THE MISSINGS (Aspen Falls Thrillers Book 2) Read online

  Elizabeth nodded.

  As Chase began to walk to where he could see Jax at work, Akila Copeland approached him.

  “Hey, Chase. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “If only.” He looked at the young CSI. “Leaving already?”

  “This wasn’t the crime scene. Not much for me to find. Next time can you get me an actual crime scene to investigate?

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Chase strode to the taped-off area and walked through. Terri was the closest of his crew to the body, resting on her haunches and observing while Dr. Taylor checked various details and made notes, her camera clicking away at intervals.

  Daniel was talking to a patrol officer, animated and pointing down the road. When Daniel saw Chase he signaled a stop with his hand, ended the conversation, and approached Chase.

  The young detective shook his head. “The Daily is all over this one. I fielded one call and have let three others go to voicemail. We need to control the perimeter.” The Aspen Falls Daily might be a small-town paper but they didn’t miss much. Most of their staff, seasoned on larger city papers, chose to live in Aspen Falls because of the lifestyle. They could kick back when they wanted to, hit the slopes to catch the freshest powder, but could also exercise their olfactory muscles to sniff out prize-winning stories.

  Chase called the patrol sergeant and requested two more uniforms even though this was obviously not the murder scene. Even if the press got every fact right, the rumors and speculation would fly, and their already difficult case would get that much harder. Information containment was as important as anything they’d done so far on this case. Which wasn’t much. Time enough for press releases when they had something to say.

  “What else do we have?”

  Daniel hesitated, peering at the sullen young woman standing behind Chase.

  Chase reminded Daniel who Elizabeth was with an abruptness that invited no questions. “Now, Detective. Tell me. What do we have?”

  “Not the murder scene. Hispanic female, late teens or early twenties—”

  “Seventeen,” Elizabeth said. “Rachelle was seventeen.”

  Daniel turned to Chase, hesitating. The rest of what Daniel had to say would not be pretty, especially for a family member to hear. Chase nodded for him to continue.

  “Her lungs, heart and both kidneys have been surgically removed.”

  Elizabeth sucked in a breath and grasped Chase’s arm.

  “Do we have a time of death?” Chase asked.

  “Doc says it’s been a day. No more than two. She said she’d have a better idea after she runs some more tests.”

  Elizabeth Benavides had shown up in his office on Wednesday. Probably about the same time her sister’s body was being harvested for whatever could be sold on the black market.

  Sometimes life sucked.

  “I want you and Elizabeth to dig for some answers in the Hispanic community,” Chase said. “That’s where we’ll begin to get a handle on what’s going on in this town.”

  “Wait. She’s a civilian—”

  “That’s right. She is. She’s also a civilian who has access we don’t.” Chase watched Daniel. “And you’ll be there to protect her.”

  “I don’t know anything about that part of town.”

  “I know that, but you’re the closest we’ve got. Use her connections, Daniel. Pretend you belong. Go tomorrow during the day. You should catch a lot of people home on a Saturday.”

  Chase walked over to where Terri was still taking notes with Dr. Taylor.

  “Hey, Doc.”

  “Detective.”

  Chase stood over the lifeless body of Rachelle Benavides. The familiar twist in his gut made him remember the personal side of murder. The family’s loss. The life cut short by violence. He’d never met Rachelle Benavides but he’d come to respect her in the few hours he’d spent on her case. He vowed to find her killer or killers.

  He processed the nude body, caked blood on the café-au-lait skin—especially around the slice along her sternum—and the tiny diamond stud earrings in her ears. Seventeen. Not much older than Angela. Damn it.

  “What’s your initial impression?” Chase asked.

  “This girl has had everything removed. All of the major organs. Heart, lungs, kidneys. All surgically excised.” Jax Taylor paled. “If this is a doctor, I want his head on a platter. I want to be doing his autopsy.”

  “You don’t think this could just be the work of a competent hunter? Someone used to dressing game?”

  “No way. This person has been to medical school. I’m actually pretty in awe of his—or her—technique.”

  “I need the results as soon as you can get them. Call me if you find anything that might be important.”

  Terri Johnson stood up. “I think it’s time we see what my contacts in the ER at Aspen Falls Memorial might be able to tell us.”

  “Funny you should mention that. I was thinking the same thing.”

  It was going to be a long night. Again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Aspen Falls Memorial Hospital

  Friday, September 21

  The hospital emergency room seemed unnaturally quiet, but Chase bet it wouldn’t be that way much longer. Friday night often brought out the worst in people who had worked hard all week and wanted to blow off steam. And for some reason the college kids seemed to prefer Aspen Falls Memorial to the campus infirmary.

  Leslie James, the ER doctor on duty, looked up as they approached the desk. “Unless our communication system has crashed, you’re not here on a new case.” James moved around the desk to greet the detectives.

  The ER doctor sported an easy-care haircut and what Chase thought Bond would call an adorable smile. Terri normally worked all of the sexual assault and rape cases, and Chase could tell the two women had developed a friendship over the years. A friendship forged no doubt by mutual respect for jobs where each woman saw a lot, one under street lights and the other under fluorescents.

  Terri gave a nod toward Chase to include him in the conversation. “We’re here more as students at the moment.” She made the introductions. “What can you tell us about organ donation?”

  Leslie James answered their questions at length. To her professional credit, she didn’t ask them why they were standing in her ER, probing into a very specific area. Chase was especially impressed to discover that some things, like skin, could be stored for a period of time, but anything that required a beating heart and blood flow needed to be harvested and transplanted as soon as possible.

  He pushed thoughts of his son away.

  Chase was reminded that the process of pairing a donor to a recipient hinged on blood samples. Blood type matching, tissue matching and cross matching were all done via blood tests.

  He thought of all of those painful legalities when David died—form upon form they had to sign. His memories shoved back. There was no pushing these thoughts away. He needed to acknowledge them and move on. Two years ago he had not wanted any more information than absolutely necessary for that moment. That moment—the pain—was big enough. It had taken over his world. He hadn’t wanted to know the process.

  And blood samples in a hospital would never raise a red flag. But maybe blood being drawn without a good purpose would. Chase didn’t think his kids had ever had their blood drawn at the doctor’s office when they’d gone in for colds or the flu. And Rachelle Benavides had complained about having flu symptoms on her social networking pages. Maybe the ER employed a different protocol.

  “Is there any reason for a blood sample to be drawn when a patient comes in with cold or flu symptoms?” Chase asked.

  “None,” Leslie James said. “Viral illnesses would never require a blood test unless there were other indications, and most colds and flu are viral.”

  Terri flipped a page in her notebook. “Do you keep records of patients whose blood has been tested?”

  “We do.”

  “Can you see if you di
d a blood test on one of them?”

  “Terri, you know I can. But I can’t give you that information without a warrant.”

  “And here I am, hoping for the entire list of names,” Chase said. Chase glanced at the faces of the two women hoping they’d gotten his attempt at humor. He received confirmation in two identical rolls of eyes.

  Terri looked at her friend. “She’s dead.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Still need a warrant. We have really picky attorneys.”

  Crap. Fatigue and frustration were wearing away Chase’s patience. “Let’s see what your attorneys think when the hospital is named as complicit in both previous and subsequent deaths related to our investigation,” Chase said.

  For the first time frigid air fogged the camaraderie. The humorous repartee was history.

  “What are you saying, Detective?” Leslie James asked.

  “I’m saying that someone should contact us first thing in the morning. We have a minimum of three deaths, possibly more, that could be linked to this hospital. I’m sure the public would appreciate a cooperative position as opposed to one that implies a cover-up.”

  “Detective Waters, I have no doubt you’ll hear from someone tomorrow morning.”

  Out in the parking lot Terri squared her shoulders. “Did you have to be such a prick?”

  “Look Terri, sometimes it takes a prick to shake up the waters, excuse the pun. The more the good guys know what we’re looking for, the harder it is for the bad guys to hide.”

  “I just don’t want my relationships jeopardized. I’ll need them again, you know.”

  “I do know.”

  “You’re planning on going public?”

  “Not for as long as I can help it. Get a warrant. I want to see those records.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Madrigal Home

  Friday, September 21

  Efraín set the book next to him on his bed. The shot the physician’s assistant had given him yesterday at the hospital had worked wonders for his flu symptoms. He’d be able to work tomorrow and get back to his classes on Monday.

  Efraín’s parents were in the kitchen, and he could picture their ritual after-dinner coffee cups on the old scarred table. The dishes from his family’s dinner would have been long since washed, dried and put away. The paper-thin walls of the small home made it seem as if Efraín sat at the table with them.

  “Dios! How are we going to pay for the truck repairs, Armando?” His mother insisted they speak in English but she sometimes slipped into Spanish when something upset her. And money always upset her.

  “We will find a way,” his father said.

  His father always said that. And somehow, for as long as Efraín could remember, they always had found a way. He had never been hungry. Never not had a roof over his head. That was way more than he could say for a lot of other people.

  At sixteen he understood fully the things that separated him from everyone else in this small town, in this country, and the things that would forever make him different. It didn’t matter that he placed in the top five percent of his class at Aspen Falls. It didn’t matter that he had become a trusted and valued employee at Cobalt Mountain Books even though he had only worked part-time there for four months. It didn’t matter that he had a dream—to be a writer. Nothing mattered in the end—except for where he came from.

  His parents had tried desperately to get across the border from Mexico when his mother was pregnant with him. They’d been turned back—or scared back—three times before they finally found a way into the US. But they never made it to a hospital where he could get a legitimate birth certificate.

  Efraín Tomás Hanks Madrigal met this world in a cattle shelter in the middle of nowhere. His parents told him he was a “legitimate American,” but with no paper to prove it, he’d always been just another wetback from Mexico. His three siblings, two more boys and a girl to wrap things up, had all been born in Aspen Falls Memorial. They were legal-legal.

  His name fit. The Spanish form of the Hebrew name Efrayim, Efraín meant “double-land” or “twin-land.”

  He didn’t belong anywhere.

  “Maybe we won’t find a way this time, mi esposo.” His mother’s voice shook. “With your hours not being regular right now and my Aspen winter ladies still in their summer homes, we can barely pay our rent.”

  His mother’s outlook relied on the practical while his father’s leaned more to the spiritual.

  “Confia en Dios.” The soft words of his father, “Trust in God,” both gratified and irked Efraín.

  At some point didn’t a man need to take control? Be responsible?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Aspen Falls Memorial Hospital, ICU

  Friday, September 21

  The woman had come to hate the soft lighting in her husband’s hospital room, the jazz playing low because that’s what he enjoyed, the still air that surrounded him. Rather than a kind of sexy background to their lives, these things signified sickness. Death. Helplessness. These things meant she waited for something that might never happen.

  Waited for someone else to die.

  They’d had no match through living donors and she hated this vulture she’d become. Listening to the police scanner for calls that might mean she and her husband would grow old together as they’d planned. A car accident. A fall. Even some kind of shoot-out. All they needed was one good kidney.

  She had come to terms with the idea that violence might bring her peace. Even though she hated herself a little more every time she looked in a mirror, she had come to terms with being a scavenger. You do what you have to do.

  She stood outside the door that would open to her own private hell and sucked in deep breaths. Somehow the pain-infused air of the hallway tasted better than the air in the room. The hallway held the pain of other people. The room held her own.

  She shot up a prayer for strength and plastered on a smile because she loved him so much. She pulled open the door and walked in.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Aspen Falls' Hispanic Neighborhood

  Saturday, September 22nd

  Daniel Murillo just wanted this morning to be over. To get through the rest of the day, get out of this neighborhood, leave these people and their lives behind. It wasn’t that he had abandoned his Hispanic heritage. Not at all. It was that he felt his Hispanic heritage had abandoned him.

  Elizabeth Benavides walked at his side, more comfortable with these surroundings than he would ever be—or would ever want to be. He couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty she wore like a casual pair of jeans. Most Hispanic women, in his experience, thought of themselves as goddesses. They moved and acted like they wore crowns—or at the very least, tiaras—and everyone around them should consider themselves a subject. Elizabeth Benavides moved with the grace of those women but without the superior attitude. She was relaxed and confident and eminently approachable, even when her eyes glazed over and her shoulders sagged for a moment. She was determined to find her sister’s killer, and being a part of her community might be the key. The curves of her body and the curve of her lips warmed him. Maybe this enforced servitude in the Hispanic community wouldn’t be as bad as he’d thought.

  When they’d met a few minutes before ten, Elizabeth carried an insulated tote along with her purse. Daniel offered to carry the tote for her and she handed it over to him.

  “Whoa. What do you have in here? Lead weights?”

  “If you can’t manage it, Detective, hand it back. I’m stronger than I look.”

  Daniel hefted the tote over his shoulder. “I’ve got it.”

  They’d been strolling up one block and down another for twenty minutes now. A lot of other people were enjoying the weather or they would have looked conspicuous.

  Illegals frosted his butt. They were problems in more ways than one. Because of his appearance and his surname, Daniel Murillo had to prove his legitimacy and his potential every day of his life in the country he’d been bo
rn into as a fourth-generation citizen. Forget the military service he and his family had given. Forget the sacrifices they had made. Forget the fact that his brother lived in Boston, a respected neurosurgeon, and his sister was serving as a missionary in South America. Because some Mexicans had come north, not respecting the laws of this country, he had to pay.

  It pissed him off.

  And the beautiful young woman he stood with picked up on his attitude. “Let me do the talking. You open your mouth and you might as well open your wallet,” Elizabeth Benavides said.

  “My wallet?” Was she implying he’d have to pay for information?

  “Isn’t that where you keep your Tea Party card?”

  “Hey—”

  “Just be quiet and look pretty while I ask the questions.”

  Daniel conceded she might have a point. For the moment anyway, he agreed to walk along beside her, silent, on this warm Saturday morning.

  He gazed down one street and saw four guys working on a low rider. The purple paint sparkled rich and luxuriant in the sunshine. Three young girls in tight jeans and midriff blouses stood near, pretending not to notice the glances thrown in their direction from the young men in between paying attention to the inner workings of the motor and wiping fingerprints off the surface of the car.

  A group of grade-school children rushed passed them. The youngsters spoke Spanglish, a colorful combination of Spanish and English, while they kicked a battered—almost flat—basketball between them. Not far behind them two mothers walked, engrossed in conversation. One of them pushed an ancient, heavy stroller and the other one moved forward hand-in-hand with a toddler.

  He and Elizabeth kept walking. He knew she had extended some kind of sensor. She didn’t talk, and he had stubbornly decided to be quiet and “look pretty,” regardless of what happened around them.

  In the next block aromas cascaded over him. Scents he hadn’t smelled in such a direct way in decades. They passed by a house with the unmistakable smell of fresh tortillas, a hint of tamales just coming together. Homemade chorizo overpowered him a few steps later, and he fought the impulse to lick his lips.