Dreaming Death

by Heather Graham

“He knows he could face the death penalty.”

  “He’s still claiming innocence. I talked to Jackson; he was with him this morning. He sent Angela in. He still claims that he had no idea that people were planting bodies on his property. We’ve questioned the housekeeper. She was terrified and panicked and so was given some sedatives. She also swears that she knew nothing about the bodies. And she’s lived on the property for about a year, though she goes on weekends to stay with her niece. The bodies were buried deep enough to keep them from being disturbed by animals. Most were covered with lye, but... I’m not an ME. Beau Simpson is the best, and he’s seen enough to believe that the organs were definitely taken from them.”

  “So—we get a crack at Dr. Lawrence, too?” Stacey asked.

  “Oh, yes. Separately, I think. Then maybe together. We’ll see.”

  Jackson Crow was holding the press conference right when they arrived; news was seeping out about the many bodies that had been found on the property of the very respected Dr. Henry Lawrence.

  Jackson could handle a press conference like no one else.

  Yes, Dr. Lawrence was being held. He was being held, at the moment, but they needed to remember that while he would probably face many charges, he would have his day in court.

  Reporters asked him dozens of questions; he fielded them all well. The discovery was so new and so much was still under investigation that he couldn’t say that indeed, the Yankee Ripper had been caught or even that these were the bodies related to the murders that had taken place in DC and Northern Virginia. The case was, he repeated several times, still under investigation.

  Stacey and Keenan arrived at their office in time to sneak around the growing crowd and watch the press conference from the television in the conference room.

  When Jackson came back upstairs, he met with them there.

  “From the preliminaries we have so far, it definitely appears that these murders were committed to acquire the organs from the victims. Here’s where I’m curious. We found many men. But also young women. Why did this killer go from secretive attacks on these people—quick killing, quick removal of organs—to making such a display with his so-called Ripper victims?”

  “Is it even the same killer?” Stacey mused. “I mean, one would hope that an operation like this is the only one in existence, but...”

  “We know we’re looking for more than one person,” Keenan said. “Dr. Lawrence has to talk to us. Maybe once we have identified the bodies and hopefully placed him with at least one or two of them in the same place at the same time, he’ll realize that he’s really in trouble.”

  Stacey frowned and said, “Billie Bingham.”

  Keenan and Jackson both looked at her.

  “Billie Bingham. She was at the trial. Maybe she met Lawrence then. But maybe, just maybe, they had a falling out. And he wanted to get rid of her, but Billie Bingham was a public figure. There would have been tons of media attention if she had just disappeared. Make it look like she was a victim of a crazed killer, and no one would look for the others, those without family to hound law enforcement to the ground over them being missing. Or those who were just down-and-out. I mean, it may be a bit out there, but she was at the trial.”

  Keenan looked at Jackson. “Right. It may be far out there, but so is everything that has to do with this case. Forensic accounting could go over her books again. I’m assuming she’s been audited many times and that she had a way to keep her cash-flow documents, but there might be something there to indicate that she was financially gaining from all of this.”

  “I’ll get people on her financials again,” Jackson said.

  “And Lindsey Green in her basement—Raina felt something from her at the morgue. She didn’t know who had killed her. A surprise attack from behind,” Keenan said. He inhaled and said, “Maybe Billie was the one to kill her. She’d be waiting for someone to get the body and expecting that another woman would be killed that night so that the supposed Ripper would have his Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes victims. Naturally, she’d never expect that her killer meant for her to be the ripped-up Catherine Eddowes victim.”

  “It’s possible, certainly. Billie’s assistant had no idea that anyone else was in the house,” Jackson said.

  “Right,” Keenan said. “Well, we’re going to go and take our cracks at Dr. Henry Lawrence.”

  “I’ll get Forensics working,” Jackson told them. “Good luck.”

  They walked down the hall to the interrogation room.

  “It’s a good theory. The more I think about it, the more the theory makes sense,” Keenan said.

  “That this whole elaborate scheme to kill prostitutes was a way to get rid of Billie Bingham?” Stacey asked him.

  “Quite possibly. But still, say Billie was in on it. Billie was dead and set up in Lafayette Square when Bram thought that he heard a man and a woman arguing. If everything we’ve heard about Billie is true, she might have wanted a bigger share of the money,” Keenan said.

  “Maybe. Are you going to ask Dr. Lawrence about it?” she asked him. “Or am I?”

  “Hmm. What do you think? Is he going to respond better to you because you were, in your way, involved with the McCarron trial?”

  “Doctors can have god complexes. Feeling superior. Maybe he’ll respond better to a dude who is almost six and a half feet tall.”

  “I say we still go in separately, and we both bring up Billie’s name.”

  “He already told us there were dozens of people there. And that’s true.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s going to be tired. He’s been stripped of his finery. Maybe he’ll feel more like talking. We’ll both come at him.”

  They turned in their weapons, signed in and were escorted to a holding cell. The guard bringing them in said that Fred Crandall was in the viewing room; he had been watching Henry Lawrence since he’d been brought to the interrogation room.

  “You first—memory lane,” Keenan decided. “I’ll see if Fred has gleaned any more information since last night.”

  “As you wish,” Stacey said.

  Keenan slipped into the viewing room, nodding to Fred.

  “A hell of a thing!” Fred told him. “I stayed until about five in the morning. I figured we were on to something complicated, but man...that was a damned body farm. How the hell did you get on to all those bodies?”

  “The earth just looked...odd. I asked Jackson to arrange for dogs. And well, you know the story from there.”

  Fred was a good guy, but if Keenan had told him that the ghost of one of the victims had come after him, he might have reported Keenan as needing a psych evaluation.

  “By the way, where’s Jean? Thought your respective precincts decided you two needed to pair up for this.”

  “They did, and we did. Jean was out there with me. I’m still geared up—wanted to watch you questioning this guy and thought it was better you two than me. Always thought I could go in with Jean and I’d remind him he could face DC charges and she could remind him that he’d also face federal charges—and the Commonwealth of Virginia, if he was wavering. She’ll be here in a bit; she thinks it might be nothing, but she went to see a woman who called her precinct this morning. In the task-force meetings, we were talking about those who’d fallen off transplant lists. Could be a fluke or a fake. You know how many calls we get.”

  “It could be important. When did this call come?” Keenan asked him. He looked through the viewing window. Stacey was just sitting down with Henry Lawrence.

  The doctor was staring at her as if he’d like to slice and dice her. He was tired, aggravated, and looked as if he’d been forced to roll in the mud.

  “Dr. Lawrence,” Stacey said.

  “I’ve been set up,” he told her.

  “But you’re a transplant doctor.”

  “I was a transplant doctor.”

/>   “You know how to transplant human organs. Tough science. In fact, I don’t know how you’ve been pulling it off. But then, you must think that you pick up throwaway people and their lives don’t matter. Still, you must make sure that your wealthy clients live. I mean, if you’re going to get paid, right?”

  “Idiot woman!” he said. “I told you—I don’t do transplants anymore. Everything you’re saying is untrue. You can’t just grab anyone.”

  “But you can go for the young and healthy and hope for the best, right?” she asked.

  “I keep telling you—”

  “But you did know Billie Bingham.”

  He sighed. “Look, I don’t even live in DC. And whether I was ugly as sin or not, I’m a surgeon. I’d never need an escort service. I’m a surgeon.”

  “Billie wasn’t the famous Billie Bingham, back in the day of the McCarron trial.”

  He sighed again. “My lawyer is going to dice you people to pieces,” he said.

  “Dice. Interesting choice of word,” Stacey said. She stood. “Well, enjoy your accommodations!”

  “Wait! Wait. You should believe me. You, of all people. Your father was important in that trial. You know that I was devastated. That I tried to save Dr. Vargas... Hey! Don’t you walk out on me!”

  Stacey walked out.

  She joined Keenan and Fred in the observation room.

  “Your turn,” she told Keenan.

  “You got a rise out of him,” Fred told her.

  “But no confession, no names.”

  “I’ll take a different tack, ask him who he thinks might be setting him up, who might be involved.”

  Keenan walked in to talk to Henry Lawrence.

  “What is this? Musical cops? You know your boss was in this morning. You can ask me questions from here to eternity. I didn’t do it.”

  “I just find it hard to believe that you didn’t know that Billie Bingham was in the courtroom during the McCarron trial. She was beautiful—staid-looking at the time, but young and very beautiful. She had to have caught your attention,” Keenan said.

  “I’m a surgeon. Women flock to me,” he said.

  Beyond a doubt, the man was a narcissist.

  “Then again, all those bodies. Right under your nose. It’s difficult to believe all those people were buried and you had no clue.”

  “I have an office and long hours at the hospital. When I’m home, I’m holed up—sleeping, working or relaxing. I’m not staring at the woods.”

  Keenan felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. It was Stacey, texting him.

  He got up and went to the door of the interrogation room.

  “Hey! Don’t leave me just sitting here for hours! I’m a surgeon!”

  Keenan turned back. “I know lots of surgeons. Good men and women, good surgeons. And you know what? They don’t behave as if they’re superior to others. They like helping people, curing them, making them better. I even know a few who are lamenting on a Saturday night that they don’t have dates. News flash, guy. You’re not that special.”

  “Why you—”

  Keenan didn’t hear the rest; he let the door clang shut and strode into the observation room to see why Stacey had been beckoning him.

  “What’s up?”

  “Jean thinks a woman who called in about being approached by strange people is the real deal. She was offended that anyone would think that she would accept a heart without it being in her hospital with her doctors, or that she consider taking a heart if it was from a questionable source. I think we should join Jean. Fred is going to stay here; he may go in eventually, when Dr. Lawrence is really getting impatient,” Stacey said.

  “If that works for you,” Fred told him.

  “I don’t think we were getting anything out of him anyway,” Keenan said, “but he did give me an idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tell you on the way. It was a long night, but it’s going to be a longer day.”

  They headed out. “Curious?” Keenan said as he drove.

  “What’s that? And what’s your plan?”

  He glanced her way. “Oh, I guess most areas are like this. We’re on our way to a mansion, which is near the alley where Jess Marlborough, her friends and her pimp spent their days working. Mansions, hovels. All within a stone’s throw.”

  “Any big area is going to have those with money and those without.”

  “Right. But it makes me think. This area just isn’t that big. Anyway, let’s see what this woman has told Jean and find out how viable the information might be!”

  They were a large highway away from the down-and-out region where Jess Marlborough had plied her trade—six lanes and then several blocks before they reached an area of impressive single-family homes—with single families still living in them, in contrast to the many old mansions that now housed four or more apartments.

  They parked behind Jean’s unmarked sedan and headed up the walk.

  Detective Jean Channing met them at the door.

  “I don’t know how much this can help us, but Mrs. Kendrick—Anita Kendrick—called after seeing the news from last night. A few weeks back, she was approached by a woman in a coffee shop. The woman wanted to let her know that she didn’t have to wait and die. For the right price, she could receive a good, young heart almost immediately. Come in, come in, she’s a lovely woman,” Jean told them. “Through here. She’s in what she calls her small parlor.”

  They went in, walking through the foyer, a large parlor with a huge hearth and through a door to a smaller sitting area. Anita Kendrick was sitting on her sofa, drinking tea. Chairs were grouped close, and a table sat near her perch and bore medications and water bottles, and anything the woman might need seemed within easy reach. She didn’t rise to greet them.

  “Forgive me. Some days I am stronger than others. I’m feeling a bit tired,” she told them from her chair. “Please, sit, join us.”

  “You were approached by someone suggesting they could get you a healthy heart transplant?” Stacey asked, after she and Keenan had introduced themselves.

  “I just didn’t—well, I couldn’t believe that it was serious! I was in the coffee shop. My niece was with me that day. She’d helped me out—they do have transportation from the medical center, but Elinor is so sweet, and I love seeing her, and she’s happy to take me. But after my appointment—it was a good day—we stopped for a snack at the café. And while Elinor was at the counter, this woman came up, and of course, I was polite, thinking she needed help, and she told me she could get me a heart. I shouldn’t die—‘a woman of my class’—and hearts were available! I mean, she might have followed me from the cardiologist, but how she would know...?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, I stared at her. I thought it was a joke. I said that I was on a list—a just list, a good list. And she actually said that some people deserved to be in the world, and others just didn’t. I still thought it was a come-on to get money in some way, so, I said that I was calling the police. And then, naturally, she ran away. And I didn’t think anything of it—even when those poor women were being butchered—because I couldn’t believe anyone could be killing to steal organs!” She was truly indignant.

  Anita smiled at them. “I’m in my late sixties; I’d love to have more years. But I’ve had a beautiful life. I lost my husband last year. We didn’t have our own children, but we adored our nieces and nephews, traveled the world and took them with us sometimes. I’d never take a single breath of life from another human being. This is so horrible!”

  “Thank you for helping us, Mrs. Kendrick,” Stacey told her. “What’s your prognosis? Is there—”

  “A chance?” Anita asked, smiling. “While there’s breath, there’s a chance. I don’t give up. I just wish there was more I could give you.”

  “If we showed you pictures, do
you think you might recognize the woman?”

  “Maybe. But she was quite odd. Now that I think about it, I think that she was wearing a wig and glasses. I am certainly more than happy to try.”

  Keenan produced his phone, flipping through his apps quickly. He found the dossiers he had on Cindy Hardy, Sandra Smith and Agnes Merkle.

  He thought about the others, the other women who were connected, in one way or another. Jess’s friends, Nan, Candy, Betty, Tiffany and Gia. Tania Holt.

  And Peggy Bronsen, the aide who had come running from Congressman Smith’s office, worried about what her boss might be doing.

  He would draw them all up next, if need be.

  He showed the first three pictures to the woman. She studied the three of them carefully once, and then again.

  “Maybe...”

  Her voice trailed.

  “Maybe?” he, Stacey and Jean Channing all spoke at the same time.

  Their hostess looked up, smiling. “I could be wrong. I told you she was wearing a wig and glasses. But the nose...and her chin. I think...it might have been this woman. No, I don’t just think. Yes, this is her, the woman who approached me.”

  She pointed. The picture she’d picked out was of Sandra Smith, the congressman’s wife.

  Keenan stood quickly, ready to head out.

  “Wait, please!” Anita Kendrick pleaded. “Don’t leave me—I mean, until you have her.”

  “Keenan, go,” Stacey said. She looked at Anita Kendrick. “Is that all right with you? I was top as a marksman—or woman—in my academy class. And Jean has been a detective for years—”

  “And years,” Jean put in dryly.

  “Yes, fine, I just thought that you were all going. And my housekeeper went shopping and hasn’t come back yet. She’s due soon. I just don’t... I don’t want to be alone. Just in case someone knows somehow that I called the police. Of course, you have the man, but that woman... I won’t feel safe until you have her, too.”

  “We’ll have the woman,” Keenan assured her.

  He headed to the door telling Stacey to call Jackson and find out just where this suspect was and say she should still be under watch.