His life hanging in the balance, Cecil lay on the operating table, under anesthesia, while a surgeon operated on his chest. The majority of the police force was in the Stanford Hospital waiting room, talking about his abduction and speculating on his condition and the scuttlebutt was he could go either way. They said Moore, who was seeing a doctor, rescued his partner from certain death.
A uniform came into Moore’s exam room, while the doctor was out and told him the situation. “A perimeter was set up and they searched every street and avenue, and so far nothing. You say these men were in a black sedan, wearing black suits and sunglasses? Can you tell us anything else?”
Moore was beginning to wonder if he imagined them and he wasn’t the only one.
It didn’t take long for word to get out about the men in black. The officers had a hardy laugh, when the sergeant reminded them this was a hospital waiting room “and right now… Cecil was struggling for his life and whoever these men in black are, actual men, or aliens…”
Two men stop themselves from chuckling.
“…I don’t care, they may be hallucinations for all we know, but one thing I know for sure, Detective Moore brought Cecil back alive.”
Now they had serious expressions, as they thought of a fallen comrade struggling for his life.
When Moore arrived in the waiting room, his wounded cleaned up, his hand bandaged, the rank and file were all congratulating him on a job well done, patting him on the back and shaking his good hand heartily. They all smiled and Moore felt good. Cecil’s wife, Debra thanked him profusely, giving him a warm hug and kissing his cheek. “You are a such a lovely man,” she said.
It was nice to hear, but Elaine was displeased. He could see it in the drooping rolls of flesh under her eye and around her heavy girth. He sighed and smiled. She walked right by him without a word, proceeded to talk privately with the police chief.
When the surgeon emerged from the operating room, well wishers crowded around him to hear him speak, eager for any news about Cecil. The doctor asked to speak with his wife, Debra and she came forward. Elaine and the police chief stood behind her and behind them, everyone else.
“He had a recent skin graft operation.” The surgeon said.
“Oh my God,” Debra was horrified. “Is he going to be all right?”
“The epidermal and dermal layer was taken from his gluteus Maximus and applied to the chest in the area over the heart.”
“What?” Elaine was thinking, someone took a piece of skin from his ass and put it on his chest?
“A square piece of skin was taken from his chest and that thin epidural layer is missing. In addition, he was moved too soon after the operation and now much of the fine work that was done by an excellent surgeon, I might add…”
The chief and Elaine exchanged a perplexed look, then Debra asked the doctor, “Is he going to be all right, doctor?”
He patted her hand and smiled.
“Can I go in to see him?”
The doctor said, “Yes, but only you, he needs his rest.”
As they were about to leave, Elaine asked him, “Doctor, how long ago did someone perform this surgery on Cecil?”
“It’s hard to say. Much of the scar tissue has recently reopened, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say, sometime yesterday.”
Immediately, Moore was alarmed when he heard the news. Elaine told him to meet her in the conference room at the station… “to discuss some things.” She left it opened ended like that.
She had him waiting, when she came in with a couple lieutenants as back-up.
Moore smiled.
She said, “We are very concerned about you? You disappear without a trace, turn up two days later, looking like hell, are you all right? Do you need to speak with a therapist? There are councilors you could see.”
“No, I’m just fine. Thank you,” Moore said.
“Well, then can you tell us where you’ve been for the last two days?” She asked calmly and he answered honestly, although he wouldn’t tell them how he got onto Henderson’s location. “Once again, how did you find Henderson’s office?”
“I’ll have to ‘plead the 5th’ on that one.” Moore said jocularly.
Elaine wasn’t laughing. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “you go AWOL, in a city vehicle no less and as if that isn't enough, you conduct your own investigation outside department approval and you don’t even report in, and once you have Cecil’s location, you fail to notify us and go in alone, instead of with a full force, endangering Cecil’s life in a high speed car chase, just after he’s had an operation. Does that about sum it up?”
“Ah, I think you left out the gun fight, in which I was wounded.”
Moore was back on duty by the next day, making Stuart uncomfortable. She stiffened and looked away from him.
Elaine declared, “Cecil is out of the critical care ward and is expected to make a full recovery.”
Everyone cheered.
Raising her eyes, Elaine looked at each of them, then spoke, “It’s up to you people to apprehend his abductors and do it by the book so we can put these people away. All right? Now what do we have so far?”
Lan spoke quickly, “We went over the whole crime scene in East Palo Alto. We found a lot of the evidence: the plastic bubble in a box, that provided a sterile environment to use as an operating room, a couple of surgical trays and tools. We ran a number of prints and we got a hit. Josh Henderson was a positive match to the fingerprints on the plastic bubble. Blood was found inside the bubble and it was the same type as Cecil’s.”
“What else?” Elaine asked, glancing at Stuart, to see if she had anything.
Lan said, “Henderson, has been running what appears to be an organ transplant… black market trade…for the last 3 years.”
Determined to bring some info to the table, Stuart said, “The few records left behind indicate Henderson had a legitimate cover business in medical supplies and laundered the money he got from illegal operations.”
Elaine asked, “What about the cafe where Cecil was abducted?”
“The cafe property is owned by Danson Enterprises, who acquired the land on the night of Cecil’s abduction.” Lan included Stuart, “We checked into Danson Enterprises and found out it’s a subsidiary of Stratosphere, beneficiary of: CEO and co-founder: Victor Weiss.”
“Have you got a picture of him,” Moore asked.
“Yeah sure,” Lan handed him a picture.
“That’s him,” Moore said. “That’s the man who gave a speech to the Junk Yard Dogs, at some kind of… celebration-” Suddenly, he became quiet thinking about the night he hoped the gate with the Totenkopf carving on it and broke into a private office to obtain information illegally, and looking at the disappointed faces of the other detectives in the room, he fell silent and the others went on.
“Stratosphere is one of the biggest computer software firms in the world,” Lan added, “and Victor Weiss has a net worth of 49.7 billion.”
Stuart came up with some more information. “A member of the San Francisco Yacht Club, the bridges golf club and the Olympic Club, he also flew leer jets and drove a Koenigsegg CCX, priced at $600,910.”
“Man owns an island in the South Pacific.” Lan went on, “That includes hotels, restaurants, swimming pools, golf courses, a whole city, with 2,300 residents. He came from humble beginnings to become one of the richest men in the world.”
“He owns several mansions: one in Lake Tahoe, a sprawling mansion in Porcupine Creek, worth over 42.9 million, another house in Atherton, said to be worth 110 million, a home in Pacific Heights, Malibu, Rancho Mirage, all over the bay area, INCLUDING Half Moon Bay.”
Elaine asked, “Any evidence linking him to the crime?”
“It’s believed he’s a Nazi sympathizer, for the eradication of most unwanted citizens, drug users, homosexuals, Jews, mixed race and other ethnicity's and he’s for quarantining anyone with a contagious disease.” Said Lan.
Stuart added, “He may have been in Half Moon Bay at the time of Cecil’s abduction. One article on him described his business practices as ruthless cut-throat methods, so kidnapping, murder in his climb to the top, is a possibility, although it’s hard to see any motivation for taking a piece of Cecil’s skin.”
Then Moore spoke up, “He owns the property, on which Cecil and I saw the Junk Yard Dogs ride their motorcycles. He isn’t renting that property out either. It’s being used solely for his own use, I’m sure of it.”
After a moments reflection, Elaine said, “All right, let’s find out his connection to the Junk Yard Dogs. You may have to go through his lawyers to speak with him.”
Continuing his effort to locate the Junk Yard Dogs, Moore was searching on-line through a national data base, while Lan and Stuart were putting on the pressure, trying to get an appointment with Weiss, through his lawyer.
“We have a high ranking detective, with the Palo Alto Police, who was abducted, on land now owned by your client, plus an eyewitness, who places him with the Junk Yard Dogs, known accomplices in his abduction, and by God, he’s going to talk with us, or he can be compelled to speak once the DA convenes a grand jury…”
Meanwhile, Stuart was talking to his publicity manager, “It’s really in Weiss’s interest to speak with us. He has everything to gain by coming in and clearing his name. If the media were to hear his name came up in the abduction of a policeman…”
Bored, Moore turned and stared at Stuart.
She faced away from him and concentrated on her phone conversation. “We need him to clear this up right away.”
Moore went over to Lan and said, “My instinct tells me Weiss was definitely behind Cecil’s abduction. I saw him giving a speech to the Junk Yard Dogs.”
“Great, now prove it,” Lan said, “legally, I mean.”
“Wow, you got me,” Moore said. “Tell me Lan, how were your efforts in finding and rescuing Cecil coming?”
While Elaine had her detectives go through impossible channels to interview Weiss, she actually had a meeting with him in a Victorian two story converted house, in the shadow of city hall, across Bryant Street.
The lawyers left them alone, when Elaine entered the office where Weiss was sitting. He had her sit down, while he finished signing some documents, then swiveled around to speak with her. “I have a proposal that might benefit us both and put this whole matter with Cecil to rest.”
“Really? What do you have to do with his disappearance?”
Without admitting anything, he said, “How would you like to earn more money, then you ever dreamed possible in your entire life?”
She seemed interested. “That sounds like the beginning of one of your seminars, of which, I’ve been to quiet a few.” She smiled.
That evening, Moore dropped in to see his old friend Cecil, who was feeling revived, after a good nights rest, seeing his best friend, giving him thanks for getting him through that ordeal. “Really, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Moore laughed, then asked him about his skin graft operation.
“I don’t know who it was, but who ever it was removed this black patch of skin, that was on my chest, right over my heart. I always thought about having this operation done. As a boy, I asked my father about it, and he would tell me that black patch was there to protect my heart. I was lucky to have it. Everyone else’s heart was open to attack. But I seemed to remember something else, something the black patch was covering. Years later, when I was a teenager, he told me, it covered a mistake he made when I was small, but he wouldn’t tell me any more about it.”
“That’s all you know?”
“Well, I asked my father about it again as an adult and he said, it had something to do with the Masons: the black patch covered up a Masonic symbol. My father was a Mason, you know? But he didn’t want me to become one. Anyway, you know that stuff is all a bunch of nonsense.”
“Yeah, but why? Why remove an old black… patch of skin?”
He thought for a long moment, then said, “You think… maybe they were doing me a favor?”
They looked at each other and they both went, “Nah.”
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