Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) by Chris Bauer (mobi ebook reader .TXT) 📗

or full ownership of the island, he’d have access to its inhabitants. They were far from Third-World backward, but they did suffer from lack of experience in the modern world, lack of marketable job skills, and therefore lack of funds to survive in it, even on the island, needing significant subsidies from the Logan family. Desperate people sometimes found organ donation an easy way to make large sums of money. Wally knew this from the undocumented immigrants he continued to exploit on the mainland.

Cheap raw materials, huge profit margins. The same blueprint he was using in Philly.

Cha-ching.

Minimal risk, and little of it borne by Ka Hui, most borne by the donors. If some of it went the same way—south—as it occasionally did for donors in the Philly organ-harvesting model, it could keep Kaipo in business as a mob cleaner, too.

“At that point,” Magpie said, “she’ll make the same mistake Logan did, blame you for the crash. Things would change for Miakamiians if you became responsible for them; maybe she wouldn’t see the good in it. Maybe she’d decide to come back, to try to talk you out of your interest.”

But some of this new work was not going the same as with the Philly model. These people were different, this because of where they lived. Different because of what surrounded them in the water off Miakamii. Shells. Specifically, the mollusk shells they collected for use in making their expensive leis. Something special about those shells, something… medical.

Research, all of it recent, by the pharmaceutical industry, had surfaced an anomaly. Not the known oddity of Miakamii having been the only Hawaiian Island to escape polio in the 1950s, nor the only one to never report a case of AIDS. But the newest discovered abnormality was that in all of modern medical history, and in all of the island’s oral history, as far as could be researched, none of the island’s current or former inhabitants had ever shown symptoms of senility, dementia, or Alzheimer’s. Not one.

Rumor had it that it was because they and all their ancestors spent lifetimes handling the shells. Rumor only, but rumor, word of mouth, and innuendo managed to fuel the organ transplant industry, legal and illegal.

Illegal transplant organs were expensive. Via word of mouth, organs believed to come from a Miakamii native could break the bank, and so far, some had. Business in the islands since he had returned was robust.

“I want Kaipo, Magpie. And I want that island.”

“Understood. But one more thing, boss. The ice chest.”

“What ice chest?”

“The one waiting for you under your table near the pool today.”

Wally’s eyes got wider. A Styrofoam container at his reserved space poolside at his hotel this morning; the cabana help claimed to know nothing about it. In it, a full human liver in dry ice.

“It was viable as a transplant organ,” Magpie said, “and it’s already in play.”

A gift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unprompted, mysterious, and so far, untraced. Someone knew about his new venture, but Wally didn’t know who that someone was. He loved the gift, but he was furious he was in the dark about who had provided it, and why. What the hell did this person want?

“Tell me more,” Wally said, “like where the container came from.”

“A cheap disposable. Available at Walmart, Target, anywhere. It’s not likely we’ll have any luck—”

“There’s a dead body out there missing this organ, Magpie. Find out who it belonged to.”

6

Spreading left and right of the house’s center entry were long, single-story wings that curled around a green front yard like two outstretched arms. Philo and Patrick were at the deceased Dr. Miya Ainaloli’s residence with Philo’s Navy buddy Evan.

“They released Miya’s house as a crime scene this morning,” Evan said. He unclipped the crime scene tape stretched across the entry’s threshold and swept it out of the way. “They also told me they didn’t clean up after themselves.”

“Most cop jurisdictions don’t,” Philo said. “They get in, process the scene for evidence, get out. It’s what keeps crime scene cleaning companies like mine in business.”

“If you say so.” Evan paused and pressed a palm flat against the doorjamb to steady himself, then took a deep breath and exhaled. “Miya was so proud of these front doors…” An impressive flea market find, he said, their antique French colonial glass panes puttied into place individually and stunning in the sunlight. Except with her, Evan had been more pragmatic.

“Her argument was Kauai is low crime, she had a security system, with cameras and alarms and a quick-response arrangement with the security company. Plus she had Betsy, her Boston Terrier. But this old French door entry, with these glass panes—”

His finger poke found the empty space that once held a pane of glass, the one nearest the door handle. One tentative poke only, to confirm the glass was missing.

“… they rendered it all worthless. No deterrent whatsoever, the alarm service only good after the fact, after she was…” Evan’s mouth moistened, him swallowing the pain. He cleared his throat to compose himself. “After she and her dog were gone. I should have argued harder with her.”

“They killed her dog, too?”

“Don’t know. The cleaning lady told the cops Betsy wasn’t in the house when she arrived yesterday. The dog’s still missing.”

Only one pane of glass in the door was broken; all that was needed. Evan could reach in and open the locks from the inside but he didn’t, instead using the front door key on his keychain. All part of the denial, Philo knew. All part of not wanting to normalize what some murdering monster had done. Evan’s pragmatism had been validated, sure, but there would forever be the other side of it: rats always found a way in.

The front doors opened wide, letting them into the two-story section of the home. They were hit with a blast of cold air, almost cold enough they could hang meat in there. A sentiment Philo thought better unmentioned.

“Air conditioning’s still on high,” Evan said,