by Jo Robertson
Hell, he even missed odd duck Howard Casey, who was one of his technical assistants.
Back at work in the autopsy room, Patch felt more cheerful than he had in weeks. The varied instruments, the stainless steel table, the tubing and scales – all were items of exactness and surety. He could count on the results. The facts were immutable.
He glanced over at the row of body trays where his assistant Howard pushed an autopsied body back into the vacant drawer. The man had been Wilson’s lab helper for nearly eight months, and he still didn’t understand much about what made the inscrutable man tick.
He’d hired Howard Casey, of course. The technician had a stellar curriculum vitae, along with outstanding letters of recommendation. Howard had completed his training and work experience at various institutions on the east coast. Patch had been very pleased with the qualifications of his new hire.
Still, eight months later, he was no closer to understanding the man than he was before he’d begun working for the county coroner. Howard wasn’t a physician, but had very strong anatomical skills, a pleasant bonus for the very busy medical examiner’s office. He was confident, knowledgeable, and very competent. If an underlying arrogance tinged his personality, well, it was something Patch could work with.
“Howard, would you get the evidence report off my desk for this young lady, please?” Patch nodded toward the young female on the autopsy table. The external examination had already been completed, the body photographed afterward, cleansed and photographed again.
He never liked to begin an examination until he knew the name of the victim, whenever possible. It seemed ... disrespectful, otherwise.
“Certainly, Dr. Wilson,” Howard answered, retrieving and handing him the file. “Will you be needing an assist for this?”
Another odd quirk – Howard never called Patch by any name except his formal title and last name. Not that Patch was complaining. He rather liked when the younger generation showed proper respect for their elders.
He thought briefly of Sheriff Slater, who always called him by his nickname “Patch.” Wilson pretended to be annoyed by it, but he enjoyed the affection that went along with the appellation. He’d known Slater a long time.
“No, thank you, I can handle this one. After you clean up, you may leave for the day.”
“Whatever you want,” Howard answered mildly.
Patch scanned the first page of the report. The girl had already been identified from fingerprints taken at the scene – Valerie Hightower, a runaway from Richmond. She’d been reported missing by her parents two months ago, and confirmed by several homeless people in Rosedale who recognized her from the street.
The pathologist examined her fingers, not yet displaying the dirt and wear of older denizens of the street, and thought what a pity her early death was. He looked sadly at the pale young face, the long hair flowing over the end of the table like tangled weeds, the hands lying parallel to her torso.
Snapping on his latex gloves, he picked up the long-bladed scalpel, and pulled the microphone toward his mouth, beginning his autopsy of seventeen-year-old Valerie Hightower from Richmond, California.
An hour later Patch stepped back from the autopsy table, his internal examination complete. Initially, he’d intended to do both autopsies back to back, the girl’s first, Dickey Hinchey’s second. Instead he called Slater.
The Sheriff arrived at the coroner’s office a half hour later with P.O. Cruz in tow. Patch supposed what he had to show them would interest Cruz as well, since Dickey Hinchey was his murdered parolee, and the cases appeared related.
Located in the basement of the hospital, a place Cruz had never been, thank God, the morgue was a spotless, rectangle of gleaming stainless steel and concrete. Wilson waited for them at the wide swinging doors and led them to the gurney which held the body. The girl’s hair hung over the edge of the shiny table and a sheet covered her legs, but her torso lay open, the flaps of the Y-incision pulled back so they could view the interior organs.
Cruz leaned closer, looking over Slater’s shoulder, but didn’t voice the thoughts in his head. A ripple of queasiness raced along his nerves at what he saw.
The body cavity gaped like the maw of a gigantic cavern.
“Where the hell are her organs?” Slater demanded.
Patch nodded. “Good point. I drained the fluids, removed her intestines and lungs, other minor material, but – ”
Suddenly, Cruz realized something as he looked back and forth between the open body and the stainless steel containers resting on a set of scales. There were no organs from the body. Kidneys, heart, liver – all missing.
Slater glanced at Cruz’s blanched face. “You see it?”
“Hell, yes.”
Patch confirmed their worst fears. “The body has been stripped of vital organs, neatly and precisely, likely someone with medical knowledge, however scant. Organs that are both vital and valuable,” he added.
“Holy shit,” Slater exclaimed. “Do you know what these particular organs go for on the black market?”
Chapter 36
Roger Milano met the next day with his attorney in a privacy room at Folsom Prison. John Wright came straight to the point. “Someone assaulted Frankie Jones in the prison parking lot after work night before last.”
“Jesus mother-fuckin’ Christ,” Roger shouted, clamoring up and knocking his chair over with a loud crash. He saw the security guard glance through the observation window and quickly sat down. Wright raised his hand, signaling that everything was okay.
Roger swiped at his damp forehead, saw the tremor as he clasped his hands together. “How is she? Is she hurt? How bad? Was she – ” The words had tumbled out of his mouth with the force of fear and panic, but now he couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “Was she ... assaulted?”
“No, no,” Wright assured him. “She’s okay. The guy threatened her. She’s shaken up, scared, skinned up a bit, nothing serious. Mad as hell.”
Roger managed a grim smile. “She’s a warrior.”
“She didn’t see her attacker,” Wright continued, “and has no idea who it was, but she’s taken an unspecified leave of absence from Pelican Bay.”
Wright looked inquiringly at Roger. He didn’t know Roger’s relationship to this Frankie Jones, but he’d been watching out for her on Roger’s behalf for the last dozen years or so. He suspected Frankie was Roger’s daughter, but he wasn’t sure. Last names were different, but a legal name change was easy to get. She’d never attended the trial, never visited the inmate until several years after he was incarcerated.
“She told the authorities her aunt was grievously ill.” Wright lifted one corner of his mouth at this bald lie.
Roger and his sister-in-law were not fast friends. An ironic understatement because his dead wife’s sister hated his guts and was completely sure Roger had murdered his wife in a fit of rage.
But Frankie ... the important thing was her safety.
“Why, then?” Roger asked. “If not – not rape – why was she attacked? What did they want? Why threaten Frankie? She’s nobody.”
Even though privilege was supposedly observed in the privacy room, the lawyer lowered his voice until it was barely audible.
“Walt Steiner at Pelican Bay called me, talked quite a while. Frankie’s gone off the grid, but she contacted him, told him she didn’t see her attacker . A murder went down in the prison yard a few days ago, and the inmate who confessed to it had contact with Frankie before he was suddenly paroled and released. Name of Cole Hansen. Now he’s in the wind, too.
“She thinks the attack has something to do with this – this Cole guy?” Roger scratched his head, frowning. “Why does that name sound familiar? Cole Hansen,” he muttered softly.
Wright looked pointedly at Roger’s right knuckles. “He’s LOD, too.”
Roger jerked back, astonished. “You think this has something to do with me?”
Wright lifted his hands, palms upward. “You tell me.”
Roger sat up straight, as if an iron bar had replaced his spine. He’d always had such stiff composure, Wright recalled, even during the arrest and all through the trial.
Roger hadn’t wanted Frankie to observe the proceedings, and the aunt hadn’t allowed it, but when she reached the age of consent, no one could stop her from visiting him in prison.
That was the first time he’d met Frankie Jones. Even at that young age, she was impressive – slender and composed with gray eyes calm and stormy at the same.
“What’s going on, Roger? What’re the Lords up to?”
Roger folded his arms across his chest, the only concession to relaxation he allowed himself. “I’ve heard bits here and there, how they’re expanding their enterprises.”
“Expanding? What does that mean?”
“Rumor is they want to move into other kinds of activities, all illegal, of course.”
“What’s left that the Lords don’t control?” Wright asked.
“Murder for hire, for one,” Roger said. “The professional kind, not gang retaliation.”
“You think the Lords hired someone to kill Frankie?”
“No. She’d be dead by now if they’d put a contract on her.” Roger leaned forward across the table separating the two men. “They wanted to scare her. Real bad.”
“They did,” Wright acknowledged.
“So you’ve got to figure out what she’s done that’s spooking the Lords.” Roger looked deadly serious. “She’s always been a feisty one. I can see her poking her nose in where it doesn’t belong, not realizing how dangerous these people are.”
“Look, Roger, I represent you, not Frankie. I can talk to her, but privilege doesn’t apply.” Wright shifted uneasily. “I’ve only got a cell number for her. Anyway, she’s taking leave and laying low for a while. But she’s not going to stop whatever she’s involved in.”
Roger thought a bit, staring up at the ceiling and tapping his long fingers on the table. “I think I know where she might be.”
He stood up, his back toward the door with the guard on watch through the window. After he’d whispered the information into Wright’s ear, he added. “I think I can trust you, but I swear to God if anything happens to my little girl, I’ll kill you.”
Wright stared at Roger’s broad back as he left the room. He’d always known Roger Milano was capable of killing someone, but had convinced himself the man was innocent of his wife’s murder.
Whatever his previous thoughts, he now realized for a certainty, that Frankie Jones was Roger’s daughter, and from the narrowed steel gray eyes, he knew if he didn’t protect her, Roger would come looking for him.
Chapter 37
The killer stood restlessly at the kitchen counter in his pricey condominium, knowing blowback was just a knock on the door away. His hands were so shaky that whiskey slopped over the edge of his glass. The splintered ring finger chaffed against the other ones, ironically whole and healthy.
What next, he wondered? How would they come at him this time?
He drained the whiskey clumsily and considered the latest development. His merchandise hadn’t satisfied him. It wasn’t prime, they claimed. Not good enough.
Bullshit!
He thought of his parents again. They had money, beau coups of it, hidden away in various accounts all over the world, squirreled away for a rainy day. Like it wasn’t pouring buckets of crap down on their only son right now. The apartment and its contents had been their parting gift to him before they took off to a comfortable life in sunny Florida.
But that was long ago. They’d done their duty by him, and now they’d cut him off like a diseased and amputated body part, not their own flesh and blood. No, they wouldn’t understand this mess he’d gotten into.
Glancing around the room, taking in the fancy furnishings, the antiques and collectibles, he wondered if he could get another loan on the place. Hock the expensive items – rich people’s junk, in his mind, but his parents had loved them. Some of them might even be priceless, passed down from generation to generation from the Mayflower to him, the degenerate descendant.
Damned bastards, not accepting the first shipment he’d delivered! That’d boiled his blood. After he’d gone through so much trouble, taken so much risk. It hadn’t been easy – he shivered at the reminder of what he’d done – but he’d fulfilled his commitment.
Surely they’d understand that? But they were getting restless and wouldn’t wait much longer. And now this nonsense about inferior merchandise? What the fuck!
Dread was a felled tree trapped on his chest. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
What they asked of him – demanded of him – was a hazardous proposition, and if he didn’t pull it off, he’d either be in prison for the rest of his life, or dead. Did California still have the death penalty? That was his fate – murdered by the people he owed money to, or executed by the state.
The thug who’d broken into his home a few days ago – his fucking home, for God’s sake – had been very specific about what they’d do to him if he didn’t come through this time. He’d left a vivid and still painful memento.
“You can use some of the items, can’t you?” he’d shouted in desperation. “It can’t all be worthless.”
“Look, you little piss-ant addict,” the man said, sitting in a favorite armchair by the window, slapping one gloved hand with the eighteen-inch metal pipe he held in the other. Was he going to break another finger? Or his thumbs? Surely not. He couldn’t work without his thumbs.
“You gotta know that the Boss wants all or nothing,” the thug continued. “Now, see, Bernardo is a patient man. He’ll take a little down, but you gotta pay for wasting his time, causing all this trouble. Honest, dude, you’ve been a real pain in the ass.”
The intruder smiled in anticipation and the man thought of his ass and what the metal pipe could do to delicate flesh. The thug rose and took a menacing step forward.
“You know, there are dozens of parts of the human body that you can cut off or damage,” he reflected aloud, shaking his head in wonder, “and the damn fuckers still work perfectly.”
He grinned with a kind of salacious glee. “Well, maybe not perfectly, but ... There’s lots a’ stuff I can do to you and leave you able to do the job.” He stared meditatively toward the ceiling as if he were a damn priest giving advice to a mendicant.
Which he was, he supposed – a beggar pleading for his life. Don’t hurt me, he entreated silently.
“A leg, an arm, an ear. Whadda ya wanna give for the down payment?” Acting as though he’d just gotten a bright idea, the man answered his own question. “I know, a fingernail. That’s the easiest thing to hide from your ... uh, coworkers.”
“Please, don’t,” he gasped, despite his determination to remain stoic.
“Put a little bandage on it. No one will know the difference,” the thug continued as though he hadn’t heard. “Hella easier to heal than a broken leg, ya gotta admit.”
All the while the man had continued to slap the metal bar against his palm, the sound a sickening reminder of pain, concussion, broken bones, and damaged muscles – all the so-fragile parts of the human body.
Now his attacker laid the metal bar aside and pulled something from his back pocket.
“This’ll work just fine, I’m thinking. You won’t deliver inferior merchandise again. Right? Yeah, the fingernails are a good lesson.”
He saw now that his torturer held a pair of pliers in his hand.
“What do you prefer – thumb or fingernail?” he asked, advancing with purpose and pleasure.
Several hours later the pain was a dull, numbing throb in spite of the Dilaudid he’d taken.
The two ragged ovals where his thumbnails had been still oozed blood through the bandages.
Chapter 38
“I dunno what the kite means,” Cole Hansen mumbled as he rubbed at his chaffed wrists. “It’s just a bunch of scrambled writing to me.”
Cruz h
ad removed Cole’s handcuffs after Frankie made the runaway ex-con swear on his sister’s life that he wouldn’t flee again. Cruz tried very hard not to grimace at her naiveté. Even if he found it kind of cute, she wouldn’t appreciate it.
“Why’d you pick it up then?” Cruz challenged, sitting in one of the oak kitchen chairs that surrounded Frankie’s kitchen table.
“A gut feeling.”
“But why did you pass it to me, Cole?” Frankie asked quietly. “Surely you knew it would put me in danger. Did you want that?”
“No! God, no!” Cole exclaimed. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, Doc.”
Frankie leaned back in a matching chair. The three of them had cups of strong coffee and slices of pound cake. Cruz would’ve preferred a cold beer, but didn’t want to slow down the interrogation.
The doctor looked much calmer than she should be. After their late lunch she’d gone here – her childhood home, she said – waiting for her friend Walt to call her as he’d promised. That the correctional officer hadn’t contacted her yet wasn’t a good sign in Cruz’s mind.
“You know, Cole,” Frankie continued. “You probably have information that you don’t even realize you have. Something you overheard after the beat-down in the yard? Gossip or chatter among the inmates?”
“Think hard,” Cole added. “Your life might depend on it.” He glanced at Frankie. “The doctor’s life, too.”
Cole picked at a piece of cake with his long, dirty fingernails. Even though he’d been living on the street for less than a week, a faint odor of unwashed body and unbrushed teeth wafted across the table.
He took a long swallow of coffee before answering. “Yeah, I guess the LOD’s business ain’t so secret since I dropped out. Might as well tell you what I know.”
“Tell us what illegal activities the Lords are engaged in outside the prison system,” Cruz prompted. “Tell us why Dr. Jones was threatened.”