“I don’t think you should try to see him,” Wright added during the brief pause. “It might alert whoever’s looking for you. It’s too dangerous. Roger wouldn’t want you taking unnecessary chances.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She felt her cheeks flush and her eyes mist. She’d never, not for a minute, believed her father had killed her mother. If he were dying, she had to find a way to convince him of that continued belief – and her love for him.
“Tell him – tell him I said, ‘semper fi.’”
“Like the Marine Corps?”
“He’ll know what it means.” Frankie cut the connection before she began crying like a baby.
When she returned to the dining room, she got right down to business. “Let’s proceed as if I’m the target. Surely it’s easier to find out where my house is than track down a recently-paroled homeless man.”
Cruz quirked his mouth. “You’d think, but I found Cole pretty fast.”
“Hot shot,” Slater said in an attempt at humor.
Cruz took in Frankie’s pale face and damp eyes. “Everything okay?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I – I know you both want me to hide out here, tend to my patient, but I – I have to visit my father.” She paused and then dropped the bombshell. “He’s in Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, under guard.”
“Father?” Slater and Cruz spoke at the same time, and it would’ve been comical if the situation weren’t so dire.
Cruz recovered first. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“You gotta give us more than that,” Slater said wryly.
Frankie gave them the short version. “My father is doing fifteen to life for murder two. He was attacked in the exercise yard at Folsom State Prison. Knife wounds. They don’t expect him to live.”
Stunned silence followed.
“I’m going to see him,” Frankie insisted, a fierce look on her face. “With or without your approval.”
Chapter 54
Toward dawn, the three of them lounged around Slater’s great room, a fire roaring in the fireplace, the comfortable area warm with the heat of fire and strong coffee. This was the first focused opportunity they’d had to share their individual findings with each other.
Cruz had made copies of the kite Cole had stolen from Pelican Bay, and handed Frankie a yellow legal pad to jot down notes. “Let’s try to figure out what we know about the deaths of these three people,” he began, “see how they’re connected to each other and the attacks on Frankie – and maybe what’s going on at the prison.”
Putting down his coffee mug, Cruz shifted toward the front of the armchair he sat in. “Okay, we have three dead victims, all attacked in a similar fashion, but not exactly the same way, according to the medical examiner.”
Frankie spoke from her position on the couch, “Cole claims they were all chopped, slashed and bashed – his words. He says that’s what the Lords do.”
The description of mayhem sounded creepy, and an ominous silence settled over the room, a grim contradiction between the fire’s cheeriness and the topic’s gloominess.
“Unfortunately, Cole summed it up right,” Slater said. “All three bodies were savaged by knives and blunt instruments.”
“Then, what’s different about the murders?” asked Frankie.
Cruz continued the thread of conversation. “Two of the three had internal body parts removed – not Dickey Hinchey, though.”
“What?” Frankie sat up straight. “Someone removed your victims’ organs? In tact?”
“Dr. Wilson thinks so,” answered Cruz. “He doesn’t know for sure, and not all of the organs – maybe the liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart. And he says the murder weapons don’t match.”
In her mind Frankie heard Cole’s crazy mutterings again – Music! Keyboards! Music!
“Cole tried to warn us,” she said, “when he talked about music.”
Slater rose from a wing chair and jabbed at the fire with a poker.
“And Frankie’s findings about the illegal surgeries performed at Pelican Bay.” Cruz addressed Slater’s back, “She discovered that a high percentage of inmates at Pelican Bay have had some kind of abdominal surgery.”
“I’ve postulated that they removed kidneys because that’s the only whole organ that could’ve been excised and the patient still survive.” She looked troubled. “But I had no idea your murder victims were missing organs, too.”
“Holy hell!” Slater turned away from the fire, his bronzed face disturbed. “What are they doing with these kidneys? Why are inmates willing to give them up?”
“Frankie and I think it’s some token of allegiance to the white gang Lords of Death.”
“What the hell is the world coming to?” Slater raked his fingers through his cropped hair. “What do they do with these – parts, just throw them away?”
“Or sell them on the black market,” Cruz answered, “but we think it’s tied to our homeless people,” Cruz answered.