Ruthless (Debt Collector 8)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “It could kill her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not willing to take that chance,” I say. “I’ve only just… She only has a short time left. I don’t want you taking that from her.”

  He heaves a long sigh. “You are quite right. And I was afraid that might be the conclusion you would reach. It is entirely reasonable. But, you see, my young debt collector, it’s not up to you.”

  My voice drops, low and menacing. “You can’t force her to do this experiment of yours. I won’t allow it.”

  He doesn’t seem to register my threat. His voice just turns sad. “You misunderstand me. Your mother has already decided. She wants the procedure.”

  My fists ball up, but I can see the torment in his eyes. “You could refuse to do it.”

  “I could. And I should. But I will not.”

  My breathing starts to become uneven. “I could stop you.”

  “Yes, you could. And perhaps you should do that. I leave that to you and your conscience, debt collector. But I would advise speaking to your mother first about it.”

  My chest is tight, air fighting its way in and out of my lungs. I can’t believe Dr. Brodsky has talked my mother into this. That I was the one who allowed him to come here. That all of this is slipping out of my grasp. I heave a couple more breaths, then turn my back on him to yank open the door to Madam A’s brothel, determined to stop my mother from volunteering to be his lab rat.

  My mom’s eyes open as I approach, and she turns toward the sound of my boots on the floor of her room. I stop by her side, and the soft hum of the monitors fills the silence. All I can see is the hollows of her cheeks, the thinness of her hair, the way her chest lifts and falls too fast, as her lungs try to compensate for the failings of her heart. It’s far too easy for me to picture her body completely still as the death that’s chasing her finally catches up. But I want to cheat him of every second that I can… not have her die even sooner under Dr. Brodsky’s mad experiment.

  “Mom, don’t do this.”

  “Joey.” She reaches a hand out to me, and I take it in both of mine. “I want to do this.”

  “But… it’s just that…” I have to fight to keep the tears burning hot inside me instead of spilling onto my face. I clear my throat. “I didn’t bring you out of that hospital to have you be experimented on.”

  The back door whispers open. Dr. Brodsky closes it again, quietly, behind him, but he stays by the door. Which is good, because if he tries to convince my mother to be his lab rat in front of me, I might be tempted to do something I don’t want my mother to see.

  “Joe.” Her voice is breathy, and it rivets my attention. “I’m going to die anyway.”

  “It doesn’t have to be today!” My voice is more of a cry than I want. I’m not going to convince her this way, like a child. I should be stronger, but I can’t find it in me.

  Her thin fingers pat my hand, reassuring me. “Joe, you have to let me do this. I know it’s not likely to work. I know it will steal some of the time we might have had together. And I am sorry for that. I would be dead already if you hadn’t taken me from the hospital. If I had paid my debt then, at least my life energy would have gone to serve some better purpose.”

  My face twists. I don’t want to say that it would just go to some CEO so he can shine a little brighter in his rise to the top. I’ve seen too much to believe in the justness of the system anymore. I know how corrupt it is.

  “Mom—” But I stop myself, uncertain if I should tell her.

  “I want my life to mean something, Joe. I want it to count.”

  Her words tear at me, given that is exactly what I’ve been desperate for.

  “And this,” she lifts one hand to wave weakly in Dr. Brodsky’s direction, “will give my life some purpose, what’s left of it. I wasn’t able to be strong for you, Joe. I couldn’t take away the life that has been dealt to you. But Dr. Brodsky’s device could change things—it could change everything, even that terrible gift you’ve been given. If there was a way that life energy could be harnessed without using debt collectors… Joe, you have to let me be a part of making that a possibility.”

  And like that, I am trapped. I cannot say no to her dying wish to be part of changing the world that stole her son from her. I bow my head, words stuck in my throat, tears leaking out. I give her a small nod, my gaze fixed on her hands, unable to look in her eyes as I agree to let her die.

  There’s a soft whisper of sneakered feet on the floor behind me.

  “Joe!” Elena’s voice is filled with excitement and a little breathless, like she’s run the whole way here from Madam A’s office. “I found it! The algorithms—” Her words break off as I raise my head to face her. “Oh.” She floats a look between me, my mom, and Dr. Brodsky, who has now approached my mother’s bed, hovering a few steps away near the monitors.

  “I… I can come back.” Elena turns like she’s going to run out of the room.

  “Wait,” I say. The word is soft, but it freezes her in her tracks. She slowly turns back to me, eyes round and solemn. “I want to see what you’ve found.”

  I wipe my face and bend to kiss my mother’s forehead. I don’t have any words for her, so I give her a small smile instead. I don’t look at Dr. Brodsky or Elena as I stride out of the room. I hear her following behind me, but I don’t turn back, trying to master the pain that’s ripping my heart into pieces before I have to speak again. She doesn’t say anything either until we arrive at Madam A’s office. Elena’s screen lies on the desk. I press my fists against the hard wood of the desk’s surface and focus on the data shining from the screen.

  It means nothing to me. “What have you found?”

  “Joe.” Elena’s voice is hushed. “What happened? Is your mother okay?”

  “She’s going to die.” My throat closes up, and I have to fight through it to keep speaking. “Dr. Brodsky’s going to do an experiment on her that will most likely kill her.” I look up, and Elena’s face is contorted, like she doesn’t know what to say—as if she’s afraid whatever she says will be too little or too much.

  I spare us both by looking away from her big brown eyes and studying the screen again. “Please, just tell me what you’ve found.”

  She hesitates, then taps the screen to bring up a file. “After I accessed Candy’s financial records, I was finally able to find the pattern. There’s a correlation between when she receives a deposit in her accounts and when certain kinds of collections are assigned. It was difficult to track down at first, but then I cross referenced it with records from the Actuarial and Assessor’s offices, and found there were no corresponding payouts.”

  I rub my forehead, trying to keep in the emotions wracking my body, so I can follow her explanation. “You’re saying there are collections but no payouts. And those are the kids they’re transferring out?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t look that way in the records. I had to dig further to tie those ghost collections to kids who died in the same hospital around the same time. The ghost collection records always had an identical diagnosis—82-year-old female patient, with cancer, complicated by sepsis.”

  “That’s a pretty common diagnosis. Couldn’t that just be a coincidence? And what do you mean by ghost collections?” My head pounds as I try to grasp onto what she’s saying.

  “They’re ghosts because they don’t really exist. Someone has borrowed a different patient’s record and just changed the name.”

  “So Candy’s falsifying the records? That’s good. That’s something we can hang on her, if nothing else.” I’d prefer to get her on murder charges for the kids, but I’ll take records tampering for now, if that’s all we’ve got.

  “Well, yes, she’s falsifying records, but she’s not the only one. Someone else is setting up the ghost collection—it’s the signal that starts the whole chain of events, because it always comes first. Then the children are transferred out. Then the deposit is made to Candy’s account—always a slightly different am
ount from one of five unrelated accounts. But it’s made close in time, every time.”

  I rub a hand across my face, feeling muddled again. Her big brown eyes look worried, and that doesn’t help with my attempts to focus. “I’m sorry. I just… can you spell it out for me? I’m going to have to explain this to my bean counter, Flitstrom, and I need to make sure I understand.”

  Her lips pinch together, but she nods and swipes a delicate finger across the screen to bring up a patient record. “Here—this is a cached record of Candy’s psych officer account three weeks ago. See the 82-year-old cancer patient with sepsis? Mary Trenchant?” She points to a record that’s flagged for collection.

  “Yeah.”

  She taps into the record and brings up the history, then pulls up a second screen. “Mary Trenchant is a ghost. See this other record for Lucy Hoffsteder? It’s identical except for the name. Only Lucy is real. And she was transferred out a week before Mary Trenchant showed up on Candy’s screen. There’s no other record for Mary—she’s a copy, made after Lucy’s record was archived.”

  “Because no one would pay attention to a dead woman’s record.”

  “Exactly. At least not for the short amount of time that Mary, the ghost record, shows up in Candy’s collection notices. And deep inside Mary’s file…” Elena taps a few more levels down into the record. “…you see this code? The diagnosis? It says ‘cancer complicated by sepsis’ in the description, but that numerical code? It doesn’t mean cancer. It’s a pediatric code.”

  “That’s the kid they want transferred out?”

  “Yes. This code is the same diagnosis given to Hope Salinas, an 8-year-old with leukemia in the same hospital as our ghost patient Mary Trenchant.”

  “So this is the order for the hit? Candy gets this, and then what?”

  “Then she assigns one of her debt collectors to Mary Trenchant. It’s always the same collector. Someone named Moloch. On that same day, Hope Salinas suddenly takes a turn for the worse and dies.”

  “So the collector transfers out the kid. But what about the ghost collection?”

  “It’s marked as ‘expired before collection’ and then deleted from the system. The only reason I caught this one was because it happened in the last year, which is how far back the cached records go. I pulled all that data, and that allowed me to pattern match case after case like this. Always a ghost record that shows up with that particular diagnosis, dies before collection, then is deleted from the system. Always a child dies in the same hospital. And always Candy gets paid. All within the same 24 hour period.”

  I stare at screen that she’s gripping tightly in her hands. “Elena, you’re a genius.”

  She gives me a sad smile. “Not genius enough. There’s another ghost collection record that showed up in Candy’s files today, just before you tapped into her records. Julie Sanders, 82-year-old cancer patient with sepsis. Scheduled to be transferred out tomorrow morning.”

  “Is there a pediatric code too?”

  She nods. “It’s the same code as Sophie Miles, ten-year-old heart patient in the peds ward, same hospital.” She swallows and looks up into my eyes. “Joe…”

  “I know. We need to do this now,” I say. “I hope Flitstrom is working late tonight.”

  “Do you think this will convince your assessor to do something to stop it?”

  “I think so. I mean, at the least he can put the collection on hold. Or move the kid. Or something. This is perfect, Elena. Just what I need to convince him to go whistleblower and get an investigation launched.”

  A better smile lights her face.

  I flip open my phone and bring up Flitstrom’s number. Before I tap it to call him, I stop, realizing that I can’t just take off and bring all this to him. Not while my mom is…

  I close my phone.

  “What’s wrong?” Elena asks.

  “Could you do something for me? I mean, something more, because you’ve already done so much…”

  She looks puzzled.

  “Can you make sure that Dr. Brodsky doesn’t…” I can’t force myself to say experiment on my mother. “Can you just ask them to wait? Until I get back? I would ask her myself, but if I go in there, and she asks me to stay…” Time is short—for her and for this kid that Candy has scheduled to transfer out. “If I have to choose…” I’m fighting, hard, to keep my voice level. Elena has already seen me cry today. The last thing I want is a repeat of that.

  “I understand.” She hands me the screen. “Everything you need for Flitstrom is on here. I’ll make sure Dr. Brodsky waits until you get back. And I’ll see if we can arrange to have Sophie smuggled out of the hospital. If nothing else, at least we can stop that from happening.”

  She has that determined look, softened only by the deep brown of her eyes peering up into mine.

  “You know what?” I say. “You’re not just a genius. You’re like a really short, kind-hearted drill sergeant.” I let out a low breath. “But I think I already knew the kind-hearted part.”

  She drops her gaze to her hands, then tucks them both under her arms. The small blush on her cheeks makes me smile in spite of the heartache that’s tearing around inside me.

  Then she looks up into my eyes again. “Just stop these guys, Joe.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  It’s late, nearly ten o’clock, and Flitstrom isn’t happy I’m calling him at home. I’ve got my full debt collector regalia on, and I keep my voice low as I stride through the dark streets toward the metro. I’m already on my way to meet him, even though he hasn’t agreed to it yet.

  His voice exudes impatience over the phone. “Whatever problems you’re having with your psych officer, you can take it to internal affairs in the morning.”

  “Sir, this really can’t wait. And by morning, my psych officer may have called internal affairs herself.” Which is highly unlikely, but sounds like a good excuse. It’s only been an hour or so since I tied Candy up in her apartment. I’m sure she’s already worked her way loose, and she might have even called the police, although I doubt it. She’ll probably just go about her business as usual—which unfortunately means transferring out a kid name Sophie in the morning.

  An audible sigh drifts over the connection. “Can you tell me the problem over the phone? Maybe we can work it out.”

  “This really has to be in person.”

  “This is highly… irregular, Lirium.” The doubt in his voice makes my chest tight. Flitstrom is so by-the-book he even schedules out his coffee breaks to the minute. Which is precisely why I think he’s the guy to bring this to, if only I can get him to step out of his routine for two seconds.

  “We don’t have to meet at the Department,” I say, hoping that will reassure him. I don’t want this meeting documented by security anyway. “How about that café around the corner, where you get your coffee. The Official Bean?”

  “How do you know where I get my coffee?” Definitely suspicious. And I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t. He’s skeptical of anything out of the ordinary, which is why he’s the better man to be the whistleblower on this—not a near-washing-out debt collector who may or may not have recently been involved with the mob.

  “You always have a cup from the café when I check in.”

  There’s silence on the line for a moment, and I can just imagine Flitstrom’s little bean counter gears turning, calculating the odds that I’ve gone rogue debt collector on him. Or that I’m dragging him out for something less dangerous, but pointless. He’s all about efficiency and making the system run like a well-oiled machine. Which is why this monkey wrench I’m about to toss into the gears will upset him—and get him to call for an investigation.

  I hope.

  “All right,” he says, and the tightness in my chest eases. “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes, waiting.” I close my phone and hurry to catch the metro as it slides into the station.

  Flitstrom strides into the café with
a nervous look over his shoulder, like he already regrets coming out at night to this part of town. Not that the neighborhood near the Department of Health and Life’s east-side division is exactly low-rent. At least, I’ve spent time in a lot worse places. But there are probably more junkies hit-seeking out at this time of night than what he normally sees in his nine-to-five.

  I hold a hand up so he’ll see me. He slouches a little as he walks over and slides into the booth, sitting opposite me. He’s dressed in the same plain blue jacket and tie he wears to the office. I wonder if he has any other clothes.

  I’ve already ordered coffee for both of us, hoping that will put him at ease. I slide it over to him, but he ignores it and glances at Elena’s screen lying between the cups.

  “All right,” he says. “What’s this about?”

  I take a breath and go right for it. “I have evidence my psych officer is illegally transferring out underaged kids.”

  He stares at me, processing what I said. I know he’s heard every word, so I wait. The café is nearly empty, just a kid making out with his girlfriend in the corner and a bored staff member bouncing his head in time to music only he can hear. Neither pay any attention to us.

  Flitstrom reaches for the coffee. The liquid on top forms shuddering rings with each shake of his hand. He sips, swallows, and blinks several times as he sets the cup down.

  Finally, he says, “What evidence?”

  I frown. He’s not questioning that it’s possible. There’s a very slim chance that I’ve read Flitstrom wrong all along. Maybe he’s not a straight arrow. Maybe he takes illegal hits on the side himself. There’s even the possibility that he’s involved in Candy’s scheme. I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t have come to him. But he should be outraged by this, not cold and calculating about the evidence. Then again, he is a bean counter.

  “I have copies of government records that show how it’s set up.”

  “You’ve been accessing government records?” he asks. “How?”

  There’s no way I’m telling him about Elena. “I’m a debt collector. We have ways of convincing people to give us information.”