showed as a bright-almost neonred, clashing with her nail polish. 'It's severely undercut.' To Boldt she said, 'That's why the search teams missed it.' She became distracted then, as the screen seemed to call to her. Again she worked the mouse. Again the screen redrew several times. 'You're lucky.' 'How's that?'
'These most recent rains haven't yet caused the Tolt to reach the high-water level marked last fall, which means there hasn't been any additional undercutting.' Now her fingers flew through a volley of commands. Boldt looked over to see both Daphne and Joe Webster glued to the screen. 'Uhoh,' she added, punching keys furiously. 'Becky?' Boldt asked, sensing from her sudden silence that they had problems. 'You had better get someone out there quick,' she said, pointing once again to the screen. 'The projected flow for the Tolt will pass that mark in less than forty-eight hours.' Daphne asked, 'Would you mark the area for us, please?' But Becky didn't seem to hear, still consumed with working the computer. 'And there's something else,' she said, the screen changing colors once again. 'You're wrong about the depth. About the grave being shallow.' She switched to a lateral view that depicted an overhang of brown earth and the animated blue of the river water well below it. 'According to this, the undercut is at least six feet below grade-below the surface. Those bones were buried deep.'
'He knows what he's doing,' mumbled Boldt. 'It is a doctor,' Daphne let slip, a look of horror on her face. 'A doctor!' coughed Becky Sumatara. 'You never heard that,' instructed Boldt. He looked Sumatara in the eye, then Joe Webster. 'In fact, if it's all the same to you for the time being … you never heard word one of this. We can't afford any rumors, any leaks.'
Joe Webster nodded, suddenly a shade paler. Sumatara didn't seem to hear. 'There's a doctor killing people?' gasped the woman, staring back into the glowing screen with its pulsing colors.
The red no longer appeared neon. To Boldt, it seemed the color of blood.
Sharon Shaffer had a hard time thinking through the drugs. It was like trying to write with her left hand-she knew the letters that were supposed to appear on the page, but they never came out looking right.
A car had arrived about an hour ago. It had left about forty minutes later. Forty minutes by her way of thinking.
The man was in the kennel pen next to her. He had two fresh bandages. Seeing this, she felt sick to her stomach. The Keeper was a butcher.
She didn't remember her neighbor having been returned, although there he was, and the collapsible wheelchair The Keeper used to move them was folded up and leaning against the wall. She must have fallen asleep again. She kept nodding out this way, which was one of the reasons it was so difficult to measure any passage of time.
She glanced to her right and literally jumped when she saw The Keeper in the pen next to hers. He had hold of her I.V. tube and was injecting a drug into the tube using a syringe. Separating the two of them was only the smallest amount of chain-link wire. Wire that would bite back if she so much as brushed against it. The intense look on The Keeper's face terrified her.
Felix, the biggest dog of the group, the alpha male, wandered freely in the center aisle. Pacing. Panting. Hungry and anxious. He was the sentry, the jail guard. He was there to prevent any chance of another intruder, any chance of escape.
The Keeper said softly to her, 'I've canceled my morning appointments, but I'm in a bit of a hurry.' With the muzzle, she had no chance to respond. She was thinking, 'Morning appointments!?'
'When you awaken your right eye will hurt. it will be carefully bandaged. Under no circumstances are you to toy with this bandage. Do you hear me? Do you understand? Nod, if you understand. Good. Now you're crying. Why are you crying? Do I scare you.
She nodded, though somewhat reluctantly. 'Me? You needn't be scared. Stop that crying. I'm a doctor.' She couldn't. The more he said, the more terrified she was.
'Please,' he said childishly.
She wrestled with her emotions and brought herself under control.
She was shaking now, the crying turned inside. She wanted to see him as insane, but she couldn't. He seemed so professional in everything he did. So calculating. It made the chance of escape seem all the more distant. 'You will cause yourself an enormous amount of pain if you cry later. Hmm? The saline in the tears. You understand? You must not allow yourself to cry. You must apply no pressure to this bandage, none whatsoever, so be careful how you place your head when you sleep.' He waited a moment and asked, 'Are you listening?'
She managed to nod her head yes. 'Because of you-because of your cornea-some poor soul will be able to see again. Hmm? You will be giving someone the gift of sight. Can you imagine such a thing? A miracle is what it is, and without you, none of it would be possible. Hmm? How does that make you feel?'
Like escaping, she thought. Now, more than ever, escape was all she could think of. The drugs he injected brought a hazy fuzz to her eyes. Would she ever see again? Would she awaken? She glanced one last time into the eyes of The Keeper.
Perhaps, she thought, blindness wouldn't be so bad after all.
Boldt had a dozen thoughts crowding his head while staring at his phone. Following a morning with his father, Miles had been dropped off with their neighbor Emma, who was becoming something of a nanny to the boy. The phone wasn't exactly his, just as the coffee room wasn't exactly his office, but until they assigned him a cubicle he used both as if they were his own. People now knocked before entering the coffee room. In practice, Boldt had a bigger office than Shoswitz. @Z: He was sitting in a fiberglass chair under a cloud of cigarette smoke left by a former visitor. Someone had stolen today's date off the Gary Larson day-at-a-glance calendar, so Boldt had to keep checking his watch to remember the date. The trash can was filled to overflowing because to save money the offices were being cleaned only every other day and Saturdays.
Unable to reach Dixie earlier by phone, Boldt had resorted to the newly installed electronic mail-asking a younger, more computer-literate uniform for help. He dictated a memo detailing his discoveries at both the Army Corps of Engineers and the details of his interview with Dr. Light Horse at the university, and suggested that Dixon follow up on some of Light Horse's recommendations, which included examination and study of the surgical techniques used to close Cindy Chapman's incision. With the push of a button, his memo-supposedly-flew across town, bleating like a lamb on some secretary's screen. 'Sarge?' John Lamoia called from across the room, a phone cradled between neck and chin. He waved some papers at Boldt. Lamoia, who was heading up the surveillance of Connie Chi, the Bloodlines employee, was in an office rotation while other detectives watched their suspect. He was tall, with brown curly hair, and wore pressed jeans. He was a cocky, vibrant womanizer; everyone on the force liked him, male, female, uniform or suit. 'The AMA printouts,' Lamoia said.
Boldt crossed the room quickly, his own expectations increasing with every step. It was possible-in fact, more than likely-that the name of the harvester was somewhere on this printout. He took it from Lamoia. He scanned it quickly. And scanned. Page after page. His heart sank.
La Moia had anticipated his reaction. He hung up and explained, 'Six hundred seventy-five surgeons. Discouraging, to say the least. Last page,' he instructed. Boldt flipped forward. 'By category it's a little better. Any of them could probably train to do those harvests-that's what I'm told-but if this guy is sticking with his specialty, then we've got thirty-one in thoracic, ten in urological. In general surgery we have,' he honed in to read, 'sixty- eight; thirty-four at the UDUB. I wrote a total there: one forty-three.'
The job before them was overwhelming, though not impossible-given a huge task force, which Shoswitz seemed unlikely to grant them. A careful interview would have to be conducted with each Quiet inquiries about bank accounts and surgeon credit limits and life styles. of schedules, phone calls and travel itineraries. Through this, they were to attempt to narrow this enormous list down to the one harvester-all without making him the wiser.
Reading his thoughts, Lamoia, who had reached the office and was still reading over his shoulder, suggested, 'Are you thinking about bringing them in here one by one?'
'Thinking about it, but not very seriously. One: Doctors can make the kind of noise that finds the ears of the top brass. Two: Word would spread too quickly, the harvester would shut down shop, and that would be the end of any incriminating evidence. One of the difficulties here, don't forget, is that the law is hazy about all of this. If we're going to bust this guy, we're going to have to practically catch him in the act. We give him a week to clean — guaranteed. If we're right up his act, and he'll skate about this, this guy has been in business at least three years, which means he's extremely well organized and knows what he's doing. Who knows how many harvests he's done? He hears that we're coming after him, and he'll clean up so well that we'll never find so much as a needle out of place. We need the operating shears that connect Blumenthal to those bones. That would be some decent
