The Garbage Man

by Candace Irving

  Kate did. Any soldier would.

  Male, female; black, white, brown—hell, even purple—it all faded before the rifle site of the enemy. In the heat of battle, your comrades-in-arms trumped everything, including Army and country. At times, even God.

  But try and explain that to a civilian.

  "Anyway, he might not look like it on the outside, but Sergeant Fremont is pretty messed up. And, like you, he keeps insisting that he's dealing with it all just fine."

  "I thought you didn't see the man. Professionally, that is."

  "I don't. I ran into him one night while he was waiting for the bus. He must've had an especially rotten day, because I'd stopped before, but that was the first time he accepted a lift to the shelter. We chatted during the drive."

  She grabbed her friend's arm. "What else did Fremont say? I'll explain in a minute, but I need you to repeat every word that came out of that man's mouth. Don't leave anything out, including your impressions."

  "Kate, you're scaring me."

  "I don't mean to." Ruger must've picked up on her vibes too, because he'd decided to run his late-night check on the house an hour early.

  Okay, according to her mom's chirping cuckoo, not early.

  "Just tell me."

  "There really isn't much else. I might be a shrink, but I'm not his shrink. I didn't take notes. All he said was that his friend was cheated out of a soldier's death. But he wouldn't say what that meant, much less who, or how."

  Tanner Holmes.

  What were the odds?

  Actually, they were fairly decent—and increasing with each new connection. Namely, the revealing comments their faux Sergeant Fremont had made to Liz.

  According to Ian Kusić's girlfriend, the lab tech claimed he'd gotten hooked on oxycodone following the search for Staff Sergeant Holmes. What if that was only partially true? What if Kusić had gotten hooked not because he'd been on that search and rescue detail, but because the tech had been instrumental in selecting Tanner Holmes for his unwitting donation and death?

  She'd bet that damned Silver Star that Holmes had been Kusić's first. Kusić had swallowed those pills because of the guilt.

  As for Holmes, he'd been branded a deserter. A vile and permanent stain that ranked right up there with traitor in most soldiers' eyes. And a deserter—falsely accused or not—would definitely be cheated out of a soldier's death. No Purple Heart. No flag at the funeral. No toasts from his former comrades in arms. Just the nagging, bitter shame of his memory.

  And if it was all a lie, the burning need to correct it.

  Kate vaulted to her feet and double-timed across her kitchen.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I need my laptop. I have to google something." She reached the desk in the den and fired up her computer.

  "Google what?" Liz followed her and stood beside her chair. Ruger joined them.

  "Not what—who. Staff Sergeant Tanner Holmes, US Army." Kate clicked open her laptop's browser, typed the man's name into the search field at the top, and hit enter.

  Links filled the screen.

  She scrolled down to an LA Chronicle "On War" article and brought it up. The article was five years old and had been written shortly after Holmes' body had been found hanging in the window of that bombed-out Iraqi building. She skimmed past the description of the man's entrails lying in a scorched nest at his feet.

  There, the second-to-last paragraph—it contained a quote by another soldier, a fellow staff sergeant by the name of Thomas Burke. Though stateside at the time of Holmes' death, Staff Sergeant Burke insisted the Army was wrong. Yes, Holmes had met and fallen for a local Iraqi woman; and, yes, the two had put in a request for a visa so they could marry and she could move to the States; and, yes, that visa had been denied due to ties the woman's older brother was rumored to have had with a particularly nasty terrorist—but Tanner Holmes was not a deserter. Burke would prove it.

  Kate opened a fresh search window. This time, she typed Burke's full name and rank into the waiting blank. Instinct had her adding "Special Forces" at the end.

  Liz leaned close to tap the screen. "Who's that?"

  Kate held her tongue and mentally crossed her fingers as she hit the return key. Another list of links slotted in. Kate ignored them and selected the "images" tab at the top.

  She felt Liz stiffen as a succession of thumbnail photos began to appear. Kate zeroed her cursor in on the first close-up and tapped the trackpad. The face of the man she'd met and breakfasted with as Sergeant Fremont twelve hours earlier filled the screen. "That, Dr. Vogel, is the real Garbage Man."

  Thomas Burke.

  16

  Liz pushed trembling fingers through her curls. "I don't... I don't understand. That's a picture of Sergeant Fremont—right?"

  Kate sighed as her friend absorbed the fallout from this latest mortar to her crumbling world. She was reluctant to be the one to lob in another round. Unfortunately, "No. I realized he was using an assumed identity earlier this evening at the station when Joe—Agent Cordoba—thought he'd located a photo of Fremont. We were looking for one because I'd received a call from the shelter. The man we knew as Sergeant Fremont had disappeared. I was terrified he was Grant's latest victim, until I received another call from a Mazelle detective I met this afternoon. The Mazelle detective had located a witness who saw someone running from yet another murder scene shortly before Agent Cordoba and I stumbled upon it during the course of our own Garbage Man investigation. But the suspect couldn't have been Grant—because he was wearing prosthetic legs."

  Liz's already fair complexion blanched to stark white. "But Fremont—" Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears as she glanced at the photo on the screen. "—Burke, can't use prosthetics."

  "I think he can. Nor do Burke's skills end there."

  Everything she'd noted these past few days fit. Using the trust Burke had built up at Fort Leaves to get the drop on his first three victims before he administered that paralytic to keep them immobile—but awake—as he carved them up. Surprising Grant long enough to do the same to him. Breaking into her home and removing that Silver Star from her trunk and pinning it to her pillow. Trapping Ruger in her dad's old room before he left. Breaking into her SUV while she was inside Madrigal's offices before heading back across town so he could phone her and arrange to meet her at the Silver Bullet for brunch to find out if Max's tags had succeeded in jogging her memory. And, finally, breaking into the CEO's home and trapping yet another snarling dog so he could lie in wait to slit the throats of the three holier-than-thou civilians who'd engineered his best friend's murder and posthumous disgrace.

  As a quick-thinking and adaptable Special Forces soldier who'd been vetted by combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, Burke would've been capable of it all.

  And a hell of a lot more.

  The slump to her friend's shoulders as she stumbled to the couch testified to the fact that, deep down, Liz agreed.

  But that wasn't all.

  Kate also believed Burke had taken on his faux identity so that he could obscure his own while he spent the past several years ferreting out the members and particulars of Madrigal's illegal organ and tissue racket as he'd honed his skills and gathered the supplies he'd need to take it apart, piece by piece and limb by limb. Literally. Burke had planned these kills down to the slightest nick of his knife. But not for God, Army or country, or even to protect his fellow soldiers and vets—though he might be telling himself so.

  He'd done it for cold-blooded revenge.

  Kate made her way to the couch. In a depressing turnabout, it was she who sat down next to Liz to hold her friend's hand for comfort. Ruger had done his part, too, moving in to nuzzle into Liz's lap.

  "The good news is, Grant didn't kill those first three VA employees. But he has been killing vets—and he wasn't just taking their organs. He and his co-conspirators at Madrigal have been slicing off every useable bone, ligament, valve and piece of flesh, and selling them through a tissue bank. I think
that's why Burke carved up his first three victims—and Grant—the way he did, and why Burke vacuum-packed their parts and set them out in bags along the roads." She'd always felt that "take one, to go" display was critical to the killer's psyche.

  Even the missing organs made perverse sense in light of what they'd learned.

  "Liz, I know you're the shrink here, but I'm pretty sure Burke has been trying to tell us about Madrigal's organ and tissue rackets all along. Even worse, I think the murders began with active duty soldiers and progressed to vets."

  Hell, given everything she'd learned, she seriously doubted Tanner Holmes had even been the first.

  Liz wiped at the shock and dismay still staining her cheeks. "Oh, God."

  "I know." But as depraved as it was, Madrigal's business model was sound.

  What better place to cull organ "donors" than from soldiers serving in various hotspots around the globe? As donor pools went, it was stellar. Military personnel tended to be young, in shape and prescreened for diseases that could and would impede a conventional transplant. With a pool that numerous, Madrigal could guarantee a near perfect match. Or at least as perfect as they were likely to get.

  Something for which the truly rich and desperate wouldn't hesitate to pay a small fortune.

  As for the pesky fact that a donor couldn't survive without certain organs and/or might balk at losing one they could spare, since said organ loss would signal the end of a career they wanted?

  Well, those hotspots were also conveniently located in places where soldiers were not only likely to die, but had done so on a weekly—if not daily—basis. Places where deaths would have been relatively easy enough to conceal. She'd worked enough of those hotspot cases to know firsthand that more than a few evidentiary details got lost in the fog of war.

  And if those details had been deliberately obscured by the same medical personnel tasked with signing off on a victim's cause of death?

  Kate shuddered to think how many murders had been missed. "You told me in Abel's kitchen that all a lab needs to tissue-type an organ is a couple vials of blood. Soldiers give that every time they turn around." Hence the need for a bribable lab tech and an admin type on the payroll. "But then the wars began to draw down and Madrigal's once ready supply of quality organs slowed to a drip." Which would've made it harder to explain away murders. Until they realized they still had a ready supply; it had simply shifted. "So, they began to target vets." And if they concentrated on those who were homeless or isolated, but still caring for their bodies enough to seek out the VA medical care they were entitled to, Madrigal no longer had to worry about burials. "I suspect they got into the body parts business then."

  Why waste the extra parts and potential profit?

  Kate left Ruger at the couch to comfort Liz and returned to the desk. Minimizing the window containing Burke's close-up, she re-read the LA Chronicle article on Tanner Holmes, stopping at the description of his body's desecration. The staff sergeant's intestines had been found at his feet. It hadn't been enough to hang the man, Madrigal had also had Holmes gutted and burned to conceal the organs that were missing.

  Had the coroner known? Had he or she been paid to look the other way?

  She'd have to track down the autopsy report and compare the information and conclusions within to the staff sergeant's exhumed remains, but odds were that the answer was a heinous and traitorous yes.

  Disgusted, Kate minimized the Chronicle's article, and enlarged the window containing the close-up of Staff Sergeant Burke. She clicked out of Burke's photo and switched the view to the original list of links concerning Burke. There, she clicked on a headline she'd noted earlier: "Wildcat Triathlete Loses Legs to Afghan IED."

  The image the article painted of Tom Burke as a teenage triathlete and subsequent Special Forces soldier—and cross-trained medic—was one of patience, persistence and inner strength. Qualities that would've stood him well while deployed downrange, and also as a determined vet bent on regaining the use of his legs so he could wreak overdue vengeance on those who'd murdered his friend.

  The author's admiration for Burke didn't surprise her, but the photo he'd pasted in the article's sidebar did.

  It was of the staff sergeant in-country and definitely in his element. Sporting the generous facial hair many SF and SEALs grew during deployments, Burke had been photographed beside a wall of sandbags, dressed in a tan T-shirt and camouflaged trousers stained with the sweat and grime of a recent mission. According to the caption, the photo had been snapped a mere week before her ambush—and six before his own.

  Like her, Burke's Humvee had been hit with an IED. He'd lost his legs and suffered a serious head injury in the blast.

  Liz's questions regarding Grant and the rare, but potentially deadly shift in personality a traumatic brain injury could bring filtered in, only to be supplanted by those mesmerizing eyes.

  Something about their intensity got to her in a way they hadn't in that diner or at Fort Leaves. An eerie sensation prickled in. Perhaps it was due to the mustache and full beard, but the longer she stared at this Burke's mouth, the more she swore she could see his lips moving.

  "Kate?"

  She stiffened as her friend's fingers pressed into her shoulder. The impression vanished.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. Sorry. Had a weird moment there."

  "Another memory?"

  She shook her head. But she wasn't so sure. "I don't know. If it was, it's gone now. Just a sec, okay? I need to take care of something." Kate brought up the clean-shaven close-up of Burke she'd located and used her laptop's software to text the photo to Lou so he could update the APB, then sent it to Joe. She sent the close-up to Detective Moradi as well, adding a request for Moradi to run it past the witness who'd seen someone running from the Madrigal CEO's house.

  Kate reopened the LA Chronicle article on Tanner Holmes next and sent a final text to Lou and Joe with a link to the article.

  "Almost finished." Retrieving her phone, she dialed Joe's number, only to get his voicemail. He, Tonga and Agent Walker were probably already at the state lab, carting in Grant's remains, if they weren't already hip deep in the autopsy.

  Kate left a message asking the CID agent to retrieve all records the Army had on Staff Sergeants Thomas Burke and Tanner Holmes.

  She dumped her phone on the desk as she finished and turned to find Liz staring at her. "What?"

  "You're doing it again."

  "Doing what?"

  Suddenly, she knew. Kate withdrew her fingers from Max's watch as smoothly as she could. The watch that, given the fresh scrapes on her skin, she'd been twisting for some time.

  "That's a classic coping mechanism, you know. Tactile touch. It can be very soothing, even stave off panic attacks."

  "Really?" And to think she'd hit on it all on her own. Bully for her.

  "Do you know when you use it?"

  That was a trick question, right? To get another discussion going so she'd accept the referral Liz had been pushing?

  Well, it wouldn't work. "Look, I—"

  "When you're thinking about the past, that ambush, that's when you start turning it. I've watched you do it several times since we've met up again, so don't deny it. And, yes, I know you've probably figured that out for yourself. But what I don't know is why you started twisting that watch while you were staring at—scratch that, mesmerized by—that bearded photo of Thomas Burke."

  "I did?"

  Liz nodded. "You did."

  That odd déjà vu impression rippled back, giving her pause once more. But she still couldn't put her finger on why. "Got a second?"

  Her friend smiled. "I've got all night, remember? I'm the babysitter."

  Kate appreciated the attempt to soften the tension, but it hadn't worked. Not with her. She pushed away from the computer desk and stood. "Follow me."

  Destination in mind, she was relieved when Ruger took it upon himself to join them as they headed down the hall to her dad's room. Kate braced
herself at the door and opened it. Liz and Ruger followed her inside.

  Her friend stopped beside the trunk at the foot of the bed, turning around as she took in the dust-covered decor that hadn't changed since the day they'd met. "This is so weird. I can actually feel the fear I felt when we snuck in here to poke through your dad's case files when he wasn't home."

  "Yeah, I know." It was probably why her father had built that cabin and moved his desk and files over there.

  "So what are we looking at tonight?"

  Kate knelt and lifted the lid to the trunk. She withdrew the velvet box inside and passed it up to Liz.

  "Oh, wow. This is your medal. Well, the big one."

  "Yep. Silver Star." The going reward for killing eleven men in as many hours, and somehow living to bury the tale, at least mentally. "The first and last time I opened that case was after I'd pulled the medal off my chest at Walter Reed. From there, I dumped it in this trunk with the rest of my gear. I hadn't laid eyes on the medal since...until I found it pinned to my pillow last night."

  Her friend's lashes flew wide. "Are you telling me—"

  "That someone was in my house? Yes."

  Liz's knuckles turned white as she and the case sank down to the floor beside the trunk. "Holy moly. Burke?"

  "I think so. Ruger's the only one who knows for certain. He was trapped in here at the time. But that's not all." Kate withdrew the dog tags from beneath the collar of her sweatshirt and held them out. "These belonged to Max Brennan. The final time I saw them was the night before we left on that last mission." She pointed to the pair of nicks at the edge of the upper tag. "I put those there myself that same night. Max and I were messing around. No one else knows that. After I came to in that hospital, I asked for these. I was told they were never recovered from that Afghan compound. So how did they get inside my Durango this morning? I found them dangling from my rearview mirror when I came out of the Baymont building in Little Rock."

  It was a good thing Liz was sitting or she'd have hit the rug then, along with her jaw. "Oh, God. He—"