Before Kate could follow that up, the waitress returned with an oversized tray, burdened with two very Bountiful Breakfasts indeed. Forget the squad; they could feed an entire platoon with this.
The table's laminated Formica disappeared with record speed as johnnycakes, grits, deluxe hash browns, sausage and juice joined the scrambled eggs, bacon and toast Fremont had mentioned.
The two of them thanked the waitress, shamelessly digging in as only two ex-soldiers could while the teenager ferried the empty tray to the kitchen.
Halfway through her eggs, Kate paused. "It's possible a good Samaritan took in one or two of the missing men until they could get back on their feet."
Fremont's snort punctured that fantasy. "No one stops long enough to look anyone in the eye on skid row, let alone extend a truly helping hand, and we both know it. Besides—" He polished off the last bite of his own eggs and started in on his sausage and hash browns. "—two of them left boxes behind. The priest assigns everyone a plastic tub on arrival. You're allowed to put anything inside, and he locks it up for you. Two of the vets took him up on the offer. No one's seen the men for damned near twelve days now. Yet the boxes are there, waiting. Father Popichak was concerned enough that he let me tag along to take a peek. One of the boxes has baby photos, a Purple Heart and some cash—almost four hundred bucks total. You think the guy just forgot it?"
Unfortunately, "No."
"Me, neither."
So why were the men missing? And if not to them, to whom had Fremont spoken, and what had he learned? Kate stacked the trio of johnnycakes nearest her on top of their mates and jockeyed the resulting tower across the table. "So what did you discover?"
"Two more vets with stolen blood, at least three vials apiece. And get this: one of the new guys was in Kusić's vampire seat the day the lab tech left on vacation."
So whatever Ian Kusić had been into, had been on-going. But stolen blood still didn't mesh with her only viable working theory: the list. Four hundred bucks was a tidy sum for a homeless vet, but it wasn't enough to buy a slot at the top of a potentially year-plus surgical waiting list. Not if that trunk of Benjamins was any indication of the going rate. Then, again—
Kate frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Or, perhaps, something. Eventually. "Stolen blood doesn't fit with what we've been able to learn about the other two victims." Just the tech.
But this wouldn't be the first time she'd uncovered evidence of unrelated criminal activity during an investigation. And while time-consuming, such detours often led to the fleshing out of a case in other areas—and to connections she might not have noticed if she'd ignored seemingly extraneous clues.
"Did Kusić take anything besides blood from any of the men—including you?"
To her surprise, Fremont nodded. "Yeah, medical histories."
Kate forked a piece of scorched pepper out of her hash browns. "I don't understand. Kusić was a phlebotomist. Isn't that his job to ask questions while he's drawing blood?"
"About cancer and dementia?"
"Dementia?" That was odd. In eight years, the Army had jabbed more needles into her flesh than an addict could abuse in a lifetime, and she'd never once been asked about the possible physical deterioration of her brain—even as she'd teetered on the verge of a psych commitment at Walter Reed.
Fremont nodded as he retrieved a slice of toast. "Yup. Near as I can figure from talking to the others, Kusić had a list of weird-ass questions he saved for those he stole blood from. Most involved cancer and dementia. Specifically, Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease. I thought about copping to my dad's ball cancer, but his docs were pretty sure he got it 'cause of 'Nam. A parting gift for operating in and around Agent Orange. In the end, I figured it was none of the tech's damned business, so I didn't say anything."
Kate might've agreed, were she not still stuck on his earlier comment. "Creutz—what?"
"Creutzfeldt. It's a strange one. Had to look it up. It's also called mad cow disease."
Mad, it was. Along with this entire conversation, because it made no sense. Unless— "Did Kusić ask his questions before he drew the extra blood, or after?"
"No idea about the others. Didn't think to ask. But with me, the questions came first. Why?"
She laid her fork on her plate. "I asked a doc about the potential use for small amounts of blood. His suggestions included unauthorized medical research." If Kusić had been collecting under the table for a study, it made sense to lead with any pertinent and perhaps disqualifying questions.
There was no sense in risking his job if the patient didn't fit some predetermined criteria.
But could a study of dementia—or even cancer—yield the kind of money she'd found inside Kusić's bedroom closet, let alone the funds to support the lifestyles of Jason Dunne and Andrea Silva?
Though she suspected not, she'd be putting the question to Tonga and the state's pathologist as soon as possible.
Kate reached inside the pocket of her jacket to retrieve her memo pad and pen, using them to transcribe the gist of their conversation as the vet made inroads into the tower of johnnycakes she'd nudged his way.
Loath to interrupt the man's enjoyment, she began a sketch of Madrigal's logo. For some reason, it still bothered her.
Fremont paused between bites to wave the tines of his fork toward her drawing. "What's that?"
She added the outline of the company's whited-out MM in the center and used the ink from her pen to color in the rest of the oval. "Something I saw today. But that's not what's bugging me. I've seen it before. I just can't figure out where." She spun the pad so he could get the full effect. "The real logo's red and white, not blue."
Fremont nodded as she twirled the pad back around. "I've seen it." He squinted at the now upside-down drawing for a bit longer. "Madrigal, right?"
"Yes. You know the company?"
"Not really. Just that it has something to do with medicine. I once spent a couple hours staring at that logo on some doc's coffee mug."
She flinched as a white mug with that same scarlet logo flashed through her brain. She'd seen one of those mugs too. In someone's hand, being raised to lips.
An odd jumble of sounds buzzed through her ears as she attempted to focus on the image, only to dissolve into pulsing silence.
"Kate?"
She met that intent stare. Concern had darkened it. For the second time since she'd sat down to breakfast, she flushed. "Sorry. Had a weird, almost déjà vu moment there. You said you'd seen the logo on a doctor's mug. At Fort Leaves?"
He shook his head. "Iraq—Baghdad. I had some time to kill while I was waiting for the docs to patch up a buddy of mine. A lot of time. I can still describe everything in that damned waiting area."
Madrigal staffed active duty facilities overseas? Was that where she'd seen her mug? Except she'd never been in one in Baghdad. "What about Landstuhl or Walter Reed? Madrigal's a hospital staffing company. Do you happen to know if they contract healthcare workers in either of those?"
Fremont shrugged. "They might. My physical therapist at Walter Reed had one of their freebie calendars on his wall. Had some pens, too. He never mentioned the company though."
Unlike those vials of blood or those potentially missing vets, this connection meshed. Jason Dunne had been at Fort Leaves for the past six months, but before that, he'd worked at Walter Reed—for three years. Possibly long enough to come in contact with Robert Stern and Madrigal Medical.
The heck with Dunne's folks and a Fayetteville connection; there was an excellent chance Dunne and the lawyer had met in DC.
Kate closed her memo pad and stuffed it in her jacket pocket as their waitress stopped by to refresh the coffees. Rather, she tried to pocket the pad, but the wire spiraled along the top caught on something. As Kate pulled it free, the tags she'd managed to forget about until that moment clattered to the floor.
She leaned over to wrap the chain around her left hand, fisting the tags securely within her
palm as she straightened.
The vet's brow rose. "Those yours?"
She shook her head. "They belonged to a friend."
"The same one who gave you that watch?"
This time she nodded. Because Max must have gifted it. Still, "How do you know I didn't find it at some swap meet?"
To her chagrin, the compassion returned...and it was threaded with pity. "Because you twist it when you're upset. I may not be a shrink, but I've been around enough screwed-up vets—myself included—to know a crutch when I see one. Hell, we've all got 'em. And they tend to be personal. There's no shame in it."
But there was, especially as he reached across the table to smooth a finger along the raw flesh at her wrist.
"You just gotta be careful you don't clamp down on your crutch so hard, you lose the ability to function on your own without it."
Silence pulsed again, and this time it was not in her ears. She had no idea how to respond, had she even possessed the nerve.
He shook his head slowly, regretfully. "You're not the only one, Kate. There's an entire Army of us, trying to make our way through the fires of redemption, right along with you. All you gotta do is look to the left or the right and reach out for support. Shit, it took me quite a while to scrape up the courage to do it myself."
"Did it help?"
"Some days, absolutely. Others?" He shrugged. "All I know for certain is I have to keep trying. We've all got a mission in this life, whether we're still wearing the uniform or not. That doesn't mean it's not damned difficult at times. Or that you won't fall flat on your face and get sucker-kicked in your kidneys while you're down. You just gotta suck it up—the pain and, yeah, the humiliation—and grab on to whatever you can and right yourself. Then start pushing forward. You do that, and you'll get there. Eventually. And here's the best part: somewhere along the way, you just might realize you started enjoying life again."
Her wrist began to itch. She ignored it and tightened her grip on the tags. "What if...you don't remember what the mission is anymore?"
"Don't remember? Or don't want to remember?"
The tags cut into her palms as she accepted the truth for the first time since she'd woken up in that hospital bed four years ago. "Both. I told you about the kid I killed. There's more, but not much. And it's not good. He had an AK-47. I found it propped up against the wall just outside the cell as I was dragging on the jihad jammies I'd stripped from his corpse. I grabbed the rifle and took off to find the others. I knew three men had survived the ambush. The kid had taunted me with that while I was pretending to wash up, telling me he was headed across the compound to torture my friends next."
Only one of the men had qualified as an actual friend. But that hadn't made her first discovery any easier.
"I found two of the soldiers where he'd promised. But someone had beat the kid to the punch—literally. And then shot them." She raised her empty hand and stroked a fingertip over her right temple. "Right here. The opposite sides of their skulls were missing, but there was enough left of their faces for me to ID them when I got back."
Something she still did in her nightmares, a couple times a month at least. Who knew if the two had been stopping by to visit with her during her night terrors, as well?
"What happened after that?"
Kate stared at the hand still gripping the tags. Its skin was tight and paper white, contrasting starkly with the band of excoriated red above and below the watch.
Max's watch.
She swallowed hard, and followed Fremont's earlier advice. She tightened her grip on the tags, and kept moving. "I searched the buildings in the compound, one by one. There were seven in all. Most about the size of the hovel where I'd regained consciousness. But they were empty. I'd saved the largest for last, figuring that's where I'd most likely die. And that's where the bastards were. I could hear Max inside, moaning as someone struck him. I remember thanking God that at least he was alive as I switched the AK-47 to auto and breached the outer door. That's it. My memory stops there."
Except, for the first time in four years, it didn't.
Kate stiffened as another fragment exploded into focus. Just like that, she was back in that mud-brick hellhole, looking down the sights of her enemy's AK-47, staring at one of those same, bearded enemies at her still-naked feet. The bastard was dead. On his wrist, Max's orange-faced dive watch.
Yet another fragment cut in. Her, bending down to wrench the watch from the bastard's wrist. And then she was locking it around her own, where it had remained ever since.
A plate shattered in the diner's kitchen and the vision disintegrated, replaced by the reality of her raw flesh—and Max's watch. He hadn't secured it to her wrist as she'd assumed. Hoped. Prayed.
She forced her hand open and stared at his tags. Had she taken these too? Had they been in her trunk all along?
But...they couldn't have been. The tags hadn't been lying on the table beside that hospital bed with the watch when her psyche had returned to its shredded self.
"Kate?"
She fisted the tags, drawing comfort and courage from them, despite their bizarre re-emergence in her life. "They called it a fugue."
"They?"
"The doctors. The ones gathered around like vultures when I woke. I was told that, basically, my brain checked out in that final building in that compound. One of the shrinks said I just couldn't handle mowing down nine of those bastards at once." She'd always doubted that. How was that worse than having to kill a kid? To feel his blood sliding over the back of her hand, warming it before it splashed into the dirt? Unfortunately, she hadn't been right enough in her head to argue. Still wasn't. "I came to, so to speak, roughly two days later in a bed at the combat support hospital. I was found by a search patrol while attempting to return to friendly territory. I don't remember that either. But by then, the compound had been located and the bodies recovered. Our forensic guys sketched in the rest. As for my missing hours and so-called heroism, the shrinks at Walter Reed said it might all come back eventually—" She pushed forth a shrug infused with significantly more indifference than she possessed. "—or it might not."
"Do you want it to come back?"
She bent out a smile at that and mimicked the vet's answer to her earlier query. "Some days, absolutely. Others?" She shook her head firmly. "Hell, no." Her sigh bled down into the bits of congealed sausage left on her plate. "Who knows? Perhaps it's better if I don't."
His nod was slow, thoughtful. "Perhaps."
"Really? I figured you'd be telling me to give the shrinks another go at my marbles; see if they can fill in all the chips and cracks and polish them up for the world to see. Another fucked-up vet made whole again—hallelujah." She tapped the pocked and mottled scars that took up more than a third of her face and neck. "Well, as whole as possible."
"That's up to you, Kate. But you should talk to a professional."
For some reason, that pissed her off further. "In the interest of full disclosure, Steve, I haven't even read the investigation. Didn't want to. As for the write-up for that Silver Star? I only heard that second hand during that asinine ceremony they insisted on at Walter Reed. I shoved the write-up and its corresponding piece of tin in my trunk when it was over and left them there to rot and rust."
The vet leaned forward, pinning her to her seat with that loathsome compassion and its bastard brother, pity. "Why haven't you read it? Hell, for that matter, why haven't you framed that write-up and hung it on the wall?"
"Because it's a lie."
"You just said the forensics—"
"Fuck the forensics. Who killed whom is immaterial. Don't you get it? I failed those men. So I killed those bastards. One, two, three, or eleven of them—it doesn't matter. Our men are still dead. Max is still dead. You think it's so great that I made it home? I've got news for you and your kumbaya shit. My best friend was on that mission. He was the one I heard moaning as I entered that last building with that AK-47. But it wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. I didn't sav
e anyone's ass but my own. And let's face it; that is nothing to brag about."
The compassion vanished, along with the pity. Fury took their place as his fingers bit into the arms of his wheelchair. If the man could've stood up and loomed over her, he would have. "Damn it, soldier—"
Her phone trilled, cutting him off. Just as well. The waitress had returned too, alerted by Kate's tirade, coffee pot in hand and a soothing offer of a refill on her lips.
Kate scraped her chair away from the table and turned her back on all of it—especially Fremont—as she retrieved her phone.
It was Liz.
Figured. She'd managed to avoid the Army's shrinks and their psychobabble for four years—until these past three brain-battering days. Why not continue the mental waterboarding with Liz?
Kate accepted the call—and changed her mind. Instantly.
"Please tell me Grant's with you."
The panic lacing her friend's voice jolted Kate to her feet. She was halfway to the door before she realized she'd left her jacket—and the sergeant—at the table. She stopped and whirled back around. "What happened?"
Please God, don't let Grant be—
"He's missing."
No, he wasn't. Not yet. Not without proof, damn it. So, calm down. "Did you phone his dad?"
"No. Abel called me. Kate, he's frantic. Abel says Grant was supposed to stop by for dinner last night, but he never showed. When Grant's cellphone went to voicemail, Abel assumed he'd been called to the hospital on an emergency. Then someone from the hospital called Abel this morning. The woman said you guys had ordered a head check on all the staff, and they couldn't locate Grant. His phone's going straight to voicemail. That's why they called his dad. Abel couldn't remember your number so he called the hospital back after he checked the house and barn. Grant must've mentioned that I was back in town, because Abel asked for me. Kate, there was no hospital emergency last night. And no one's seen or heard from Grant since. No one."
The Garbage Man Page 21
