CHAPTER 14 – ON WHAT?
Saturday, April 21
Rachel closed the file folder and took a moment to breathe and relax before moving on to the last one in her pile. She had been at it for about an hour, and the half cup of coffee left in the styrofoam cup next to the stack of files had undoubtedly gotten cold by now.
She picked up the bagel sitting on a napkin next to the coffee and took a third bite from it. It was nothing special, she preferred plain to onion ones, but it gave her an extra moment of procrastination.
The files reminded her of “busywork” childhood homework assignments, but she also knew how often the little details hidden away in the mundane led to the bigger clues. She had hoped going through them again she might see something different, something she missed when she went through them yesterday. Nope.
None of the hospital staff said anything to suggest even the possibility Steven Ambrose’s condition was staged or even exaggerated. Everyone who interacted with him described the kinds of difficulties working with him they would expect from a quadriplegic. Everyone involved with moving him from his bed to gurneys to take him to different tests consistently described the deadweight of a paralyzed body that did not tense up the way a non-paralyzed person would.
Agency technicians and medical consultants had reviewed the scans. No signs of tampering and altering. Nothing in the images themselves suggested an option other than significant motor cortex damage. That the damage wasn’t even worse was the biggest wonder there.
The closest thing to anything suspicious she could find was a general agreement the depression he had started with improved faster than most expected it to. People agreed his initial depression symptoms were consistent with people abruptly paralyzed. He had a few initial sessions with a therapist specializing in helping patients with similar injuries. The therapist refused to share her notes, naturally, but agreed about the initial depression. He refused further sessions, and she had not seen him during the later weeks when his depression seemed to improve. A court order would get her the files later.
People disagreed on when the improvement began, but no surprise there. The last file mentioned his mood improving after the visit from his lawyer. It was not the first time she had read that. That bore looking into. The lawyer would probably be a pain, but she would have the man checked out. Ambrose would hardly be the first criminal with possible mob ties to have a corrupt lawyer involved with his case.
That helped her mood, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. At least it could be something else to track down. She set down the bagel and grabbed up the last file. She might go back through them later looking specifically for indications of when the depression started letting up. It was something, at least. “Little things,” she grumped. “That’s how I’ll catch you.”
Halfway through that file Lieutenant Thorne came in again, smiling and carrying a coffee mug.
“Hey, pull up your email,” Thorne suggested, “I sent you a link you need to see.”
He looked happy. Or maybe it was just less grumpy than the stupid caterpillar mustache usually made him look. Tom Selleck he was not.
She closed the file and put it with the rest before she opened her laptop. It only took a moment to wake up, but it felt longer. She opened her email while Thorne walked around the desk to come stand next to her. A little too close. His hands on his hips made him take up more space. She bristled a little but held her chair where it was. She refused to be the submissive woman shrinking back from a man with a testosterone surplus. It was not the first time she encountered the situation.
His email was at the top, with the subject line “Possible Lead.” Links to two video clips and one photo made up the body of the email.
“That one first,” Thorne said, jabbing at one of the video icons with a rough-nailed finger.
The video opened in a new window, showing fuzzy, black-and-white surveillance camera footage. The time-stamp was last night, 2:17 A.M.
“This just got forwarded to us from a warehouse store not quite a mile away from the apartments,” Thorne explained as a man in dark clothes entered the frame, his back to the camera. The man was wearing a small backpack and walked past rows of tables piled with what looked like clothes. He waved a flashlight around casually.
When the clip ended she launched the second one. This one started at 2:35 A.M. It was the same camera, but this time the man was rushing towards it holding a box under one arm.
“Now the picture,” Thorne instructed and chuckled.
The image appeared to be zoomed in from the second clip. It was clearer than the video; Thorne must have already had a first pass of image enhancement run on it. It was clear enough she could tell without straining it was Steven Ambrose. Ambrose’s eyes stared wide, his mouth slightly open.
“He looks frightened,” Moore suggested.
“Our friend, the criminal mastermind, robbed a warehouse store last night,” Thorne explained, his tone a little sarcastic and more than a little condescending. She was pretty sure the police lieutenant had little respect left for the man they were trying to catch—re-catch. Certainly not the respect he showed before the hospital. Or during the weeks leading up to the arrest.
“He came in through a rooftop skylight, which triggered a silent alarm. It took about fifteen minutes for the police response to arrive. They searched through and didn’t find anybody, of course. The skylight was still open. No sign of a rope or anything, and doesn’t sound like the skylight itself was tampered with. That part’s kind of odd. The skylight can’t be opened from outside without damaging something, but apparently there wasn’t any damage. We can go take a look for ourselves. I’ve already got the techs going through the place for us.
“Anyway, it wasn’t until this morning when somebody ran through their camera footage and found this. None of the other cameras saw anything.”
“So he got away again,” Moore mused aloud, “but we know where he was at 2:30 last night. What’s in the box?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Adult diapers,” Thorne said with a snicker.
“Oh. Well that’s interesting....”
“And, uh, seems like that might poke another hole in the faked-injuries theory,” Thorne added.
“So he really isn’t traveling very far,” Moore observed, now scooting her chair away to look at him more comfortably. “Let’s beef up our surveillance net—again—and include that as a new search radius point. Use good people, we know this guy is good.” She understood why the police lieutenant might have lowered his opinion of the man they were hunting. The man seemed to make amateurish mistakes. Those were the mistakes she needed him to make though. But she also knew Ambrose seemed exceptional before. Whether that had been lost with the brain injury she had no way to know, but she would rather be pleasantly surprised at Ambrose’s mistakes than underestimate him.
“Maybe not that good,” Thorne countered. “He missed a pretty low-end security system. How does a guy who plans and stages bank heists damn near get caught robbing a warehouse store?”
“Maybe he wants us to know he was there?” She already doubted that was the answer.
“The second part of the footage, the face shot. I agree, he looks kinda scared to me,” Thorne pointed out. They agreed on that, but what could it mean? Was it as simple as being surprised when police showed up in the middle of his robbery? After the time she had spent hunting the man, it was hard to picture Ambrose surprised by that. Was there something else?
“Unless Ambrose wasn’t actually the one who did all the planning.”
Thorne did not respond right away, he just raised an eyebrow, looking skeptical.
All the profile work she did leading up to the arrest fit with what she learned about him afterwards. But things since his escape from the hospital did not seem to fit the same profile. Something changed. It could probably all be attributed to brain damage. Or it could be something more sinister.
; “For that matter,” Moore continued, “do we know for certain that the man we’re seeing is really Steven Ambrose, and not just someone who looks like him? There weren’t any fingerprints left at any of the apartments, or in the patient’s room where Ambrose’s IV was. There weren’t even any of his fingerprints on the ID band. And none of the cameras we’ve seen him in have been super clear. Suppose for a minute that maybe Ambrose is just being set up to take a fall.”
“Conspiracy theory time?” Thorne’s tone was decidedly judgmental.
“Which is the simpler explanation, Pat” she challenged the policeman. “A: he spontaneously healed and walked out, but still isn’t all there and he’s making rookie mistakes, B: someone at the hospital orchestrated elaborately faked records and test results and helped him leave, and he’s making rookie mistakes even more out of character, or C: someone went in to the hospital, probably with help but a lot less help than B requires, killed or probably removed Ambrose from the hospital unseen and then walked out looking like Ambrose and has spent the last day or so laying a false trail to keep us from looking in the right place?”
She took the moment, while Thorn considered, to see if she could come up with a fourth option.
“And I’m thinking removed,” she added, “because if he’s dead then who are the diapers for? They would be consistent with all reports of his condition while he was at the hospital.”
“Well, when you say it like that it doesn’t sound as far-fetched,” Thorne conceded. “It would be easier to arrange than faking the whole thing and fits better than miraculous healing like he’s on some lost mystical island. Admittedly, this city has heard of stranger things. People healing faster than normal does have some precedent.”
“Stranger things?” Not this crap again.
“Like a guy who doubles in size at whim? A girl who apparently sucks the life out of people with some kind of weird, red ghost-tentacles? A guy in a black suit that jumps six stories high?”
“Actually,” she interrupted him, “from everything I’ve heard that’s being attributed to alien tech.”
“Alien ship crashes, bits of tech found in the ocean—some of which explodes—and we’re seeing people with fucked-up powers.” Thorne shook his head and groaned a long sigh. It looked like they shared similar views on that, at least.
She was so tired of hearing about alien-this and alien-that. A handful of people in the city did appear to have unusual abilities—she hated the word ‘powers.’ But the crimes going on now were the same crimes going on before the crash. They weren’t different, they weren’t more or less common. The media loved to showcase the unusual, but that happened before the crash too. Even if a few unusual people were running around, crimes were thousands of times more often committed by regular people. Criminal intentions, and violent tendencies, even evil itself—if it existed—were possible in anyone. No theoretical alien radiation or technology was necessary to explain it.
“I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here. No, we’re going to have to re-interview his crew,” Moore said. “I’m thinking that’s more productive than going through a warehouse store a crew of lab techs are already going through. As it is I’ll put money they don’t find any prints or DNA.” Standing in a huge store was not likely to give her any insights into what he might have seen there, or what he might have planned from there. And if something else was going on she wouldn’t find anything at a warehouse store to tell her what.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Thorne agreed. “Let’s go see some people in jail.”
One of the arrested men particularly interested her in retrospect. At the time it seemed a minor thing, nothing relevant to a trial. The district attorney hadn’t even bothered prosecuting it. But now little things might be bigger than they seemed at first. It might even provide some interesting leverage. She shut down her laptop.
“Yes, lets.”
CHAPTER 15 – ENYTHING HELPS
Steven woke up on another rooftop, the sun bright overhead. Pain at the back of his head competed for attention with his dry mouth. For the moment, not feeling most of his body didn't seem so bad. He was probably stiff and aching everywhere.
For a few minutes he just laid there, poignantly aware of his condition and his position. How long could he keep sleeping on rooftops? He was sure all his past aspirations had sat higher than this somehow. This was not a life he would wish for. He was not sure how long he could endure it before he just didn’t bother anymore.
He sat himself up and spread his meager possessions around him to take stock of his resources. Diapers and wipes he set in one pile next to the emptied backpack. He piled a small stack of clothes next to that. Cans of baked beans and a can opener came next, along with one candy bar. It was not a lot.
He shook the plastic sport water bottle and heard just a few drops spatter back and forth. He should have grabbed more water from the warehouse store, he chided himself. He'd seen huge packs of bottled water stacked on pallets. He should have at least grabbed a few bottles. If he had more time he would have.
He could find drinking fountains in a number of stores although many would have cameras. Worst-case scenario, he concluded, he could get water from a sink at any public or restaurant bathroom. Some smaller restaurants might not have cameras. If nothing else, they might not be tied into anything the police or FBI should be able to tap into. As long as he did not cause any trouble he wouldn't give the staff reason to care.
The first order of business was changing himself; then breakfast. He floated the soiled diaper off near a far corner of the roof. Breakfast was cold baked beans. The can opener had taken some concentration—holding the opener still while turning the handle. At least prying the lid open once it was cut enough was easy, and it was not like his fingers got dirty. The beans were not bad. The little bits of bacon in them helped them not be as bland as the hospital food.
His goal for the day would be to explore the area and find somewhere better to stay. It wasn’t really a plan though. He should have a plan by now, right? Bank Robber Steven no doubt had a plan for everything. Brain-damaged Steven barely seemed capable of making a plan for eating lunch. He scrunched his eyes closed to ward off tears he could feel rising to the surface.
“Dammit!”
He stuffed some diapers and the wipes in his pack. He did not want to tote the box of them around the city with him. Once he found a place, he would come back for the rest. He put his remaining five cans of beans, and the opener, in the pack with his clothes. The candy bar he pocketed. He did not want to leave behind more than he had to. Once everything was in the pack, he added a few more diapers to fill the remaining space.
From the sun’s position in the sky he guessed it was within a couple of hours of noon. But he had lost track of direction, so it could have been close to noon and the sun just not right overhead—which it wouldn't be this time of year anyway. He would find out as the day went on. The sun would continue rising or falling, and then he would at least know if it was late morning or afternoon. A watch would have been another handy thing to grab while he had the chance, he thought a little wistfully and a little regretfully.
The buildings around last night’s rooftop were dingy and dirty brick buildings with minimal windows. Most windows sat higher on the buildings, with quite a few broken. An industrial district, and a partially abandoned one at that.
One plus to that was fewer people around to see him float down from his rooftop. He looked about to be sure. The streets were strewn with litter and trash. A stack of cardboard boxes might have been a shelter for someone else as homeless as him but were unoccupied. Rooftops might be a much safer idea, he told himself, trying to decide whether he saw part of a blanket sticking out from the crude shelter or not.
No one seemed to be out on the shadowed street, so he lowered himself down. The street smelled like rotting garbage and stale urine, smells that had not drifted up to his rooftop.
He made a point of noting what his build
ing looked like for when he came back. It was a taller building, and would have been three stories tall if it had been apartments. It was the same red-brown bricks as most of the surrounding buildings. He saw windows and a glass door, all at least partly smashed out, at the far corner of the building, under what remained of a sign. “Bakery,” at the end, was all he could make out. Closer to him there were rows of chips and gouges in the wall, scars from automatic weapon fire. “Some neighborhood,” he muttered.
Would inside the building be a better place to find shelter? He scanned it for movement, finding quite a lot of it, but all rather small. Rats, he suspected. Could rats climb and reach the roof? None had overnight, so he decided he would be safe enough for now. Whatever they liked in there was inside, so if they left him alone he would leave them alone. Besides, he reminded himself, part of his goal for today was to find somewhere better. It was important to have goals, as one of the physical therapists had reminded him at the hospital.
He wandered from there to streets less filthy. It took a few blocks before he saw people as he moved into a less abandoned area, and then a few blocks after that found genuine car and foot traffic. Still not a nice looking neighborhood though. Shop windows had bars or grates over them, but they all seemed to have intact glass, so that was an improvement. A hunched Mexican man pushed a cart laden with bagged snacks. A soft bell ting-tinged regularly as the cart rolled. Four pigeons scattered out of his way.
He scanned buildings as he went, trying to determine which ones were empty and which were inhabited. How was he supposed to tell what kind of building squatters could live in? He felt sure that was not a part of his criminal past.
By the time he decided it was about noon—the sun had been climbing in the now cloudy sky after all—he had come to a neighborhood which mixed retail and residential and more industrial-looking commercial buildings together. It seemed like a confusing zoning situation to him. Half-constructed buildings loitered in several areas, but no actual construction seemed to be going on. Partially demolished buildings dotted the area, but he avoided them. A feral cat stared at him from one.
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