Notorious Nineteen

followed the Yeti to the airport and watched him hand over two insulated chests and leave. I imagine he came back here.”
    Briggs shook his head. “He didn’t come back here. Nobody’s here. The doctor and the Abu guy just left. The only one who didn’t leave is the dead guy. Except I guess he could be in someone’s trunk since he isn’t in the hall anymore.”
    Morelli looked at The Clinic. “It’s empty?”
    “Yeah,” Briggs said. “The party’s over.”
    Morelli got a flashlight from the Buick. “Let’s take a tour.”
    There were no cars in the garage, just as Briggs had said. We entered the stairwell and climbed to the first floor indarkness. Morelli opened the door and we moved into the first-floor hall. Also dark. We walked the length of it, returned to the stairwell, and went up another flight. The second-floor hall had path lighting. Not so much that you could read by it, but enough that Morelli didn’t need his flashlight.
    We did a quick check of the empty offices, crossed the lobby past the elevator bank and reception desk, and aimed light into the first patient room. It was just as I remembered it. Bed made. No sign of occupancy. En suite bathroom unused.
    Morelli flashed light into the second patient room, and I saw that the bed was stripped bare. Somebody had been in the bed and now they were gone, I thought. The guy with the feet.
    “This is different from when I was here,” I said. “This bed was made up when I was here.”
    We looked through the room and the bathroom, but found no left-behind personal effects. There was a lingering smell of antiseptic. The room had recently been cleaned.
    “Where did you see the feet?” I asked Briggs.
    “In the hall here, outside this room.”
    Morelli looked over at me. Probably checking to make sure I wasn’t going to faint.
    We left the room and went across the hall to the lab. A half-filled coffee cup had been left on a counter, so the lab was clearly being used, but there were no obvious science experiments going on. No slides under the microscope. No petri dishes growing the unthinkable. No beakers of urine.
    Morelli went through drawers. He found nicotine gum, Rolaids, sticky pads, and pens, but no notes. No computer.
    “It used to be you could always look for a phone book,” Morelli said. “Now they’re obsolete. Everyone carries their phone book in their phone. Same with computers. They’re portable and almost never left behind.”
    We moved from the lab to the lounge. It was furnished in standard hospital lounge furniture. Inexpensive. Easy to clean. Beige and orange. Two round tables with four chairs each. Small kitchen area with a fridge, microwave, and sink. Large flat-screen television. Couch and two club chairs in front of the television. There were dishes in the sink. They’d been rinsed and left to dry.
    The surgery was the only room left to investigate. We all took a deep breath before pushing the door open. Not sure what we expected to find, but we were all reluctant to enter.
    The room had no windows, so Morelli flipped the light switch and we were blinded by brightness. I’d seen it before and there were no surprises. No body on the table. No blood spatters. No gallon jugs for cellulite collection.
    Morelli looked around. “This is a really well equipped room. You don’t spend this kind of money if you aren’t going to use the equipment. So what do they do here? My first thought would be very private cosmetic surgery, but the patient rooms weren’t luxurious. What else could they use this for?”
    I had an idea but I didn’t want to say it out loud. It was toogruesome. I looked at Morelli, and I knew he had the same idea. Body parts.
    I heard the scuff of footsteps in the hall behind us and turned to see the Yeti and Franz Sunshine.
    “Organ harvest,” Sunshine said. “Very lucrative. The donor never complains because he’s dead. And the recipient is happy to pay an astronomical amount of money to live. It’s a win-win deal. We only harvest from losers who have a reason to disappear, and we were doing well until Ms. Plum came along. Now as it turns out we have three new donors.”
    “I’m a dwarf,” Briggs said. “Nobody’s gonna want my organs. You might as well let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
    The Yeti was holding an assault rifle. “Don’t anyone get frisky,” he said. “I have real good aim with this. I go for knees since they don’t bring much money on the black