by Tom Clancy
“I could have done that!”
O’Toole heard the noise as the two grown men scuffled like children in a playground, but John Kelly was her concern, the antibiotic medication still in her hand. She tried to remove the photograph from Kelly’s view, but her own eyes were first drawn to the image and then repulsed by it as Kelly’s hand seized the print and held it a scant twelve inches from his own wide-open eyes. It was his expression now that occupied her consciousness. Sandy recoiled briefly at what she saw there, but then Kelly’s face composed itself and he spoke.
“It’s okay, Sam. He has his job to do, too.” Kelly looked down at the photo one last time. Then he closed his eyes and held it up for the nurse to take.
And things settled down for everyone except Nurse O’Toole. She watched Kelly swallow the oversized pill and left the room for the calm of the corridor.
Sandra O’Toole walked back to the nurses’ station, remembering what she alone had seen. Kelly’s face turning so pale that her first reaction to it was that he must be in shock, then the tumult behind her as she reached for her patient—but then what? It wasn’t like the first time at all. Kelly’s face had transformed itself. Only an instant, like opening a door into some other place. and she’d seen something she had never imagined. Something very old and feral and ugly. The eyes not wide, but focused on something she could not see. The pallor of his face not that of shock, but of rage. His hands balled briefly into fists of quivering stone. And then his face had changed again. There had been comprehension to replace the blind, killing rage, and what she’d seen next was the most dangerous sight she had ever beheld, though she knew not why. Then the door closed. Kelly’s eyes shut, and when he opened them, his face was unnaturally serene. The complete sequence had not taken four seconds, she realized, all of it while Rosen and Douglas had been scuffling against the wall. He’d passed from horror to rage to understanding—then to concealment, but what had come in between comprehension and disguise was the most frightening thing of all.
What had she seen in the face of this man? It took her a moment to answer the question. Death was what she’d seen. Controlled. Planned. Disciplined.
But it was still Death, living in the mind of a man.
“I don’t like doing this sort of thing, Mr. Kelly,” Douglas said back in the room as he adjusted his coat. The detective and the surgeon traded a look of mutual embarrassment.
“John, are you all right?” Rosen looked him over and took his pulse quickly, surprised to find it nearly normal.
“Yeah.” Kelly nodded. He looked at the detective. “That’s her. That’s Pam.”
“I’m sorry. I really am,” Douglas said with genuine sincerity, “but there’s no easy way to do this. There never is. Whatever happened, it’s over now, and now it’s our job to try and identify the people who did it. We need your help to do that.”
“Okay,” Kelly said neutrally. “Where’s Frank? How come he’s not here?”
“He can’t have a hand in this,” Sergeant Douglas answered, with a look to the surgeon. “He knows you. Personal involvement in a criminal case isn’t terribly professional.” It wasn’t entirely true—in fact, was hardly true at all—but it served the purpose. “Did you see the people who—”
Kelly shook his head. looking down at the bed, and he spoke just above a whisper. “No. I was looking the wrong way. She said something, but I didn’t get around. Pam saw them, I turned right, then started turning left. I never made it.”
“What were you doing at the time?”
“Observing. Look, you talked to Lieutenant Allen, right?”
“That’s correct.” Douglas nodded.
“Pam witnessed a murder. I was bringing her in to talk to Frank about it.”
“Go on.”
“She was linked up with people who deal drugs. She saw them kill somebody, a girl. I told her she had to do something about it. I was curious about what it was like,” Kelly said in a flat monotone, still bathing in his guilt while his mind replayed the image.
“Names?”
“None that I remember,” Kelly answered.
“Come on,” Douglas said, leaning forward. “She must have told you something!”
“I didn’t ask much. I figured that was your job—Frank’s job, I mean. We were supposed to meet with Frank that night. All I know is it’s a bunch of people who deal drugs and who use women for something.”
“That’s all you know?”
Kelly looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes. Not very helpful, is it?”
Douglas waited a few seconds before going on. What might have been an important break in an important case was not going to happen, and so it was his turn to lie again, beginning with some truth to make it easier. “There’s a pair of robbers working the west side of town. Two black males, medium size, and that’s all we have for a description. Their MO is a sawed-off shotgun. They specialize in taking down people coming in for a drug buy. and they particularly like the gentry customers. Probably most of their robberies don’t even get reported. We have them linked to two killings. This might be number three.”
“That’s all?” Rosen asked.
“Robbery and murder are major crimes, doctor.”
“But that’s just an accident!”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Douglas agreed, turning back to his witness. “Mr. Kelly, you must have seen something. What the hell were you doing around there? Was Miss Madden trying to buy something—”
“No!”
“Look, it’s over. She’s dead. You can tell me. I have to know.”
“Like I said, she was linked up with this bunch, and I—dumb as it sounds, I don’t know shit about drugs.” I’ll be finding out, though.
Alone in his bed, alone with his mind, Kelly’s eyes calmly surveyed the ceiling, scanning the white surface like a movie screen.
First, the police are wrong, Kelly told himself. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did, and that was enough. It wasn’t robbers, it was them, the people Pam was afraid of.
What had happened fit what Pam had told him. It was something they had done before. He had allowed himself to be spotted—twice. His guilt was still quite real, but that was history now and he couldn’t change it. Whatever he had done wrong, it was done. Whoever had done this to Pam, they were still out there, and if they’d done this twice already, they would do it again. But that was not really what occupied his mind behind the blank staring mask.
Okay, he thought, Okay. They’ve never met anyone like me before.
I need to get back into shape, Chief Bosun’s Mate John Terrence Kelly told himself.
The injuries were severe, but he’d survive them. He knew every step of the process. Recovery would be painful, but he’d do what they told him, he’d push the envelope a little bit, enough to make them proud of their patient. Then the really hard part would start. The running, the swimming, the weights. Then the weapons training. Then the mental preparation—but that was already underway, he realized . . .
Oh, no. Not in their wildest nightmares have they ever met anyone like me.
The name they had given him in Vietnam boiled up from the past.
Snake.
Kelly pushed the call button pinned to his pillow. Nurse O’Toole appeared within two minutes.
“I’m hungry,” he told her.
“I hope I never have to do that again,” Douglas told his lieutenant, not for the first time.
“How did it go?”
“Well, that professor might make a formal complaint. I think I calmed him down enough, but you never know with people like that.”
“Does Kelly know anything?”
“Nothing we can use,” Douglas replied. “He’s still too messed up from being shot and all to be coherent, but he didn’t see any faces, didn’t—hett, if he had seen anything, he would probably have done something. I even showed him the picture, trying to shake him a little. I thought the poor bastard would have a heart attack. The doctor went crazy
. I’m not real proud of that, Em. Nobody should have to see something like that.”
“Including us, Tom, including us.” Lieutenant Emmet Ryan looked up from a large collection of photos, half taken at the scene, half at the coroner’s office. What he saw there sickened him despite all his years of police work, especially because this wasn’t a crime of madness or passion. No, this event had been done for a purpose by coldly rational men. “I talked to Frank. This Kelly guy is a good scout, helped him clear the Gooding case. He’s not linked up with anything. The doctors all say that he’s clean, not a user.”
“Anything on the girl?” Douglas didn’t need to say that this could have been the break they’d needed. If only Kelly had called them instead of Allen, who didn’t know about their investigation. But he hadn’t, and their best potential source of information was dead.
“The prints came back. Pamela Madden. She was picked up in Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans for prostitution. Never came to trial, never did any time. The judges just kept letting her go. Victimless crime, right?”
The sergeant suppressed a curse at the many idiots on the bench. “Sure, Em, no victims at all. So we’re not any closer to these people than we were six months ago, are we? We need more manpower,” Douglas said, stating the obvious.
“To chase down the murder of a street hooker?” the Lieutenant asked. “The mayor didn’t like the picture, but they’ve already told him what she was, and after a week, things go back to normal. You think we’ll break something loose in a week, Tom?”
“You could let him know—”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “He’d talk. Ever know a politician who didn’t? They’ve got somebody inside this building, Tom. You want more manpower? Tell me, where do we get it, the kind we can trust?”
“I know, Em.” Douglas conceded the point. “But we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Maybe Narcotics will shake something loose.”
“Sure.” Douglas snorted.
“Can Kelly help us?”
“No. Damned fool was just looking the wrong way.”
“Then do the usual follow-up, just to make sure everything looks okay and leave it at that. Forensics isn’t in yet. Maybe they’ll turn something.”
“Yes, sir,” Douglas replied. As so often happened in police work, you played for breaks, for mistakes the other side made. These people didn’t make many. but sooner or later they all did. both officers told themselves. It was just that they never seemed to come soon enough.
Lieutenant Ryan looked back down at the photos. “They sure had their fun with her. Just like the other one.”
“Good to see you’re eating.”
Kelly looked up from a mostly empty plate. “The cop was right, Sam. It’s over. I have to get better, have to focus on something, right?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Hell, I could always go back in the Navy or something.”
“You have to deal with your grief, John,” Sam said, sitting down next to the bed.
“I know how. I’ve had to do that before, remember?” He looked up. “Oh—what did you tell the police about me?”
“How we met, that sort of thing. Why?”
“What I did over there. It’s secret, Sam.” Kelly managed to look embarrassed. “The unit I belonged to, it doesn’t officially exist. The things we did, well, they never really happened, if you know what I mean.”
“They didn’t ask. Besides, you never really told me,” the surgeon said, puzzled—even more so by the relief on his patient’s face.
“I got recommended to them by a pal in the Navy, mainly to help train their divers. What they know is what I’m allowed to tell. It’s not what I really did, exactly, but it sounds good.”
“Okay.”
“I haven’t thanked you for taking such good care of me.”
Rosen stood and walked to the door, but he stopped dead three feet short of it and turned.
“You think you can fool me?”
“I guess not, Sam,” Kelly answered guardedly.
“John, I have spent my whole damned life using these hands to fix people. You have to stay aloof, you can’t get too involved, because if you do you can lose it, lose the edge, lose the concentration. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You don’t want to know, Sam.”
“I want to help. I really do,” Rosen said, genuine wonder in his voice. “I liked her, too, John.”
“I know that.”
“So what can I do?” the surgeon asked. He was afraid that Kelly might ask for something he was unfitted to do; more afraid still that he might agree.
“Get me better.”
9
Labor
It was almost grim to watch, Sandy thought. The strange thing was that he was being a good patient. He didn’t whine. He didn’t bitch. He did just what they told him to do. There was a streak of the sadist in all physical therapists. There had to be, since the job meant pushing people a little further than they wanted to go—just as an athletic coach would do—and the ultimate aim was to help, after all. Even so, a good therapist had to push the patient, encourage the weak, and browbeat the strong; to cajole and to shame, all in the name of health; that meant taking satisfaction from the exertion and pain of others, and O’Toole could not have done that. But Kelly, she saw, would have none of it. He did what was expected, and when the therapist asked for more, more was delivered, and on, and on, until the therapist was pushed beyond the point of pride in the result of his efforts and began to worry.
“You can ease off now,” he advised.
“Why?” Kelly asked somewhat breathlessly.
“Your heart rate is one-ninety-five.” And had been there for five minutes.
“What’s the record?”
“Zero,” the therapist replied without a smile. That earned him a laugh, and a look, and Kelly slowed his pace on the stationary bike, easing himself down over a period of two minutes to a reluctant stop.
“I’ve come to take him back,” O’Toole announced.
“Good, do that before he breaks something.”
Kelly got off and toweled his face, glad to see that she hadn’t brought a wheelchair or something similarly insulting. “To what do I owe this honor, Ma’am?”
“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you,” Sandy replied. “Trying to show us how tough you are?”
Kelly had been a touch lighthearted. but turned serious. “Mrs. O’Toole, I’m supposed to get my mind off my troubles, right? Exercise does that for me. I can’t run with one arm tied up, I can’t do push-ups, and I can’t lift weights. I can ride a bike. Okay?”
“You have me there. Okay.” She pointed to the door. Out in the bustling anonymity of the corridor, she said, “I’m very sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you. Ma’am.” He turned his head, slightly dizzy from the exertion, as they walked along in the crowd. “We have rituals in uniform. The bugle, the flag, the guys with rifles. It works fairly well for the men. It helps you to believe that it all meant something. It still hurts. but it’s a formal way to say goodbye. We learned to deal with it. But what happened to you is different, and what just happened to me is different. So what did you do? Get more involved in work?”
“I finished my masters. I’m a nurse-practitioner. I teach. I worry about patients.” And that was her whole life now.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me, okay? I know my limits.”
“Where are the limits?”
“A long way off,” Kelly said with the beginnings of a smile that he quickly extinguished. “How am I doing?”
“Very well.”
It hadn’t gone all that smoothly, and both knew it. Donald Madden had flown to Baltimore to claim the body of his daughter from the coroner’s office, leaving his wife home, never meeting with anyone despite pleas from Sarah Rosen. He wasn’t
interested in talking to a fornicator, the man had said over the phone, a remark that Sandy knew about but which neither medic had passed on. The surgeon had filled her in on the background of the girl, and it was merely a final sad chapter to a brief and sad life, something the patient didn’t need to know. Kelly had asked about funeral arrangements, and both had told him that he would be unable to leave the hospital in any case. Kelly had accepted that in silence, surprising the nurse.
His left shoulder was still immobilized, and there had to be pain, the nurse knew. She and others could see the occasional wince, especially close to the time for a new pain medication, but Kelly wasn’t the type to complain. Even now, still breathing hard from a murderous thirty minutes on the bike, he was making quite a point of walking as rapidly as he could, cooling himself down like a trained athlete.
“Why the big show?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Does there have to be a reason for everything? It’s the way I am, Sandy.”
“Well, your legs are longer than mine. Slow down, okay?”
“Sure.” Kelly eased off his pace as they reached the elevator. “How many girls are there—like Pam I mean?”
“Too many.” She didn’t know the numbers. There were enough that they were noticed as a class of patient, enough that you knew they were there.
“Who helps them?”
The nurse pushed the elevator button. “Nobody. They’re starting up programs for dealing with the drug habits, but the real problems, the abusive backgrounds and what comes from it—there’s a new term now, ‘behavioral disorder.’ If you’re a thief, there are programs. If you abuse kids, there’s a program, but girls like that are outcasts. Nobody does much of anything. The only people who deal with that are church groups. If somebody said it was a disease, maybe people would pay attention.”
“Is it a disease?”
“John, I’m not a doctor, just a nurse-practitioner, and it’s outside my field anyway. I do post-op care for surgical patients. Okay, we talk over lunch, and I know a little. It’s surprising how many of them show up dead. Drug overdoses, accidental or deliberate, who can say? Or they meet the wrong person or their pimp gets a little too rough, and they show up here, and their underlying medical problems don’t help very much, and a lot of them just don’t make it. Hepatitis from bad needles, pneumonia, add that to a major injury and it’s a deadly combination. But is anybody going to do anything about it?” O’Toole looked down as the elevator arrived. “Young people aren’t supposed to die that way.”
