Dr. O (19 page)

Either way, Thorpe was at fault, along with all the scientists behind the creation of Pythagoras. Now they must either deal with him or die. He'd gone to great lengths to bring Thorpe to her knees, and perhaps she was ready to bargain.

He looked out a porthole to see a tug passing by. All looked peaceful from where he sat. He was unsure if he had been successful in killing Hogarth and the others, but he was fairly sure that he had. It would send a clear message to Thorpe, finding the child's charred bones amid the wreckage.

He thought of sitting across a table from Thorpe, answering her questions, answering all the questions that troubled her sleep, all the whys that she seemed incapable of seeing on her own. And he knew she was no dummy, despite his rage toward her and his desire to hurt her as her father had hurt him.

As for her father, there'd been no way to get at him. He'd died of a sudden heart attack long before. But Rosenthal, now there was a man on whom he had been able to wreak his revenge in full. He'd left Rosen-thal a crippled madman.

Rosenthal was here in Seattle, in an asylum. Thorpe knew this much, and she had had the asylum watched, but now, with Hogarth gone, she'd pull back her forces and he'd go find Rosenthal and tell him how he could get his mind back.

As for Randall Hogarth, he'd gotten what he de-served. Ovierto had met him soon after the Hogarths had arrived in the city, convincing him that with Pythagoras in their hands they could rule the medical world together, that he, Ovierto, would need a spokes-man and a front runner so that he might remain a silent partner in the multi-billion dollar scheme that could lead to universal domination. Hogarth's morals and his "philosophy" had never been so tested before. He did exactly as he was told, but he never knew what hit him. He'd thought he and the girl would escape death. They would step out of the house at nightfall to gaze at the stars, at a safe distance from his doomed wife. But Ovierto had seen a different scenario unfolding; his mind spurring him on to do what his hand itched to do, he had seen it played out and surprised everyone, including Randall. He had obliterated Thorpe's oh-so-careful hideaway.

He was much pleased with himself. He went back to the chart room, where he had installed a computer. He turned it on and pulled up the file he wanted. He'd gotten the information required to access Thorpe's computer from Bateman, who had become a sniveling creature in the end. He had used Bateman's code at first; this was soon cut off to him, yet it had been long enough for his computer to take over on a modem and begin a random selection to search for Thorpe's code. For some time now he'd known her every move before she did.

He decided to call her electronically. By the time they traced it he'd be gone.

He typed out his message and it was conveyed to her terminal in Nebraska. From there it would flash to any other she might be using.

Donna Thorpe hadn't slept since Hogarth and her child had disappeared with Robyn Muro. She paced before her people at the Hilton suite, where all information statewide and along the coast was being monitored. The car was found, charred to the tires, at an overlook point along the Pacific Coast highway. The news burned like ice through her veins. The information was helpful in giving them a lead and units had been dispatched. She wanted to rush there herself, but she was suddenly stopped by one of the computer clerks, who said there was a Priority One message coming through for her on her terminal.

She went to the terminal, pressing her code. It was either news from Quantico or Nebraska, she wasn't sure yet.

Then it came up.

Hogarth is executed. Give me Pythagoras and the killings will end.

"Bastard... bastard's on line. Corey, Corey, trace this. Get on it and work on it until you drop. This damned job is Priority One for your people. Got that?"

"Yes, Inspector, right away."

She grit her teeth. "So, he wants Pythagoras. Don't we all," she said to herself. Then she ordered a man to bring her car around. "We're going to Oregon."

"That won't be necessary, Inspector," said one of her agents who handed her a radio receiver headphone. "It's Muro."

"Muro, you damned fool! Where are you?"

"Never mind where I am. I'm alive, and lucky—"

"I know, Hogarth and the child are dead. Ovierto has just told me so along with the men who found the car."

"Ovierto?"

"The bastard just contacted me."

"He wants Pythagoras, the whole thing, doesn't he?"

"Yes, yes, he does."

"Are you going to deal with him?"

"Yes, we are."

"Washington approves?"

"To hell with Washington. This is my call."

Both of them knew that their conversation was being monitored by Ovierto, and they fed him what he wanted to hear. Thorpe played off her beautifully, Robyn thought, if only because she really did believe Hogarth and the child dead. Robyn decided to keep it that way until she could speak to Donna Thorpe face to face.

"With the information Hogarth had," Thorpe continued, "we have a complete package on Pythagoras. I say we give it to him before more lives are lost."

"But if he uses it for... for evil..."

"It will take years before he can mount anything useful. To get the kind of technical assistance he needs—"

Robyn disagreed, knowing that Pythagoras could bribe anyone, but she said, "You're right. It may be our only chance to end this senseless killing spree."

"We can't risk another child... other people any longer."

"No... I don't suppose we can."

"We've got to deal with Ovierto... do what he wishes, whatever is necessary. I'll see you back here shortly."

"It would be shortly, if you'd send a car for me."

"Hold on. Let's secure this line."

Thorpe did so, scrambling the signal before taking any further information from Robyn.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dr. Samuel Boas was one of many associate clinical medical examiners and pathologists who worked at FBI headquarters in Quantico. At least, that is how he viewed himself. He was in fact the director of the enormous and multifaceted FBI labs, in charge of their smooth operation, the budgeting decisions and allocating time and resources among departments, persuading them to cooperate and sometimes "share," like good boys and girls there in the big sandbox when samples came to them from law enforcement agencies across the nation. The FBI crime lab at Quantico had become the ultimate in forensic medicine, forensic psychiatry, toxicology, ballistics, and questioned documents.

Before becoming the chief of such a prestigious operation, he had been the director of the SFPD Crime Lab in San Francisco. He'd served as a consultant to universities and hospitals from D.C. to Hong Kong. His training had recently taken him into hypnosis, domination, terrorism, and victim behavior. He had been on a panel formed to understand what had occurred at Jonestown, what kinds of controls Charles Manson managed over his murderous "children," how Patty Hearst became a bona fide SLA member, and how others, held captive for years, were turned into true slaves to their masters, as in the California case of the woman called K who had for seven years endured captivity and brutality until she became the perfect slave.

Boas belonged to a host of associations, and he wrote and published papers each year on these and related topics, as well as his well-known textbooks on forensic medicine. He had worked with the U.S. Department of Justice, Scotland Yard, Hong Kong, the CIA, the LAPD, the NYPD, and many others throughout his long career.

And he knew the toll Ovierto was taking on the one victim he had once physically scarred. He had tried to warn Donna Thorpe about this before. It was one of the reasons he had flown to Seattle to see her face to face, along with the information he harbored about those disgusting Adam's apples, three hardened lumps of flesh now. But hidden within the curled folds of these three masses of the largest laryngeal cartilage in the throat he and his staff had discovered an amazing thing.

Boas had held Thorpe's attention long enough for him to go over his concerns for her personal health and her mental state. She blew up at this, they had argued, and she immediately saw him as the enemy, as if he had been sent here by her superiors to watch over her like some aged vulture, to which charge there was some truth. He had so upset her that she had shut him out suddenly. Her interest in this cop from Chicago was her new obsession, and she had rushed out of the room and down to the lobby in search of Sergeant Muro.

He hadn't been given a chance to tell her about the pearls! And then all hell broke loose at the so-called "safe house."

In the meantime, he had consulted with several old friends, posing them a hypothetical about a police person and a fiend she had been chasing for six years now. He told them every detail that seemed relevant for them to reach a conclusion about the long-term effects of such a relationship as that between the sadomashochistic Ovierto and the steady officer Thorpe. They in turn had asked a thousand questions which helped to bolster the hypothetical, such as those concerning her personal supports. He told them of the rocky home life and the fact that the murderer had killed her lover.

To a man, they agreed with almost all of his own assessments of what Thorpe was going through, and yet there seemed to be no way to communicate these concerns to her. She closed him out. She needed someone she could wholly confide in, but he seemed not to be that person.

And yet his superiors believed that he had some magical quality or trick up his sleeve to garner that very prize from Inspector Thorpe —her complete trust and confidence. He didn't like the role they had cast him in, didn't like going behind Donna's back, trying to convince Washington that she was all right, and that they hadn't misplaced their trust.

Boas had been in forensics for the better part of a half a century, but he had never seen anything like the cat-and-mouse game being played out between Donna Thorpe and this madman, Ovierto. Somehow Ovierto knew her every move, and he even played the forensics people for fools on occasion, as he had with the Adam's apples sent to Nebraska. The men there hadn't seen the careful, almost invisible work done by the mad doctor, whose hands must surely be skillful indeed. He'd hidden a clue in the folds of skin in the laryngeal tissue.

Boas had come to Seattle for good reason. If Ovierto were here, perhaps what he had found embedded in the flesh of the apples could help Thorpe. He had kept his find to himself, telling no one, not even his assistants. He had not told Thorpe, either, why he must see her in Seattle.

She had told him to come ahead but said that on his stopover in Chicago he was to pick up a passenger, a policewoman named Muro. The doctor agreed to do so, and he agreed to share his lurid files with Robyn Muro if that would make everyone happy.

When he had finally gotten Thorpe alone to tell her of the bizarre find, she'd bolted from him, discovering that Sergeant Muro had disappeared, locating her in the lobby of the hotel. It wasn't until a day later, after he learned of news of the attack at the winery, that Dr. Boas had again been able to get Thorpe alone, insisting on ten minutes.

Thorpe looked as if she'd gone without sleep all night, and Boas guessed this was the case. "I've got to get back to D.C. in a few hours. Now, you're going to listen to me."

"Of course, Dr. Boas, what is it?" she said, ransacking the room for the water, ice, and booze. Boas had noticed the drinking before.

"It's about Dr. Ovierto's most recent gift to you, the gift of the apples."

"Yes, what about them?"

"Embedded in each was a pearl."

"A pearl?"

"Not your most exquisite pearls, but yes, pearls. Here they are."

He placed them in a clean ashtray he found on the table between them. He stared at the glistening, white- and-ivory beads as they collided with each another. "What do you think it means?"

"Who the hell knows with this son of a bitch? Casting his pearls before... swine? We being the swine?"

"Yeah, like him to illustrate his point in such a fashion. Showing's definitely better than telling so far as Ovierto is concerned."

"Any rate, I've done some checking around the piers and-"

"Why Boas, you?"

"Just an itch I had to scratch. Any rate, the pearls come in at only one location."

"Pearls? Imported to here?"

"Yes, from the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, Australia and China, but they all go through customs and customs is located at Pier Thirty-four. Now, I figure, these being obviously untouched—"

"Boas, you old hound. This could be important."

"Why the hell do you think I came all the way from D.C.?"

"Who else knows about the pearls?"

"Not a soul."

"No one?"

"You and me." He could see her pulse pounding in her temple. "This could be it. Could be it... could be..."

"I wish I could stay to see it through, but—"

"Get clearance. We may need you. Tell them I want you here, Doctor, please."

He frowned. "I've been away too long as it is."

"Try."