by A. R. Moler
July
When Danny read the request, it was pretty obvious that this was exactly what Jennifer specialized in. After all, she'd done the same sort of thing for the Baltimore police department and occasionally the FBI office located there.
The Nevada Highway Patrol had a missing man. Another officer, who had responded to the same call, was now in a Las Vegas hospital. He was still alive but in serious condition. That officer was expected to survive, but among other injuries, he had been shot in the face and was incapable of talking.
Danny agonized a little. Jennifer wasn't finished with her training yet. She still had two weeks to go. On the other hand, she had completed most of it. He knew her hand to hand combat skills were primo, having been on the receiving end. Her firearms proficiency, not so much.
What if he was the one who went with her on her first assignment? Despite thin numbers of available and trained psi, as a whole, the administration was leaning more and more toward sending agents out in pairs anyway. Too many things were prone to go wrong. If an agent was alone when things went bad, the situation could quickly spiral out of control, as they had for Isabelle Rea. Maybe this was just another piece of the overall puzzle that Peter and Stephen Benford were bent on solving. Those two were heavy backers of encouraging all forms of emotional bonding. Danny had to smile just a little. After a lifetime of first denying his bisexual desires, then acquiescing to a long series of very temporary relationships, he was falling hard for Peter and Jennifer. Jennifer was definitely the one responsible for making him realize just how deep his feelings for Peter ran. Jennifer was a volcano of emotion all on her own -- blunt, passionate, aggressive at times and apt to blow if the stress level got too high.
Danny also grudgingly acknowledged the possibility that any assignment she was given could place her in danger. That thought positively tied knots in his gut. God. He was just going to have to suck it up and let her do her job. If she found out he was coddling her or being overprotective, she'd rip him a new one. That made him grin a little, too. She was way cute when she was mad.
***
There was about an hour left until they were going to land in Las Vegas. Jennifer stared out the window. This was official. She was functioning as a Division P agent on an assignment. None of the usual rather dubious status of "just a sketch artist" applied here. There was a little hint of an adrenaline thrill when she thought about the badge and ID in her pocket. It wasn't like she hadn't done something similar dozens of times before. Her purpose was to scrounge around inside somebody's head with the hopes of producing an accurate picture of a suspect. She never knew exactly how the exercise was going to play out. Sometimes it was straightforward; sometimes it was gut-wrenching.
A soft touch tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "You look pre-occupied," said Danny. She looked at him. He wore a dark suit and a pale blue shirt. Stereotypical mirror sunglasses dangled from his breast pocket.
"You look like a fed," she commented.
He smiled. "Because I am, and so are you." Jennifer was dressed in a pair of black slacks, a gray blazer and a white button down over a black camisole. On short notice it was the most conservative thing she could come up with. He slid an arm behind her and hugged her. "It'll be fine. I do this sort of thing all the time."
"What happens when we land? Is there going to be someone waiting for us?" she asked.
"No. We'll go collect our rental car and drive to the hospital. One of the commanders from the Nevada Highway Patrol is scheduled to meet us there at four."
"Is he the one who called and asked P for help?"
"No, actually that was one of our people who works for the Las Vegas DEA office. His name is Jordan Hayes. There's suspected multi-state drug trafficking involved and Jordan's acquainted with the injured officer."
"And this DEA guy, Jordan, he couldn't help?" Jennifer asked.
"He's a mid-level telepath, but beyond being able to figure out that Officer Sawari did actually see the person who shot him, he couldn't do much more."
"Oh."
***
Jennifer found the drive from the airport curious. There was the obligatory "strip" of all the big casinos that you always saw in beauty shots of Vegas, but she hadn't quite expected the miles and miles of suburbia or the stark dry mountainous crags that poked up around the edges of the city. Danny drove, following the GPS instructions to get them to the hospital.
Commander Adair looked relieved to see them, and gravely shook their hands. Jennifer knew without even looking at Danny that he was scanning the law man for impressions and emotions.
"How's Sawari doing?" asked Danny.
"Fair. He's stable, and that may be all we can hope for at the moment. He's being assessed by a plastic surgeon for reconstruction. One of the bullets struck him in the left side of the jaw and shattered the bone. If it had been a couple inches higher it would've been much worse."
"What exactly did Agent Hayes tell you about us?" Danny asked.
"Not a lot. He said you were federal from an agency called Division P. I've never even heard of you."
"I'm not surprised. We're very, very specialized. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to sign some nondisclosure paperwork. Much of what we do is relevant to national security," said Danny. Jennifer gave him a sideways glance of curiosity. That was laying it on pretty thick, wasn't it? Then again, maybe not.
"I really don't care what I have to sign, so long as it's legal and gives me a chance at finding Peake."
"Peake is the man who's missing?" said Danny.
"Yes. Matt Sawari was following a suspected drug runner, up Highway 93. The car pulled off and parked. Sawari radioed that he was going to hang back and watch for a few minutes to see if the driver was meeting anyone. Peake was his backup. According to the log, Peake arrived on scene and met Sawari. They indicated that a second vehicle had arrived and then shots were heard over the radio. Dispatch immediately sent more officers to the location. When the rest of our people got there, they found Sawari. We suspect whoever shot him probably thought he was dead. There was no sign of Peake."
"Was there any video footage?"
"Nothing helpful. You're free to have a copy if you like," offered Adair.
"I assume a search was conducted for Peake."
"Yes, of course. In fact, we've widened the search grid and still have a half dozen people out looking. We're not very hopeful about finding him alive at this point."
"Mmm, I hope you're wrong, but I understand your acknowledgement that it's probable," said Danny.
"Do you think there's any chance of getting a description or a clue from Sawari? I'm not sure what you can do that no one else can. He can't talk. There's too much damage."
"It's not what I can do. It's what she can do." Danny pointed toward Jennifer. "Is he conscious?"
"Intermittently."
"Can I see him?" asked Jennifer. She made a gesture with her briefcase.
***
Sawari was on a ventilator. He was surrounded by a maze of tubes and wires and monitors. Jennifer sat on a stool with a sketch pad in her lap. The police officer was drugged, but awake.
"Matt, my name is Jennifer. I'm a sketch artist and I'm helping your police department try to find the people who did this to you and your colleague. I'm going to ask you some questions. If they seem kind of weird, don't worry about it."
She had spent so much time doing other things over the past few weeks that she had to take a couple of deep breaths and try to get her head in gear. Come on, you can do this, just like always, she told herself.
"All right. For the moment we're going to stick to yes or no questions. Thumb up for yes, thumb down for no. Did you see the person who shot you?"
Thumb up.
"Was it a man?"
Thumb up.
"Was he white?"
Thumb up. Now she had to edge toward getting him to visualize the man. It might or might not work. She knew the officer was loaded with pain meds.
"St
are at the ceiling for me, and think about what he looked like." The heart monitor jumped a little in speed. Oh. She was going to have to get him to calm down a little. "You're perfectly safe. There's an officer just around the corner. My partner is a federal agent and he's just down the hall. No one can hurt you. I know memories are tough and they're scary, but they're just memories." She patted his hand lightly where it lay on the sheets.
His heart rate settled some.
"Look at the ceiling. You don't have to close your eyes unless you want to. I know it's hard, but I want you to think about the man who did this. When you very first saw him, what he looked like."
The image she skimmed from his head was hazy. There was some fear and the drugs were blurring his thoughts. She made a quick sketch. The gunman was looking over his shoulder at Matt.
"Okay, that's really good," she reassured him and he gave her a bleary look of confusion.
"White, collar-length dark hair, relatively narrow lips… Now I want you to think about when he turned to look at you."
Over the past few years she had found that breaking the events down into the less threatening moments sometimes helped. She followed the track of his internal gaze. The shooter had a bit of a snarl on those thin lips. His nose was more shadowy due to oblique lighting from the car headlights. Her mind focused on the facial details despite the thread of fear she felt from Matt. She always felt sorry for making victims relive their traumas, but law enforcement in general often found her sketches incredibly helpful in the whole "catching the bad guys" end of things.
"That's great, Matt. We're definitely getting there. Did the man ever turn more toward the headlights? Concentrate on that one second." Matt's fingers clenched a little at the blanket. Jennifer could tell he was hovering on the edge of a dark place, someplace his memory didn't really want to go. She waited, giving him a little time to calm.
"Did you see what happened to Chris Peake?" she asked. That was a tipping point. She was suddenly slammed by a tidal wave of vicious images and emotions. Chris Peake had been a few steps away from Matt, and they had looked at each other as they approached the first car. The gunman had turned in their direction and pulled a gun from near his waist. Matt's gun was already out and he was shouting, "Freeze! This is the Nevada Highway Patrol." The gunman fired and the first shot hit Matt in the chest. Things became more chaotic and the memory swirled. There were more shots and Matt had seen Peake go down too as another person from the second car ran in their direction.
Matt was lying on the ground at this point, having been struck by several shots. Memory deteriorated further, clouded by pain and shock. Bullet impacts were played and replayed over top of visual images of feet and some snippets of voices. She heard "Is … dead… yeah or soon… his face," followed by, "Is he still breathing?" And, "Yeah I think." The voices had to have belonged to gunmen. "Take... useful... otherwise... can dump." It was kind of like bad cell phone reception, cutting in and out. There were noises and the soft sounds of footsteps on sand. Matt's vision was tunneling down to minimal at this point, but his panic level was spiking. He was certain he was dying...
The sharp chirp of the heart monitor had apparently attracted the attention of one of the nurses. Jennifer jerked back to normal reality to see a woman checking on Matt. "Calm down, honey. You're okay," soothed the nurse patting her hand gently on Matt's arm. The woman shot an angry glare at Jennifer.
Jennifer made herself take a deep breath. Her own heart rate was pounding hard enough to actually hurt. The harsh traumatic memories were still clawing at the edge of Matt's thoughts and she had a choking sensation that made her want to start screaming.
In another instant, Danny was kneeling beside her, a hand on her shoulder. She wrenched away and stumbled up from the stool to the corner of the cubicle.
"Do not touch me!" she snapped. She slid down the wall, pencil and pad clutched in her grip and began to draw. Core dump. Her eyes didn't really even register what she drew. It just poured out, replicating every image Matt had seen.
When her hand finally slowed, she had filled eight pages. She looked up. Danny was now the one sitting on the stool. He wore an expression of deep worry as he watched her. Their eyes met.
"Are you all right?" he asked. It wasn't a question she really wanted to answer, so she evaded it.
"I'm almost done. Give me a few minutes to pull all this into a composite," she said. Slowly, she began to flip back through the pages and pick out the individual details for the first gunman, copying them into a very specific overall picture. She even had a very vague sketch for the second assailant, a black male of stocky build.
When she was finished, she stood up. "I… usually only give just the composite to the police, because it's too hard to explain where the rest of the information comes from. What do you want me to do this time?" she asked Danny.
"You can stick with the same plan for the moment."
"I have a description of the second shooter, but it's not so great. As best as I can tell, Chris Peake was still alive at the time of the shooting and there seemed to be a plan to take him along, I'm guessing to use as a hostage. Although based on a few things Matt partially overheard, I think the backup idea was to ditch the body if he died."
"So there's a chance Peake might still be alive…" Danny said.
"Maybe. We have no idea how badly hurt he may have been." She turned to Matt. "I have a picture to show you, if you could give me a thumb up or down on whether I got it right." The injured man gave her a stressed look. She showed him the picture. Thumb up. The absolutely haunted look in his eyes told her that she was spot on.
"Thanks, Matt. You've been incredibly helpful. I know it was really hard. This will improve the chances of them catching this man and hopefully finding your friend."
As she was walking out of the ICU cubicle, Danny said. "I, however, do want to see the other stuff you drew." Jennifer handed him the sketch pad.
***
Adair was awfully startled when Danny gave him the composite.
"The guy can't talk at all. How did you…?"
"Ms. Sebastiano has some unusual methods and I'm afraid that's all you have clearance for me to tell you. If you have doubts, please feel free to talk to Agent Hayes from the FBI. He's aware that the Baltimore field office has used Ms. Sebastiano with great success on several cases," said Danny. He glanced at Jennifer, who was putting her sketch pad and pencils back into her bag. He was worried about her. She had been adamant about not letting him touch her. Her shields were slammed down hard and tight, but her body language screamed tension. He thought she would benefit from a hug, but obviously she didn't think so.
"We're not leaving Vegas until tomorrow. I'll check back with you in the morning and see if you've made any progress." Danny crooked a finger at Jennifer and she followed him out of the hospital. It was after seven and with the flight, it had been a long day.
In the car driving back to the hotel, Jennifer was unusually quiet. Danny was frustrated and still deeply concerned.
"Talk to me, Jen. Make me believe you're okay," he prompted.
"I'm fine."
"Bullshit."
"Danny…" she began. He could tell she was trying to rein in her temper. "It's often this way. If the victim was traumatized, especially if it was bad, I get to see it all. In excruciatingly up close and personal detail of what they went through. Every emotion, every terror, just everything. It takes me a while to… get it out of my head, sometimes a couple of days."
"Is going to the hotel okay? Or do you want to go somewhere as far from people as we can get?" he asked.
"The hotel's fine. Where are we staying?"
"The Luxor. The accounting department can chew my ass later."
