In Death 08 - Conspiracy in Death

"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 running research. It's too big for one cop -- and a cop working outside the system -- to handle alone. You need contacts, fillers, assistants, experts. There's a team, Roarke. He's got a team. We know he had the nurse. My best guess is she fed him data on patients, the kind that use the clinic or make use of the medi-van service. Sleepers, LCs, dealers, chemi-heads. Dregs," she concluded. "Vessels."
    "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 connections. But obviously, she was also considered dispensable. Maybe she had a conscience, maybe she was getting nervous, or maybe they just sacrificed her to throw the investigation off the scent. It worked for Friend," she mused. "He wouldn't have been pleased, do you think, if he'd discovered this rogue research conspiracy. It would have cut into his profits, his glory. There go the lecture fees, the big banquets in his honor, the media hype."
    "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.
    "Then Friend comes along," she continued. "Building and brokering organs has been the thing. It's tough to grow them for anyone over -- I forget -- like ninety because of the timing and the age of the tissue. Takes weeks to grow a new bladder and you've got to do molding and layering and stuff. A lot of work, a lot of money to order one up. But Friend comes up with this artificial material that the body accepts. It's cheap, it's durable, and it can be molded to order. Mass-produced. Applause, applause, let's all live forever."
    He glanced up at that, had to grin. "Don't you want to?"
    "Not with a bunch of interchangeable spare parts. But anyhow, he gets carried through the streets, the crowd roars and throws buckets of money and adulation at him. And the guys doing organ building and reconstruction research are shoved right out into the cold. Who wants to hang around peeing in a diaper while their new bladder's growing in some lab when they can pop into surgery, get a new, improved one, and be peeing like a champ inside a week?"
    "Agreed. And that manufacturing arm of Roarke Industries thanks the full bladders everywhere. But since everyone's happy this way, what good will this little group of mad scientists prove by continuing their work?"
    "You keep your own," she said simply. "Medically, it's probably some major miracle -- regeneration -- like the Frankenstein guy. Here's this half-dead, messed-up heart. Not gonna tick much longer. But what if it can be fixed, completely, like new? You got the part you were born with, not some