Dr. O

by Robert W. Walker

  This confused Robyn. "For what?"

  "For... for forgiving me, for Joe."

  "I never said I did."

  "No, you never put it in words."

  Robyn considered this and what she felt. She still felt Swisher had died needlessly, and that this woman had contributed greatly to that needless death, but she also had had time to realize that Joe loved danger, and that it was Joe who wanted to be in the thick of it. He could have turned Thorpe down, and no one would have blamed him. Her trickery, working on him through the Stavros case, had had little to do with Joe's ultimate decision.

  "He make a pass at you?" Robyn asked her point- blank.

  "No," she lied. "He loved you very much, and I... I couldn't be sorrier for your loss."

  It was uncharacteristic of Inspector Thorpe to say as much, but Robyn had watched her closely these last few days, and it appeared that she was a ball of twine, slowly unraveling one moment, tightly in control the next. She was on what Ovierto might call his satanic roller coaster ride.

  Perhaps the best place for her now was back in Nebraska, close to Jim and the kids, to return and fight for that part of her life before it was completely lost to her. Robyn suggested this.

  Donna looked away. Anywhere but in Robyn's eyes. "I'm afraid that it's already too late for that. No... best move I can make is D.C. Get at those records. I’ll make arrangements."

  Robyn put out a hand to her and she took it as if it were a life preserver, pulling Robyn into her. They held onto one another for a long time.

  BOOK THREE

  What need is there of suspicious fear... if thou seest clear, go by this way content and without turning back: but if thou dost not see clear, stop and take the best advisers... keeping to that which appears to be just. For it is best to reach this object, and if thou dost fail, let thy failure be in attempting this.

  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

  I have always felt friendly toward Satan. Of course that is ancestral; it must be in the blood, for I could not have originated it.

  Mark Twain

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  St. Francis of Assist Cemetery, Washington D. C.

  Dr. Maurice Ovierto had unlimited funds to draw upon in two Swiss bank accounts. He had obtained most of his money from victims like Rosenthaler, who signed over all of their money to him in an attempt to save themselves from Ovierto's wrath. Ovierto had taken the money, but it had only worked to a certain degree, postponing the execution of the death sentence.

  Ovierto had learned that with enough money a man could buy anything—anything. Satisfy any lust, cause any amount of mayhem. He could even buy murder, but this he preferred to do himself. Currently he was buying ghouls, graveyard ghouls; for enough money could buy enough men and enough tools for the job he had in mind tonight on a chill December eve in Washington, D.C. amid the gravestones of the long dead. He needed a pair of bodies, and to the men who were being paid well beyond their day labor job fees he must have seemed both a godsend and an extraordinarily selective body snatcher, for they had had at first to forage through the cemetery for half an hour before he pointed to the graves he wished unearthed.

  They were at bottom now, the mud and mire streaming from their clothes while Ovierto stood by untouched by the soil. They had reached the concrete encasing the coffins that lay side by side, the two that he wanted. The men set the small charges that would crumble the concrete vaults, turning them into rocks which they could remove by hand.

  They timed the small explosives to go off just as an-other jet swooped in low for nearby Washington National Airport. Ovierto wondered if Thorpe were on the plane. It was unlikely, he decided, since she probably thought he was still in the vicinity of Seattle, a continent away.

  At any rate, she was in for a grand surprise when she did return to D.C.

  The men were over top of the caskets now. Ovierto ordered the body bags be sent down. He didn't particularly wish to see the couple's desiccated bodies. The woman had been in the ground for over six years, the man three. There wouldn't be much left of them, and he had to watch closely lest the fools he had hired tried some shenanigans with whatever jewelry they might find down there. For this reason, Dr. Ovierto climbed down with the bags personally as the lids were being pried open and smashed.

  One of them popped open like the trunk of a car when a hasp was broken; foul gases sent the men back. Maurice Ovierto went closer. It was the man. Not so high and mighty anymore.

  But the hands were bare of jewelry and nothing on his wrists marked him. Ovierto silently cursed this fact.

  "Open the other one —hurry!"

  This was done within minutes. On the hand of the female skeleton grinning up at Ovierto there was a lovely diamond with a gold band, and this brought a smile to Ovierto's lips. "Good, good night's work," he said as if to himself and the desiccated remains of the woman and her mate. For a time the men he had paid so handsomely watched uneasily as he pulled forth a pair of needle-nosed pliers and began to tug on the dead woman's skeletal hand, wrenching it back and forth, holding firm to the wrist bones that began to rattle, until he plucked the left hand completely off. This he placed in a small bag he had pulled from his coat pocket.

  "Get her in the body bag and to the van," he ordered the men as he proceeded to the male skeleton and worked for much longer at removing the right hand, mostly bones to which a few tatters of sinew doggedly adhered. In a short while, Ovierto had removed a hand from each of the corpses. Then he climbed the ladder back out of the six-foot trench, ordering that the second body be taken to his van.

  Ovierto looked back at the gravestones and the gaping holes. "This'll kill her," he said to himself and then laughed the laugh of the mad. "Kill her... kill her..."

  Another day and night went by in which Donna Thorpe flew back to D.C. to make her "request" in person and to view the documents on Pythagoras, should she be allowed to see them. A day later she contacted Robyn by phone and told her to catch the next flight out for D.C.; she wanted her at the Defense Department the following day at exactly 9 a.m. With still no ripples from Ovierto and things in Washington State pretty slow, Robyn was glad for the change.

  She'd been getting pressure from Chicago to return home to her job there. In D.C. her captain wouldn't so easily find her, and, she admitted to herself, she'd be-gun to want Ovierto as much as Thorpe did.

  In D.C. it was cold and raining at the Pentagon where she was met by Donna Thorpe wearing a blue serge suit, the one she'd been wearing the day they had made love. They exchanged an awkward moment of pleasantries when suddenly Donna kissed her on the cheek and said, "You were right. It took time, but it worked. We're going in to see Pythagoras."

  "Great, Donna."

  "They're not happy about it, but they fear Ovierto a lot more than they do us."

  "Us?"

  "I told them it was the two of us or no deal. I want you in. In fact, I want you in the agency."

  "But I've got a job back in Chicago that—"

  "Forget that. The agency is for you. You're a natural. We need talented women in the FBI. Oh, well talk about it later. Let's get in out of this muck."

  The Pentagon was enormous, living up to the expectations and cinematic recreations of the place created in Robyn's mind. It did not let her down in the red tape department, the number of doors and levels of lieutenants they were filtered through before arriving at a room that appeared to be hermetically sealed. There were no windows or decorations, only an enormous antique pair of tables and chairs that reminded Robyn of the Chicago Public Library's golden old furniture. The lamps hanging low over the tables enhanced the dusty-library image.

  They were left here alone in the empty room, and here they waited for ten minutes before a door at the rear of the room, opposite the one they had entered, opened. A man with two stars on each shoulder, a general, approached with an armful of documents and files. He did not introduce himself. He seemed angry, put out, his big jowls set hard when they were normally like Jell-O,
Robyn guessed. He simply placed it all at the end of the table and disappeared the way he had come.

  The two women went to the files and Donna divided them down the middle. "We've got two hours."

  "Two hours?"

  "All they'd give us."

  "But what about the laser itself?"

  "I've seen it. It's fully operational. It just hasn't per-formed accurately. Oliguerri held the key."

  "Now they have it, do you trust them to use it wisely?"

  "Yes, yes, I do."

  "Responsibly?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Ovierto finds out, he's going to go on a rampage ...

  "That was one reason they were anxious to cooperate. They're afraid."

  Robyn nodded, understanding. "Of course... enough publicity brought about by Ovierto and this could go public, and maybe it ought—"

  Donna grasped her hard by the wrist and Robyn saw that she had placed a finger to her lips, indicating the place was bugged.

  Robyn nodded. "I mean, it would be unfortunate, I mean."

  "Best get to work here."

  For the next two hours they scoured the files, Donna taking particular interest in anything having to do with her father and Rosenthaler.

  "Here," said Robyn suddenly, "it's Ovierto."

  There was a photo of a much younger Dr. Ovierto in white lab coat standing side by side with Rosenthaler. Ovierto had done his residency under Rosenthaler as some kind of boy genius, rising rapidly in the hospital in Houston. There was some indication the two men were very close and that some of Rosenthaler's advice to Senator Thorpe concerning Pythagoras might have actually come from Maurice Ovierto.

  They read further, Donna looking over the discovery of Ovierto's definite tie with Pythagoras with a mix of fear and fascination. "Then he was there, during the testing."

  "And there was some human experimentation going on."

  "Ovierto's history," she said, "here it is."

  There were several biographical pages on Ovierto, information that had been concealed and sent to the deep for years, kept even from the very government agency mandated with locating and destroying Maurice Ovierto.

  Just then the general returned. Two hours had gone by in a flash. He said he'd come for the files and he began to silently scoop them up. Donna Thorpe pursued him through the door, however, shouting, "General Wright, General Wright!"

  He turned, gave her a demure look and said, "I believe we have no further dealings, Inspector."

  "The hell we don't!"

  Robyn stood by, staring a hole in the general.

  "Agent Thorpe, we have been true to the spirit of our arrangement, and we have followed your instructions to the letter. Now, the deal is over."

  He turned the documents over to an aide and they began to move off.

  "Ovierto was part of a human experiment with Pythagoras, wasn't he? Wasn't he, damn you!"

  The general turned, his face livid, rushing back at her like a rhino. "This meeting is terminated! Do you understand?"

  "And my father? How was he terminated?"

  "That's madness, to suggest that—"

  "Pythagoras became too big for the senator when your side learned of its military applications, isn't that right?"

  The general said angrily and lowly in a growl, "Just do your job and get Ovierto, and quit making wild accusations that have no foundation. Your father died of a heart condition, I am told."

  "He didn't have a heart condition. He never had a heart condition."

  "Heart attack then."

  "Yes, while in his office, working late... alone."

  "I have nothing more to say to you, Inspector."

  "I'm sure you don't."

  Robyn put an arm around her and led her away from the retreating figure of the big man with the stars on his shoulders winking back at them. "You work your whole life for what you believe in, and some fat fart like that kicks it all right out from under you," she said to Robyn as they searched for their way out of the gigantic labyrinth.

  They didn't notice the handyman who was at work in a corner area where electrical conduit and pipes created a maze in a box. The man's hands worked deftly among the jumbled wires. He wore a jumpsuit and a ball cap and sucked on an unlit cigar, observing the no-smoking rules of the government facility. He watched Thorpe and Muro go by with a twinkle in his eye, for now Maurice Ovierto was sure he had come to the right place to continue his struggle against them, against all of them.

  Ovierto moved from the electrical box here to the phone lines in the basement, the tag on his chest indicating he had gotten clearance to do work in the building. He had followed Elbert Mackey from here the day before, taking his truck, his tools, his clothing, and his life. Tapping General Sampson Wright's phone line would be a simple matter.

  "We have it, Mr. President," he mimicked the officious General Wright. "We have Pythagoras."

  "Not quite," he replied to himself in his own voice, "because the price is going up." Inside his tool chest he had the makings for a bomb. Infiltrating the Pentagon with an unassembled bomb was a great deal easier than trying it with an assembled one....

  When Donna and Robyn got back to Quantico there was a small package waiting for Thorpe, and as it was rank with a sickening odor, and the handwriting was his, it was obviously from Ovierto. It had taken some time to determine that it was safe to open the package, that it contained no bomb, but the emotional explosion it caused in Donna Thorpe was enough. The contents spilled out with black earth, a pair of desiccated, bony hands, one with a ring on it. The sight made Donna gasp, back away, almost fall, and grab for some anchor around her as she weaved. Robyn rushed to her, supporting her, but she pulled away and ran from the room, vomiting and crying.

  Robyn lifted the message rubber-banded to the skeletal left hand as she stared at the beautifully set diamond on a lacey ribbon of green gold on one finger. One of the hands was larger than the other, a male's hand, while the left, with the ring, was a female hand. Donna used tweezers to pry open the message. It was a sick rhyme that read:

  Sykes was fun

  and Bateman more,

  but nothing compares with a mothering whore

  and a bastard's corpse...

  They helped vent my spleen in a rollicking cemetery scene

  Here in old D.C.

  at beautiful St. Francis of Assisi...

  It came clear to Robyn. She hit an intercom button and called for assistance. Several agents responded quickly to her call for any information on a graveyard disturbance in the area.

  "Something went out over the wire about ten this morning," said one of them.

  "Where at?"

  "Assisi, about an hour away."

  "Are Thorpe's parents buried there?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact. What's this all about?"

  "Christ... Christ... the bastard's turned into a ghoul, a body-snatching ghoul. Can you get me out to the cemetery?"

  "Right, no problem. Come along."

  She told another agent to tell Thorpe that she would check out the cemetery, assess the damage done, and get back to her.

  On the way, Robyn realized that not only was Ovierto in D.C., but that he had been in the city for some time. She prayed he had not done any more harm to Donna than he had already inflicted. She detested the maniac for his methods, for Joe's sake, and now for Donna's.

  At the large cemetery the roads swelled and rolled about the graves like a park path. The groundskeeper who had called the police earlier was excited to learn that the FBI had been called in and said it was no ordinary case of cemetery tampering, that it was an out- and-out body-snatching. In fact two bodies were missing, a couple by the name of Thorpe. Robyn wanted to see the empty graves and the ground around them. She called for the local police, asking them questions of the crime scene as it had originally been found, and when the police questioned her interest she grew angry.

  "The man was a goddamned senator, and that interests the FBI." The other agents, rather
enjoying her performance, didn't reveal the fact she was not FBI.

  Soon she heard from Donna, who was on her way out.

  Robyn told her she could take care of matters there, but Thorpe was stubborn and she was coming on.

  At the graves' bottoms, far below the headstones with her parent's names engraved on them were two gaping holes where the coffins had rested, their fronts smashed open. Donna didn't need to see this. It was obvious he was trying to break her as he had Rosenthaler, to send her over the edge.

  Robyn tried to stop Donna at the gate, pleading with her, telling her that she was playing right into the maniac's hands. "He wants you to go in there and stand over those empty graves and keel over, kid. Don't you see that? Don't you see it?"

  "Out of my way." Donna made the car lurch forward, tearing away from Robyn, but Robyn held onto the side, walking swiftly, continuing to plead.

  "They were never here anyway, your parents! Their bodies, yes, their husks, empty shells, but not them, Donna! Donna!"

  Thorpe stopped the car she was driving and rested her head on the wheel, crying. Robyn reached in and held her head in her hands, saying, "Go on, cry it out."

  "I don't want to cry," she said. "I want to kill him."

  "You and me both."

  She dried her eyes. "Then let's get back to work."

  "Now you're talking."

  "How did he do it? Two graves in one night, one man?"

  "He had help... lots of help, according to the local cops. Probably hired help."

  "I got the paper sent to documents. They're trying to learn what they can from it. Strange stationery, almost like rag paper."

  "Yeah, I noticed that."

  Robyn came around, got into the car and saw that the other woman was staring out at the silent cemetery, her parent's grave sites out of the line of their vision, over a gently sloping hill. Noise rose from that direction, where the other agents and the locals were talking over the horror of it all. "Come on," said Robyn, "let's get out of here."