“No, nothing like that is showing up. And I’ve got access to some pretty weird databases, so I’d expect at least a footnote somewhere.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see if the paramedic was listening, but she had stepped out of the room, maybe to tell the detective about the scrawled message on the wall. Chapel stood up straight, ignoring his protesting knees.
“Maybe it’s a person’s name,” Angel suggested. “Or at least an alias.”
“Maybe,” Chapel said. At the very least it was a clue. Dr. Bryant had died to give him this information. It had to mean something.
But it was going to have to wait. Dr. Bryant was dead — there was nothing more he could do for her. There was one other name on the kill list that was located in New York City. He needed to get moving.
At the door the detective was waiting for him. “Anything you can share?” he asked.
Chapel shook his head and started to push past the man.
“Maybe you should talk to the daughter,” the detective told him.
“Daughter?”
The detective nodded. “You probably heard her on your way in — she’s in the kitchen, grieving pretty hard for her mom. She’s the one who found the body. They were supposed to have lunch together today.”
Chapel’s heart went out to Dr. Bryant’s daughter, but it wasn’t his job to console anyone. His job was to make sure nobody else’s kids had to mourn their parents today. “Did she give you anything you can use? Did she see anybody running away from the house, or tell you about any enemies Dr. Bryant might have had? Otherwise—”
The detective shrugged and pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket. “Julia Taggart, thirty-two, lives in Bushwick. No, nothing like that. We liked her for this at first — the skinny is she and her mom had some fights, just screaming matches. But I’ve seen what people look like after they kill their moms and she ain’t the type, she—”
“Taggart,” Chapel said, his eyes going wide.
“Yeah,” the detective said, “that’s her name, does that mean something to you?”
Angel’s voice sounded in his ear. “It definitely means something to me,” she said.
“Taggart — not Bryant,” Chapel said.
The detective nodded. “Sure. The deceased and her husband split up back in the late nineties, nothing weird about it, just a divorce. Dr. Bryant went back to using her maiden name, but the daughter kept her dad’s.”
“Number seven on the kill list is Dr. William Taggart,” Angel said. “He lives in Alaska.”
Chapel had already made that connection. “Yeah. I definitely want to talk to her,” he told the detective.
He was led down the stairs and back into the kitchen. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through lace curtains and gave the room a yellow glow. There were cops everywhere, most of them just standing around in black uniforms or suit jackets. In the middle of this tableau, sitting at the kitchen table, was a woman in her early thirties wearing a white lab coat. Her eyes were smeared with half-melted makeup, and a teardrop had gathered on the point of her chin. She had fiery red hair that fell to her shoulders, and under the lab coat she was wearing jeans and a black sweater, with a single strand of pearls around her neck.
A cop with a notepad was trying to talk to her, but Julia Taggart just kept shaking her head. The cop wanted to clarify some details of her story, but Julia could only mutter short responses. She was clearly devastated by her mother’s death.
This isn’t going to be easy, Chapel thought. But he had to ask her some questions before he moved on. “Miss Taggart?” he said. The cops parted to let him through. “Julia? My name is Chapel. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She looked up at him with hopeful eyes. Like maybe he was going to come tell her that her mom wasn’t really dead, that it had all been a terrible mistake.
Chapel had seen that look before. When he’d got back from Afghanistan, he had visited the family of every one of the Rangers who died the day he lost his arm. He had thought he could bring them some comfort, at least let them know their sons or brothers or husbands had died for a good cause.
Every time he’d been completely stalled — flummoxed — by that same look. That look of final, unthinking hope in the face of utter desolation.
Chapel wanted to run away. He wanted to do anything in the world except talk to this woman, now. What could he possibly tell her? I’m so sorry, but your mother is dead and you can never know who did it, or why they did it, and even if I do catch them, I can’t even tell you that. All because the CIA didn’t want its secrets getting out.
He bit his lip, hard, and sat down next to her.
“We’ll get this guy,” he told her. It was all he was allowed to say — the only shred of comfort he was legally allowed to give. He hated his job sometimes. “Maybe you can help me get him. I just need to know a few things.”
She looked away, her eyes darting from his face. He hadn’t told her what she wanted to hear. “I’ve already answered all your questions,” she said.
Chapel didn’t doubt the police had asked her a million things already, all the usual questions you asked in an investigation like this. He had a few he was pretty sure she hadn’t heard before. He glanced at the cop with the notepad, though. He definitely didn’t want what he was going to say written down.
“Maybe I can take you somewhere and buy you a cup of coffee,” he told her. “Maybe getting away from this house will help jog your memory.”
“I just… want to go home, now,” she said, looking right into his eyes. “Can I go home? Please?”
Chapel turned to look for the detective — the man he assumed was in charge here.
“Sure,” the detective said. “You want me to call a patrol unit to take her there?”
Angel spoke in his ear. “I’ll have a cab out front by the time you get out the door.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Chapel told the detective. “I’ll make sure she gets home okay. Do you need to sign her out or anything?”
The detective shrugged. “We’ve got her information.”
Chapel got up from the table and offered Julia a hand getting up. She shook him off and rose on her own, though she looked a little wobbly. She followed Chapel out of the house and down to the sidewalk where, as promised, a cab was waiting for them.
Julia stared at the cab as if she’d never seen one before. She was in shock, of course, but she pulled herself together visibly and said, “I live on—”
“Woodbine Street. Don’t worry,” Chapel said. Angel had already given him the address. “I’ve got this taken care of.”
He opened her door for her and offered his arm as she started to climb in. Too late he realized he’d given her his left arm. Her hand brushed his silicone fingers and stopped there. Without getting into the cab, she stopped and lifted his artificial hand and peered at it like she was looking at a specimen through a microscope.
“Oh,” she said. “This is really lifelike. I didn’t even notice until just now. What is this, a DEKA Luke arm? I’ve read about these.”
Chapel frowned. “It’s the most recent version. Technically it’s still just a prototype, but—”
“Typically they only give these to soldiers who have lost limbs in combat,” she said. She’d had one leg inside the cab. Now she removed it and put her foot down firmly on the sidewalk. “Mr. Chapel,” she said, “you’re clearly not a policeman. I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me exactly what’s going on here.”
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:31
“This one’s sharp. Watch out, honey,” Angel said.