The sound faded up on the clip.
—“They are true, I take it — the Hubble spacecraft has been disabled and its successor, the James Webb telescope, has been destroyed?”
“Yes,” Shepherd confirmed.
“Get to work on that statement and get it out fast,” O’Halloran said to Squires, tuning out from the rest of the report. “Now it’s out there I don’t want it to look like we’re trying to hide anything.”
“What about Franklin and Shepherd? You want me to assign someone new?”
O’Halloran thought about it for a moment. “No, let me talk to them. I want to hear how this happened and right now I doubt we have the men to spare anyway.”
“I’m happy to come in if you want me to, sir,” Squires replied, his voice a little guarded.
“No, it’s okay — you stay home with your family, that’s the best place right now. Call me if you hear anything new.”
O’Halloran put the phone down and listened to the familiar creak of the house he had lived in for over twenty years. He could hear Beth in the kitchen clearing up the lunch things.
Stay at home with your family.
Damn right.
He found Franklin’s phone number and hit the button to dial it.
49
Jackson had been thankfully called away almost as soon as he and Franklin had left the interview room. They’d swapped cards and promised to catch up before Franklin left town but in truth neither of them really meant it. They had never been that close and Franklin didn’t have time to shoot the breeze about “back in the day.” He had more pressing things on his mind and other situations to deal with.
He couldn’t explain the feelings he’d been experiencing for the last few days or the things they were making him do. All he knew for sure was that they were getting stronger, swelling inside him like the slow intake of a deep, deep breath. Over the years he had listened to enough strung-out junkies talk about how it felt to crave a hit and that was the closest he could get to describing what this was like for him. It was an urge that steadily filled his mind and body, slowly pushing everything else aside until he could think of nothing else. It had taken over everything, driving him to do whatever it took to try to satisfy the craving. He blew out a long breath as he stalked through the empty offices, his footfalls on the stained carpet tiles silent beneath the constantly ringing phones.
Not long now.
He found a coffeepot in a kitchen on the second floor. It was sitting on a hot plate with a layer of thick black sludge on the bottom. Bottomless, twenty-four-hour coffeepots were standard issue in any police department, but they usually got continuously topped up by the various shifts. This one had clearly been left to stew overnight and no one had noticed, further evidence of the staffing crisis Jackson had mentioned.
He did his best to scrape the goop from the bottom of the pot then found some fresh coffee in a container in the icebox and some filters in a drawer and set a new pot bubbling. He was just scouting around for some clean mugs when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He answered it without looking to see who it was, expecting that it would probably be Marie giving him a hard time about not being home.
“Franklin!” He jammed the phone into the crook of his neck, continuing his search through the cupboards.
“You mind telling me why you’re making unauthorized statements to the press about your ongoing investigation?” Franklin nearly dropped the phone as he recognized O’Halloran’s voice.
“Sir?”
“I’ve just seen you and Shepherd on CNN chatting to the Reverend Fulton Cooper.”
Franklin flashed back to the empty studio — empty but for the cameras. He heard the phone creak as his hand tightened around it. “He must have taped the interview.”
“You spoke to him in a TV studio?”
“He was—” Franklin closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been stupid. His mind wasn’t on the job the way it usually was since the urge had taken him over. “He was in the middle of a broadcast, sir. We didn’t think it should wait.”
“You get anything out of him?”
“A little.”
“You think he’s our guy?”
“Yes, sir, I think so.”
There was a pause. Franklin stared ahead. A WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE mug mocked him from inside the cupboard.
“Stick with it, Agent Franklin. Keep a tighter lead on Shepherd and get more on Cooper fast so we can turn this thing around and make this little PR stunt blow up in his face.”
“Yessir.”
“And, Franklin?”
“Sir?”
“Keep me directly informed.”
Franklin waited for more, expecting some kind of explanation or further instructions, but all he heard was a soft click as O’Halloran put down the phone and cut the connection.
50
For the second time in a week Liv woke up in the windowless room of the sick bay. She looked across to the other bed. It was empty, the sheets and mattress stripped off. On the wall behind it a row of cupboard doors hung open revealing bare shelves.
She tilted her head toward the door and listened. No sound at all came from the hallways beyond it, not even the generator, which suggested it was daytime. She tried to sit up and felt something snag painfully in her arm. There was a shunt strapped to her forearm, attached by a tube to a clear bag hanging high on a stand by the bed. She had a moment of panic, wondering if it was doing her good or harm.
Footsteps outside.
Her heart rate stepped up a few beats.
There was nowhere to hide and she didn’t have the energy to run. She swallowed drily and watched the door swing open, wishing she’d had the presence of mind to grab something heavy.
“Hey, you’re awake.” The man was blond and tanned and somewhere in his late twenties. He looked more like a surfer than someone intent on doing her harm. He also looked drawn and tired, as though he hadn’t slept for days. “How you feeling — like shit, I bet?”
He spoke English with an Australian accent. He popped a digital thermometer in her mouth and checked her over with the relaxed and practiced eye of someone who had done this a million times before. She could smell coffee and soap.
“Who are you?” she said, the moment the thermometer was removed.
“Name’s Kyle.” He frowned as he studied the readout. “You’re still running a bit of a fever. You should take it easy. Get some more sleep if you can.”
“Don’t drink the water,” she said, voicing the alarm that was clanging in her head.
“The water’s fine,” Kyle replied, checking her drip bag then smoothing down the tape holding the shunt in her arm.
Liv sat up and felt the room shift around her. “No. It’s not, it’s poisoned — I’ve seen men die from drinking it.”
“Me too,” he said, and she understood his tiredness. She swung her legs off the bed and pulled at the tube. “Hey!” Kyle reached out to stop her.
“Show me,” she said, turning away and yanking the tube from her arm.
“You need to—”
She stood, wobbling slightly then headed for the door.