Chapter 41
It took an entire pot of black coffee before Aaron could feel the buzz of the caffeine waking his senses. He’d not gotten the amount of sleep he was instructed to. How could he, when every time he closed his eyes the image of a dying Makayla haunted him?
He tried to tell himself he was not entirely responsible for her death. He’d thought by now, after the third time of losing someone he cared for on the job, it would have gotten easier. It was a war after all, and each officer knew the risks.
As he stared into the dark swirl of his coffee, he persuaded himself by solving the case, and finding those missing girls, Makayla’s sacrifice would never be forgotten. To him she was already a hero, but he wanted the world to know it too. Glancing up from his desk, he looked around to make sure no one was watching him too closely, then took the burner phone from his pocket and placed a call to Liam. It rang a few times before he picked up.
“Bro, I meant to call, I got…”
Aaron spoke over him, “Are you still with the girls?”
“Yeah. We’re safe. Turns out the transplant doctor, Vermaak was it? Is dead.”
Aaron stared at the files at his desk, searching incoming homicides. “I haven’t gotten to anything on my desk yet.”
After a brief pause, he asked Liam, “What’s happening that side?”
“Willow is with the doctor. They’re using … I’d rather not get into it right now. It’s all a bit science fiction for my tired mind.”
Aaron wiped at his weary eyes, “Have you slept?” he asked as he stretched out his back on the rickety old desk chair.
“Not a wink”
Aaron admitted he hadn’t either.
Liam cleared his throat. “I was thinking about that bugging device I discovered at Raine’s house. It was military grade.”
Aaron stiffened in his seat. “Our military?”
“Pretty sure of it. The same type we used in the White House.”
Aaron took a sip of coffee. “Interesting, but a serious allegation.”
Aaron heard a scream in the background that sounded like Raine. He jumped up from his seat. “What’s going on Liam?”
“Bill told you not to touch Matilda,” Liam scolded.
“Stupid thing!” Raine’s voice took a high pitch.
Aaron sat back down behind his desk, reassured by the sound of a smirk in his brother’s voice.
Liam started to laugh. “That damned woman never listens.”
Aaron wiped a hand over his face, then jerked as Bryce slapped down a file on the table before him.
Aaron smiled up at him.
“Don’t give me that smile, I told you to get sleep.” Bryce glowered down at him, but from the dark rings under his eyes, they both suspected that none of the team had gotten much sleep.
Bryce’s gaze fell down to the phone in his hand. “Is that your brother?”
He nodded.
“He got the girls?”
When Aaron didn’t answer, Bryce added, “If you’re keeping them around because they assisted in this case and are now working with you on finding a link to the missing girls, you’d better make sure you play this right.”
Bryce’s eyes held warning. The last time Aaron had involved a civilian, she ended up dead.
“Internal affairs is on my ass,” Bryce said. “They know about the South African girls, and your scene at the hospital…”
Aaron held up his hand, stopping Bryce from talking as he thought of something. Bryce ignored his interruption, “You find me some useable evidence to prove they’ve been assets in these cases, or I can’t help them.”
“Aaron,” Liam called out. He’d totally forgotten he still had his brother on the line.
“Gotta go.” He said, ending the call.
Bryce leaned down and ground his fists into the table. “What are you doing?”
Aaron grabbed the envelope with the footage from the hospital of the night he’d shot the guy who assaulted Raine.
“I have a lead,” he said.
Bryce straightened up. “Open that file I just gave you. The results from that tissue, matched the sample in the vial, and is a ninety percent match to the soil sample taken from the hospital basement. I’ve already sent CSI down there. I came here to tell you.” He paused for maximum emphasis, excited to break the good news.
“We found at least three shallow graves filled with what appears to be female victim’s aged between twenty and thirty years in that abandoned incineration room.” Bryce sighed before continuing. “Seems he was banking the bodies for something. Perhaps, ultimately he wanted to be caught. Or it could be a simple thing like him visiting the graves, a way of keeping his trophies.”
Aaron’s eyes sparked. “So the evidence is solid? We can use it to build our case?”
Bryce nodded.
“And no, that’s not it, Captain. The other bodies are used in the next sacrifice, this builds up the levels of ascension as each one of the girl’s essence influences the power of the devil’s breath released.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask,” a female officer spoke up from the desk behind Aaron’s. “He does this thing where he tries to get into the killer’s mind.”
Aaron spun around in his seat, “Officer Powel. That is between us.” He half joked.
Bryce’s eyes flickered to Powel, then back to Aaron, shaking his head. “Hopefully, the DNA from the gut found on Lorel Palmer will match one of those bodies, which is as you suspect.”
“Bingo!” Aaron slapped the table. “The sisters provided that evidence. And my father is responsible for the information about the gut. That means we can work something out for them?”
Bryce shoved the file forward, “Great, now get to work,” he turned to exit, “We have missing girls to find Anderson.” He said, already halfway out of the office.
Aaron stood, took the envelope containing a number of disks from that night they escaped the hospital. He sorted through the labelled folders. Already knowing internal affairs had seen most of the recordings. He took the one marked hallway incident and asked officer Powel to put it up on the screen.
“Go past this,” He instructed her, “When we start seeing people running…” he stood closer to the screen, hands on hips. “Stop, there.” He pointed.
She stopped the footage, then played it at normal speed.
He saw himself and Liam wheel the gurney with Willow down the hall right after the guards, nurses and even hospital patients made their way down the hall. Where he saw a nurse give chase after Raine. Raine pulled down a side-cart in the way of the nurse, then ran toward where Aaron and Liam where headed with her sister. Just before she ran out of view of the camera, he watched with a sting in his veins as Raine was pulled into a room by her attacker.
“Stop it there.” He stepped forward, then pulled the rest of the disks.
“Can you take a screen-shot, of that?” He moved closer to the monitor, pointed to the man’s arm.
“Yes sure.” Officer Powel said, pressed a few keys on her remote. “Gotta say Sir, when you requisitioned this smart screen I was a bit annoyed.”
He shrugged. “Yeah I know, we didn’t have it in the budget for this and a new coffee maker.”
“But it’s proving to be a great asset,” she added, “catching a killer over coffee anytime.”
He just gave her a look and slid in the next disk.
New footage of the night that nurse was killed played from a different camera view, “Further back,” He said softly.
“Stop.” He found the same nurse that chased Raine in the visitors’ lounge, he watched while they argued with staff about removing Willow from the scene, that nurse looking too upset, like she was taking it personal. “Back, I need you to go back please Officer Powel.”
“Now stop!” That same nurse excited Willow’s room.
‘Back it up even more pls.”
“Okay.”
She cleared her throat. “You see it too right?” she asked him.
“Indeed, the camera only catches one angel of the doorway to that room. And to me it appears that Bertha,” he rubbed the back of his head, “Our murder victim was never in that room, nor do we see who entered the room at our estimated time of death.
“It appears the girl did it, Sir.”
He shook his head, shot her a solid stare. “That girl is weak and sickly, no-way she had the strength to open up a chest cavity, remove a heart and string her body up like that.
“The nurse was killed somewhere else?”
He clapped his hands.
“Do we have a different angle; we can’t see Bertha enter the room.” Then added, “The nurse that gave chase down the hall, find her on any other footage. He handed her the disks. “I have a hunch.”
She nodded, took the disks from him and gave a soft smile. “Thank you, Sir.”
He sat behind his desk. “What for Powel.”
“I like working with you.”
He mumbled, “You must be the only one.” while looking down at the file in front of him, found the assisting detective on the case and called him up.
“Could you get me street footage of the nurse who was killed at Mercury Memorial? I want to follow her every move that night.”
“Already done, Sir.”
“And?”
“I emailed it to you about five minutes ago, Sir.”
He thanked him and ended the call, not forgetting to say, “Great work, detective.”
He clicked on his emails, downloaded the clips and pressed play. Forwarding the footage, he saw that nurse again, right behind Nurse Benson as she got off the bus. She was easy to spot on the street, her clothes were too big, and her shoes, although the same color as the rest of the nursing staff, they were different. He continued to follow the suspicious nurse on the other monitor of the inside of the hospital, to where she was meddling with Willow in the visitors’ lounge after she’d been removed from the scene. He froze the frame, zooming in on to her hand. He noted the poorly covered tattoo, which was the same shape and size as that of the man who stabbed Raine, and which was also the same tattoo of the perp he shot in the knee at the compound.
He placed a call to the gang unit, sending out an alert to surrounding precincts asking them to question all individuals with that specific tattoo about the missing girls, and, or any information regarding the missing, or alleged dead Doctor Vermaak, the transplant surgeon.
As he typed in the name Vermaak, the notice of his death pinged. He had been found not far from the hospital, in the river with stab wounds to his chest, his throat slit. He swore out loud.
“What is it, Sir?” Powel asked from behind her desk.
He shook his head, “another murder.”
“Was he a lead?”
He nodded, rubbed over tired eyes and fell back in his chair.
A notification came from Liam to his phone. He opened the image file with the caption - It was a picture of the guy he’d shot in the hospital. The text told him it was taken from Raine’s phone a day before he tried to murder her at the hospital. He suspected it was the same man who had been following her and who had bugged her apartment.
“Yessss.” He said out loud, spinning in his chair.
“A new lead, Sir?”
He shot her a look, this is why he didn’t want to work with other people, too many questions, too much watching over his shoulder for his liking.
Officer Powel was about to open her mouth. “No I do not care to share Powel. This is only a hunch, one I will protect you from, for now.”
She sighed then went back to work on the screening of the hospital footage.
Aaron sat back, drawing invisible lines between events. If he could find out who the new female suspect had been working with, he’d find out where the bugging device had come from, and who in the military was working so hard to cover up the organ trafficking ring. In conclusion, he would find the missing girls. He stared at the image of the man on his phone and emailed it to his desktop computer.
“Powel.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I sent you a file, find me any of his acquaintances.”