Redzone by William C. Dietz

had no choice but to work on the newly revived case. A total of forty-six arrests had been made subsequent to Kaplan’s death. Among those awaiting trial were the organ jacker’s so-called spotters, pickers, and harvesters. All of whom were questioned to whatever extent their attorneys would allow. Then deals were struck as suspects agreed to rat each other out. That drove
more
interviews, all of which had to be cross-checked. It was a time-consuming business.
    Meanwhile, the LAPD Adult Missing Persons Unit was working overtime in an attempt to match their list to the partial descriptions and muddled recollections obtained from various gang members. The situation was made all the more difficult by the fact that once a donor’s organs were harvested, the rest of the body had been cremated withinhours. As a result there was nothing for the forensics people to run DNA tests on.
    One week after the hearing, Lee and the rest of the team were putting in long days in an attempt to clear all of the Kaplan-related issues. And because of that, Lee had been forced to put her mother’s letter, and the question of what to do about it, on a back burner.
    In an effort to catch up with all of the administrative crap she had to do, Lee had decided to work into the night. An hour had passed, and Lee was nearing the bottom of her in-box when she came to a cardboard mailer. She glanced at the return address, saw that the package was from Cheyenne Darling, and tore it open. There was a thumb drive within but nothing else. Information that pertained to McGinty perhaps?
    Lee pushed the USB drive into one of the ports on her computer. A single file appeared. It was labeled FRANK LEE . Lee felt a fluttery sensation in the pit of her stomach as she clicked PLAY . At first it was very difficult to know what she was looking at. The lighting was murky and the camera work was erratic. Then she saw the specially designed metal framework and the man strapped inside of it. It was her father! He was naked, filthy, and held in place by a complicated system of metal bars, pulleys, and cables. All working together to render him helpless. She’d seen such a machine once before and recognized it right away.
    Lee felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the camera moved in over a tripod, where it wobbled for a moment before being secured in place. Then her father’s eyes tracked movements she couldn’t see.
“Please,”
he begged. “Don’t do it!”
    There was no reply as a man in a white scream mask entered the shot and began to wrap rubber tubing around her father’s extremities. In each case the tourniquet was applied as close to Frank Lee’s torso as possible. The police officer was shaking the cage by then in a desperate attempt to escape. But the effort was to no avail.
    Once the tourniquets were tightened the Bonebreaker stepped out of the picture. Lee knew what would happen next—and ordered herself to stop the tape. But for some reason she couldn’t. Then came the unmistakable sound of a chain saw starting up. Her father began to scream at that point. And he continued to scream as the Bonebreaker reentered the picture carrying the saw. Gray exhaust shot out into the air as the Bonebreaker pulled the trigger all the way back. Then the chain began to chew its way through her father’s leg.
    Lee was sobbing by then, and screaming,
“No! No! No!”
as the blood flew. Then the world began to spin, the floor seemed to disappear, and the endless fall began.
    *   *   *
    Lee was deep below the surface of the ocean. She could see light, and was kicking her legs in an effort to reach it, but couldn’t breathe. “You can’t sleep forever,” a male voice said.
    Her father? Calling to her from the hallway outside her room? No, he was . . . Then Lee “saw” blood spraying away from the chain saw and screamed. Or tried to . . . But nothing