Conspiracy in Death

She took a deep breath, then another. Then focused on the monitor.

I can't say I'm positive what it all means, but I have some theories, and don't like any of them. You'll see from the records that follow that regular calls have gone out from the main 'link here at the clinic to the Drake. While we might contact some department there on occasion for a consult, there are too many, too often, and all from the main 'link. Rotation doctors use this office 'link. Only nurses and clerical staff use the main regularly. There are also calls to the Nordick in Chicago. Unless we had a patient who had used that facility and whose records would be there, we would have little reason to contact an out-of-state. Possibly, in rare cases, to reach a specialist. This same principle applies to the centers in London and Paris. You'll find only a few calls there.

I've checked, and the contact numbers for each facility are the organ wings. I've also checked the logs here for who was on duty when these calls were made. There's only one staff member whose schedule fits the time frame. I'm going to have a little chat with her after I file this. I can't think of an explanation she can come up with that'll satisfy me, but I'm going to give her a chance before I call the cops.

I assume, when I do, I'm to keep your name out of it. How about a bonus? We won't call it blackmail. Ha ha.

Get these murdering bastards, Dallas.

Louise.

"Didn't I tell you just to get the data?" Eve mumbled. "What the hell were you thinking, hotshot?"

She glanced at her wrist unit, calculated that even now Feeney and Peabody would be hauling Jan's butt into interview. She thought she would cheerfully give up a decade of her life to be inside that room and in charge.

No sulking, she reminded herself and began to scan the 'link logs when the one beside her beeped.

"Dallas." She frowned as she saw Feeney's face. "You get Jan into interview already?"

"No."

"You've picked her up?"

"More or less. She's about to be bagged and tagged. We found her in her apartment, dead and still fresh. Whoever took her out did it fast and neat. Single blow to the head. Prelim time puts it less than thirty minutes before we got to her door."

"Hell." Eve closed her eyes a minute, shifted her thoughts. "That puts it under that same amount of time after Louise regained consciousness. Defensive wound indicated she'd seen her attacker and could identify."

"Somebody didn't want Jan to talk." Feeney pursed his lips, nodded. "Follows."

"That puts it back at the Drake, Feeney. Wo's out. We need to find out where the other doctors on the short list were in that hour period. You've got the security discs and logs from Jan's building."

"Peabody's confiscating right now."

"He wouldn't have done it himself. He's not stupid. You're going to find a droid, six two, two ten, Caucasian, brown and brown. But somebody had to activate and program."

"Droid." Feeney nodded. "McNab hit something interesting when he sca

"I have a feeling he won't be ru

She trailed off, snapping back. "Sorry," she said in a careful voice. "Just thinking out loud."

"You think good, kid. Always have. Keep going."

"I was going to say that in some of the research I've done, I found that Westley Friend's self-termination used the same method as Dr. Wo, and they were both – along with some of our other cast of characters – involved in some classified project at the time of his death. It seems a little too neat. Someone might want to suggest to Morris that he consider that dose was forcibly administered."

"It was her pin found on scene."

"Yeah, and it was the only mistake in this whole business. That's a little too neat, too."

"Smelling goat, are you, Dallas? Scapegoat?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm smelling. Be interesting to find out how much she knew. If I had access to her personal logs…"

"I think I'll just wake up McNab, keep the boy busy awhile. You stand by."

"I'm not going anywhere."

When the transmission ended, she picked up her coffee and got up to prowl. It had to go back to Friend, she decided. Revolutionary new implant that made certain hot areas of organ research obsolete. Meaning end of funding, end of glory for those heavily involved in those areas.

"What if a group of doctors or interested parties continued and restarted research on a covert level?" She turned to Roarke, grimaced when she noted he was ma

"It's all right. I've got his pattern now. It's nearly routine from here." He glanced up, pleased to see her focused, restless, edgy. That, he thought, was his cop. "What's your theory?"

"It's not one rogue doctor," she began. "Look at this little operation. I can't do this out on my own. I've got you, with your questionable skills. Feeney, Peabody, and McNab, sliding under regs and procedure to feed me data. I enlisted a doctor on the side. I've even got Nadine ru

"She contacted someone with possible donors, let's say." Roarke nodded. "Every business needs a good inside track. And this appears to be a business."

"She passed data straight to the labs. Her contact with the outside centers could have, likely was, for verification of a hit. She'd be what you'd call middle management, I guess."

"Close enough."

"I bet we find she has a nice nest egg stashed. They'd pay well. We know their lab man had to be Young. Every business needs a geek, right?"

"Can't run one otherwise."

"The Drake's enormous, and our geek was pretty much in charge of the organ wing. He'd know just where to stash outside samples. And he had a medical license. He'd be the likely candidate to assist the surgeon, to bag the sample, to transport it back to the lab. That's two."

She crossed to the AutoChef, getting more coffee. "Wo. Politics and administration. A skilled surgeon who enjoyed power. Former president of the AMA. She knew how to play the game. She'd have high co

"Only if what they're doing, or hope to do, works."

"Yeah. They're willing to kill to make it work, so why not take out the competition? It used to be organ building. Louise sort of explained it in the initial report she did for me. They took tissue from a damaged or defective organ and built a new one in the lab. Grew them in molds so the tissue'd take the right shape. That solved the rejection problem. You used the patient's own tissue so the body'd accept it and tick along. But it takes time. You just don't grow yourself a new, happy heart overnight."

She walked back to the console, eased a hip on the edge, and watched him work as she talked it out. "They do that kind of thing in vitro. You got like nine months to deal there. You can grow the bad part back or repair it.