By the time Kate reached Braxton, four cars were haphazardly racked into the gravel drive of Grant's childhood home. She didn't recognize any of them. She did, however, spot Joe jogging down the steps of the wraparound porch as she vaulted from the Durango. Clearly, he'd taken her phoned plea to drop everything and get here yesterday to heart. Thank God.
"Is Abel okay?"
Joe grabbed her arms, steadying her as they met at the corner of the lawn. "Mr. Parish is fine. We've managed to calm him with a little help from an injection your friend Dr. Vogel had in her bag. Don't worry; she said the sedative's mild. Agent Walker's with them. We haven't interviewed the man yet. Mostly because the sedative's just kicked in, but also because Ed and I thought it best to wait for you given your relationship with his son. From Abel's conversation with Dr. Vogel, I understand you two were also good friends with his younger son as well?"
"The best." Los Tres Amigos. The irony lashed in. Here she was, about to climb the steps of that rambling farmstead house where she'd spent a good deal of her high school years. Liz would be inside again, but no Dan—and, now, no Grant. From what Grant had relayed last night, Abel wouldn't be around for long either.
The sludge she'd been swimming in for days surged up and did its best to drag her under, damned near succeeding.
Joe cupped her chin. "You okay? You don't need to do this, you know. Hell, this is perilously close to conflict of interest, as it is."
"Yeah, I do. I know Abel. He's not going to open up to anyone else, except perhaps Lou—and the sheriff's stuck in an ass-covering meeting with the governor and the state police over those newspaper articles." Plus, this was Braxton. Everyone in her department was experiencing a conflict of interest today.
The town was that small. Which made Grant's disappearance all the more horrifying—and suspicious.
She dropped her forehead to Joe's chest as the guilt pummeled in. "It's because of me, isn't it?"
"No!" He hauled her closer and squeezed hard. "Good God, there's no way anyone can know that."
But there was. And she did.
Grant had disappeared somewhere between her house and this one, last night of all nights. The same night Ruger had staked his watchdog credentials on his belief that someone had been in their home, uninvited. "I talked down the threat, Joe, because I just didn't want to accept it. But Ruger knew. And from Ruger's reaction, the bastard left minutes before I arrived home. He was probably hiding in the trees, watching, while Grant and I were talking in my drive. And now Grant's missing, and according to Lou, his cellphone's been cut off. If I'd accepted Lou's offer of a bodyguard then, or even yours to sleep on my couch—"
"Stop." Joe grabbed her chin and forced her to meet the determination in that iron stare. "It wouldn't have made a difference, and you know it. Come on, Kate. Suck it up and start thinking like the agent I know you still are. You can do this. You will."
He was right. She could do this, and she would. Starting now. That he'd used the same phrase Fremont had slapped her with less than forty minutes earlier in that diner, helped.
Suck it up.
Kate pulled the cold noon air into her lungs and did just that. She released the lapels of Joe's jacket and shoved her hands in the pockets of her own as she nodded and took a step back. "Thanks, friend. I'm good to go now."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely." Her fingers had found Max's tags with unerring, subconscious accuracy. She knotted the beaded chain around her hand, holding on for support as they reached the steps to the porch she'd helped whitewash all those years ago.
It could use a fresh coat.
The screen door creaked as Joe opened it.
Kate thanked him again as she entered, then turned into the living room. The lanky, vibrant man she'd chatted with outside the post office four short weeks ago was now slumped in his favorite brown La-Z-Boy recliner, silent, bleak and somehow aged by an additional seventy years.
It wasn't from the cancer.
It was terror.
Though dulled by the drugs, fear was still achingly visible amid those pale blue eyes that had somehow become paler, and in those pinched, quivering lips.
"Katie?"
"It's me, Poppa Abel." She let go of the tags and leaned down so she could wrap her arms about his shoulders for a gentle squeeze as she pressed her lips to his lined, papery cheek. Christ, he was frail. Little more than brittle bones with a bit of muscle stretched across, here and there. This was definitely the cancer, and this time it was eating through his body, hard and fast.
How could she have been so blind?
Kate choked on her tears as she straightened. She caught the subtle tip of Liz's head and knew there was something else going on. Something Liz needed to share. Kate turned to where the BAU agent had struck up a quiet conversation with Joe.
"Agent Walker?"
"Yes, Deputy?"
"Would you mind sitting with Mr. Parish for a bit?"
"Sure thing." The shrink redeemed his entire profession as he crossed the room and gently drew Abel into a conversation about the array of photos on the mantle that actually had the old man smiling.
With Abel distracted, Kate led Joe into the large kitchen at the back of the house. Liz followed. Her unease increased as Liz closed the door behind them.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm not entirely sure. But something is." She walked them over to the pine beadboard cupboard Mrs. Parish had designated as the family pharmacy and first aid station when Grant was in diapers. "It's in here. Rather, they're in here."
Kate and Joe waited, bemused, as Liz plucked a succession of pharmacy-grade, orange pill bottles from the cupboard and lined them up along the butcher block counter. There were over a dozen when she finished, all prescribed to a name and address Kate had never seen before.
"Who's Theodore Stewart?"
"Abel."
Kate retrieved a bottle to take a closer look. Abel's name was nowhere on the label. "I don't understand."
"Neither do I. Not completely. As I'm sure Agent Cordoba told you, I decided to be proactive. I brought a selection of sedatives with me. Because you said Abel was out of remission, I took the time to come in here and check his medications to make sure nothing was contraindicated with what I thought would best calm him. I found these."
"And he admits they're his?"
"No. But he didn't deny it. And that's not the bizarre part." Liz tapped two bottles in the middle of the line. "These aren't used to treat cancer. They're immunosuppressants. They're designed to negate a body's normal immunological response to foreign tissue. In effect, to prevent the rejection of said tissue. Or in Abel's case, an organ." She tapped a bottle to the right. "This one prevents infection. A critical precaution for someone taking immunosuppressants."
Kate shook her head as she tried to right her spinning brain. It wasn't that she hadn't understood what Liz had said. It just didn't make sense. "Are you telling me Abel had an organ transplant?"
"Yes. From the scar running down his chest, I'm guessing he received a new heart about a year ago, possibly two. Please note; I'm estimating that timeframe off the scar I've seen on a patient of mine who received one three years ago. But that's not the stunning part."
It was to her. Grant had never mentioned this. Hell, he hadn't even hinted at it.
Liz turned to address Joe. "I don't know if Kate told you, but Abel was first diagnosed with colon cancer when we were sophomores in high school. Fortunately, it was caught early and the cancer went into remission. But the fact that he'd once had it should've prevented him from being placed on the national waiting list with the United Network of Organ Sharing. And when you add on Abel's age at the time of transplantation—well, let's just say he had two strikes against him and you don't get any with UNOS. They abide by very rigid criteria. They must. There are simply too many people who need organs and too few available."
Kate stared at the name on the bottle in her hand. There was only one explanation that made sense for a transplant that shouldn't have been and the obvious secrecy surrounding it.
Black market.
She returned the bottle to its slot in that long line and swallowed the bile that threatened. "I know there's a thriving market for illegal kidneys in certain countries." China, India and Pakistan readily came to mind. "But hearts?"
Even the truly desperate tended not to sell those, because you couldn't walk away from the table once the transaction was complete. Even if he had found someone willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, Abel had never been outside the country. Ironically, Abel had volunteered that himself during that visit outside the post office last month. At the time, he'd been admiring a resident's new passport as he bemoaned the fact that he'd never needed one.
That meant the surgery had taken place in the States, possibly in Arkansas. But that wasn't the most appalling part. There was only one person Abel knew with the skills to track down a black-market heart who would also have been willing to risk his professional reputation and freedom to obtain it.
Grant.
But she had to be sure. She caught Liz's stare. "Did you ask him point blank about the transplant?"
"Yes."
"What did he say? His exact words."
"'Grant took care of it.' Then he clammed up. Moments later, Agent Walker arrived so I didn't push it."
The betrayal cut to the bone as Kate sagged against the maple table she'd dined at a mere six weeks ago with both Grant and his father, three feet from that collection of damning pills. At the time, she'd have sworn on Ruger's life that neither man—but especially Grant—was capable of such heinousness. But now? With that confession? Worse, with three meticulously hacked up bodies in the state morgue, all devoid of their vital organs?
Ten minutes ago, she'd assumed Grant had been kidnapped and was the next likely victim. Now, staring at those pills, she didn't know what he was. Surely, he was innocent of murdering his co-workers, at least?
Please, Lord. Give her that much.
Instinct and experience combined to warn her she'd likely come up empty.
She'd believed she was the cause of Grant's disappearance. She might be right—but for the wrong reason. She'd all but laid out her investigation for the man in her driveway last night...and he'd immediately vanished.
Had he simply gone off the grid?
The bile rose once more as she recalled that burner phone. The one she'd blithely handed over following Grant's revelation regarding the re-emergence of Abel's cancer. A revelation she now believed he'd had no intention of making anytime soon. He'd deliberately abused her sympathy to get himself out of a jam—with her.
Lest that bountiful breakfast she'd shared succeed in its relentless upward quest, Kate pushed off the table and zig-zagged toward the door at the rear of the kitchen.
"Are you okay?"
She waved Liz off as she continued her dogged path. "I just...need a moment. Alone."
Or a million.
Would any amount of time be enough to pull herself together to face the man who'd been more of a father to her at times than her own? To question him, and treat him like the suspect he now was?
Kate stumbled down the back steps of the house, grateful there were only three. She stared out over the stone patio at the old semi-truck tire swing hanging from the limb of a gnarled oak.
She closed her eyes against the memory of Liz pushing Dan so hard he'd flown off and landed in the dirt. He'd bruised his tailbone so badly he hadn't been able to sit properly for a month. She could still hear Grant laughing.
Grant.
Good God, how could he?
Kate lurched off the patio and turned toward the old ramshackle barn that served as a detached garage, desperate for another memory of simpler times, before her childhood innocence and her town had gone to crap. She focused on those that'd begun in this very barn. She and Liz sneaking out here late at night during the summer of their junior year. They'd help Dan open the barn's rear doors and shove his mom's old Buick into neutral so they could roll it out and push it down the lane where they'd finally gather their nerves and fire it up.
She'd spent most of those midnight rides terrified someone would recognize them—most especially, her dad. Now, today, she wondered if her father had known all along and had simply accepted that she'd needed that tiny spark of rebellion.
The bittersweet memories of the past merged with the sour denial of the present to carry her up to those barn doors. She opened the one on the right and slipped inside.
Of course, Mrs. Parish's old Buick wasn't inside. She hadn't really expected it to be. But neither had she anticipated this.
A Land Rover.
The bulk of the British SUV was camouflaged amid the hay-strewn shadows, but it was definitely green...just like the one Cal Burgess had spotted a week ago Tuesday morning in the parking lot of the Baymont building. The one the security guard had seen driven by a man who'd argued with Andrea Silva.
Kate's nerves bellowed like a wounded calf in the chilly silence of the barn, warning her to turn around.
Close the door. Run.
Go back inside that kitchen and pretend she hadn't seen what she'd seen. What this was.
She listened to her cop instincts instead, and stepped deeper into the barn. She hooked Max's dog tags around her neck so she could retrieve her cellphone as she approached the passenger side of the SUV. Thumbing the phone's flash, she prayed with every step that the evidence she'd culled from not one, but two of Braxton's roads did not match the Starblaze tread patterns in front of her.
But they did.
And there was more.
Kate swung away from the Land Rover as the bile that had been threatening finally breached her throat. She slammed her phone onto the barn's workbench and braced herself as she deposited the bulk of that much-too-bountiful breakfast into the hay at her feet.
It didn't help. She could still see that trio of nicks and voids that Emmett had pointed out to her at the edge of the road near the pet cemetery. They were seared into her brain.
Along with those coldly sectioned body parts.
She voided her stomach once more and used a rag from the bench to dry her mouth.
"Feel better?"
It was Joe. Thank goodness. Lord only knew what Liz would think, finding her in this position twice in two days.
Kate traded the soiled rag for her phone and turned to face the man who'd seen her through straights equally as rough as this. "Not really." She waved him deeper into the garage, toward their most recent and damning piece of evidence yet. "Take a look."
Joe switched on the flashlight of his own smartphone as he moved closer to the Land Rover. "What am I searching for?"
"Did you get a good look at the tread impressions back at the lab?"
"Yeah—why?"
The moment his beam hit the tread of the right rear Starblaze, he knew. It was in the sharp pull of his breath. Joe expelled his breath just as sharply as he hunkered down beside her. The pain ground in deeper as she held out her palm to double-check its measure against that distinctive trio of flaws.
"Holy shit, Holland."
"Yeah." No doubt about it. This was the SUV that had left its mark out on the edge of that gravel road beside Jason Dunne's body. The same SUV that had almost run her down at her cabin.
So who had been driving? Grant, or his father?
Did she even want the answer anymore?
Her stomach threatened another rebellion. Odd, because there was nothing left inside with which to rebel.
Not even froth.
And for some reason, she was freezing.
She was dimly aware of Joe taking her phone from her nerveless fingers and helping her to her feet, then leading her out of the barn. She grabbed his arm as he guided her around the corner.
"Wait. We need photos. I have to call Lou and brief him. And the crime unit. And then the—"
"No, you don't. Kate, you're in shock. Hell, so am I—and I didn't grow up in this town with these folks. Just let me get you to that pair of Adirondack chairs I saw out by the patio and I'll make the calls while you...process."
He supported her body and soul the entire way, gently nudging her into the closest chair upon their arrival. She fell back against the slats of the weathered wood, grateful she hadn't removed her jacket. She was so cold now that her hands were shaking, too. She shoved them in her pockets in a desperate attempt to warm them.
"You want me to get Dr. Vogel?"
Kate shook her head firmly. She couldn't see Liz just yet. Nor did she want to go back inside. She knew she had to face Abel—but, again, not quite yet.
Joe nodded. "All right. I'll phone the sheriff. You sit here and let things settle for a minute. Okay?"
"Okay."
She did as ordered, staring dutifully, if blindly, at the scuffed toes of her boots as her former fellow investigator moved far enough away to give her what privacy he could while he made the call that would swing the entire focus of their investigation around to the man she'd been crawling into bed with for the past six months.
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 were 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 old 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.
"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.