The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  “What are these things?” I said.

  “Mostly interview notes. The handwriting is awful. It’ll take hours to get through it all.”

  I spun one of the pads around. The top sheet was a list of interview subjects. It was long, about forty names. There was Ned Bowles and Lois McGuin and Eric Russo.

  “Something wrong?” Weston said.

  “Not wrong. Just the names on this list. Markaris—see? The cops interviewed him, but Markaris told me he was away most of that year, working in Puerto Rico. Anyway, this is a lot of interviews. It looks like the detectives did a thorough job.”

  “Tuesday, with Quintero, I’ll go over all this and see what he remembers.” She stacked up the cards and pads and put her hand lightly on mine. “Would you like more coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  With the fresh coffee, we switched binders and went back to work. A few times she asked me about something she came across. I admit, I was having trouble concentrating. A couple of times I glanced up and thought I saw her eyes darting away, as if she’d been staring at me. I felt like a kid in school, spending study hall flirting with the prettiest girl around. Totally juvenile—but there it was.

  After a while, I went to get us a couple of bagels to munch on. Back at the table, Weston had stood up and was shuffling quickly through the papers. “What’s up?” I said.

  “I can’t find Russo’s airline receipt and the note that was with it. The folder’s here, but it’s empty.”

  We looked through everything. They definitely were gone.

  Weston said, “Do you think—?”

  “Scottie took them.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll find out,” I said.

  He’d had plenty of time to get home. I took out my phone. Mrs. Rogansky answered before the second ring.

  “Dr. Henderson, I’m glad you call. I look everywhere for your number. Can’t find.”

  “Slow down, Mrs. Rogansky. Is Scottie there?”

  “No. He came home and look at his papers for a while, then make a phone call. He told me to go away, but even from upstairs I heard him yelling. Really angry.”

  “You don’t know who he called?”

  “No, I was hoping it was you. That’s why I look for your number. He went out.”

  “Have you made any other calls since then?” I asked.

  “No, I would have called you, but your number—”

  “Your phone is digital, isn’t it? One of the new ones. I saw it in your kitchen.”

  “Yes, Scottie buy it. Why?”

  “There’s a button on it that says ‘redial,’ right?”

  “Ha!” she said. “Sure, I should have thought. I grew up under the Soviets. There you had to think quick every day, yes? I’ll have to hang up first.”

  I gave her my number so she could call me back.

  “Scottie got in an argument with somebody on the telephone and went out,” I told Weston. “His landlady is getting the number he called.” My phone rang. “It’ll show up on her screen when she hits redial.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Rogansky. Got it?”

  I copied it down: 202 area code, from the District.

  “Thanks. Call me back if Scottie comes home, all right?” I hung up.

  “Hold on,” Weston said, “I’ve seen that number today.” She pulled out her own phone and showed it to me—her contacts list. “That’s Griffin O’Shea’s home phone.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Jamie dialed O’Shea’s number, but there was no answer so she left a message. “Why would Glass want to talk to him?” she said as she put the phone away. “His landlady said he was angry about something?”

  “The angry part doesn’t mean much,” I said. “Scottie’s that way most of the time. I don’t know what he’d want to talk to O’Shea about. Something to do with that airline receipt and note. That must be why Scottie took them.”

  “The landlady didn’t know where he went?”

  “No. He went through some of his research papers before he made the call to O’Shea. If we took a look at those things, they might tell us something.”

  “That beats sitting around here.” She started putting the binders and papers back in the file box. “If this goes sideways, I’ll have to take the gloves off with Glass.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. Scottie wants answers, that’s all. Just like you.”

  “No,” she said after a second, “I don’t think he’s like me at all.”

  We took her car, a beat up Mercury Marquis that she called “company wheels.” It had a bench front seat, so I tossed the box between us, and she stepped on the gas.

  Weston drove with one hand loosely on the wheel, the other waving around as she talked. In the first two miles, she spouted six different theories about why Scottie had phoned O’Shea. Then she grew quiet, thinking.

  “Cases like this can be funny,” she said. “Sometimes it’s Hansel and Gretel—one bread crumb at a time, all the way to the end of the story.”

  “And the other times?” I said.

  “One of those bread crumbs turns out to be a landmine.” She laughed. “Sorry. Now I’m thinking like Chicken Little.”

  I watched her for a moment. “How did you shoot your boss?”

  “That? I—” Her voice was suddenly raw. “We were on a raid in Alexandria, a two-bit counterfeiting shop. Arles didn’t follow protocol. He went around the outside of the house and in a back door without calling his entrance. A bad guy stepped between us as Arles came in. He had a gun drawn. I dropped and fired. One round went wide, hit Arles in the ear.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “And the other guy?” I said.

  “Three in the chest.”

  “Did he get off any shots?”

  “Two. Missed me by a bit.”

  “That sounds close. How long ago did this happen?”

  “Five weeks.”

  “How are you doing with it?”

  “Fine, Doctor.” She shrugged, losing some of the tension. “Sorry.”

  “Are you sleeping OK?”

  Her laugh was husky. “Your mind goes straight from women with guns to bed. That’s way too James Bond.”

  And that was an artful parry. It put that story completely out of bounds. I had to wonder, though, how fully recovered she was. An incident like that would leave scars on anybody, even someone as tough as she was.

  I watched the road. In a few blocks the awkwardness was gone, and we smiled at each other.

  I pulled the box of files closer. The notepad with the list of interview subjects was on top. “According to this list, the cops back then didn’t interview Griffin O’Shea.”

  “Should they have?”

  “Not necessarily. He and Russo were with the same law firm. They both did work for Braeder, but Russo was the point man. O’Shea did contract negotiations. He might never have had anything to do with my mother. But there are some people on this list I can’t figure out.”

  “Who?” she said.

  I flipped through the pages, looking at the interview notes. She was right about the handwriting being a mess.

  “This Fred Bartley, for one. Russo said Bartley was tax manager at Braeder. What’s that got to do with my mother? And this Peter Sorensen. He was director of research, not my mother’s department. And Charlene Russo.”

  “Eric’s wife?”

  “She worked for Eric back then, but why would the cops want to interview her?”

  “Hmm,” she said. She slowed down. “Here we are. Lights on in the house.” She swung into a parking space, and her hand went to her hip, checking her gun. She saw I’d noticed and shrugged slightly. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  Mrs. Rogansky answered almost as soon as I knocked. “Dr. Henderson, a nice surprise! Come in, come in!”

  I made introductions, leaving out the part that Jamie was an FBI agent. “You said Scottie was looking at some papers before he made his phone call. Do you know what they were?”

  “He le
ft them here.” She led us into the living room, where Scottie’s backpack was on a coffee table along with four stacks of papers.

  “These are the original autopsies,” I said, picking one up—my father’s. “These diagrams show the entry and exit wounds.” The other three reports were open to similar sketches.

  “Mrs. Rogansky, tell me what Scottie did—as much as you can remember,” I said.

  “He came through the front door and went straight in here, like he was after something. I ask him how his meeting with you went, and he didn’t answer, just set those things out and looked. You know Scottie. He gets his focus, and he forgets everything else.”

  “Did he make the phone call after that?” I said.

  “No. He thought I was in kitchen, but I came back to watch. He used his little computer there, only a minute or two to find what he wanted. Then he paced around, you know? He was so nervous. And to the closet for some of his fooling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She held out her hand. “Gun with his fingers, yes? I told you he plays like that sometimes.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t playing this time.” I led her to the closet. “Show me. As close as you can.”

  “Like this.” She pulled the closet door open a few inches and put her hand in. “Bang, bang. Silly, like a kid.”

  “He stood like that?”

  “Yes, just like.”

  I turned to Weston. “When we went to the house in Damascus, Scottie showed me the same thing. He opened the closet, put his hand in. Bang, bang, bang. I didn’t pay attention to the way he was standing.”

  I took the autopsy report. “My father was shot in the right side of the face. The same for my two brothers. When we were at the coffee shop, Scottie tapped you there, the right temple. How did he know that’s where Markaris had been hit?”

  She frowned, and then her face lit up. She swung her left hand at my head, and the natural arc brought it against my right eye.

  “Left-handed,” we said together.

  “I’ll bet Scottie has been thinking all along that the killer was left handed,” I said. “Since he started remembering what happened in the closet.”

  “Why did he take the airline receipt?” she said.

  “It wasn’t the receipt he wanted. Remember he asked you if Russo wrote the note that was with it. You told him that was O’Shea’s. It was the handwriting he was interested in, that backhanded slant. Scottie’s never met O’Shea, but when he saw that handwriting, he guessed—”

  “O’Shea wrote it with his left hand.”

  I picked up Scottie’s tablet and tapped the power button. “Look. He was checking O’Shea out.” I turned it so she could see, an article about a personnel shakeup at the US Attorney’s office. There was a photo of O’Shea—chief of staff—staring glumly at the camera. His empty right coat sleeve was visible in the corner of the picture.

  She stared past me while she thought. “What reason would O’Shea have to kill Markaris, or anybody in your family?”

  “Scottie’s always thought Eric Russo was at the center of what happened. If Russo was headed for the airport that night, he could have sent somebody else to the house. No one is more connected to Russo than O’Shea. That’s all the explanation Scottie would need.”

  The backpack was on the table. I felt it, then unzipped it to be sure. “Scottie took the gun. He had this planned since he left the coffee shop.”

  Jamie pulled out her phone.

  I said, “I don’t think he’ll hurt anybody, but it—”

  She waved me off and dialed. “Schaeffer, it’s Weston. I need a location on a Griffin O’Shea. He’s a lawyer, works at the US Attorney’s office for the District. I’ve got his home number but he doesn’t answer. Get a mobile number and track him down. . . . Yes, now. . . . I’ll hold.”

  Mrs. Rogansky was still standing by the closet. “Who is she?”

  “She’s with the FBI,” I said. “We need to find Scottie. Do you have any idea at all where he went?”

  She folded her arms tight. “FBI. You come to my house, your friend’s house—”

  “Mrs. Rogansky, there’s no time for that. If you know anything, you need to tell us. Did Scottie say anything before he left? Anything that would give us a guess where he is?”

  Her eyes were furious behind her glasses. She looked away.

  Weston cocked her head, listening to the phone. “O’Shea lives in Adams Morgan,” she said to me. “We can get over there in a few minutes.”

  I put my hands on Mrs. Rogansky’s shoulders. “We only want to keep Scottie out of trouble. Can you tell us anything?”

  She looked at the floor and shook her head.

  Weston was already at the door, and we went out together and jogged down the sidewalk.

  “You really think Glass won’t hurt him?”

  “I hope not, that’s all.” I slowed a half step. “Besides, I can’t figure O’Shea for a murderer. He’s a cold fish, but not that way.”

  Weston unlocked the car. “People are hard to predict, one way or—”

  We both turned at the sound of a door banging shut. Mrs. Rogansky had come out on the porch. She raised her hand as if to beckon to us but seemed to change her mind.

  I went back up the sidewalk, to the bottom of the steps. “You know how Scottie can be when he’s angry. We need to stop him.”

  Her eyes flicked sideways, to the end of the porch. “Before he left, Scottie told me, ‘Stay inside. Don’t go near windows.’”

  I looked past the house, at the woods.

  “He left through the back door?”

  She nodded.

  I waved to Weston. “Come on! He’s in the park.”

  FORTY-TWO

  We took the path from the back of the house. The sun had set, and the park was gloomy in the dusk. The only sound came from half a mile away, the few cars on Piney Branch Parkway.

  The trail split and split again. Then those trails began to crisscross. I couldn’t get my bearings in the low light, and my only reference point, the peak of Scottie’s house, had disappeared behind the trees.

  “He’s got a special place out here, two big rocks in a clearing,” I whispered to Weston. “I think he’ll be there.”

  She took out her phone and punched in a number. She kept her voice so low I couldn’t hear most of what she said, but it sounded like she was calling for backup.

  To our left was a big, brick building, a school maybe, since there was a playground. I headed away from it, downhill. Fifty yards farther on, we came to an open space in the trees. I’d almost crossed it before I recognized the rock outcrop and boulder. And no Scottie.

  “This is the clearing,” I said. “He should be somewhere around here.”

  “It’s a big area. We’ll find him faster if we split up.”

  I turned to go, but she grabbed my hand. “If you see him, stay back. Whistle and I’ll come. You know how to whistle?”

  I squeezed her hand. “That’s Lauren Bacall—To Have and Have Not.”

  She laughed softly and moved off. When she reached the trees, she stopped, and I heard a metallic click as she racked a bullet into the chamber of her gun. That I didn’t remember from the movie.

  I took another path over a hill and into a ravine. Down there, I couldn’t hear the cars on the Parkway, and there was even less light. Except for a few huge beech trees, the vegetation was low and dense, brambles and hollies.

  As I rounded a turn, a crow burst from the underbrush, giving an angry caw-caw. I jumped aside and lost the path, and when I circled I couldn’t find it. Past the top of the ravine was a glow of street lights, so I headed toward them.

  Halfway to the top I came on the path again. While I was deciding which way to turn, I heard another bird call, a low chitter. No—I cocked my head to hear better—that was human, a staccato whisper.

  The sound was coming from my right and lower down. I had to move carefully. The slope was steep and drifted with leaves. Every few feet I stopp
ed to listen and zero in.

  I might have stumbled straight into them if Scottie hadn’t been wearing a white T-shirt. It made a pale smudge through the tangle of bushes. I edged closer. Another man was kneeling in front of him. I wasn’t sure it was Griffin O’Shea until I heard his voice.

  “I came here like you wanted,” O’Shea said. “We can talk. You don’t need to point that thing at me.”

  The way Scottie was standing, I couldn’t see the gun, but he must have been holding it right in O’Shea’s face.

  “I know you were at the house that night. Russo sent you, didn’t he?”

  “What are you talking about? What house?”

  “When I was shot!”

  “OK, I understand. I wasn’t there. Neither was Eric.” O’Shea’s voice was steady and rational, a negotiator’s voice. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “You’ve got nothing. No proof. Like I said, we’ll just talk it through.”

  Scottie shifted, and O’Shea made a lunge for him. With one big hand, Scottie shoved him away, then swung the gun back to club him.

  “Don’t!” I stepped into the opening. “Scottie, get away from him.”

  He jumped behind O’Shea and flicked the gun up at me. “Cal . . . No, he’s going to answer me.”

  “Easy does it, OK? Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Scottie was surprised by the calm in my voice. He wavered, and tapped the barrel against O’Shea’s back. “You’d better give us the truth. We’ll know if you don’t.”

  “Mr. O’Shea, that’s good advice,” I said. “Let’s start with the digital camera plans—the plans my mother took from Braeder’s file room. What do you know about them?”

  O’Shea’s eyes shifted, looking for any way out. Scottie grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

  “That whole thing got started by the people at Braeder,” O’Shea said. “Eric and I didn’t get involved until later, and we never knew much.”

  Scottie nudged him hard with the gun. “Keep talking.”

  O’Shea glared back at him, but he didn’t have the courage to do more than that. “Braeder needed a lift, some way through to the big time. They didn’t have any new breakthroughs in their own research pipeline, so they decided to buy one.”