The Grim Harvester

By Frank Hibbs

A murder mystery novel about black market human organ merchants grimly harvesting organs for sale to unscrupulous transplant surgeons. A middle aged man, a miner of gold, is drawn into the search for the culprits by his love for a young woman with whom he is madly in love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 13, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462830268

Frank Hibbs

Frank Hibbs was born and raised in Sevier County in southwestern Arkansas, the son of a lumberjack. Drafted in 1944 he served with the Army in WWII as an infantryman with 3rd Army in the ETO. Reenlisting he became a B-29 Flight Engineer in the Air Force and few 21 combat missions in the Korean War. He ended his 21-year service in the military with the Strategic Air Command flying b-36's and C-124's. Married with two children he worked thirty years as an electronic technician in industry and retired in 1992. After retirement he began painting and writing all types of fiction.

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Copyright © 2007 by Frank Hibbs.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

The ebony darkness of midnight covered the rugged mountain terrain where the entrance to the main shaft of an old abandoned gold mine gaped like a monsters mouth. The dim starlight revealed the black blotch of the mine entrance lying above the flat terrace created by its old spoil. The night was dark, cold, and moonless with only the dim light from a clear, cold, star filled sky dimly silhouetting the evergreen trees that towered above the high ridgeline.

The ominous dark hole in the side of the steep forested ridge marked the entrance to an old worked out mineshaft that gaped like a fairy tale dragon’s lair with the dragon lurking inside in wait for its prey. A boulder littered ridge sloped steeply upward above the inky dark opening toward a pine tree covered ridge crest high above the old abandoned goldmine. A cold breeze whispered through nearby pine trees and swirled about the large boulders that made up the surface terrain around the entrance to the old abandoned mine shaft.

The starlight dimly reflected off patches of old snow lying scattered among the boulders representing the last remains of a heavy snowfall in the area. The dim glow from the distant stars made the patches of snow ghostly pale blots among the ominous dim shadows around a motley group of decaying wooden buildings. Covered with snow and icicles, the north side of the old building’s shingled roofs hung heavy with long spears of ice. The gaunt bare limbs of leafless deciduous trees growing around the decrepit wooden buildings lifted their gaunt limbs to heaven in apparent supplication for mercy. The spring night air was sharply cold, almost calm as the breeze died and white frost began to form on weathered wooden planks strewn about the mineshaft entrance.

Rustling noises of small animals out foraging for food among the trees and old deserted buildings sounded eerily ominous. The sharp death cry of a small forager who lost the game of survival among the old mine buildings to a larger predator instantly created a short suspenseful silence along the mountainside. Further away, down the hollow, an owl hooted ominously from one of the trees it perched in to add an eerie mood to the cold dark rocky landscape.

Far down the hollow formed by the two high ridges that dominated the landscape, vehicle headlight appeared on the old road leading to the mine. The vehicle slowly and cautiously moved along the graveled, potholed road that led to the level area created by the old goldmines spoils below the dark gaping mineshaft entrance. Eventually a bone white Ford van was discernable as it moved onto and parked on the open area in front of the mine. Once parked the white van remained motionless with its headlights on and engine idling.

The bulky figure that sat in the drivers seat of the van swept the area with a spotlight mounted on the vehicle’s left door and carefully surveyed the area that contained the mine buildings. When the probing spotlight satisfied the driver that no other human lurked in the area, he extinguished the vans headlights and killed the engine, instantly plunging the scene into star lit darkness again. The ogre had arrived at his secrete hiding place.

It was eerily quiet after the vehicle’s engine shut down and even the small animals seemed afraid to move about again after the noisy disturbance created by the white vans engine. The bulky figure in the driver’s seat sat motionless, tensely listening to the night sounds around him for several minutes after he shut down the vehicles engine. Extracting a cigarette from an inside shirt pocket, the figure exited the van and stood beside it smoking the cigarette for another long period apparently to make doubly sure he was alone. His steaming breath mixed with tobacco smoke, rose from his face into the frosty air and vanished above his head.

He finally dropped the cigarette into the dust at his feet and ground it under his boot heel then secured a large flashlight and a pair of leather gloves from under the drivers seat of the van. Holding the flashlight in his armpit, he slipped on the gloves and moved to the back of the vehicle. With one swift motion, he unlatched and swung open the two rear doors of the white van then stepped up past the doors to open and crouch over a rectangular coffin sized wooden toolbox inside the van.

Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he extracted and cradled in his arms a blanket wrapped form from the long toolbox bolted to the metal wall of the van and stepped back to the ground. The bulky figure turned, deftly kicked the vans rear doors closed with one foot then walked up the sloping ramp toward the dark mine entrance.

The probing flash light beam ahead of his advance revealed a large wooden warning sign near the mine entrance erected by the Forest Service. The wooden sign was set solidly in the ground by cement with the lettering burned into the thick wooden boards in typical government agency fashion. The four by four foot sign described the dangers of a cave in offered by the old mine to anyone who dared enter the shaft beyond its dark gaping entrance. The dark figure paused only briefly at the mine entrance then stepped boldly past the entrance portals.

Inside the old mine, the rock walls of the shaft became sharply visible as the bulky figure passed the mine entry probing the flashlight down the dark tunnel ahead of his movement. Large spider webs hung suspended across the shaft that he sometimes brushed aside or just impatiently plowed through tearing the webs to shreds. He paused, shifted his burden slightly in his arms for better balance and continued walking further into the rock walled shaft. He detoured around mine timbers and piles of rock that had fallen from the roof of the tunnel when the old mine shaft timbering deteriorated over the years.

The light beam reflecting off the rock walls of the old shaft dimly revealed a big man wearing a heavy mackinaw coat and hunters rubber soled high lace boots. A billed cap with furred earflaps covered his head to below his ears and made his features indistinct. The mysterious rigid form wrapped in the blanket he carried so effortlessly cradled in his arms remained rigidly unmoving even when he shifted it to different positions. His black leather gloved right hand now gripped the flashlight, swinging its beam back and forth across the rock floor ahead of his booted feet.

Moving deep into the old mine shaft the bulky figure soon turned left into a side tunnel away from the main shaft that continued on straight into the bowels of mountain. A hundred feet into the side tunnel, a jumbled rock fall and a sagging wooden beam impeded his way. He stooped low then crawled on his knees to get under the sagging roof beam until the opening grew so small he had to lay his load down. He placed his blanket wrapped burden down in the narrow low opening that remained in the shaft and pushed it ahead of him as he crawled on his knees past the rock fall. The blanket fell away from one end of the form as he pushed it ahead of him and two small pale rigid human feet and ankles became dimly revealed.

Once he was past the rock fall he again arose to his feet, picked up his burden and traveled the side tunnel for another five hundred or more feet. He stopped at the end of the shaft where the probing flashlight’s beam revealed a wide dark pit gaping ominously in the floor if the mineshaft. The large open pit had originally contained an ore elevator when the mine was producing pay grade ore in a lower shaft.

Kneeling on the hard rocky floor the man placed the rigid, elongated bundle he carried close to the lip of the pit, removed the blanket, and laid it aside. With the blanket removed the pale, nude, and rigid body of a small brown haired woman with a strange shrunken appearance to her face and body lay on the dusty shaft floor. The man stood up again and placed the flashlight on the floor in a position that would illuminate the small still body of the woman lying in the dust of the tunnel floor. He softly murmured aloud to the still figure of the woman, You were lot of fun for a week but all good things have to end sometime, then chuckled gleefully.

The bulky figure squatted again, reached down with one gloved hand, rolled the nude body toward the pit until it tumbled over the edge into the dark abyss. He listened until the sound of the body and loose, disturbed rock hitting the shaft floor far below echoed up for a moment then the pit became silent again. He picked up the flashlight, swung it around the rock walls near him, and chuckled at the gleaming eyes of rats shining out of the cracks in the tunnel walls.

Chows on downstairs boys go down and get yours before it’s all gone.

Retrieving the blanket, he folded it into a compact rectangle, placed it under his arm, and retraced the route he had come back to the mine entrance. Before he left the mine, he brushed cobwebs from his clothing and probed with the flashlight around the area while standing in the timbered entry to the mine. Once he was completely satisfied that no other humans lurked about the bulky man walked to the white van and prepared to leave.

Once seated in the van the bulky figures face briefly revealed itself in the bright flare of a match as he lit a cigarette. A brief whining noise from the starter and the engine started with a roar that was quickly idled. The mysterious man backed the van around and headed it down the rough graveled road with the same slow care that he had approached the area with earlier. The headlights grew dimmer as the distance increased from the mine and finally disappeared completely among the evergreen trees further downs the hollow.

Quiet descended again over the site and the small animals began to stir on their nightly foraging rounds again. The frost continued to form and in the heavens the mighty constellations of stars marched majestically across the cold night sky. From the dark shaft of the mine there seemed to emit the faint ghostly crying of a woman weeping pitifully in despair, filling the dim star lit night around the old mine with heartsick sorrow. The hunting owl cocked his head to listen then spread his broad wings and soared away down the hollow to hunt the rest of the night far away from the old mine.

The Ogre in the form of a man slowed the white van as he approached the intersection with a paved county road, halted the vehicle, and turned off its headlights. Nervously he scanned the dark asphalt road for other headlights until he was sure no other vehicles were nearby to see him leave the graveled mountain road. Turning his lights back on, he hurriedly gunned the white van into the paved road and turned toward the city. He lit another cigarette when he was sure no one had seen him exit the old mine road.

His thoughts turned to the purpose of his dead of night excursion to the mine and chuckled at the huge success of a long ago idea to use the old abandoned gold mine shaft as a dumpsite for his victims dead bodies. He assured himself it would be a very unlikely event if his victims ever turned up. If someone did find them, no one remembering seeing him near the mine would protect him from detection as the dumper even if discovery happened.

He thought of his latest acquisition lying in bed awaiting his pleasure if he chose to take her. A bolt of desire raced through him and he decided to indulge himself as soon as he arrived at his destination. The euphoria ended abruptly when an eerie feeling that some one was watching him from the darkened rear of the van made the hair stand up on the nap of his neck.

He pulled the white van to the shoulder of the deserted road, stopped and quickly scanned the rear of the van with his flashlight and saw only the coffin-sized toolbox. The Ogre overcame his fear and continued driving the ghost white van toward his lair making sure to stay within the speed limit and not give a traffic officer reason to pull him over. Thus, the ogres growing overconfidence in his ability to remain undetected while he reaped his grim harvest began his eventual downfall.

A knight not dressed in shining armor but a brown business suit launched upon a quest to find the missing girl children from his fief by his concern and pity for their hard lot. He suspected such a monster as the ogre was responsible but did not know where to search for him or where he had concealed his victims. The knight had a good heart that often grieved at the sad lot of the girl children that trod the streets of his fief seeking substance to live on.

John Pinellii a detective for the Port Colon police department spread the sixteen missing person’s reports on his desk again and slowly ran a finger across them at the point that gave sex and age. They were all young women less than twenty years old, the youngest a fourteen year old runaway from down state. All were girls that had entered the sleazy life of a prostitute after their arrival in the city of Port Colon. All had mysteriously disappeared without a trace from the streets of Port Colon where they plied their sleazy trade to make a living. All were either reported missing by a few friends or worried relatives from out of town. His partner Brian McKenzie sitting at the adjoining desk glanced over his shoulder and informed him he would not go to into the captain’s office with him again to plead for more time on the missing person files.

The data spread on the desk before him seemed to contain a common thread for all the young prostitutes had vanished without a trace over the past five years. The most recent within the last month involved a brown haired sixteen-year-old youngster. John had not been able to develop any leads on the stacks of files lying before him on the desk and was literally at his wits end. His section chief had ordered him to file the cases and begin another investigation with a more pressing need of his time. He decided to give it one more shot and reached for the phone to call Kirk Howell at State Police Headquarters.

Hi, is that you Kirk? John Pirelli. I have been reviewing some missing persons cases I have been working on and I am about to be forced to shelve them for lack of a lead. What do you have on missing young women, fourteen to twenty years old? I suspect a serial killer but no bodies have surfaced as they did in Seattle, they just vanish without a trace. Can you put it in your computer under that age group with the common characteristic of vanishing without a trace?

Hang on John that should be possible, I’ll enter it right now and see what comes up. How have you been doing, I haven’t heard from you in months. How are you guy’s doing on that mob hit? When did you get side tracked to missing persons?

I had to find a kid from out of state that was reported in town. I found him living with a fag on River Street. After I found the lad, I had gotten interested in these other reports. It’s fascinating how they all vanish without a trace of any kind. Usually most cases involving missing women like these turn up in a morgue somewhere.

Here comes the data on the screen now John and it tells me in your city in the last six years there have been twenty four complete disappearances of young females. In Nevada, mostly around Reno and Vegas, there have been ten. North of us very few have occurred, five in all. Your bailiwick is top with the even two dozen.

I only went back five years Kirk when I pulled the files. I think we have a very deadly and twisted person loose in our state and we had better keep an eye out and an ear to the ground. I may have to drop the case for a while if my supervisor, Captain Dawson, doesn’t authorize some more time and money for my investigation. He is about ready to pull the plug on me and start me on something else.

Dawson is a good man, why is he likely to pull the case?

Can’t blame him, it isn’t his fault, because the tight budget bunch on the city council has already cut him to the bone as far as money is concerned. In a few minutes, I am going to enter his harried presence and try to convince him to give me a few more investigative hours on this but it doesn’t look good for him to authorize more time. Should you run into anything please call me, this case makes my skin crawl because I have a hunch they are all connected some way.

Sure will John and thanks for calling me. I wasn’t aware this was going on but I will keep a look out and may open a file on your suspicions. Good luck and give me a call occasionally to keep in touch. Anything else I can help you with?

Nothing else right now Kirk, see you later and good luck.

John Pinellii hung up the phone, gathered the files from his desk, walked to the supervisor’s office, and knocked for entry. He received the usual gruff, Come in, composed his face in his most pleasant and hopefully convincing expression, and entered the office. Captain Barney Dawson looked up from a mass of paperwork on his desk and greeted John with a scowl when he glimpsed the files in John’s hands as he came through the door.

No dammit, we cannot spend any more money on that stack of dead ends in your hand. John you are a good friend and fine investigator but you don’t know when to throw in the towel sometimes. In addition, you have completely lost your professional outlook over these missing women and have become emotionally involved. Sit down and tell me one more time what you have come up with and your reasons for continuing with the investigation. I don’t think anything you say will change my mind, it is still going to be no.

Barney, this thing screams for further investigation and you know that’s the truth. The common thread of young women making a living on the streets and disappearing is just one facet of this case that is important. The fact that no bodies are turning up indicates that it just may be a very organized effort, John paused when Barney waved his hand and scowled.

John, white slavers, or someone else in the sleaze trade may be taking them somewhere else. Hell most of them are runaways anyway, Barney put forth.

Captain, even if a white slave organization was snatching them, eventually some word would get out, they shouldn’t just vanish completely. Nobody notices anything special about their actions before they vanish and they do not talk to their friends about a trip they are taking out of town. These women must be dead from some mysterious means because not a whisper has turned up as a clue to their fate. Let me talk the vice squad into putting one officer on the street under cover investigating this case full time.

Have you got anything new at all to tell me about this case, anything at all? Barney growled.

I have found a bartender, a waitress and two hookers who have noticed two men talking to various young hookers on the street. Their descriptions of these two are very vague and fit any number of men prowling the strips looking for whores. The bartender noted they were stalking only the young ones exclusively and turning away from older women. The two hookers who noticed the two related they turned down the proposition when the pair wanted them to agree to a team meet. If we can get an undercover officer working the tenderloin we might get a lead on these two men, at least a better physical description, John pleaded.

John you are describing the action of at least a hundred men on any Saturday night you might pick. What makes you suspect them?

They seem to work together and pick on the young runaways and are always seen working on a lone woman, never a pair.

Not enough, John, you are pitching all high throws and nothing in reach of my bat. I must pull the plug on this one or the council budget watchdogs will have the commissioner down on me.

"Barney you have to do what you gotta do and I realize you have let me go this far out of friendship. I must be honest and admit I have no new lead