How could she play this? She couldn’t very well tell him she’d found his phone number on a label stuck to a cooler full of body parts. Or could she?
“Concerning Destin on August twenty-fourth,” she said, just as she realized the twenty-fourth was yesterday.
“I don’t understand. I told Joe we had to cancel Destin because of the hurricane.”
He sounded like a businessman. She hadn’t had the chance to research Advanced Medical Educational Technology. But there was nothing clandestine or sinister in his tone. The best interrogators Maggie had worked with had taught her that the less the interrogator said, the more the interrogated filled in. She waited.
“Are you working with Joe?” Piper asked.
“I’m trying to.” She kept her remarks innocuous.
Piper laughed and added, “I told him he needed an assistant. Look, Maggie—you don’t mind if I call you Maggie.”
A businessman but also a salesman, Maggie decided.
“Not at all.”
“I already told Joe I’d make this cancellation up to him. I’ve got a couple dozen surgeons coming to a conference in Tampa over Labor Day. I’m going to need at least twenty-two cervical spines. I’d prefer brain with skull base intact, if that’s possible.”
Maggie thought about the body parts found in the cooler, individually wrapped in plastic. Could it be that simple? A body broker making a delivery? From what little she knew, there was nothing illegal about it. Most federal regulations applied only to organs. Few states regulated anything beyond that.
“I don’t want to lose Joe,” he said when she didn’t respond. Evidently Maggie’s silence was disconcerting to Piper. “Can you tell him that? He hasn’t called and the number I have for him has already been changed. That’s an annoying habit your new boss has.”
“Yes, I know. He likes to be the one calling.” She wasn’t surprised.
“It’s tough to find someone with his skill and consistency. Especially someone who delivers and sets up. Can you tell him that?”
“Yes,” Maggie said.
As she pressed End, she noticed she had missed a call: Dr. Tomich.
Brokered body parts. It made sense. And it probably explained the identical cooler Liz Bailey saw outside a funeral home. It didn’t, however, explain Vince Coffland’s disappearance.
Maggie pressed Return Call.
“Tomich,” he snapped. His clipped manner made his name sound as if it were a swear word.
“Dr. Tomich, it’s Maggie O’Dell returning your call.”
“Ah yes. Agent O’Dell.”
Before she could tell him that the parts might be brokered, Tomich surprised her by saying, “It appears you were correct.”
“Excuse me?”
“After examining the X-rays I discovered a bullet in Mr. Vince Coffland.”
“Are you certain it wasn’t shrapnel? I think that’s what the metal is in the severed foot.”
“No, no, no. This is a bullet. I went back and extracted it. Looks like a .22 caliber handgun. The trajectory path would suggest that it entered somewhere below the occipital bone and above the cervical vertebrae.”
“In other words he was shot in the back of the head.”
“That would be within the broad range, yes. You understand I am speculating. Without the head and neck I do not have the entrance wound. But from where the bullet was lodged and from the downward path it left in the tissue, I would estimate that the victim may have been bending over when shot.”
Execution style? Maggie kept the thought to herself as she thanked Dr. Tomich and ended the call.
The body parts may have actually been meant for one of AMET’s surgical conferences. However, it looked like Piper’s connection, Joe the body broker, might also be a killer.
CHAPTER 52
Charlotte Mills packed up the last plastic container and hauled it upstairs. She had secured all her important documents, jewelry, and memorabilia, including photo albums, scrapbooks, and her collection of autographed novels. One container alone held all the newspaper and magazine articles about her husband’s “untimely death,” or as Charlotte called it, his Mafia-style murder.
The federal government had ruled the plane crash an accident, an unfortunate engine failure on the Lear jet that was supposed to deliver him to Tallahassee so he could testify in front of a grand jury. She had warned George months before that turning state’s evidence could mean his death. But he insisted it was the right thing to do, his penance for helping “the son-of-a-bitch” corrupt politician get elected. As a result, the son of a bitch kept his job.