by Todd Borg
“Dr. Garcia had access to the medical reports you sent the medical foundation. You said that the reports didn’t have names attached. But is there other information that could be used to figure out a person’s identity?”
Mendoza inhaled. “Yes, if one is determined. The reports include patient age, gender, and race.”
“Garcia has a son who has some kind of stage four cancer. Paco is an undocumented, illegal immigrant who wouldn’t be missed by many.”
“You are scaring me, McKenna. You are tearing out my heart. What can I do?”
“Does a typical cancer victim have use for organ donation?”
“It depends on what kind of cancer and how far it has progressed.”
“Hold on.” I turned to Whitehall. “Do you know what kind of cancer Martin Garcia has?”
“No.” He shook his head hard as if to throw off demons.
I repeated the answer to Mendoza.
“Well, even without knowing the cancer, I can make a generalization. Most cancers are treated with chemo. The chemo that best kills cancer cells also kills certain healthy cells that are more vulnerable than others. Bone marrow is one of those types of cells. Often, doctors will find a bone marrow donor whose tissues match the recipient. Then they’ll give the cancer victim an especially high dose of chemo knowing that, while it kills the cancer, it also kills all the bone marrow. Once that is done, the only hope for the victim to survive is to have the matching donor ready to replace the bone marrow.”
“Can a bone marrow donor be a kid?”
“It’s not common, but yes, they can.”
“What is the risk to a kid who donates bone marrow?”
“If it is done correctly, the risk is there but not great.” He paused. “Unless...”
“Unless what?” I said.
“Unless they take other organs.”
“Such as?”
“Well, cancers often destroy organs, and doctors often transplant replacement organs from brain-dead donors at the same time they transplant bone marrow.”
“But organs from donors who aren’t brain dead would work just as well, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Where can a doctor do a transplant?”
“You mean, which hospitals? Most, probably. It’s like any other major surgery.”
“Could human organ transplants be done by a veterinarian?”
“Well, we always use specialists for such delicate operations. But having said that, I’ve heard of vets doing transplants on pets.”
“Are pet organs and pet operations hugely different from people? Or would the skills transfer?”
“They would transfer. In fact, in most ways, doing a transplant on a human isn’t much different from doing a transplant on a dog. Most veterinarians don’t have a lot of staff as we’ve come to expect in hospitals for people. But they manage. The risk would be greater, but the operation could still be done.”
“And a veterinarian could presumably do a human transplant in the same place as he does pet surgery, right? In an animal hospital?”
“Yes. It is certainly possible.”
“Thanks.” I hung up.
FORTY-EIGHT
I looked at Whitehall. He looked stunned. Spot lay on the floor, his head up, watching Whitehall.
“Are you sure you don’t know where Andrew Garcia practiced veterinary medicine?” I asked.
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I should’ve paid more attention.”
“You don’t know where Garcia and his son Martin went?”
Whitehall shook his head. His eyes were watery with distress. “No. If only I could help, but I don’t know what to do.”
“I need to see their house.”
Whitehall didn’t hesitate. “Okay, let me get the key.”
As Whitehall stood, Spot jumped up.
I followed Whitehall into his office. He opened a drawer in his desk. I stepped close just in case he tried to surprise me. He reached into the drawer and pulled out a key.
We went out the front door and walked to where a narrow connecting path led to the neighbor’s house, the cabin that Whitehall rented to the Garcias. Spot trotted ahead.
The drive of the rental house was just wide enough to accommodate two vehicles. On one side was a brown Hyundai. The other space was vacant.
“How does Garcia transport Martin?” I asked.
“A white Ford van with a wheelchair lift gate.”
Whitehall walked up a shallow wheelchair ramp that had been built over the one-step threshold and let us in.
It was a four-room cabin, not much bigger than mine. The kitchen and living room were on the east side, the two bedrooms on the west side with a bathroom separating the bedrooms.
I searched the desk in one bedroom, looked through kitchen drawers, checked over the bookcase, and found nothing of note except a key for a Ford. I slipped it into my pocket.
“Did Garcia have any vet friends?”
“I don’t know any of his friends,” Whitehall said. “His entire focus in life seems to be taking care of his son.”
“You said that you don’t know where he practiced. But did he ever say anything about other places, places of familiarity?”
“No. I have always had the sense that he was local, although I can’t say precisely why.”
“May I use your computer?”
“Yes, of course.”
We went back to Whitehall’s big house and into his office.
I used his computer to search for Dr. Andrew Garcia, but got nothing. Either his name was false or he’d worked for someone else or he’d retired before the internet became comprehensive. I also looked up all the local animal hospitals from Reno to Placerville including all of the ones in the Tahoe Basin. I copied and pasted their addresses into a list, then logged onto my email and sent the list to all of the local law enforcement agencies along with a short note explaining that I believed Paco to have been kidnapped by Dr. Andrew Garcia for the purpose of harvesting his bone marrow and other organs for his cancer-stricken son Martin. I notated which animal hospitals I would investigate.
I mentioned Garcia’s white Ford van and suggested that, regardless of what might sound like a far-fetched suspicion, they put out an Amber Alert.
I added Whitehall as a contact for information, logged off, and told Whitehall to stay put in case any law enforcement had more questions.
Spot and I got into the Jeep and drove out through the gate.
It took me two hours to drive by all of the Tahoe animal hospitals from the north half of the lake to Truckee. I knocked and looked in windows and listened at back doors and studied the parking lots looking for Garcia’s van with the wheelchair access gate. I satisfied myself that none of those hospitals was occupied at this late hour.
While I drove, I received phone call progress reports from Diamond at Douglas County and Sergeant Bains at El Dorado County. Sergeant Santiago at Placer County called and said that they’d picked up Salt and Pepper, but they’d found no sign of the kid or anyone else at Placer County animal hospitals.
Then I remembered something that Mallory had said. I got him on the phone.
He explained that they’d checked all the veterinary clinics on the South Shore, but found nothing.
“I’m calling with a question,” I said. “You mentioned that one of your boys saw a suspicious blue pickup in South Lake Tahoe, but it didn’t match Paco’s first description, so your officer let it go.”
“Yeah.”
“Where was that sighting?”
“You think that could matter?”
“I’m desperate.”
“Hold on. I’ll see if it’s in a report.”
He put me on hold. I was coming down the West Shore from Tahoe City, going past the neighborhood where Paco had been kidnapped a couple of hours before. My fatigue was overwhelming. I’d thought I was being so clever. Even had Paco help set the crazy trap. But I put the boy at risk and lost him. No amount of rationalizing
would change that simple fact. I’d used terrible judgment, and Garcia was possibly going to take a scalpel to a little boy and take his organs as a result. Maybe he had already cut the boy open.
Mallory came back on the line. “I talked to the officer who saw the two big men. He said they were parked over on Third, a couple of blocks toward the lake from Highway Fifty.”
“He say what the men were doing?”
“That’s what was strange. He said it looked like they were on a stakeout.”
“What happened?”
“He watched them for a bit, called it in, the men saw him, and they drove away.”
“Thanks.”
FORTY-NINE
I drove into heavy rain as I went around Emerald Bay. The rain continued into South Lake Tahoe.
At the “Y” intersection, I turned toward Stateline, drove a couple of long blocks and took a left on Third. The street goes into an area of warehouse buildings before it curves into the residential neighborhoods closer to the lake.
I went down two blocks and parked.
I grabbed my cell phone, got out into steady rain, and took Spot with me. I wanted stealth in the dark, and a Harlequin Great Dane does not aid stealth. But Spot was a formidable foe against bad guys.
The area was dark, the businesses closed. We walked down one very long block, turned the corner, walked the next short block, turned and repeated. The rain was steady, making all the surfaces shine, reflecting distant car lights on Lake Tahoe Blvd.
There was no animal hospital listed for this area, so I didn’t know what I was looking for. But I had nowhere else to look.
When we completed the circle and came back to our starting point, we went in a different direction. There was an auto repair shop, a metal fabricator, the garbage collection facility. I passed the recycling center, multiple construction contractors, a dance studio, and a newspaper office. There was a small storefront that was closed up, a fenced storage yard for heavy equipment, a lighting showroom, another auto repair shop, a cluster of rental storage garages.
I tried not to rush, tried to be a thorough observer and use all of my senses.
I looked for the odd light glowing in the back of a business that was closed, a sound that didn’t fit with a place where the people had all left for the night, a smell that was out of place. But I succeeded at nothing except getting myself soaked. I’d wasted a lot of time.
But I had nothing else to do. All the law enforcement agencies were looking for Dr. Garcia, too. I had no better idea about where to look.
Then I realized that I’d been thinking wrong about searching this dark commercial district.
Whenever I walked Spot at night, he always noticed a hundred things that eluded me. Most of the time, I had no idea what they were. But he would turn and stare into the dark. Sometimes he stopped, forcing me to stop, while he sniffed the breeze. Often, I couldn’t tell if what he noticed was a sound, a sight, or a smell. Regardless of the sense, he was much more perceptive than I was.
My mistake was paying attention to my perceptions when I should have been paying attention to Spot’s.
We started making another circuit of the area, walking all the same blocks. This time, I stopped looking at the buildings and just watched Spot. Spot looked and turned and pulled and focused here and there at places where we’d already been. I couldn’t imagine what all his questions and thoughts were about. After a time, he’d turn away from whatever had caught his attention and resume walking.
We had retraced most of our steps when Spot came to a full stop in front of the abandoned storefront. He stood in the wet dark, staring at it, nose held high, air scenting.
The building was long and narrow and made of concrete block. The front had a window that was covered on the inside to make it opaque. Next to it was a glass door, also covered on the back side.
I let go of Spot’s collar. “What is it, boy?”
He swung his head up to look at me, then turned back toward the storefront.
I gave him a little pat on his shoulder. “Go look. Show me what you’re smelling.”
Spot walked toward the door, lowering and then raising his head, sniffing the air. He turned away from the door and went to the right, down along the side of the dark building. I followed.
Spot sniffed the ground a bit, but mostly focused on the air, moving his head around almost like a slow-waving flag.
We went past several small, dark windows, set high up in the concrete block wall.
At the rear corner, Spot turned the corner and walked along the back side of the building.
There was a loading dock up at the tailgate height of delivery trucks. Next to the dock was a short stairway that rose to a double doorway. The right door was new, made of metal. It was wet with rain, and it shined, reflecting distant vehicle lights from Highway 50, two blocks away. The left door was old and corroded with rust and was too rough to show a reflection. Just visible in the night were old painted letters that came to the edge of the door, the beginnings of words that were interrupted when the right door was replaced years after the words were painted.
GA
TA
AN
HO
Spot sniffed his way over to the far rear corner of the building. Then he came back and investigated the stairway.
As Spot began to walk up the stairs, I figured out what the painted words might possibly have once said.
GARCIA’S
TAHOE
ANIMAL
HOSPITAL
If so, this would be where Andrew Garcia had his veterinary practice before he retired.
At the top of the stairs, Spot put his nose to the center joint where the new right door met the old left door.
He wagged.
My heart thumped.
Paco!
FIFTY
My first thought was to call 911, but I knew the routine. Cops would come, then more cops. They’d pound on the door. They’d ask why I thought a kidnapped boy was inside of a dark building, and when I said that I knew because my dog wagged at the door, they’d think I was nuts. They wouldn’t be able to break in without probable cause and a warrant or some indication of an emergency within the building. Whatever terrible thing Dr. Garcia was doing could go on for hours uninterrupted.
I had to go in now.
I had to have surprise.
I had to do it alone.
I tiptoed up the stairway to check the door. There was no handle. It was designed to be opened from the inside only.
The tiny crack between the doors was dark. I put my ear next to it. Nothing. I sniffed as Spot had done. Nothing. But I knew not to put any stock in not being able to detect odors that were obvious to Spot. A human’s nose compared to a dog’s nose is like an ant’s eyeball compared to the Hubble Space Telescope.
I took hold of Spot’s collar and gently pulled him down the stairs. We ran around the far side of the building. There was no side door. Other than the double metal door at the back, the only way in was the front door.
I went back to the front of the building and gently pulled on the front door. It was locked. It was a standard commercial door, solid metal frame with a metal rim around heavy tempered glass. It would be difficult at best to breach. Even the glass would be nearly impossible to break with any force less than a well-swung baseball bat.
The building’s front show window was large and would be even stronger than the door.
I looked at the edges of the glass, trying to see if there were any gaps in whatever opaque material was behind the glass. But I could see nothing. No telltale hints of light at the edges of either window or the edge of the door.
Any attempt I made to break in would make a lot of noise. In the time it took me to find Paco inside the building, Dr. Garcia would gain a huge advantage.
Maybe I could get in from the roof.
I looked around for a way up, a dumpster or something that I could climb. There was nothing. The concrete block wall looked about a dozen fee
t tall with no handholds. I could search around nearby businesses and see if someone had left a ladder out back, but that might take hours and still yield nothing.
I saw a garage across the street that I hadn’t noticed before. The door was up. Parked inside was a van, facing out. It was hard to see in the dark, but it looked like a white Ford van, like the van Whitehall had said Dr. Garcia used to haul his son Martin in his wheelchair.
Still holding Spot’s collar, I ran to the garage with the Ford van. The key I’d taken from Garcia’s kitchen drawer fit in the lock. I ushered Spot into the back on top of the lift platform. At the rear of the van was the spare tire compartment. I opened the tire cover, felt around in the dark, and removed the tire iron. Then I got in the front and started the van.
The big engine roared loud in the enclosed space.
I put the van in drive, rolled out into the street, waited until I thought I had enough momentum, then turned off the engine.
The van went silent as we rolled. Without engine power, I had no power steering or brakes, but I didn’t have to turn. I guided the van alongside the building, then stepped hard on the brakes to stop.
“You stay inside here, boy,” I said to Spot as I got out and gave him a pet, then put my finger across his nose, the signal not to bark.
With the door open, I stood on the driver’s seat, and, holding the tire iron, boosted myself up onto the roof of the van and used my foot to gently shut the van door.
The top of the wall was now at face level. I grabbed the edge and boosted myself up, swung my foot over the edge, and pulled myself onto the roof.
Like many commercial buildings, the roof was flat and coated with small gravel. The rocks made crunching noises as I walked. Despite my rush to find Paco, I tried to move gently to minimize the sound.
There were several places where the flat roof was interrupted. There was a large exhaust vent near the back of the building and a small exhaust vent to one side. In the middle of the roof was a built-up skirt, and on its top a skylight mounted at an angle. I tiptoed over to look.
In the dim light from distant buildings, I could see that the skylight was an old model, hinged at the high end with a latch at the low end. From inside, a person could use a special rod to open the skylight for fresh air. From the outside, there was no way to unhook the latch except to break it.