Black Daylight Read online

“Better to not kill them. Murder racks up faster than buying and trading kidneys. People take notice of a bunch of dead bodies missing kidneys.”

  “Wasn’t that actually happening in Chicago or somewhere?”

  “It did. In Chicago. Last year. But we busted the operation.”

  Widow nodded.

  Rower said, “This isn’t that. We’ve suspected major players with an organization like a corporation.”

  “Looks disorganized to me.”

  “He’s not a part of whoever the buyers are.”

  Widow shrugged.

  Rower pulled out her phone.

  “Who you calling?”

  “The sheriff. We need a ride and his men are dead.”

  “Think you can uncuff me now?”

  Widow smiled and held his hands up.

  Chapter 31

  R OWER AND WIDOW STOOD in the snow and the dirt out in front of the Explorer. The two dead bodies of the Reznor side of the Lawrence County sheriff’s office were laid out ten feet behind them.

  Widow held onto the shotgun in the trail carry position with one hand south of the trigger housing, and the muzzle pointed down.

  He stood three feet from Rower, but he didn’t have to. He wanted to.

  Compared to her five foot, four inches, Widow stood a whole foot taller. She looked up at him a little more than she did most men. He could tell because she seemed to strain a bit. The polite thing to do would’ve been to back up a foot or two, but he didn’t. He liked being close to her.

  Rower holstered her Glock after double- and triple-checking that Rousey was dead. She never checked his pulse or breathing or listened for a heartbeat. She just looked at his missing northeast torso. Widow didn’t know why she had to look three times, but she did.

  After she holstered her Glock, she took her phone out of her jacket pocket and called Sheriff Shostrom first. She told him what had happened. He was in complete disbelief, which was understandable. In less than five minutes his entire department in Reznor had been decimated.

  He said he was on his way and commanded them to preserve the integrity of the crime scene, which rubbed Rower the wrong way, but she said nothing about it.

  She called her SAC next and explained to him what had happened. He suggested that she keep Widow close and they should search for the sister. Maybe she could explain and confirm Widow’s theory.

  Bukowski said he would send two more agents if she needed, but she declined.

  “I’ll be fine on my own for now.”

  “You sure?” Bukowski asked.

  “I’ve got Widow.”

  He was quiet for a moment. He had already looked Widow up and found out all he could, which was that there were redacted files, courtesy of the United States Navy and the DOD.

  He found that Widow had served in the SEALs and was officially an NCIS agent, but with a sixteen-year career, the man only had six years accessible, and even those had redacted sections.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will. I’ll call you later.”

  They both clicked off their lines.

  Bukowski made one more phone call and ordered two agents to be on standby. They were posted in different locations. The closest one was in Sioux Falls.

  Bukowski ordered the man to head to their satellite office in Rapid City, just in case.

  Rower slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket and turned to Widow.

  “Guess we’re waiting for Shostrom.”

  “Do we have to wait? Shouldn’t we get over to the sister’s house?”

  “We can’t leave dead bodies out here unguarded.”

  “Why not? They’re not going anywhere.”

  “We have to stay. At least until Shostrom gets here.”

  “That’s not how we do it.”

  “How who would do it?”

  “The Navy. We’d leave them when there’s still bad guys out there.”

  “Didn’t you say Kylie was scrawny?”

  “Ninety pounds, if that.”

  “You worried about a ninety-pound junkie?”

  “I’m not worried about her, but whoever else is involved. If Rousey was her boyfriend or whatever, there could be others. I only thought I saw two people in that car last night. There could’ve been three or four.”

  “We can’t leave anyway. He shot the tire out.”

  Widow shrugged and said, “We can walk. I did it.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Little over an hour, but I was carrying a woman who was out cold. She was dead weight. And it was colder than it is now. If we wait much longer, it’s going to get worse. The sun is going down.”

  He pointed to the sky, not because she needed to know where the sun was, but because he wanted to use his arms and his hands. He no longer was wearing handcuffs, and it felt good.

  “You’re right.”

  “You’re the agent in charge here. You make the call.”

  “Technically, I’m in charge of me. You’re free.”

  “Free to go?”

  “You can go. I need you to stay in town though.”

  “I’m not leaving you. Think you know that.”

  “I do. But I had to say it anyway. That’s the law. Can’t detain you for no reason.”

  Widow looked at the sun peeking through the trees.

  He said, “Sun goes down early here.”

  “It’s winter. It started vanishing around four-thirty.”

  Widow nodded.

  “I’m going to check the truck for a flashlight.”

  Rower said, “Good idea. Check for flares.”

  She took out her phone and called Sheriff Shostrom again. She wanted to get an ETA.

  Widow walked back to the rear, back to the cargo bay of the truck and checked around. He found road flares under the floorboard, as well as a spare tire, but he ignored it. She would make him do all the changing of the tire and still insist that they wait. Plus, there was steam hissing out of the engine. He was pretty sure the Explorer wasn’t going anywhere anyway, not on its own.

  He didn’t find a flashlight, only an empty case where it looked like one was supposed to be stored. He found backup batteries for a flashlight, but no flashlight.

  He grabbed five flares and went around the Explorer, cracking them and dropping them around the truck. When he reached the nose, he held onto the last one, in case he needed it.

  He met with Rower. She hung up the phone.

  “He’s on his way.”

  “We waiting?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay.”

  “You worked the Chicago thing? Earlier you made it sound personal.”

  “It is. It happened in Chicago. It was headed by a different office, but we had a task force that spread out across state lines. They asked me to join. I flew to Chicago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Bodies turned up all over Chicago. Missing organs. Mostly poor people. Mostly black. Mostly men.”

  “Sounds like a serial killer.”

  “That’s what we thought, but why the missing organs?”

  “Hannibal Lector took his victims organs. He cooked them.”

  “I know. I saw that movie.”

  “The book is more graphic.”

  Rower said, “This went on for nearly a year.”

  “What happened?”

  “We caught the guy.”

  “And?”

  “Dr. John Jay Holcomb. A retired Marine surgeon, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. But that was ten years earlier. Then, I think he was selling stereo equipment at a Best Buy.”

  “He should’ve gone into the Navy.”

  “Would that have made a difference?”

  “Maybe. Or the Air Force. Lots of tech skills learned. That’s popular nowadays, right? He would’ve been the manager of the Best Buy instead.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  Widow asked, “Why the dramatic decline in jobs?”

/>   “His medical license was disavowed, and the Marine Corps dishonorably discharged him. He was doing unsavory things. Nothing like later on, but bad shit.”

  “Then he went on to sell stereos?”

  Rower said, “He quit that job anyway. When we caught him, he was living in a houseboat on Lake Michigan.”

  “How did he afford that? Must’ve been a piece of shit.”

  “Then it was a million-dollar piece of shit.”

  “How?”

  “That’s how we noticed him. Someone called in a tip and told us that he was spending large amounts of money. More than he had. He quit his job. And started living it up on the boat. He bought it with cash.”

  “How?” Widow asked again.

  “He was killing poor black men, harvesting their kidneys, sometimes their hearts, and he sold them.”

  “On the black market?”

  “No. He sold them to one buyer. They turned around and sold them for more money.”

  “Who was it?”

  “That’s the thing. We never found out.”

  “Did you offer him a plea deal?”

  “The DA refused to. His name was in the paper, on TV. People were terrified of him for a year. The mayor wanted him hung out to dry. No immunity. No deal. Not even a lenient sentence. Just the death penalty.”

  “Illinois doesn’t have the death penalty.”

  “No, but that’s what everyone wanted. He got life.”

  “Did he ever say who he sold the organs to?”

  “He died. Three black inmates from a local gang beat him to death. Retribution, they claimed.”

  Widow nodded.

  “John was sick in the head, but I always felt that we were arm’s length away from someone worse. Whoever bought the organs was organized, like a corporation.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we didn’t even get a whiff of them. He murdered ten people. That’s probably twenty kidneys if they were all healthy. Plus, he took two hearts.”

  “If there’s a corporation that deals in organ theft…”

  “Black Market Organ Trade,” she corrected him.

  “Right. If there’s a company that deals in that, then there must be a lot of money in it, but aren’t organs fairly cheap on the black market? I read something about this once in Time magazine. I thought it was cheap to fly to the Middle East and get kidneys.”

  “In Iran, you can buy a kidney for five thousand bucks. American.”

  “See, cheaper to just fly to Egypt and then buy a ticket to Iran.”

  “True, but that’s the prices for people in Iran. You can’t fly to Tehran with an American passport.”

  “You can. I’ve done it.”

  “Not from America, you can’t. Besides, you don’t know what you’re gonna get if you go through all that trouble. And a five-thousand-dollar black market kidney in Iran is just as likely to be useless as replacing your kidney with a tennis ball. Often, American businessmen with the right connections have gone through all that trouble and ended up dead. I heard of one who got a goat’s kidney.”

  Widow made a face like he was grossed out.

  “Goat?”

  Rower shrugged and then looked down the road for Shostrom. Nothing was coming.

  She said, “That’s what I heard.”

  “So how much to get a black market kidney in America?”

  “Depends. They range from fifty thousand to a half million.”

  “Half million?”

  “That’s for top quality. They match them, do the procedure with top medical staff, and there’s actually customer service provided.”

  “If you don’t know who the company is, how do you know all this?”

  “We’ve seized websites, and there’s some witness testimony out there. Plus, Interpol has busted warehousing of organs. So, have we, but not like they have. They found a huge facility in Spain last year.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “It’s a dummy corporation. All the trails anyone has ever followed have led nowhere.”

  “Could be different corporations out there.”

  “There are, but someone is the head of the snake.”

  “How come no one’s talking about this?”

  “It’s complicated and complex. It’s like the sex trafficking trade or the drug trade. It’s huge and touches all corners of the earth. There are a lot of greased hands, and it’s old too. The media has a short attention span. They want instant news stories. The organ trade has been around since the invention of the scalpel.

  “Hell, since the invention of ice.”

  Widow nodded.

  They both looked up to see the sun take one last shine over South Dakota, over the Black Hills, and then it set in the west.

  After sundown, they saw a pair of headlights beaming and bouncing on the road ahead.

  Chapter 32

  R OWER STEPPED forward and stared at the oncoming lights. Widow stayed back a little because of his cautious nature, and a little because of experience, and a lot of the primal brain that his genealogy never evolved away from.

  He said, “Careful.”

  Rower stayed quiet, but he saw her reach up under her jacket and unsnap the safety catch on her gun holster, all from standing behind her. He knew the movements she made, and he heard the faint whisper of a click from the button.

  She stepped up and reached out her left hand up over her face to dim the lights.

  When the car was in sight, she began flagging it down.

  Widow pumped the shotgun, ejecting the casing for the slug that had blown a major chunk of flesh and tissues off Rousey and replacing it with a live Magnum slug.

  The car that pulled up was an old Buick. Widow didn’t know the model, not by sight, but an old Buick was an old Buick, reliable, big, clunky.

  The car rode fine over the snow and dirt. The driver’s face was not visible because of the headlight beams shining at them.

  As the car came closer, Rower reached into her jacket and pulled out her FBI wallet and badge, flipped it to show the badge.

  The Buick driver saw her and slowed the car.

  He rolled a window down and stuck an elbow out, rested it on the sill. He leaned out a little and came to a stop.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Rower walked up to the window, but not too close.

  She said, “We’ve had an incident.”

  “Like an accident?”

  The driver leaned out a little farther and took a look.

  “Oh my! Are they dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You FBI?” The driver looked at her badge.

  “That’s right.”

  “Is that James Rousey?”

  Rower closed the badge and put it back in her pocket. The driver stared at her Glock as her jacket whipped open.

  Widow noticed.

  The Buick’s bumper was a good twelve or so yards from Widow.

  “I’m afraid it is. Did you know him?”

  “We all know him.”

  “You got a license, sir?”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  The driver turned and reached for his wallet. Widow watched.

  The driver wiped a brown, leather wallet open, like Rower had done, and jerked out a driver’s license, handed it to her.

  Widow heard a noise, just to his right. It was a buzzing sound, like a pager.

  He looked down and saw Rousey’s phone was half hanging out of his coat pocket. The screen was cracked. It faced upward to Widow.

  He stepped over, one big step, and bent down. He scooped it up.

  There was a late text message alerted across it.

  It was from some guy named McCobb.

  Just then, he could hear up ahead of him Rower read the driver license.

  “Ty McCobb.”

  “That’s me, ma’am. Sorry, I mean Agent.”

  Widow read the rest of the message.

  It read: “Almost there. They dead?”


  Widow looked up and saw McCobb holding a Ruger GP11 with a short three-inch barrel. It was a palm-sized weapon that packed a powerful punch with .357 Magnum bullets.

  McCobb pulled the hammer back with his thumb and aimed it right at Rower’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The muzzle flashed a bright fireball, and a bullet rocketed out of the barrel.

  The gunshot went BOOM! in the snowy silence.

  Chapter 33

  W IDOW RAISED the Remington shotgun fast and pointed it at the driver through the windshield.

  He yelled at the top of his lungs. That old cop training came back, and the bass down deep in his chest took over.

  “TOSS THE GUN! TOSS IT!”

  Rower toppled over, clutching her ears. Her left eardrum had burst open in a painful explosion as if it had been prodded with a stiletto. Blood seeped out between her fingers.

  She racked her jaw up and down out of reaction. Her Glock lay on the ground. She had tried to draw on him when she saw the barrel of the Ruger, but he ambushed her.

  The Glock was in her reach, but her ears throbbed and her head pounded. She couldn’t stop thinking about the pain.

  McCobb had fired a warning shot right past her head, a shot across the bow. He ducked down, fast and the driver’s door swung open. He hopped out, stayed tight behind it and pointed his Ruger over the sill, down at Rower.

  “Hold it! I’ll kill her!”

  “THROW THE GUN!”

  McCobb pulled the hammer back again.

  “Three seconds!” he shouted.

  Widow froze. He knew he could hit McCobb from this distance, but he could also hit the Buick and miss completely.

  McCobb had a shorter distance, a clear line of sight, and an incapacitated target.

  “Two!” McCobb yelled.

  Widow looked at Rower. She rolled back and forth, slowly over the snow. She couldn’t hear the countdown.

  “Drop your gun! Last chance!”

  Widow shouted, “All right! All right!”

  He let up his aim and showed the Remington to McCobb. He took his right hand off the gun, away from the trigger housing.

  He tossed the shotgun up and ahead of him about ten feet, which he made look like it was accidental.

  McCobb wasn’t stupid, however, because he called out further instructions.

  “Step forward past the gun!”