Blood Work

30

THEY FIRST WENT to Bonnie Fox’s office in the Cedars west tower. The waiting room was empty and Fox’s receptionist, a woman named Gladys who never smiled, confirmed that the doctor was not in.

“She’s up in north and I don’t expect her back here today,” Gladys said, maintaining her frown. “Are you here for your records?”

“No, not quite yet.”

McCaleb thanked her and they left. He knew the translation of what Gladys had told them was that Fox was making her rounds on the sixth floor of the north tower, the hospital. They took the third floor bridge across to north and then the elevator up to the sixth floor cardiology and transplant ward. McCaleb was growing tired of lugging the heavy leather bag with him.

McCaleb had been on six often enough not to seem out of place. Graciela, still in her nursing uniform, fit in even better. McCaleb led the way down the hall to the left of the elevators to where the transplant waiting and recovery rooms were located as well as the transplant nursing station. There was a good chance he would find Fox somewhere in the area.

As they made their way down the long hallway, McCaleb looked through the doors that were open. He didn’t see Fox but he saw the frail forms of mostly older men on beds. These were the rooms for those who waited, hooked to machines, their time getting close and their chances dimming like the quieting of their hearts. As they passed one room, McCaleb saw the young boy he had seen before. The boy was sitting up on a bed, watching television. He appeared to be alone in the room. The wires and tubes snaked out of the sleeve of his hospital gown and ran to the machines and monitors. After he discerned that Fox was not in the room, McCaleb quickly looked away. The young ones were the hardest to take, to even acknowledge. Their organs so new yet inexplicably failing them, a terrible and sometimes fatal life lesson learned for nothing that they had done. For a moment, McCaleb’s mind flashed on the Everglades, the gathering of investigators on airboats at Devil’s Keep, the black hole into which disappeared his belief that there is a good and valid reason for everything.

They were in luck. As they made the turn to the nurses’ station, McCaleb saw Bonnie Fox leaning over the counter and sliding a patient file out of a vertical rack. As she straightened up, she turned and saw them.

“Terry.”

“Hey, Doc.”

“What’s wrong? Are you-”

“No, no, everything’s fine.” He held his hands up in a calming gesture.

“Then what are you doing up here? Your records are at my office.”

She seemed to notice Graciela then and clearly didn’t recognize her. This added to the confusion already growing on her face.

“I’m not here about the records,” McCaleb said. “Is there a room-an empty room-that we can use for a few minutes? We need to talk to you.”

“Terry, I’m in the middle of checking on my patients here. It’s not right for you to come in here and expect me to-”

“It’s important, Doctor. Very important. Give me five minutes and I’m sure you’ll agree. If you don’t, we’re out of here. I’ll go pick up my records and be gone.”

She shook her head in annoyance and turned to look at one of the nurses behind the counter.

“Anne, what do we have open?”

One of the nurses leaned to her left and ran her finger down a clipboard.

“Ten, eighteen, thirty-six, take your pick.”

“I’ll be in eighteen, since it’s close to Mr. Koslow. If he rings, tell him I will be in there in five minutes.”

She looked sternly at McCaleb as she said the last two words.

Walking quickly, Fox led them back down the hallway and into room 618. McCaleb entered last and closed the door behind them. He put the heavy bag down on the floor. Fox leaned her hips against the empty bed, put the patient file down next to her and folded her arms. McCaleb could feel the anger coming from her and directed squarely at him.

“You have five minutes. Who is this?”

“This is Graciela Rivers,” McCaleb said. “I told you about her.”

Fox studied Graciela with unsparing eyes.

“You’re the one who started him on this,” she said. “You know, he won’t listen to me but you’re a nurse, you should know better. Look at him. His color, the lines under his eyes. A week ago he was fine. He was perfect, goddammit! I’d already taken his file off my desk and put it away. That’s how sure I was about him. Now-”

She gestured toward McCaleb’s appearance as proof of her point.

“I only did what I felt I had to do,” Graciela said. “I had to ask-”

“It’s been my choice,” McCaleb interrupted. “Everything. My choice.”

Fox dismissed their explanations with an annoyed shake of her head. She stepped away from the bed and signaled to McCaleb to sit down.

“Take off your shirt and sit down. Start talking. You’re down to about four minutes now.”

“I’m not taking off my shirt, Doctor. I want you to listen to what I have to say, not how many times my heart is beating.”

“Fine. Talk. You want to take me away from patients I need to see, fine. Talk.”

She rapped her knuckles on the patient file on the bed.

“Mr. Koslow here, he’s in the same boat you were in a couple months ago. I’m trying to keep him alive until maybe a heart comes along. Then I’ve got a thirteen-year-old boy who-”

“Are you going to let me tell you why we’re here or not?”

“I can’t help it. I am so angry at you.”

“Well, listen to this and maybe it will change how you feel.”

“I think that’s impossible.”

“Can I tell it or not?”

Fox held her hands up in surrender, pursed her lips and bowed to him. Finally, McCaleb began the story. He took ten minutes to summarize the story of his investigation but that was all right. By the five-minute mark, Fox was so transfixed that she wasn’t noticing the time. She let him tell it without a single interruption.

“That’s it,” he said when he was done. “That’s why we are here.”

Fox’s eyes moved back and forth between them for a few moments while she tried to comprehend what McCaleb had just told her. She then began to move about the small space of the room as she recounted her understanding of the story. She wasn’t pacing. It was more as though she needed to make room for the story in her mind and was manifesting that need in small movements back and forth that expanded the personal space around her.

“You are saying that you start off with a person who needs an organ-heart, lung, liver, kidney, whatever. But like you, they are of the rare blood group that is type AB with CMV negative. What that translates to is a long, long, possibly unsuccessful wait because only maybe one in two hundred people are in that group, meaning that likewise, only one in two hundred, let’s say, livers, that come along would match this person. So have I got this right? You are saying this person decided to improve his odds by going out and shooting people who are in his group because then their organs would become available for transplant?”

She said it with too much sarcasm and that annoyed McCaleb but rather than object, he just nodded.

“And that he got the names of these people in his group from a list of blood donors in the BOPRA computer?”

“Right.”

“But you don’t know how he got it.”

“We don’t know for sure. But we do know that BOPRA’s security system is highly vulnerable to compromise.”

From his pocket McCaleb took out the list that Graciela had printed at Holy Cross. He unfolded it and handed it to Fox.

“I was able to get that today and I don’t know the first thing about hacking into computers.”

Fox took the page and waved it at Graciela.

“But you had her to help.”

“We don’t know who this person is or who they had to help them. We have to assume that if this person has the connections and ability to hire a contract killer, then he or she could get into the BOPRA computer. The point is, it could be done.”

McCaleb pointed to the list.

“Right there is all that’s needed. Everybody on that list is in the group. He would pick one of the donors. He would pick somebody young, do some research. Kenyon was young and fit. A tennis player, equestrian. Cordell was young and strong. Anybody who watched him over some time would know he was fit. A surfer, skier, mountain biker. They both were perfect.”

“Then why kill them-as some sort of practice?” Fox asked.

“No, not practice. It was the real thing but each time things went wrong. With Kenyon the shooter used a fragmenting bullet that pulped his brain and he was dead before they could even get him to the hospital. The killer refined his method. He switched to a full metal jacket load that was fired across the front of the brain. A fatal injury, yes, but not instantaneous. A man who drove up called it in on a cellular phone. Cordell was alive. But the address got screwed up and the paramedics went to the wrong place. Meantime, time goes by, the victim dies at the scene.”

“And again the organs were never harvested,” Fox said, understanding now.

“I hate that word,” Graciela said, her first words in a long time.

“What?” Fox asked.

“Harvested. I hate that. These organs aren’t harvested. They’re given. By people who cared about other people. They aren’t crops on a farm.”

Fox nodded and looked silently at Graciela, seemingly taking her measure all over again.

“It didn’t work with Cordell but it was not because of the method,” McCaleb continued. “So the shooter just went back to his list of potential donors. He-”

“The list from the BOPRA computer.”

“Right. He goes back to the list and picks Gloria Torres. The process starts again. He watches, knows her routine, also knows she is healthy and will do.”

McCaleb looked at Graciela as he said this, afraid the harshness of it would bring another response. She remained quiet. Fox spoke.

“And so now you want to follow this trail of harvested organs and you think the killer-or the person who hired the killer-will have one of them. Do you realize what this sounds like?”

“I know how it sounds,” McCaleb said quickly before she could build on her doubts. “But there is no other explanation. We need your help with BOPRA.”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it. What are the odds that it could be just a coincidence that the same man-a contract killer, most likely-just happens to gun down three different people from the exact same one-in-two-hundred blood group? You couldn’t figure those odds with a computer. Because it can’t be coincidence. It’s the blood work. The blood work is the connection. The blood work is the motive.”

Fox walked away from them and to the window. McCaleb followed and stood next to her. The room looked down on Beverly Boulevard. He saw the string of businesses across the street, the mystery bookshop and the deli with the Get Well Soon! sign on the roof. He looked at Fox and it looked as though she was staring at her own reflection in the window.

“I have patients waiting,” she said.

“We need your help.”

“What exactly can I do?”

“I’m not sure. But I think you stand a better chance of getting information out of BOPRA than us.”

“Why don’t you just go to the police? They have the best chance. Why are you involving me?”

“I can’t go to them. Not yet. I go to them and I’m out of it, off the case. Think about what I just told you. I’m a suspect.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I know that. But they won’t. Besides, that doesn’t matter. This is personal. I owe it to Glory Torres and I owe it to Graciela. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines on this one.”

A small bit of silence slipped by.

“Doctor?”

Graciela had come up behind them. They turned to her.

“You have to help. If you don’t, then all of this-everything you do here-means nothing. If you can’t protect the integrity of the system you work in, then you have no system.”

The two women stared at each other for a long moment and then Fox smiled sadly and nodded.

“Go to my office and wait for me,” she said. “I have to see Mr. Koslow and one other patient. It will take me a half hour at the most. After that I’ll come to the office and make the call.”