Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) (19 page)

Chapter 54

Towards dawn, the three of them lounged around Slater’s great room, a fire roaring in the fireplace, the comfortable area warm with the heat of blazing logs and strong coffee. With all the chaos and new information this was the first focused opportunity they’d had to share their findings and theories.

Cruz had made copies of the message Cole had stolen from Pelican Bay, and handed Frankie a yellow legal pad to jot down notes. “Let’s try to figure out what we know about the deaths of these three people,” he began, “and see how or if they’re connected to each other and to whatever’s going on with the
Lords of Death
and the attacks on Frankie.”

Cruz put down his coffee mug and edged toward the front of the armchair he sat in. “Okay, we have three dead victims, all homeless, and all attacked in a similar fashion, but not killed in the exact same way, according to the medical examiner.”

Frankie spoke from her position on the couch, “Cole claims they were all chopped, slashed and bashed – his words – he says that’s what the
Lords
do, so it seems gang-related.”

The words sounded creepy as an ominous silence settled over the room, a grim contradiction between the fire’s cheeriness and the topic’s gloominess. “It’s true all three bodies were savaged by knives and blunt instruments, but if Anson Stark had something to do with our murders,” Slater said, “why? I can see that kind of violence inside the prison, but ... ”

“Then, what’s
different
about your murders?” asked Frankie.

Cruz continued, “Two of the three had internal body parts removed – not Dickey Hinchey, though, but the Sacramento woman had both kidneys removed.”

“What?” Frankie asked, straightening up, hearing for the first time the autopsy results of the bodies in Bigler County. “Someone removed the girl’s organs? In tact?”

“Dr. Wilson thinks so,” answered Cruz. “He doesn’t know for sure, and not all of the organs – maybe the liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart. He also says the murder weapons don’t match.”

In her mind Frankie heard Cole’s crazy mutterings: “Music! Keyboards! Music!”

“Cole tried to warn us,” she said, “when he talked about ‘music.’ I thought he meant inside the prison.”

Agitated, Slater rose and jabbed at the fire with a poker.

“Our murders have to be related to Frankie’s discoveries at Pelican Bay.” Cruz addressed Slater’s back and explained, “Frankie discovered that a high percentage of inmates at Pelican Bay have had some kind of illegal abdominal surgery.”

“I’m postulating that they removed kidneys – because that’s the only whole organ that could’ve been excised and the patient still survive. I had no idea your murder victims were missing organs, too.”

“Christ!”
Slater exclaimed, turning away from the fire, his bronzed face disturbed. “What are they doing with these kidneys? Why are inmates willing to give them up?”

“Frankie and I think it’s some token of allegiance to Anson Stark’s gang
Lords of Death,”
Cruz answered.

“What the hell is the world coming to?” Slater raked his fingers through his cropped hair. “Are you saying there’s two kinds of organ removals, one inside the prison, and the other my murder vics? And at the prison they – what? -- just throw them away?”

“They wouldn’t have time to sell them on the black market before they degraded,” Cruz answered, “and Dickey Hinchey didn’t have any of his organs taken.”

“That’s the difference between the prison surgeries and the murders, right?” mused Frankie. “One is an oath of allegiance, one ... ” Her voice trailed off as understanding hit her. “But there’s no way someone could know, just by looking at the person, if the organs were viable or not.”

“But I’ll bet my life the
Lords of Death’s
involvement in removing organs from inmates is tied to our murders somehow,” Slater said.

“Maybe,” Cruz said, handing Slater the kite Cole Hansen had retrieved while in the SHU. He explained what he and Frankie thought the codes meant as Slater stared at the succession of letters and numbers on the paper.”

Slater’s face took on a grayish pallor. “God, it looks like an order-on-demand for black market organs.” Still clutching Cole’s note, he shook his head. “I can buy the allegiance theory, donating an organ to show loyalty to the prison gang, but this other thing – ” He waved the note. “An enterprise like this? Frankie’s right. How could they know if the organs were healthy? Using homeless people? Doesn’t make sense.”

Cruz answered slowly, suddenly feeling the final pieces of the puzzle click into place. “It’s two separate things tied to one single fact – corruption,” he said. “It occurs at every level – at Pelican Bay and here in Rosedale. Local cops have to be involved.”

“You think a cop is killing homeless people,” Slater scoffed. “One of our own is doing this – this hideous thing? That’s impossible.”

But Slater’s words rang hollow in the large room.

“I think the Anson Stark’s oath of allegiance from gang members turned into a profitable business on the outside,” Cruz said.

Slater nodded slowly, “And they got plenty of members to run a complicated enterprise like this. Bastard’s doing it from inside the prison.”

Angie Hunt woke up in hell. She knew this because the world around her was a swirl of colors – blacks and grays and reds. Flames and wickedness, she thought groggily, payback for all the evil she’d committed during her long years of using and hooking. All the people she’d hurt and betrayed.

Her body throbbed as if the Devil himself had punched her with giant fists.

She heard a distant groan, didn’t realize for a long moment that the sound came from her own swollen, dry throat. Her slender fingers fluttered like palsied digits on the ground beside her, but her body wouldn’t respond to her brain’s command to move.

Battling her way through a deep fog of hurt, she tried opening her eyes. One was swollen completely shut, but the other offered a narrow line of vision. Not hell, then, because she saw the rock ceiling of the cave around her.

But she was on her way to dying, she thought.

Chapter 55

Cruz sat back in the arm chair, one leg crossed at the knee. “Who better to target than the homeless? They’re virtually faceless unknowns. Nobody misses them when they disappear. We assume they’ve moved on to another place, another county, even another state.”

“And who better to facilitate than cops?” Frankie added. “Local cops know who the homeless are, and where they congregate.”

“Hinchey’s organs weren’t taken,” Slater said without conviction.

“A mistake?” Frankie suggested. “And that’s why the last victim was young and presumably healthy? She was homeless, but specifically targeted because of her youth.”

“Maybe Hinchey and the Sacramento woman were mistakes – they hadn’t figured out yet that they needed fairly healthy homeless people.”

“God,” Slater said, “I’m having a hard time believing a cop is involved in this.”

Mind working furiously, Cruz said, “Has to be, couldn’t work without insiders. An organization large enough to execute the harvesting, the packing and transportation, a list of clients wealthy enough to pay for illegal organs, and doctors willing to do the illegal surgeries.”

“The donor lists for organs are long,” Frankie explained. “Some people wait years for a new kidney or heart. Bypassing the legal lists of donor recipients, getting to the top of the list is very difficult to do.”

Slater said grudgingly. “Gangs and the mob, with an assist from a cop.”

Frankie nodded. “It could be done. With the right precision, skill and planning, even the inmate organs could remain viable.”

They sat in stunned silence, barely able to comprehend the bizarre scope of what they were proposing. Slater cleared away their mugs and glasses, while Frankie and Cruz remained immobile, their expressions grave.

“So Anson Stark’s blood oath was the start of it,” Slater summarized. “He just moved from there into a new, illegal activity. He’s probably been planning this for years.”

“I think Angie Hunt’s disappearance is connected to this whole affair,” Cruz said. He paused to explain for Frankie’s benefit about Angie’s kidnapping. “She knows every homeless person and isn’t shy about inferring with cops.”

“You’re thinking she stuck her nose in the wrong place,” Slater confirmed.

“We have to expose this,” Frankie said, “but where do we start? Who do we trust?”

“People were bribed or paid off to make a scheme like this work,” Cruz said, “dangerous people.”

“Something’s still bothering me.” Frankie chewed at her bottom lip, asked tentatively. “There are two projects for harvesting organs. Could there also be two killers?”

Slater and Cruz exchanged glances. Cruz shook his head, “I thought at first – there were suggestions, comments people made, that I didn’t put together – ” He frowned, thinking of that vague possibility “ – but it’s too much coincidence to think there are two of them.”

“We’ll have a hard enough time proving the killer’s a cop,” Slater muttered. “The D.A. won’t buy the idea there are two of them.” He swiped his hand over his forehead, damp from the warm room and his own anger. “God help us all if it’s a cop. And God help the cop when we find him.”

Angie wasn’t dead, but her throat burned, swallowing was almost impossible, and her arms and legs were boulders anchoring her to the ground.
Was she paralyzed?

She tested mobility by turning her head gingerly to the left. A sharp bolt of lightning shattered her skull.

Oh, shit, oh, shit.
A cloud of foggy panic blanketed her mind and she lost consciousness again.

She awoke later – hours, days? Time had no meaning in her dark tomb.

Not dead yet.
He hadn’t killed her, but he’d tried damn hard, enjoyed himself, too. He’d tried to choke the life out of her with those rough hands of his.
Not dead, but dying.

A tear trickled from the slit of one eye. The bastard was going to win. She’d die here in this dark, remote cave, and no one would ever know what’d happened to her.

Her breath was a sighing release, a letting go, a giving in to the inevitable.

No, no!
The voice reverberating around the cave came from inside her.

Git your lazy ass up and fight, girl! You gonna die like some old ‘ho after all you been through?

No, no,
she forced her cracked lips to whisper. She thought hard to bring up her killer’s face, that weaselly punk with the mean face done this to her. A man supposed to protect people like her. He was a damn coward, pickin’ on someone her size.

She kept up the litany in her brain, her mouth forming wordless shapes, her strength building until she could lift one hand off the ground and place it on her chest. She felt the dampness of blood below her breast, the sharp jagged edge of bone, and knew she was seriously injured.

Gotta move, gotta git up, gotta go, don’t lay here and die like a broken, used-up ‘ho.

The passage of time was nothing but agony and release of consciousness, waking up to more pain and passing out again. It must’ve taken her hours, inch by inch, to drag herself from the interior of the cave to its mouth. She saw the faint orange and yellow wash of sky on the eastern horizon when she finally rested.

Rolling at last onto her least injured side, she looked at the long downward slope of sagebrush and shrub and rock that stretched for what seemed forever. She lay for an hour, watching the sunrise, thinking if she died here and now, she’d have a beautiful burial site.

But pain was her savior and made her gird her last ounce of strength to roll as hard as she could down the long treacherous hill.

Chapter 56

At last Slater pulled himself out of the comfortable arm chair. “I’ll leave the two of you now. I’m pretty beat. Thinking of a cop this corrupt – well, I can’t wrap my mind around it. In fact, I’m not going to completely believe it until I have proof. And if I find solid evidence, there’ll be hell to pay in the Rosedale Police Department.”

With that final comment, he left the living room and made his way to the den where he’d bunk for the night.

Cruz turned to Frankie, suddenly feeling awkward. “You and Cole will be safe here tonight, so don’t worry.”

“I won’t.” She walked into the kitchen for a glass of water and he followed her.

He stood next to her as she began to rinse the few dishes in the sink. “It’s been a harrowing few days for you.”

Her dark brown hair had fallen out of its loose knot and strands hung across her cheeks and forehead. “Not so bad.” She shrugged and gave a slight smile. “Although I did get a new appreciation for practicing medicine in a sterile environment.”

They finished in silence, Cruz very aware of her closeness, and her apparent indifference to his presence.

At last he walked to the door, reaching for his jacket. “If Slater asks, tell him I decided to stay at my apartment tonight.”

Frankie trailed him onto the front landing where Cruz paused to look down at her pale face.

“Sorry. I’ve got to get back to business at the parole office first thing. I’m behind on my cases.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go.”

I don’t want to,” he murmured. She stood very near and his breathing became shallow. “Slater will look after you,” he added softly.

“Don’t worry about me.” She placed one hand on his chest. “Take care of yourself.” They stood so close he could smell the light fragrance of her soap or shampoo. He placed his hand over hers, felt his heart begin a steady thumping, wondered if she could feel it.

She smiled wryly. “Besides, I’ve got you on speed dial, remember?” She looked fresh and innocent, a façade for the steely determination he knew lay beneath the surface.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’ll be safe here while Slater investigates the police department.”

He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself rather than her.

Moments passed before either moved. Then it seemed the most natural thing in the world when he lowered his mouth to hers for the briefest brush of his lips across hers.

Sergei huddled in a corner at the end of the alley by
Jesus Saves.
He knew he should tell someone what he’d seen, but he also knew his English was not so good. Officer Cruz had been looking for Angie. Officer Cruz liked Angie. He would believe Sergei. Maybe.

He’d always been suspicious of the police who hassled the homeless people on the street. They shouted at them, called them dirty names, treated them like dogs, like the soldiers Sergei remembered as a boy in Russia after the fall of Communism.

He took another long gulp from his vodka bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had an alibi for the night Dickey Hinchey had been murdered. Sergei had been housed in the Methodist Church with all the other homeless people.

But tonight he was on the street because of the drinking. He couldn’t go in the van for a nice dinner and a warm place to sleep if he was drinking.

What if the cop killed Angie and they blamed Sergei, who had no alibi tonight?

No, it was better to keep his mouth shut and stay alive. Who would believe him over the word of a Rosedale policeman? No one.

As the vodka worked its paralysis on his mind and body, Sergei wasn’t sure he himself believed what he’d seen. Maybe it was all a figment of his imagination, the alcohol convinced him. Maybe he was an idiot
.

A land owner, surveying his property in preparation for selling it, found Angie Hunt’s body. The figure of a small, dark-skinned woman lay in a culvert – unmoving, battered, bloody, and bruised – dead, the farmer thought at first.

He looked up the long length of the mountain, saw the disturbed brush and dirt.

How could she have fallen that distance and survived? When he put his aged fingers to her throat, he noticed the ugly, bluish-purple ring around her neck, but found no pulse. He shifted his fingers, searching desperately for any thread of a heartbeat.

Nothing.

He dialed emergency services, even though the reception was spotty in this part of the foothills. No luck. The farmer was elderly and his truck was parked a half mile away. It couldn’t negotiate this rocky terrain.

Could he move her that far on his own? She looked sleight, almost weightless, but at sixty-nine he was a weak shadow of his younger self. He sighed heavily, but knew he had to try. Couldn’t just leave the poor little thing here even if she was already dead.

The animals, the carrion birds – no, he couldn’t do that.

He sighed deeply, a religious man, who believed in signs and miracles. If she was dead, moving her wouldn’t matter. If he left her here to get help and she was somehow alive, she’d likely be dead before he got back.

He raised a quick prayer to heaven and made his decision. Bending on creaking knees, he lifted the woman into a sitting position, then hefted her over his shoulder. She was heavier than he’d imagined, or maybe he was weaker than he believed.

God help him, he thought, as he staggered his way back to the truck. It was the longest half mile of his life.