Free The Vanished by Tim Kizer Page A

diagnosed with cirrhosis. And apparently he’s not doing too well: last year he was placed on the liver transplant waiting list.”
    “Cirrhosis? Is he an alcoholic?”
    “His cirrhosis was caused by hepatitis C.”
    David was about to ask Vincent what Roger Kemper’s cirrhosis had to do with Annie’s abduction when it dawned on him: the investigator suspected that Roger had kidnapped Annie to take her liver.
    “Do you think he kidnapped Annie for her liver?” David asked.
    “Yes. The interesting thing is that the liver can regenerate itself, so you only need to transplant a piece of it. It means that Annie might still be alive.”
    “What about Roger’s parents? Wouldn’t it be easier for him to get his father or mother to donate him a piece of liver than to kidnap Annie?”
    “His biological father’s dead, and his mother and stepfather have an incompatible blood type. By the way, Roger’s blood type is B-negative, which is very rare. Only two percent of the population have it.”
    David knew that B-negative was a rare blood type because Annie’s blood was B-negative.
    “And your daughter’s blood type is B-negative, too,” Vincent said.
    “Does he have siblings?”
    “No.”
    Was Roger going to take a piece or the whole liver?
    It didn’t matter anyway: Roger wouldn’t let Annie live because she could turn him in to the police.
    “Roger’s the kidnapper, I’m sure of it,” Vincent said. “I called his job today. They said he’s on vacation and will be back in two weeks. I believe he left Fort Worth to have the transplant done.”
    Since Roger was forcing Annie to donate her liver to him, he wouldn’t be able to have the surgery performed in an American hospital. He would have to either find a back-alley surgeon (which was a highly risky option) or go to a third-world country, where corruption was widespread and hospital administrators were willing to bend the rules for a price.
    If Roger had elected to have the transplant done in a foreign country, he had most likely gone to Mexico: it was close and had a fair number of surgeons capable of doing the job. He would have had no trouble taking Annie to Mexico in a car because U.S. customs agents didn’t check the passports of people leaving the country.
    Now the question was: Is Annie still alive?
    “Do you know when he left Forth Worth?” David asked.
    “His neighbor said she hadn’t seen him since last Thursday.”
    “Do you think he found someone in America to do the surgery?”
    “I have no idea. If I were him, I’d do it in Mexico.”
    They might have cut out Annie’s liver in Texas and then transported it to Mexico. How long could the liver be stored outside the body before being transplanted?
    “Do you really think Annie’s still alive?” David asked.
    “There’s a good chance that she is.”
    Vincent might have said it just to make him feel better. Roger had no incentive to let Annie go after the surgery.
    “Do you think Roger’s still in Mexico?” 
    “Average hospital stay after liver transplant is ten to fourteen days. If Roger had the surgery last Thursday, he should stay in Mexico until at least this Sunday.”
    Because it took more than a weekend to recover from a liver transplant, Roger’s surgery couldn’t have occurred before last Thursday.
    “Can you find him?” 
    “You mean, can I find him before he comes back to the States? No, I can’t. I just don’t have the resources to do it. You have to ask the police.”
    If it was already too late, if Annie was dead, would he be able to bring Roger Kemper to justice? David believed he would. A DNA test would prove that Roger’s new liver had come from Annie, which should be enough to get him convicted of Annie’s murder.
    “The police aren’t going to help,” David said.
    “You have to try. There’s no other way to find Roger quickly.”
    There was another way. Paul Sibert, Pima County Attorney, his former boss and good friend. Paul could ask the chief of