The Body Thief (19 page)

Richard scoffed. “It didn’t take much effort
on my part to convince you.”

“And
you
were supposed to make sure
you conducted the autopsies. Your staff, and most certainly not my
sister, should never have come anywhere near those bodies. We had
an agreement and you fucked up.”

“It wasn’t my fault I came down with a
stomach virus! I wasn’t the one who called your sister in! Staffing
was responsible for that! I couldn’t get myself off the floor of
the bathroom. I was in no position to carry out a post mortem.”

“You should have told me that when I called
you to authorize the pre-autopsy donation.”

“You called me the night before. How the
hell was I to know I’d be face down in a toilet bowl by the time
the body arrived at the morgue. That bug lasted more than
twenty-four hours! I’ve never felt so sick in my life!”

Alistair gritted his teeth against the
hopelessness of it. There was no arguing with Richard and it hardly
mattered, anyway—even if the man wasn’t telling the truth. Sam had
done the autopsy in Richard’s absence and had been concerned enough
to report her findings to the police. Alistair had no doubt that
the detectives he’d met in the general manager’s office were smart
enough to work it out. Most of the organ retrievals had been
carried out by Alistair and those that had been transported to the
morgue for autopsy had been authorized by Richard.

Alistair could only hope that the detectives
didn’t pursue it any further. If they examined the autopsy records
and compared them to the consents…

“Speak with my sister,” he said, urgency
gripping him inside. “You need to make sure she’s well off the
scent. If the police come asking questions, wanting to compare the
bodies in the state they arrived at the morgue to the signed
consent forms, they’ll notice the anomalies and then both of us are
in a world of hurt.”

Richard gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “You,
at least. Let’s not forget who started this.”

Alistair leaned across the small table and
pushed his face up close to his friend’s. Fear filled the other
man’s eyes, replacing the earlier defiance.

Good.
Alistair needed him scared.
“Make no mistake, mate. We’re in this together. If I go down,
you’ll go down with me. I promise.”

They eyed each other for a full minute
before Richard lowered his gaze. He put more space between him and
Alistair, and sat back.

“All right. I’ll talk to Samantha, try and
distract her from her idea that something’s wrong. I’m not sure how
I’ll manage it. She’s as sharp as a tack. But I’ll think of
something.”

Alistair smiled, relieved. “Good. I also
want you to get hold of the morgue records from the donor bodies
autopsied over the winter months. It seems that’s the focus of the
police investigation.”

Richard frowned. “What am I supposed to do?
They’re all stored in a secure computer database.”

“I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll think of
something. A convenient computer virus that just happens to wipe
out a heap of files. Make sure it’s not only the donor body files,
though. That would be plain stupid. Do it right and hopefully,
neither of us has anything to worry about.”

Richard nodded and then picked up his glass
of beer and held it up to propose a toast. “Here’s to increasing
the rate of organ and tissue donation at the illustrious Sydney
Harbour Hospital and here’s to its even more distinguished boss of
the organ donation and transplantation team.”

Alistair could tell the man was mostly being
facetious, but he clinked his glass to Richard’s all the same. As
was often said, it was better to keep your friends close and your
enemies even closer. He intended to keep Richard very firmly in his
sights.

* * *

Rohan turned the page and read the words
scrawled across the next document. Why were doctors allowed to get
away with such indecipherable handwriting? It made his job that
much harder when he had to guess nearly every other word. Not
having a medical background or being familiar with medical
terminology didn’t help.

He’d received the records he’d requested
from the general manager and had been plowing his way through them
for more than three hours. The copies he’d made of all the hospital
notes that related to every patient who’d died and donated their
organs since June were piled on every available surface. The squad
room was quiet, empty of almost everyone except Bryce and him.
Rohan let out a heavy sigh and glanced over at his partner who was
similarly engaged.

“Find anything yet?” Bryce asked, turning
his head in Rohan’s direction.

“No, but I’ve learned more about the myriad
of illnesses and disease that attack the elderly and ultimately
cause their death than I’ll ever need to know. It makes you look
forward to getting old; that’s for sure.”

Bryce grinned and leaned back in his chair,
stretching his arms above his head. “You’ve got that right. I
wouldn’t want to be old and frail, for quids.”

“Except, if we don’t grow old and frail, it
means we’ve died before our time. That’s not such a comforting
scenario, either.”

Bryce shook his head. “There’s no way we can
win! Man, sometimes life sucks!” He opened his mouth on a huge yawn
and then settled back into his seat.

“One thing I have noticed is that a lot of
these patients or their relatives were seen by Doctor Alistair
Wolfe. We’ll have to get Hannah Langdon’s records and see what
matches up. It will be interesting to see if the patients she
identified as having unusually excessive evidence of organ and
tissue donation were among his patients.”

“He
is
the head of the Unit and
nobody can question his devotion to the cause. It’s not surprising
to find his name on so many of the files.”

“Still, it’s worth making note of,” Rohan
replied. “I’ve also been going through the consent forms obtained
prior to the retrievals. All the ones I’ve seen so far have been
limited to one or two of the major organs and I’m almost through
the pile. I haven’t seen any that gave consent for skin and eye
tissue, and yet, according to Hannah and the girl at Forsyth’s
funeral home, there were at least two bodies that came from the
Sydney Harbour Hospital with those removed.”

“Yeah,” Bryce nodded, his expression
thoughtful. “I haven’t come across a consent for that kind of
thing, either.” He returned his attention to the remaining files in
front of him.

Rohan did the same. A moment later, he
frowned. The file of Ronald Miller was missing the consent
altogether. He must have overlooked it.

Starting at the front, Rohan slowly went
through the file again and came up empty. It wasn’t there.
Could
it have been misplaced? Incorrectly filed?
It wasn’t beyond the
realm of possibility. He could only imagine the amount of paperwork
generated every day in a busy hospital.

“This is a little strange,” Bryce murmured,
eerily echoing Rohan’s thoughts.

“What is?”

“I’ve been through this file three times. I
can’t find the consent form.”

Rohan’s heart thumped hard against the walls
of his chest.
Coincidence?
Surely two of the hospital files
couldn’t have fallen victim to sloppy administrative staff?

“What’s the name of the patient?”

“Cassandra Jackson.”

Rohan suddenly recalled the night at the
station when Samantha had told him one of the donor bodies she’d
autopsied had arrived at the morgue without a consent form in the
hospital notes. He hadn’t asked her for a name or if the deceased
had been a patient at the Sydney Harbour Hospital, but that
information could be obtained easily enough. Under other
circumstances…

At the thought of again having to come face
to face with her, his gut twisted with nerves. He hadn’t spoken to
her since the night at her apartment. Every time he thought of that
moment when everything went so off course, he cringed.

Okay, he knew this much: She’d overreacted
to a throwaway statement. He hadn’t meant to insult her. Not for an
instant did he believe she was deceiving him about being on the
pill and, at the time, he’d been unable to see how she’d made such
a leap. He was just being cautious. Like he’d told her, it wasn’t
personal.

Later, after he’d had a chance to cool down,
he’d replayed their conversation in his head and could see how
she’d misunderstood, but their argument had made one thing even
clearer: She didn’t know him at all.

It hurt that she thought he believed she was
capable of such dishonesty when that couldn’t be further from the
truth. She was the most honest, honorable, selfless woman he knew.
How else would she be able to devote her time examining corpses in
order to find answers for relatives of the deceased? Most people,
for all their good intentions, would turn and run a mile. But not
Samantha.

In the short time he’d known her he’d
discovered she was unique and special and sweet and wonderful. And
he couldn’t get past the feeling that he’d stuffed things up big
time. She was always in his thoughts and he had no desire to erase
her from his mind or his heart, but damage had been done. There
didn’t seem to be a way out.

All he could do was apologize and hope that
she’d give him another chance. Now that he’d begun to get to know
her properly and had kissed her, there was no way he could walk
away. She touched him deep inside like no other woman had and he
was determined to make her see they were good together, in every
possible way. Years ago they’d had a strong friendship based on
mutual interests and respect. It was time to convince her he was
worthy of that connection again, and so much more.

Sam put the last suture in place and
straightened her back. A muscle in her shoulder complained. She’d
been bent over the gurney for way too long and now she was paying
for it. She’d give anything for a back massage. If only she had the
time…

Night after night, driving home from work,
she vowed to leave a little earlier the next time so she could
visit a massage therapist in the city, but over and over it
happened like tonight: She’d end up taking the exit that took her
over the Harbour Bridge and arrive home with the kinks still in her
tired muscles and the knots still in her back.

Placing her tools in the stainless steel
tray beside the gurney, she returned the body to the fridge.
Tugging off her protective clothing, she dropped the pile into the
laundry bin and headed into the showers. At close to five, the day
was as good as done. With September now upon them, the days were
getting longer. She smiled at the thought of enjoying a few rays of
afternoon sunshine and finding new flowers blooming in the garden
beds that lined the pathway to her building.

On spring days like this, she missed the
large backyard she’d had as a child. During those early years, she
spent hours in the garden with her sisters and her mom. Even
Alistair would come out and help sometimes and they’d gather around
and listen while their mother told them stories about when she was
young: how she’d worked in the garden with her own mother and how
she was taught what each plant was and where it would grow
best.

Sam’s smile turned sad. It had been a long
time since her mother had been well enough to do anything other
than enjoy a little fresh air and sunshine in her beautiful garden.
She was far too sick to get down on her hands and knees and weed
and plant and water like she wanted to.

Sam and her siblings now contributed to the
cost of a gardener and once a week, a man came in to trim the
hedges, weed the garden beds and water the plants. It didn’t make
up for the fact Enid Wolfe couldn’t do it herself, but Sam knew it
gave her mother pleasure to know the property was being cared for
and treated with love.

Scrubbing away the effects of the day, Sam
rinsed off and then stepped out of the shower. Drying herself, she
slipped on the clothes she’d worn to work and then ran a brush
through her damp hair. It curled around her face and she
impatiently tucked it back behind her ears. It irritated her that
the gesture reminded her of how Rohan had run his fingers through
her hair.

She was grateful he’d left when he had. She
might have done something embarrassing—like apologizing and begging
him to stay—and as much as time had taken most of the heat from the
memory of his words, she was still convinced her anger had been
justified. It saddened her to think she’d lost his friendship—and
what could have been a whole lot more—for a second time. The look
he’d thrown her before he left her apartment told her it was
unlikely he’d ever set foot in her building again.

With a sigh, she returned to her office.
Taking a seat before her computer, she began to enter her findings
for the autopsies she’d conducted throughout the day. The phone at
her elbow rang, momentarily startling her. She assumed, this late
in the day, most of the people she dealt with would have packed up
and gone home. Picking up the receiver, she answered the call.

“Doctor Wolfe.”

“Sam, it’s Angie. Sorry to bother you, but
you have a visitor in the waiting room. It’s that detective again.
The cute one. Are you available to see him?”

Sam’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of
Rohan. She hadn’t expected him to seek her out. In fact, she hadn’t
expected to hear from him ever again.

“Sam?”

She blinked and cleared her frantic
thoughts. “Um… It’s fine, Angie. Tell him I’ll be out in a
minute.”

“No problem. I’m about to finish for the day
and I think most of the other staff are gone. Are you going to be
all right with him here on your own?”

“Yes, of course, I’ll be fine. The
detective’s a…a friend of mine.”

“In that case, I’ll see you in the
morning.”