The great thing about work is that it eventually ends. My day had started with a hangover and unwanted responsibilities and ended with mild nausea and scummy teeth. Leaving the office was a heck of a lot less dangerous than entering and I felt a profound sense of relief when I climbed into my Honda and plugged in my iPod. The Ramones began to lull me into a nice state of mental oblivion. I wanna be sedated … Yeah, you and me both, Johnny.
Home for me was a large apartment at 40th and Chambers, almost due north from the office. Fifteen hundred square feet of lavish space furnished by the Bureau for the team leader. In the past month I’d come to like the casual opulence of the place with its huge flat-screen TV, fully stocked kitchen and maid service, Monday through Friday.
The only thing I’m meticulous about (besides staying alive) is my espresso machine. It’s the one thing besides my weapon I take to any new locale. Gleaming stainless steel and chrome, it looks like it belongs in a Star Wars movie. With a little finely ground coffee and some tenderness, it yields me a cup of liquid heaven. God knew what he was doing when he invented caffeine and I thanked him for it.
With a cup of liquid love in one hand and the TV remote in the other, I began an evening of channel flipping. I sank into my hideously overstuffed leather couch, letting my eyes glaze over as I skipped through the usual sludge of reality TV, prime time game shows, soap operas for those who didn’t get enough of them during the day, and sports. Nothing caught my eye so I decided to zone out and watch what passes for BIG NEWS in Denver.
Crap, crap, crap. More crap. Human interest crap. Weather crap. Sports crap (I couldn’t care less about the Brocos, Nuggets, Avalanche, or Rockies. If it’s not from Minnesota, it doesn’t matter).
Before my eyes could droop shut the news finally gave me something I was at least partly interested in.
The Organ Donor.
On the big screen, a talking head stared seriously out at me, his hair perfectly coiffed, not a strand out of place. He spoke in deep, sonorous tones about Denver’s most notorious serial killer to date, the Organ Donor. This guy (or gal) had been terrorizing the city for the past month-and-a-half, kidnapping people, harvesting their organs and leaving their bodies posed in very public places. The police would get a call from a disposable phone telling them where to find the organs, the caller’s voice electronically altered to confound identification. The organs from each victim were always stowed on ice in a Styrofoam chest, along with a note written in crayon that read, “Give them to someone worthwhile.”
So far the victims had one thing in common: they all, at one time or another, had been on the wrong side of the law. All of them had records, all them were loners—people who wouldn’t be missed. The talking head told me that a new victim had been found that morning near an alleyway in Lower Downtown, also called, creatively, LoDo. At 6:18 a.m. thirty-seven-year-old William Krouse had been found lying face down in a gutter, organs missing. A couple of hours later the police received another call from the Donor. The organs had been found behind a dumpster in an alley at 17th and Wynkoop, near a bus stop.
What made this news report different was a photo of the victim. Denver PD had run an effective media blackout, but this time someone had managed to snap a shot and the media had plastered it all over my big screen. Krouse used to be a large man, plenty of fat and plenty of solid muscle. The photo showed him on his stomach, naked, one arm on the sidewalk, another on the street. His legs were splayed unevenly on the concrete. It looked like he had fallen out of the sky and landed there. At least the media had had the decency to pixelate the area from lower back to mid-thigh. Lying face down hid the gaping wound in his torso, where his organs had been removed. Good thing, too; last thing I wanted to see was a big red slash against his bone-white skin.
Bone white?
I vaulted off the sofa and peered at the flat-screen, studying the grainy photo closely. No blood in the gutter, and what looked to be no moribund lividity from pooling blood inside the body. Yep, the big guy had lost most if not all of his blood during dissection. Or vivisection.
Curious, I unsheathed my cell and said, “Call Alex.” Within a few seconds he came online.
“Hello?” He sounded tired.
“Alex, it’s Kal. Got a minute?”
“Sure, Kal. What do you need?”
“I need you to send me everything you have on the Organ Donor.”
“What?” He no longer sounded tired.
“The Organ Donor. Everything you can get. Background on the victims, where they were dumped, times of the calls to the police.” A thought hit me. “Heck, Alex, get me everything. I even want the personal notes from the lead detective on this.”
“Right,” he said without missing a beat. “You want the FBI’s notes? They’re also in on this. I can have it on your desk first thing in the morning.”
“How about now?”
“No can do. I’m not anywhere near a computer.”
“Since when are you not near a computer?” I asked, surprised, figuring that he’d have his RediPad handy.
“Since I’m in a girl’s bed and she doesn’t own one,” he replied with more than a trace of smugness.
Alex had never even talked about girls, let alone hinted he might actually sleep with one. “Great, Alex. I’m really happy for you. Honest.” Small hesitation. “Is she a fembot?”
“Har-de-har-har. Listen Kal, if you need it now, I can always call Ghost for you.”
The temperature of my stomach reached zero Kelvin in less than a second. We got along fine, but Ghost was just that … a ghost. He haunted cyberspace, unhampered by anything trivial like firewalls or top-level encryptions. Around six years ago he had come to the Bureau’s attention and managed to resist exorcism; the Bureau had never discovered his true name, so no exorcism could work. Since then there existed a fragile truce: the Bureau wouldn’t make an effort to erase him and the only naughty activities he would indulge in would be on the Bureau’s behalf. Sometimes, if you asked nicely, he would do you a favor or three, but the damn thing still creeped me out sometimes. It had a power I couldn’t fathom. He was a Supernatural, and in my business Supernaturals were always suspect.
“Kal, you still there??
“Yeah,” I said, still contemplating the Bureau’s very own Deus Ex Machina. “Go ahead and get hold of him. Tell him I’d like to have everything downloaded to my RediPad ASAP.”
“Anything else?”
“No thanks, Alex.”
“It should be there soon, Kal.” The cell clicked as he hung up.
Sighing, I turned to the cupboard and started prepping my favorite evening meal—Lucky Charms. As the multi-colored marshmallow-filled cereal tinked into my Scooby-Doo bowl, I couldn’t help a silent chuckle at Alex’s expense. He’d joined the Bureau some six years ago as our resident techie/magician, a geeky mix of MacGuyver and Q from the James Bond movies. So dang smart and efficient, I often forgot that he was still basically a naïve kid with mad skills. So sensitive, so much like an adolescent with wide eyes believing in the basic goodness of humanity and the world in general. It was my job not only to take his advice when necessary, but also to treat him with kid gloves because the Bureau needed him a hell of a lot more than a tired old agent like me.
Hip deep into my second bowl, my cell buzzed. “Whatcha got, Alex?” I mumbled through a mouthful of whole grain yumminess.
What came through the phone was more an insect-like buzz than a human voice. “I have the files you requested, Kal.” Asexual, horribly jangling, the buzz sent a shiver up my spine and down again all the way to my toes.
A couple of seconds passed as I forced a half-chewed lump of cereal down my suddenly too tight throat. “Uh, thanks, Ghost. Thanks a lot.”
“Are you all right, Kal? You sound nervous.”
How did I tell a cyberspirit that sometimes he really spooked me the hell out? “I’m fine, Ghost. Just a little tired, you know. Fighting the good fight.”
‘That’s good, Kal. I hate to think I make you nervous.”
It was frustrating, having the same conversation with a dead person every time your paths crossed, like talking to an Alzheimer’s patient. I’m pretty sure Ghost did it to get under my skin. It worked, too. “Thanks, Ghost. I’d hate to be nervous.”
“Are you still happy in the Bureau, Kal?”
The question took me by surprise. For a few seconds I did nothing but blink, my mouth doing a pretty good impression of a landed fish. “Doing okay, I guess,” I answered finally, unsure where this was leading.
“Then why do you seem so tired and on edge lately?” That gender-neutral buzz sounded rather … sad somehow, and I felt a tug in the silent places of my heart.
“It’s a tough business, living life alone for so long. Sometimes it gets to me.”
The cell vibrated on the counter, humming its way toward the edge, but I was too tired to pick it up. Finally it stopped just at the edge, millimeters from falling to the linoleum. “Has the loneliness gotten to you? You know, Alex and I can help you out.”
I cudgeled my brain for a reply that wouldn’t make the spook angry. “I think he’s a great kid and the smartest person I know. I like him well enough, but you know the circumstances, Ghost.” My voice was even, calm. “I can’t call anyone a friend. The life of an agent is short, brutal and emotional attachments make us weak. That’s why when and if we do attempt a long-term relationship, it’s grounds for immediate resignation. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
Bzzzz …“You should resign, then.”
“It’s the nature of the business, Ghost.”
“Okay, Kal. Just don’t let the job get to you.”
I frowned. “Eventually it gets to all of us; then we quit or die.”
“True.”
For a moment I was irritated about having a debate with a cell phone, but I stowed the aggravation and broached a topic I hadn’t raised in a while. “I appreciate that, Ghost, I really do, but can I ask you to do a favor for me?”
“You can ask.”
Great, a flip phone. I crossed my arms. “Remember the package Alex asked you to deliver for me some time ago?”
“Of course. I do not forget anything. Why?”
“Do you think you can deliver another one for me?” I asked, crossing my fingers.
Once again the cell vibrated, but this time away from the edge of the counter. “That should be no problem,” he said slowly.
“Okay, Ghost, maybe later.”
His voice suddenly became crisp and brisk. “I’ve downloaded all the relevant files to your RediPad, Kal, and I’ve sent them to the printer in your office. There are forty-three pages for you to peruse, all the data I was able to sift from the FBI and the DPD. I trust that will be sufficient?”
“Uh, yeah, thanks.” A chill crept on sneaky feet up and down my spine. If Ghost could access my printer from the phone, what was to stop him from accessing anything with a computer chip? Every time that thought crossed my mind my flesh got all goosepimply.
“Goodbye, Kal.”
“’Bye, Ghost.”
“Oh, and Kal? Have a good evening.” The phone clicked.
“Ghost? Ghost.” I picked up the cell, but it was cold and still in my hand. He was gone.
“Well, crap,” I muttered while stalking toward my office, miffed that the cellular spirit had gotten the last word.
In my office, the printer was chugging its way toward the end of the file, that distinctive hot toner smell stinking the place up. A few seconds later the last page rolled out of the feeder into the hopper. I snagged the stack and began to thumb through it.
The more I flipped through the pages the more impressed with Ghost I became. Everything was neatly organized and laid out in a linear fashion from first to last victim with FBI’s and DPD’s notes also neatly arranged on the same timeline. I know cops, I’ve had to impersonate plenty, and most of them are never organized enough to produce what I held in my hands. The fact that it … no, he … had done it in such a short time freaked me out just a little.
Clearing away a section of my desk, I sat down and got busy doing the one part of my job that I really hate … research.
April 7th, a month and a half ago, the body of Sheree Brydendorf (a prostitute) had been found by a street sweeper on the 16th Street Mall at 6:05 a.m., a half hour before sunrise. The body had been splayed in a gutter much like Krouse’s. In fact, its positioning had been virtually identical, right down to the arms and legs. Flipping through the police photographs, I saw that all the bodies had been arranged the same way. Creepy? For sure. A message? Maybe. If it was, it was one known only to the Organ Donor.
Whoever dumped the bodies, assuming it was the murderer and not an accomplice, had guts. Pardon the pun. He/she/it disposed of the remains in very public places, in full view of busy intersections and businesses. All in the wee hours of the morning, just before sunrise. Soon after the bodies were found, the calls to the DPD came in, telling them where the organs could be found. I quickly scanned the pages, found the notes of Detective Lieutenant Wilkes of Denver Homicide and saw that he’d come to the same conclusion I had. Someone had been at the scene, watching, waiting for the body to be discovered then phoning it in when it was. The killer? An accomplice? Whoever it was called himself the Organ Donor, which surprised me because it was usually the cops or the media who liked slapping labels around. Strange and stranger.
Frowning, I read more of Lieutenant Wilkes notes and saw that he felt the DPD was being jerked around, that the organs, all placed in fairly easy-to-find locations, were a blind, a distraction from the rest of the case. From his notes, the crisp, concise writing and well-thought-out logic, I pictured him as a pretty sharp cookie. This was a good cop—one who could probably crack the case if no one stumbled into his way.
And then came the FBI. Someone pulled the emergency brake, most likely a politician, and screamed for the Feds to aid in the investigation after the third murder. After reading the lead agent’s notes, I came to the conclusion that the guy was a total tool. That man turned out to be Special Agent Avery Briegan of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime’s (NCAVC) Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). From what I read, the man sure thought his feces contained no odor and, unfortunately, that particular malady is epidemic among law enforcement officers working at the federal level.
Agent Briegan, along with the rest of the BAU, thought the organs were the key to catching the killer. They had every forensic specialist they could find going over them and the containers they were packed in with a fine-toothed comb.
So the BAU and the local feds had come in, virtually taken over the case and, if my ability to read between the lines still worked, promptly ignored one Detective Lieutenant Wilkes entirely, probably raising his blood pressure several hundred points. Usually the BAU coordinated efforts with local law and the feds, but this time it seems they’d stepped on toes.
I made a mental note to get all the dirt on this Briegan when I made it to work in the morning. Something about this case bugged me and I was damned if I was going to let it go. It was an itch I had to scratch.
Shaking my head, I continued to flip through the file, reading every word, trying my best to bumble my way through some of the more dense passages. Sometime later, when the yawns were coming thicker than flies on cow flop, I finally had had enough. Even though my curiosity bump was itching up a storm, I was too damn tired to figure out why.
As I lay in bed I wondered what the rest of my week would look like. The way things were going, I really didn’t want to find out.