Page 14 of Icy Heart, Empty Chest
“Cops aren’t exactly my most favorite profession.”
He seemed a bit surprised. “Because you’re a professional thief?”
I glared. “No, because the ones with power are the most easily corruptible.”
“We do some good in the world,” he argued, brow furrowed.
“I’m not disputing that, I’m disputing the good you don’t do.”
He cocked his head at me. “Cora...”
I raised my eyebrow, “The amount of corruption in the average unit would make
you shit a brick. Trust me. Half of this likely came from your files. We can talk about a witch-hunt for your mole later, in between the conversations of all the thieves I know who were let down by cops before they started their lifestyle.”
He looked like he would argue back but just flared his hands in front of him and said, “So what am I looking at?”
Gods. Did he have to smell good too? This case just gets more unfair. My retainer is going to have to be ungodly. Get to a warm beach somewhere and forget on a hammock with a strong drink.
I took a telescoping backscratcher and pointed to my first picture.
“The buyer that my fence delivered your heart to is Dr Aaron Ziedlin. Smart guy. Top ten medical school, medical oncology residency with surgical oncology fellowship. Over twenty years of education brought him from the bigger cities to us and our much smaller children’s hospital. Last year he became chief attending on the pediatric oncology service.”
Damien studied the picture of the small balding man with glasses, looking every bit the professor.
“Nice pointer,” he snickered. I pouted. I wanted a laser.
“No interrupting,” I snapped. “Approximately four months ago, he started reaching into the market looking for almost anything related to healing. Maybe magic could succeed where medicine failed? Not sure of motives exactly but the bottom line is when your witch put out the heart a few days ago, I already had an offer lined up from him. He offered one of my partners and I a nice sum in order to obtain it from her. I went to the witch, passed it on, the money cleared in my account the next day.”
He was glaring at me. I glared back.
“Do you want the truth or not? Anyway. I started digging into him. Ziedlin’s, post-doctoral thesis was the interface between magic and medicine, and in what fields they cross over, down to the cellular basis. I’m assuming he meant to try it with oncology, it’s forty-eight pages without bibliography and I have yet to read it fully. By my timeline, it’s been five days. He hasn’t doneanything to it yet because you’re still alive and sitting in my kitchen. But our window is closing, statistically.”
I took a large map from the pile, placing it side by side with the one on top.
“This is the hospital. And this is his new house. In a few days, he’ll be away at the big surgical conference a few cities over for a few days. In all likelihood, he’ll store it under lock and key at one of them. It is entirely possible to keep it off-site but for a legitimate doctor to reach into the illegal side of things, my gut tells me that he’d want it in one of the two places he frequents the most, safe from other people.”
“Home and the hospital, makes sense,” said Damien thoughtfully. “How did you get these blueprints?”
I shot him a look and clasped my hands in front of me. “Let’s just go under the assumption that nothing on this table was gained legally. Are you going to be OK with that?”
He sighed and released the picture. “I doubt I have a choice and I’m desperate.”
“Smart man.”
He sat forward with his waves bouncing around his face. “What are you thinking
for the timeline?”
“The conference starts Thursday night, into Friday and Saturday. At a bare minimum, we need to scope out his house and search the hospital. The hospital won’t be terribly complicated. Swipe a badge and you have your fill of the place if you go at the right time. The house will be harder.” I rested my head on my hand, thinking.
“In what way?” he enquired.
“Individual security systems, dogs, other people on the property like family or cleaning services, other mechanical hazards and the time it takes to look around and figure outwhere they put things. Usually art is displayed, which is easier. I hate safe-cracking, ’cause I am not good at it.”
He was staring at me again.
“What?”
