by Brenda Novak
“Cruz?” She asked the really important question now. “How did they find us? How did they know about this house? It’s owned by my father. My official residence is in Crescent City – ” She interrupted herself when she heard the rise of hysteria in her voice.
It was funny how doctors could contain the panic and chaos of trauma during triage, but when it was your own life threatened, you lost yourself to terror.
“I’m scared,” she admitted reluctantly. “Someone has connected this house – my safe house – to me. It’s where the lawyer told me to go.”
The thought flitted through Cruz’s mind: what lawyer? What was she talking about? But like an annoying fly, it buzzed away. There were too many immediate concerns to consider.
“We’ll figure it out. Sheriff Slater will help us. We can trust him. He’s got a deputy watching the house. For now, keep the weapon close by. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The phone went dead and she carefully placed it on the table. A sense of warmth came over her, knowing that Cruz was thinking of her, worrying about her.
Throwing off the quilt, she moved steadily and quietly around the downstairs, checking every lock, every window, every point of entry. She conducted the same systematic patrol upstairs. Satisfied, she finally returned to the chair, determined to keep watch over herself and her patient.
No point in telling Frankie about Angie Hunt, Cruz thought. She didn’t know the Jesus Saves woman personally, and she would only worry about another person in danger, possibly targeted for murder.
In fact, they hadn’t discussed the case Detective Flood was putting together – the murders of two homeless people, the investigation. An uneasy suspicion gripped his gut. The whole tangled web of death, missing organs – it had to be connected somehow.
Throw in a man like Anson Stark, a powerful gang leader, the attack on Frankie. He was sure she’d gotten involved unwittingly in something far more dangerous than he’d initially thought.
Additionally, there was the murder of the woman in Sacramento County. How did she fit into the puzzle?
The answer came sooner than he expected. Cruz was still talking to people loitering around Jesus Saves. Had they seen or heard anything about Angie? How late had she worked last night? The blowsy blonde, Sharon Fasser, claimed she knew nothing and clearly had decided to be unhelpful.
Slater rang through while Cruz continued to ask questions. “Good news from Sac County,” he said.
“It’s about time for some good news.”
“Their M.E. did a complete autopsy after a little pressure from homicide division. The homeless woman they found in Battery Hill Park was missing both kidneys.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, and according to the coroner after examining her lungs and other internal organs, she was unhealthy, probably well into the final stage of cirrhosis.”
“So the kidneys would be no good.”
“Yep.”
“I’ll bet someone is royally pissed off about that,” Cruz mused aloud.
“Yeah, enough to kill because of it,” Slater agreed.
“And how does that death fit into the overall scheme?” Cruz asked. “We’ve got to talk to someone we can trust at the prison. Walt Steiner?”
“The visitation officer at Pelican Bay?”
“Yeah, Frankie trusts him.”
“Not sure it’s wise to trust anyone right now,” Slater muttered as he hung up.
Chapter 51
The killer saw from the scuffed dirt on the cave’s floor that she’d crawled from the spot he’d dropped her, back toward the entry. She lay unconscious near the mouth of the cave. He looked around, wondering if anyone could see the opening this far up.
Bitch!
He bent over her, felt for a pulse. Steady and strong. Good, she was alive.
Grabbing her feet, he dragged her heedlessly deeper into the interior. For good measure he kicked her once in the ribs. The blow roused her for a moment, and she groaned weakly, rolling into a fetal position.
He jerked her flat on her back on the rumpled blanket he’d spread on the dirt. Wouldn’t want to get his own clothing dirty.
Bitch! Miss Self-righteous Angie Hunt, always looking down her nose at reliable, productive members of the community. Favoring the scum she surrounded herself with. He felt the familiar rage roil inside his gut, remembered his father’s disparaging words.
Straddling her, his knees on either side of her hips, he looked down at her bruised face, the gouges and cuts on her arms. He felt the first stirrings of arousal at the sight of her helplessness – not sexual – he wouldn’t screw a diseased whore like her if his life depended on it.
But a thrill at the sight of her fragile, thin neck – the cords standing out like chicken bones – made him hard. Thinking about how easy he could snap it – a twig in a child’s hand – aroused him. The utter vulnerability of the woman and the absolute power he had over her made him shudder with sexual promise.
He wrapped a hand around her throat. He could break her scrawny neck with one twist. He spread his fingers widely and felt another pulse of anticipation jitter through his body. Felt her pulse skitter beneath his touch.
She coughed and sputtered her eyes open, staring at him with round black pits in her chocolate face. “You?” she choked out. “I thought – ” Pure unadulterated hatred, mingled with fear, contorted her face.
He could hardly hear her weak words, but laughed anyway. “Yeah, what a bitch, huh?”
Her eyelids fluttered wildly as she tried to shake her head. Her eyes rolled back, showing only the whites, stark against her brown skin.
He wrapped both hands together around her throat, thumbs hooking at her larynx.
Squeezing slowly, watching her eyes jerk and close – open, jerk, and close as she gasped for air – he brought her almost to death. Then the next moment he allowed her to gasp back to life in a spate of wheezing and coughing. He repeated the actions, excited by the perverted intensity of the act. He began a third time.
All at once with a sudden burst of strength, Angie came to life, fought him, her skinny fingers clawing at his hands, desperately trying to break loose from his iron grip. Her legs kicked, her hips bucked beneath him, but he continued the rhythm – tighten and release, tighten and release.
At last the exquisite pleasure was too much and he exploded, spasmed in a jerk that bowed his body backward. Sweat dripped down his face onto her rictus of repulsion. He collapsed on her, rolled off and trembled with the greatest sense of release he’d ever felt.
That was good. He bathed in the pleasure of the moment until his sweat cooled in the dim cave. Finally he stood, stared at the corpse. His heart slowed down, his brain sprang alive, and he aimed one last kick at the lifeless body.
She didn’t flinch or move. He smiled with thin, cruel lips.
What a rush! And he didn’t even have to screw her.
The killer rolled her onto the dirt floor and tossed the blanket over her body, looked around. They were so deep inside the cave she wouldn’t be found for years and years.
It was the last phone call Frankie ever expected to receive.
“He what?” she nearly shouted into the phone.
The neutral voice on the other end of the line didn’t belong to a medical person. Frankie knew by the tone – brusque and military sounding. “He’s been transferred to Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, the ICU. You’re the only person listed in his files, but you’ll need picture ID to see him. He’s under guarded lock-down.”
She dropped the land line. It fell lopsided onto its cradle. Her father was in critical condition in a trauma center. That meant he might not survive the night. The automaton-like voice had given few details on his condition. She’d have to visit the hospital herself for a status report from a physician.
Involuntarily, Frankie glanced at the stairs winding up to the second level bedroom where Cole Hansen recuperated from his bullet wound. He was getting better every hou
r, but still ran a low-grade fever.
She didn’t dare leave her patient, but she had to see her father. Learn for herself how critical his condition was. What had happened to him in Folsom Prison? And why?
Did it have anything to do with her?
Chapter 52
“Both of them can hide out at my place,” Slater offered as he and Cruz sat in the Sheriff’s office discussing the case. “No one would suspect the Bigler County Sheriff of harboring an ex-con on the loose and a pretty prison doctor.”
“Who said Frankie’s pretty?” Cruz asked.
“Oh, ho, I’m the older and wiser man, and I can tell by the way you say her name that she’s no ordinary-looking woman.”
It annoyed Cruz that he was so transparent. “Cole Hansen’s a violated parolee, not a runaway,” he corrected. “I had to violate him to keep the heat off me and Dr. Jones.”
Slater smiled slyly. “Dr. Jones, huh?”
“Cut it out. We’ve got three murders, attacks on a respected member of the community, homeless people in jeopardy, and a violated parolee on our hands.” He rose to pace the floor of the small office. “We don’t have time for jokes.”
“I got plenty of room at my ranch,” Slater offered again, “and it’s secluded enough to avoid notice. Trick will be to get them out of the ‘ordinary-looking’ Doc Jones’ house.”
He smiled at his little joke and rubbed the top of his close-cropped head. Gray threads ran through the thick brush of hair. “How do you figure the Lords got to them anyway?”
Cruz shook his head, continuing to pace. “No idea. Whatever this is about, though, I bet somehow it all leads back to Anson Stark.”
“Maybe,” Slater said slowly. “But if so, we’ve gotta be careful. Whenever money’s at stake, the risk increases.”
He gave Cruz directions and a set of keys to his ranch north of Placer Hills. “I’d better see what Flood thinks he’s got on the cases.” As they left the office, he placed a hand on Cruz’s shoulder, halting him. “Safety first, Chago, safety first.”
Cruz didn’t need the warning. He didn’t call ahead to warn Frankie about the move to a different safe house. She’d resist the change, especially if Cole was not recovering well, and he didn’t need an argument with her right now. Safety first, he muttered to himself.
“I’m not leaving my patient,” Frankie insisted when Cruz arrived at the Rosedale house and explained the plan to her. “Not until his fever drops and the wound stops seeping.”
He’d brought groceries and was stacking them on the counter, when he paused. Hands on hips, he glared down at her. She looked frazzled and he didn’t blame her. The last forty-eight hours had been brutal for both of them.
He stepped away from her because even while his survival senses were ringing alarm bells, part of him wanted to take her in his arms and soothe her. “All right, okay.”
Finished with stocking the refrigerator, he rummaged through it, muttering, “No beer? What kind of doctor doesn’t drink beer?”
She trailed after him. “The kind who – ”
“No, don’t tell me,” he interrupted. “The kind who keeps a giant bottle of vodka in her bedroom.”
“The kind whose mother was an alcoholic,” she corrected calmly.
He felt foolish, straightened up, and looked at her over the top of the fridge door. “Oh – sorry. And I guess the vodka is – ”
“A nice little disinfectant and pain killer in an emergency.”
He smiled gently. “Not a reminder to stay on the straight and narrow?”
“Well, maybe that, too,” she admitted, sinking onto a kitchen bar stool. “Seeing as how I’ve kept it in my bedroom since before med school.”
He leaned against the counter, holding a carton of milk and a package of sliced lunchmeat. “We’ve got to figure this out because you and Cole can’t stay here.” He drank from the milk carton with the abandonment of a child and then stuffed his mouth with several slices of ham.
“Who at the prison has the know-how to remove a kidney without someone dying?” Cruz asked Frankie as they moved into the living room.
“Has to be one of the nurses, night-time, probably. No one else would know the mechanics of it, but it would still be a great risk.”
“Another doctor?”
“Dr. Vincent comes in to cover for me, but he’s old, nearly retired. I doubt he’d – ”
“Where would they do it?”
“The SHU clinic is pretty quiet at night, but at least one guard would have to be part of the scheme,” Frankie answered. “They’d have to pack the organ in ice and transport it for immediate use.” She shook her head in perplexity. “I don’t see how they could manage it.”
“Unless ... ” Cruz began, trailing off.
“Unless, what?”
“Unless they don’t plan on using the organ at all.”
Frankie looked shocked. “But – but why would they remove a perfectly good kidney simply to – what, dispose of it?”
“A demonstration of loyalty?” Cruz suggested. “Or intimidation?”
Frankie bit on her lower lip, concentrating. “If that’s true, they could dispose of it easily enough in the hazardous waste containers.”
“A ritual for leadership in the gang,” Cruz continued. “Do you have the names of those inmates who had abdominal scars? We could cross-check them against known members of the Lords of Death.”
“I have another idea,” Frankie said after thinking a long moment. She retrieved the pilfered note from a folder, and pushed it across the counter where Cruz stood. “Take a look at this again. In light of what you’ve told me, could the letters and numbers refer to human organs?”
Cruz nodded. “Cole was talking about musical instruments ... ”
Frankie’s brow puckered. “The symbols could represent blood types, like O+ stands for O-positive.”
“And the ‘10p’ at the end of the note could be 10:00 pm, couldn’t it?” He bent his head close to hers, their cheeks almost touching. “A delivery time?”
“Who was the note meant for? If the note says the – the supplier, I suppose, needs one O-positive or A-negative blood donor of a heart, for example – ”
“Right,” Cruz interrupted excitedly, “‘1O-O+’ means one organ, with blood type that’s either O-negative or O-positive.”
Frankie turned her head quickly toward Cruz, their faces suddenly close and unbearably tense. “Ah, because O is the universal donor, yes, and ‘HK’?”
“Heart and kidney,” Cruz replied immediately, his voice low, his breath soft against her skin.
The reality of their words broke the spell and she shuddered violently. “My God, it’s a specialty order for organ transplants.”
Chapter 53
The escape from Frankie’s family home in Rosedale to Slater’s house took place after midnight, but no one was sleepy. Even in the safest place possible – the residence of the county Sheriff – none of them found comfort in the Sierra foothills, no matter how far from Rosedale, but there was safety in numbers.
Slater’s house, roomy and spacious, was able to accommodate all of them. Frankie and Cruz each took a guest room, and Slater would sleep on the sofa bed in the den. Still recovering from the gunshot wound, but no longer feverish, Cole had been settled into the master bedroom upstairs.
Slater had finished the cleanup at the Rosedale house, the repair of the back door and disposal of the broken glass and blood-stained rug. He’d examined the residence during the daylight and found no clues to identify the attacker, but stationed the same deputy outside in case someone returned to the scene of the shooting.
It was now three in the morning, and Frankie and Cruz gathered at one end of Slater’s ancient dining room table with the Sheriff at the head. Fueled by endless cups of coffee and the adrenaline rush of flight, no one was inclined to go to their room. Everyone’s mind was on the brutal attack at Frankie’s father’s house and the astounding information that’d come at them like a ru
naway train.
Slater looked into Dr. Jones’ calm eyes, gray like his own. He swiped a large hand over his jaw. “I hate to say this, Dr. Jones, but the attack was aimed at you. Personally. I don’t think it had anything to do with Cole Hansen.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” Cruz contradicted. “The attacker could’ve been looking for Cole, missed seeing him in the garage, and gone searching.”
“And knew just where Cole might be? At Dr. Jones’ father’s house?” Slater shrugged but didn’t argue further. “We won’t know, will we, long as the two of them are together?”
“Are you suggesting we split them up?” Cruz seemed outraged at the idea, and Slater knew for sure the parole officer was starting to take a personal interest in Frankie Jones.
She rose abruptly, nearly knocking over her cup of coffee. Agitated, she rubbed her hands up and down over her crossed arms. She stopped and faced them, stance like someone prepared to do battle. “Talk to me, not about me.”
Cruz and Slater exchanged sheepish looks. “Sorry, Frankie,” Cruz said at last, “but it will be hard to figure out who did this if we don’t know who the target was.”
“I know that.” She ran her fingers through her thick dark hair, messy and tangled from the recent activities. A good hot shower, she thought, that’s what she needed. No time for one now, though. Her cell phone buzzed in her back jeans pocket.
It was her father’s lawyer. A sharp jolt of guilt ran through her. She hadn’t thought of her father since they’d left the Rosedale house, running for their lives. “I have to take this,” she said, and moved into the kitchen for privacy.
“Where are you?” Wright’s voice was unusually sharp, his normal unflappability gone. “I’ve been trying to reach you.” He paused. “Roger’s in ICU.”
“The prison called me,” Frankie answered. “They said Sutter.”
“Yes, Sutter General, downtown Sacramento, under heavy guard. Frankie, he’s in a bad way. He may not last the night.”