Diagnosis: Danger

by Marie Ferrarella

  Natalya laughed. “Now there’s something to ask Mama for Christmas. ‘Could you give birth to your grandchild, Mama?’ Provided she could, of course, which we both know isn’t possible anymore.”

  Kady refused to be put off. She did, however, come close to losing her temper. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her sister like this. This Mike person had her twisted up inside. Whether that was good or not remained to be seen.

  “Stop putting obstacles in your way, Nat. Let nature take its course.” She peered closer, and then grinned. “Although—” she used her thumb to gently wipe away a slight smudge of lipstick from her sister’s mouth “—I think you’ve already started on that path.” She looked at her meaningfully.

  Natalya picked up her purse and began to head for her room. “I’ve got to go change.”

  “Highly recommended,” Kady called after her. “I’ll see you later. I’ve got to go see a patient.”

  House calls were a thing of the past, but Natalya knew for a fact that there was one patient, a man in his late seventies, that Kady indulged. She turned around to look at Kady.

  “Today?”

  Kady lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Hey, hearts don’t look at calendars.” Hand on the doorknob, she paused one last time. “You going to be all right?”

  “Sure.” Natalya tried to sound as cheerful, and positive, as possible. But even as she said it, turning toward her room, she knew she wasn’t. Not for a while, at least. Not until she could get everything sorted out in her mind.

  An hour later found her no better. She needed air. Needed to go out and try to clear her head. It was Sunday. She always liked Sundays in New York. The traffic, both pedestrian and automobile, was far less congested on a Sunday. The office buildings stood like tall, silent sentries. It made walking less of a competitive sport and allowed her to window-shop. Window-shopping was her favorite diversion. And for once, it was one of those wonderful sunny days that came along so rarely in New York.

  Her mind made up, she took her jacket out of the closet and put it on. As she began to walk out of the apartment, Natalya absently put her hand into her pocket. And stopped dead.

  Her fingers came in contact with something. It took her only a second to recognize the thin, smooth shape. It was a camera.

  Clancy’s camera.

  She’d forgotten all about it. Taking it out, she closed the door again and stared at the slim object in her hand. It hardly looked like a camera. For as long as she could remember, Clancy had always been into electronic gadgets. Be it a computer, a cell phone or a camera, he liked them cutting-edge fast, and the tinier, the better. And this was almost spylike tiny.

  A pang zigzagged over her heart. For a moment, Natalya debated just putting the camera away again until she could deal with looking at the photographs a little better.

  But then she suddenly thought, what if Clancy had managed to take a photo of his killer? Or, at the very least, a photo of the last person he’d been with the night he died. That could help reconstruct his evening. So far, it seemed as if nobody had seen him from the time he left the mortuary until the time he turned up behind the art gallery. She knew he both date and time stamped everything, it was part of his obsession with organization.

  Natalya took a deep breath and pressed the view menu on the camera. One by one, she began going through the photographs on the memory card backward to the most recent. There was nothing remarkable about the first few. It was almost as if he’d snapped them in the shadows. But then, that was Clancy. It seemed almost ironic to her that, with his passion for cameras, he’d never actually taken the time to learn how to frame scenes to their best advantage.

  She’d gone through five shots of shadows and was about to stop when she saw the photograph. The light was bright, making everything visible. It had obviously been taken at the funeral parlor.

  Natalya cringed. The photograph was of a dead man. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties. By his build, he appeared to be in the prime of his life.

  The man was stark naked.

  “Oh, God, Clancy, was that snake, Tolliver, right? Were you doing something with those dead people you weren’t supposed to?” She could feel tears gathering in her eyes. There had to be some mistake. Clancy wasn’t like that. He wasn’t.

  How well do we know anyone?

  The question echoed in her head as she moved back to the next photo and then the one that had been taken before that. When she came to her sixth shot, her stomach had completely turned. What the director had said about Clancy had to be right. He’d been doing improper things with the bodies that were brought into the funeral parlor to be prepared for burial.

  She almost stopped, but then, she’d come this far, she might as well see it through.

  Natalya’s breath lodged in her throat when she saw the seventh shot. It was of a woman.

  Something was wrong here. Clancy was not in to women, he admitted that to her when they were thirteen.

  But if he wasn’t into women, why had he taken the photograph? It didn’t make sense.

  She needed to see things more clearly than the tiny screen allowed. Camera in hand, she went back to her room and switched on her computer, then waited for it to go through its paces. It moaned and groaned and emitted a battery of strange noises, its lights winking and flashing.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” she urged impatiently.

  Once the noises and lights had settled down, she slipped the memory card out of the camera and into a slot on her tower. Within a minute, she was pulling up the shot of the nude woman, enlarging it until it filled her entire monitor.

  She caught her breath as she saw what Clancy had seen. Quickly, she flipped to the other photos, viewing them one by one.

  It was beginning to make sense.

  Natalya never bothered shutting off her color printer. It took far too long to come around when she needed it. She hit Print and the machine came out of sleep mode. It was printing within seconds. Slowly, eight by tens of Clancy’s photographs began to emerge from the mouth of the printer. Mike was going to need to see these.

  Mike hadn’t known exactly what to make of her phone call when it came. Essentially, Natalya’d said nothing, only that she needed to see him right away. With the scent of her body still fresh in his head, not to mention on his sheets, he could only think that she was returning because she wanted more of the same.

  Well, that made two of them, he thought.

  He’d begged off from his mother’s weekly Sunday lunch and was glad now that he had. Otherwise, he might have missed Natalya’s call.

  Again, it bothered him a little that the moment he’d told her to come over, he caught himself looking forward to her appearance with an anticipation that he wasn’t accustomed to. Now, all that mattered was that she was coming over.

  Replaying her last words in his head, he realized that she’d sounded mysterious, but, hell, that was her right. He had to admit, it kind of made things more interesting.

  Maybe, he thought, as he went to answer the door, she was having as much trouble reconciling everything that had happened last night as he did. Like where, if anywhere, was this going?

  No point in wondering about that until it got to the starting gate, right? It seemed like a solid philosophy. He still went on wondering.

  When Mike opened the door, she was wearing a blue sweater beneath a jacket and a pair of jeans that looked as if they’d been applied with a paintbrush. He could feel his temperature rising already.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d been running. Or wrestling emotionally with something, unsure of which side to take.

  Damn, he had to stop overanalyzing things.

  Mike laughed at himself as he closed the door behind her. He was a cop. Overanalyzing was what he did for a living.

  “Elevator out again?” he asked. When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “You seem breathless.”

  “No, it’s working,” she assured him, tryin
g to measure out every word. She certainly didn’t want him to think she was panting at the very sight of him—although it would take very little for that to happen. He’d answered the door shirtless.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he confessed.

  The remark stopped her for a second. Was that his way of saying that Saturday night—or was that Sunday morning—had just been one of those things? Great, but over?

  Stop it, Nat. This is bigger than your all-consuming attraction to Supercop. This is about Clancy and what he was getting ready to tell you.

  “I have something to show you,” she told him. She held up the manila envelope she’d brought.

  “All right,” Mike said gamely, his curiosity aroused. “Come into the living room. The lighting’s better there.”

  Natalya shrugged out of her leather jacket as she went. When she felt his hands behind her, she sucked in her breath, surprised, before she regained control. Looking a little amused at her reaction, Mike took the jacket from her.

  She realized that her fingers were shaking slightly as she opened the manila envelope and took out the photographs she’d printed less than an hour ago. She handed him the lot.

  “Here.”

  Slightly bewildered, Mike took the photographs from her. The bewilderment grew as he looked at the first photograph and then the second.

  “You came here to show me naked pictures of men?” He raised his eyes to hers, his expression a little uncertain. “I don’t—”

  “The pictures are from Clancy’s camera. He took them.”

  He continued to go through the photographs. He dealt with death every day, but this was a little hard to stomach. “We didn’t find a camera.”

  She debated making up an excuse, then decided that if he pressed her, the truth would come out. And then he wouldn’t know when to believe her. It was best to face the music now and get it over with.

  She slid the tip of her tongue along her lips before beginning. “That’s because that first day, when you came into the apartment, you startled me. I was holding the camera and I guess I must have slipped it into my pocket without realizing it. It’s practically the size of a credit card,” she added quickly, “and with everything else going on, I guess I just forgot about it. Until this morning.” She bit her lower lip before concluding. “I put my jacket on and there it was.”

  Finished, he straightened the photographs in his hands and looked at her. “Okay, I still don’t see—”

  That’s because he didn’t know what he was looking for, she thought. And because he hadn’t looked at them through eyes that were desperate to absolve a friend. “The photographs are of some of the people who were brought in to the mortuary.”

  He inclined his head. “That would account for the pale complexions, but—”

  “No, look,” she ordered tersely. To underscore what she meant, she pointed to the photograph on top. To the scar that was visible. “See?”

  “What is it I’m seeing?” But even as he asked, he realized what she was pointing out. “Those are incisions.” Just like the ones on the bodies of the homeless victims. Quickly, he went through the rest of the photographs again. Different people, same discovery. “Those are all incisions.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “Yes. And they all appear fresh.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She traced one line. “The scarring hadn’t begun. Because the person was dead.”

  He felt a stirring in his stomach. The same kind he felt when he was onto something. But he wanted to be absolutely sure of what little facts there were. “And these were on your friend’s camera?”

  “Yes.” Excitement vibrated in her voice. “I think this is what Clancy meant when he said he was onto something. It wasn’t anything to do with falsifying the bookkeeping. This is a whole lot bigger than that.” Her eyes widened as her voice gained momentum. “Those incisions are in the region of the kidneys. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  Mike was trying to wrap his head around what this could mean. “You think people are being killed for their organs?”

  She didn’t know if she would go that far, but it definitely had something to do with organ theft. “Or at least having organs harvested just after they died. There were no autopsies done.” That was evident because of the lack of wide, V-shaped incisions across the breast plate. “These people died and were hustled to the mortuary, as per instruction by whoever was overseeing their arrangements. But before they got there, someone decided to make them a little lighter. And their own pockets a little heavier.”

  “Someone like a surgeon.” It wasn’t really a question. The incisions he was looking at had all been closed neatly, with perfect stitching, as if to make the lines all but invisible.

  “Had to be,” she agreed. “Those incisions are too good. And someone had to know what they were doing, otherwise, the organ would be butchered and useless. Timing is everything in these cases.” She took a breath. There was an ache in the center of her chest. “Clancy stumbled onto this and they killed him for it,” she concluded.

  “It looks that way,” he agreed. Carefully, he returned the photographs to their envelope. “But we can’t know for sure.”

  She looked at him, stunned. “You’ve got the photographs. What more do you need?”

  “The actual bodies, for starters.” He knew she wouldn’t like hearing that, because it sounded as if he didn’t believe what she was saying. But she didn’t understand how carefully a case had to be made. “We need to have autopsies done in order to make sure that these bodies are missing organs before we start to point fingers.”

  He was talking about exhumation. “Are you going to go to the next of kin?” she asked him.

  It wasn’t that simple. “In my experience, most next of kin really don’t want the body of their loved one disturbed. They’d rather close their eyes and try to move on.”

  “If someone I loved had been violated like that, I’d want to know so that I could make whoever was responsible pay,” she declared with feeling.

  She was one hell of a fiery woman. He liked her spirit. But that still didn’t make the case for them.

  “‘Ignorance is bliss’ isn’t just something printed on a dish towel. Most people would rather not hear things that’ll give them nightmares.”

  Well, she couldn’t argue with that. “So what are you going to do?”

  What he always did as a backup plan. “Get to the D.A.’s office. If I show him these photographs and tell him what we think is going on, he might be able to come up with the name of a friendly judge who doesn’t mind disturbing the dead.”

  She nodded, then said something she hoped might help him persuade the D.A. “This might tie into the case where those homeless men were killed in the park.” He looked at her, surprised. “I read the newspaper on occasion.”

  “It might tie in with that.” He didn’t bother telling her that he’d already thought that. Why steal her thunder? He grabbed his jacket from the hook where he’d hung it. He knew where the D.A. lived and these wouldn’t keep until tomorrow. “Thanks for bringing these.”

  She read between the lines. He was planning on leaving her behind. “Thank me later. I’m coming with you.”

  The hell she was. “Stay here and wait for me,” he instructed.

  She placed her hand on the envelope. “They’re my photos.”

  He wasn’t about to be put over a barrel. “How do you figure that?”

  She continued to hold on to the corner of the envelope. “Clancy left me all his worldly goods. Last time I looked, a camera was a worldly good.” She smiled. “Want to waste time, arguing with me? My mother says I’m very stubborn. It’s a trait all Polish women share and if she thinks I’m very stubborn—”

  He had no doubt that Natalya was probably capable of arguing until hell produced a skating rink for penguins. “C’mon.” He sighed, handing her her jacket.

  She grinned, preceding him out the door. “Knew you’d see
it my way.”

  Chapter 13

  District Attorney Hayden Sommerville looked less than enthusiastic about finding a police detective standing on the doorstep of his Staten Island home on a Sunday afternoon.

  Tall, with a full head of prematurely silver-gray hair, Sommerville looked more like Hollywood’s version of a leading man than the sharp legal mind that he was. His good looks, coupled with his flamboyant style, had gotten him more than his share of press coverage and women. The latter, so the story went, was a thing of the past now that he had finally settled down. He had two children under the age of six, both of whom had more energy than an entire battalion of kindergarteners.

  The children, Nathan and Jake, were currently trying to poke their way around their father’s imposing body and across the front door threshold in order to see what was going on. But Sommerville stood like an iron statue, refusing to let them out.

  It looked to Natalya as if the man was fighting a battle with his temper and was in serious in danger of losing it.

  “It’s Sunday, Detective,” Sommerville pointed out, enunciating each word as if it were to stand alone. “A day of rest and a day that I promised to my family.” He looked at Mike meaningfully, lowering his voice so that it carried no farther than the front step. “Cut me a break, DiPalma. I am half a business phone call away from a divorce right now. My wife said that if I didn’t give her and the boys some time alone, I wouldn’t have her and the boys.”

  Despite some posturing, Sommerville was one of the good guys. Mike could more than sympathize with the man. But he also knew that they could very well be fighting time. If Tolliver was somehow involved in a black market scheme to sell organs, there was nothing to prevent the funeral director from fleeing before they could arrest him. And until they had some definite proof to show the police department, their hands were tied.