When she was done, she took a towel to him and told him they’d wait a minute for the skin to dry completely.
“Could I trouble you for a refill?” He handed her the plastic pitcher of ice water from his bedside.
“No problem.” She headed into the washroom.
Trevalian slipped his hand through the side rail and snatched a disposable razor from a box on the lower shelf of the EKG trolley. He slipped it under the covers, between his legs-let her find it there-and lay back on the pillows. He’d spiked his heart rate and pumped up his adrenaline, wondering if that might skew his EKG.
The nurse returned with the water, poured some, and actually held the cup for him as he sipped from the straw. Like taking candy from a baby, he thought.
Twenty-one
T revalian waited for the dinner tray to be removed and the hospital room door to shut, and the clicking of the dead bolt in the doorjamb. He checked the clock: 8:06 P.M. The nurses had been checking on him every two hours.
He administered one last dose of painkiller from the electronic box attached to his bed and went to work disconnecting the IV tube. They had removed the catheter in the late afternoon and were no longer monitoring his vital signs, so he had little concern of alerting the nurses’ station to his activities. He lowered the side rail, unhooked his leg, swung it over the bed, and waited for the rush of blood and pain to his head to subside. Then, one-handing the IV stand, he prodded the ceiling tile, and to his relief, it moved. He was reminded of placing Rafe Nagler’s body bag into just such a hiding place at the Salt Lake City airport. How interesting, he thought, that things should come full circle like this.
He moved the panel out of the way and slid it to the side, but only far enough to look vaguely out of place. The key to any ruse was psychology-to push and pull the adversary, allowing him his own discoveries. Trevalian wasn’t going to make this too obvious.
He covered the disposable razor with a towel and crushed it against the vinyl tile floor, making sure to pick up every last speck of broken plastic. He then removed a piece of adhesive tape from his arm and taped one of the razor’s two narrow blades to the end of a pen that read “St. Jude’s Community Hospital.” He tested it and added yet another piece of tape for reinforcement. Now it behaved like an X-Acto knife, the blade holding strongly to the end of the pen. A tool. A weapon.
He listened carefully for any indication his crushing of the razor had been overheard. Silence.
He checked the clock one last time, and then continued his work.
Twenty-two
T ommy Brandon sat across from room 26 at St. Jude’s Hospital. “Furnishings compliments of Christopher Guest and Jamie Lee Curtis” read a plaque immediately below the door number.
“You ever see her in that one with Arnold?” Brandon asked the Secret Service agent, who had the chair closer to the hospital room door. This man was technically in charge. He was also unresponsive. Brandon continued, “True Lies? Jamie Lee. That little dance she did. Funny. Really funny. And sexy? Come on!”
Still the agent failed to acknowledge him.
“This is what they call the technical integration of law enforcement agencies, right?” Brandon said sarcastically. “The politicians are fucking brilliant.”
“Put a sock in it, will you?” said the agent. “We start out like this, it’s going to be a long night.”
Both agents saw a nurse approaching. Brandon immediately looked away, keeping his eyes on the exit door at the end of the hallway; the two men had the entire hallway covered.
“He had an EKG not an hour ago,” the agent said to the approaching nurse. “How often are you going to check on him?”
“Just doing my rounds, Officer. Doing my job, same as you.”
“It’s Special Agent,” the man corrected. “I was just making conversation.”
“And I was just making conversation back.”
“We’ve got to search you,” the man advised her.
“I know.”
Brandon did not take his eyes off the far door. “He just came on shift. You’ll have to forgive him. He doesn’t realize you’ve already been through this three times, Maddie.”
“It’s all right. Let’s get it over with, please.” She raised her hands out like wings. She told the agent, “You get fresh with me, and your senior officer will hear about it.”
“Special Agent in Charge,” the man said, correcting her again.
“He’s still going to hear about it.”
He patted her down-gently and carefully-and cleared her. “Okay. You can go inside.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said.
She waited for the agent to unlock the door. She went inside, and he relocked it behind her.
“It’s Sunday,” Brandon told him. “No one likes getting a call on a Sunday.”
“Every day’s the same to me,” the agent said.
“That’s kind of sad, you ask me,” Brandon fired back. With the room door shut, Brandon was free to look in whatever direction he wanted. He chose to stare down the agent.
“But no one did ask you,” the agent said, determined to have the last word. Brandon could have kept playing, but decided against it. It was going to be a long night, and the sheriff seemed determined to keep him here-and away from his trailer-for as long as possible.
Twenty-three
O nly seconds after the nurse entered the hospital room there was a pounding on the door-not the casual knock that Brandon had grown used to but a frantic, full-fisted effort. Her voice barely made it through the thick door, but it sounded as if she was in a panic.
Brandon and the agent took positions, both with their weapons drawn, and the agent unlocked the door. He stepped back, prepared for a hostage situation where Trevalian was using the nurse to startle them.
She was red-faced, wide-eyed, and overly excited.
“He’s gone!” she said. “The bed…I checked the bathroom…”
Brandon glanced at the agent, then punched his radio and rattled off several codes, relaying an emergency. It was quickly worked out that the agent would go in, but without his weapon.
Brandon pulled the nurse out of the doorway. “Get gone,” he said.
The agent pulled open the door. The bed was empty. He edged toward the closet and slid the door across. Empty. Glanced under the bed. Nothing. Moved cautiously toward the bathroom, the door standing open. Checked the reflection in the mirror first-the bathroom appeared empty. He yanked the shower curtain back. No one. Then he caught it out of the corner of his eye: a ceiling panel over the bed. Slightly askew. Not like the others.
“Clear!” he shouted. He returned to the hallway, where several more deputies had gathered. He used hand signals to direct Brandon to follow. Together they entered the room. He pointed to the ceiling panel. Brandon climbed onto the end table and popped the ceiling panel out of its frame. He poked his head inside and squeezed a flashlight past his chin.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, his voice dampened. “Looks like a panel over the bathroom goes up into a crawl space or something.” He jumped down and repeated the procedure from the countertop in the bathroom. He broke away several of the flimsily hung ceiling tiles, stretched onto his toes. “Affirmative. There’s egress here.” He ducked out of the ceiling and looked down. “He could be fucking anywhere by now.”
Twenty-four
W alt had spent the last hour in the Mobile Command Center writing up a summary of events. His eyes strayed to a seating chart thumbtacked to a corkboard.
It was a large sheet, showing tables and seating arrangements for the Shaler brunch. Of all the seats, one was marked with an X.
Dryer felt his presence. “What?”
“That’s the seating plan for Liz Shaler’s talk,” Walt suggested.
“Yes it is,” Dryer agreed.
“Why the X on Stuart Holms?” Walt asked.
“We were reaching. On the off chance the contract on the AG came from someone attending the conference, we looked at wh
o failed to attend. His was the only empty seat.”
“And the initials by his name?” Walt asked. “Explain it to me.”
“Exactly what it says: meal preference. Do you want a regular meal, vegetarian meal, do you have your own personal chef, are you allergic to wheat…You know how these people are.”
Walt referred to his notebook and flipped back through the pages. He asked, “And what’s that date printed down there by the file name? Bottom of the sheet?”
Dryer leaned closer. “Six-six. June sixth. What is it, Sheriff?”
“Stuart Holms uses a personal chef. Name of Raphael,” he said, consulting his notebook. “Won’t eat a bite if it’s not prepared by Raphael. He’s fanatic about it.”
“Well, that’s Stuart Holms’s seat, and he’s down for a regular meal. What’s it matter? I think you need some rest.”
“What it means, I think, is that six weeks ago-on June sixth-Holms already knew he wouldn’t be attending Liz Shaler’s talk.”
“And so, why bother with meal preference if he’s not going to be there?”
Walt nodded. “Maybe. Yeah.”
Dryer did a double-take, first looking at the seating plan, then back at Walt. His brow creased, tightening his eyes. “Naa…” But he didn’t sound as convinced as a minute earlier.
A knock on the coach’s door was followed by the big head of Dick O’Brien. “Sheriff, you got a minute?”
Twenty-five
W alt climbed out of the Mobile Command Center wearing a fresh black T-shirt that read SEARCH AND RESCUE on the back.
O’Brien apparently never stopped sweating.
“Hey there,” O’Brien said.
“Hey there, yourself,” Walt answered.
“How is he-your dad, I mean?”
“Came through the operation with flying colors.”
“Good to hear.”
“Yes, it is,” Walt said.
“My guy…who shot him…It was meant for you: the gun and all.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I just mean he was doing his job. If you can go easy on him…”
“We could make a trade, you and I,” Walt proposed.
“Could we?”
“Must have steamed him, her taking to his brother all over again.”
“Don’t go there, Walt.”
“Jealousy is a powerful motivator. A man like Patrick gets anything he wants, right? But when your rival turns out to be your own brother, what then?”
“This is a big mistake.”
“Was a big mistake. His mistake,” Walt said. “You helped me. On the bridge. Why’d you do that?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s say your boss killed her-some kind of accident. Lost his temper. But who took her down there and put her in that cage? Who did that to her? Who was it carried her up the Hill Trail and dumped her?” He studied O’Brien, who seemed to be sweating more profusely. “It was his trying to implicate Danny that pushed you over the top, wasn’t it? Danny was a good fit for it, and you knew that’s how I’d see it. That Danny would go down for it.”
O’Brien remained tight-lipped.
“You must have also known there wouldn’t be near enough evidence to prove any of this-it would come down to a jury trial. And if Danny went down for it, he’d go down and that would be that.”
“I wish I had the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”
“The thing I don’t get is the workout clothes. She’d already run that day. She wouldn’t have gone running again. So you-or someone else-had to get her into running clothes. It had to be running clothes to sell that she’d been out Adam’s Gulch. But where’d they come from, those running clothes? Did she keep some clothes at Patrick’s? Was that it? Something she could jump into if his wife came home early? I don’t get the clothes.”
“I’m glad your dad is doing better.” He turned to break off the conversation, then turned back again. “I’ve been within an arm’s reach of Patrick for four solid days, Walt. That’s the God’s truth.”
“You give me Cutter, and any of your guys involved in the cover-up will walk.”
Brandon ’s frantic voice called out a series of codes over the radio.
Walt went running right past O’Brien, clutching his gun belt to keep it from slapping, wishing he’d had more time to see if the man had been ready to make a deal.
Twenty-six
W alt paced Trevalian’s empty room, Brandon standing in the doorway, watching. He checked the windows-all fixed glass, none broken. He wandered into and then back out of the bathroom. He approached the closet and slid open the doors. Walt had only glanced in there the first time. Now he returned for a more thorough look. They’d been searching the grounds for the past hour, with no sign of the suspect.
“There’s a ceiling hatch leads up into the joists,” Brandon said, breaking the silence. “Up over the bathroom. Three of the rooms on this floor have similar access.”
“Climbing with that knee of his. You think?” Walt said.
He squatted and looked beneath the raised bed. He turned over a pillow, then another. He lifted the bedding and peered under the sheets. “This guy is seriously wounded, and he’s clever. If we’re thinking he climbed out through the roof, then you can bet he didn’t.”
He touched another pillow, then spun around sharply on his heels, facing the closet again. “You went through all this?” he asked, indicating the closet.
Brandon answered, “There’s nothing in there, unless he’s hiding in a drawer.”
Walt reached up into the closet and pulled out the pillows. As he did so, he said, “Did you happen to notice that three of the pillows on the bed-the ones that were under his knee-were stripped of their pillowcases? Do you pay attention to anything other than the nurses?”
Brandon fumed but knew better than to answer.
Walt opened the end of one of the pillowcases taken from the closet, then looked up disapprovingly at Brandon and shook its contents onto the floor, discovering big chunks of foam and fabric. A section of a zipper. He hurried now and shook out the other pillowcase as well, spilling out similar contents. “Help me out,” Walt said, spinning back around and lowering the hospital bed’s side rail. The two dragged the mattress off the bed and flipped it over, upside down, onto the floor.
The bottom of the mattress had been cut away with something sharp into a human form-head, shoulders, legs, arms. Three sections of clear tubing had fallen to the floor.
“He was in the room all along,” Walt said, “faceup, under the mattress. Breathing tubes,” he said, picking them up. “In here the whole time we were out there looking for him.” Furious at him now, Walt shouted, “One officer always protects the crime scene! Jesus Christ, Tommy.”
He stormed out of the room, already putting himself into the contrarian mind of Trevalian. Where would he go? How could he hope to escape the valley? Was there someone helping him?
Then it came to him: Dryer’s men and most of his deputies had been deployed to search the hospital, top to bottom.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.
Twenty-seven
T revalian had found his way into town on the most direct route available, and one he was quite certain the cops wouldn’t think to search or roadblock: the bike path. He’d stoved in the head of a deputy who stood guard outside the bottom of the hospital fire stairs, and had left him unconscious and stripped of his clothes, a sock down his throat, his hands cuffed behind him. He had the man’s cell phone and now wore his uniform, though the shoes were a size small and his feet were killing him. A wheelchair had gotten him most of the way into town along the bike path, while fifty yards to his right cop cars raced up and down the highway. He’d ditched the chair at the turn to the ski slopes. When the painkillers wore off, he was going to be in serious trouble.
From somewhere near the center of town, he called the memorized number and left a page when the recorded message told him
to do so. He hoped he wasn’t too late. If a contract had gone out on him, it might not be rescinded.
He waited. Five minutes passed. Ten.
Finally the phone rang and he answered the call.
“Go ahead,” a male voice said.
“The engagement was broken off,” he said.
“So I heard. Most disappointing.”
“I had a little problem getting away from the church, but that’s behind me now. I’m free.”
“Free?”
“Yes. But my in-laws are never going to let me out of this town. I could use a place to stay.”
“That’s the problem with being single,” the man said. “You’ll think of something.”
“I need your help with this.”
“I’m afraid not. You failed to consummate the marriage.”
At that moment, a helicopter passed overhead. At first Trevalian had trouble hearing, and hoped the contact hadn’t hung up. But then, much to his surprise, the same sound of the helicopter was in his other ear: the ear pressed to the phone.
He scanned the sky and spotted the flashing red and white lights as it flew to the far end of town. It hovered and then landed halfway up Knob Hill. It looked to be a private home the size of a country club.
In the phone he heard nothing. The call had disconnected.
A moment later it rang again and he answered. There was no sound of the helicopter in the receiver, and he wondered if he’d actually heard it coming from the phone, or not.
“The bride is still in town,” the voice said. “Her father’s place. Try to work things out with her. If you’re successful, contact me again. I’ll see what I can do to assist you.”
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