“That was a shitty thing to do,” Paula said. “Asking for Tommy’s records like that.”
“I told you you weren’t gonna like it,” John responded.
“I only met your wife once, but I know she’ll go ballistic when she finds out about this.”
“Then she best not find out.”
Paula looked away from her partner in frustration as they walked out of the business offices at the hospital. “She said she was willing to get us a transaction report. I don’t get why you thought Tommy’s info was necessary.”
“The data aren’t about Tommy. They give us a point in time that a change in the waiting list occurred and who made that change.”
“This is not appropriate procedure . . .”
“Mr. Penley?” someone from behind them called out.
John turned and saw a familiar face, but one he couldn’t quite place.
“You’re Tommy’s father, right?” a worn and tired woman asked.
“Yes, John Penley. I’m sorry . . .”
“Rebecca Gunderson. Steven’s mom.”
Steven Gunderson. The boy listed in the obituary this morning.
“Mrs. Gunderson. I’m so sorry. Melissa and I heard about Steven.”
“We don’t know what happened. They told us the surgery went fine. Dr. Anderson said everything would be okay. Then Steven rejected the kidney, and no one will tell us anything.” She stiffened. “Why are you here? Is Tommy all right? Did something happen to him, too?”
“Tommy is still waiting. Excuse me, this is my partner, Detective Paula Newberry.”
The two women exchanged glances but nothing more.
“We are tying up some loose ends on an investigation, that’s all,” John said.
“Mrs. Gunderson, I’m sorry about your son. When did he get his transplant?” Paula asked.
“Last month. Out of the blue. We expected a long stint on the waiting list, but my husband got a call that said they had found a match. Then . . . Steven’s body rejected the transplant. All they said was that it didn’t take. No one will talk to us.”
“How’s the rest of the family taking it?” John asked.
Rebecca Gunderson’s eyes welled. “It’s tearing us apart. Frank, my husband, acts like it’s my fault. He won’t talk to me. He stopped going to work and sits around drinking.”
“Everyone handles grief differently. He can’t possibly think what happened to Steven is your fault.”
“I wish I could say that for certain. But that’s why I’m here. I tried to get answers from these people, and they blew me off.”
“Do you want us to see if we can find out anything for you?” John asked.
Paula jabbed her bony elbow into John’s ribs.
“Would you do that?”
“I can’t promise anything,” John said before Paula cut him off.
“We can’t get involved in that,” Paula said.
Rebecca ignored Paula and stepped in closer to John. “Please find out what happened to Steven. We need closure.”
“We will,” John promised.
Paula headed toward their sedan.
As soon as Paula was out of earshot, John said, “Go meet with Trisha Woods and sign a consent form to allow me to look at your son’s medical records. Without that consent, I can’t help you. You know Trisha?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Good. Make sure you tell her that you want me to get those records. She’s pulling together a bunch of data for me now, and I’d like to get Steven’s records as well.”
Rebecca grabbed John and hugged him. “We have to know what happened. You understand.”
She pushed away from John, straightened her shoulders, turned, and walked back through the doors to the administrative offices.
John watched the determination in her stride and knew that no matter what he found hidden in the dead boy’s medical records, the outcome would not change. Steven Gunderson wasn’t coming back. It was cold, final, and unfair.
John joined Paula back at the car, and she lit into him before his butt hit the seat.
“What the hell was that about?”
“She—”
“Are you out of your mind? We can’t go poking around that kid’s death. It wasn’t homicide. A tragic accident maybe, but there is no evidence of anything wrong here. We have rules.”
“She needs answers,” John said.
“We all need answers, and sometimes life hands you a steaming bag of crap instead. We have policies for this kind of thing.”
“You can’t hide behind policy for the rest of your career. What will some department policy do for us, other than waste my time? You heard her—all of the sudden, the boy gets bumped up on the transplant list. How did that happen? Who made that happen? The UNOS data will connect the dots.”
Paula turned in the passenger seat. “You’re using the kid’s medical information to fill in the blanks on the transaction data that Trisha Woods wouldn’t give us?”
“Yeah, and when we combine it with the information from Tommy’s records, we should start to see if there are any inconsistencies in the data. Was it the same staff person making the entries? Was the data entered from the same transplant center? And when did the organ become available on the UNOS database?”
“Even if the timeline for the donated organs matches with the killings, it could be nothing but coincidence. Without knowing where all the donated organs came from, it’s all speculation.”
“We could ask for an autopsy on Steven Gunderson,” John said.
“He died in a hospital under a doctor’s care. Not likely to get an autopsy on a case like that,” Paula said.
“I bet we could get the parents to push for one. Rebecca said they wanted answers.”
“The hospital is gonna resist that and bring all their lawyers out of the boardroom to block the autopsy.”
“What have they got to hide? They can’t afford the bad press they’d get if they opposed the parents’ request for an autopsy. The hospital’s foundation and grant funding would dry up if they got caught on the bad side of a media storm.”
“And you want to make sure the media gets wind of this?”
John shrugged.
“Won’t the hospital threaten to remove Tommy from the transplant program if you do something that reckless?”
“That is why I can’t be the one to leak this to the press.” John looked at his partner.
“Me? They know we work together.”
“They will be too busy scrambling to cover their asses to put the pieces together.”
A cell-phone ring cut off Paula’s response. John fished the phone from the car’s center console. He’d left it behind when they went into the hospital out of habit.
He answered and then paused. His eyes narrowed, and the vein in his forehead throbbed in time with his heartbeat. “You’re certain?” he said to the caller.
After another pause, he said, “Give me the address.”
Paula mouthed, “Another one?”
John nodded, closed the phone, and tossed it on the console.
“Partial remains in the water in Old Sacramento. The first officer on the scene called it in.”
John turned the ignition, and the sedan rumbled to life. He flipped the car into gear and sped from the hospital parking lot. “If this is our guy, we have a new worry. He’s speeding up with no cooling-off period between his kills.”
Paula sat without a word in response, jaw clenched so tight her lower lip turned ghostly pale.
John cut across town to I Street and pulled to a stop at the waterfront in Old Sacramento near the Delta King, a restored paddle wheel steamboat that once prowled the Sacramento River delta waters.
Paula shook her head. “The time between kills doesn’t matter. If this guy is harvesting and selling organs, he’s a businessman.”
“How does that change anything? He’s still a murderer, businessman or not,” John said.
“What would you do with a white-collar criminal suspected of fraud or insider trading?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Follow the money?”
“This guy is in it for the money, not the thrill of the kill, so we track him by the money trail. It’s business for him,” Paula said.
Two television news vans pulled to the curb at the pier and jockeyed for the best camera position to capture the exclusive breaking-news footage.
“And it looks like business is booming,” John said.