Part 11 (1/2)
”Oh, Abby.” Shaking his head, Jake dragged a hand through his hair.
”He called the police. G.o.d, it was a nightmare. I got arrested again. I mean, this guy caught me red-handed. I tried to tell the cops what I'd found, but no one would listen. No one believed me. And any defense I may have had went downhill after that.”
Jake nodded, knowing how bad something like that would look to the police. ”They thought you were trying to cover your tracks.”
She nodded. ”I wasn't. I was looking for information. Anything that would prove I was innocent.”
”Did you find proof?”
”It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally did.” Abby took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at Jake.
His eyes were the color of a thunderhead, his jaw set as if in stone. ”Tell me,” he said.
”Each time those patients died, Dr. Jonathan Reed was the doctor on duty.”
”That doesn't prove anything, does it?”
”Each of those patients were cremated after their deaths,” she said.
”A lot of people choose to be cremated these days.”
”Each time Reed was the doctor who p.r.o.nounced them dead.”
”That's still not proof.”
”There's a reason those people died, Jake. There's a reason why their bodies were cremated. There's a reason why they were chosen. And there's a reason why all of those things happened on Reed's watch.”
”Abby, are you telling me this respected surgeon killed four homeless people? What possible motivation could a man in his position have to do something like that?”
Abby swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was beating fast and unevenly. She was still cold, only now the ice seemed to be seeping from the inside out. ”I think Reed murdered those people for their organs.”
Jake wasn't the kind of man to react, but Abby saw him recoil, saw the flash of surprise in his eyes. She held her breath, waited for the disbelief to follow. When it didn't come, she lowered her head and put her face in her hands and fought a hot rush of tears.
”Do you have anything to back that up?” he asked after a moment. ”Any kind of proof?”
Taking in a deep, calming breath, she raised her gaze to his. ”No.”
”Abby...you know how that sounds...”
”Of course, I do,” she snapped.
”You could have fought this legally.”
”He was going to kill me.”
”You could have asked for protection.”
”Jake, I was dying in prison,” she cried. ”A little bit every day. I couldn't bear it. Having my dignity and my humanity stripped away a little bit at a time. I didn't even feel human some days. It was like my mind and my body no longer connected. My G.o.d, I didn't kill that patient. I couldn't bear the thought of spending the rest of my life in prison for something I didn't do.”
For the first time, his gaze faltered, and Abby knew he understood. He was in law enforcement, after all. He'd been inside prisons before. He knew what it was like.
”How do you tie this in to black market organs?” he asked.
”When I was in prison, I had access to an entire library. I was going through archived newspapers and ran across an article from the Rocky Mountain News. Two years ago, there was a story done on Jonathan Reed when he became chief of surgery at Mercy General. There was a photograph of him with another surgeon from Paris. They'd gone to medical school together. This other surgeon, Dr. Jean LaRue, had a four-year-old daughter who needed a liver transplant. She'd been on the recipient list for over a year, but it wasn't looking good. He didn't think she was going to get the new liver in time.
”By accident, I ran across another article from a Paris newspaper when I did a search on LaRue. It seems some miracle happened and Dr. LaRue's daughter got her new liver in time to save her life.”
”How does that involve Reed?”
”The first homeless patient at Mercy died the same day Dr. LaRue's daughter received her liver.”
”Connecting Reed to that patient and then to the liver transplant is a stretch, Abby. I mean, in this day and age, how could something like that work?”
”Reed has a private clinic not far from Aspen.”
”Aboveboard?”
”Yes, but I think he does a lot more than treat bronchitis and set broken legs.” When Jake continued to stare at her, she elaborated. ”I think he has a list of recipients. Wealthy friends, more than likely.... When a possible donor checks into the hospital-a patient whose sudden death won't raise too many questions-Reed plugs the information into a computer. If he gets a match, he injects the patient and takes what he needs.”
”But doesn't the patient have to be kept alive?”
”Just long enough for serology testing and testing for certain diseases such as Hepat.i.tis C and HIV. That usually only takes about six hours. Once the testing is done, the organs can be removed from the body. The organs are then profused in a cold-storage medium high in electrolytes and nutrients. Kidneys are flushed. Then the organs are put on ice, to be jetted to wherever a recipient is already in an operating room and under anesthesia.
”A heart and lungs can only be out of the body for five or six hours, so the serology is done while the donor is alive. Kidneys and pancreas can last up to forty-eight hours. Livers up to eighteen hours.” She looked at Jake. ”Aspen is only an hour away by jet.”
”So the timeframe is feasible.”
She nodded.
”Criminy.” Jake heaved a huge sigh. ”It's feasible, but it's still a stretch.”
”Reed is in a position to pull it off. He's an important man at the hospital. He's a trusted, respected surgeon. He's well connected. Wealthy. My G.o.d, if one of his friends were to come to him in need of an organ transplant-or even the friend of a friend or a child...Reed could have a long list of possible recipients. He could do the surgeries himself. An anesthesiologist and nursing team wouldn't be hard for him to find if he paid them enough.”
She paused to take a breath. ”Jake, he murdered those people. Then he kept them on life support until he could harvest the organ he needed. He put the organs on ice and flew them to his clinic in Aspen.”
”How could he cover up something like that?”
”Mercy General is a small, privately held hospital. Maybe he had someone on staff helping him. As terrible as it sounds, Reed knew no one was going to ask questions about a homeless person dying. He knew his actions would never come into question. When that homeless person died on my watch, he wasn't expecting the man to have family who cared. He wasn't expecting them to ask for an autopsy. When they did, he needed a scapegoat. I was convenient.”
”d.a.m.n, Abby, that's a wild theory.”
”You're a cop, Jake. Tell me you believe in coincidence.”
”I don't.”
She stared at him, her breath clogging her throat. ”You could look into Reed's financial records. I'm betting my life he's come upon some huge sums of money in the last couple of years.”
”All we have is a theory, Abby. I can't act on something that's based solely on circ.u.mstantial evidence and-”
”And what? The word of a convict?”