He directed her to a sushi joint not far from the hospital. As she
banged down the number-two maki roll lunch special and a glass of
tea, she wondered how much of this quixotic lurch into New Jersey
was about solving the Laszlo Toth murder and how much was about
solving Kyle Byrne. Somehow the kid had gotten under her skin. She
couldn’t tell for sure if he activated the procreating or maternal center of her brain, but she felt the intense desire to protect him. And
after seeing him in the hospital and then, later, seeing the burned-out
hulks of his house and car, she knew for sure that he needed protecting. He was a fool kid in over his head in waters he couldn’t fathom.
But he swam with such a plucky charm that he couldn’t help making
her smile. Who was the last man who had made her smile? Santa,
maybe, when she still believed, and that was a long time ago. Kyle Byrne was still on her mind when she returned to the hospital
for the file. Except there was no file.
“I don’t understand,” said Ramirez. “There has to be a file.” “Well, it’s not so hard to understand, is it?” said the clerk with unrestrained pique. “You were obviously mistaken. We have no record of a patient by that name that entire year.”
“If he came in DOA, would there still be a record?”
“If he walks in, is wheeled in, or drops in from the sky, we don’t do a thing until a file is opened. Why don’t you try Summit Oaks Hospital on Prospect Street?” He leaned forward and lowered his voice as if he were confiding. “That’s for psychiatric cases. You might have better luck there.”
“You are a wonder, aren’t you?” said Ramirez, whipping her own file out of her briefcase. “The death certificate held by the State of New Jersey has Liam Byrne being declared dead at this hospital in 1994, so I suggest you cut the cattiness and look again.” “Let me see that,” said the clerk.
The clerk took the copy, examined it closely. Slowly the officious look slid off his officious little face like a gobbet of ice cream slipping off a cone and splattering on the cement.
“Ah . . . er,” said the clerk. “Is your name by any chance Houston?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we have a problem.”
“How delicious.” She leaned forward and rested her knuckles on the desk. “Now, why don’t you tell me about our little problem before I start getting curious.”
“It’s the doctor who signed the certificate and declared Mr. Byrne dead, the Dr. Manzone whose signature is right there.”
“That’s not his signature?”
“No, that at least appears to be legit.”
“Then I’ll need to talk to your Dr. Manzone.”
“That might be difficult.” The clerk winced involuntarily. “He’s
not with us anymore.”
“No?”
“He was indeed here in 1994 when he signed the certificate, but
he’s gone now. Gone, gone, gone.”
“I get the sense I’m being shuffled like a deck of cards, but all
right, deal. Where can I find this Dr. Manzone now?”
“Rahway.”
“In another hospital?”
“No, ma’am. In the state prison. There were some—how should I
put it?—irregularities.”
Detective Ramirez smiled a wolfish smile and sat down in one
of the chairs facing the clerk, leaned forward over the desk, glanced
right and left to make sure no one was in earshot. “All right, you
sweet little man. Dish.”
ON HER WAY to the East Jersey State Prison in Rahway, New Jersey, a quick thirty-minute drive from the hospital, she called Henderson. “You would not believe the shit that we stepped into.”
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” said Henderson.
“I had to turn my phone off in the hospital. Now, listen to this. Liam Byrne’s death certificate was signed by a Dr. Manzone. Manzone certified that Liam Byrne died of a heart attack at this hospital in a place called Summit, New Jersey. But the hospital doesn’t have any record of Liam Byrne. It might be just a clerical error, right? Except that this Dr. Manzone isn’t your normal ear, nose, and throat guy. He had something else going on the side.”
“Ramirez, you need to come back.”
“You’re not listening. There was this place in Elizabeth that was doing embalming for a host of funeral parlors from New York, New Jersey, and even Philadelphia. I thought everyone did their own, but apparently often they outsource. But it wasn’t enough to just juice these bodies with formaldehyde. These guys in Elizabeth would cut out the kidneys, the eyes, even the bones, and sell them to distribution centers, some kind of biomedical supply houses, to be used in transplants. And the guy doing the harvesting was our Dr. Manzone.”
“Where’s this heading?” said Henderson. “Because we got stuff going on down here you need to be a part of.”
“Hang on, Pops, it’s just starting to get interesting. Sometimes the corpses they got weren’t in good enough shape for the transplants— too old or they died too long ago or there was some disease eating at their bones. So what did our guy Manzone do? The son of a bitch doctored the death certificates, or made new ones, so that the organs they were selling would look like A-one used parts instead of the rusted refuse of rent-a-wrecks. Are you getting me? I’d bet dollars to those doughnuts you stuff down your gut each morning that Liam Byrne didn’t die of something as natural as a heart attack.”
“Where are you going now?”
“Rahway. Our Dr. Manzone is in the same prison where they held Hurricane Carter. Manzone cooperated fully with the New Jersey authorities and apparently could remember the details of every doctored certificate, down to the specific parts cut out and sold. I bet he’ll remember what the hell happened to Liam Byrne.”
“Forget it, Ramirez.”
“Forget it? Are you crazy, old man, or just lazy? We’re on top of something huge here. If Byrne was murdered fourteen years ago, then Toth might have been killed by the same guy for the same reason. Which means this same bastard was probably trying to kill young Byrne last night. And the reason was in that file cabinet. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a serial killer on our hands and Kyle Byrne is next on the list.”
“Forget about it. Come on back. Lieutenant’s orders.”
“What’s going on here, Henderson? Why are you shutting this down?”