The guys didn't say what time they'd be coming so he made sure he was ready by six AM. He had a leisurely breakfast and waited. And they promptly showed up... three hours later.

"Where are we going?" Devon said.

"We're going to the clinic, where the patients have been disappearing," Artie said, "talk to the staff, snoop around a bit..."

"Okay."

"Did you read the files I gave you?" Myka asked.

"Yeah." He handed them back.

"What did you think?"

"Fudge? Are you guys serious?"

Pete and Myka laughed. Artie just frowned.

Arriving at the clinic, they found it almost deserted, or as deserted as a free clinic could be. Though there were a few patients waiting to be called, there was an absence of crowds and the long lines that one would have expected. Scared off by the disappearances and dead bodies, I suppose, Devon thought.

"Okay," Artie said to Devon, "Pete and I will go to the administrator's office and poke around their files. You and Myka try and talk to the staff and see what you can find."

They split up, and Myka and Devon went to the Nurses' Station.

"Best if you take the lead," Myka said. "They'll find it funny if a Secret Service agent is here."

Devon nodded and went up to the nurse who seemed to be in charge.

"Hi," Devon said. "Can we talk to the head nurse?"

"I'm the head nurse. Who wants to know?"

"I'm Lieutenant McMasters," he flashed his badge quickly so the girl couldn't take a good look at it and see he was NYPD instead of DC Police.

The girl groaned. "Not another cop," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"When will you guys quit sending people over already! There are no more dead bodies popping up anymore, okay? We're fine!"

"Excuse me?" Myka said, echoing Devon.

"It's been a week now, and no new bodies have been found. So you cops can lay off and stop scaring the patients away."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, look around you," she gestured at the half-full room. "Used to be there weren't any available seats. Most of the people have stopped coming since we started finding dead bodies."

"I heard there have been sixty dead bodies?" Devon asked.

"Yeah..." the nurse sighed. "Poor crips."

"Crips? They were cripples? All of them?"

"Yes. Paraplegics, many of them - a missing arm or leg, although others had different problems. Some had congenital defects like missing eyes, deformed hands or feet, missing genitals or facial features..."

"What? Missing genitals?"

"One of then didn't have a nose or ears, while others had... other missing parts."

Devon and Myka looked at each other.

"Some even had Down's Syndrome, although no one bothered to do a complete genetic exam to make sure."

"So all of them had problems?"

The head nurse nodded sadly. "Most of us think that a nursing home for handicapped people, or some place like that, couldn't take care of these folks and, when they died, they just dumped the bodies here." The nurse sighed again.

"Where were the bodies dumped?"

"At the door to the biohazard waste area. They were put in disposable body bags."

Devon looked at Myka and pulled her away from the nurse. "That didn't sound like they were just dumped." Devon said, sotto voce.

"What do you mean?" Myka asked.

"It was very considerate of our mysterious body snatchers to put them in body bags first," Devon said. "Contrary to what most people assume, it's not easy putting dead bodies in body bags. You don't just slip them in."

Myka's eyes widened a bit in slow comprehension.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Chances are," Devon continued, "that the other cops missed that clue." He turned back to the nurse. "What kind of body bags?"

"The same kind of disposable bags the hospital uses, actually, though I know they didn't come from our supply."

Devon nodded. "Where does the hospital get its supply?"

"We get them from a mortuary supplier in New York."

Devon asked for the supplier's name and phone, and thanked the nurse.

He and Myka sat in a couple of vacant seats in the waiting area. Myka pulled out her laptop and located the supplier. Devon read the number and called it using his cel.

"St. Luke's Mortuary Supplies," someone on the other side answered pleasantly.

Devon identified himself as an NYPD police officer, and asked about disposable body bag orders from the clinic.

"Oh, yeah," the man said. "We got a big order this month."

"You did? How big?"

"They usually order one case every couple of months. This time, they got three cases."

"Cases? How many are in a case?"

"Twenty-five." The voice paused. "The thing is, though," the man said, "they paid for these last three cases in cash."

Devon found out that, apparently, cash payments are never done. Devon asked for the name of the person who placed the order. The man didn't know, but he was able to locate the receipts and told him who was the person who received them, and that this person was also probably the one who paid for them as well.

After hanging up, he explained it to Myka. They walked back to the nurses' station.

"Hi," Devon said. "It's us again. Do you know someone named R. Preston working for the clinic?"

"That would be Dr. Robert Preston, the new full-time resident. He just started here about a month ago. He just went off-shift."

Myka stepped away, pulled out her cel and started calling Artie, so she didn't have time to see what went down next.

The nurse gestured. "Actually, that's him over there." She pointed to a doctor in a white coat appearing from a side door.

"Hey!" Devon exclaimed. The guy turned and saw him. Some kind of instinct made him run. Devon drew his gun and took off after the guy even before Myka could react.

"Devon's pretty fast," Myka muttered. She didn't even have a chance to see the guy. She took off after them.

-----

Devon found himself running after Preston out the back door and out onto the streets. He tried to run the guy down, but Preston was fast. But after three blocks, he felt the guy losing steam. Probably out of some desperation, Preston turned into an alley, slowing him down enough for Devon to catch up. Devon grabbed the guy's wrist but the man swung on him, catching him on the side of his head. Devon fell to the ground, his head spinning, but didn't give up. He grabbed at the man's white coat, pulling himself up. He pushed at Preston's chest, slamming him against a door. Something felt funny there, he thought.

The strength of the impact cracked the door lock. They both fell through the doorway, Devon on top of Preston. The man shoved Devon, knocking him back and to the right, giving the man room to stand.

All the commotion attracted the attention of the three warehouse men inside (apparently, the two had stumbled into some sort of warehouse).

"Hey!" one of the big guys yelled as the two of them struggled.

Devon finally got Preston turned around, holding him with his hands pinned behind his back.

"Stay back," Devon yelled, holding the man with one hand at arm's length, and holding his badge out to the approaching warehouse guys with the other. "Police!"

The men slowed a bit as Devon put his badge away and pulled out a set of handcuffs. But as he was about to snap them on, the man was able to pull one of his arms away.

He reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a knife - a surgical scalpel, actually - THE scalpel, and slashed at Devon's arm.

Devon pulled back, not because of any strong sense of pain, but more from an instinctive reaction to being attacked. The pain he felt was more akin to a paper cut. But the guy switched the way he held the scalpel, and pounded it into Devon's chest, straight into his heart.

Rich, red arterial blood spurted out of the wound and Devon fell back. Though consciousness was starting to slip, he saw what was happening.

"That dude stabbed the cop!" one of the men exclaimed. The other one picked up a long two-by-four and swung it at Preston's head. Preston ducked, managing to miss much of the impact and, with the same kind of grip on the scalpel, stabbed, or more accurately, pounded it into the warehouse guy's left thigh. The stabbing action was so strong, it actually forced the sharp knife into the man's thighbone. The man screamed and fell down, writhing in extreme pain. Devon could only watch mutely, unable to move from the shock of the blood loss, and the fatal damage to his heart.

Another of the warehouse guys punched Preston straight in the face, causing him to fall back, tripping over Devon's unmoving body.

Preston shook off the punch, stood up, blood streaming from a broken nose, and blindly swung around his arm with the scalpel, catching the other man on his cheek. The man fell down unconscious. Clearly, it wasn't the scalpel cut, since a cut like that wouldn't cause instant unconsciousness. Still, the man didn't stir. There were three men down now. Devon finally dropped into unconsciousness

The last of the warehouse guys stopped and warily circled Preston.

Preston covered his face with his hand to hide his features, staggered back through the door he and Devon came in through, holding the side of his head that was hit by the two-by-four, blood streaming down from his broken nose. As soon as the guy left, the last warehouse man rushed forward and looked at his two friends, crouched down, checked for a pulse, and then called 911 on his cel.

Just as he finished his call, Myka banged the door open and rushed in. "Federal agent!" she cried, Tesla gun drawn.

The remaining warehouse guy, still squatting, instinctively raised his hands, but when he saw Myka's "ray gun," he assumed she was some kind of kook and started putting his hands down.

"Keep 'em up," she said sharply, and fired off a shot at the far wall.

At the crackle and lightning-like bolts of the Tesla, the guy exclaimed in surprise and brought his hands up again. "They're up! They're up!" he said.

"Move away," she gestured, and the man stood up and moved away, hands still up.

Myka kneeled, gingerly avoiding the growing pool of blood from Devon, and checked the three for life signs. "Who are these guys," she asked.

"They're people that work with me here in the warehouse. The other guy's a cop. I don't know him."

After checking for a pulse, she stood up, shook her head and lowered the Tesla. "I'm sorry," she said.

"What! They can't be dead! I just checked!"

Myka shook her head again sadly.

"Jimmy! Sam!" He rushed to them and checked again, but couldn't find a pulse as well.

He was about to turn one of them over, but Myka stopped him.

"Stop!" She shook her head. "You don't want to do that."

"What do you mean?"

"Just don't."

He wanted to push the matter, but Myka deftly changed the topic.

"Where's the cop you mentioned?"

"Huh? That's the guy." He pointed at the third non-moving figure - the one in the suit.

Myka just looked and didn't react. That's not Devon, she thought. Where's Devon?