THIRTY-TWO
Scott stood next to Jayne’s hospital bed, looking at the clipboard he’d removed from the door of her room. She murmured and he looked at her, but her eyes remained closed. She was semi-reclined under a blanket and her forehead looked discolored. He could see abrasions on her arms where the short sleeves of the hospital gown ended. When he heard footsteps in the hallway, he darted out in time to stop a nurse, who gave him a polite, interrogative smile.
He held up his Bureau badge and the clipboard. ‘What does all of this stuff mean? Why is she out cold?’
‘She’s not out cold. She’s sleeping.’ She took possession of the clipboard and slotted it back into the holder on the door. ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about, sir. She took a knock on the head that had a mild concussive effect and the doctor wanted to keep her in for observation. He cleared her half an hour ago and she is now sleeping. Please don’t disturb her.’
Scott sighed and ran his hands through his hair. ‘What about Lander? Steelie Lander? They would have come in together.’
‘Around the corner in eight-oh-eight. I believe one of your colleagues is already there.’ The nurse continued down the hall.
Scott turned to look at Jayne again. Her mouth was hanging open slightly and the fluorescent bar above the bed was shining bright on her forehead. He walked back in to lean over her and switch off the light, half hoping the noise would wake her. He wanted to ascertain that she was really all right, to apologize for putting her in danger.
He reached down to her cheek but remembered what had happened when he’d picked her up off that bathroom floor and pulled the gag from her mouth. She’d opened her eyes but hadn’t been able to focus on him. Even when he’d repeated her name, she hadn’t recognized him and then the paramedics called in by Agent Carter had arrived, pushing Scott aside while castigating him for moving someone without first establishing the nature of their injuries.
He had been forced to stand on the sidelines, watching them tend to both Jayne and an unconscious Eugene King, and he hadn’t even thought about the effect the same sight would be having on Steelie, who was standing just behind him, supported by Mark and Eric. He should talk to Steelie.
Scott stepped away from Jayne’s bed and saw that Angie was watching him from the doorway.
She looked him up and down as he approached. ‘You got a chance to change clothes?’ She kept her voice low.
‘When I logged the evidence at HQ.’
‘Any sign of Franks?’
Scott shook his head.
Angie’s eyes went to Jayne. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘Nurse says she’s fine. Just sleeping. What’s the word on King?’
‘The Doc won’t let us have him yet. Seems he’s experienced two separate traumatic “events” involving his head in the last twenty-four hours. He won’t be out of the woods for a day or two.’ She paused. ‘She’s tough. Wouldn’t think it to look at her.’
Angie made to leave, then turned back. ‘Don’t let that one get away.’
Scott tried to acknowledge this suddenly personal directive with a casual response but only succeeded in producing a strangled noise.
Angie regarded him with a smile for a moment, then set off down the hallway.
Scott took a final look at Jayne before going in search of Steelie’s room.
When he looked in her door, he saw Eric sitting on the side of Steelie’s bed, his hand closed over her fist. He was saying, ‘Keep the thumb on top. That’s key.’
Scott took in the bruise coming up on Steelie’s chin. Her hair was unruly, making her head look huge over a thin body lost in a voluminous hospital gown.
She noticed Scott and said, ‘Welcome to Fight Club.’
She raised her fist. ‘The first rule of fight club is . . . know how to fight.’ She pointed at Eric, ‘That’s key.’ She leaned back against the pillows.
Scott sat down in the chair just inside the door. ‘Eric giving you lessons?’
‘Yeah, which beats him giving me medical tests. A minute ago, he asked me how many fingers he was holding up. It was just the one – the middle one.’
Eric smiled as he stood up. ‘I don’t get to run that joke too often.’ He crossed to the door. ‘I’ll be back in five.’
Steelie regarded Scott for a moment, then asked, ‘Is Gene here as well?’
He nodded.
‘You’ve got him under guard, right?’
‘He’s not going anywhere.’ He cast around for something to say. ‘I just came from Jayne’s room. She was sleeping. She’s going to be fine.’
‘The doctor told me.’
They fell silent. Scott leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor. He was uncomfortable but spoke anyway. ‘Steelie, I owe you both an apology. I should have known—’ He broke off to see why she was groaning.
Steelie had sat up. ‘Should have known what?’ she challenged. ‘That Gene was lying in wait for us? That he’s got a mean right hook? What are you, a mind reader?’ She sank back on to the pillows.
He had never seen her look so angry. ‘Point taken.’ Waiting for her to compose herself, he averted his eyes and took in the IV stand next to her bed. The nametag appeared to read, Lander, Sandra. He frowned and tried to focus on the name and then quickly looked over at her, hoping she hadn’t clocked him reading it, which he was almost sure had her name as Sandra. She wasn’t looking at him. He got up and came to the side of her bed.
‘Look, Steelie, when I was driving back from Phoenix with Jayne, I had a . . . situation.’
‘Yeah, I heard.’
‘Right. Well, then you’ll know she bailed me out. Which made me wonder who bails her out, when she needs it. Is it you or is there someone else?’
She didn’t respond.
He continued. ‘Because I think she needs it. At least to deal with the seriously bad dreams I think she’s having.’ He waited. ‘I’m only asking because I care. No one should be alone on this . . . or groping in the dark. In the Bureau, we don’t even get a choice about getting debriefed. So who do you guys talk to?’
She seemed to assess him. ‘We never got debriefings. But I don’t think Jayne would have these repercussions if it weren’t for one particular incident, which jumbled up some of her reactions to other, normal things. That’s my opinion, anyway.’ She exhaled. ‘Look, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, though not as wrong a place as our escort. His name was Benni, a French soldier, all of twenty years old. We were looking for a gravesite in Kos. He tripped a wire, a mine blew, and he bled out a few feet from Jayne, who was on orders to stay put by the deminers, who were trying to get a handle on the situation.’
She paused. ‘I’ve heard you’ve got a good six hours to intervene before a traumatic memory fixes itself like fucking concrete in your brain. No one got to Jayne, or anyone else, for three days. So,’ she reached for her bedside control and began reclining the mattress, ‘you know anything that can break up concrete?’
After a moment, he met her gaze. ‘Freeze-thaw usually works.’
She gave him a slight nod before she closed her eyes and settled back on the pillows. ‘Now, I’m an invalid and I know my rights, so stop harassing me. Sheesh.’
He took a chance and looked at the name on the IV bag again from much closer. Then he pulled the covers above her shoulders, looking at her bruised chin one more time. ‘It’s good to have you back, Steelie.’
‘Yeah, I’m great,’ she mumbled.
Outside the room, he saw Eric emerge from the elevator at the far end of the hallway. His partner shook his head as he walked.
‘What’s happening?’ Scott asked, assuming the worst and that King had managed to die in the last half-hour.
‘You won’t believe this,’ Eric murmured as he drew him back toward the elevators. ‘You know the cell phone sim cards the criminalists found at King’s house?’
Scott nodded.
‘Tech Support’s pulled the numbers off them to cross-check against those suspect numbers on our missing prostitutes’ call records.’
‘He called the vics,’ Scott deduced.
‘Nope.’ Eric glanced at him. ‘He called our old boss Franks.’
‘What?’ Scott halted.
Eric pulled on his arm to get him into an elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. ‘One of the sims shows a call to our anonymous tip line and two show a call each to Franks.’
‘Direct to Franks?’
Eric nodded. ‘They date to after you started the media campaign for information on the van. Each call is about six months apart. We don’t know the content yet but Franks is going to have to give up his own phone log. My bet is that King was the anonymous tipster Turner referred to when he quizzed me in LA – the guy whose tips Franks was relying on to crucify you and get us transferred out of here.’
Scott felt anger and vindication in equal measure.
Eric looked at him. ‘King was playing him like a violin, man.’
They left the elevator and walked out to the Crown Victoria Scott had left parked in an area for emergency vehicles. ‘You think Franks will go down for this?’
‘If he doesn’t go down, he’ll at least go sideways. It’ll be up to OPR. They’ll decide how much more Franks should have done to verify the information in the tips before he used it to make operational decisions. You want me to drive?’
Scott hesitated at the car door and looked back at the hospital, where only every third light or so was still on at this late hour. He tried to work out which one was Jayne’s room and then realized he didn’t even know which side of the building it was on.
Scott turned back to his partner. ‘Who’s on King’s door?’
‘We’ve got two guys on loan from Atlanta PD.’
‘Do they know he’s dangerous?’
‘Houston, he’s concussed. And handcuffed.’
‘Do they know he’s dange—’
‘They came personally recommended by Angie.’
‘OK, then.’ Scott threw his partner the keys over the roof of the car. ‘You should have said that first.’
When Scott woke in the hotel room to the sound of his cell phone ringing next to him, he felt like he’d just gone to sleep. He saw it was Eric calling and answered in the dark.
Eric didn’t bother with preliminaries. ‘King’s awake and talking.’
Scott sat up. ‘Who to?’
‘Whoever’ll listen. But he’s made it clear that he refuses to talk to someone he calls “Special Adversary Houston”. That would be you.’
‘Oh, I’ll get him to talk to me.’
‘No, I think we need to use this, Scott. Keep you out of there, to start with.’
‘I don’t think I can do that, Eric. I need to get this guy.’
‘He’s more likely to confess if he thinks he’s getting us to jump through hoops at the start. We can show him our good faith.’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘This is tactics,’ countered Eric.
Scott lay back down and thought for a moment, stretching his mouth and running a hand through his hair. ‘OK, but we review how you’re going to do it. You’ve gotta start with Patterson because we’ve got an evidentiary link with her personal effects at his house and then you want to get corroboration with Spicer’s evidence, so we can nail King with the biological traces from the van . . . sorry.’ He sighed. ‘You know what to do. Who are you going in with?’
‘We’ll start with Angie, see if he wants to boast in front of a woman. If that throws things, we’ll switch in Mark.’
‘OK. They both know the case.’ Scott paused. ‘I want ears in the room.’
‘You’ll get ’em. You can be next door, down the hall, whatever you want.’
‘Fine.’ Scott tried to switch into support mode. ‘What else are you going to need?’
‘Well, if he doesn’t confess straight off, I need whatever we can get from his property that rules out someone else using his backyard as an abattoir. But I think we’ll get a confession. If he’ll spill it to Jayne—’
‘Wait, what?’
‘Angie interviewed her.’
‘When?’ Scott strained his neck to see the clock on the bedside table. ‘It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake! Are you at the hospital? Have you talked to her?’
‘Scott, I’m right here at the hotel. I can practically hear you shouting from down the hall, in fact. No, Angie talked to her while you were at HQ.’
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘We were just doing the routine. Jayne was lucid, so gave her evidence.’
Scott recollected Angie’s comment that Jayne was tougher than she looked. So Angie would have already heard Jayne’s account of whatever King did to her in that bathroom. Scott felt he was being left out of his own investigation but knew that wasn’t happening.
Eric began again. ‘So . . . if you can liaise with the ME’s office on the ID’s of whatever body parts are coming out of King’s yard and take over my link to the criminalists?’
Scott exhaled. ‘You got it.’
‘I’ll drop you at HQ. See you at oh-eight-hundred out front?’
‘Done.’
Scott hung up and let the phone rest on his chest as he lay in the dark, listening to the climate-controlled air conditioner kicking on. He hated sleeping in air-conditioning and had never become used to it even when he had lived in Atlanta. Now here he was, sleeping in it again, dealing with the same case, and he wasn’t even going to get to interrogate their suspect. He felt immensely irritated. He put the phone on the bedside table and lay on his back, drawing in deep breaths and letting them out slowly, willing a few more hours of sleep.