"So, you took up the standard once more, and once more me and the kids have to wonder if you're coming back alive. Isn't there enough crime in Nebraska to fulfill you, Don?"
"Yes... you're right..." she sniffed back tears. "It was wrong to go."
"Things like that... you're the chief. You could have coordinated the whole thing from here. Why place your-self in such danger?"
"I won't do it again."
"You put me through hell, you know?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
"And while it was going on, this manhunt of yours... you never gave me a thought."
"Not true," she said, sitting up. "I called and—"
"You called to touch home, to recharge your batteries. Don't try to fool yourself. When you're working no one's on the planet other than you and the creep you're after."
She shook her head. 'You're being... you're—"
"Concerned? Worried sick? You bet. And while we're at it, I'd like my children to have a mother."
"That's not fair!"
"We're going to wake them to this, if you don't hold your voice down."
She breathed deeply, nodding. "I didn't come in here to fight."
"No?"
"I came in to say I was sorry, and maybe find something under these covers." She lifted the sheet.
He smiled in spite of himself. "Do you mean it, about quitting this obsession with Ovierto?"
"If he'll quit-"
"No, if you'll quit!"
She hesitated a moment. "I'll... I'll... I can't promise anything other than I'll do my best to stay in Nebraska."
He reached down, brought her lips up to his and kissed her tenderly. " 'Bout all I should expect to hear from you," he said.
"It's a start."
"No, this is a start," he said, kissing her ferociously, sending his tongue deeply into her mouth. His sexual maneuvers were rough and he ended their lovemaking with a pounding of himself deeper and harder and deeper into her, all as if to make up for the arm-lock she had placed him into the night before. Neither experience had given her any gratification, except that now, perhaps Jim would reconsider the rash words of the evening before.
Later, breakfast with the children was relaxed and pleasant. Just before she left, Jim made her promise once more to end her obsession with Ovierto.
She told him to consider it done.
She was met downtown with news that sent her reeling back to those moments in bed with Jim, the promise at the door. Her superiors at Quantico had faxed new orders for her. She was to go full-steam ahead on the Maurice Ovierto case. The information was sketchy, something to do with her being the only field agent who had had contact with Ovierto, and secondly that no one else had placed him in Chicago as she had. Apparently, her report had made an impression on someone high up. She'd been careful to give her report a proper framework, saying that her Nebraska office was in pursuit of information on a Nebraska homicide that could have been Ovierto's first abduction-murder, and that the trail had led them to Chicago. The rest of the report was fairly accurate, detailing how agents such as Jack Harris had died, and how a Chicago cop named Joe Swisher had also met his end. According to the report, Swisher had been involved in a mutilation case that might be the work of Ovierto. He had contacted her in Nebraska, offering the tip only if he could be in on the bust.
So far as she knew, no one questioned the particulars of the deal she and Swisher had arrived at, which had been exactly what she had counted on. With the possible exception of Robyn Muro, no one in the CPD was squawking either. And now this—a coup of sorts! Quantico admitting to a mistake, reinstating her, with obvious limitations. She would remain in Nebraska, but every shred of information on Ovierto would filter through her offices.
Obsession, or hard-won right to see a case closed? No matter what terms she might use, no matter how she put it to Jim, it was going to be a blow to him. She had no choice now in the matter. It was a direct order. She only wished that she hadn't promised....
She was still responsible for the safety of Elena Hogarth and her family. She had worked tirelessly to see they were intercepted by agents at another corner of the continent, where they were being safely detained now. It was all her ballgame once more, and she didn't need to couch her terms in the muffled wrapper of an ancient case, nor employ the services of another Joe Swisher. It was too bad about what happened to Swisher, and she felt remorse for Muro, who loved the man, but at the time the CPD connection had been necessary to keep her hand in the game.
She hoped that no one would ever know how strongly she felt Swisher's death.
Jim was wrong about her resembling Ovierto, dead wrong. Ovierto felt no remorse for any of his actions, and for a time she had believed that she could work that way if need be... but she couldn't. Not as tough as I thought I was, she told herself now.
In the squad room the atmosphere was mixed. Some men were missing. Victims of the Chicago debacle. But now they had been given the full green light to seek out and wreak revenge on this bastard, Ovierto. The orders to her were read aloud, and they ended with a chilling line:
The Company is now involved in the search for Ovierto, and if the CIA gets him before we do, we'll never live it down, so it's shoot to kill, Inspector Thorpe, shoot to kill.
Boxes upon boxes of records were shipped to Nebraska; all the paraphrenalia of a six-year-long man-hunt. It almost seemed as if Quantico believed that by shipping everything to Nebraska along with Thorpe their problems with Ovierto were over; that it was now a Nebraska field office problem, like a simple tax evasion rap, or a whiskey runner, or an ordinary kidnapping. It seemed as if Washington wanted to wash its hands of the ugly matter. And it also seemed as if she now had been cast in the same role as she had cast Joe Swisher.
She'd heard nothing from Robyn Muro, and in talking with Brian Noone she learned only that Muro had been promoted and was still working on the Stavros case.
Ted Lowenstein, a young new member of the team, who had been summoned out of the squad room when a package had arrived that looked suspicious, returned now to tell her that the package was addressed specifically to Donna Thorpe.
Donna went down the long corridor to the steel- reinforced, concrete bomb room where the package had first been taken. Ted's expertise equipped him to pry open tricky packages, and now he was decked out in the pads and the oversized catcher's mask and mitts, but he said there was no bomb inside.
"How can you tell?" she asked needlessly, knowing it had been X-rayed.
"Just doesn't have the feel of a bomb. Too light for one thing, and we peeled away the outer layers, and the dog doesn't smell anything he's trained on, so—"
"So what's that odor?" she asked, feeling her brain go into a spiral of memories. The odor was familiar. It was human decay, a stench like raw chicken left in the heat for two days.
Ted said, "I think you know."
She'd acquired some kind of reputation, after all. These young men in the department had been aware for years now of how Dr. Ovierto had singled her out to receive his grisly "gifts."
"What markings were there on the outer paper?"
"Addressed straight here."
"He knows I'm here. What else? What about post-mark?"
"Hard to tell?"
"What do you mean, hard to tell?"
"Smudged over badly, but I think it was Portland, Oregon."
"Oregon?"
"Yes, but-"
"But what?"
"Had a little stamp on it, rubber and ink pad stamp with a little message."
"What message?" She lifted the outer paper with tweezers to read it for herself. It seemed a logo of sorts from a grocer. It read: Washington State Apples Are Great Apples."
"Jesus, how can he know about Washington! Christ!"
They had relocated the Hogarths to Seattle.
"You want me to open it? The box?" he asked.
"I've got to get some air first," she declared, fearful of what she might find inside, and rushed to a spec
ial phone that had been set up specifically to contact the agents watching over the Hogarths. She had to hear for herself that nothing untoward had happened to anyone in the family.
Nothing had happened in Seattle. She felt a sudden relief. She alerted the field agent to the fact that Ovierto might now know their location, and that there might be a change in the works, but that the family was not to be told as yet.
Then she went back to where Ted had remained with the frightening package, which was little more than a three-by-four-inch box once the outer, larger boxes had been removed from around it. It sat on the table, the contents fully exposed when she entered. Ted stood in a corner where he had backed away, and vomited repeatedly.
Thorpe stared rigidly and fixed her emotions like steel against the sight of the pulpy tissues and lumpy balls in the interior of the box. They looked something like turkey parts, but were instantly recognizable as human.
But she wouldn't give Ovierto the satisfaction of get-ting to her again. She just wouldn't. She vowed she wouldn't.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Chicago, Illinois
November turned into December, and still Robyn couldn't get past Joe Swisher's death. The funeral had been hell for her, but Joe would have loved it. Over half the cops in the city had turned out. He did have more friends than he had realized. All day at the wake cops came up to her with stories about Joe, often how Joe had saved their necks in a tight spot, tales he had never told her. The age difference between them, ten years, had never been so evident as at the wake, with this procession of policemen from Joe's past moving by his coffin. Several times she had been moved to tears, but her overwhelming emotion that day was one of pride to have been Joe's woman.
Her bitterness toward Donna Thorpe not only lingered but grew. She'd been careful with the files that Peggy Olson had lifted from Joe's place only an hour before the Feds burst through the doors. She had placed them in a safety deposit box. Noticing the amount of time she spent locked away with the contents of that box, the people at the bank were beginning to think her strange. She read and reread every file, every scrap of paper, for a clue to Ovierto. She began to hate the man beyond any hatred she had ever known. She read of the deaths in England, in Atlanta, and of the FBI agent, Sykes—Thorpe's partner. Ovierto was a one-man fire starter, keen, even brilliant, and given totally to the darkest side of mankind, the side that made it entirely possible to believe in Satan and a Hell.
But there was something missing from all of the information provided Joe Swisher, something vital. There was no file on Ovierto himself, no background information, nothing that might hint that he was bound to become an assassin. He was just referred to as a mad M.D., a maniac with a scalpel.
Where had he gained his medical knowledge? What schools had he attended? Where did he practice? At what stage of his career did he go mad? Who was his first victim—and why? Why?
According to Donna Thorpe there was no why. She knew that Joe wouldn't push for such an answer, that Joe acted on what was at hand, that he always did. She knew Joe well from his own file, from information supplied by Joe's shrink. She knew that if Joe took the assignment he wouldn't ask a lot of questions, that he'd just see a challenge, plunge in, and either kill or be killed....
Now Thorpe was swinging a lure in front of her eyes, but the lure wouldn't work, not without full disclosure, a thing of which Thorpe seemed incapable. So, she had put the idea of working with Thorpe out of her mind. It had worked for a day, two days, three... and then it came back, creeping in, taking over her waking hours, interfering with her daily work, of the work being done on Stavros with Peggy and Melody, of which Captain Noone had approved. Until now the notion of going after Ovierto on any terms offered her, had seemed like an irresistable gleaming diamond, but the Stavros case continued to keep her busy.
The Stavros case was coming along well. Peggy and Melody had proved her right. With dogged determination, the three of them had retraced Stavros's day before the killing. It had taken a great deal of overtime, knocking on doors, interviews, and even a full-blown stakeout. The case was shaping up to be a "family-related" crime of sorts, since the victim was sleeping with another man's wife. The chief suspect was a man named Dominic Gotopolis, a big, proud Greek who worked in a construction pit and wore a hard hat home each night. His wife had apparently "disappeared" since the Stavros killing, and neighbors feared that she, too, was dead.
It took weeks of dredging up circumstantial evidence enough to interest the D. A., who finally ordered a search warrant on the basis of the information the policewomen had obtained. Now they were ready to go in, and the warrant specified they could enter while Gotopolis was away. They did so quietly, with the eager help of the maintenance man's wife, one of their key sources of information.
The big second floor apartment was completely dark inside, and everything was a mess. The man was obviously living alone. There were clothes everywhere in need of washing. Peggy went down one corridor that led to the bath and a back bedroom. Melody rummaged about the living room area and kitchen. Robyn heard a mewing like a cat from the master bedroom, and she pursued the sound.
There was no need for guns, and yet she felt strange not having hers raised. Usually when they made a warrant search, they had to first subdue the people inside the house with threats of violence. All of the shades here were pulled and the curtains drawn, leaving the bedroom as dark as night. There was someone on the bed.
She went instinctively for her gun at the same time that she flicked on the light. What she saw made her gasp. "Oh, my God."
The lady who had gotten them through the door screamed and crossed herself. "Please, keep back," said Robyn as Melody gently moved the lady back and Peggy rushed in.
Peggy said, "Oh, Jesus... oh, Jesus."
It was Mrs. Gotopolis, and she was alive, but she was beaten beyond recognition. She was tied to the bed, a starved woman below the bruises —shapeless, in her late forties, and nude. There were welts all over her body where she had been beaten, and her eyes were pulpy, cut like a boxer's so that she could hardly focus on her rescuers.
Peggy saw the misshapen, desiccated piece of human flesh that hung, like a broken light socket, from tape at the ceiling over the woman's head. "What the hell is that?"
"It's something I'm sure Mrs. Gotopolis is glad she can't see any longer," Robyn whispered in Peggy's ear. "Stavros's penis."
Beside the bed she saw the homemade whip of rope and a broom handle that Gotopolis had created for the occasion. Some metal instruments lay alongside the bed as well.
"Call 911," said Robyn. "Get a medic team down here now!"
Peggy gladly rushed for the phone so she would not have to see anymore. Melody hung at the door while Robyn put a soft hand to Mrs. Gotopolis's temple. The woman flinched like a frightened animal. "It's over," said Robyn, "We're here to help you."
"HowwwpppP meeeeeeE," the woman rumbled, her lips a bloody pulp.
Robyn started to untie the ropes but suddenly stopped. She looked up at Melody, who stood frozen in the doorway. "Get down to the unit, Mel, and bring up that Polaroid."
"Polaroid?"
"Do it!"
Melody's mouth fell open, but she nodded and disappeared. Robyn continued to talk soothingly to the victim, and she found a blanket to lay across her, but she didn't want to disturb another thing in the room until she got pictures. Peggy returned saying, "Medics are on the way."
"Where's Mel?"
"Don't know."
"Get her, will you, quickly."
Just then Melody returned with the camera. "Take some shots from every angle," said Robyn as she removed the blanket over the woman. "Mel, do it."
"I... I can't." She pushed the camera into Peggy Olson's hands.
Robyn tore it from Peggy, who merely stared at it. "We've got to document this just as it is if we want to nail this bastard." She began snapping shots, moving about the room.
The landlady was upset at this, shouting and gesturing. Peggy t
ried to calm her. Melody opened a window for air and sucked at it. When the landlady disappeared and they were listening to the photos being snapped, Melody said to Peggy, "Is that something she learned from Joe Swisher?"
"Just doing her job."
"Sure... getting good at it, too."
"Mel, she wants one thing and that's—"
Suddenly Gotopolis was in the room, upturning furniture and shouting, "What are you doing in my house! My house! With my wife! My property!"
He charged at them like a bear, picking Peggy up and throwing her into a wall. Melody brought up her gun but the bull had hold of her wrist. She dropped the weapon, her hand white from the lack of blood, and he sent her hurdling through the window she'd opened, careening down the two flights to the pavement below.
At the bedroom door Robyn had him in her sights. "Hold it, Gotopolis! You're under arrest for murder."
"Murder! Is it murder to protect your wife from filth?" He came at her.
"Stop where you are or I'll—"
His stride was so great he was atop her when the gun went off, blowing a hole in his chest. His shirt was afire with the powder for half a second as he exploded backwards and over the sofa that quickly soaked up his blood. He was dead.
Peggy had had the wind knocked from her, but she had stood against the wall with her own gun trained on Gotopolis when Robyn had warned him to stop. She would have fired if Robyn hadn't. She still held her gun on the dead man when she said, "My God, Melody! The window."
Robyn was already perched there, staring down. A crowd had gathered around Melody. The ambulance's lights and siren spread the crowd. Even before they got to Melody, Robyn was crying, "Is she all right? Is she going to be all right?"
"She'll live. Taken a bad hit, but shell be all right."
"Get someone up here. We've got another victim," she shouted down. She then turned on Peggy and asked, "Why didn't you fire?"
"I was going to but—"
"Going to but? Buts and ifs can get you killed in this job, Peggy, remember that."
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