The Garbage Man

by Candace Irving

  How long she sat there, she wasn't sure, but eventually she moved. Breathed. Assessed.

  Decided.

  It was time.

  Time to do what she'd done before she'd gathered up those pieces of her squadmate in the aftermath of her first IED explosion. The same thing she'd done before she'd crawled into those mass Iraqi graves she'd been tasked with processing. And what she'd been forced to do when she'd woken up naked inside that Afghan hovel to find her collarbone shattered, her ribs cracked and her face and shoulder flayed open, and some horny kid wanting to rape her again.

  Suck it up, soldier.

  Fremont's voice echoed in her ears as she clamped her hands around the tags dangling from her neck and pushed through the agony and horror long enough to locate the core of strength deep inside that always seemed to be there when she needed it most. She used it to pull herself to her feet.

  It was easier than she'd expected. And harder.

  But she made it. Kate Holland fell away as she stepped off from that chair. Deputy Holland took her place.

  "Thought I told you to rest."

  "I'm fine." And she was. For now.

  She dragged the dog tags up to the collar of her polo and slipped them beneath. The flattened chips of metal slid like ice down her chest, coming to rest over her heart. And, yet, she'd never felt warmer. Stronger.

  There, the tags weren't a crutch, but her own personal talisman. A tangible promise to Max...and herself.

  She would get through this.

  She turned to face Joe and the case. "What did Lou have to say?"

  Instead of answering, Joe stared at the outline of the tags between the edges of her jacket. She thought he was going to mention them, until he shrugged. "I got his voicemail. Thought about leaving a message, then decided to try Seth. He says to tell you he'll get through to the sheriff, then round up the crime unit and head over here. You want to wait for him?"

  "No." She was ready now. She had a thousand questions ricocheting around inside her brain and she wasn't leaving without answers. She accepted her phone from Joe with a surprisingly steady hand, then turned to march across the patio and up those three steps to the kitchen. "You coming, Cordoba?"

  "Right behind you, Holland."

  Just like old times.

  She took perverse comfort from that as she entered the empty kitchen. Stopping at the pine cupboard, she grabbed the first bottle of medication that wasn't in Abel's name and kept walking. Liz and Agent Walker were seated on the couch beside the La-Z-boy—and one still very weary, shell-shocked old man.

  Liz vacated her spot as Kate approached.

  "Thanks." Despite those thousand ricocheting questions, Kate set the bottle of pills on the coffee table in front of Abel, then sat down beside him and quietly waited.

  It took a good five minutes for him to screw up his nerve. She knew that's what Abel was doing long before he was ready. Dan had gotten that same look in his eyes out in that barn the night he'd finally confessed to her that he wanted to take her to the senior prom "for real".

  Unfortunately, she hadn't felt the same. She had even less desire to slow dance with his dad a decade later.

  Still, she waited.

  Despite the latest pummeling of her psyche, her instincts were still good to go, because Abel finally broke.

  "I got the heart almost eighteen months ago. We'd found out I needed it a few months before that. Grant hadn't run into you yet—on purpose, I might add. He was working at the VA in Fayetteville at the time, and still reeling over Dan's death, along with his own years spent stitching up an endless supply of folks over in Iraq. He pleaded with UNOS, called members of the transplant committee personally and insisted that, at fifteen years cancer-free, I oughta be an exception. He told 'em that, other than my failing ticker, I had the body of a man half my age and had a detailed physical to prove it. They still said no."

  Abel paused as they heard a car pull up, then sighed as Kate leaned forward to tap the lid to the bottle of pills. She was in no mood to be delayed or distracted.

  "I'd accepted it, you know? Death. I guess with Dan gone and Grant avoiding me and the house, I was ready to move on and see Barbara again. Then it all changed. Grant showed up and said he'd accepted a job in Little Rock and that, while he was settling in, someone had heard of my need. Grant claimed a fellow doctor's wife was on life support and the doc was ready to terminate if and only if the heart was a match. Claimed the doc said he'd see it as a sign." Abel broke off again as the shadow of Seth's hefty bubba build passed by the lace-covered window.

  Joe left to head off the deputy at the front door.

  Kate spotted the growing exhaustion in Abel's stare and decided a prod was in order. "It wasn't a match, was it?"

  Abel scowled. "Hell, it wasn't even from a woman. I figured that out a couple months later when I overheard Grant talking about my prognosis with someone on the phone. I guess I shoulda suspected something wasn't right. They knocked me out here at the house before the surgery, on a Friday night no less. When I came to afterwards, I was in an official recovery room, but then they knocked me out again when it was time to come home. Grant never did tell me whose heart I got, but the whole blessed thing was just off, you know?"

  She knew. And so had Abel. That the surgery had been illegal, and the rest. The whole filthy business that nailed Ian Kusić, Jason Dunne, Andrea Silva and those missing homeless vets to Madrigal Medical's front door...and Grant's.

  There was a list all right. Only veterans, homeless or not, did not want to be on it.

  But if Grant had masked the location of the surgical site from his own father, Kate was that much further away from discovering where those illegal transplants—and potentially subsequent murders of vets—were taking place.

  Hell, she didn't even know where Grant was. All she had to go on was the staffing company.

  "Grant works for Madrigal Medical on the side, doesn't he?"

  The old man clutched at his thinning hair as he trembled out a nod. "He tried to quit, especially after he met back up with you. But they wouldn't let him go. I don't know who he works for, though. He wouldn't say."

  "Do you know if he has one of those vacuum-pack machines to seal food for the freezer?"

  Stiff silence greeted that question.

  But she'd seen the newspaper on the kitchen table. Like the one at Madrigal, it was today's, and well worn. "Abel?"

  He sighed. "I don't know if he has one...but I'd been talking about getting one to put up the vegetables from the garden so I could quit canning. He bought me one for Christmas this past year."

  Add on the fact that Grant had been hunting and field-dressing deer since he was in elementary school to those Starblaze treads and his surgical expertise, and she was on solid ground for a warrant.

  So why did she feel as though she was sinking—and suffocating—in quicksand?

  Kate stood. Not only was a briefing with Seth in order, the resulting distance from Abel could only help her regain her equilibrium. She shot Agent Walker a brittle nod and headed for the kitchen to clear her head. There was no hope for her battered heart anymore. If there ever had been.

  Through the double windows above the sink, she caught sight of Joe escorting Seth around the back of the detached barn, and chickened out on the briefing.

  It could wait.

  One look at that Land Rover would hold her for a lifetime.

  Water. She wasn't thirsty, but her mouth was still coated with the vestiges of her rejected breakfast and the dregs of Grant's betrayal.

  As Kate reached for a glass, the cacophony of half the department's vehicles barreling up the gravel lane reverberated through the kitchen, shaking the floor and cupboards. She had to give Seth credit. Emmett and the rest of the crime scene unit had arrived in record time.

  Kate lowered her hand, bemused, then ticked as she caught sight of the smartphone she'd snagged in lieu of the tumbler she'd sought. A swift click of the phone's power button, and her suspicions we
re confirmed. Grant had told the truth about one thing. Abel was prone to leaving his phone in odd places, but he wasn't using that bargain-basement burner she'd returned to Grant. Because this phone was Abel's.

  "What's that?"

  Kate whirled around to find Liz tucking the bottle of pills she'd left in the living room into the beadboard cupboard. "Evidence of yet another lie. Christ, I am such an idiot."

  "You are not."

  "Really?" Kate stalked across the kitchen and slapped Abel's actual phone on the counter so she could wave her hand at those pills. "Then explain how I could've missed all this! And don't get me started on what I found in that old barn."

  To her frustration, Liz simply closed the cupboard and leaned against it. "I have no idea what you found. I'm not sure I want to. But I do know this: you, Deputy Holland, are a great cop. Heck, you were better at solving mysteries and crimes than most of Braxton's police force when you were fifteen years old. That's why your dad used to run his gut instincts past you to double-check them ahead of his partner—remember? And don't try and tell me he was just humoring you, because we both know he wasn't. But here's something you may not know. When it comes to Katie Holland, the daughter and the woman, you also have the most amazing ability to ignore what's too painful to acknowledge, even when it's stabbing you in the eye. And let's not forget, Grant had an excellent reason to hide what we've both learned today—which he actively did."

  "But, why? Why didn't he come to me?"

  She truly was an idiot, wasn't she? Because that answer was a no-brainer. You didn't tell your lover, who also happened to be a cop, that you were up to your surgical mask and scalpels in a scheme to steal organs from your fellow vets. Because it was looking very much as though that's exactly what Grant and those three victims whose bagged parts she'd helped identify had been involved in.

  Damn it, she would've supported Grant through Abel's declining health, just as she had in high school, if he'd only opened up to her. Yes, there was an excellent chance Abel would've been dead by now. But others—how many innocent others?—would be alive today, and Grant and his father wouldn't be staring at life sentences. Or worse.

  But according to Abel, Grant had been avoiding her since his return to the States. At least a year before he'd discovered Abel needed a heart. "Liz, I just don't understand why."

  And she desperately needed to.

  Her friend pushed a strawberry curl behind her ear and laughed. The sound was born more of frustration than humor. "You really are an emotional ostrich. Grant's in love with you, Kate. I know we were just kids to him at first, but Grant fell hard for you when he came back for Christmas break our senior year. And before you ask why he never told you, it's because he knew Dan was hung up on you too. I still think that's why they ended up following you into the Army, especially Dan. Yes, he wanted to serve his country. But deep down, I think Dan was hoping you'd run into each other a few years down the road, and that being a soldier would help you see him in a different light. A light you understood and respected."

  Liz was right. Dan had tiptoed around it the night he'd asked her to senior prom, but she'd ignored it—and him—just as Liz had accused her of doing. She'd assumed he'd gotten over it. Evidently not.

  Hell, maybe Dan was right. Maybe she might've seen him differently if they'd run into each other overseas.

  But they hadn't. And now Dan was five years dead. Perhaps not directly, but obliquely because of her.

  No wonder Grant had avoided her.

  Was it possible that if she'd been less of an ostrich she could've headed off the rest? She'd probably be obsessing over that one for the rest of her life.

  Kate picked up Abel's phone and switched it on, torturing herself with the view of the old family photo that either Grant or Abel had installed as the phone's wallpaper. Abel, his wife and the boys looked so happy there.

  How had it all gone so wrong?

  Kate shoved the phone in her pocket and faced Liz. It was time for the truth—and this woman, shrink or not, would give it to her, unvarnished. She just had to ask for it. "Do you think Grant did it? Is he even capable?"

  She wasn't referring to Abel's heart, and Liz knew it. Her friend's bright blue gaze glistened brighter as it settled on the worn Sunday paper neatly refolded and centered on the distressed farm table they'd sat around as teenagers.

  "Do you know if Grant suffered a concussion over there?"

  For the first time, Kate wished she had broken down and swapped war stories with the man the few times he'd attempted to draw her out, even if it had meant offering up the fantasy showcased in that Silver Star write-up. "I have no idea."

  Liz shook her head. "Me, neither. I assume you've figured out that he was seeing Dr. Manning. Grant was also participating in a group for vets who worked with the VA. If you can't get access to his medical records, someone there might talk if you get them alone. As a psychiatrist, I'm not supposed to suggest that. But if Grant did suffer a concussion, the damage to his brain could've affected his personality significantly. If true, as his friend, I'd want that bit of mitigating knowledge out there."

  Kate nodded, but she didn't agree. She'd processed too many shrink-wrapped body parts to entertain the idea of mitigation at the moment, if ever. "And if there was no concussion?"

  "Well, he's not the same teenager and young man we used to know. Iraq changed him. As did Dan's death. I could see that before he opened his mouth. He's...distant now. Guarded. I don't know if he's different with you, but I suspect not."

  This nod was genuine. Liz suspected correctly. Grant had tended to be distant with her too. But she was guilty of the same with him, so it hadn't really registered, much less mattered.

  She pushed Liz the way she hadn't pushed herself. "And?"

  Her friend dug her hands through her loose curls and sighed as she massaged the base of her scalp. "I don't know. There is a significant stressor at play."

  "Abel's cancer? That it's terminal this time?"

  "Yes."

  Kate nodded. "I agree." Though she'd yet to speak with Walker, the BAU agent was bound to concur. As stressors went, that cancer's return was a doozy. For Grant to find out that the illegal heart and whatever role he held in Madrigal's macabre business had been all for naught?

  It was more than a stressor.

  It was a recipe for revenge.

  And according to Abel, Grant had wanted out. But someone at Madrigal had refused.

  In his grief, anger and desperation, had Grant seen the murders of his co-conspirators as his only escape? It wasn't as though Madrigal's CEO, that slime of a lawyer Robert Stern and anyone else in on those illegal transplants could call the police and turn Grant in. Was that what the trio had been discussing in that back office at the Baymont this morning?

  If so, she and Agent Walker were wrong about the stalking. Grant would have no need. He knew his victims. They would've trusted him. That's why there were no signs of an initial, physical attack on the bodies.

  And Grant would have had access to the paralytic drug that turned up on the tox screens.

  "Liz, I had breakfast with Sergeant Fremont this morning. He says Ian Kusić had been drawing extra vials of blood from certain homeless VA patients. Those same patients appear to have been questioned extensively by Kusić about potential family histories of cancer and dementia, specifically Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease—and some of these same men are now missing."

  Her friend clutched the closest kitchen chair and shifted to sink into it. "Wow. This really is happening. Right here in Arkansas." She stared at the photo of those oversized bags beneath the fold of the paper. "Yeah, everything you just said fits. When you think about it, a bit of blood is all you need for tissue typing. A sample from the donor and the recipient for comparison. If you have enough markers, and the health histories check out, it's a go. Of course, you'd have to have access to a lab to run the blood work."

  Kate claimed the seat beside Liz at the Parish family table, but it was nothing like o
ld times as she flipped the paper upside down and shoved it away from them. "I've got a good lead on the lab." As a medical staffing company, tissue typing was probably the easiest step for Madrigal to abuse. "Have you heard of a company called—"

  Her jacket pocket vibrated. For a moment, Kate thought Abel's phone had gone off. But Joe must've bumped the mute button on hers by accident. The caller was Lou.

  Kate stood. "Sorry. I need to—"

  "—take that. I know." Liz stood as well. "I'll keep Agent Walker company until the hospice nurse arrives. I need to speak to her, but Abel says she's not due for a couple hours."

  Kate withdrew Abel's phone from her pocket and passed it to Liz. "The number's probably in here. Please give the phone to Agent Walker when you're finished."

  "I will."

  Kate connected through to Lou as her friend left. "Hey, boss. I guess you've heard by now."

  "Yeah. Life sucks. But you already knew that."

  She did.

  "You okay, kiddo?"

  "Yup, what've you got?" Because Lou Simms wouldn't be eating up her time at an active crime scene—and that was what this old farmhouse had become—just to engage in chitchat, however much he feared she might need it.

  "We're still waitin' on the warrants for Madrigal, but tell Seth the ones for Abel are a go, to include the house, surroundin' property, and especially the Land Rover and the barn it's parked inside. I've expanded the Fort Leaves warrant to include anyone Kusić drew blood from. I'll let you know when that comes in. The one for Grant's condo is approved too. Since it's in Mazelle, their police department will be executin' it. You're free to assist them in an advisory capacity or wait for the report if you can't get away from there. We still haven't been able to connect Jason Dunne to that shyster you spoke to, but the Little Rock PD did find Dunne's Stingray. It was parked in an overflow lot at Fort Leaves. Also, the second round of tox results on Kusić are in, along with the initial financial data dumps."

  "Kusić popped positive for oxy, didn't he? But he was clean on Xanax." The drug Grant had sworn the tech was also addicted to.