Page 22 of Twisted Empire

“The oldest one I’ve found was from twenty-six years ago,” Dexter said. “And I’ve set aside twelve records so far.”

“So that’s less than one case a year. Between that and the mixing and matching, and how many patients the doctors and nurses would typically be seeing, it’s no wonder no one else noticed the repeated data. We never would have if we didn’t know to look for it.”

Beckett spoke up from behind the wheel. “Doom’s Seed must have some kind of shell company set up to transfer the records over in a way that looks legit.”

I nodded. “That could be another lead, if we can figure out where they’re coming from.”

Slade glanced toward Beckett. “How far do you think this business extends? Obviously it’s not just this city since it covers our hometown as well. Presumably he’s active in the entire region in between too.”

“Given the reach of the average Devil’s Dozen member,” Beckett said, “I’d expect he’s organizing the transplants throughout the state, at the very least. It’s more likely he has connections and facilities set up in various places across the country. It could extend overseas as well.”

The immensity of the crime momentarily overwhelmed me. My stomach lurched, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “We have to stop him.”

Slade squeezed my shoulder. “We will. No doubt about it.”

Logan jerked straighter upright in his seat, sucking in a breath. “Holy shit.”

All our gazes except Beckett’s shot to him.

“What?” I demanded.

He lifted his head to stare at us with a stunned expression. “I found it. The Baldwin file. It’shere, in the latest batch of records. This has got to be it.”

I sprang across the van to squeeze next to him on the bench and peer at his screen. Slade hustled over as well, leaning to peek over the top, and Dexter set aside his tablet to give the momentous occasion his full attention.

Logan motioned to the top of the record he had open on his laptop. The patient’s name was Christina Baldwin.

“She had a dual kidney transplant,” he said. “Sixteen years ago—not too long before Maddie’s dad was killed.”

“Remind me what’s important about this particular file?” Beckett said.

While I started scanning the record, Slade filled the other guy in. “Logan found a bunch of old notes that Evan Silver wrote. Notes that seemed to be related to his investigation. A few of them mentioned the Baldwin file in a way that made it sound like it was some kind of key to his findings. We never knew what was in it or why he fixated on it, though.”

“This could be the thing that tipped him off that something was wrong,” I said, still skimming over the data as quickly as I could while still absorbing it. “The file passed by him for one reason or another while he was doing his usual research work… Wait a second. Scroll back up to the basic physical data?”

Logan complied, watching me instead of the screen. “What did you notice?”

I checked the woman’s height and weight and confirmed what I’d thought I remembered. “She was really petite. Only four-foot-ten, ninety pounds.”

Dexter cocked his head. “What made you want to check that?”

“Because down here…” I motioned for Logan to scroll back down, and he did until I tapped the screen. “The dosage of medication it says she was given to slow her heart rate for the transplant procedure. I did a project that touched on that drug earlier this year. That’s definitely too high a dose for a person that small. It could havestoppedher heart.”

Logan’s eyebrows rose. “But obviously it didn’t, since she has a bunch more post-transplant records.”

“It’s probably not what they gave her at all—I’d bet it’s another one of those copied numbers, and whoever put together this falsified document wasn’t quite careful enough.”

“Let me see.” Dexter peered closer and then started tapping on his tablet. He let out a triumphant sound. “There are three more records just in the ones I already have with the exact same dosage. That’s another marker—I hadn’t caught that one yet.”

Slade smiled tightly down at me. “Something like that—you figure your dad might have noticed the error.”

“Absolutely. If it stood out to me, it’d have been even more obvious to him.” I sucked my lower lip under my teeth to worry at it.

“Wow,” Dexter said abruptly. “I found a record with that dosage from all the way back in the 1980s. How old was Doom’s Seed then?”

“It could be part of his family legacy, a business that his parents were running before him,” Beckett reminded us. “A lot of the venturesI’minvolved with go back as far as my grandparents or even earlier.”

The size of this psychopath’s horrific practices and their impact on my world just kept expanding. I rubbed my forehead, my thoughts spinning as I tried to absorb it all.

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