Backfire fst-16

by Catherine Coulter

  “I’m thinking he must have suspected something wasn’t right when he got to his room at the Fairmont; maybe our agent in the hall spooked him. Anyway, he must have had the canister in his hand when he opened the door to the suite. He threw it at us, and there was a deafening noise and a blinding light. I knew what it was, but that didn’t stop my ears from buzzing or help me see any quicker, and, of course, it hurt.

  “There was instant fire everywhere, walls of it, and that was Xu’s doing, too. Flash-bangs make a great incendiary device if you wrap them in an accelerant, like Sterno in a Ziploc bag, and duct-tape the bag to the canister. It would make the canister that much bigger, but not too big to carry in a jacket pocket. The Sterno ignites and gets blasted in all directions. It’s a potent weapon.

  “Since Xu knew what was coming, he had a second to turn away, prepare himself. We didn’t, but we did manage to fire through the flames even though we couldn’t see anything. Luckily, one of us hit him.”

  Nurse Blankenship returned and nodded to Savich. “Agent Savich, your wife will be going to CT now, before she’s admitted to her room. You can go with her. She’ll be out in a second.”

  “There she is,” Eve said.

  Sherlock was lying on a gurney, a white sheet pulled up to her neck, what looked to be rolls of cotton bandage wrapped around her head. There were streaks of blood at its edge, probably from her hair. She looked pale. “Give us a moment,” Savich said to the orderly and nurse.

  He slipped her hand out from under the sheet and squeezed it. “Sweetheart, are you awake?”

  She whispered, “Yes. I was only resting my eyes.” She looked around at everyone. “All of you guys are here? Hey, is this some kind of party? Is it my birthday?”

  Savich knew she was trying to make a joke but was too woozy to pull if off. He said, “Yes, it’s a party, and you’re the guest of honor. After you get this dinky head scan to make sure your brains are in good working order, we’re going to cut you a slice of your birthday cake.”

  Her eyes dropped to half-mast, her voice faded, but Savich, who knew her as well as he knew himself, heard the whisper of humor when she said, “I sure hope it’s carrot cake.”

  “Yes,” Eve said, “with butter-pecan ice cream.”

  Savich leaned close. “After the scan, the doctors want you to camp out here for a couple of days. Is that okay with you?”

  She closed her eyes, and her voice was starting to fade out. “I don’t think I want to stay here, Dillon. The light’s too bright and I don’t know anybody and my head hurts. Well, maybe I’ll stay if you stay with me and bring me birthday cake.” She attempted a grin. “I’ll share it with you.”

  Savich smiled. “You know what? I’m going to see if you can’t camp out with Ramsey. Would you like that?”

  “I like Ramsey,” Sherlock whispered. Her words sounded like they were floating up from the bottom of a well.

  Harry said, “Sherlock, do you remember chasing Xu down? Tackling him?”

  “Yes, of course I remember Xu. I got him on his stomach, and he was bleeding all over the place and I was cuffing him and then—” She frowned. “I saw a really bright light, it was beautiful, and then, all of a sudden, I was here getting stitched up and waiting for my birthday cake. Do you really think they’ll let me camp out in Ramsey’s room? I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

  “I’ll see if you can sit with him by the campfire.”

  “Please tell me Xu didn’t get away. Please.”

  Eve said, “He did, but not for long. Now neither will the man who shot you.”

  Sherlock couldn’t say anything because it was suddenly all too much. She closed her eyes again and breathed deeply. The orderly said, “We need to get her to CT now, Agent Savich. You’ll have to clear it with admissions if you’d like her to stay in the Taj with Judge Dredd. You really know him?”

  There was a bit of laughter, which felt very good to everyone. Cheney said, “I think it’s a great idea, her rooming with Judge Hunt. Dr. Kardak might go for it, if only to keep even more law enforcement officers out of the hospital. There’s already a battalion of marshals and SFPD officers hovering on that floor. We can fit her in without adding a single man, and still be sure she’s safe.”

  Eve said, “Ramsey can get her into their poker games. Does she play?”

  Savich smiled at Eve. “She’s a killer at Texas Hold ’em.”

  Cheney said, “Okay, listen up, everyone. There’s no way Xu gets away from us. We’ll have his picture all over the news in an hour. He’s wounded, and he needs medical care. He’s in a stolen white Infiniti with an APB out on him. All he’s got with him is what he was carrying in his pockets. A passport, if he’s lucky. But he’s not going anywhere until he gets his wounded arm taken care of. That’s got to be where we focus.”

  But it wasn’t Xu who had shot Sherlock, Savich thought.

  San Francisco General Hospital

  Tuesday evening

  Sherlock’s head thrummed to a steady beat. If she tried to move her head, it felt like electric jolts were frying her brains. The stitches felt like they were pulling her scalp too tight. On the other hand, she was alive, and breathing trumped everything.

  Savich had kept her parents away with the promise she’d be home tomorrow. Really it was Sean who’d kept them away. Her parents had looked at him and known to keep still, and put on a good show. Savich told her he’d lied clean, telling Sean his mother was staying with Molly and Emma because they were scared. Sean had listened thoughtfully to this smoothly delivered lie, Savich told her, and said, “But Papa, I want to protect Emma. Can’t I go over and stay with them, too? We can have cocoa and I can show Emma Flying Monks, my new computer game.”

  Sherlock’s mother said, “But Sean, you promised to go with me to the movies tonight to see Rory and the Last Duck, don’t you remember?”

  Torn between impressing Emma with his computer game and the movie, Sean was seriously conflicted until his grandfather said, “Your grandmother promised to buy me kettle corn, Sean; that’s my favorite. Yours, too, right?” and so Sean’s conflict melted away. He did think to ask, “Papa, are you coming with us?”

  No, Savich told him, he was going to help his mother make Emma and Molly and the twins feel all secure, but not to worry, he’d be back to tuck Sean in. Since Sean was five years old, matters of life and death and hospital stays with a huge white bandage around a parent’s head weren’t about to be a part of his reality. When they’d wheeled Sherlock into the room, Molly had been there with Ramsey. She was horrified at what had happened, and question after question came pouring out until she saw Sherlock had gone quietly to sleep, providential, since the last thing she needed was Molly hovering over her.

  When Sherlock woke up, the nurse gave her two Tylenol, a net, the nurse told her, to keep her safe, the only pain meds she would be getting for now. Hence the dull roar in her brain when her dinner was delivered thirty minutes later.

  A fillet of sole sat in the center of a hospital plate, with half a lemon on the side, and vegetables. Who wanted vegetables when you felt down and out? When you could have been dead, your head shot off? No, you wanted ice cream, and a birthday cake, not runny chocolate pudding. She said to Ramsey, who sat in his bed eight feet from hers, “How are you surviving on the hospital food?”

  He smiled, having seen the limp fish on her tray. “Since I’m Judge Dredd, one of the nurses asks me every day what I would like for dinner. The chef either makes it himself or picks it up on his way in to the hospital.”

  “That’s not fair. Nobody asked me what I wanted to eat. What did you get for dinner?” Despite the hot wire slicing through her head, she leaned up. “I see now, it’s a big steak, medium. And a baked potato. This isn’t fair, it’s not right. Can I have a bite?”

  Ramsey looked at the steak left on his plate, looked over at her, and said, “Nah, I’m far more in need of red meat than you are, Sherlock. I’ve got to build up my strength. Getting shot i
n the chest trumps a little head wound any day. Eat your fish and leave the real patients to chow down the meat and potatoes.”

  Deputy Morales said from the window, a hamburger halfway to his mouth, “We were nice as could be to the nurse, but she kissed us off, said we had a per diem, and we should order in what we wanted for ourselves.”

  Savich appeared in the doorway, carrying two big pizza boxes. “Ramsey told me you’d try to steal his dinner, so here you go, sweetheart, enough for you and your guards and maybe one slice for Ramsey, if he’s still hungry.” He studied her face. She was still pale, but she was sitting up, with the bandage wrapped around her hair, looking faintly ridiculous. Today he liked ridiculous; it was a great look.

  Soon there were four guards standing around the two patients, all chowing down on pizza, including Savich’s vegetarian pie. Savich stood at the foot of the bed knowing he should eat, but his thoughts of what had happened wouldn’t let go of his brain. He couldn’t imagine eating, and so he stood there, watching her, listening to their chatter and laughter fill the room. Everyone was distracted, and that was a good thing.

  The pizza tasted wonderful and settled nicely in Sherlock’s stomach, despite her headache. She saw Dillon wasn’t eating, and she wanted to tell him she was all right. He leaned down to kiss her, and she saw the fear lurking behind his smile as he said, “I’ll be back after I’ve tucked Sean in for the night.”

  She took his hand. “Will you bring my birthday cake?”

  “So you remember that, do you?”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t forget the butter-pecan ice cream.”

  There was a knock on the door. A young cop none of them had ever seen said, “Agent Savich? I’m Officer Holt. I found a folded piece of paper on the sidewalk where Agent Sherlock was shot. I took it immediately to Lieutenant Trolley. After she read it and dusted for prints, she told me to bring it to you right away.” He handed Savich the paper. “You can see it has your name printed on it, nothing more. No one has any idea who left it.”

  Officer Holt looked over at Sherlock. “Hello, Agent Sherlock. I’m glad you’re okay.” He looked then at Ramsey and swallowed. “Sir, all of us are glad you’re going to be all right,” and he swallowed again.

  Without thought, Sherlock turned her head to see how Ramsey was reacting to this show of adoration, and froze at the jolt of pain in her head. She managed to smile at him when Ramsey thanked Officer Holt for his concern, but her focus was on Savich as he unfolded the piece of paper.

  “What’s in the note, Dillon?”

  He looked up, his brow furrowed. “Remember last Thursday, that note delivered to me at the Hoover Building?”

  Sherlock said, “For what you did you deserve this. What about it?”

  He handed her the note.

  It was quiet, the light dim in the hospital room. Sherlock and Ramsey lay quietly, waiting for the sleeping pills the nurse had just given them to pull them into sleep. The guards by the windows were reading by shrouded reading lights. Savich hadn’t returned yet from tucking Sean in. They’d brought in a cot for Savich.

  Sherlock said, “Ramsey, I was going to wait until Dillon got back, but I don’t think we should put it off. We need to talk about this other person in the mix, this man who shot me—he was already here in San Francisco, waiting, I suppose until he had the setting he wanted. Shooting me—it was revenge, Ramsey. It’s got to be revenge. Against Dillon.”

  No sleeping pill could compete with what she said. Ramsey’s brain snapped to full alert. “I gathered you thought that, from that bizarre note, but I don’t understand. You don’t think the man who shot you has any connection to Xu, that they don’t have anything to do with each other?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t think so. Everything Xu has done is business to him, a matter of survival, but for the man who sent Dillon that note, it’s personal; something in the past is driving him. For what you did you deserve this. How do you like that for over-the-top drama? He wants to terrorize us; he’s taking pleasure in it.”

  Ramsey turned toward her, immediately regretted it, and held himself very still. He hated the sharp pain, but he hated more having to lie like a slug, helpless and impotent. And he hated having to be shaved and bathed each morning because he wasn’t strong enough yet to take his own shower. He reminded himself both he and Sherlock were lucky to be alive. He said, “So shooting you was revenge against Savich. But why here, why now? And why you, rather than Savich himself?”

  “Well, there’s more to it than that, Ramsey.” She looked up to see Dillon slip into the room through the partially open door, saw the guards move quickly, then throttle back.

  Savich nodded to the guards, said quietly, “This was his second note, Ramsey, that’s what Sherlock was going to tell you. What did you call it, Sherlock? His second notice of doom? He sent me one before he shot you.”

  Ramsey tried to take it in. He said slowly, “You’re saying I was this madman’s first victim? You’re saying he shot both Sherlock and me to gain revenge against you?”

  Savich nodded. “The first note was delivered to me last Thursday at the Hoover Building. That night, Ramsey, at midnight, you were shot. We didn’t connect the note to you until tonight, when he proudly sent us the second identical note after shooting Sherlock.

  “We couldn’t ever be sure of a motive for Xu to try to kill you in the first place. All of us wondered why shoot the judge? But his connecting your shooting to the Cahill trial, making it seem the Cahills were responsible, I’d say it was fortuitous for him. Shooting you succeeded in getting Sherlock and me to fly out to San Francisco, and that wasn’t fortuitous, it was planned. He’s been watching us ever since.”

  Ramsey said, “But if the man was in Washington delivering the note to you, he’d have had to move fast to get to San Francisco and set everything up to shoot me from the beach below my house the same night. There wasn’t enough time.”

  Sherlock said, “He wasn’t in Washington. He paid a young auto mechanic to deliver the note to the Hoover Building on Thursday. We found the guy who did that and brought him in, but we couldn’t track down the man who’d paid him.”

  Savich said, “In fact, we know he was here in San Francisco, studying you and staying at a B-and-B in Atherton for about a week, enough time to do the reconnaissance he needed of your habits, your home, for planning the Zodiac rental, all of it. What’s terrifying is that he would have succeeded if Molly hadn’t called out to you at the last moment.”

  Ramsey said, “So my being shot the same day I shut down the Cahill trial, the same day Mickey O’Rourke disappeared, it was all a coincidence?”

  Savich said, “Yes, and one he took advantage of. The shooter was following your trial closely enough to decide that Thursday night was the perfect time to shoot you to throw us off making the connection to the note for a while. He couldn’t have scripted it better.”

  “Like Dillon said, he’d already been here a week before any of that. And he had to have been to Washington before he came here, checking out the neighborhood around the Hoover Building, learning enough about Teddy Moody to pick him out as his mark.”

  Ramsey said, “Why didn’t he leave a note with me, so you’d know this was his revenge, like he did with you?”

  Sherlock said, “I imagine he was getting a real kick out of the confusion he’d created since we immediately connected your shooting to the Cahills. I guess when he shot me, he was ready to take the credit.”

  Ramsey said, “And that leaves us the big question. Why me? We’ve been friends for a long time, Savich, but there are other people closer to you. That must mean the shooter has a connection to both of us.” After a moment, Ramsey said, “This is the same man who tried to kill me again in the elevator on Saturday, the same man we believed was Xu.”

  Sherlock said, “And that was an act of someone who’s driven or unbalanced enough to take such a risk. Very unlike Xu.” She closed her eyes for a moment, not in pain but in thought, thou
gh sleep was pulling on her. She became aware of Dillon stroking her forearm, his touch light and comforting. She continued. “It all makes sense now. Xu was very hard to predict, even to understand. How could we profile a man, reconcile everything he had done, when he was two very separate men whose motives couldn’t be further apart?”

  Ramsey said, “Then that telephone message to Molly, that wasn’t Xu, either.”

  Savich said, “No. The phone call was meant to terrorize, like the notes.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment dig at me, and my family?” Ramsey said.

  Savich nodded. “That, yes, and more than a little unhinged, like that photo he left of you as Judge Dredd X-ed through under the hydrangea, and the blood he left in the elevator shaft. The man makes plans, but he’s not rational. He’s deranged.”

  Sherlock said, “The thing is, Ramsey, he took lots of time to plan this all out, to learn all about you. Lots of time—and that’s the key. We think he was in prison, where he’d have nothing but time to spend in the library. He told the young man who delivered the first note to Dillon to call him the Hammer. That’s a prison moniker.”

  Ramsey said, “Do you think it’s someone I put away?”

  There was silence in the hospital room, the two guards at the window listening intently.

  Savich said, “Maybe, but it’s got to be as much about me because he picked me to send the note to, and he shot my wife. I don’t know why he went for you first, Ramsey. Forgive me, but if I’m to be blamed I would have thought he’d have gone for Sherlock first, but he didn’t. It was you.”

  Sherlock said, “There’s got to be a good reason he went for you first, Ramsey. We have to figure out what it is.”

  Ramsey said, “It means he’s carrying a load of rage at me, maybe more than he has against you, Savich. It could be over something he thinks we did to him together.”

  Sherlock only nodded. Her head felt like a weight was pressing her down. “Yes, but what?”

  Savich said, “We’ll have to find out, but not tonight. You both look ready to fold your tents. Get some sleep.”