by Steven James
She knows where you live . . . Tessa trusts her . . . If she decided not to go to the body farm . . . If she’s free . . .
“Give me one more sec.” We climbed into his car. Accidentally, I bumped my wounded arm, and a jolt of pain made me cringe. I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to steady myself.
Easy, easy.
“You all right?” Ralph said.
“Yeah.”
I repositioned myself in the seat. It didn’t really help. Ralph pulled into the street while I called Cheyenne, found out she’d bypassed the body farm tour and spent her time reading through the case files and filling out the Joint Op paperwork.
“Listen,” I said, “there’s been a lot going on with this case and I’ll brief you on everything, I promise, but right now, I need to ask a favor.”
“What is it?”
“Something’s up with Tessa. I’m not sure what, I’m worried about her. She’s at home. I think she needs someone there with her right now, but I have to swing by the hospital. Can you go over there? Just for—”
“The hospital?”
“I hurt my arm a little. It’ll be all right. But if you can check on her, it would help. She knows you. She trusts you.”
“Pat, you wouldn’t go to the hospital if your arm was only hurt a little. What happened?”
“A through and through,” I said. “No arterial damage. No apparent fractures.”
Cheyenne knew guns like I know coffee, but she didn’t ask about the caliber, the proximity of the shooter, the angle of penetration, she just said instead, “Oh, Pat, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be all right, just don’t tell Tessa. Okay? I don’t want her to worry.”
“I won’t tell her. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
“Take care of that arm.”
“I will.”
I hung up.
“All right,” I said to Ralph. I took a small breath. “Tell me about Basque.”
“He’s missing,” he said. “And so is Dr. Renée Lebreau.”
37
“What?”
“Both of them.”
The news sent my thoughts back to Basque’s trial.
Last autumn Professor Lebreau and her Michigan State University law students were the ones who’d found the discrepancies in the eyewitness testimony and DNA evidence from Basque’s trial thirteen years ago. Their findings had played a pivotal role in the Seventh District Court’s decision to give Richard Devin Basque a retrial and had also been influential in swaying the jury to acquit him.
“When was she last seen?”
“She failed to show up for her legal ethics class about twenty-nine hours ago. Her SUV’s still in the parking lot. She hasn’t been seen since.”
“And Basque?”
“We’re not sure, but he dropped off the radar screen a couple days ago. Chicago PD is looking for him, but as you know . . .”
“He’s a free man.”
“Not just free.” Ralph said the words with a dark tone that showed he didn’t agree with the verdict either. “Innocent.”
“According to the courts.”
“Yeah. And an innocent man doesn’t have to check in with the police when he goes on a road trip.” His words were grated with anger.
I thought again of Grant Sikora’s dying wish: “Promise me you won’t let him do it again.”
“I promise,” I’d said.
A stretch of silence, then I asked Ralph who was working Professor Lebreau’s disappearance.
“Director Rodale sent Kreger to head it up.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“Good man. Smart. Cool under pressure. He’s working with the East Lansing Police.”
Basque was one of the most elusive killers I’d ever encountered, and if he was involved in Professor Lebreau’s disappearance, even with Kreger’s help, I wondered if a city the size of East Lansing had the resources to find him.
You promised Grant Sikora you wouldn’t let Basque kill again . . . you promised . . .
“Send me up there,” I said.
Ralph shook his head. “You know I can’t do that. You have your classes, this Fischer case, the whole custody thing with Tessa that you need to straighten out—not to mention that scratch on your arm.”
“My gunshot wound is a scratch?”
“No bones sticking out. Can’t be that serious.”
“Nice criterion. Listen, find a way for me to help search for Basque. I know more about him than anyone—”
“Except for . . . ?”
At last I realized what this conversation was really about—the FBI agent who’d helped me track Basque thirteen years ago.
“You,” I said.
He nodded. “My flight leaves in an hour.”
We were on Massachusetts Avenue NW. The hospital was two blocks away.
“We need to be careful about this, though,” he said. “Not jump to conclusions. For all we know, the professor went on an unscheduled vacation and Basque went fishing for the week.”
But I could tell he didn’t buy any of that.
I knew Ralph would have already thought of this, but I felt like it needed to be said: “If it’s been twenty-nine hours, there’s a good chance—”
“Yeah, that she’s dead,” he said. “Or worse.”
A harsh stillness filled the air as we both thought of the things Basque had done to his victims before he killed them.
“Ralph,” I said slowly, “what do you think of preemptive justice?”
“I was an Army Ranger, man. Most of the missions we went on were preemptive. Identify a threat and eliminate it before it eliminates you.”
“Or someone else,” I said.
“Yes.”
And I had a feeling we were thinking the same thing.
We arrived at the hospital and parked in front of the emergency room doors.
“Both Basque and Lebreau go missing in the same week?” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence. Basque is involved.”
“I know.”
We climbed out of the car, and Ralph offered me one of his Herculean arms for support, but I turned him down. “Here’s the thing that just doesn’t fit,” I said. “Dr. Lebreau is the one who ended up providing information that helped exonerate Basque. Why would he go after her?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing. I have no idea.” His voice grew dark. “But, trust me. I’m gonna find him. And if he hurt her . . . Let’s just say the justice would be fast.”
“And clean.”
“Yeah.”
We entered the lobby.
When a law enforcement officer is brought into a hospital with a gunshot wound, the doctors are primed and ready, so I wasn’t surprised to see a trauma team waiting for us: half a dozen surgeons and nurses in gowns, booties, gloves standing poised around a gurney.
But apparently they must have been expecting something a little more exciting, because the doctors looked at each other uncertainly, and one of them asked, “You’re the GSW?” He sounded disappointed.
“Sorry it’s not more life-threatening,” Ralph said. “Next time we’ll try to make sure he gets shot in the chest.”
“Hey, thanks, Ralph.”
They didn’t seem to appreciate our comments, and one by one they dispersed. Ralph excused himself so he could get to the airport, and a severe-looking nurse carrying a stack of paperwork appeared and gestured toward a nearby exam room.
38
Tessa needed to get her mind off the whole deal with Paul Lansing, but it was still gonna be more than three hours before Patrick was supposed to show up.
Great.
Not exactly in the mood for crossword puzzles or poetry. Not today.
Maybe do something to make up for keeping the emails from him, for going behind his back, that would be a major plus.
So? Clean?
Um . . . not.
Supper?
Ouch—that was painful just to think about. She’d tried cooking a few times, and those had not exactly been her best hours.
Okay, so what does he care about—besides you—what matters to him?
Well, that was obvious.
His work.
And right now that meant finding whoever killed the congressman’s daughter in that whole weird, totally disturbing, chimpanzee attack.
She tried to think like Patrick would:
Location and timing.
Why then?
Why there?
What does the choice of this location tell us about the killer’s familiarity with the region, about his travel patterns? About his perception of the area and his relationship with the victims?
Timing: last night.
Location: the primate research place.
The cable news last night had said that the place was studying cognition in higher primates.
She knew a little about primate cognition, but maybe . . .
The Internet was a possibility, but she had a better idea.
She went online and, using her freshly acquired reader’s card verification number, logged onto the Library of Congress’s archives, the world’s largest collection of scientific journals, and then typed in “Gunderson Foundation Primate Research.”
A nurse checked my blood pressure and pulse and then put a bandage on my seeping IV needle mark, and after she left the exam room, I spent ten minutes filling in the hospital’s paperwork while I waited for the doctor to arrive.
But at last I set the forms aside, borrowed some paper from a receptionist, and began analyzing the details of the hotel chase, the shooting, the locations related to the crimes, jotting notes as I did.
After a while I realized that it’d been an hour since I’d spoken with Tessa or checked in on the case, and I still hadn’t gotten back with Director Rodale, who’d left me a message earlier for me to call him.
I phoned Tessa first, and she assured me she was fine. “Detective Warren is here.” She lowered her voice. “I didn’t need a babysitter.”
“That’s not why I asked her to stop by. You know that.”
A slight pause. “I guess so.”
“What are you two doing?”
“Talking about boys.”
“No, we’re not,” Cheyenne called from the background.
“Boys?”
“She thinks you should let me date older guys.”
“No, I don’t,” Cheyenne said.
“Whatever.”
Despite Tessa’s reluctance to have someone check in on her, she sounded much more relaxed than when we’d spoken earlier, and I was relieved. “Anyway,” she said, “we’re playing chess. She’s a lot better than you are.”
“Well, that’s not too hard.”
“True.”
I tapped a finger against the chair. Since I was still waiting for a doctor, my chances of getting home in time were growing slimmer, but I said, “I’m still hoping to make it by 7:00.”
I heard Cheyenne again: “Check.”
“All right, I’ll see you.” Tessa sounded distracted, and I pictured her studying the board.
She hung up, I called Doehring.
We talked for a few minutes about the case—still no sign of Mollie Fischer, but they were checking the hotel room by room. “Farraday found the wheelchair in room 809.”
“Whose name was the room reserved under?”
“The manager’s. It’s a comp room he keeps reserved for foreign dignitaries visiting Washington.”
Unbelievable.
“Fourteen sets of prints on the chair—so far mostly partials, DNA from Mollie, two maids, some still unidentified. No matches to anyone in the system, though. And the alley? Well, somehow these guys hacked in and looped the video feed. That’s why we didn’t see the woman enter. Marianne’s furious she didn’t catch it.”
So the question remained—where was Mollie?
I remembered reading about a case from the 1990s in which a Belgian couple abducted young children and kept them in a specially designed dungeon. The police searched the house twice and heard children crying each time, but assumed the sounds came from kids playing outside somewhere. Two girls starved to death while the husband was serving time and his wife, who was an elementary school teacher, stayed in the house and ignored the girls’ cries for weeks until the two children finally died.
“Take the room apart,” I said. “Check under the bed frame, move the furniture, assume nothing.”
“It’s done.”
“A maid’s cart? Could they have put her in a laundry cart?”
“We checked. Listen, how is your—”
“I’m fine. The freezers at the hotel? The roof? What about the elevators? Check on top of them—” And then, thinking of the hotel’s state-of-the-art security and ultramodern renovations, I had a grisly thought. “Any document shredding machines at the hotel? Large ones, I mean industrial-sized?”
“Don’t worry. My men are thorough.”
At last, as we were finishing the call, I asked him if he could send an officer to pick me up when I was finished here, take me back to my car.
“You were shot, Pat. I’ll have Anderson take you all the way home.”
“No, I just need to get to my car. I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave the hospital.”
We hung up.
Finally, under the pretext of returning the call he’d made to my cell earlier in the afternoon—but primarily hoping to find out if he was the one who’d told Fischer to keep the information about Mollie from the press—I punched in Director Rodale’s number.
His secretary told me he’d just gone home for the day. “He wants to speak to you too,” she said.
That was no surprise.
We set up a meeting at his office tomorrow at noon, between my classes.
Then I went back to my notes, and a few minutes later the doctor arrived.
39
After unwrapping the bandages that the paramedics had snugged around the arm, Dr. Stearn washed out the QuikClot, carefully inspected the entrance and exit holes, then ordered an X-ray to make sure there were no bone or bullet fragments in my arm.
Which only ate up more time.
Afterward, I convinced him to take me to a patient’s room rather than the exam room so I could watch the news on the in-room television. He irrigated the wound and said, “Prepare yourself.” He was getting a scalpel out to debride the area—a process that involves cutting away the dead tissue surrounding the injured area.
I tried to focus on the news.
Chelsea Traye, Channel 11’s on-site reporter, announced that they were expecting a statement “at any moment” from the FBI concerning “an alleged shooting in the basement of the historic Lincoln Towers Hotel.”
“Alleged, huh?” Dr. Stearn said.
A deep needle prick as he numbed the area.
“Until it goes through the Bureau’s public affairs department, I’m not officially wounded.”
“How nice.”
As I watched the news, Dr. Stearn finished the debridement and as tenderly as possible put a non-occlusive dressing on the wound. WXTN’s news team was explaining that according to their sources, the authorities were looking for a man and a woman as possibly being responsible for Mollie Fischer’s disappearance and the death of Twana Summie.
An orderly holding a doctor’s scrub top for me appeared at the door—something to wear, since my shirt had been stained with blood and scissored to pieces by Parvaneh. “Compliments of Mercy Medical,” he said.
“Pink?” I said. “I thought scrubs were supposed to be green?”
“Discourages people from stealing them.”
“I can’t imagine why.” I pointed at the chair in the corner of the room. “Just set it over there.”
As soon as he was gone, I called for a nurse and handed her a twenty dollar bill. “Can you stop by the hospital gift shop a
nd pick up a T-shirt for me? I’m a federal agent and I’d consider this a great service to your country.”
She smiled. “Sure.”
The doctor had a sling out and was adjusting it to fit my arm. I told him I wouldn’t need it; he told me I would.
The news program cut to the press conference, and Margaret appeared on the screen. I turned up the volume. Even though she was only giving a perfunctory explanation, I had to admit that her statement was much more carefully worded than mine had been earlier in the day.
She finished by announcing that one of the Bureau’s “finest agents” had sustained “minor injuries from adversarial action at a shooting in the basement of the Lincoln Towers.”
A few hours ago I was silly looking, now I was one of the FBI’s finest agents.
Maybe Margaret was just plain warming up to me.
“Minor injuries?” Dr. Stearn said dubiously, and I realized that so far he had only communicated to me in two-word sentences.
“Hurts though,” I said.
In the end, Margaret didn’t say anything that I didn’t already know, then the news program shifted to an “expert’s analysis” of the incident.
The doc finished with my arm and told me to come back and have it checked on Monday for infection. Finally he gave me some pain meds and antibiotics. “No narcotics,” I said. He reluctantly agreed, switched the meds, then said, “Twice daily.” He pointed to one of the bottles of pills and then tipped out two. “Swallow these.”
“For pain,” I said.
He nodded and then stunned me with three complete sentences in a row. “Take another two before going to bed. The next couple days are going to be rough. I’ll give you a prescription.”
I thanked him and was standing up to go when the nurse returned with a hot pink “DC Rules!” tourist T-shirt.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said.
“The only extra large they had left.” She handed me the shirt and my change. “Don’t worry, pink is the new black.”
“Oh. Is that it.”
Dr. Stearn was scribbling his signature on a sheet of paper clamped to his clipboard.
“No driving,” he said.
Okay, back to two-word sentences.
“I understand,” I replied.
