The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  Nobody.

  It was later now. Maybe forty-five minutes had passed, he wasn’t sure; he had lost track. It was dark. The neighborhood wasn’t interested in the killing any longer. He’d been upstairs, had taken some notes. He had bought a disposable camera at a local Quik-Mart and had tried to photograph the scene himself because SPD was so focused on the Safeway killing that only a single patrolcar and a body bag team from Dixie’s office arrived to help out. In this light, he wasn’t likely to get any decent shots.

  He took a picture of the fire hydrant. It was a gravestone now as well. How appropriate that Maybeck had hit a fire hydrant, Boldt thought, taking one last shot. Where this guy was going—maybe he was there already—he’d be putting out fires day and night for the rest of eternity.

  His pager rang. He hoped it was Daphne with news of Pamela Chase or Tegg. He had a hell of a time shutting the thing off, but he finally hit the right button.

  He called in on his cellular. The message was from LaMoia, who had obviously abandoned the Safeway investigation at some point; LaMoia had a way of getting away with things like that. He was slippery without being sleazy. Nothing from Daphne. That worried him.

  The message was read to him by the dispatcher: “Administration building, 8 P.M.”

  Boldt checked his watch: 7:45.

  He jumped in his car and took off. The body bag boys were screaming something at him, but Lou Boldt wasn’t listening. Donnie Maybeck was yesterday’s news.

  45

  Dressed in a navy blue cashmere blazer, a white pinpoint Oxford and a multi-colored Italian silk tie, Elden Tegg warmed with the sight of his guests enjoying themselves. He loved the role of host, of provider, although secretly, in his innermost thoughts, he despised the pretensions of these people. Tonight was Peggy’s opera dinner. Five of their twelve guests were voting members of the opera board, including its chairman, Byron Endicott. Despite Maybeck’s earlier problem with the police and his own discovery that the county police had dug up Anna Ferragot’s grave, Tegg attended his wife’s dinner, clinging to a plan set in motion earlier in the day with a call to Vancouver. The harvest would take place tomorrow morning as planned. Tegg would deliver the organ himself. He had a noon flight booked out of Vancouver for Rio via Mexico City. His life as a veterinarian was finished; when he hit Rio he would be carrying Wong Kei’s money and would have access to several accounts here in the city. If he worked quickly enough, that money could be electronically transferred before the little people had figured out how to even spell his name. That money was his ticket to buying his way in as a transplant surgeon. A new life.

  A part of him recognized this as delusion. Fantasy. It all seemed too simple. It all worked out too easily, too perfectly. And yet he convinced himself that people did this kind of thing all the time. He read about them in the paper: Executives vanishing with the entire corporate pension; secretaries disappearing with their bosses; housewives cleaning out the joint accounts, never to be heard of again. All it took was a little courage, a little planning, and a lot of quick decisions.

  He was focused on the upcoming harvest and his own escape. All he had to do was maintain a certain pretense of normality for the next few hours—fool everyone—and by tomorrow noon he would be gone, off to his new life. This was the way it was done, wasn’t it?

  “The way what is done?” the woman in front of him asked.

  Had he said something to her? Was he thinking aloud, speaking his thoughts for everyone to hear? “Sorry?” he asked, trying to remember her name, distracted by a piece of mushroom at the corner of her lips.

  “What’s that?” she asked, her napkin finding the mushroom. Tegg’s eyes found her breasts. Right out there for everyone to enjoy. There was more silicon in this room than hors d’oeuvres. More tucks than in a Scottish kilt.

  His wife signaled him so that this guest could see. What a lifesaver! He excused himself and dashed off to her side.

  Peggy looked radiant, though somewhat awkward, in a Japanese tea dress cut so tightly around her hips and knees that she moved from guest to guest like a hobbled horse. Most of the other women in the room fell noticeably short of Peggy’s high standards for presentation, though not for lack of trying.

  His wife mouse-stepped past him and whispered, “T.J.’s having trouble with the company, but he won a Pro-Am in Scottsdale last month.” She scooted over to the champagne and had a word with one of their white-gloved servers.

  Tegg wasn’t up to this pandering and politicking. For years he and Peggy had worked so hard to acquire this kind of social acceptance, but now that it was here, especially at a time of such nerve-racking decisions and potentially catastrophic problems, it all seemed so fake to him. They had bought this acceptance, by throwing his harvesting money at the arts—ballet, summer dance, the opera—by being seen. By blending in. Ridiculous nonsense. What would Peggy say if she found out her substantial contributions to the arts came not from his work at the clinic but from the harvested kidneys of degenerate runaways?

  “Wonderful to see you again, Elden. How’s the practice?”

  Thomas—T.J.—Harper owned the second-largest retail department store in the Northwest. He had white hair, white teeth, and wore a tailored suit from London.

  “Keeps me in stitches,” Tegg answered, waiting for the rag merchant to see the humor. The man responded with a slight grin, though it seemed forced. Everything was forced at occasions like these. Tegg wasn’t sure what to say next. He drank some champagne.

  “You did a fine job on Ginger’s leg,” Harper said.

  Ginger was the Harper’s terrier mutt. Tegg felt his face flush. These kinds of comments made him feel like cheap labor, a gardener, or a house cleaner. A little person. Tegg felt he was groveling, and he hated himself for it. He forced kind words from his mouth, for Peggy’s sake. “I understand your golf game is in top form. Congratulations on Scottsdale.”

  The man glowed. “We ought to go out sometime.”

  “I’d love to,” Tegg replied. He wasn’t much for golf, although they belonged to the club—more for appearances and for Peggy’s sake than his own. Tegg excused himself and headed straight for Tina Endicott, whose eyes betrayed a restlessness that Tegg interpreted as sexual urgency. Byron Endicott had incited a great deal of envy in the hearts of the males in his social set by marrying this twenty-eight-year-old stunner, forty-odd years his junior. It was anybody’s guess as to how long it would hold together, how much loose play Byron was willing to tolerate. Endicott had asked for a telephone twenty minutes earlier and had yet to reemerge from the study. Tina had legs that didn’t stop and lush auburn hair.

  As he was revving himself up for his conversation with Tina, his wife again caught his eye and offered a glance at the diminishing caviar that told him his guests had gone through twenty-five hundred dollars worth of fish eggs in half the allotted time. Message received: The soup course would be advanced and served any minute. He and Peggy could work a party the same way he and Pamela could handle a harvest.

  It just wasn’t as much fun.

  Tegg nodded toward the study indicating he would fetch Byron Endicott. Peggy acknowledged and tottered off toward the kitchen.

  As Tegg crossed the foyer, a waitress answered the front door. Facing him, her features twisted in anxiety and her swollen limbs trembling with trepidation, stood the piggish Pamela Chase. What was she doing here? More problems? Tegg felt a tic coming on and reacted quickly as his shoulder and head attempted to meet, by hurrying to greet Pamela. The young waitress flinched with his tic and glanced quickly away, as if she hadn’t seen it. He saw a fear in Pamela’s squinty little eyes that he didn’t care for one bit.

  “Pamela? Problems?” he questioned.

  “It’s important,” she said, maintaining her cool surprisingly well, glancing sideways at the uniformed caterer. “An emergency at the office.” The electricity in her eyes told him this required immediate action.

  He motioned her toward the study, well aware he
would have to evict Byron Endicott. If he didn’t handle this carefully, rumors of a scandal would be started before the fish course.

  As he ushered Pamela into his study, his mind sorting through possible explanations for her arrival—had Maybeck opened his little package?—he tried to see this young woman through the eyes of Byron Endicott. He knew damn well the kinds of things that would be said about them if he failed to handle this correctly. But he didn’t care. Let them talk. By tomorrow, a new life.

  Control, he reminded himself, feeling another tic coming on but refusing it, as if slamming a door in its face. Unknowingly, he slammed the door to his study. It made a tremendous crash. Pamela jumped. Old man Endicott mumbled into the receiver and hung up. He rose to his feet and came around the desk with a suspicious, irreverent expression. “And who is this lovely creature?” he asked Pamela.

  Tegg experienced a flash of embarrassment. He said, “This is my surgical assistant, Pamela Chase. Byron Endicott,” he said, indicating the old man. “I’m afraid something has come up at the clinic, Byron. We’ll need the study for a moment if you don’t mind.”

  “Enchanté,” Endicott said, taking her hand. “Not Douglas Chase’s little girl?”

  “Yes,” Pamela said, looking to Tegg nervously.

  “And such a lovely young woman!” he lied. “Last time I saw you … But just look at you!” he said, leering artificially.

  She blushed.

  Endicott grinned at Tegg. “I’ll leave you two,” he said, his implication obvious. “But you must introduce her around, Elden, or I’ll raise a stink. I promise.” To Pamela he said, “We are all very close friends of your parents. You really must say hello before you leave.”

  Endicott smirked, gave Tegg a teasing, nasty look, and let himself out of the room.

  “I’m sorry for coming,” she said.

  “Not to worry,” Tegg replied. “You look awful. What is it?” He closed the door tightly, a dozen thoughts crowding his brain.

  “The police came to my apartment asking about my trips to Vancouver.”

  At first he couldn’t be sure he had heard her right, but from her grave expression, from the constriction in his own chest, he knew that indeed he had. He felt the betraying savagery of two tics overcome him—like two sharp bolts of electricity. He fell into a chair. His blood banged so loudly in his ears he couldn’t hear what she said next. First Maybeck, now Pamela. Too close. Much too close. There was no time to waste. He began plotting immediately.

  “They know about everything,” she said. “They offered me a deal if I gave them you.”

  Had Maybeck talked? His attorney, Howard Chamberland, had assured him everything was fine—Maybeck had been released on a misdemeanor charge. His palms went clammy. Control! he reminded himself again, answering her perplexed and ghostly gaze with a squaring of his shoulders and a lifting of his chin. The police moved about as fast as languishing sea lions, certainly no match for his latest plans. No reason to panic. Evaluate the situation. Analyze. Indecision was anyone’s biggest enemy. He had contingencies.

  He looked into her dark, squinting eyes and thought about telling her of his plan to escape. But that would include the harvesting of the heart, and she didn’t approve of that—she might even betray him if she knew about the heart. No, better to calm her and be rid of her. Tomorrow morning would come soon enough.

  “Sit down,” he told her. “Good. Can I get you something to drink? A pop? I want you to relax, calm down. You’re with me now, you’re all right.”

  “She’s pretty. More than pretty. Dark hair. Taller than me. Beautiful eyes.”

  “A woman?” he asked stupidly. The idea that a woman had questioned her seemed so much less threatening to him than had it been a man. Why, he wasn’t sure.

  He knew how she hated pretty women. She felt betrayed by her weight problem, failing to see it as a disease, but instead as a weakness of character, an attitude that had been drummed into her by her inept parents.

  “I have to interrupt here,” he said, doing so. “Forgive me, please, but the details are quite unimportant to me. They didn’t arrest you, did they? And there’s a reason for that: They haven’t got anything of any value on us. Suspicions is all. We’ve talked about this before, but what’s important to remember with the police is that if you don’t talk to them, there’s nothing they can learn from you. It’s hard, I know,” he said, reaching over and touching her knee. “Terribly difficult. But true.”

  “She mentioned the harvests. She said three of the donors had died from hemorrhaging.”

  He couldn’t catch his breath. Failure? Footsteps in the foyer, drawing closer. They wanted him at the table, no doubt. It suddenly felt as if the room were smaller, the walls closing in. Yes. He could feel the walls moving closer. Control!

  A knock like a knife in his chest. Not now! He glanced toward the door, tried to lift himself from his chair, but couldn’t move. Such helplessness was foreign to him: It was always the patient that was paralyzed, never him. Pamela rose effortlessly to answer the door, and this inspired Tegg’s limbs to obey. He reached out and stopped her as he came to his feet, reminding himself that the sure sign of superiority is the ability to overcome. Performance—appearance—was everything.

  When he opened the door he felt relief to find one of the waitresses staring back at him. He had somehow expected his wife and had no desire to face her at this particular moment. He could picture her at the end of the dining table, facing his empty place, crazed with rage and yet politely fielding conversation and graciously offering the bread basket to her guests.

  “The soup is served, Dr. Tegg. Mrs. Tegg asked me to tell you.”

  “Please have them start without me, would you? Just a little business matter to clear up. I won’t be but a minute.” It was an easy absence to explain. As the only vet in the clinic, he was constantly on-call. He responded at all hours to emergencies of every sort. It was perfectly normal for him to be summoned in the evening hours to handle an emergency. Tonight, rather than drag him downtown, when he was in the midst of an important dinner party, his assistant had had the good sense to seek his advice in person so as to occupy as little of his time as possible.

  He shut the door and asked Pamela, “Hemorrhaging? That’s impossible! Must be some sort of trick, saying such a thing. Trying to rattle you.”

  “I don’t think so. She sounded serious. She said the investigation is being run by Homicide.”

  The word reminded him of Maybeck, of sending that package to the man. He regretted that now. He had regretted that only a moment after he had turned it over to the delivery boy. But it was done.

  “Maybeck’s fault,” he said, the idea taking hold, and coming as a great relief. “If he mistreated the donors in any way … Once the patient is out of our control, out of our care, we can’t be expected to monitor his or her every move, can we? Of course not! The wrong activity too soon and something is bound to come loose. They were told how to take care of themselves. We can’t babysit every last patient, now can we?”

  Pamela said flatly, “She showed me a picture of a woman. Sharon, the same woman we did the kidney on last Saturday. I remember her name. I remember that night very well, very clearly, as you can imagine I would. And I remember seeing a sponge, and her chest being damp, and now I have to wonder, with Betadyne? Was that why her kidney wasn’t prepped? Was that why you did what you did to me, what we did, to distract me? She said that Sharon had disappeared, and that’s not right for a kidney. It’s a heart, isn’t it, Elden? AB-negative, she said, and all I could think of was a heart.”

  His own heart responded like a chorus of timpani.

  “You don’t need to answer because I know. How many times have you tried to convince me to do a heart? And just yesterday, you took that dog’s heart. What’s happening? Have you done it already? Have you?”

  “This doesn’t involve you,” he warned.

  “Doesn’t involve me?” she questioned. “Where is that coming from
? Get a clue!”

  His anger surfaced but he contained it. She was just a child. “We have talked about this. I don’t accept your arguments. You know that. I have heard them a dozen times. What you can’t face is that I might be right! Admit it!”

  “I won’t tell them anything. You know I won’t. I owe you that. But I’m scared. For you. For me. I’m not sure what to do. They know about the trips to Vancouver. They know about all of it. We have to do something! They’re not just going to go away.”

  “You’re missing the central point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is that if they had anything, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me.”

  Panic struck him. What if she had already cut a deal with them? What if she were wearing a microphone, the police standing ready outside his door? He stood and edged around his desk, taking a quick but useless look outside. It was rainy and dark. He couldn’t see anything but a driveway full of cars. He approached her from behind then and stroked her hair. She liked it. She leaned her head back and looked up at him. He bent over feigning a kiss and ran his hand over her chest and abdomen, secretly searching for an unwarranted bump that might alert him to a wire or a microphone. He leaned her forward and massaged her neck and back, searching here as well. Nothing. Perhaps she was loyal to him after all.

  He continued, “If they had anything at all, they would be doing more than asking questions. They’re nosing around, is all. They earn their living nosing around. Our tax dollars, mind you!” He was losing focus. “Granted, they’re obviously on the right track. I’ll give you that. I’ll concede that much. But where are the charges? Why haven’t they questioned me? You see? They’re tiptoeing around, is all. We mustn’t give in to that. And besides, we’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? Of course we have. We have even anticipated such a moment. Hmm? The lab at the farm can be dismantled in a matter of a few hours. We’re prepared for that. No problem. Where’s the evidence to come from?” It was true: If he dismantled the farm’s surgical facility, if Pam remained loyal, what was left for the police? He said, “I don’t think this is nearly as bad as it looks, my dear. Hmm? Not nearly as bad as it looks. The important thing is to stay calm. With that in mind, stay where you are. I’ll be right back.”