Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

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 proof."

"So what are you suggesting?" Lamoia asked. Lamoia could piss him off when he got like this. The coffee room phone rang. It could have been any number of things. Besides interviewing Cindy Chapman and Sharon Shaffer's elderly roommate, Daphne was working with her contacts at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to come up with a possible psychological profile of the harvester. Bernie Lofgrin owed Boldt more complete lab reports on both Chapman and Shaffer. It might even have been Dr. Light Horse at the University, or Ms. Dundee at Bloodlines, both of whom had agreed to call if anything else pertaining to Boldt's case occurred to them. But above and beyond all of these, Boldt hoped it might be someone-anyone-calling to tell him that Sharon Shaffer was safe and sound, or that some doctor had just turned himself in.

The call was from the surveillance team assigned to Connie Chi.

Twice, the cellular phone from which the call was being placed went dead, and twice Boldt waited impatiently for the return call. The first news he heard, after the team identified itself, was, "We got a problem here …" The second time the voice asked, "How much of that did you get?" Boldt could tell by the ambient sound that the car was moving. "You rolling?" he asked. Again, the line went dead before he received an answer. The third time he answered, the phone remained in the clear, although he found himself rushing sentences in anticipation of another failure. "Everything we're seeing here indicates she wants to lose us," the man said, referring to Connie Chi, the Bloodlines employee. "She made you?" Boldt asked. "That's just the thing: I don't think so. But she's sure as hell acting like she did. We called in Danny and Butch. They're in the jeep. We've been trading her off. I gotta think she thinks she's lost us. Way she's acting makes me think someone told her what to do. Know what I mean? All jitterylike. Constantly checking her mirror and shit like that. An amateur. It got a little hairy when she tried to ditch us in Nordstroms, but I gotta tell you: This gal is no criminal. Or if she is, she's the kind every cop loves /cause she's so damn nervous that she sticks out like a sore thumb. I gotta hand it to ya, Sarge: You now how to pick 'em."

"Keep me posted. I'm on my way."

As he steered through traffic in an attempt to intercept the surveillance teams, Boldt heard over his radio, "I've got her, Butch." The voices surfaced only occasionally, rising from a sea of electronic hiss. "Okay, good, we're falling off her.

Keep us posted."

Mobile surveillance presented its own special logistical nightmares. To be effective it required an enormous number of vehicles, a central dispatcher coordinating them, and a lot of luck. juggling the same two or three cars for an extended period usually failed. You either lost, or were spotted by, the mark. Boldt wondered what the hell was keeping Lamoia, when all of a sudden the man's voice crackled over the airwaves. Lamoia was like that: just when you were about to lose faith in him, he came through. He seemed to constantly push everyone, everything, right to the limit. With him rolling, they were up to four cars. They had a fighting chance. "She's turning right on 119th," announced detective John C. Adams, or J.C., as everyone called him. "What the hell is she driving?" Lamoia asked. "A red Saturn," came the reply. "But she ain't driving it. Some other woman is." Lamoia asked for the license number and was given it. "I've got them," he announced. "Turning again- 19th, now headed north on Greenwood. Go ahead and pass them."