The Immorality Clause Read Online Free PDF Page B

heart attack didn’t do it…” I muttered.
    “What’s that, sir?”
    “The john’s heart is missing,” I dug around a little more, lifting his damaged lung out of place with the prod. “I think… Huh .”
    “What?”
    I pulled the stick out of his chest and gently pried apart the jagged wound across his stomach. “Looks like most of his intestines are gone… Possibly liver as well, but it’s hard to tell without getting in there and digging around. We’ll have to see what the medical examiner thinks.”
    “You think this was an organ harvest?”
    I looked around the room, “Maybe. The organs don’t seem to be here.”
    “What the fuck? This is way too messy for a routine organ harvester,” Drake said. His voice echoed back to me from the shower where he’d gone back to work collecting the fingerprints.
    If it was an organ harvest, why did they take his intestines? Intestines were useless as a transplant. I focused my examination on other parts of the body instead of the massive wounds to the chest and stomach; the disembowelment question would have to wait until the autopsy. Dark bruising around the throat peeked out from underneath the blood. I pushed softly into the john’s throat and my finger sank. “His larynx was crushed,” I called toward the bathroom.
    “Must be why nobody heard him,” Drake grunted.
    I eyed the walls dubiously. They were double- or even triple-lined for sound protection, I doubted the crushed larynx was why no one heard him. About the only reason it would have made sense was if the door was open.
    “Wait a minute…” I felt stupid for not noticing it immediately. “How the fuck did the killer get out of this room without leaving a bloody trail in the hallway?”
    “Hmm.”
    “Thanks for the help,” I mumbled, walking to the door. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
    I’d left my bag of toys in the hallway. Damn. I’m in a whorehouse; maybe I should have phrased that differently . I’d left my forensics kit in the hallway. Better . Inside the bag, I had a portable scanner, much bigger than what Drake used to get fingerprints. My scanner detected wall density. A consistent, solid wall wouldn’t register, but if there was a hollow spot, the scanner would notify me to check for potential secret passageways.
    NOPD dicks who worked the other precincts didn’t have one of these in their standard kit, but Easytown was unique. Thomas Ladeaux, aka Tommy Voodoo, had a hand in everything that was done down here, including construction and remodeling of old buildings for new businesses. There’d been a few times where we discovered hidden compartments in the walls of buildings, oftentimes unbeknownst to the proprietor. It was straight out of the old stories of Prohibition-era speakeasies. Like I said, Easytown was unique.
    “Powering on the radar,” I said loudly enough for Drake to hear.
    “Aww shit, sir. Do you have to use that thing around me? Genevieve and I are still planning on having another kid.”
    I flipped the switch, turning on the system, and aimed it toward the wall. A high-pitched whine came from the box as the 3D rendition of solid masonry came up on the green monochrome screen. “You’re thirty-six, Drake. If you’re gonna have another child, you better get to it.”
    I walked along the wall slowly, checking for hollow spots while Drake complained about his sperm count. After a few circuits, I decided that there weren’t any secret passages hidden in the walls of this room. Shit. Where does that leave us?
    The scanner’s whine stopped as I turned it off. Sergeant Drake poked his head out from the bathroom. “You done with that thing yet?”
    I walked back to my kit and put the scanner back inside the case. “Yeah,” I replied. “Didn’t find anything, though.”
    Drake walked into the bedroom and held up his fingerprint scanner. “Mainframe shows several male fingerprints and a few women. None of them is from Charles Wolfe.”
    I nodded; I’d expected