Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [59]
“I do remember. The Bureau had some men down there,” Jeffrey said, glancing up from the picture of Maria’s body at the crime scene. Lydia was in the shot, and he’d been looking at her, half listening to Wizner.
Morrow had no idea what they were talking about so he kept quiet, not wanting to seem uninformed.
“Of course, UNOS was outraged and went to great trouble in publishing reports about these supposedly unsubstantiated claims, claiming it was an urban myth with no evidence to support it. But meanwhile the reports kept coming in; there were television shows airing in Europe; Dateline did a show here featuring a man who claimed his corneas were stolen.”
“You can’t be suggesting that this is actually happening here. It’s impossible,” said Jeffrey, incredulous. “You can’t just take any organ out of some random person and plug it into someone else. There are strict time constraints, batteries of tests that need to be run. You’re a doctor, you know this.”
“Clearly it wouldn’t be safe. But I’m not sure it’s as impossible as UNOS makes it sound. It would just take a little corruption and a little organization.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jeffrey said, too tired for some far-fetched theorizing when he was lacking what he really needed—cold, hard, undeniable facts.
“Look, all I’m saying is the Lopez heart was removed with skill; it is currently nowhere to be found. One can only hope that it is being put to good use. Don’t look so green, Mr. Mark.” Wizner was smiling and it made him look like a ghoul.
Jeffrey hated the glib indifference he found so common to those professionals accustomed to the unspeakably grotesque. He had managed to keep his humanity over the years, in spite of the horrors he had witnessed. He wondered why others had not.
Nonetheless, what Wizner said made a sick kind of sense. But it was too out there at this point to bear any real looking-into.
He began to roll down his sleeves, which had been pushed up past his elbows. He was getting ready to call it a night. “Morrow, first thing in the morning we should head over to that church. Lydia said the Fox girl had some involvement there, and she seems sure that the crucifixes you found came from there as well.”
“Most people in this town have some connection to that church. People are pretty religious here, like I said. And that blind healer is a local celebrity. The priest there, Father Luis, is a bastion of this community,” Morrow said.
“Whatever, it still bears looking-into. If all the victims attended that church, which we don’t know for sure that they did, then it’s possible the killer is connected to it, too. It would really help if we could come up with another body. I suggest you have some of your men comb the park where we found Maria Lopez and see if they turn anything up.”
Wizner quietly began gathering his notes and photographs with his thin, delicate white hands. He placed the papers in a manila envelope, which he slid under his arm after donning his brown cotton jacket. “I hope you’ll keep in mind what I said, Mr. Mark,” he said, walking out the door without pausing for an answer.
“I will. Thanks for your help,” Jeffrey said, not noticing that Wizner was already down the hall.
In silence Morrow and Jeffrey gathered the rest of the materials scattered on the table. Photographs of the missing people, now presumed murder victims, hung on a bulletin board in the corner of the room, similar to the one Lydia and Jeffrey had set up back at the house. Jeffrey paused to look at them again.
In high school, Jeffrey had always been troubled by The Bridge of San Luis Rey, the novel by Thornton Wilder. Several people crossing a bridge are killed when it collapses beneath their feet, sending them all plummeting to their deaths. Their lives were not extraordinary, neither especially wicked or divine. Their deaths seem just a random selection of fate. What worried Jeffrey was thinking that maybe there was no order to the universe after all—just a series of accidents, lucky or unlucky, determining the course of lives. Not very comforting.