“Get real,” Jake growled.
“I’m telling you what she told me.”
Jake stopped and spun around.
“Did one of the Americans have a goatee?”
“The mother-in-law didn’t know,” Joanna answered.
“She didn’t see them. But what she did see was the five thousand dollars paid to Jose in advance. His wife used the money to fix up their home in Mexico.”
Jake’s face hardened.
“They bought those Mexicans to use them. That modeling job was a load of crap. They had something else in mind for those Mexicans.”
“Like what?”
Jake shrugged.
“Who the hell knows?”
“And why pick men with cancer?” Joanna asked.
“And why pay someone five thousand dollars only to blow him into smithereens with C-four?”
“I don’t have a clue,” Jake said, scratching at the back of his head.
“Maybe we’ll get some answers when we find the rest of Jose Hernandez.”
“How will you do that?”
“With dogs,” Jake told her.
“Which brings me to the purpose of my visit. I’m going to need a piece of that hand to give the dogs a scent to track. I’ll need it first thing in the morning.”
Joanna hesitated.
“I’d use dogs that can sniff out C-four. The remaining parts of Jose Hernandez should be loaded with it.”
Jake nodded.
“Good idea. But I’ll still want them to take a sniff of that hand.”
“What time will you stop by tomorrow?”
“How does eight o’clock sound?”
“Early. But I’ll have the tissue ready.”
“Good,” Jake said, checking his watch.
“I’ve got to run.” He waved to Kate, glad to have seen her again, gladder yet that life seemed to be going well for her.
“You look super, kiddo. Say good night to Jean-Claude for me.”
“Once we’re settled I hope you’ll join us for dinner,” Kate said.
“It’ll be like old times.”
“Just let me know when,” Jake said and reached for the door.
Joanna came over and took his arm.
“I’ll walk you to your car.” Outside the drizzle had stopped, but the air was still heavy with humidity. The moon was a blur in the cloud-filled sky.
Jake said, “Are you going to apologize for being so bitchy when I first walked in?”
Joanna smiled at his directness.
“That’s not what I had in mind.” She took a deep breath and tried to think of the best way to tell him about Paul du Maurier. Jake had been an important part of her life, the closest thing she had to family besides Kate. And the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.
“Jake, there’s something you should know.”
“I’m all ears.”
Christ! Joanna moaned to herself. How do I do this?
“Well?” Jake prompted her.
“Jake!” Kate called from the doorway.
“Jean-Claude insists on saying good night to you.”
The little boy ran over to Jake and hugged him.
“Good night, Jacques.”
“Good night, Jean-Claude,” Jake said, patting the boy on his backside and sending him back to his mother.
At the door Jean-Claude waved goodbye with both hands.
Jake took Joanna’s arm and headed for his car.
“He’s a great kid.”
“He’s all Blalock.” Joanna grinned.
“Every stitch of him.”
“So what was it you wanted to tell me?”
Joanna’s smile faded as she again struggled to find the right words. To hell with it. She’d tell him another time.
“It’s a long story. I’ll save it for tomorrow.” Saturday, April 3, 10:30 a.m.
I gave Lieutenant Sinclair a piece of the dismembered hand,” Lori said, closing the freezer door in the cold storage room.
“Was it as putrid as I thought it would be?” Joanna asked.
“Worse,” Lori said, wrinkling her nose.
“It smelled awful, even the frozen part.
I doubt those dogs will be able to do much with it.”
“You’d be surprised,” Joanna told her.
“Not only do those dogs have a remarkable sense of smell, they also have an incredible ability to discriminate between odors.”
“But won’t the terrible smell of rotting tissue throw them off?”
“Not really. Those dogs are trained to detect C-four, and they’re rewarded every time they are successful. Somehow they’re able to zero in on small traces of C-four regardless of what other odors are present.”
” But even if they uncover more body parts now, the tissue will be so decayed it won’t be of any use to us.”
“It’s not so much the tissue we’re interested in,” Joanna said.
“It’s other things that might give us a clue to who the terrorists are and what they plan to blow up.”
Lori squinted, not following Joanna’s line of reasoning.
“Give me an example.”
“A piece of paper in a pocket that contains a telephone number we can trace.”
They left the cold storage room and passed the guard posted at the door. Ahead another policeman was standing outside the door to the forensics laboratory. He eyed the approaching women carefully, then returned to the military position of parade rest.
“What the hell is the world coming to?” Lori asked sourly.
“What do you mean?” “When you have to have policemen guarding laboratories in a hospital,” Lori said, keeping her voice low as they walked by the second police officer.
“And their presence is really scaring the technicians.”
“The police are there to protect them from harm.”
“That’s what’s so scary,” Lori said.
“Every time a door opens, everyone in the lab jumps. They’re really uptight. Maybe you should have a little talk with them and try to calm things down.”
Joanna nodded.
“I’ll do it right after lunch.”
They came to a bank of elevators. Joanna pushed the up button, now wondering what she could say to her technicians to allay their fears. Nothing came to mind. They had every reason to be on edge, just like everyone else in the hospital. It was now common knowledge that the patient who was an eyewitness to the bombing had been murdered in his bed at Memorial by the terrorists. Even with a policeman posted outside his room.
“Have you ever thought about leaving this madhouse?” Lori asked.
“Oh occasion,” Joanna admitted.
The door to the elevator opened. Joanna and Lori stepped aside to let an attractive young woman dressed in a blue blazer and white silk blouse pass by.
Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun. There was a large diamond on her ring finger.
The women exchanged glances and half smiles.
“This is the Department of Pathology,” Joanna told her.
“Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Yes,” the woman said, studying Joanna’s face and name tag briefly.
“I’m trying to find the director’s office.”
“It’s to your left halfway down the corridor.”
“Thank you,” Eva Reineke said and walked away. Monday, April 5, 9:52 p.m.
The two police officers assigned to guard the forensics laboratories had the same name, Michael Murphy. Both were well-built and broad-shouldered with auburn hair and green eyes. Although unrelated, they could pass for brothers and were often mistaken for each other. Their colleagues had nicknamed them Big Murph and Little Murph because of a four-inch difference in their heights.
“Hey,” Big Murph called out to his partner who was stationed outside the cold storage room.
“I’ve got to make a run to the John.”
“You’d better pack a lunch for the trip,” Little Murph cal
led back.
The nearest public bathroom on the B level was at the far end of the corridor, the equivalent of a city block away. Some of the laboratories had private bathrooms, but all doors had been locked for the night, and only a short list of medical personnel was allowed entry. Little Murph studied the list of names on his clipboard. Dr. Joanna Blalock, Dr. Lori McKay, Marci Wetterman, Cathy Grimes and Mary Chen. A photograph was next to each person’s name.
“Anybody still in your lab?” Little Murph asked.
“Two,” Big Murph said.
“If they leave before I return, double-check to make sure the door is locked.”
“You got it.”
Little Murph leaned back against the cool metal door and listened to his partner’s footsteps echoing down the corridor. The B level was actually underground and had no windows or doors leading directly to the outside world.
It had a closed-in feeling to it, like that of a dungeon. Little Murph yawned loudly, his gaze going to the wall clock. It was 9:55 P.iM. In
two hours he could go home to his wife and his baby girl, whom he called Sunshine because sunlight turned her hair a golden blond. He’d kiss both of them, then sleep like a log and wake up and return to Memorial Hospital at noon so he could guard the place against a bunch of goddamn terrorists. He couldn’t believe they’d bomb a hospital. But then again, he wouldn’t have believed they’d bomb a residential neighborhood either.
Little Murph thought he heard a door opening and quickly looked down the corridor. He saw nothing, but the light was dim in the distance. Turning on his flashlight, he moved forward slowly, again searching the hallway and again seeing nothing.
He unfastened the strap on his bolstered pistol, still staring down the corridor and listening intently. Except for the sound of his own breathing, there was only silence. Then he heard a cabinet door close and a woman’s laughter coming from within the forensics laboratory. He switched off his flashlight and returned to his station outside the cold storage room.
He refastened the strap across his pistol, wondering if the terrorists would be stupid enough to try something inside a hospital with policemen everywhere. They just might. Little Murph nodded, remembering the terrorists had killed the eyewitness with a cop sitting right outside the door. The bastards had disguised themselves as a cleaning crew. Well, if they try that again they’ll wish to God they hadn’t. Little Murph’s gaze went back to the clipboard. There were no cleaning crews or maintenance men or anybody else scheduled to be on the B level after 8:00 p.m.
Again Little Murph heard a woman’s laughter from inside the forensics lab. He wondered what could be so amusing about sorting through body parts and trying to put them back together. He wouldn’t do it for all the money in the world. Little Murph hated the sight of blood, and viewing mangled bodies gave him the jitters for days, sometimes even caused nightmares. And it was getting worse. That’s why he’d decided to go to night school for his law degree. Three more years and he’d have it. Then he would move up the coast to someplace where Sunshine could have pets and a big backyard, to someplace where the air didn’t choke you and the schools weren’t filled with drugs. Three more years. Little Murph thought again.
The wall clock struck ten, emitting a click as its hands moved. From down the corridor came another clicking sound, louder and moving toward
Murphy. He spun around, concentrating his sight and hearing, trying to see who or what was making the sound. Then he saw a woman approaching, her high heels clicking against the linoleum floor.
He unfastened the strap over his pistol.
“Oh, Officer! Thank goodness!” Eva Reineke gushed.
“I thought I was doomed to stay down here forever.”
“What’s the problem?” Little Murph asked, studying the smartly dressed woman.
She was wearing a gray woolen skirt and white silk blouse with a blue blazer. A large diamond sparkled on her ring finger.
“I was in the I.C.U waiting for my husband and took the elevator down,” Eva said.
“And now I can’t find my way to the front lobby.”
“That’s because you’re on the B level,” Little Murph told her, now seeing she was young—no more than thirty—and very pretty.
“You’ve got to go back up to the main floor.”
Eva sighed wearily.
“I’d be grateful if you could show me where the elevators are.”
“I can’t leave my post, ma’am,” Little Murph said.
“But I can give you directions.”
Too bad, Eva thought. It would have been easier to shoot him in the back of the head as he walked away.
“Thank you,” she said warmly and slowly reached for the semiautomatic Beretta inside her blazer.
The door to the forensics laboratory opened abruptly. A middle-aged technician with Asian features looked out and called over to Little Murph.
“We’re having trouble unscrewing a plastic top. Could you help us?”
“Sure,” Little Murph said, then turned to Eva.
“You stay here, ma’am. I’ll be right back to give you directions.”
“You’re very kind,” Eva said.
Little Murph walked over to the doorway where the technician stood. Following him, Little Murph kept his head down, not wanting to see any blood or guts or body parts. Off to the side, giant centrifuges were humming, and racks of test tubes were being rocked back and forth in a water bath. Little Murph didn’t look up even when a timer sounded at the rear of the room.
“Here you go,” the technician said and handed him a small bottle with a plastic screw top.
“Please be careful. It contains radioactive material.” The top was stuck fast. It took Little Murph two tries to loosen it.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“That’ll do,” the technician said.
“Thanks.”
Little Murph turned and walked back through the doorway, still keeping his head down. He closed the door after him, making certain it was locked. In the hall he took a deep breath.
He looked down the corridor to the door of the cold storage room. The woman was no longer there. Christ, he growled under his breath. She was probably wandering around, searching for the elevators. In the distance he heard an elevator open, then close. He nodded. She’d found it.
Little Murph walked back to the cold storage room. At the bottom of the metal door he noticed a small, odd-shaped pile of puttylike material. His first thought was that something was leaking out of the room. He knelt down to examine it more closely.
The C-four detonated, giving off an intense yellow flash. Little Murph saw the brilliant color coming at him and, for a fraction of a second, it reminded him of his daughter’s blond hair and how it glowed in the
sun. Tuesday, April 6, 12:20 a.m.
The policeman lifted up the crime scene tape for Joanna. She ducked under it and hurried down the corridor on the B level, wondering if the forensics laboratory had been completely destroyed. She kept thinking about the bomb in West Hollywood and how it had wiped out a row of houses. Her laboratories had to be gone, she thought dejectedly, and ten years of work gone with them.
At the bank of elevators she saw Jake and Farelli with Dan Hurley and two aTF. agents, all standing behind a second yellow tape. Inside the opened elevators members of the Crime Scene Unit were dusting for fingerprints.
“Welcome to the Late Late Show,” Jake said humorlessly.
“What have we got?” Joanna asked.
“A bomb went off and a cop was killed,” Jake said, thinking about the cop’s young widow. She hadn’t been notified yet because they hadn’t found enough of Michael Murphy to make a positive ID.
“That’s all we got.”
“Why are we waiting here?”
“We have to make sure there’s not a second bomb,” Hurley told her.
Joanna looked at him quizzically.
“Why would they leave a second bomb behind?”
“As a boob
y trap,” Hurley explained.
“That way they can kill more cops.”
“Bastards,” Farelli muttered.
“What the hell kind of people are we dealing with?”
“Ordinary-looking people,” Hurley said flatly.
“Your usual bomber is white, middle-class and between the ages of twenty and forty. And every damn one of them believes in some cause or other. The scariest part is that they’re all convinced God is on their
side.” “What about the innocent people they blow up?” Joanna asked bitterly.
Hurley shrugged.
“They couldn’t care less.”
The group turned as an aTF. agent approached. His blue jacket was covered with grime and a white powder like substance. He waved them in.
“It’s all clear, but watch out for hanging wires.”
Hurley led the way down the quiet corridor. The air was murky with particles of dust and debris still suspended in the draft less hall. They kept their eyes on the ceiling and walls, looking for any objects that might be dangling or protruding. They crossed an intersecting corridor, and the damage became more obvious. Now the walls were badly cracked, the ceiling buckled upward. Light fixtures were shattered, and in their place were large, powerful spotlights.
Nearing the door to the main forensics laboratory, Joanna held her breath and hoped that at least part of her lab was still standing. The ceiling above her was gone, and she could see exposed pipes and wires. The smell of something electrical burning permeated the air.
Joanna stopped and looked in. The door was hanging by a single hinge, its glass pane blown out. The floor was littered with broken glass and overturned instruments, but the large centrifuges were still upright and running. And the cabinet doors were still closed, their contents secure.
“Were any of my technicians here at the time of the explosion?” Joanna asked.
“Two,” Hurley answered.
“They got bounced around pretty good. One may have a broken arm.”
“Where are they?”
“IntheER.”
They walked on through the debris and came to where the cold storage room should have been. The entire wall was blown away, without a trace of the large metal door. Part of the opposite wall still stood, but it was covered with fissures and craters. In some places there were jagged slivers of metal sticking out, like darts in a dartboard.
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