Toward evening, someone got off work early and returned home.
"Wouldn't this be a little wrong?" Dahlia asked with a frown after hearing Nick's plan.
"This is the fastest way I can think of to solve this case."
Nick felt helpless, too. He would have liked to investigate that free clinic directly, but clearly, without any evidence, a judge would never issue the PPB a search warrant based on guesswork alone.
Besides, this was a nonprofit funded directly by the federal government, under the Health Resources and Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services, although it operated independently.
The FBI had just stated that it was "none of our business." As long as the case stayed within Oregon, there was nothing wrong with the local police handling it themselves.
Yet now they would be searching a medical institution under federal jurisdiction. Even if it was only a small free clinic, that would still be something of a slap in the face.
Moreover, Nick thought it unlikely that the clinic itself was the problem, since it was too small to have an inpatient department and was located downtown.
With so many people around, there were too many eyes watching. Even if Vultures had infiltrated the place, they most likely held only one or two key positions, using access to medical records to select victims.
So even if the PPB turned the place upside down, they probably would not find many leads, and every day they delayed might mean more victims.
The deliveryman had already died in a car crash, scattering a heap of human organs and blood bags all over the ground in public. Even an idiot could guess that the police would investigate thoroughly. If those people were decisive enough, they might already have packed up and