What he couldn’t tell was if Douglas was inside. Maybe the other window would offer a better view. He ducked under the first one and hurried to the next.
Once more he drew his head slowly to the window, ready to react if he was spotted. He brought his left eye to the window’s edge, peered in enough to make sure that no one was in sight.
And heard a distinctive click. Outside, not from the cabin. Calleigh might know what kind of gun that is, just from the sound, he thought stupidly, his muscles tensing, adrenaline surging through his body.
Then he heard a voice.
“You wanna drop that piece, hoss?”
19
BACK FROM KAREN PLATT’S law firm, inside his glassed-in corner office, Horatio scanned news reports online, using a laptop computer that rested on his sleek desk.
He knew that there had to be some connection between Marc Greggs and Karen Platt. The similarities between the two bomb attacks had demonstrated that. Which meant that the key to finding the bomber was figuring out what they had in common.
Once he reached that conclusion, the rest was easy.
Both had been important figures in a high-profile right-to-die legal case that had consumed the Miami papers, even reaching the national news, eight months ago. He remembered the case well, but now he studied the newspaper accounts from the time because he wanted to refresh himself on its details. He especially wanted to identify any other potential victims.
Sadly, that was not a small pool.
Hector Ibanez was a Cuban émigré who had been rising fast in Miami’s rough-and-tumble political world—a particularly bloodthirsty subset of government that had a history of chewing up politicians and spitting out their bones. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the humidity, maybe Miami’s unique mix of nationalities and lifestyles—and probably, Horatio believed, some of it stemmed from Miami’s long connection to the drug trade (studies had shown that virtually all the currency in use in the city had cocaine on it, in fairly substantial quantities)—but things went on here that wouldn’t be tolerated by any other city’s political leaders.
Ibanez had been smart, shrewd, tough, and connected. As a young man, he had come out of Cuba with money, and with a circle of friends who enabled him to amass more in a hurry. His rise to prominence was fast, fueled in part by the Elián González case, which he had ridden to notoriety in Miami’s Cuban-American community. The six-year-old González boy had been smuggled over from Cuba by his mother, without his father’s knowledge. During the difficult crossing, she and most of the other would-be émigrés on their boat died. Fishermen found Elián floating in an inner tube and handed him over to the Coast Guard. He was put temporarily into the custody of his great uncle in Miami, but his father wanted the boy returned to him in Cuba. Relatives in the United States wanted him to be allowed to stay, but the law demanded otherwise, and it was enforced by a SWAT team’s raid on the Miami house where he was staying. The child was taken, over mass protests, and returned to his father’s care. When young Elián had been sent back to Cuba, Ibanez’s reputation as one of the boy’s staunchest defenders had not gone with him. It was said that Ibanez couldn’t buy his own drink or meal in Little Havana for a year after that.
But Hector Ibanez had not been satisfied with being a prominent player in Cuban-American politics. He had his eye on bigger prizes, and his support in the Cuban community catapulted him easily onto Miami’s City Council. There, his genuine political skills became apparent. Supporters started to talk openly about a future Mayor Ibanez, and to whisper his name in connection with the word “governor.” No one expected it to take him long, either.
All that changed the night he was driving his brand-new Dodge Stealth on the Venetian Causeway (after, some claimed, visiting the married girlfriend on Belle Isle who had paid for it—but this was Miami, after all) and, in passing a slow-moving tourist’s Camry, had slammed into an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.
Ibanez had been airlifted to Dade Memorial Hospital, where he spent the rest of his life. The doctors who treated him declared that life over almost as soon as he arrived. His brain had suffered severe trauma, and he was brain-dead, they said. Although his body still functioned, it was only marginal function, and that with the help of the latest medical technology. Left to its own devices, it would shut down and join his brain in permanent slumber. Everything that had made Hector Ibanez who he was had gone away and wasn’t coming back.
His supporters and fans refused to accept that diagnosis. Their ranks included his adult son Esteban, and they wanted him kept alive by any means necessary. Doctors had been wrong before, they pointed out. Miracles could still happen. Hector Ibanez was a force of nature, they said—he had been counted out before but had always emerged from any challenge stronger and more successful than before.
His wife and daughter took the opposite view. Ibanez had been an exciting, charismatic, powerful man. He wouldn’t want people to see him sitting in a hospital bed, unable to eat or speak or even change himself. They didn’t want people to know that their hero had to be moved around by orderlies to avoid bedsores, had to be washed by nurses. His sharp intellect had vanished, as had his sense of humor, his unerring memory for names and faces, the instincts that had made him an opponent to be feared or a friend to be cultivated. He was nothing but an empty shell, kept breathing only through profound medical interference, and every day his wife Carmen and daughter Antonia had to see him that way was agonizing for them. Besides, they argued, he had always said he didn’t want to be saved through heroic measures, and he feared brain death more than anything. To keep him alive was torture for everyone, especially him.
So the legal lines were drawn, lawsuits and countersuits filed. Ibanez had a living will, but its authenticity was contested. Esteban testified against his mother and sister, and they returned the favor. Each side won some victories, but the side favoring Ibanez’s death won more. The case went to the state’s Supreme Court, which sided with Carmen and Antonia. Esteban made an appeal to the governor, but he, leery after the backlash in the Terri Schiavo case, refused to intervene. Esteban went to Congress, where the issue was debated, but ultimately the decision was left up to Florida’s courts.
Finally, after three years of struggle, the plugs were pulled. Eight months ago Hector Ibanez drifted off to a sleep that didn’t look much different than his last three years had, and he never woke up.
Doctor Marc Greggs had been Hector’s chief neurosurgeon, and ultimately had been the one who turned off the machines that kept him alive. Karen Platt had represented Carmen Ibanez and her daughter through the various suits and countersuits. The connection, Horatio decided, couldn’t be clearer.
The Baby Boomer had shifted his focus from abortion providers to the people involved in Ibanez’s death.
A clearing throat drew Horatio’s attention away from the computer. He swiveled in his black office chair to see Wendell Asher standing in his doorway. “You wanted to see me?”
“Special Agent Asher, yes, I did. Thank you for dropping by. I want to tell you what I’ve just learned.”
“I’m all ears, Lieutenant,” Asher said.
Horatio filled him in. “What I don’t understand,” he finally said, “is why your bomber has changed his obsession. Isn’t that rare?”
Asher didn’t answer right away. He cleared his throat again and blew his nose on a tissue as he tried to compose his response. Wadding it up, he held it gingerly until Horatio scooted a wastebasket toward him. Asher tossed the tissue inside. “Thanks. And you’re right,” he said after a while. “It is rare. I don’t think it’s unheard of, but it’s unusual. Then again, if this guy was your usual nut job, I’d have caught him years ago. He’s smart enough to dodge me, so maybe he’s smart enough to know that switching things up once in a while will help him stay free. Maybe he’s even smart enough to have varied interests. A lot of religious conservatives see euthanasia as usurping God’s authority, right? Just like abortion, they see it as a form of state-sanctione
d murder. When you look at it that way, it’s not such a big change after all.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Horatio said.
“I mean,” Asher continued, “it’s really not so different. An unborn child is unable to speak up for his rights, isn’t he? So is a guy who’s been declared brain-dead. We don’t really know what might have been going on in his head, or in Terri Schiavo’s or anyone else’s in a similar predicament. We know what the electrical impulses show on medial equipment, but that’s not the same as truly knowing what’s in the heart or soul. But again, that person can’t speak up, can’t defend his right to live. So the state reaches a decision and yanks the plug, right? Game over.”
“Game over,” Horatio repeated noncommittally. His job was to enforce existing laws, not to second-guess them. He’d let others worry about right-to-die issues while he worked on preserving the right of potential murder victims to keep on living.
“Sorry to yammer on like this,” Asher said, as if picking up Horatio’s mood. “I have a tendency to run my mouth, especially when I’m talking about this case. I think maybe I’ve been living inside this guy’s head for too long, you know?”
“That’s an occupational hazard, isn’t it?” Horatio said. One with which he, by virtue of his brother’s experience undercover, was far too familiar. Ray had gone so deep into his drug-using persona, he had almost lost track of who he really was. Once he had been able to shed the cover story—and come back from a faked death—he took his wife Yelina and their son and went into hiding.
“Tell you what, Horatio. When all this is over, before I head back to Denver, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee or a steak dinner or something. We can sit down together and really get acquainted, all right?”
“I’d like that,” Horatio said. Which wasn’t necessarily true but seemed like the polite thing to say. He still had to work with the guy, after all, and didn’t think it would help their working relationship to point out that he had no interest in getting acquainted with an out-of-town Bureau drone.
When he got Asher out of his office, his next call was to Frank Tripp. Once again, he had to outline his thoughts, although Frank had lived through the whole story and remembered it well, so the process went faster than it had with Asher. And Frank didn’t interrupt as often.
“Sounds like you’ve nailed it,” Frank said at the story’s end.
“Which means that what we need to do is put bodies around everyone else associated with the case,” Horatio said. “The judges who heard it in its various trials and appeals. The other doctors who testified. Their lawyers. Journalists and pundits who wrote opinion pieces in favor of letting Ibanez die. It’s a big list, Frank.”
“That’s what overtime’s for,” Frank said. “I’m on it.”
“And Frank?” He hadn’t told Asher this part, had barely wanted to believe it was true. The news accounts, though, had reminded him that it was.
“Yeah?”
“Alexx Woods did the postmortem on Ibanez.”
A moment’s silence. Horatio could hear the faint hum of the line. “She still at the morgue?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get someone over there.”
“Do it. And get a car to her house, pick up her husband and kids. I’m going to put in a call to Jorge Ortiz, have him check that location first.”
“Got it,” Frank said. “And I’ll get someone over to Ibanez’s wife’s house, too.”
“Good. I’m on my way there after I check in with Alexx, and I’ll feel more comfortable if there’s a uniform outside when I get there.”
“Horatio,” Alexx said. As he approached he noticed that her eyes were moist.
“Are you all right, Alexx?”
“I’m fine, Horatio.” She gestured toward the ruined corpse of the lawyer, on her table. “It’s just—I knew Karen Platt. Her son goes to school with my kids. We’re not friends, but I see her at PTA meetings, the market—it hits close to home.”
“Maybe closer than you think, Alexx.” He had stopped off at the morgue before driving out to Carmen Ibanez’s house, but he couldn’t spare a lot of time. Mostly he had wanted to check in, to see with his own eyes that she was safe.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean, Alexx, is that we believe the bomber is targeting people connected to the Hector Ibanez case. You did the post in that one, right?”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Even though there was no doubt as to the cause or circumstances of his death.”
“Not at all. But in a high-profile case like that, especially with questions remaining about his exact medical condition, there’s almost always a postmortem examination. I happened to catch that one.” She considered for a moment, staring into space, as if trying to read her own notes from the time. “I found extensive, permanent brain damage. Mister Ibanez was totally deaf and blind, nonresponsive to any external stimulus, with almost complete impairment of every mental process. There was no medical chance that he would have recovered brain function.” She paused again, then caught Horatio’s gaze, her eyes bright with fear, and steadied herself with one hand on the table. “Do you think I’m a target, Horatio?”
“It’s possible. Frank has already dispatched a car out to your house to pick up your family. Jorge Ortiz is going in with the bomb squad to make sure the bomber hasn’t been there yet.” He ticked his head toward the door. “There’s an officer outside that door, and until we catch this guy, you and your family will be protected at all times.”
“Okay, Horatio. We’ll do whatever you need us to. Just find that bastard.”
He offered her a comforting smile. “I intend to do just that.”
“You really think he’ll go after her? The grieving widow?” Ryan asked en route to Bal Harbour. They were headed north on Highway 1, and would cut across the northern end of the bay on 922.
“I think he’d like nothing more than to kill her. She was the one who pressed the hardest. She was the public face of the right-to-die side of the debate. And she was the wife. In the killer’s mind, of all people, she should have stood by her man, shouldn’t she? No matter what.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right, H.” Ryan looked out the windows at the traffic falling behind them.
“And people say I drive fast.”
“You do,” Horatio said. “Right now there’s a reason for it.”
“A reason? You think he’s there now?”
“I don’t know where he is. But I don’t want to take that chance. The thing about this bomber is that he needs time to prepare his attacks. He plants his devices carefully, conceals them well, and makes sure they’ll hurt the people he wants hurt. All of which requires him to spend a certain amount of time on the premises. He’s got to know that we’ll figure out the connection between Greggs and Platt soon enough, if we haven’t already, which means he has to hurry up and get to whatever other victims he wants to hit right away.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan said. “But what if he’s done? What if the lawyer and the doctor were his only targets here? Or he figures out that we’re on to him and decides to cut his crusade short?”
“Then he moves to another city, another set of targets. I don’t think this is a guy who’ll stop what he’s doing until someone stops him. If he leaves town, he’ll still be Special Agent Asher’s problem, but not ours.”
“In some ways that’d be a relief, huh?”
“In some ways,” Horatio said. “But I don’t intend to let that happen.”
20
CALLEIGH BAGGED A long blond human hair, hoping it wasn’t one of hers. She didn’t think it was—hers was pulled back and banded to keep it in check, and she had found this near the center of Lyall Douglas’s bed, where she hadn’t been. A close look revealed that it still had its follicular bulb, which meant DNA could be extracted from it. Chances were it belonged to Wendy Greenfield. If it did, it wouldn’t help locate Douglas, but it would be one more thing connecting him to his victim.<
br />
If he went to court, that would aid the case against him. The idea was to have an overwhelming amount of physical evidence at the disposal of the State Attorney. Sometimes people would buckle under the weight of it and plead guilty without going to trial. Those who did offer defenses often found that juries might believe that one or two bits of physical evidence weren’t convincing, but that one after another after another stacked up like bricks built a solid wall of proof.
The trouble was, if they didn’t find him, they’d never get him into a courtroom. She hoped Eric was having better luck at that than she was.
“Eric?” she said. “Are you getting anything useful?”
He didn’t answer. That’s weird, she thought. He was just in the living room a few minutes ago.
Or was he? Maybe it had been longer than she’d thought. Sometimes when she was scouring a scene for the tiniest bits of evidence, she lost track of time. Her mind went into its collecting groove and didn’t pay attention to the passage of minutes, or even hours.
“Eric?” she said again, a little louder. “Hello?”
The stillness of the empty house answered her.
She went back into the living room. Eric’s kit was still there, and so was the forensic vacuum. She saw the mud on the floor near it. Probably why he had brought it in, she guessed, to suck some of that up and get it back to the lab.
But no Eric.
She glanced at the bathroom door, but it stood open, the lights off. Even if he had used the bathroom—a big no-no at a crime scene, and they were treating this like a crime scene—he’d have heard her and responded. The house wasn’t that big, so it only took her a minute to check all the rooms.
After that, she went back out to the Hummer. Maybe he was napping in the back. Unlikely—Eric Delko was a professional, and wouldn’t pull a stunt like that. Unless he’s sick or something…
He wasn’t at the vehicle, though. She looked up the block, then down it. Had he gone to a neighbor’s house to use a bathroom there? But why wouldn’t he have said something?
Right to Die Page 14
