Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

Miraculously, he got most of the mess into the bucket at the last possible moment.

The door rattled as The Keeper fumbled with the lock.

The dogs erupted into barking once again. Sharon covered her ears. The door opened. The Keeper was dressed in a business suit. He was smiling. "Good morning," he called out, sounding more like Captain Kangaroo than the madman she took him for.

Elden Tegg walked down the narrow cement aisle that separated the two sides of the kennel, carefully inspecting the inhabitant of each cage. He knew the medical history of each of these animals. He had grown to love them. Each and every one despite-or perhaps because of-their nasty dispositions.

"Time to eat," he said, pushing the wheelbarrow to each cage, the bag of dog food precariously balanced. At the end of the run, he reached the two newcomers, Sharon and Washington.

Sharon was huddled modestly in the corner, looking at him through the muzzle he had cleverly rigged out of nylon strapping. Her contempt for him never left her eyes, although he intended to correct that by harvesting her right cornea. "Come on," he said to her, encouraging her to show him her incision. When she failed to obey, he reached for the remote device that controlled her collar, threatening to use it. Use of this device had the same effect as coming in contact with the wire-it triggered the collar. She sprang into action, obediently duckwalking toward him, paying careful attention to her I.V. She clung to modesty by keeping folded up on herself. "Let the doctor see," he instructed, enjoying the title. He could care less about her nudity: It was the incisions that held his interest. His insistence on leaving the two of them naked had no basis in voyeurism. A determined person could hang himself with clothing. He couldn't afford to lose her, that was all. He waved the remote again, and she turned herself for him. The skin around her bandage was slightly pink but not bad.

He motioned her back into the far end of the cage and let himself inside, the shock collar's remote "wand" constantly in hand, constantly a threat. He changed her dressing, removed the muzzle, took her temperature-ninety-nine and change, nothing to worry about-and replaced her I.V. of Ringers solution with a fresh one supercharged with Valium, a dash of Demerol and a higher dosage of antibiotics. He gave her new gauze for her gag, returned the muzzle, and handed her a bucket of a Quaternarybased disinfectant they used at the clinic. He stood by and watched her as she scrubbed the pen's floor. He directed her to a few missed spots and then took the bucket back, convinced of the pen's cleanliness. Locking her inside he told her, "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

He turned and faced Washington. "Welcome," he said. "You're insane," Washington whispered. Tegg went rigid. His first temptation was to shock him, but he resisted. He had never felt clearer. "Sticks and stones," he answered. "She needs medical attention."

Tegg shot back dismissively, "What do you think I just gave her?"

Sharon grunted at her companion, waving him off, asking him to stop.

Tegg added, "Perhaps you need some medical attention."

"Perhaps you do," Washington protested.

Tegg understood that such charges, if left unanswered, gained validity in some perverse way by simply having been spoken. He picked up the "wand" for this man's collar and reminded him with a short little zap! Washington responded with a spasm of pain. "You are out of your element. I would watch my accusations if I were you."

Washington backed into the corner. "Don't do t is."

Tegg objected, "Do what? You don't even know what this is about.

This is about basic needs. This is about life and death.

That's fairly simple, isn't it?"

He clearly wasn't getting through. Tegg paced the center aisle.

He couldn't describe his present feeling. The air seemed to be vibrating, his thoughts precise-as in the middle of an operation. He felt righteous and angry-why was he forced to defend such obvious logic?

He checked his watch: eight-twenty. From the top of the hill closer to town, the cellular would operate. He could call Pamela. She could reschedule some of the morning appointments and be out here in a little over forty minutes. Why waste a specimen like this? he thought, pausing by Washington's cage. Make the most with what you've got. "Some lessons," he told the young man, "are better learned first-hand." He returned the shock collar's remote device to its hook on the cage, clearly confusing his captives. "Remember our little skirmish yesterday? I certainly "won't allow that to happen again." It wasn't a confusing situation to Elden Tegg: With a strong specimen such as Washington, the dart gun was clearly the only way to go.

"This is my son Miles."

"Hello, Miles." Dr. Crystal Light Horse, a transplant surgeon on the University of Washington's-the U-Dub's-medical staff whom Dixie knew through his lecture series, wore an oversized lab coat and a laminated name plate that included the hospital's insignia. She seemed young for a practicing surgeon, mid-thirties. She was a Native American with laughing eyes, barn-wood brown. She pursed her lips whenever Boldt spoke, her attention focused on him as if she were looking down a gun sight.

Boldt wondered at all the social obstacles she had overcome to get here.

He said, "We tried Miles in day care for about three days, but we noticed this look in his eyes," he explained. "Do you have kids?"

it Two. "Then you know what I mean."

"No."

"You see that look?" Boldt asked, pointing at his son. "That sparkle? Well, that's him, you know? And after day care," he waved a hand in front of his own face like a magician, and acted out the transformation, "gone. just this glazed look like no one was home."

She bristled. "Both my children went through day care, and I never noticed any such thing." "As a surgeon," Boldt asked, "have you ever had to remove a person's foot from his mouth?"

That won a smile. "Thankfully, no." She added, "It's a good thing you're a policeman. It looks as if you have a kleptomaniac on your hands." Miles had stolen a fountain pen off her desk-expensive by the look of it. Boldt wrestled it free and returned it. Miles promptly grabbed it again. His father stole it back and fed him a Bic.

Her office was buried in books and papers. He worried that she might be one of those more-diplomas-than-you-can-count type-A educators, quick to lecture, short on substance.

He explained, "I need to throw a hypothetical situation at you.

I'm involved in an investigation that is really more your field than mine, and I'm at a loss for specific leads to follow."

"A scent."

"Exactly."

"I'll do what I can."

"Let's suppose you're a transplant surgeon which you are-who, for one reason or another, finds herself in need of a great deal of money." "You're broke."

He nodded. "You're broke and you hear that overseas or maybe right here in this country, this city, people are willing to pay big money for certain organs."

"There's no evidence that in this country-" He raised a hand, interrupting; he didn't want her getting ahead of him. "Now as I understand it, in transplanting something like a kidney, you would want the donor to be blood type O."

"Not accurate: You would prefer the donor organ to match the recipient's blood group exactly."

"But to sell?" he inquired.

She bristled again. "Type O might indeed make it easier to sell," she agreed. "Type O is the largest, most common blood group, and Type O organs have the lowest rate of rejection in transplants into any other blood group."

He suggested, "So, if you put yourself in the roll of the harvester-"

"The procuring surgeon," she corrected. "We don't like the word 'harvester."' "Nor do I" He completed, "How would you, as the procuring surgeon, locate a potential donor with blood type O?"