Читать книгу The Legacy Enslaved - William Speir - Страница 9

Wendy Mitchell couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up in her apartment alone for another night. She hated going out by herself, but all of her friends had been busy that week. By Thursday evening, she decided that she’d rather go out solo than spend another night watching re-runs.

Wendy was a tall, fit, leggy blonde twenty-four-year-old woman who stayed active and loved to dance. She looked through her closet and selected a mini-dress that showed off her body – especially her legs. She teased her hair to twice its normal volume, put on her clubbing make-up, and slipped into the dress, which shimmered in the light as she moved. A pair of earrings and high-heeled pumps completed the ensemble. She was ready to be noticed and to have a good time.

She caught a cab outside her apartment building and headed for the nightclub district. Looking good and feeling good, she couldn’t wait to meet a few new dance partners. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even let one of them take me home.

She paid the driver and got out when the cab stopped in front of a new nightclub that she had wanted to try out. Velvet ropes stretched across the entrance, but after one look at her and her outfit, the doorman unhooked the ropes and gestured for her to go inside.

“Club Mingles” is the perfect name for this place. The club was obviously designed to be a place where singles, as well as cheaters, could go and meet new people. As soon as she stepped inside, two different guys asked her to dance. I’m going to have fun tonight!

In a private office above the dance floor, a wall of video monitors displayed the feeds from dozens of cameras around the club.

One of the technicians zoomed in on a new girl in a shimmering mini-dress. “Look at that one,” he said. “With those legs and that body, she has potential.” Swiveling in his chair, he added. “We could do well with her.”

A voice came from the shadows. “Are you thinking about Dr. Black, or are you suggesting that we put her on The Exchange?”

“The Exchange,” the technician replied. He changed the video display to another camera showing the girl dancing.

“And what about our contract? We’re short on what we’re supposed to send to Dr. Black, and you know the consequences if we don’t fill our contracts on time.”

The technician nodded, gesturing toward the girl on the video monitor, who was now dancing with a different partner. “I understand. It’s just a shame to let that go to waste.”

“Not waste,” the voice corrected, “just a different purpose. Alert George, Rachael, and the team.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the technician acknowledged.

Wendy was having a great time. She had already danced with four men, and she hadn’t even ordered a drink yet. She maneuvered through the crowd to a section filled with individual tables. She found an empty one, and the waitress appeared as soon as she put her clutch purse down. Wendy saw that her nametag read “Rachael.”

“What can I bring you?” Rachael asked, keying the table information into her tablet.

“Vodka with a twist,” Wendy responded over the music.

Rachael entered the drink order into the tablet. The tablet flashed a notation saying “Special” on the screen, and Rachael entered an acknowledgment code. She nodded to Wendy and made her way to the bar.

George, the head bartender, saw the drink order show up on his screen: “Vodka with a twist. Special.” Even though there were several bottles of vodka on the lower row of liquor behind the bar, he reached up to the third row in the back, grabbed a bottle of vodka, poured the liquor into a glass, and returned the bottle to the third row before putting a twist of lime in the drink.

Rachael held out her hand when he turned around. “Is that my special vodka with a twist?”

George nodded and handed the drink to Rachael.

Rachael took the drink to Wendy’s table and set it down. “I’ll be back to check on you in a little bit.”

“Thanks!” Wendy said as Rachael turned to leave.

Wendy took a sip of the drink and looked around, wondering who she’d dance with next. She downed the rest of her drink, reached for her purse, and headed for the dance floor.

She was about to tap a good-looking man on the shoulder and ask him to dance, when she suddenly felt funny. She headed for the bathroom instead. I probably shouldn’t have finished the drink so fast on an empty stomach.

The room was spinning by the time she reached the door of the ladies room. She pushed the door open and saw the sinks and stalls off to the left. She turned left but felt two sets of strong arms grab her and pull her back. She lacked the strength to struggle, and the arms dragged her through a panel in the wall behind her, which closed once she was through.

She was vaguely aware of the arms pulling her through a large room, out another door, and into a van waiting behind the club. She noticed that there were three other young women in the back of the van, but everything went dark after that.

“The van just left for Dr. Black’s,” the technician said.

“Good,” the voice in the shadows responded. “Alert the clinic to be ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When Wendy woke up, she couldn’t move. Her arms and legs were tightly secured, and there was a strap over her forehead holding her head in place. She could only move her eyes. She glanced to her right and saw her reflection on a smooth silver metal panel on the wall. She was naked and strapped down to some kind of gurney. A large circular panel of lights hung above her, and she heard the clink of metal that sounded like kitchen implements being placed on a metal tray.

What happened to me? Was I in an accident? Did they take me to the hospital? Why can’t I move? Why can’t I speak?

She heard a door open and several people enter the room. “Ah, good,” a man said. “She’s prepped and ready.”

Wendy saw someone wearing surgical scrubs and a curved plastic mask that covered his entire face. “Let’s start her on the gas and get going. We have only a few hours, and there’s lots to do tonight.”

“Yes, Dr. Black,” a woman’s voice said.

Wendy saw a mask being placed over her mouth and nose by a gloved hand. She smelled the antiseptic odor of the gas and felt her body relaxing, but she was still somewhat conscious. What’s happening? What are they going to do?

She saw the man in the surgical scrubs pick up a large scalpel. A moment later, she felt the blade as it began to cut her chest.

The pain was indescribable, but she couldn’t scream. She had no control over any of her muscles. Trapped in a nightmare, she felt the man as he cut, peeled, and pushed. Her mind couldn’t comprehend what was being done to her. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally lost consciousness.

“What’s going on inside?” the detective asked.

“We don’t know,” the patrol officer replied. “We’ve been watching the clinic for almost three hours, but the windows are all covered. A van arrived and pulled up to the loading dock at the back about two and a half hours ago. Four people were taken inside, and they haven’t come out yet.”

“Is the van still at the loading dock?”

“Yes,” the patrol officer replied.

“The search warrant is on its way,” the detective said. “Once it gets here, we’ll go in.”

“What do you think we’ll find?” the patrol officer said.

“Our information is that someone is using the clinic after hours to illegally treat undocumented patients. I expect we’ll find people practicing medicine without a license and people seeking medical care because they can’t go to the hospital without it being reported to us.”

“Stabbing and gunshot wounds?”

The detective nodded.

“We’ll be ready when the warrant arrives,” the patrol officer assured the detective.

The doctors and nurses carefully removed Wendy’s organs, tissues, and bone marrow before vacuum sealing each one in a heavy plastic covering. They then placed the sealed packages in special containers to keep them cooled during transport.

Once they finished with Wendy, they took the special containers out of the room and loaded them into the van that had originally brought the four women to the clinic. A person that no one from inside the clinic knew was already waiting in the van’s driver’s seat. He started the van’s engine as soon as all of the containers were loaded, and the van drove off into the night to deliver the containers to the people who would repackage the organs and transport them to the individual buyers.

The organs and other tissues from the four women were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market, with buyers located all around the world.

The doctors and nurses that had worked on the women walked down the hall to get cleaned up while another crew came in to dispose of the remains and sanitize the rooms for the next day. The cleaning crew unceremoniously dumped the little that remained of Wendy and the others into heavy-duty trash bags. The crew would take the trash bags to a nearby incinerator before dawn, removing all evidence of the girls’ presence at the clinic that night.

“Here’s the warrant.” The lieutenant handed the paper to the detective.

“Thanks, L.T.” He grabbed his walkie-talkie. “All units, converge on the clinic.”

The teams surrounding the clinic moved forward to enter the building and arrest everyone inside.

Officers entered through the loading dock, the side doors, and the front door to prevent anyone inside from escaping.

“This is the police!” the detective bellowed as he entered the building. Officers began a room-by-room search of the clinic. They quickly found the doctors and nurses who had operated on the women. The officers detained them in the clinic’s lounge. The doctor who led the team that worked on Wendy immediately demanded to see his attorney, and the other doctors and nurses did the same.

It took a few minutes for the police officers to identify the doctors and nurses found inside the clinic. When the detective entered the lounge and looked around, one of the officers walked over to the detective with a confused look on his face.

“I thought you said that the people working here at night were practicing without a license.”

The detective nodded. “That’s what I was told.”

The officer showed the detective several of the IDs from the detainees. “They all work here.”

“What?”

The officer pointed to the distinguished-looking man in the corner. “That’s Dr. Carl Black, the owner of the clinic. His portrait is in the lobby. The rest of the people are his employees.”

“I don’t understand,” the detective said, looking at his watch. “What are they doing here so late? It’s almost three in the morning!”

“They won’t say. They’ve all demanded to speak to their lawyers.”

The detective nodded. “Hold them here until we get this sorted out.”

His walkie-talkie crackled. “Detective? You’d better get back here to the operating rooms.”

When the detective arrived at the operating room where Wendy’s organs had been removed, he saw several officers puking in the sink on the far wall. Looking down at the trash bag, he saw Wendy’s remains and suddenly felt ill himself. It took a minute to realize what he was seeing, but when he checked the other operating rooms and saw the same grisly scene, he knew what was going on in that clinic late at night.

He turned when his lieutenant enter the room.

“What the hell is this?” the lieutenant demanded when he saw the remains of the four women. “This was supposed to be an illegal clinic.”

“It’s a chop shop,” the detective said hoarsely.

“A what?”

“A human chop shop. It’s the newest thing in human trafficking,” the detective replied, wiping his brow and mouth with his handkerchief. “Rather than girls – or boys – being kidnapped and sold into slavery, the victims are brought to clinics like this and harvested for their organs, tissues, anything that someone needs and is willing to pay for. A fit person can easily fetch between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars for parts on the black market, which is considerably more than he or she can be sold for to a slaver. The worst part,” he added, lowering his voice, “is that they’re harvested while still alive, and in many cases while still conscious.”

“Why?” the lieutenant asked, looking pale.

“Drugs get into the tissues, making them unusable. Since the victims are going to die anyway, they’re just paralyzed while the doctors start working on them. That’s what Dr. Black and his team were doing here tonight. It looks like they harvested four women. The organs are gone, but the remains are still here.”

“So instead of arresting people for trespassing and providing medical services without a license, we’re arresting the owner and the employees of the clinic for murder and black market organ harvesting?”

“Yes, sir,” the detective replied.

The lieutenant nodded. “Call in the Medical Examiner and a forensics team. I want to know how long this has been going on, and if there’s anything here that identifies those women, I want it found! I’ll notify Homicide. We’ll be turning this over to them. I imagine the Feds will want in on it, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant put his hand on the detective’s shoulder. “Good job tonight. It isn’t what we expected to find, but it’s good that this place is getting shut down.”

The lieutenant walked away. The detective reached for his phone to call in the Medical Examiner and a forensics team. I wonder how many other places like this there are.