The Angel Maker lbadm-2

by Ridley Pearson

  He oversaw her efforts as she packaged the organ in the Viospan.

  She did a splendid job of it-he could have done no better. When the small Styrofoam container with its bright orange label was sealed and ready to go, Pamela retrieved her sliced-up jeans from the floor.

  Tegg added quickly, attempting humor, "It's a good thing Maybeck's handling this one. After all, what would you wear?"

  She forced a smile; she wasn't pleased with any of this. But hers was a role of obedience. Five minutes later, she was gone.

  Like most of the rooms in the small cabin, the kitchen was in disrepair from years of neglect. Maybeck entered shaking off the cold, looking like a biker with lockjaw-he had the remarkable ability to talk most of the time without showing his grotesque teeth. "We got trouble."

  Problems? Tegg wondered. He was proud of the way he had improvised with Pamela. The only problem he could conceive of had to do with transporting Wong Kei's wife to Vancouver. "She died?" he gasped. "Connie, says a cop was nosing around Bloodlines yesterday. Had that girl Chapman's name. Knows she's in the database."

  The police? The room suddenly seemed to be without air. "Calm down," Tegg said, though rattled himself. The guy was pacing faster than a hungry pit bull, rubbing his thumb and fingers together like he was trying to remove something sticky from them.

  The police? Now? He felt broadsided. Maybeck said, "We're gonna shut it down, right? You got plans for shuttin' it down, right? That's what you said before."

  Tegg found it difficult to think with Maybeck circling the table like a predator. "Sit down!" he instructed. When issued this order for a second time, Maybeck sat. "We are gonna shut it down, right?" Maybeck repeated. "We can't shut it down," Tegg informed him. "We have Wong Kei to think about. I took an advance payment. He's counting on us. You know what that means as well as I do." Tegg had his own personal agenda, his own reasons for wanting to see this heart harvest to completion, but he wasn't going to share them with a little person like Maybeck who would never understand. Maybeck would respond better to his fear of the Chinese mafia than to Tegg's needing to right his own past mistakes. "What advance?" Maybeck asked.

  Tegg decided to play to the man's greed. "Don't forget: You have fifty thousand dollars coming to you from this heart harvest-if there is a heart harvest. No advance for you until the job is completed."

  Maybeck brooded. Tegg needed to settle him down. He offered, "I have some vodka."

  "Gimme some."

  "Not too much," Tegg warned.

  "There's still work to be done."

  He poured him a glass, no ice. Tegg seldom drank. He put the bottle away. A thought occurred to him: If worse came to worse, he could always tell Maybeck that he was closing up shop. He could courier the organs himself, if absolutely forced to. But with possession nine-tenths of the law, he would rather have Maybeck do it.

  No more work to do tonight," Maybeck corrected, spinning the warm vodka in the glass as if it were cognac. "Word from up north is that the old bitch barely lived through the flight. The Chink said that the doctor says we gotta wait at least a week. He mentioned next Friday."

  "Next Friday? But that's insane!" Tegg protested loudly. "We've already abducted her. She's lying on my table downstairs right now!" He felt dizzy. "Fuck her! It's the cops I'm worried about. We gotta shut this down, Doc. We gotta do something fast!"

  "Whom do you fear more, Wong Kei or the police?" Tegg let the question hang there.

  Maybeck drank half the vodka, swallowing it like water. He cringed and then coughed out an appreciative, "Ahhh." He answered, "The Chink, hands down. Goddamn gooks'll kill you for pocket change. I hear what you're saying, Doc-I hear ya, all right, but I don't know. I just don't know."

  Tegg marveled at the incomplete mind of a little person. Most of all, little people wanted the answers decided for them. He debated several possibilities and said confidently, "I suggest the following: First, we explore the extent of their knowledge. Police muck about all the time. Doesn't mean they're necessarily onto something here. Hmm? Connie keeps us up to speed on everything that's going on at Bloodlines. Her time has come to perform for us this is where she earns her bread and butter."

  "She gives us the database updates-that's how she earns her bread and butter."

  "Don't toy with me, Donald," Tegg warned, a mixture of anger and paranoia sweeping through him. The police?

  Maybeck killed the vodka and looked around for the bottle. Tegg edged the glass away from the man using the back of his wrist-he wanted a glass with Maybeck's fingerprints on it in case he needed it later for damage control. An ounce of prevention …

  "The point being: if the police remain interested in Bloodlines, then we must know about it. You have to arrange this with Connie. No telephones, you understand, unless it's just a signal of some sort-no discussions on the telephones! That's imperative! Even a person like you can understand that. Hmm?" He didn't care if he insulted the man. He was beyond caring about such things: It was the police he was concerned about now. That and a successful harvest. Maybe he could up the schedule-a week seemed an interminable time-he'd have to look into changing that. "If the cellular worked from out here, I'd call the man right now," Tegg said. "But as it is, we'll just have to wait on that."

  He wrestled with the next thought that came into his mind because it was more something that Maybeck would think to do, not Dr. Elden Tegg; and yet it persisted, nagging at him, refusing to go away. They needed time. They needed to distance themselves from the police. There were ways to buy insurance that little people like Maybeck understood perfectly well.

  He said, "You understand what kind of trouble youlre in, don't you? You personally? After all, it was you who made the contacts with these donors minors, don't forget. it was you who delivered them to me. You who arrange to steal. You who paid them. You who put them back onto the streets."

  It was both of us," Maybeck complained. "Oh, no, not at all.

  Think for just a moment-if you're capable of thinking-think about what I've just said, and I believe you will see that I'm correct. Hmm? Yes, I can see it in your eyes."

  "It was you who sliced them open, Doc. What I done ain't nothing compared with that."

  He wanted to encourage the man without directly giving him an order. "If Connie poses a problem for us, we should take care of her. She's the only direct connection between you and Bloodlines. Perhaps I can advance the schedule. Another week and you could have your fifty thousand," he reminded, /'and be out of town."

  "Take care of her?"

  "Is this stupidity an act of yours?"

  That inflamed the man. Good. Tegg wanted him angry. Intense anger was a precursor to violence tegg felt this same anger himself at the moment and violence was perhaps required of Donnie Maybeck. "You're saying we zoom Connie?" Maybeck asked incredulously, trying to appear smart. "I didn't say anything of the sort. I merely pointed out that you're in a hell of a lot of trouble if this investigation goes ahead. We can't stop the police from investigating, but we can stop them from having any luck. Things just might work out if Connie took a two-week vacation. Hmm?"

  "But what if she freaks out?" Now he was catching on.

  Tegg remained silent. "Oh, I get it," said Maybeck. He smiled.

  Those teeth were anybody's nightmare. "Yes, I think you do, Donald," Tegg encouraged. "I think you're finally catching on."

  Michael Washington was lost. He had followed the old railroad grade for most of Saturday, had slept near a marsh that wasn't on the topo-map, and now was stuck in a thickly wooded, second generation forest. A moment before, having climbed high into a treetop, he had spotted a small cabin and Quonset hut poised in a remote and secluded clearing. He consulted the map once again, hoping this old homestead, a few of which appeared as small black squares on the map, might serve as a landmark and help him to determine his location. Nothing doing. He couldn't find anything like it on the map.

  The problem was not the map, he thought, but him. For the better p
art of the morning he had been consumed with trying to debug a software subroutine, all in his head, while hiking the old railroad grade. He worked as a programmer for Microsoft in a division developing a database program that remained a closely guarded company secret. Weekends, he backpacked alone, exploring new territory-this part of the country was sure a hell of a lot different from Cleveland! — working out problems in his head, de-stressing. It left him mentally refreshed and physically satisfied by Monday morning when his twelve-hour, work-a-day world began again. Not infrequently, these sojourns left him briefly off-trail-lost.

  This was not his first venture into this region. Through trial and error he had explored quite a piece of the South Fork of the Tolt and areas south toward Snoqualmie Falls. Even the old railroad grade was no stranger to him-it provided sure footing and a slightly elevated trail to follow. Each weekend, he expanded his knowledge of the area as he mentally ticked down imagined lines of source code in his head, searching for solutions to various problems inherent in the program. He was something of a superstar in a company of superstars. He didn't think of himself this way, but he knew that others did. Probably because he was Afro-American. If you had any brains at all, if you made it up even one rung of the ladder, coworkers and supervisors took notice. You were the exception not the rule. If you solved all the problems that stumped the Golden Wizards, they considered you a genius. Unwittingly, Michael found himself in this strange, even burdensome position. Now he was expected to solve the more difficult problems.

  His immediate problem was to find his way to his car. By his calculations he was still a good two or three miles from where he had parked it, and none of this looked like familiar territory, especially the cabin and Quonset he had momentarily glimpsed. About all he could do now was to ask directions or try to connect with a dirt road that might eventually lead him to an identifiable landmark. It would be dark in another three or four hours; he couldn't afford too much more "exploring."

  Despite the numerous NO TRESPASSING signs he encountered, Michael Washington walked in the direction of the buildings. He respected other people's right to privacy as much as the next guy, but lost was lost. Although it wasn't exactly an emergency, these people would have to be sympathetic to a person being lost.

  Surrounded by thick forest, his only indication that he was nearing the small farm were these posted threats which occurred with an increasing frequency. When eventually he met with a sign that read PASS AT YOUR OWN RISK, he began to wonder what kind of people these were. He was no stranger to the occasional news story of the survivalists, racial extremists, and psychotic killers who hermited the woods of the Northwest. The warnings were quite explicit; perhaps it was a better idea to just move on and avoid the place. Obey the signs. But Michael Washington was too practical, too logical to pass up a chance to establish his location. He wasn't after a ride. He didn't need help. All he needed was the slightest indication on the map of where the hell he was. He stood in front of this final warning for only as long as it took the light rain to start up again. That did it! He was going to find his way out of here if it was the last thing he ever did.

  It was.

  The structure was thirty feet long and about as wide. At the far end, rain leaked in across the poured-cement floor. The canopy of corrugated metal that arched overhead reminded the woman of an airplane hangar. Rain beat down on it like hailstones. Her ears rang from it. She had awakened in a cage-a dog pen, she now realized by looking around. Constructed of chain-link wire mesh and galvanized pipe, the cage appeared to be about eight feet long by four feet wide, and too low to stand up in. There were dogs in nearly all the cages. She was naked, lying on a brown burlap sack. She had no idea what time it was, who she was 'where she was, or what had happened to her. Some kind of nightmare. The reality of her situation slowly seeped in. She remembered the two men in her house. She remembered the needle in her arm. She tried to sit up. Pain screamed from her side; her arm tangled in an I.V. tube. She recalled a devastatingly bright light and another warm surge of drugs. Again, she tried to sit UP, the pain even more intense. Her hand fell to her side, and she felt the bandage there. Panic overcame her. Dogs. A cage! Naked. There was a bucket behind her, a roll of toilet paper alongside of it. Against the wall, an automatic waterer. The IN. bag was clamped to the overhead wire of the cage. Drip, drip, drip: She could see it feeding her. She rolled to get a better look at the bandage. It was several inches long, redness seeping into the skin around its edges. She felt overtaken by a sudden burst of nausea, rolled to her side, and vomited.

  Had she awakened before this? She couldn't remember. She felt completely disoriented. There was nothing here that fit into her reality. it was almost as if this were happening to someone else. She really had believed it to be some kind of intense nightmare at first, one of those in which everything is too real, tactile, painful, and emotionally all-encompassing. But there was no question as to the reality of her situation. If she had awakened prior to this, her situation had not taken hold. Only now, as the dogs began stirring in their cages, as the pain in her side reached an excruciating level, did she begin to grasp her circumstances.

  She began to collect herself. There were eight adjacent cages against each of the Quonset hut's two long walls, a cement aisle separating them. The building's only door was to her right. Her cage was sandwiched between two others that were empty. At the far end of the building, to her left, a cage was stacked high with sacks of dog food. Across the aisle to her left a gas heater suspended from the high ceiling emitted a warm wind which blew directly onto her. Perhaps, she thought, that heater explained her placement in this particular cage.

  She counted twelve dogs. Some of them carried partially healed scars. She felt dizzy at the sight of those scars. A kennel? She sat up, slowly, overcoming the pain, driven by the need to get out of here. There was a weight on her neck. She grabbed for it, tugged, but it was thick and heavy. A collar of some sort. Only now did she realize all the dogs were also wearing such collars. Big collars, with a heavy black lump attached. She knew what that lump was-a battery; she understood the purpose of these collars. She pulled at it again; her fingers touched a small padlock-it was locked around her neck! She panicked. She crawled on hands and knees over to the chain-link door and grabbed hold. Her collar sounded a brief electronic alarm. It failed to register on her mind as a warning, instead, invoking further panic. She shook the cage door violently.

  A jolt of electricity flashed from her neck to her toes like scalding water. Pain as sharp and severe as any she had known. She let go, fell back, and cried out at the top of her lungs.

  The dogs leapt to their feet in unison and barked so loudly, so vehemently that it deafened her. Sharon Shaffer clasped her hands to her ears and screamed again, tears pouring from her eyes. The dogs roared on.

  Perhaps this was hell, she thought. Perhaps she had died and gone to hell.

  As Michael Washington tentatively entered the clearing that held a cabin and a Quonset hut, he heard a sickening cry that cut him to the core. A woman' It was immediately followed by the vicious barking of dogs, but he felt almost certain that he had heard a woman. Perhaps it was nothing more than his active imagination, he thought. He had, after all, only minutes before been thinking about the weirdos who lived in places like this. One of the newspaper stories that lodged in his mind was that of a father and son who had kidnapped a woman backpacker, keeping her in chains, raping and torturing her until authorities finally raided the camp. Had he merely projected the terror of that story onto what he had heard?

  Or was there a woman trapped in there with a bunch of dogs?

  He broke into a run. A minute later he reached the far end of the structure. The building's only door held an enormous padlock. Locked, with dogs inside? Why? He banged loudly on the door and pressed his ear to its cold metal.

  There were so many dogs barking it was impossible to be sure exactly what he was hearing. And yet that sounded like a woman calling for help.

&n
bsp; He abandoned his pack and ran toward the cabin, stopping abruptly before he reached it, because it occurred to him that if it was a woman's voice, then whoever was inside that cabin was responsible for her being there.

  He returned quickly to his backpack, scooped it up, and made for the woods. He hunkered down and took a minute to collect himself. By all appearances the cabin was unoccupied, but the car tracks in the mud indicated this place was frequented often; and by the look of several of the tracks, recently.

  How long would he have to check this out? He left his backpack in the woods, returned to the structure, and circled it fully. Only the one door. Hinges on the inside. You'd need a stick of dynamite to break that padlock. He circled again, beating on the walls to check their construction-too stout to hope to bust up. At one point, he thought he heard that voice again-he was sure of it-but those dogs were so loud! The frustration drove him to a frantic circling of the building. Around and around. He finally caught himself and stopped.

  He had to get help. That was all there was to it. He ran along the very edge of the primitive driveway that led to the farm, alert for any cars ahead of him, prepared to hide in the woods if he saw any. The driveway-the road-was the most obvious route to follow: Somewhere out there was civilization, and this had to be the fastest way to it.

  The more he ran the quicker his pace, driven by adrenaline, driven as if pursued by someone.

  The driveway, a half-mile long, joined a dirt road challenged on its edges by weeds. He followed this road to the right, convinced not only that town was this way-the sun lay to his right; he had to be running south-but also that his car was parked somewhere in this general direction.

  He tried to think this through. Whoever lived in the cabin was gone. He decided that if a car approached from in front of him a car returning-he would hide. But if a car or truck happened to approach him from behind-a car headed south, a car headed out of here-he would flag it down. He prided himself on his logic; the fact that he was able once again to think clearly restored some of his confidence and helped to calm him. He pumped hard and continued to run.