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Morelli looked over at me. Probably checking to make sure I wasn’t going to faint.
We left the room and went across the hall to the lab. A half-filled coffee cup had been left on a counter, so the lab was clearly being used, but there were no obvious science experiments going on. No slides under the microscope. No petri dishes growing the unthinkable. No beakers of urine.
Morelli went through drawers. He found nicotine gum, Rolaids, sticky pads, and pens, but no notes. No computer.
“It used to be you could always look for a phone book,” Morelli said. “Now they’re obsolete. Everyone carries their phone book in their phone. Same with computers. They’re portable and almost never left behind.”
We moved from the lab to the lounge. It was furnished in standard hospital lounge furniture. Inexpensive. Easy to clean. Beige and orange. Two round tables with four chairs each. Small kitchen area with a fridge, microwave, and sink. Large flat-screen television. Couch and two club chairs in front of the television. There were dishes in the sink. They’d been rinsed and left to dry.
The surgery was the only room left to investigate. We all took a deep breath before pushing the door open. Not sure what we expected to find, but we were all reluctant to enter.
The room had no windows, so Morelli flipped the light switch and we were blinded by brightness. I’d seen it before and there were no surprises. No body on the table. No blood spatters. No gallon jugs for cellulite collection.
Morelli looked around. “This is a really well equipped room. You don’t spend this kind of money if you aren’t going to use the equipment. So what do they do here? My first thought would be very private cosmetic surgery, but the patient rooms weren’t luxurious. What else could they use this for?”
I had an idea but I didn’t want to say it out loud. It was too gruesome. I looked at Morelli, and I knew he had the same idea. Body parts.
I heard the scuff of footsteps in the hall behind us and turned to see the Yeti and Franz Sunshine.
“Organ harvest,” Sunshine said. “Very lucrative. The donor never complains because he’s dead. And the recipient is happy to pay an astronomical amount of money to live. It’s a win-win deal. We only harvest from losers who have a reason to disappear, and we were doing well until Ms. Plum came along. Now as it turns out we have three new donors.”
“I’m a dwarf,” Briggs said. “Nobody’s gonna want my organs. You might as well let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
The Yeti was holding an assault rifle. “Don’t anyone get frisky,” he said. “I have real good aim with this. I go for knees since they don’t bring much money on the black market.”
“Why were you in Cubbin’s house?” I asked him.
“Looking for his money. He said he had money hid there but I couldn’t find it.”
“He was trying to buy his way out of donating his heart?”
“Something like that,” the Yeti said.
“Let’s move this along
,” Sunshine said. “We’re all going down to the garage now. Hands on your heads. Single file. If anything bothersome happens John will shoot you.”
So the Yeti’s name was John.
We followed instructions and walked down the hall to the lobby. We shuffled into the elevator and lined up against the wall. The Yeti was steely-eyed with the assault rifle trained on us. Morelli was wearing his cop face. No emotion. Watching the Yeti. Waiting for his moment.
I was still wearing Ranger’s GPS watch. I had my hands on my head, one hand over my wrist, and I pushed the audio button. No one seemed to notice. I couldn’t see the watch face, but I hoped I was sending.
The elevator doors opened onto the garage and we exited, hands still on our heads. The white van and a black Mercedes were parked side by side, noses to the wall.
“You’re going to turn and walk to the far side of the garage,” Sunshine said. “Walk very carefully. John is known to have a short fuse when he feels threatened.”
I knew this to be true. He’d zapped me with the stun gun, and I hadn’t seen it coming.
We got to the end of the garage, and I realized there was a door that I hadn’t noticed before. It had another of the number-sequenced locks on it, and it looked like a door to a vault.
Sunshine punched in six numbers, the door released, he pulled it open, and cold air rushed out at us. I sensed Morelli shift foot to foot. He wasn’t liking what he saw.
“What is this?” I asked, hoping Ranger was listening.
“It’s a freezer,” Sunshine said. “Convenient for storing bodies until we can arrange disposal. Because we’re short-staffed right now and can’t sedate the three of you, we’ll slow your respiration for a few hours. When Dr. Fish returns you’ll be barely alive, but hopefully some of your organs will be usable.”
He flipped a switch and a light went on in the freezer. It was commercial grade. Possibly originally designed as a morgue or maybe a walk-in for Shop n Bag. Sunshine took the rifle from the Yeti and motioned for him to go into the freezer.
