“Dr. Sparks had other problems to contend with—namely getting hearts. We have a severe shortage of healthy hearts. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve been reduced to repairing hearts with minor defects and recycling them for our sickest transplant patients,” Berger muttered. “That’s what happens when the government gets involved.”

Oliver asked, “What are you talking about?”

“What?”

“The government being involved,” Oliver said. “Are they hoarding hearts or something?”

Berger smiled. The first smile of the entire session. “I was speaking off the top of my head. No, the government is not hoarding hearts. What the government has done is pass good legislation that has done its job. Unfortunately, it’s made our jobs as cardiac surgeons a little harder.”

No one spoke.

“The helmet law,” Berger said. “Since they’ve enacted the helmet law, we don’t get the fatal head-injury motorcycle crashes. Meaning we just don’t get hearts like we used to.”

28

“So now we know why Sparks was involved with the bikers and their Peoples Environment Freedom Act or whatever the heck it’s called.” Marge closed the door to Decker’s office. “Sparks wanted the law repealed so he could harvest hearts.”

Oliver sat in Decker’s desk chair, exhausted after four hours of extensive questioning. The minutiae of Berger’s activities the night of Sparks’s murder. Berger had taken them through his activities in the lab step by step, giving them a plausible time frame. In the end, they had no choice but to release him. Not enough evidence to hold him for murder.

“A doctor needs a hobby.” Oliver shook his head. “And here I thought vampires were all made up.”

“Sparks was collecting hearts, not eating them,” Marge said.

“Out of my chair, Scott.” Decker checked the clock. It was almost one A.M. Today was Friday and the evening would bring in the Sabbath, his family’s day of prayer, meditation, and rest. As far as Decker was concerned, time couldn’t pass quickly enough.

Oliver got up and parked himself in a folding chair. “When we arrested Berger, he’d blurted out the same thing to Dr. Fulton. That Sparks was obssessed with getting hearts, used to try to pick them out of dead accident victims.”

Decker remembered New Chris’s intensive-care nurse talking about Sparks and his police band radio. How the doctor had raced to accidents, ostensibly to help out the victims. Had he only been interested in seizing body parts?

“I don’t know if it’s illegal,” Decker said, “but preying on victims like that is major league creepy.” He sat down. “So now we can explain why Sparks became a weekend warrior. The main question is…is Myron Berger telling the truth?”

No one spoke.