Brain Trust

by A W Hartoin

  “Depends on who you ask,” said Fats, putting me in the truck and handing me my phone when it started ringing. “Chuck. You’ve got to tell him.”

  I groaned and didn’t get hello out before he blasted me with, “You made him pee, Mercy. I said I’d handle it.”

  “So I handled it. Big diff.”

  “It is a big difference. I wouldn’t have made him pee and terrified him.”

  I snorted. “Oh, really? You’d threaten him with the full weight of state prosecution and possibly federal. That’s better? I don’t think so. Besides, he’s an easy pee. Fats barely touched him.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t.”

  “You want to hear what we got?”

  “I already got it with no urination,” said Chuck.

  “We softened him up for you and, by the way, our trash can’s gone,” I said.

  “So he hauled Denny out in broad daylight. He must’ve had a truck stashed somewhere. I can’t wait to get my hands on that guy.”

  “Get in line,” I said. “Anything on Scott Frame?”

  “We’re tracking him down. He’s supposed to be pulling a night shift and he wasn’t answering the phone. Probably turned off the ringer.”

  “You might want to send somebody over,” I said.

  “Already on the way. He’s not dead though. Our guy isn’t interested in killing the Trust members, just their families.” Chuck paused. “You’ve got Fats with you, right?”

  I told him I did and all about the missing Brain Trust file, which sent him into spasms of rage.

  “There must be something in that file,” he yelled.

  “I can hear you and I know,” I said.

  “Go back to the hospital where you’ll be safe,” he said.

  I said I would and leaned my head on the window, hoping for a five-minute snooze. Not gonna happen. Spidermonkey texted. “They’re dead.”

  Fats glanced over and asked, “Who is it?”

  “Spidermonkey.” I texted him, “Who’s dead?”

  “Keely and her husband,” he texted back.

  We went back and forth. The information was simple and horrifying. Keely Stratton and her husband were selling their house in Nicaragua and had an open house. They got a lot of traffic since the expat community was huge in their area. The local police thought someone stayed behind, possibly hiding in a closet. After the Strattons went to bed, he came out and shot them in their sleep. That was in March and there were no clues whatsoever. Spidermonkey thought the locals had been very diligent in the investigation. Murdered expats were bad for business. Plus, Keely and her husband were well-liked and generous to the local community. No enemies. No one suspicious sniffing around. A few items were taken from the house—jewelry and a pricey watch—but the cops thought it was for show, not a real robbery. Certainly, no one local. Keely had bought quite a few art pieces from Nicaraguan artists. They were worth thousands and would’ve been easy to hock. Apparently, the population wasn’t fussy about the provenance of pieces. The killer could’ve made a bundle, but he’d left behind the art and plenty of electronics.

  “Make sure you stay with Fats,” he texted.

  I told him that I had Dr. Bloom’s file and was headed back to the hospital with her. He said Mom had just gone down to her MRI. I guess he hacked the hospital. He and Uncle Morty couldn’t help themselves. Information was addictive.

  Spidermonkey tried to get some Brain Trust information for me, but he didn’t have much hope of it being useful. There’d been no break-ins at the other detectives’ houses, except for Keely, so he assumed that their files didn’t have anything important. My dad was the lead so he would naturally have everything and now everything was gone.

  When I told Fats what happened, she asked, “I wonder why he’d kill Keely. That’s different.”

  “She was the only female in the group. Maybe that pissed our guy off,” I said.

  Fats nodded. “It’s not easy being the only girl and she was second to your dad. Has anyone heard from your dad yet?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “They have to give him a phone call sometime,” she said.

  “You’d think.” I hugged Dr. Bloom’s envelope to my chest and found it oddly comforting. For once, The Klinefeld Group seemed like a fascinating puzzle instead of an ever-present threat. At least, they weren’t shooting detectives in their sleep or dragging bodies around in trash cans.

  Fats pulled into valet parking and we trotted in. There still wasn’t any press, thankfully, but a couple of nurses warned us that reporters were sneaking in and roaming the halls, just in case I turned up.

  Hopefully, nobody told them Mom had another MRI and we went to radiology instead of Mom’s floor. She wouldn’t be done yet and it would be nice to be there when she got out.

  We stopped in a side hall after spotting a guy skulking around with a video camera and calling security on him.

  “I wonder if Aaron’s bringing dinner,” I said, peeking around the corner to see if the coast was clear. It wasn’t. The guy was questioning everyone who came down the hall.

  “You know Aaron’s cooking, but call him and ask when,” said Fats. “I’d like to have dinner with Tiny before midnight.”

  “You should go back to his apartment. He needs a break and I’ll be here.”

  “Excellent idea.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Alone time. You know what I’m going to do first?”

  “No and I don’t want to.”

  She opened her mouth and I held up a finger when Aaron answered, “Huh?”

  “It’s Mercy,” I said. “Are you bringing dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” he said.

  “Care to be more specific?” I asked.

  “No. Here’s Morty.”

  I rolled my eyes at Fats. That was useful. I could’ve saved my breath and a discussion with Uncle Morty.

  “I was just gonna call you,” Uncle Morty said. “We got ‘em.”

  “You broke through already? Impressive.” I could hear him preening on the other end of the line. For all his grumpiness, he did love a compliment. “So what have you got?”

  He and Novak had broken all the encryptions and they were layered, so it was crazy impressive. We’d been right. Josef Mayer had given up the Unsubs to the Canadian version of the FBI. They’d passed the information to our guys, who really screwed the pooch, as my dad would say. The FBI put a small computer hacking task force on it and they had broken through. But despite their hacking skills, they had no ability to blend with the well-informed psychos. Like the guy who showed up to visit Blankenship, they gave up details on crimes the Unsubs knew they didn’t do. They strung them along, letting them dig holes before telling them that they’d been made and changing the encryption. Of course, the task force could break through again and they did, but the Unsubs laughed at their attempts and once again changed the encryption. It became a game to them and the Unsubs were nothing if not good at games.

  The real problem wasn’t that the task force wasn’t as good at blending with psychos as Chuck. The problem was that they gave up. The investigation got dropped and the task force disbanded out of sheer frustration. From what Uncle Morty found out, nobody seemed to care that a skilled group of serial murderers, rapists, and child molesters went on doing their thing unbothered by a little thing like law enforcement. Uncle Morty got ahold of internal memos that said the Unsubs couldn’t be real, so why bother when they had real terrorists to worry about? Previous memos said the Unsubs were absolutely real and must be stopped. In short, the FBI got beat and talked themselves into thinking they didn’t.

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. “Well, I mean, that we have evidence, not—”

  “There’s more,” he said.

  “More?”

  Just then, a voice came over the speaker system, “Code Silver, Radiology. Code Silver, Radiology.”

  I froze and Uncle Morty said, “It’s about y
ou. The Unsubs—”

  Click. I hung up on him. Fats grabbed my arm as a security guard ran past us with his weapon drawn.

  “What the hell is a Code Silver?” she asked.

  “Active shooter.”

  “Shit!” Fats grabbed my arm, attempting to shove me behind her. It didn’t work. I ran, dragging Fats along behind me and that’s no mean feat.

  “Stop!” she yelled.

  “Let go! My mom’s in there!”

  She got me in a bear hug. “My job’s to keep you alive.”

  “And mine is to keep my mom alive.”

  A door to the stairs burst open down the hall and Chuck ran out, weapon drawn with Sidney five steps behind, yelling into a radio, “Man down. Man down! Shooter headed to ER. Lock it down!”

  I struggled in Fats’ arms. “That’s the other way. Let go! He’s gone.”

  A trauma team ran by us with a nurse saying, “I saw that guy. He won’t fit on a regular gurney.”

  “Tiny,” Fats whispered.

  She let go and we ran to radiology, bursting through the double doors to find the hall crazy crowded. The MRI suites were farther down around the corner. I didn’t see a wheelchair. Mom would’ve been in a wheelchair.

  “Where is he?” asked Fats. “I can’t see him.”

  EMTs came running from the other direction with an oversized gurney yelling for everyone to get out of the way and that’s when we saw him. Tiny lying on his back with multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. The pool of blood under him grew as we watched. Two nurses were struggling to staunch the bleeding as they tried to figure out how to lift him.

  “Oh my god,” said Fats.

  “Clear an OR,” yelled Dr. Calloway.

  “We need more guys!” yelled a nurse. “He’s too big.”

  I pushed Fats toward them. “Go. You do it.”

  She ran through the crowd, shoving people aside and then kneeling in Tiny’s blood to single-handedly lift him onto the gurney. She was strong, but I didn’t think she was that strong. It must’ve been like when mothers lift cars off their kids. Love gives you strength. She probably could’ve lifted a Mack truck.

  They strapped Tiny on the gurney and ratcheted it up to pushing height.

  “OR five! It’s ready!”

  “We need five liters of O neg!”

  “Pressure’s dropping!”

  They pushed Tiny down the hall and a doctor turned back to yell at Fats. “Come on! You have to put him on the table.”

  She looked at me and I yelled, “Go!”

  Tiny disappeared with his entourage and I pushed my way through the crowd. People were running this way and that. There was another area of blood. It wasn’t all Tiny’s. The guy with the video camera stood against a wall with his mouth hanging open and the camera hanging limp at his side. He was going to kick himself later.

  I grabbed a nurse as she dashed by with bags of blood. “Where’s the other victim?”

  “OR,” she yelled, pulling away from me and running down the hall.

  I went for the MRI suite around the corner and found that hall surprisingly calm. The doors were all locked, presumably because of the Code Silver, but I hadn’t heard any shots. Tiny’s wound definitely wasn’t gun-related.

  “Who’s in there?” I yelled, banging on a door. “I need to find Carolina Watts!”

  Nothing. They were hunkered down. It was no use, so I ran for the elevators. The OR. Somebody would tell me if Mom was in there. I pounded on the up button. “Come on! Come on!”

  “Mercy!” Mr. Snyder, head of security, was at the emergency stairs. “Come this way.”

  I ran to him. “Did he get my mom?”

  “Carolina? No. She was in MRI when it happened. Everything’s locked down. She’s still in there.”

  I grabbed his arm to steady myself. “Thank god.”

  “He stabbed her bodyguard and a cop.”

  “Unbelievable.” I cocked my head to the side as a faint sound echoed through the hall. “Did you hear something?”

  “What?” asked Mr. Snyder.

  We both listened, but nothing happened. I thought it was in my head, but then Mr. Snyder’s radio squawked. “Suspect cornered at loading dock. Shots Fired! Shots fired!”

  Mr. Snyder yelled obscenities as he ran off full steam, presumably toward the loading dock.

  I didn’t know where to go, up to the OR or back to Mom. A nurse peeked at me from around the corner by the elevators. “Is it all clear?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “They’ve got the guy at the loading dock.”

  She came out slowly. “Thank God. They make us do all those drills, but I never thought I’d actually have to do it in real life.”

  “Were you there when it happened?”

  “I was in mammography, doing a scan.” She shook a little and I eased her against the handrail to steady her. Tricia wasn’t a nurse. She was an ultrasound tech and when she heard the commotion in the hall she ran out to see what happened. She saw Tiny and a cop on the floor, blood everywhere. A man ran right past her. She only got a glimpse. The suspect had a bloody knife in his hand and was wearing scrubs with a mask and cap, which she thought was odd. There was no shooting. Tiny and the cop had been stabbed.

  Tricia was so shaky I almost had to force her to come back to radiology to make a statement. Chuck and Sydney would want to hear her story.

  “I freaked out,” she said. “I called a Silver.”

  “Is there a code for stabbings?”

  “No.”

  “Then you did the right thing.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely. It’s fine. Just come with me and you can wait in the office.”

  “What if he got away?” she asked, growing more shaky by the second.

  I took her by the shoulders and steered her down the hall. “My boyfriend and his partner were chasing him. There’s no way they didn’t hit him. Crack shots, both of them.” I didn’t really know that about Sydney, but it sounded good and calmed Tricia.

  We got back to the MRI suites and I put her in the office.

  A voice came over the speaker. “Code Silver all clear. Code Silver all clear.”

  She sank into a chair and put her face into her hands. “Thank God.”

  Several of her co-workers came over to comfort her and I asked about my mother. She was still in Suite C and they’d be unlocking it now. I went out to find Suite C and had to restrain myself from pounding on the door. My heart was racing, but it could all be over. He made a move in the hospital, not the brightest idea. It was too strange. Something must’ve happened. Tiny wasn’t close to Mom’s suite when he was stabbed and he wouldn’t leave her. No, something definitely happened.

  The suite door clicked and a head poked out. A tech saw me and then visibly relaxed, “Oh, good. You’re here. Carolina’s been asking what happened and I don’t know what to say.”

  “Did you already do the MRI?” I asked.

  “No. I was just going to put her on the board when the Code Silver came down,” he said.

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “Like what?”

  “A man in scrubs with a mask and a cap on?”

  He had seen a man matching Tricia’s description. He’d walked by Mom and said something, but he didn’t hear what. Then he walked away down the hall.

  “He didn’t touch her or anything?” I asked.

  “Not that I saw. Carolina was smiling. Come in and ask her before we get started,” he said, opening the door for me to come in.

  “Mercy, what was that code?” asked Mom from her wheelchair. “And where have you been?”

  “The code’s nothing to worry about. I was out…gathering information,” I said.

  She gave me a lopsided smile that was oddly charming. My mother could even pull off a stroke. “Anything to get your father home?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I have the goods.”

  “Have you talked to the FBI yet?” she asked as t
he tech put up her foot pedals and prepared to get her out of the chair.

  “Not yet. I will as soon as you get going.”

  Mom waved me away and another tech came in. “We’re all set here. Can you step outside, Miss Watts?”

  “I can, but what happened to the second cop that was on my mother? She had two.”

  Mom took my hand. “They’re outside, Mercy. They can’t come in. Tell Tiny to get a snack. He needs a break.”

  The techs looked at me, their mouths set. There was no point in telling Mom that Tiny was upstairs fighting for his life and the cop, I had no idea what happened to him. “I will. You just get this done. No squirming.”

  She frowned. “That thing is the worst and I don’t even have claustrophobia.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” said the tech. “Are you sure you don’t want a sedative again?”

  “No. I’ll do it straight this time.”

  They lifted Mom gingerly and walked her to the board, laying her down slowly. The techs in Radiology are always the nicest. They put headphones on her with the classical music she wanted and gave her a warm neck pillow and blanket. When she was tucked up like a burrito, all warm and cozy, I went for the door.

  “Miss Watts?”

  I turned and the second tech had Mom’s chart in his hands and a strange kinda horrified expression on his face.

  “What?”

  “Your mom’s chart. It was in the pocket on the back of her chair,” he said.

  The other tech came over, looked, and said, “Ah shit. Call security.”

  I walked over. I didn’t want to, but I made myself do it. There was a note scrawled in black ink in the tech’s hand.

  I’ve got your daughter.

  “It was just in there.” He went stiff. “I touched it. What if it has fingerprints?”

  I grabbed a tissue off the desk in the corner and said, “It’s fine. They’ll just have to exclude you after they dust it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. Call security and tell them what you found. Let’s put this in the control room. I don’t want my mom lying there for any longer than necessary.”

  They agreed and I carried the note into the control room, laying it on a clean surface and then taking several pictures and texting them to the handwriting guy. My phone was buzzing almost non-stop in my pocket. Uncle Morty. Either he’d heard what happened or he was pissed off at me hanging up. Neither would be pleasant.