Shane didn’t like this wrinkle, especially at this moment before his exit, but he had to proceed with his escape from the compound. He checked the path of the lower patrolling security camera, immediately jumped, grabbed the branch, and hit the step with both feet, all at the same time, almost perfectly.
Shane had practiced a similar leap in the forest up in Clear Creek Canyon many times, even at night, but never at night in the rain. Shane seized the limb to his right to stabilize himself while his feet landed on the step. But the metal was too slippery, and he slid forward, his right knee and shin colliding hard with the tree trunk. A jagged remnant of a branch that had been trimmed from the tree, sliced through Shane’s pants at shin level, and punctured his skin as it cut its way to the bone.
Shane grimaced in pain, but he had no time to delay, as the lower security camera was making its circuit back. The timing to descend the tree had to be perfect. He wrapped his arms around the tree trunk and stood on a rear limb to remove his weight from the step, as he activated the step’s quick release, swinging the step away and into his backpack, in one practiced motion.
When the camera cleared his path below, he reached up, grabbed the second step, repeated the maneuver and placed it in his pack. Upon reaching a branch a few feet lower, he then dropped to the ground. Shane quickly swung the swivel pack around to his back, and stepped behind the tree, just before the security camera completed its track back across the yard and passed the tree. If the guards later checked the video feed they would see nothing.
Shane ran back to the fence, where he had left his canine friends sleeping peacefully. He was careful to take a path that kept the tree and some shrubs between him and the kitchen window. Shane could hear Big John laughing loudly at his movie, and he was thankful the guards were preoccupied. He reached down and felt the dogs to check their breathing, petted the soft muzzles, and assured himself they would recover normally.
Shane placed one hand on the top of the fence, his foot on a frost-free hose bib next to the fence, and with a quick vault up, he was silently over the fence and standing in the neighbor’s yard. Franky’s neighbor was a single doctor at a local clinic, who was in Las Vegas with his girlfriend for the week, so Shane was safe to take his time as he made his exit from the yard. He quickly felt his shin and immediately recognized the sticky feel and metallic smell of warm blood on his hand.
As he slowly approached the gate leading to the street, Shane’s thoughts returned to the jogger. He wondered silently to himself, “Who jogs in the shadows in a cold April rain at 3:45 A.M?” As a general rule, Shane did not believe in coincidences or unexplained mysteries. But the jogger’s gait was familiar to him. He struggled to recall all he could about the few seconds of movement he had seen, as he peered through the gate into the street. When he was sure there was no one there, Shane vaulted effortlessly over the fence, rather than using the squeaky gate, and walked quickly to his vehicle.
As his mind raced, still trying to recall who the jog belonged to, Shane checked the street for movement while he walked. He glanced over his shoulder at the compound twice before he arrived at his car. As Shane approached the driver’s side door, he froze, his eyes fixed on a small, white, business-sized card resting between the windshield and the wiper blade. He slowly retrieved the wet card, examined it carefully, and read four words that appeared in large type: “BE CAREFUL NEXT FRIDAY.” The note was unsigned, and there was not another mark on either side of the card.
Shane scanned the neighborhood again for signs of anything out of the ordinary, as he unlocked the car door. He recalled all the vehicles that had been parked on the street when he first arrived. He saw nothing out of place, and wondered if the jogger was in a car, a yard or a house watching him right now. Shane entered his car, started the engine, waited a few seconds as he completed another scan of the area, and then made a slow U-turn, using no brakes, his headlights off. He drove slowly forward, the way the jogger had been running. When he was down the street a block, he switched on the headlights.
Shane had done pre-surveillance many times in this neighborhood, and had recorded all of the neighborhood vehicles. He had also made both written and mental notes about other items he had seen there. As Shane drove forward, he hoped to find the jogger’s car, a dry spot where the car had been parked, or cigarettes on the ground where a vehicle had been parked…anything that would help him discover the identity of the mysterious stranger. He found nothing.
Shane drove slowly toward his apartment, as he searched for an answer. “Who could possibly know he was here, or what he was doing? Was there a leak, a witness, another agent, a concerned citizen?” He wondered in vain. Nothing made sense, as he went over and over the possibilities in his mind. He concentrated on the card, and decided it had to have been left by the jogger. “Who was he and what did he want? What was going to happen next Friday?” His normally quick and intuitive mind offered no plausible explanations.
There was nothing in Shane’s intelligence that identified anything specific about next Friday. Shane wondered, “Who wanted to get mixed up with the Magadinnos, or follow me in the early morning hours on a chilly, wet, April morning?”
Surely, he thought, if it were one of Franky Magadinno’s boys, there would have been no note, he would not have been allowed to leave, and there would have been more than one person for him to deal with. He abandoned that thought. He frowned as he drove, unhappy about this new development. Shane did not like surprises or problems during an undercover surveillance, and this promised to present both.
As he racked his brain, he recalled that his only confirmed plan for next Friday, was an afternoon meeting with Sheriff Roberts, at their usual meeting spot. He decided he must change the meet location or postpone the meeting. He also decided the jogger’s identity was his top priority. First, he had to get the card to Mark Roberts. Due to his deep cover, Shane had no connections to a local crime lab, and Mark would have to get the card to a lab and have a technician process it for latent fingerprints. If the card was void of prints, it was more likely the card giver was a professional, and Shane’s problem could be more serious. But, at least he would know that much.
In any event, he would need to change apartments, re-order his routine, and alter his local habits. And then it hit him, and hit him hard. Changing his routine would mean not going to the café, and not seeing Kate, and that was too painful for Shane to accept at this point in his life. Shane would have to figure another way to increase his own security, so he could keep the local habits he needed.
“I won’t give up my one pleasure in life,” Shane thought stubbornly. He was deviating from his own practiced security behaviors. He calculated the risks again, but his first decision remained final. He had to have some love life, even if it were just the hope of a love life.
Shane braked for a red light as he prepared to turn right on to Stewart Street, and as he did so, a lightning bolt of pain shot up his shin. He winced and reached down to feel his leg. More of the sticky blood had soaked through his pants, and he was suddenly aware this was a more serious injury than he had originally thought. By the time he arrived home, he would be leaving bloody shoe prints on the asphalt next to his car.
Shane drove in to the apartment parking lot and double checked the area for anything out of the ordinary. He saw nothing. He grabbed a cloth he kept under the driver’s seat to wipe condensation from the inside of the car windows during surveillance. He stepped out on to the lawn, wiped his shoes off on the wet grass, and tied the cloth around the bloody shoe, so he wouldn’t leave a trail to his apartment. He slowly climbed the stairs to his apartment, checking for surveillance. Each step left him in increasing agony. He realized the adrenaline had worn off.
Once on the landing, Shane did another quick outside area check, and slipped inside, gun in hand. He checked the living room slowly upon his entry, while he locked and dead bolted the door behind him. In one smooth motion, he swung the backpack off his shoulder, dropped it silently
on the entryway, and moved to one side.
He swept the apartment, going quickly, but carefully, from room to room, as silently as possible. When he had cleared each room, and was sure he was alone, he tended to his wound, undressing in the shower, so there would be no difficult mess to clean.
“What a great life I chose for myself,” Shane said aloud, mockingly. Most guys his age were sleeping right now, snuggled up against their wife or girlfriend, or at least their favorite pet. Here he was, undressing alone in a shower at 4:00 A.M., so he could check the seriousness of a wound he had received jumping from a crime figure’s balcony, at night, into a tree, in the rain. And now, he was going to have to go to a doctor, which he didn’t want to do, for fear of leaving a trail that might lead to his discovery.
Shane checked the wound, hoping he could clean and bandage it adequately himself. But the jagged tree branch had done too much damage. Try as he might, he could not stop the bleeding, and finally he gave up, deciding he would have to go to urgent care to get the wound cleaned…and sealed with an unknown number of stitches. He was tired and in moderate pain. But most of all, he was increasingly more aware of his lonely life than ever before. He didn’t even have a dog to console him and accompany him on his trip to urgent care. His thoughts returned to Kate.
Shane grabbed his medical kit, a good one, put together by a nurse he once dated in Denver. “Nice girl,” he recalled, but far too clingy for his lifestyle or his self-respect. She had called or texted him a minimum of twenty times a day, and, eventually started interrogating him nightly about his whereabouts when they were apart. “Eventually” meant for Shane that the relationship had lasted more than two weeks. He couldn’t take the building micro-management and suspicious jealousy. He had broken off the relationship after the first jealous rant, in week three.
“Still,” he mused, “she was a nice girl and right for him in many ways—just not all the necessary right ways.” He wondered if there really was someone out there who would be “right” for him, and what she would be like.
While he thought about his life, Shane began the work of stabilizing the injury site with a series of compress layers, held together by pink self-adhering sports tape—Nurse Sherry’s playful touch. He would use the urgent care in Minden, Nevada, some 25 minutes south of Carson City, and in a different county, Douglas County. It was far enough away to not draw any attention to his activities, and close enough to get to quickly, should the bleeding continue.
He dressed in his jogging suit and tennis shoes, and, carefully scanning the approach, returned to his car to make the drive. As he turned south on Hwy 395 and drove over Indian Hill, he realized again how tired he was. The adrenaline had worked well for him earlier when he needed it. But now he was drained, in pain and sleepy, left sluggish by the adrenaline void and its corresponding aftermath.
Shane was admitted immediately when he arrived at urgent care, as no other patients were being treated. Bleeding through the compresses on to his shoe and the clinic floor, he bypassed the unmanned front administration desk, and was shown to an emergency room by a friendly, somewhat older nurse, who seemed interested to hear his early morning story. When the nurse produced the standard paperwork and HIPAA form, Shane protected his identity by using his fictitious undercover driver’s license and credit card, in his assumed name of Daniel Lester Harrington.
The credit card was good, and the clinic would get paid. Sheriff Mark Roberts had given Shane the undercover “cold” name, driver’s license and credit card to protect his identity and the assignment. Only Roberts knew Shane’s true identity, and that information was locked in a safe in the Sheriff’s home. A trusted DMV employee in Las Vegas, who provided law enforcement with fictitious “cold” license plates and IDs, had provided the driver’s license, one of many given out to operatives at various Nevada departments each year.
After the initial interview the nurse had Shane remove his jogging pants to expose his injury. Soon after, a pretty, young doctor entered and began examining Shane’s wound. He noticed she was eyeing him suspiciously. “So you told the nurse you tripped on a bush while jogging?” the doctor asked, with a sidelong glance. Her pretty eyes lit up, as she assumed the look of someone who thought they knew something was amiss.
“Yeah, when it started raining, I decided to leave the hazards of an uneven sidewalk and jog in the street, where it was safer. As I ran, I tried to jump over this shrub between the sidewalk and the street to continue home, but I caught a broken branch with my shin and knee, and the rest is painful history,” Shane explained.
As he spoke, Shane leaned back and supported himself with his arms, making his stomach and arms rigid. He also closed his eyes, to avoid any telltale lying eye movements that would invalidate the story to his physician, just in case she knew any tells of lying body language. Normally, he could have focused on controlling his body to appear to tell the truth, but he was tired and in pain, and this was safer and easier.
After a long pause, the doctor asked, “So, who jogs in a cold early morning April rain?” Shane smiled, realizing he had asked the same question about the real mystery jogger an hour earlier. With his eyes still closed, he said, “An idiot like me, I guess.” A playful laugh told Shane the doctor believed the story. Self-deprecating statements always bolstered believability. “People tend to believe what they like,” Shane thought to himself.
Shane looked down from his seat on the paper-covered table, where he sat clad only in his underwear, and noticed the lady doctor’s head was at his crotch level. She was glancing secretively at his crotch, while she inspected and cleaned his wound. He watched her eyes flitting back and forth from his wound to his manhood, as if she were unable to concentrate on the task at hand. Shane suddenly realized he was seated on the examining table, wearing nothing but his “tighty whities.” He immediately turned red.
The tight briefs fit Shane snugly, revealing the outline of his male anatomy, leaving little to the imagination. Shane’s friend Mike always called the male genitalia a “package,” and Shane’s new doctor apparently found his “package” alluring. Shane closed his eyes and thought, “There’s hope for me…she likes the package.”
He glanced down again, noticed the doctor was not wearing a ring, and that she was actually very beautiful. Shane thought to himself, “You must be getting old if you didn’t notice until now the doc is single and pretty.” He smiled again about his strange life.
The doctor had used a local anesthetic to dull the pain, and the drug had finally taken effect. She began to slowly, but methodically, stitch his wound, in no perceptible rush. Other than an occasional twinge of dull pain and the sensation of tugging at the skin, the procedure was no longer uncomfortable. Nearing the end, Shane leaned further back, with his eyes nearly closed, and almost drifted off to sleep.
The doctor suddenly said, “We’re done, Mr. Harrington.”
Shane opened his eyes, smiled, and said, “Thank you, Miss…”
The doctor reached out her hand, and said, “Leslie…Dr. Leslie Graham.”
Shane took Leslie’s hand, and said, “Dr. Leslie Graham…I’m Dan, Dan Harrington.”
Dr. Leslie squeezed Shane’s hand a little too long, and a little too tightly, seeming to convey an interest in Shane, the man, not just Shane, the patient. She smiled and said, “Well, Dan, my nurse, Marjorie, is preparing a home-coming kit for you. Nothing too fancy, just a few extra bandages, some iodine-based cleaning solution and a roll of tape in a manlier blue.” Dr. Leslie beamed at Shane, obviously flirting and looking for approval.
As Dr. Leslie continued to look at Shane and smile, and Shane returned both the look and smile, Dr. Leslie’s face flushed pink. She quickly looked away, and continued then, trying to assume a more professional tone. “I will want to see you back in four or five days to remove the sutures, Dan.” Dr. Leslie smiled again and added, “But you can come back earlier, if you want to see me… to look at the wound, to check for infection, or if you have problems with
the sutures, or any unusual pain or swelling.”
The doctor was now blushing even more, realizing she had been a little too obvious about communicating her attraction. “Once the sutures are out, I shouldn’t need to see you professionally again. I mean, I won’t be your doctor, Dan, unless you need me in that way.” Her red hue deepened to crimson now, as she dug her professional hole a little deeper. Shane noticed aroused nipples, visible through Dr. Leslie’s blouse. At that moment, Nurse Marjorie came back in, and the doctor moved away, folding her arms across her chest, while she continued to smile and flash her eyes at Shane. Her complexion continued to flush red.
Dr. Leslie remained as the nurse gave Shane a prescription for antibiotics, followed by the icing for swelling and wound cleaning instructions, and asked him when he had his last tetanus shot. Shane signed some paperwork, said his thanks and goodbyes, and began walking toward the doors. He turned back to wave at Dr. Leslie, and saw that both she and Nurse Marjorie had followed him toward the door. They were both smiling and waving like schoolgirls. He returned their waves flushing a little red himself.
Shane looked in the bag as he walked to the car, and noticed that Dr. Leslie’s business card sat on top, with a cell phone number handwritten under her name. He smiled and thought how unpredictable life could be. He had been focused on one girl he couldn’t get up the nerve to talk to after seeing her for weeks, and another girl had come along and approached him on their first encounter.
As he started the short drive back home, Shane realized again how sleepy and sore he was. He wanted his bed and some rest, but it was nearly 7:00 A.M., in weekday rush hour traffic on Hwy 395 heading north to Carson City, and if he wanted to see Kate, he would have to go directly to the café. He might not even make it in time, he thought, so he drove on a little faster.
As fatigue escalated from the events of the last 24 hours, Shane tried to concentrate on staying awake as he drove. He used all the tricks he knew so well from too many late night surveillances. It had just stopped raining, and Shane’s windows were now half open, with the heat turned off, making it as cold as he could stand it. He drove sitting straight up in the seat, with both hands on the wheel. He turned the radio on to loud rock.
The Case Page 5
