The Garbage Man

by Candace Irving

  "Yeah. How'd you know?"

  "Educated guess." One that served as yet another nail in the coffin of Grant's guilt. If she'd been in a better mood she might've been impressed with his quick thinking last night in her drive. She reached out and flipped the newspaper over to stare at that eerily straight line of sacks.

  Or not.

  She shoved the paper away. "Anything interesting in the financials?"

  "Not with the first two victims. Though that's not surprisin' since you found Kusić's cash stashed at home-sweet-home. Dunne must've been spendin' his—cash, that is—faster than he could bank it, 'cause it don't show up anywhere. But neither does a history of payin' for that swanky place on the river or the Stingray."

  "He may have funneled the cash though a second account and paid his bills through that."

  "Agreed. I got Carole on that angle. We did find somethin' of note in Andrea Silva's account."

  "That was quick." They'd ID'd the woman's body roughly sixteen hours earlier, on a Saturday night. "How many bankers did the governor's aide have to drag out of bed and threaten with obstruction?"

  "Less than you'd think. A third set of those bags in as many days? Let's just say folks are gettin' mighty cooperative."

  "That'd do it." Kate headed to the sink to retrieve the glass of water she'd been distracted from earlier. She filled it halfway and finally rinsed out her mouth. "What'd you find on Silva?"

  "Her new employer. For the past six months, Silva has received deposits from a company called VitaCell Tissues, Inc. Don't yet know what all they do, but VitaCell's a subsidiary of—"

  "Madrigal Medical."

  "Got it in one, Kato."

  So much for the company pit bull's claim that he had no idea where the surgical nurse had gone after she'd quit the VA. "We need those records for Madrigal, boss. Every sheet of paper and digital kilobyte. VitaCell's, too."

  She'd scour the entire batch personally, over and over, until she figured out where those surgeries were taking place.

  Until then, God only knew how many vets' lives were in danger. Men and women who'd already given more for their fellow citizens than they should've ever had to give.

  Warrant or not, she refused to mark time in this farmhouse, becoming more enraged with Grant and Abel by the second. "Did you happen to get a home address for Madrigal's CEO?"

  "I did. It's near Grant's condo in Mazelle."

  Excellent. It was time to pay a house call—and God help Robert Stern if he and his legal briefs tried to get in her way.

  13

  "Stop obsessing."

  Kate shifted her attention from the burgundy Ram 2500 traveling ahead of her Durango on I-40 South to glare at the man in the passenger seat. Joe met her scowl and raised her a pointed brow, then went back to texting on his phone.

  Kate cursed her former fellow agent and his intimate knowledge of her vices as she returned her focus to the road. She was obsessing...now.

  The first half of the drive had been much more proactive. She'd filled it with a series of calls via the speaker on her iPhone. The first had been to the Baymont security guard who'd relieved Cal Burgess that morning. Fortunately, Felix had still been on duty and had indeed noted the Madrigal CEO's departure from the building. The guard had been happy to inform Deputy Holland that said departure had occurred roughly ninety minutes prior to her call and had included an offhand comment from the CEO that he was headed home.

  Felix had had less information to relay regarding the lawyer—just that Robert Stern and a younger brunette in a green dress had left at the same time as the CEO.

  Satisfied that her current plan to beard the bastard in his mansion had a better than average chance of success, Kate had accessed her contact list and had begun to phone everyone she could think of who might know where Grant could be.

  When none did, she'd moved on to Sergeant Fremont and the number he'd given her to Saint Clare's on the hope that the vet had returned to the shelter following their breakfast that morning. If she could obtain the names of the two homeless vets Fremont had recently located who'd passed Kusić's covert, pre-transplant questionnaire, the Little Rock PD could track them down and warn the men to take precautions, even place them in protective custody if they agreed.

  She'd had no joy there, either. Fremont was out. All she'd been able to do was leave a message requesting that he contact her when he returned—and ask him to take care. Though she had every intention of persuading Fremont to accept protective custody too. After all, Grant knew she'd spoken to a Fort Leaves vet about those vials of blood. And there were plenty of witnesses to the coffee she'd shared with Fremont in that cafeteria.

  A coffee that may have inadvertently risked the sergeant's life.

  It was that disquieting thought that had ushered in the time-honored hobby of self-flagellation. She'd spent the trip since pulling up every moment she'd spent with Grant during the past six months and re-examining them in a new and horrifying light. Especially those they'd spent in his bed.

  How could she not have known?

  Even more terrifying was the suspicion that Grant, subconsciously or not, had wanted her to. After all, he'd all but deposited the bodies on her doorstep. And there was that cross. Were those dump sites less about his knowledge of and comfort with the backroads of their hometown, and more about punishment for her?

  If Liz was right, and Grant had been in love with her since high school, it made a depressing sort of sense.

  Worse, she hadn't even seen it coming.

  Was she an ostrich? Did she have her head shoved so far down in the sand when it came to her personal life that she could miss her own lover's transformation into Mr. Hyde?

  Ruger hadn't. He'd had Grant pegged from the moment she'd introduced them. Ruger had even—

  "I said stop." Joe's sigh cut through the SUV's chilly air as he clicked off his phone and tossed it to the dash. "That's an order, Holland, and I don't care who works for whom."

  "Yeah, well, either way, that order's easier issued than followed."

  "I know. But you can't beat yourself up. All you can do is learn from it. Detectives miss things. And the closer we are physically and emotionally to the source, the easier it is to miss 'em too. You know that. You've seen it happen with others. I know, 'cause I was there. People have a special set of blinders when it comes to those they care about, even cops."

  True. But something this huge, this awful?

  She could almost understand the transplants scraping beneath her radar—but those murders? "There must've been hints, Joe. Shifts in his behavior. I knew him for four years before I left town. Yes, I was a teenager and he was the older brother of a good friend who popped back in during breaks from college and med school. But those breaks added up. Together, they should've provided me with a decent enough benchmark."

  "Exactly. You knew him—note the past tense—and, as you just admitted, not all that well. Certainly not on a day-to-day basis. And then you left. So did he. And while you two were apart, for over a decade I might add, you both changed." Joe shrugged. "You just didn't want to see those changes, much less accept them. It's human nature. You wanted life—and him—to be like it was before. Given the absolute hell you went through four years ago, I suspect your subconscious worked doubly hard to believe you hadn't changed either—without you even realizing it."

  Kate slowed the SUV to take their exit off the interstate, following the directions from the Durango's GPS unit through the subsequent suggested turn, and the next. "So what are you saying? That my brain kept a virtual pair of rose-tinted glasses lying around, just for the Parish family?"

  "Could be. Hell, I'm guilty of donning a pair myself when it comes to my own family. I fully admit, there are days I'd give almost anything to be able to forget what the world looks like beyond them. Especially what those godforsaken hellholes we managed to crawl into, then back out of, look like. Maybe Grant just couldn't find a way to do the same."

  "So like Liz, you think Grant
held it together though his tours in Iraq only to come home and crack stateside four years later, upon learning of his dad's cancer?"

  "You can't rule it out. We're not the only ones the powers that be decided to bounce between war zones like rubber balls—over and over again." Joe snatched his sliding phone off the dash as the Durango took a turn onto a secondary road sharper than she'd intended. "Think about the cases we've worked—suicide bombings, IEDs and VBIDs, fratricides. All those human pieces and parts, and all those goddamned gaping, bloody holes in soldiers and civilians alike where they just didn't belong. Grant had a better view than even we did—inside operating rooms with more hacked-off parts lying around than an over-stuffed butcher's shop. Maybe it was all still simmering around inside him, fucking with his head until it just boiled over. God knows, it's fucked with mine. And don't even try and tell me it hasn't with yours."

  She wouldn't. She couldn't.

  Because it still did.

  Joe shoved his phone in his pocket as they neared the gated community where Madrigal's CEO lived. "I know it doesn't help, but it sounds like it started out small and desperate. I suspect that was deliberate, to reel Grant in before he realized how big a bite out of his soul it was going to take." Joe sighed as she brought the Durango to a halt beside Kensington Acres' glassed-in guard shack. "His dad was dying, Kate. I sure as hell can't condone that first transplant, much less forgive it, but I can understand it. Some people will do anything for those they truly love. We've both been in the cop business long enough to have learned that the hard way."

  "True." But he was right. It didn't help.

  Kate rolled down her driver's window as the gate guard approached. She kept the mottled side of her face averted as she flashed her credentials to keep the man's attention where it belonged. "Good afternoon. I'm Deputy Holland with the Braxton PD." She tipped her head toward Joe and the badge he was holding up. "This is Special Agent Joe Cordoba, US Army CID. We're here to see Mr. Kessler. Has he arrived home yet?"

  "Yes, ma'am. 'Bout an hour ago. You need me to call and give him a heads up?"

  She shot the guard a smoothly inclusive, we're all law enforcement smile, knowing without looking that Joe was mirroring it. "That won't be necessary, sir. Mr. Kessler's expecting us." If he wasn't after this morning, the man was an idiot. "He's at 12 Westchester Drive, correct?"

  "Yes, ma'am." The rent-a-guard tipped the brim of his ball cap, then pointed deeper into the enclave. "Second street is Westchester; it's the sixth house on the right. If you have trouble locating the place, give a holler. The driveways can be a mite hard to see with all them towering trees."

  "I will."

  Kate rolled up the window and nudged the SUV through the gate before the guard decided to revisit that heads-up call.

  "Are people always so trusting down here?"

  Kate laughed. "Welcome to the South, Cordoba."

  "Yeah, well, with the kind of excitement you got going on, you can keep it."

  She was forced to agree. "The guard was right about the trees. They are thick." There were twice as many low-sweeping pines in these woods than in the ones around her house, creating a dense, nearly impenetrable stand, even in fall. Kate cocked her head as they turned onto Westchester Drive. "Did you hear that?"

  "The wood chipper? Can't miss it. Rivals a Warthog screaming in for a low-altitude strafing run."

  She shook her head as they passed the chipper and a trio of workers shoving tree limbs inside. "No, there's something else, during the ebbs in the grinds."

  Two cars were parked at the crest of the CEO's semi-circular drive. In the lead, the blue BMW Cal Burgess had pointed out that morning at the Baymont. Behind the Beemer, a low-slung silver Jaguar. Her aging Durango would only lower that three-story monstrosity's property value, but what the hell.

  Kate killed the SUV's engine, her ears perking as she opened the driver's door. There it was again. Mixed up with the gnashing of that ravenous chipper.

  Barking.

  But not the annoyed or even "on alert" type. It was the same frantic, snarling, get the hell in here 'cause something's very wrong tone Ruger had snapped and howled at her just last night.

  "Shit." Kate reached inside her jacket and eased her Glock from its shoulder holster as she closed the driver's door.

  Joe didn't question her actions or that succinct assessment as he too abandoned the Durango while slipping his 9mm SIG Sauer from his holster. "Sounds like it's coming from around the left side of the house. Possibly the ground floor."

  Kate nodded. "You take the right."

  She had the left.

  She took off as Joe nodded his agreement, sprinting around the stately, red-bricked facade until she'd arrived at the source of that barking. Stopping to peer in between the slats of a low window, she made out what appeared to be a utility room. Inside was a massive, torqued-off Doberman, his leather muzzle hooked uselessly on the handle of the inner door as he bellowed and snarled louder than an entire inner-city dog pound on End of the Road day.

  Kate resumed her sprint. Within seconds, she'd rounded the back of the house and hooked up with Joe two feet from a set of French doors that were disturbingly ajar.

  Kate nodded her intent and moved in first, spotting two bodies just inside a spacious music and TV room. Ms. Model from the Baymont's Madrigal offices and an equally well-maintained, dark-haired man in his fifties were lying on the floor. Both their throats had been slit from ear to ear, with near matching pools of blood soaked into the plush, cream-colored carpet beneath.

  Despite the glazed, lifeless stare in the woman's otherwise perfect face, Kate bent to check for a pulse. She shot a swift shake of her head toward Joe as he bent over what was most likely Madrigal's former CEO.

  Joe followed up the press of his fingers with a silent shake of his own.

  Damn.

  They kept moving.

  Joe signaled his intent with his free hand just before he split off into the formal dining room. Kate entered the foyer on her own to find Robert Stern, his throat slashed like the others and lying in a slightly smaller pool of blood amid the polished, black-and-white checkerboard tiles. Like the model, the lawyer's eyes were open—but Stern was still alive.

  Barely.

  Kate dropped to her knees, jamming her fingers into the pressure points at the sides of the man's neck to try and slow the loss of blood as she whispered in his ear. "Is the killer still in the house?"

  The lawyer managed a slight, negative shake and a soft gurgle.

  "Joe! Call 911! We got another one, and he's still with us!"

  Both hands occupied at the lawyer's pressure points, Kate jerked her head down to his ears. "Did Grant Parish do this to you?"

  Stern's mouth worked, but all that came out was another, queasier, gurgle of blood, most of it spilling over onto her hands.

  This was not good.

  "Don't try to talk. Just blink once if I'm right, twice if I'm wrong. And hang in there—the ambulance is on its way." It would be a miracle if the man lasted that long.

  She could hear Joe shouting into his phone as his boots thundered down a set of stairs, but by the time Joe had reached her side, all the lawyer had enough life left to do was stare frantically at her, then Joe, then back at her—before Stern, too, was gone.

  "Goddamn it, no!" Kate ground down on her teeth as she yanked her fingers from the man's lifeless neck and slammed back on her haunches. "Son-of-a-bitch. If we'd left Abel's just two minutes earlier—"

  She broke off as Joe's hands clamped over her shoulders for a quick, absolving squeeze—but she wasn't buying it.

  There was no absolution for this one. Not for her, and not for the others.

  "Joe, we needed him. These three were our only hope for quick answers."

  Who knew how long it would take to get them now? To find those three, already-missing vets? To locate Grant before he could murder someone else involved with this filthy racket?

  She jackknifed to her feet and left Joe
standing over the lawyer's body as she returned to the kitchen she'd barreled through minutes earlier. This time, she was in search of a stream of scalding water and a gallon of soap.

  She was still scrubbing her skin raw when a cacophony of wailing sirens overtook the wood chipper. Within seconds, both died out, leaving the pissed-off Doberman to provide his own, jarringly lonely soundtrack to the afternoon's events.

  She kept scrubbing as she heard the front door open, then several unknown males speaking. Joe, briefing.

  She ignored it all. She just couldn't seem to stop scrubbing.

  Until, finally, "You okay?"

  Joe.

  He was in the kitchen now. Behind her.

  She looked up from the flood of water in the sink that had been clear of the lawyer's blood for several minutes now. She forced herself to shut off the faucet and turn around. "No. I'm furious. I know I should be sorry for the loss of life here, and I am. But I have to be honest; I'm mostly livid—and terrified."

  But not for herself.

  "I understand. But half a dozen cop cars arrived with that ambulance. They're already stringing the barrier tape. There's bound to be a computer somewhere in this place. If we're lucky, the CEO kept the damning stuff close at hand."

  "And if not?" Because with legal counsel as slick as Stern had been, she doubted it.

  Joe retrieved Max's dive watch from where she'd laid it on the granite counter and held it out. "Then we keep looking. Keep working. There's not much else we can do."

  Lord, she hated when he was right.

  She snatched the watch from Joe's fingers and wrapped it around her wrist where it belonged. At least with all the scrubbing she'd just done, her right wrist was now as raw as the left.

  Nothing like a fresh catastrophe to camouflage her previous meltdowns.

  "Thanks. What happened to the dog?" The kitchen was suddenly, echoingly silent.

  "One of the cops in the foyer said something about a tranquilizer gun in his trunk."

  Ruger forgive her, she was grateful. Her head was pounding through adrenaline withdrawal as it was. Plus, the dog would have to be removed from the crime scene so they could fully process it. Given the Doberman's day, even she wouldn't want to do that without a little help from Morpheus.