Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

Firing off a rally of photos, he captured what he hoped would be parts of a puzzle that he could piece together into something meaningful later.

Ten minutes passed, and what looked like a motorbike courier in black clothing appeared within the moving gaps. All three people disappeared. Moments later, the courier reappeared, pulling a wheeled case about the size of a small airline carry-on. Lazlo fired off more shots. It could have been an insulated donor-organ box painted black. He heard the motorcycle start up, and seconds later saw the courier appear about ten yards away on the service road before disappearing behind the corner of the main hospital building. In the space of forty minutes, he saw three more motorcycle couriers come and go—then nothing.

Lazlo made his way out of the abandoned psychiatric block and through the developer’s site which, in addition to bordering with the remainder of the hospital’s grounds, also bordered with the main road and a side street. Squeezing through a gap between the panels of the site fencing, he re-entered the hospital grounds and headed toward the visitor parking lot where he had left his car. As he walked past the delivery road he had seen being used by the courier earlier, he noticed it was separated from the rest of the hospital grounds by a tall, chain-link fence. Part of its route brought it alongside the developer’s site where the construction site fence acted as a common boundary wall.

Driving out of the parking lot and through the exit onto the main street, Lazlo saw that access to the delivery road was by a separate entrance and exit from the same street and was controlled via a security barrier and an intercom. It occurred to him that if someone wanted to bypass the security measures, they could do so by accessing the delivery road directly from the developer’s land by easily taking down and then reinstating sections of the temporary fence.

With this in mind, and remembering that the developer’s land was a corner plot, Lazlo turned right onto the main street. He passed the point where the frontage of the hospital grounds ended and the development site started, marked by solid and seamless painted plywood-paneled fencing. It was covered with artist’s impressions of the finished condos and logos of Skyview Developments.

He followed the fencing as it turned a corner into the side street he had seen earlier. As he drove along the narrow street, he found a double gate with ‘SITE ACCESS’ and ‘NO PARKING’ signs attached to it. If his theory was correct, and there was a secret connection between the development and the hospital’s delivery road, the traffic to and from the secret organ harvesting center would use these access gates.

Lazlo moved his car to a position where he would be able to see any movement in and out of the gates in his rearview mirror.

Bodies start decomposing within twenty-four hours of death, unless refrigerated, his coroner friend, Tom Stevens, had told him. That meant organ harvesting would probably have to take place during this time frame. A refrigerated truck for transportation of the bodies would be too conspicuous entering and exiting a construction site. They would have no choice but to go the un-refrigerated route. That would mean frequent, well-organized transport that wouldn’t look out of place. A larger panel van would be ideal. Then what would they do with the bodies? El Gordito had the crematorium, but as David Miller had pointed out earlier, he couldn’t be burning that many bodies without proper permits. So, perhaps he was dumping them in a landfill, but that would pose a risk of discovery . . . There was one more possibility, and as far-fetched as it seemed, he had seen evidence of it some years ago on a different drug case. It might be that the bodies were being used as drug mules.

Forty-five minutes later, the white panel van emerged from the gates. He waited for it to pass. It was visibly sitting lower on its suspension than it had done before. It had gone in empty and come out definitely loaded with something heavy. Ten bodies, at 190 pounds each on average, would weigh close to the load limit on one of those vans.

He saw the van take a left turn. Lazlo figured the driver had been trained to be cautious of being followed and was taking precautionary, evasive action. Lazlo avoided taking the turn and drove on to the next junction, where he took a left and then a right. He could see the van ahead, a few cars in front. The van turned onto a highway, and Lazlo let a few more cars get between him and the van before he settled into a leisurely drive with his cruise control activated. This should be an easy tail, he thought.

He was just about to follow the van onto the exit to the Henry Hudson Parkway when his mobile rang.

“What is it, Cousins?” Lazlo barked.

You told me to let you know whenever we got another staged murder by a Mexican gang.”

“Go on,” Lazlo encouraged, his voice softening. Police Officer Cousins was ambitious and willing to bend the rules if it would help his rise through the ranks and, so far, a little quid pro quo had worked out fine for both of them.

“Well, come to the shoreline at Riverside Park between 147th and 152nd Streets. You’re gonna want to see this.”

Lazlo hesitated to let the van go at first, but then figured if he was right about the setup, there would be more vans to follow tomorrow.

He got to Riverside Park in less than ten minutes.

Lazlo hustled over lawns toward the bank of the Hudson River. The lights of a police cruiser sparked and danced over the flowing water. They zapped along the strange rock sculptures that only adorned that particular section of the riverbank, and lit up in urgent red and blue flashes the pallid skin of a naked body that