Dead Ringer (34 page)

He glanced at two Detroit Tigers posters. Another of some hockey player and some other crap. But saw nothing that reached out to him and said, “Here you go. A password clue.” He could try typing in
tigers
, but any security-conscious systems allowed only a limited number of incorrect log-in attempts before shutting down and Tigers seemed too easy.

Lucas moved to a large file cabinet and pulled on the top drawer. Locked. He pulled harder, but the damned thing wouldn’t budge. The lower drawers opened without a problem, so this told him the most important papers were in the top drawer.

Back at the desk, he found a letter opener and used it to try to pry the drawer open, but all it did was bend the opener. Next, he tried to push the entire cabinet over, but it didn’t move. Probably bolted to the wall. This only increased his suspicions it held Ditto’s sensitive records. But short of an acetylene torch or dynamite, he wasn’t getting in there tonight.

Royally pissed, Lucas returned to the desk and stared at the screen. Stupid damn oversight.
Damn it!
He’d come this far, only to be turned away. Every second he stood here was one less second he’d have to search. He sat down in the desk chair and looked around him. The computer monitor was a sleek flat-screen without Post-its or any other notes attached. Which was, he remembered, a place people often leave a password.

He scanned the few things on the desk. A phone, an old fashioned address book, a pen holder. He picked up the pen holder and turned it over. Nothing taped to the bottom surface. Shit. He opened the address book. Nothing on the first page. He opened the P-tab. On the first line was an eight letter alphanumeric string with two letters capitalized. If anything was a password, this was it. Carefully, making certain of no mistakes, he entered the string. Satisfied it was entered correctly he took a deep breath and hit enter.

D
ITTO HUMMED CONTENTEDLY WHILE
arranging two scalpels and an air-driven hacksaw. The call out tonight removed some of the pressure of meeting the monthly quota. In fact, it put them ahead for the month, leaving him in a jubilant mood. He toyed with the idea of asking Cathy to fly up to one
of the San Juan Island resorts tomorrow. Just call around for a bed-and-breakfast at a place she liked. Gerhard could handle the business until they returned Sunday.

Life was good.

Then again, he philosophized, we don’t realize how well off we are until something comes along to threaten the foundations of our life. Only after surviving a threat do we look back and take stock of those things we presently take for granted. This gave him pause, causing him to step back to admire the equipment he owned and the business he’d painstakingly grown from nothing. The sight swelled his chest with pride. It was a damn shame Dad wasn’t here to see how well he’d done.

But the incident with McRae had taught him another very important lesson. He needed to take time out for a complete reassessment of DFH. A risk analysis to consider better methods to protect his assets. He and Gerhard should analyze ways to improve procurement that minimized risk and maximized gain. This McRae incident should instigate a lessons learned discussion.

One thing was for sure—it’d been a huge mistake to take the hooker and her john at the same time. Worse yet, the john turned out to be someone who was missed, thereby breaking one of his cardinal rules: minimize risk. Risk management was precisely the reason for having set up the rules. Looking back on the incident, that one mistake ultimately caused the problem. The hooker? Fuck, no one had a clue. Well, except the detective. Taking Baer caused it all.

Yeah, life was passing him by. Ditto needed to spend more time with Cathy enjoying himself.

Feeling restless, he went to the window and looked out onto Dexter Avenue. Not much traffic. Typical. Yet something didn’t feel right. What was it?

“F
UCK
!”
GERHARD SLAMMED THE
steering wheel with his palm.

He checked the GPS again and then looked out the driver’s side window at an industrial park. On the passenger side was razor wire, a few clapboard buildings, and what looked like warehouses. The fucking address didn’t exist. Or if it did, it sure as shit wasn’t in this ratty part of town. Barely able to steady his fingers from the anger, he punched Ditto’s number on speed dial.

R
ETURNING FROM THE CREMATORIUM
, Ditto opened the apartment door in time to hear the phone ring. He moved to the kitchen to check the display and saw Leo was calling on the private line instead the DFH number. “Yes?”

“That address you gave me. Give it to me again.” Gerhard sounded irritated. Which was unusual for him. Of all the people Ditto knew, Leo was the most even tempered.

“Sure. What’s up?” He walked to the living room where the note was on the coffee table.

“I’m not seeing what I should be seeing.”

Ditto read the address to him.

Gerhard said, “In that case, we got us a big mother problem. All I see is fucking warehouses. This is an industrial area.”

Ditto’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch. “You sure?”

“Fuck, yes, I’m sure. Only thing in front of me is razor wire.”

Ditto didn’t believe he’d copied down a wrong address. He’d had the guy recite it twice, just to be sure. “Hold on a moment. Let me call to verify.”

Setting the phone on the table, he used his cell to dial the number the caller, Robert Gonzales, had given him. It rang once before switching over to a recording. “The number you called is out of service.”

He disconnected and traded phones again, his suspicions crystallizing. “Get your ass back here ASAP. I’m going to check something. Anything changes, I’ll call.”

If nothing else, Ditto liked to think of himself as conscientious when it came to business. Like routinely copying down incoming telephone numbers when answering a call. Any call. It might gain importance two minutes after hanging up. Like right now, there it was, the number that had appeared on caller ID, which was different than the one Gonzales had given him.

He dialed this number. It rang until eventually clicking over to voice mail. “Yo, sucka. You reached me. Leave a message.” It was Gonzales’s voice but without the heavy fucking Cheech and Chong accent.

Why call a funeral service and dish out a bogus story? He could think of only one reason, and it wasn’t good. Like maybe someone wanted him out of the building. But that didn’t make sense.

Something was definitely wrong. Time to batten down the hatches.

He pulled his Beretta 92 from the nightstand. After making sure it held a full clip and a round in the chamber, he set out
to search the building, figuring he’d end up in the basement about the time Gerhard pulled in.

Assuming, of course, no one else was here.

L
UCAS ENTERED “RALPH THOMPSON”
in the database and hit enter. Thompson’s record popped up immediately, making it the third unclaimed body on the books of both the King County coroner and DFH. The coroner recorded it as an identified but unclaimed body with no known next of kin. In contrast, the DFH records claimed the body had been donated by Thompson’s wife. Both records were tied to the same valid death certificate.

He had to hand it to Ditto, coming up with such an intricate scheme. It flew totally under the radar, unless someone intentionally cross-checked the names like he was now doing. And why would anyone ever do that?

As he started to push back the chair, a voice said, “Step away from the computer, McRae.”

Lucas jumped, adrenaline jolting him. He turned toward the voice, saw Bobby Ditto in the doorway aiming a gun at him. Lucas zeroed in on the barrel and became paralyzed.

“I said step away from the computer.”

Lucas looked from the barrel to Ditto’s face, then back again, unable to move.

“Move,” Ditto ordered.

Lucas slowly raised his hands and walked away from the desk.

“Move right.” Ditto flicked the gun in that direction. “Completely away from the desk so I can see all of you.”

Lucas did as instructed.

“You just had to keep at it, didn’t you? Couldn’t give it up. Wouldn’t believe what we told you.” Ditto entered the room, motioned the barrel toward the door. “You first.”

Lucas moved in that direction. “Take it easy.”

Ditto stepped back, keeping about ten feet of distance between them. “Out the door to your right.”

Lucas tried to calm the panic in his chest. He had to do something before Ditto killed him. But what? For now, the best thing to do was keep Ditto talking and burn as much time as possible.

“People know I’m here,” Lucas said.

“So fucking what? What are they going to do about it?”

Lucas realized how lame his statement sounded and tried again. “Just so you don’t do something stupid.”

“Stupid?” Ditto laughed. “I don’t do stupid things. Careless? Maybe a few times. But never stupid.” He waved the barrel again. “Through that door, asshole.”

Lucas entered a room of yellow tiles and well-sealed cement floor with a drain under a stainless steel table. In one corner was a crematorium. His bowels turned to ice. Ditto planned to kill and dismember him. He had to keep him talking. He turned to Ditto. “How do you justify killing people for parts? That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Ditto flicked the barrel left to move Lucas toward the center of the room. “I’m shocked you even ask when the answer’s so self-evident.”

Lucas didn’t budge.
Fuck him. He can drag me over there
. “Not self-evident to me. Explain it.”

Ditto eyed him a moment, as if torn between shooting and answering. “Sutton’s law, man. ‘Because that’s where the money is.’”

Ditto added, “If you don’t buy that one, maybe this one will appeal to your left-wing liberalism. Let’s say you’re the minister of health for some godforsaken third world country, and you find a windfall of three million bucks. Suddenly, this gives you the choice between providing free dental care to hundreds of thousands of your people or building a state-of-the-art heart transplant center that might treat a few people a year. Which would you choose?”

Lucas stayed frozen in place, searching for something to fight with. “I don’t get it. What’s your point?”

“The answer’s obvious. Or at least it should be. The right choice is the one that provides the greatest good. In this case, dental care for the masses. You can’t argue with that, can you?”

“No, but it’s irrelevant. What’s that got to do with murdering people for body parts?”

Ditto shook his head. “You make it sound so arbitrary, so capricious. It’s not like that at all.” He raised the gun and aimed at Lucas’s heart.

Lucas shuffled a step to his right. “Then explain it to me because I don’t get it.”

The gun lowered a fraction of an inch. “You of all people should appreciate just how much good a well-preserved body can do. How did you learn anatomy? On a cadaver, I bet. What were you doing in Hong Kong? You were showing other brain cutters how to do very specialized surgery, if my memory is good. In other words, you used one head to benefit how many, thirteen surgeons?”

“Ah, the old ends-justify-the-means argument.”