by Rita Herron
Remorse laced his voice, but still he’d been involved and had covered it up.
“So when Bruno dug too close to the truth, you had him shot in the head just like they were?”
“No.” Frank jumped up and paced across the small room, his shoes clicking on the floor. “Not me. I didn’t have your brother killed. I swear it.”
“Then McKendrick did?”
“No, he’s too ill, he barely knows his own name.”
“Bart Yager?” Parker asked.
Frank huffed a tired breath. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him yourself.” He turned to Grace, imploring her to believe him. “I swear, sweetheart, I had nothing to do with Bruno’s death.”
“Don’t ever call me sweetheart again,” Grace snapped.
He winced, and she wanted to apologize, to believe him, but the shock and pain of knowing he’d stood by while her parents’ killer went free for years kept her from softening. Too much hurt and anger churned in her chest.
So much that she got up and walked out of the room, knowing she’d never think of Frank as family again.
PARKER SENSED that the last few days had been too much on Grace. She looked like a delicate flower petal about to break beneath the wind. But even as he followed her out of the room, the fact that she’d turned down his proposal stirred his pain as if a knife was digging into his chest. He’d never thought he’d give his heart to anyone, but to have her throw his love back in his face had ripped him in two.
Grace needed peace, needed a future that included happiness and life without being tainted by crime. She’d never have that with him, and she knew it.
And he loved her so damn much that he wanted her to be happy. So he had to let her go.
“I’m going to question Yager,” he said as they met up in the bullpen.
She nodded, but Bradford stepped up to join them before she could say anything else.
“The ME finished Bruno’s autopsy report. You won’t believe what they found.”
Grace spun toward Walsh. “What?”
“He had tissue removed, tissue that he hadn’t voluntarily donated. So did several of the other corpses that went missing. We’re bringing in the assistant ME now for questioning. Apparently he signed off on the bodies.”
“So someone was stealing the tissue?” Grace asked.
Bradford nodded. “Apparently whoever did it sold it to tissue banks to make a profit, but in the process, some of it was contaminated.”
“You think it was this assistant ME?”
“It’s possible. Or someone could have paid him to turn a blind eye,” Bradford said. “Anyway, I just thought you’d want to know.”
“I’m going to question Yager now about Bruno’s death,” Parker said.
Bradford agreed to sit in, and Parker turned to Grace. “One way or another we’re going to get a confession out of the man, so you’ll have your answers about your parents and your brother.”
“Thank you, Parker, for everything you’ve done for me.”
He nodded, wishing he could do more. But the only thing left was to tie up the loose ends of the case so she could move on.
“I STILL CAN’T believe Frank betrayed my father, then pretended to be a family to me and Bruno.”
Parker gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Grace. But if it helps, I do think he cares for you. I think he just got in over his head.”
She gave a clipped nod. Part of her understood Frank’s desperation over taking care of Kelly, but another part ached so badly that she could barely breathe. She needed space, time away from Frank and from Parker.
Because even though she’d refused his proposal, she wanted him more than ever.
“Take the car, go home, get some rest,” Parker said. “I’ll finish questioning Yager, and let you know when I get his confession.”
She bit down on her lip. “But how will you get home?”
“Walsh can drive me.”
“Thank you, Parker. I…I am tired.” Tired of fighting her feelings for him, of thinking about the night before and how close they’d been at his cabin, of thinking about how lonely her bed would feel tonight at home without him in it.
Tired of imagining how her father would feel if he knew his own partner, the man he’d trusted to watch his back, was partly responsible for his death.
“I think I will go,” Grace said. “Call me and let me know what happens.”
Parker nodded, and Grace rushed out the door. A few minutes later she parked at her home on Tybee and went inside, but reminders of her family assailed her inside the house. The quilt her grandmother had made from her mother’s Sunday dresses. The picture of her and Bruno when he’d graduated from the police academy sat on the sideboard. The one of her parents and Bruno and her when they’d gone crabbing one day and all come home with dozens of mosquito bites….
After hearing what Frank had said, their loss was as raw as if it had just happened. She was supposed to take care of Bruno, but he’d died. And even in death, someone had desecrated his name by making his death look like a suicide. Then others had violated him by removing tissue that he hadn’t willingly donated.
She wanted those people caught, as well. They had to pay.
Furious and eager to talk to the ME herself, she dashed back to the car, swung it around and drove toward the hospital. Dr. Whitehead had performed transplants. Did he know who was responsible for stealing the tissue?
Could he possibly have known that it had been obtained illegally?
By the time she arrived at the hospital, her palms were sweating. Surely, Wilson hadn’t known….
She slung her purse over her shoulder as she entered the facility, then she took the elevator to the third floor and headed toward Dr. Whitehead’s office. He normally scheduled surgeries for the morning, so she hoped he’d be free. Then she’d talk to the ME.
She spoke to two of the nurses, then turned the corner and stopped at Dr. Whitehead’s door. Heated voices echoed from the inside, and she paused, hand on the doorknob.
“You need to leave,” Wilson shouted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” the man said in a menacing tone.
She flinched. Why was Wilson so upset? Was the man one of the victims of the contaminated tissue?
“Get out now!” Wilson snapped.
“No.”
Alarmed, Grace knocked, but a strained silence followed. She knocked again, then fear twisted her stomach and she opened the door and burst inside. “Wilson—”
He was slumped backward in his chair, his eyes dazed, his mouth slightly open as if he were trying to speak but couldn’t. Suddenly something sharp pierced her neck, and she realized that the man who’d been arguing with Wilson had been hiding behind the door.
And he’d just given her some kind of injection.
Her legs buckled as she tried to see the man’s face, but the room spun sickeningly and she felt herself falling, the world fading as she hit the floor and blacked out.
Chapter Twenty
Parker strode into the interrogation room to question Yager. He’d been surprised the police had gotten the man to the station so quickly, but Bradford informed him that Yager had been in Savannah. Which told him that his and Grace’s earlier visit had shaken up the man and that he’d been en route to talk to Frank, to formulate a plan to continue their cover-up.
Armed with that theory, he gritted his teeth as he faced the man. “Mr. Yager, we meet again so soon.”
Bart leaned on the table, fingers drumming. “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Yager said, although his tone vibrated with nerves.
“Really?” Parker arched a brow and planted his hip on the edge so he could look down at the man. “Why is that?”
“What did Frank tell you?”
Parker grimaced. “The truth about what happened with the Gardeners.”
Yager stared at him deadpan, then released a ragged breath. “That was a long damn time ago.”
“Yeah, and Grace suffe
red every minute since she saw her parents brutally murdered.”
Regret flashed in the man’s eyes for a nanosecond, but a hardness replaced it seconds later. “I swear, none of us wanted that.”
“No, but you stood by and had her parents killed to protect your own asses anyway.”
“It wasn’t like that. Frank was desperate, I had…bills, a gambling problem.”
“And McKendrick?”
“He was just plain greedy, but he’s serving his sentence now with Huntington’s. And if it makes any difference, Frank has grieved for the Gardeners as much as anyone. He tried so hard to make it up to Grace and Bruno—”
“How? And you all did that by hiring Juan Carlos to kill Grace?”
“We didn’t do that,” Yager argued. “We only wanted to scare Grace, not kill her.”
“Because you knew she would find out that you had Bruno murdered?”
Yager shook his head. “No…no, we didn’t kill Bruno.” He dropped his head forward, his shoulders slumped. “I swear.”
Parker grilled the man for twenty more minutes, and although Yager owned up to being an accomplice in the Gardeners’ shooting, and conspiring to warn Grace through Juan Carlos, he refused to admit any involvement in Bruno’s death. He insisted that Carlos tossing Grace into the sea was his own doing, not his or Frank’s.
“Sit tight, Yager, I’ll be right back.” Parker finally excused himself and met Walsh in Captain Black’s office. “I don’t get it, he won’t cop to Bruno’s death. And there’s no reason for him not to now, not with the trouble he’s already in.”
“Maybe he’s telling the truth.” Bradford folded his arms across his chest. “We just finished questioning that lab assistant at the tissue bank. He confessed that the assistant ME stole the bodies for tissue removal to sell. He’d had a black market business and was making a hefty profit. Rostan, the lab tech at L-Tech, even got in on the action.” Bradford hesitated. “And get this, Bruno Gardener was investigating the case.”
Parker’s heart thumped. “What did he find out?”
“That some of the tissues were being used in experimental research at CIRP.”
Parker swallowed hard. “I’ll bet Whitehead was in on it.”
“His name came up,” Bradford said.
A cold knot of fear seized Parker. Whitehead had expressed interest in Grace. He’d thought the man might be in love with her, but what if he’d stayed close to find out if she knew anything about her brother’s investigation? What if he’d stayed close to keep her quiet?
“I have to call Grace, warn her,” Parker said.
Bradford reached for the doorknob. “We’ll do it on the way to the hospital.”
Parker nodded, and they jogged outside to Bradford’s car. Parker punched in Grace’s cell number as his partner started the engine and they sped from the parking lot.
He waited two, three, four, five rings. Adrenaline made his heart race.
“Damn it, she’s not answering,” he shouted, then dialed her home number but again received no answer.
“Maybe she took a nap,” Bradford suggested.
“Swing by her cottage,” Parker said. “I have to find out.”
Bradford nodded and steered the car onto the causeway. Parker hung up and tried Grace’s cell phone again, but it rang and rang until the machine finally clicked on. He left a message warning her that she might still be in danger, to stay away from Whitehead.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, wiping at the perspiration trickling down his face.
“Which way?” Bradford asked.
Parker gave him directions on the island and they barreled into the drive. As soon as they stopped, Parker vaulted from the car and ran to the door, pounding on it. “Grace, it’s Parker. Open up!”
Tension strained his muscles as he listened, but there was no sound inside. Bradford hurried around the house to check the back door and windows, then rushed back.
“There’s no sign that anyone’s home or that there’s been an intruder.”
Still, Parker jimmied the door and stormed inside, searching the rooms one by one. But Grace was nowhere in the house.
His phone rang and he headed back outside. “Kilpatrick, it’s Black. A call just came in. Dr. Whitehead was attacked at the hospital. He’s barely conscious but he told one of the nurses that the assistant ME, Lamar Poultry, has Grace Gardener.”
“God…” His breath caught in his throat. “Did Wilson say where he took her?”
“It just happened. They may still be in the hospital.”
“We’re on our way.” He raced to the car, filling in Bradford as they sped away from Grace’s.
He had to find her, save her one more time. He couldn’t lose her before he said goodbye.
GRACE TRIED to open her eyes, but the light hurt so badly she closed them again. Her body felt heavy, and she couldn’t move her limbs. She must be tied down. Yes, on some kind of table.
A surgical table like they had in the operating rooms.
Or the morgue…
She swallowed the terror and screamed, but the sound that emerged faded into thin air.
Questions bombarded her. Where was she? And who had attacked her?
What about Wilson? Was he alive? If someone had found him and he’d survived, could he tell them where this man had taken her?
The vile scent of death and blood suddenly assaulted her senses and she coughed. Then it hit her—she was in the cold room where they kept the bodies before transporting them to the funeral homes and the morgue.
“You shouldn’t have been so nosy,” a voice screeched near her ear. “You wouldn’t have had to die, but you just wouldn’t give it up.”
“Give what up?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Trying to find out what happened to your brother.”
Her eyes widened. “You? But why?”
“Because he was nosy just like you. We had a good business here, selling tissue. And it wasn’t like we were hurting anyone. The tissues were taken from dead people—we didn’t kill them. We only used their tissues to help others.”
“You hurt others with contaminated tissue,” Grace hissed. “Some people died.”
“And others were healed. The research alone was going to save hundreds in years to come, allow advances in tissue enhancement.” His voice trilled in the tense silence. “Even your precious detective benefited. That last tissue he received was chemically enhanced so he healed twice the normal rate expected.”
This man was crazy. “But you killed Bruno.”
A nasty laugh rumbled from the man. “And made it look like a suicide. Thought it was pretty clever to use the same kind of gun that killed your parents. I knew that would throw off the cops.”
And it had.
“At least his tissue helped others,” the man crooned. “And so will yours, Grace. I’ll make sure of that.”
Grace silently grasped for hope. But Parker was busy—he didn’t even know she was in trouble.
A tear seeped from her eyes. She didn’t want to die. She hated the way she’d left things with Parker.
But she would never get a chance to tell him.
PARKER AND BRADFORD stormed into the hospital, both breathing heavily.
“I’ll notify security to close off all exits and to look for the assistant ME.”
“I’m going to the ER to question Whitehead. Maybe he’ll know where Poultry took her.” He ran down the hall, his heart pounding in his chest. A minute later he pushed his way past two nurses trying to keep him out of the exam room holding Whitehead and charged in.
Whitehead glanced up from the hospital bed, his face as white as the bedsheets. “Grace…”
“Where is she?” Parker barked.
Whitehead tried to lift his hand, but it flopped back down on the bed as if he had lost control of his limbs.
“He’s been drugged,” one of the nurses said. “We really need him to rest.”
Parker strode straight up to the man’s be
d. “Poultry was supplying you with tissues for experimentation?”
“We went through the tissue banks,” Whitehead said in a hoarse whisper. “Didn’t know he was stealing them.”
“Yeah, right.”
“True,” Whitehead said, then lapsed into a cough. The nurse glared at Parker, but he refused to back down.
“Where would he take her?” he asked coldly.
“Don’t know—”
“Think, damn it. Grace’s life depends on it.”
Whitehead’s eyes widened. “The cold room…basement. It’s probably where he stole the bodies before they were transported.”
Right. That made sense. He should have thought of it himself, but panic for Grace was clogging his brain.
“Save her,” Whitehead said gruffly.
“I will,” Parker said.
He raced from the room toward the elevator. A group of people stood waiting, and Parker silently cursed. No time to wait. He darted into the stairwell and raced down the steps to the basement, his boots clicking on cement as he descended two steps at a time. He shoved open the door to the basement, and searched the signs. X-rays and Radiation to the left, the cold room and unit for biohazard disposal to the right. He headed toward the cold room, driven by anger and fear. He had to save Grace, had to be on time.
He couldn’t stand it if she died.
The stench of death and chemicals assaulted him as did the cold wave of frigid air from the dark room that lay behind closed doors. He hesitated, listened for a sound, but silence radiated around him as chilling as the air that hit him when he opened the door to the room.
Surprisingly there was no one monitoring the door to check for ID—anyone could go inside. Anyone could get access to these bodies and do what they wanted at will.
He held his breath while he checked the toe tags, but saw none with Grace’s name. Still, the man could have falsified her name. Bracing himself, he unzipped the bags and checked them one by one.
Thankfully no Grace.
A scream wrenched the silence, a wail of terror that he recognized as coming from Grace.