by Jan Coffey
Her life had been studying, school, trying to make something special out of future. She’d wanted to prove her mother wrong. There was life outside of Deer Lodge, Montana. She could make a life somewhere else. She wouldn’t return as Kim had.
Disappearing with some nine older scientists for three months had been no problem for Marion. She had no boyfriends, no social life, no family that she visited or that visited her on regular basis.
Her fingers scrolled down the list. She stared at the name that came up.
“Mark Shaw,” she whispered under her breath.
There had been more than a few times she’d hoped that he’d call. Marion had even tried to call him. Four times. But it was always voicemail, and she never left a message.
He was heading to Iraq when they’d met. He was probably still there.
She stared at his phone number and smiled sadly. It’s funny how sometimes you can know a person right away, she thought. Mark was the kind of person who would be worrying about her. He’d care.
CHAPTER 16
Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut
“Same numbers.”
Sid Conway looked down at the printout his partner Desmond handed him. “And not just any numbers,” he replied. “Ten digits. These must be a phone number.”
They’d quit last night around ten. It didn’t matter how they played with the parameters, they still couldn’t get any readings on JD’s scans that made sense. Then, this morning, despite it being a Saturday, both Sid and Desmond had shown up at the facility around seven. Nat Rosen was supposed to get there at ten; he had to make a stop at the UCONN Health Center first. Like last night, there was only one output for each reading. Not darkness or a black screen this time, but one set of numbers, showing up again and again.
“What do we do with it?” Desmond asked.
Sid wondered if he should call Dr. Baer to ask his opinion. They had set up no guidelines as far as what they should do with the content that was extracted from JD’s mind. He assumed that the conservator would be notified if they found anything. But as far as how often should they contact the lawyer with the information, that had been left open. He knew that no one outside of the team expected anything as concrete as a series of numbers to be decoded.
Last night, they had nothing. This morning, they had a number. Tomorrow, they could have her real name. Wouldn’t that be something!
When Jennifer walked into the room, Sid wasn’t surprised. She’d been there when they left last night.
He smiled at her, appreciating her dedication. “Do you have a home?”
“Do you?” she asked him.
He nodded. He was certain the nurse that had escorted them in this morning had made the call. He figured Jennifer Sullivan must have left specific instructions about being called at home whenever they got here.
He noticed that she wasn’t in uniform. “We get grant money for this. Do you get paid?”
“I’m scheduled to work second shift today.”
He glanced at his watch. “Aren’t you a bit early?”
“I hope you won’t wait until you get to be my age before figuring out that money isn’t everything.”
It had been only a day, but Sid thought they were getting along. He noticed even Desmond was little more talkative with her around. His coworker answered her polite morning greetings.
“You got something this morning?” she asked, looking at the paper in his hand.
“Numbers. Could be a phone number. And that’s the only thing she’s giving us. Repeated readings and we keep getting the same numbers.” He showed her what was printed on the paper. “It’s like she’s seeing these numbers and running them through her head over and over again.”
“Did you call the number?” she asked.
“What?” He looked up, surprised. “No.”
“Why not?”
“What do I say if someone answers?”
“Ask for their name.”
“And you think they’ll tell me that?” Sid asked.
“I don’t know.” She reached for the paper. “Can I see it?”
He handed it over.
“I guess another alternative would be to contact the police,” she told him. “But considering her accident took place six years ago, I don’t even know if anyone is still assigned to the case. I could be long retired before we hear anything back from them. I say we call the number.”
Desmond cleared his voice. They both looked in his direction. “I just checked the reverse look-up. No name comes up. It’s either unlisted or a cell number…or it’s not a phone number at all.”
Sid thought about this. He was still riding on a cloud that they hadn’t lost their funding for the project. He wanted to succeed. At the same time, he knew that people were keeping a close eye on them. They had to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’, especially in the gray areas of ethical behavior. Dr. Baer had told him that in so many words, and Sid intended to follow the rules, whatever they were, all the way.
His gaze fell on JD. Her eyes were open. She was watching him. Only him. This was the first time today she’d done that.
But first and foremost, he was a doctor. There was the project…and there was the patient.
“Do you two mind if I called the number?” Jennifer asked.
Sid realized Desmond was waiting for him to make the decision for both of them. He looked at JD again.
“Exactly what will you say if anyone answers?” he asked Jennifer.
“I’ll tell them who I am and ask them who they are,” she said. “If someone answers, they don’t have to know all the specifics. But if it sounds like family…say, a middle aged woman…then I’ll tell her that we have a patient that we are trying to identify.”
JD’s pale skin in the morning light made her look like a porcelain angel. The dark eyes seemed to speak to him. Not even twenty-four hours had passed, but Sid already understood the nurse’s protectiveness of her. He felt it. He wanted to do what was right for this young woman.
“Yesterday, you said that she was pushed out of a moving car,” Sid reminded her. “What happens if this number doesn’t belong to a family member or a friend? What if it belongs to the people who think they got rid of her?”
“That’s true.” Jennifer stared down at the number for a long moment. She glanced up at JD before turning to Sid. “We have to try. We have to be careful. You didn’t imagine this. This phone number is in her brain. She wanted us to have it.”
There was no security in this facility to speak of, Sid thought. A young woman sat at a receptionist’s desk in front. She called for one of the nurses to come and escort anyone who came in outside of visiting hours.
“I don’t want to put her in any danger,” he said. “She’s vulnerable here.”
“Put yourself in her position. No, put yourself in her family’s position,” she challenged. “She’s been gone for six years. Don’t you think they have the right to know what happened to her?”
Sid shrugged. “Yes, I do.”
“Look, I won’t give them any specifics unless I sense everything is on the up-and-up at the other end.”
Sid ran a hand through his hair. He moved beside the bed. JD’s eyes followed him.
“Is this what you want, too?” he asked her.
“She talks to you, too?” Jennifer asked from her corner.
“She might not be using words, but I get a feeling that she’s definitely communicating with us.” Her hand lay palm down on the blanket next to where Sid stood. He reached down and placed his on top of hers.
“Is this what you want?” he asked again.
There was the briefest movement. He withdrew his hand and looked down at her fingers. They were curled around the edge of the blanket.
“Okay.” He turned to Jennifer. “You make the call and I’ll contact Dr. Baer and give him the number. I’ll tell him what steps we’ve taken and he can pass that on to the conservator to do whatever he wants with
it.”
CHAPTER 17
New York City
The car pulled in to the West 30th Street Heliport and the two men got out.
As his boss pulled on leather gloves, Joseph Ricker stood silently beside him and looked across the tarmac to the helicopter waiting to take them to LaGuardia airport for their flight back to Washington. The aircraft’s engine was already warmed and ready.
There were details that Joseph had followed up on while Martin Durr had been in his meeting, but Durr had not wanted to discuss them in the building or on the short ride over. Joseph knew that his superior’s concern for security was not paranoia. Cars and offices were often bugged. They started toward the chopper, where the pilot and an assistant were waiting. But halfway there, Durr stopped and held up his hand for the pilot to wait.
“Okay. Tell me.”
Joseph looked up at the helicopter and back to his boss. The noise from the chopper would block any possibility of their conversation getting picked up by a listening device. He covered his mouth with his hand when he spoke.
“The facility is completely shut down. Nellie Johnson assures me that all references to it have been erased from the power company’s files. There are no ties between the New Mexico bunker and the power company. For those who look at the records, all of the funded research experiments were being carried out at the lab on Gulf of Mexico.”
“Nothing in any file will send anyone to it?” Durr asked. “Nothing?”
Joseph understood his boss required absolute perfection.
“Nothing, sir,” he answered confidently. “This testing lab falls into the same classification as hundreds of other deserted subterranean facilities in New Mexico and Nevada.”
“How about TMC Corporation files?”
TMC was a private contractor that ran a number of laboratory and nuclear waste station facilities for the government. Martin Durr’s connections and influence in the corporation ran deep, but none of that information was public record. Even Joseph didn’t know exactly what the arrangements and the degree of ownership were between Durr and this company. The word on his first day on the job had been that he was to trust them.
TMC was crucial part of executing the top-secret, last minute switch of the facilities.
“I am told that they don’t acknowledge even knowing about the attached laboratory in their files. As far as their records, they only manage the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan next door to the research lab. TMC took over the subterranean lots. They didn’t build them.”
Durr took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “What about the demolition arrangements?”
“Having been down there, our consultant’s advice has been against demolition at present, sir. They have assured me that the personnel have been terminated and the facility adequately sealed. They firmly believe that an explosion is unnecessary and will only generate unwanted attention, due to its proximity to the adjoining Waste Isolation Pilot Plan site. They recommend arranging for a final clean-up, including the removal of everyone and everything from the facility, in three or four months’ time.”
“How about the offshore platform?” Martin Durr asked. “Will there be questions as to why no bodies are recovered?”
“No, sir. It has already been determined that the subterranean facility beneath the platform imploded after the fire. Essentially, the explosions caused a cave-in. There is no way to reach any remains.”
Durr nodded and headed toward the chopper. Nothing more needed to be said. Joseph understood that his superior was satisfied.
CHAPTER 18
York, Pennsylvania
As he got into his truck in the library’s parking lot, Mark Shaw looked down at his cell phone. There were two voice mails, four text messages, and three missed calls.
He needed a social secretary these days to keep track of his schedule. He read the text messages first. Three of them were dinner invitations. One was from Leslie. It was short and to the point.
“Let’s do dinner.”
He was surprised, but then again, he shouldn’t have been. This morning at the diner he’d heard from a couple of the regulars that Leslie had split with her boyfriend. He should have figured that it was only matter of time before she’d call. She was such a creature of habit. She’d always been most comfortable with the known—with someone she’d been with before. She shopped in the same stores, insisted on going to the same place for vacation every year. Established routines were what made her comfortable. Before they’d broken up, she’d been ready to get married, have three children, and move onto the same street where her parents lived.
Mark had no doubt that was still the grand plan.
“Been there, done that.” His thumb hovered over the delete button for a couple of seconds. He tried to think of anything positive that could come out of getting back together with her.
No, there was too much baggage between them. He pressed the delete button.
Mark listened to the voicemail messages next. Another invitation, this one to a christening party for a grandson of one of his parents’ old friends. The second voicemail consisted of a click as someone hung up without leaving a message. He wondered if that were Leslie, again. She did have a single-track mind. When she made a decision, she’d move the earth to make it happen. He checked the number. Leslie.
He glanced down at the missed calls. Three of them. He checked each of the calls. They were all from the same number. A 203 area code. Off the top of his head, he didn’t know what state that was. Not that it had any significance these days. People kept their cell phone numbers even after they moved. The thought occurred to him that it could have been from any number of people he’d served with in Iraq.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of his pickup, Mark called the number and looked out at the yellow leaves swirling about the nearly empty parking lot.
“Waterbury Long-Term Care. How may I direct your call?”
For a couple of seconds, Mark was tongue-tied. He thought of his parents first and whether they were okay. They both were well. He’d talked to them a couple of days ago.
His mind searched for possibilities of anyone he knew who might be staying at any kind of long-term care facility. His grandmother was the only one, but this wasn’t the name of the place where she was staying. He considered the people he had served with in Iraq. There was a possibility of someone being hurt and taken to a facility like that.
“My name is Mark Shaw. I’m calling from Pennsylvania. Someone tried to call my cell number three times over the past hour from your number. Is there any way you can help me?”
“I’m the receptionist. I’m afraid I don’t keep track of calls out of the facility,” the woman explained. “I can write the information down and give it to the head of the nursing staff to see if she knows anything about it.”
“And you’re in…Waterbury…?”
“Connecticut,” the woman offered.
They’d tried to reach him three times. It had to be something important. He left his name and cell phone number.
Mark tried to remember what he had on the agenda for the morning. As he roughed out the rest of his day, his thoughts kept wandering back to the mystery phone call from Connecticut. Very strange. Starting the pickup, he pulled out of the parking lot.
He hadn’t driven two blocks from the library when his cell phone rang. He looked at the incoming call. It was the same 203 area code. He pulled to the side of the road and answered the phone.
“Mr. Shaw?”
“Yes, this is Mark Shaw.”
“Hello. My name is Jennifer Sullivan. I’m a member of the senior nursing staff at the Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility.” The woman paused. “We have an unusual situation here, and we were wondering if you might be able to help us.”
He’d become a cop because he was one of those crazy people who believed in helping people. Right now, he wasn’t a police officer, but the impulse was the same.
“How can I help you, Ms. Sullivan?�
� he asked.
“We have a patient who sustained severe head injuries who was transferred to our facility with no form of identification on her. She’s presently in minimally conscious state.”
“I assume your local police department has been involved.”
“Yes, they have.” She paused again, as if thinking about how much she should say. “For the first time since she’s been here, this phone number is the first piece of information she’s revealed.”
“How long has she been there?” he asked.
Again, there was a pause before she spoke. “Actually, I need to tell you I’m feeling very uncomfortable making this call. Other than your name, I don’t know anything else about you. Perhaps I should pass on this information to our local police department and let them handle it.”
Mark’s curiosity was piqued. He’d had this same cell phone number for at least seven or eight years. At the same time, he agreed with the nurse’s reaction. “I believe that’s the right way to go. I don’t know anyone from Connecticut, but I’ve just gotten out of the service, so if this patient was recently admitted…”
“I really don’t want to discuss any specifics.”
“Okay. Then why did you call me, Ms. Sullivan?” he asked.
“Well, I thought that if you had a family member that was missing, perhaps you could help us.”
“Thankfully, I don’t. I’m sorry.”
The disappointment coming through the line was palpable. “Well, thanks anyway. Do you mind telling me where you’re located?”
“Not at all. I’m in York, Pennsylvania.”
“Have you ever been to Connecticut, Mr. Shaw?”
Mark had to think about that for a moment. “No, I don’t think I have.”
The nurse was silent.
“Listen, Mrs. Sullivan,” Mark continued. “I’d like to help, but it sounds like you’re in a bind. I can understand that.”
