The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  Camile wrestled to be free but lacked the energy for a prolonged struggle. She resigned herself to Pamela’s hold.

  A moment later the door swung open and the veterinarian stepped inside. Dr. Elden Tegg, D.V.M., as his name plaque introduced him, stood close to six feet tall, in a wiry frame, with a dark complexion, brown eyes, and a black beard carefully trimmed. He wore a white lab coat, khaki pants, and brown leather walking shoes with rawhide trim. He had a protruding Adam’s apple that bobbed as he spoke in a grating voice. His attention fixed immediately upon his patient.

  Pamela Chase passed him the cat as he nodded. He had exceptionally long fingers, immaculately clean hands, perfectly manicured nails, and he wore a gold wedding ring.

  He studied the cat thoughtfully, squeezing, probing. He looked into her eyes and glanced quickly into her ears. “Loss of appetite and vomiting,” Pamela Chase informed him. He grunted an acknowledgment. “They sent pictures along.” Tegg returned the cat to his assistant and approached the light board, turning it on and studying the X-rays.

  “Well,” he asked in a professorial tone, “did you have a look at these?”

  She answered, “I was thinking we should try a milk shake,” referring to a barium upper G.I.

  “Have I told you how fortunate I am to have you?” he asked.

  She glowed with the compliment.

  “Let’s sedate her,” he said, “shall we?”

  Fifteen minutes later, she reentered carrying both the cat and the new X-rays. Tegg slapped the large negatives into the clamps on the light box, studied them carefully, and signaled Pamela over to him. She responded without thought. “Here’s what the others missed,” he said confidently, running one of his clean fingernails over a section of the X-ray. “See here, and here?” he asked. “It’s not what you see,” he advised, “it’s what you don’t see, which might explain how it was missed so easily. Just a ghost, see?”

  “Yes, now I do.”

  “There’s some kind of obstruction in the stomach. Maybe a fur-ball, but I doubt it. Let’s try an endoscopy and have a look.” Pamela Chase prepared all the necessary equipment for the procedure and stood alongside him like a corporal at the side of a general. He inserted the black eel of plastic tubing down the cat’s throat. The tiny fiber optic camera inside the animal’s stomach sent back black-and-white pictures to the small SONY television that Tegg studied. “The problem with something plastic like this is that the veterinarian cannot feel it in the exam, cannot see it clearly in an X-ray, and yet to this poor creature it feels like her tummy is full all the time. She tries to eat, but the stomach rejects it. Probably picked it up off the floor.”

  On the screen, under his direction, a small set of pinchers moved like jaws. Tegg deftly maneuvered them to apprehend the foreign object. A moment later he extruded the endoscopy tube from the cat.

  A small piece of soft plastic—a swimmer’s ear plug—fell into the stainless steel dish that Pamela held.

  Tegg stated clinically, “That should do it. Send along the usual instructions regarding the anesthesia. Also some buffers to help out with the abrasion to the stomach lining. If the vomiting continues, they should reschedule immediately.”

  He moved toward the door. “What’s next?” he asked her.

  “You haven’t taken a break all day,” she said.

  “What’s next?” he repeated.

  “A toy poodle,” she advised, checking a list. “Blood in the urine.”

  “Are we set up for surgery?” he asked.

  “All set,” she replied.

  “Give me five minutes,” he told her. Then he added sincerely, “I hate toy poodles.”

  5

  The downtown branch of Seattle’s public library is two blocks from the Public Safety building, the police department’s central offices. It is overshadowed by an intriguing skyline sprouting new glass and steel in amounts that ten years earlier would have seemed inconceivable. The Big Money had hit Seattle in the mid-80’s, bringing with it a renewed downtown, renovations, public transit, and the ubiquitous shopping centers. The thirty- and forty-story towers competed for the best view of breathtaking Elliott Bay and Puget Sound to the west and the majesty of glacier-capped Mount Rainier to the southeast. By city standards, Seattle’s downtown is remarkably small, contained to the south by the Kingdome and to the north by the Seattle Center, a holdover from the 1962 World’s Fair. To the west is the green-marble estuary with its gray ferries and black freighters; to the east, downtown is stopped by Interstate 5, Pill Hill and Seattle College. Downtown is surrounded for miles by rolling hills blanketed in two-story clapboard homes and communities like Ballard, Ravenna, Northgate and Richmond Highlands. It is a city of water: the Sound, lakes, canals and rivers. For Boldt’s taste, the city’s growth and expansion was happening too quickly, seemed too uncontrolled. Seattle was learning life the hard way: theft, drugs, organized crime and shrinking budgets. Its art, culture and traditions kept it vital and unique: its music, dance, fine arts; its fishing, sailing, and Native American history; its festivals and celebrations; its libraries, museums, theaters and public market.

  The library is a mixture of formed concrete and garden. Plate-glass windows and deciduous trees. As with any such library, entering it is like stepping into a silent movie. On the Thursday afternoon of their meeting, it was a little busier than usual, probably because of the drizzle, Boldt thought. In a city with a winter climate like Seattle’s, the library took on a position of great importance, a kind of Mecca for the mind. The faces in these rooms were not pale, nor were they dispirited. The people of Seattle were a vibrant, red-cheeked, resilient bunch, whom Boldt counted as his own. The wet winter weather, extremely temperate considering the latitude, was essential—a few years of drought had taught the locals that much. This weather—or its reputation—was what kept the masses away. It was the city’s best defense in its increasing battle against Californication.

  Boldt entered wearing a baby carrier that supported his son Miles. He joined Daphne at one of the large reading tables on the second floor, as far away from others as possible. She steeled herself for what lay ahead. This was her chance to convince him they had a case—to win him over. That child hanging around his neck represented his other life. She couldn’t allow herself to think of it in those terms. Boldt was a friend, certainly. But more importantly, he was a cop with the connections and talent to make this case happen. This was her focus. The image of Cindy Chapman’s bleeding incision was lodged in her mind.

  On the table in front of her lay three Pendaflex folders and a pile of photocopies from her research at the library. She felt both exhausted and afraid, and the two sensations fed on each other, injecting her with an anxiety she found difficult to overcome. Without him, without some male to support her—God, how she resented it—she had little or no chance of convincing Lieutenant Phil Shoswitz to open this investigation.

  She wore gray stirrup pants, a white blouse buttoned high, and a crimson scarf to hide her scar. She had her brown-red hair pulled back off her face, a pair of simple silver studs in her ears. Boldt was, as always, disheveled, wrinkled, worn. Khakis, a Tattersall shirt, brown walking shoes with thick rubber hiking tread. He looked tired—probably was—and older than he had last night at The Big Joke.

  “Meet my son, Miles,” Boldt said proudly, speaking in a hushed voice, dropping into a chair and putting down the baby bag he carried with him. “Miles,” he said to his sleeping six-month-old child in the carrier, “this is the ‘other woman’ I’ve told you so much about.”

  “He’s adorable.”

  “I hope he gets his mother’s hair.”

  “And her brains,” Daphne said.

  He glanced down at the folders and then up at her, disapprovingly. “You’re not supposed to take these out of the office,” he declared.

  “They aren’t ours. Dixie gave them to me,” she said, referring to the chief pathologist of the medical examiner’s office. “He thought they might help convi
nce you that we have something.”

  “We?”

  “I need a partner, someone with whom Shoswitz will allow me to partner. As of this morning, Dixie is a believer, but I can’t very well partner with a pathologist.”

  “Wait a minute! I agreed to be a sounding board, that’s all. There are a dozen guys who could run with this thing.” His eyes strayed to the folders again, and she realized she was taking the wrong approach with him. For Lou Boldt, it was always the victims—the evidence—that did the talking.

  She said, “You take each one of these autopsies separately, and they don’t say much. You add them up, and we’ve got a problem.”

  Boldt leaned forward, his big hand shielding the boy’s small head, and dragged the folders across the table. “Maybe I don’t want to read these,” he said, sensing the trap they represented. She willed him to open the top folder—just get him started, that was all it would take.

  “Sure you do,” she argued.

  “Three of them? You’re suggesting a pattern?” he said, thinking aloud. “Pathology reports—so they’re dead. They’re connected to what happened to Cindy Chapman, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

  She leaned forward and nudged the files even closer.

  “If Dixie came up with these, then the pattern, the similarity between them, has to do with the way in which they were killed.”

  “The way they died,” she corrected. “And who they were or weren’t. All three filed as unsolved cases. There may be more.”

  “Runaways?”

  “They make such nice victims: No one knows they’re here; no one knows they’re gone.”

  “Don’t do this to me.”

  “To you? This isn’t about you.” She ran her red nail down the spine of each folder. “This is about Glenda Sherman, Peter Blumenthal and Julia Walker.”

  He reached for the first folder, but stopped himself once again.

  She said, “How do you prove something like this? He’s counting on that—whoever is doing this. He’s counting on our paying no attention. These kids are as good as John Does to us. They’re nobodies.”

  “I want to help, to do what I can, but it’s not easy. There are a lot of forces at play here. Even if I did reactivate, there’s no saying I’d end up on this particular ticket.”

  “I’m not buying that. The lieutenant would do anything to have you back. He’d meet any conditions you laid out. Scheduling, day care, anything. What’s the latest with the IRS?”

  “You don’t miss a beat, do you?”

  The baby spit out the pacifier. Boldt caught it in a reflex only time or instinct had developed. She was in over her head. There were a lot of forces at play. He returned the pacifier to the waiting lips. He placed his huge hand on the boy’s tiny head and encouraged him back to sleep.

  “You’re a natural.”

  “Cherish or perish.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you shouldn’t read these files. I don’t want to take you away from him.”

  “Smooth. Very smooth.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know you mean it. That’s the problem.”

  “You didn’t answer me—about the IRS?”

  “We have to make an appointment. Liz and I. She’s our accountant.”

  “Is it a big deal?”

  “If it means more money, yes, it’s a big deal. Liz had a horrible delivery …”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “It ran into some serious money. Insurance companies are wonderful until you show them the bill. Anyway … You want to remind me that I’m in a financial bind and that Liz and I could use a second income, that I could borrow from the credit union. I know what you’re up to. Point taken. Okay?” He scrunched his nose. “Do you smell something?” He grabbed the bag and stood. “In a minute everyone in the library will smell it. My son and I are going to pay a little visit to the boy’s room.”

  “You read these,” she persisted, “and you realize he’s a surgeon. Has to be. That gives us a place to start.”

  “A surgeon?” he asked, eyeing the folders.

  She reached over and hoisted the top folder. “Can you read and change diapers at the same time?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then let me,” she said, motioning for the baby.

  “You won’t like it. It’s messy.”

  “You read the files, I’ll handle Mr. Miles.”

  “You’re a poet.”

  She motioned again for the child. Boldt unfastened the carrier and passed his son to her, along with the bag. “Cloth diapers,” she noticed. “Classy.”

  “Environmentally sound. That’s Liz—ever the proper mother and citizen.”

  “Read,” she chided. She didn’t want to hear about Liz.

  When she returned, wondering whether she could ever live with doing that several times a day, his face was buried in one of the files. The two others were spread open in front of him. Fast reader. Fast learner. Lou Boldt.

  “How sure are you about this?” he asked. Accepting Miles, he thanked her and attempted to return him to the carrier. Fully awake, the boy struggled to be free, tying up Boldt’s hands and attention.

  “Cindy Chapman—the woman who sought out The Shelter—is missing a kidney.” She touched the files. “All three of these kids died from hemorrhaging associated with a,” and she quoted, “’surgically absent’ organ. Two kidneys: Walker and Sherman. Blumenthal was missing a lung. I think we may have a doctor selling stolen organs on the black market.”

  “A black market for organs?”

  She fingered the photocopies in front of her. “Is it so impossible a thought? I have a half-dozen articles here: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine. In Third World countries, harvesting is an everyday occurrence. That’s what it’s called: organ harvesting. Nice ring to it, huh? Organized, well run. Quite the business. Fifteen thousand dollars a kidney—that’s the going rate. Fifteen thousand. It’s so obvious that something like this would grow out of the lack of donor organs. Transplant technology has outraced supply. It’s all in here,” she said, again tapping her copies of the articles. “There are not enough far-sighted people out there who think to become donors prior to their deaths. Livers, kidneys, lungs, hearts, ovaries, testicles, eyes, bone marrow, you name it. There’s a shortage in nearly every category. And what happens when there’s a shortage? It’s simple economics. Third World countries are hit the worst because they lack the technology for life-support: the dialysis machines, the respirators. Egypt, India, Argentina, Brazil—kidneys practically trade on the open market. If you’re an Egyptian farmer who’s had a bad crop, you go into the city and sell one of your kidneys. You come home a few weeks later with ten years’ worth of income. And when those organs are in short supply? Maybe the doctors there turn to their colleagues overseas.”

  “Fifteen grand a kidney?”

  “Lungs about the same. Livers and hearts go for ten to twenty times that.”

  “But not here. Not in this country.”

  “Not in my backyard? Come on! What would you pay to stay alive? What happens when you find yourself number one hundred and fifty on an organ donor list where they’re averaging three transplants a month and your doctor has given you six months to live? You start making inquiries. You beg, borrow, or steal the money necessary, and you buy what no one will donate. You establish a market. Where there’s demand, someone will supply. It never fails. If you’re a doctor, can you imagine how frustrating it must be to see your patients die because so few people will take the time to fill out a couple of forms?”

  “You’re right about it giving us a way to investigate it.”

  “Us? You said ‘us.’”

  “What you do is identify their method of selection.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If it is organized—if it is a business just as you’ve suggested—then this surgeon must have some way of identifying, of selecting his dono
rs.”

  “Meaning?” she asked, wanting to hear him think this through aloud. She could feel his enthusiasm. She almost had him.

  “Listen, either they’re stealing them, in which case Chapman and these others are innocent victims, or they’re buying them, contracting them from people either desperate for money or sympathetic to their cause or both. Like your Egyptian farmer, right? Unfortunately, we don’t know which. We need to establish that first. We need to know their game plan. How do they identify their donors? That comes first.”

  “These organs are perishable goods,” she reminded. “There are time factors involved.”

  “Do they kidnap the donor, steal some kid off the streets? That’s a hell of a risk to take.”

  “They’re runaways. Who’s going to notice?”

  “But why take that kind of risk if you can cut a deal instead? What if the donor comes into the plan willingly? That makes a lot more sense.”

  “Cindy Chapman’s a victim, Lou,” Daphne said obstinately.

  “We don’t know that. What if she offered to sell her kidney? What if it was voluntary? Runaway teenagers are not exactly long on cash.”

  “I don’t believe that. Why use electroshock if they’re part of your conspiracy? She sure as hell didn’t volunteer for that.”

  “Don’t get all high and mighty, damn it. Your point is well-taken, okay? I agree with you. The electroshock doesn’t fit. Okay?”

  “You agree with me, but you won’t help me.”

  “I will help you. All I can.”

  “But you won’t take it to the lieutenant?”

  “I can’t get that involved. Not yet, anyway.” He looked down, wiped some drool from the baby’s mouth. “Extenuating circumstances.” He added quickly, “But I will help.”

  “If Cindy Chapman dies, then will you take it to Shoswitz for me? Is that what you need, a fresh victim? She’s in bad shape, you know.”