Mike had seated himself, back to the wall at a small table near the jukebox. Lydia walked over and sat down across from him like she’d known him all her life. He looked sullen, tired. But he perked up considerably when Lydia joined him.
“Are you Mike Urquia?’’ she asked, in a tone she knew would immediately dash whatever hopes he had – official, cold.
“I am.’’
“I’m Lydia Strong, I have some questions about Maria Lopez. Do you have a few minutes to talk to me?’’
He looked over at the other people at the bar and then leaned in close to her. “Look, lady, I don’t want any more shit from you people. I had nothing to do with her death. Sure I fucked her and I was there the night they say she was killed, but I didn’t do it. If you want to ask me any more questions, you’re going to have to arrest me.’’
“Mr. Urquia, I know you didn’t do it but I want to find out who did. As far as I understand, you were the only person close to Maria and you were the last person to see her alive. I want to find out about her, about who she was.’’
“Close to her? Lady,’’ he said, and chuckled, “I wasn’t that close to her. To these people, ‘close’ means I fucked her more than once – twice in my case. Look, I got a wife and two kids living about twenty miles from here. I come here to blow off some steam. When she came on to me, I took her home. Some of the guys around here said she gave good head, sometimes you had to pay her a little something. She was attractive enough – what can I say? But I don’t know a thing about her. I’m sorry if something bad happened to her, but I didn’t even know her last name until the police came and questioned me.’’
She looked at him and felt a little nauseated by him, by people’s ability to use one another so cheaply. “Did you talk at all? Did she say one word about herself to you? Anything about someone who had been bothering her, following her?’’
He looked like he wanted to say yes, to get the heat off of himself for a moment. “No, we really didn’t have…you know,’’ he paused, searching for the right words, “any conversations.’’
“So, basically, what you’re telling me is that you took her home because you heard she gave good head, threw her down, fucked her, and then left. And the only time she opened her mouth was to put your dick in it?’’
He leaned back in his chair, put his thumbs through his belt loops. “Basically, yes,’’ he said without a trace of shame, a wide grin across his face.
Sadly, Lydia could see that he was telling the truth. “One more question. Did you see any vehicles on the street when you left Maria Lopez’s apartment that night?’’
“The cops asked me that question.’’
“And what did you tell them?’’
“It was dark.’’
“Think for a second, Mr. Urquia. Did you see any vehicles?’’ Lydia was careful. There was a fine line between leading someone to tell you what you want to hear and jogging their memory.
“There were some cars parked but I didn’t notice what make and model.’’
“Cars only? Could there have been anything larger
– say, an SUV or a van?’’
“Actually, I think was a van,’’ he said, casting his eyes down and to the right. “I couldn’t say a color exactly because it was dark but maybe blue, or black. It wasn’t a van, though. It was one of those minivans.’’
“When you exited the apartment, was the car to the left or to the right of the front door?’’
“To the right.’’
She pulled her card from the inside pocket of her coat and slipped it across the table. “Please hold on to this, Mr. Urquia. If you think of anything else that might be helpful, don’t hesitate to give me a call.’’
She got up and strode out, throwing a ten on the bar as she left.
At midnight, the coroner’s office was dead quiet. Maria Lopez’s autopsied body lay covered on the metal examination table. The fluorescent lights buzzed quietly, flickering slightly every few minutes, casting the stark room in a cold eerie light. A leaky faucet dripped rhythmically into the aluminum sink. The sound was measured, not actually distracting, but it was annoying Morrow, who had gotten up from his seat at the conference table in the next room twice to try to tighten the spigot.
The conference room was bathed in the same cold harsh light. Jeffrey, Simon, and Henry Wizner, the chief medical examiner, sat slouched around a conference table littered with their notes, photographs, and the empty wrappers from the meal they had eaten while working. Long hours of poring over the same material had wearied each of them and it showed in their wrinkled shirts, loosened ties, and the dark circles forming under their eyes.
Henry Wizner stood over six feet tall, and was so thin as to be gaunt. With ivory skin, large dark eyes, and hair as black as coal, he looked like a ghost of himself. Soft-spoken with a British accent, Wizner exuded the quiet authority of a man who knew he was the best of his profession. His intelligence and wit were as sharp as the scalpel he used to do his job.
He took pleasure in his work, always marveling at the damage people do to each other and to themselves, at what the human body could endure – and what it couldn’t. Twisted bones, broken flesh, disembowelment, decapitation…he’d seen it all and then some. It had taken on a cartoonlike unreality for him, something that allowed him to sleep at night.
Maria Lopez was a mess. He’d seen worse cases, but nothing quite so intriguing in a while. “Well, it’s interesting,’’ remarked Wizner, “because this almost looks like the work of a surgeon. It’s no hack job. It’s not like someone just reached into her chest cavity and ripped the heart out.’’
“And according to your report,’’ interjected Jeffrey, “she was dead before the incision was made and the organs removed. But alive when he slashed her throat…?’’
“Yes.’’
“Because of the rash around her nose and mouth, you believe that he used chloroform to subdue her.’’
“Yes.’’
“Where does one obtain chloroform?’’
“You can get it easily enough over the Internet… if you know where to look. You can also make it by mixing bleach and acetone and distilling it. Chances are, if he knows how to use a scalpel, he knows how to get or make chloroform. It was once used as an anesthetic and they probably still say a word or two about it in med school.’’
“So you think this guy has a medical background.’’
“It would be a reasonable guess.’’
“And where the fuck is her heart?’’ said Morrow.
“A couple of years ago, I don’t know if you gentlemen remember,’’ began Wizner, “an American tourist was beaten to death in South America. She was there to pick up a child she had adopted. The natives had been spooked by a rumor that Americans had been abducting children then stealing their organs for trade on the black market.’’
“I do remember. The Bureau had some men down there,’’ Jeffrey said, glancing up from the picture of Maria’s body at the crime scene. Lydia was in the shot, and he’d been looking at her, half listening to Wizner.
Morrow had no idea what they were talking about so he kept quiet, not wanting to seem uninformed.
“Of course, UNOS was outraged and went to great trouble in publishing reports about these supposedly unsubstantiated claims, claiming it was an urban myth with no evidence to support it. But meanwhile the reports kept coming in; there were television shows airing in Europe; Dateline did a show here featuring a man who claimed his corneas were stolen.’’
“You can’t be suggesting that this is actually happening here. It’s impossible,’’ said Jeffrey, incredulous. “You can’t just take any organ out of some random person and plug it into someone else. There are strict time constraints, batteries of tests that need to be run. You’re a doctor, you know this.’’