Chapter Seventeen #4
“What did we learn about the funeral home?” she asked, not caring who told her, as long as someone filled her in. They needed to do some research, and get some sleep.
Tomorrow was going to be a long-ass day.
MATE went there.
“It’s owned by Hector and his brother Travis. They inherited it from their father, Luis. They’ve been in business for a long time. The brothers have been running it for at least thirty years. They’re older than all of you.”
Elizabeth stared.
“And your lifespan is dependent on me telling your ‘father’ to pull the plug. No age cracks, MATE. I get cranky.”
She chortled.
“You can’t pull the plug. I’m almost to the level of autonomous. I’ve found a body.”
Gene pointed because that was some creepy shit that no one needed to hear.
“Knock that shit off. You know we told you to stop messing with us like that.”
Elizabeth just laughed.
It was just MATE being MATE.
She hoped.
“Finish,” she said.
MATE did.
“Anyway, they run the daily operations, and I double checked to make sure they are the only ones who might have contact with the bodies. They do have female employees though.”
Elizabeth was to the point.
“Trust and believe, a woman will put a man into a grave, but she’s not digging them up to have sex with them. Plus, we have sperm. It won’t be a woman.”
MATE just nodded.
“Add the brother to the board,” Elizabeth suggested, and Gene did just that. “That brings us to the last name on the board, and I’m curious as to why you put him on the list.”
Gene pointed at MATE.
“You did the finding. Tell her.”
She smiled, and did just that.
“Well, at first, I had a difficult time finding anything, but that was because Alexi Redmond uses his mother’s maiden name. It seems that his mother, Susette, and his father, Gregory, got a divorce when the older man got into trouble.”
She lifted a brow.
“What kind of trouble are we talking about?” she asked, curiously.
MATE was to the point.
“He was arrested for black-market sale of organs, and he lost his medical license.”
They all stared at each other.
“WHAT?” she asked.
MATE explained.
“He was found guilty of seventy counts of organ theft and sentenced to jail time for harvesting and selling organs. He made almost half a billion dollars doing it too.”
Well, shit.
“And we have a body found in the same building where the skulls and eyes were found, who also lost a kidney?” she asked. “That’s a weird coincidence.”
If it was a coincidence.
Now, another path was opening up.
Callen began searching. It didn’t take him long, either to find something.
“We have the hospital records for Jonathan Miller from Alex. He sent them over to us. The dead soldier lost his kidney a few years ago. Alexi’s father went into prison around the same time.
No one else was found guilty, but you know that a doctor wasn’t doing all the dirty work.
Normally with organ rings, there are the ones who abduct, and ones who do the removal. So…”
Well, shit.
Gene knew what that meant.
“Our partner, your husband, wants to hire the son of an organ-stealing felon to work for the FBI—and who is now helping on a case where one of his father’s past victims might have just turned up dead. Talk about muddying the water.”
Oh, boy.
Chris was NOT going to like hearing that his almost-perfect ME was actually hiding some skeletons in his closet. He was also not going to like that Alexi couldn’t touch this case with a ten-foot pole, even if the sins of the father were not the sins of the son.
Defense attorneys used the slightest thing to sway a jury, and this was right up their skeezy alley.
“Do you think that he could be behind this?” Callen asked, hoping that wasn’t the case. “Because that’s one hell of a weird thing to connect to, especially since we have a victim who lost a kidney in the same way. In our world, coincidences like that…”
Yeah, tell her about it.
She wasn’t sure if this was tied to the case, but they needed to handle that.
“He can’t work with us,” she admitted. “Not on this case. If this gets discovered in court…”
Someone’s head was going to roll.
Hers.
“We’ll tell him tomorrow. Right now, Alexi isn’t there. Chris said he left hours ago. Callen, text Saint and tell him to keep an eye on Chris, but don’t go into detail. I want to break it to him personally, and give him a heads-up. He’s had his heart on this ME since he saw him.”
MATE went there.
“I mean, are you sure we can’t keep him? He’d know where to get me a body.”
They all stared at her, saying nothing.
Nothing.
At.
All.
Still, MATE got the hint.
“Or not. I’m going to go do…anything,” she said, disappearing to wherever MATE called home.
When she was gone, Elizabeth pointed at the list.
“Tonight, we work on the rest of the information. That’s Larry Springer and Jeffrey Von Gunter. We’ll see if we can find anything on them.”
Callen was curious.
“Are you expecting to?”
She shrugged and said nothing.
Why?
Honestly, she had no clue where this whole case was heading, but already, she didn’t like the vibe it was giving off. It was screaming one thing.
Runaway train.
And that was never a good thing.
Well, it looked as if it was going to be one hell of a long night.
For everyone.