Blood Debt

transplants weren't that difficult."
    "For transplants. Afterward, they carry the same risk of rejection or infection as any other transplant, and infection kills." She half turned to look up at him from under a fall of silken hair. "Do you know what the greatest advancement in medicine was in the nineteenth century?"
    "Convincing doctors to wash their hands." He couldn't help preening a little at her sudden smile. "Hey, I'm not as stupid as I look."
    Vicki would have taken advantage of a line like that. Dr. Seto looked so aghast that he might possibly think she believed he was, Celluci found himself apologizing and going out of his way to be charming for the rest of the walk.
    Back at the clinic, the doctor readily agreed to conduct a quick tour.
    "As long as it's very quick." The same three old men, at least Celluci thought they were the same three, watched their every move.
    Unless there was a hidden operating theater in the basement, kidneys were not being transplanted on the premises. However, many of the clinic's patients were the sort of people who could disappear without questions being raised. A number of them had.
    "They just never come back." Dr. Seto sighed as she slipped back into her lab coat. "It gets discouraging."
    "Do you have any idea where they might have gone?"
    "Back East, maybe. Hopefully, home." Her eyes focused on faces he couldn't see. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that too many of them have ended up as police statistics of one kind or another."
    When he pulled out the creased photocopy of the autopsy photo, she shook her head. "No. Not one of mine."
    Celluci'd seen liars just as sincere and almost as beautiful, but he believed her.
    A clearly stoned woman staggered in, doubled over in pain, and howling for a doctor. Celluci murmured a good-bye he doubted anyone heard, and left. Walking back to the car, he fought a rising melancholy. He and Vicki used to go for dim sum about once a month.
    They were often the only two Caucasians in the second-floor restaurant and they both towered over the rest of the clientele. The elderly women serving the food would occasionally walk right on by, shaking their heads and muttering, "You don't want."
    It was something they'd never be able to do again.
    A twenty-dollar parking ticket didn't help his mood.
    Traffic didn't ease until he was almost at the library.
    Back when he'd been in uniform, an old staff sergeant at 14
    Division had been fond of saying, "You get someone talked about three times during an investigation, and you go for a conviction 'cause that's the son of a bitch that did the crime."
    Ronald Swanson's name had come up twice now.
    A little digging unearthed the name of the clinic Patricia Chou had mentioned, "… a private clinic where people in the last stages of renal failure can wait for a kidney…" According to old issues of the weekly newspaper, Business in Vancouver, Ronald Swanson had been responsible for its development, was on the board of directors, and contributed a large portion of its financial support.
    Project Hope wasn't listed among the clinics in the phone book, but that was hardly surprising as it probably took a doctor's recommendation to get in.
    Rubbing his eyes, Celluci left the microfiche carrel, dug out his phone card, and called the clinic from the library lobby. Without identifying himself, he asked if they had a transplant surgeon on staff.
    Coolly professional, the duty nurse admitted they did. Celluci thanked her and hung up.
    Motive. Swanson's wife had died of kidney failure waiting for a transplant. Swanson could want revenge against the system that failed him. Or maybe her death had pointed out a market waiting to be exploited.
    Means. Swanson had access to facilities and the finances to buy any talent he wanted.
    Opportunity. Suppose Dr. Seto didn't know she was supplying the donors? Swanson's company had donated her computers. Could he access them again for the information he needed? According to Patricia Chou, skilled hackers were a dime a dozen, and past experience proved that one in twelve law-abiding citizens could be bought.
    "With enough money you have the opportunity to do anything."
    A hard point to argue with, but he had nothing that could be called evidence by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing he could give to the police that would justify an arrest and keep Henry Fitzroy from taking the law into his own hands.
    But the link, however circumstantial, between Ronald Swanson and Henry's ghost was