Dr. O (3 page)

The men and women killed abroad in various mysterious accidents were all scientists working toward a common goal and a common good via a NASA project. Ovierto had made his first mistake, showing a pattern—victims all in a row. But no one was willing to take Donna Thorpe seriously on this, not yet. A number of some bodies of importance must die here in the Americas first, she sadly thought. In two, maybe three days, yet another scientist would be dead. Thorpe was so certain of it that she had gone on record about it.

"Damn, damn, damn!" she cursed loud enough for her operatives to know of her frustration. She wondered how long she could afford to wait around for the next murder. Without true sanction, her hands were tied, and so far the Bureau wasn't responding to her telexes, the material she had amassed and faxed to them, nothing.

"Who do we know outside the agency in Chicago who owes us big?" she suddenly asked the people in the debriefing room.

"Remember that hot-headed bastard?" asked Pyles.

"Cop there by the name of Swisher, remember him?" asked Perry Shoup.

"Real pistol-"

"Decoy operative, reckless as hell."

"Wasn't he the guy that shut down that doctor that was murdering people for AIDS-free blood a year or so ago?"

The banter went about the room. There were a few people who hadn't a clue about Lieutenant Joe Swisher, but as these men were filled in by others, Donna Thorpe leaned back in her chair and recalled the tough, cynical Chicago undercover cop with a mixture of admiration and dislike. Admiration because he did his job so very well, as when he cornered the infamous Widow-maker a few months back, a whacko who had killed eighteen men by firing a high- powered rifle into windows from great distances for reasons the killing mind alone understood. She detested Swisher for the methods he reputedly used, for instance, torturing a man for information leading to someone that Swisher had been chasing for years in some ongoing vendetta. It had been to this vendetta that she and Tom had once played Swisher.

At that time, Lieutenant Joe Swisher had been chasing down a small-time creep named Camera, beating heads together for any information he might gain concerning the drug lord who dared work Swisher's territory. She and Tom had stepped in with a deal, seeing to it that the game plan went another way, intercepting Swisher, snatching up Camera as well. Camera was wired and returned to the streets to do a bigger job for the Feds. Camera walked as part of the deal. They had had to squeeze Joe Swisher pretty hard, using some old files from a police shrink against him. After it was over, Swisher torched the files and the Feds told him that he owed them.

Camera was relocated, given a new identity, the whole package, but someone managed to get to him anyway —a large .44 through the skull at close range. Detective Joe Swisher was at the top of the list of suspects.

Time was just right to pick some fruit from that tree again. Since Sykes's brutal death, Thorpe had come to believe that she understood Joe Swisher's unquenchable thirst for violent revenge.

Another of Joe Swisher's supposed victims had been a child-porn filmmaker and child-brutalizer by the name of Julio Zaragoza. Zaragoza had died of drowning, found head-down in a toilet bowl, his feet in the air. His head and face had been battered and he'd been knocked unconscious before he drowned.

Dr. Maurice Ovierto would have approved, no doubt. Ovierto had made brutality a way of life; it seemed that Swisher had also. Ovierto was a raging psychotic who coolly masked his psychosis; so was Swisher. It takes a thief...

At the moment they were swamped with missing persons believed to be kidnapped, some taken across state lines. These kinds of cases seemed on the rise and typically turned into murder.

Thorpe got on her phone, called Chicago, Precinct Thirty-one, and asked for Lieutenant Joe Swisher. Told the lieutenant was indisposed at the moment, she persisted.

"Indisposed?"

"Out on duty."

Thorpe wondered what mayhem the lieutenant was into.

"This is urgent. Could you patch me through to his vehicle?"

"Who is calling, ma'am?" asked the female dispatcher. "FBI."

"I see," she said with a mind full of doubt. "I'll need a name, ma'am."

"Hoover, godamnit! J. Edgar."

"Thank you Ms. Hoover, and please hold."

"No, thank you, dear," she said with mock politeness.

"I’ll try to hail his frequency, ma'am, but he's on a ten eighteen."

"Ten eighteen, that's suspect injured, isn't it?"

But she was off the line, trying to get through to Swisher. It took more time than she had patience for. She was about to slam down the receiver, when static struck and was replaced by the sound of another female voice.

"This is Sergeant Muro."

"Who?"

"Joe's partner... in the field... can this wait?"

"No, it can't"

"You're not going to come back at him with all that phony crap about knockin' off your witness, again, are you?"

"I have Swisher's best interest at heart, ahh... Muro"

She laughed. "Sure you do, you FBI bitches are all alike."

"Hey, Muro, I'm just trying to alert him to a danger in your sector."

"What danger?"

"Serial killer who seems to like high-powered scientists as targets. You read about the three in England? Everybody's read about that. Now it's starting here, and if our information is correct, Chicago and Dr. Ibi Oliguerre is next, along with a possible second physicist working out at your Fermilab. Is that reason enough to alert Swisher? I'd like him in but it's completely unofficial."

Muro hesitated a moment before saying, "Why should Joe want anything to do with you? You break into his shrink's office, lift his file, use it against him-"

"Muro! This is bigger than us, or old sores!"

"Why does it sound like a set-up to me? Unofficial?"

"I can't explain it over the phone. Will Swisher meet with me if I fly there? Tonight?"

"You nuts? He wouldn't give you the time of day."

"Put him on! This is too damned important, Muro."

There was more static and some commotion on Muro's end. Joe Swisher came on. "Thorpe, sweety, how's D.C. this time of year?"

Donna knew now that Swisher knew about her de-motion. She chose to ignore the barb. 'Your partner fill you in on the situation? Will you meet with me tonight?"

"Why're you asking, Thorpe? Why didn't you just bust in and cuff me? Drag me in before your holier- than-thou presence and just explain things to me? Like you did when you got Camera and those three women killed so you could get your man. Oh, by the way, tough luck about your partner... ahh, Sykes? But what's a few bodies along the way to a gal like Donna Thorpe, huh?"

Donna recalled having said the exact same words to Swisher once. She almost told him to fuck off. In-stead, she swallowed it and calmly replied, "Hey, mister, I'm the one saw that your unsavory file and your unsavory ass came out of that one intact and alive, or did you forget that? As for your file, you got it back, remember?"

Swisher hesitated on the other end. "My problem is you, Thorpe. I just don't like you or your methods."

"Then we agree to disagree, because I don't like your methods either."

"You call me out of the blue, sic me onto some poor slob like you've got me on a leash. Then maybe I blow your problem away, and then I'm carted off for it, shut away tight; end of Donna Thorpe's backside itch. Great."

"No, no... Lieutenant, it's not like that."

"Then why aren't you going through my captain?"

"It's not officially my case. I can't go through channels, and I can't order anyone on or off it, you under-stand?"

"Until it becomes your case, I'll say no thanks and hasta luego."

"Suppose I told you I know who did Stavros?"

"Bullshit," he replied and promptly hung up on her. In Nebraska, she said, "Damn that man." She then called for the helicopter to be readied, and she made a few preparatory calls for her visit. She'd go to the Windy City with what she had on Ovierto, lay it all out for Swisher, and take her chances. She knew just where to locate Swisher. He'd be at a watering hole, a bar and grill called Transfusions, on Kedzie near Damon Avenue.

Swisher had his own agenda: people he wanted to put away forever. There wasn't a murder in the country reported that Donna Thorpe didn't know about; she'd read with great interest the news of a man named Stavros who'd ostensibly bled to death from a wound in a nasty place, a wound a man needn't die from, unless the killer had also grotesquely arranged for the victim not to get medical attention. The case smacked of Dr. Ovierto's handiwork, and she believed it could be a decoy killing —one of Dr. O's endless red herrings, to lead police in one direction while he sought out another.

One phone call and the Stavros thing would be turned over to Lieutenant Joseph Swisher. The ties that bind, thought Thorpe.

She got Swisher's captain on the line, a man that she had made use of before many times. Brian Noone was physically one of the biggest men she had ever en-countered, but his bull shoulders and huge middle be-lied his intellect. He was shrewd. Even more than shrewd, he was ambitious. He was what was fast be-coming a rare breed: an inner city police captain who welcomed FBI involvement on a case. Not that he actually believed that the FBI knew what they were doing.

After the initial amenities, including a few remarks about how sorry Noone was to hear about Tom Sykes, Thorpe told him, "I'd like you to put Joe Swisher on the Stavros case."

"Is that a request?"

"It is."

Noone was assessing her tone. "Brian, it's important. Can't give you all the details, but—"

"That's all right. I love being in the dark," he replied with what amounted to a lot of sarcasm for Noone.

She cleared her throat. Brian. I've got reason to believe Stavros may be connected to one of our most wanted."

"Ovierto, huh?"

"This stays between us. Okay, Brian?"

"Swisher's got a full docket."

"You can loosen that up, a little juggling."

"Just snatch it from the dicks that're on it now and dump it in Joe's lap, just like that. Tell me, Inspector, what does my department get for our trouble?"

"Things work out, you and your man will get plenty of press, I can guarantee that."

"Press... I give a shit about press."

"I'll see that you get citations of—"

"How about a word to my chief... I'm up for promo soon."

"I can't make any promises on that score... but IH make a call."

"Maybe you haven't heard, Donna, but a lot of people these days aren't taking your calls."

She stewed a moment over this. "I'm coming back, Brian, so don't put all your eggs into one basket."

Noone chewed on this thought before saying, "All right, you'll have Swisher on Stavros."

Thorpe knew that Stavros must be upsetting for Swisher; that it would be the impetus for driving "Swish" straight into her hands. Noone didn't know it, but Donna Thorpe knew more about motivating Joe Swisher than his captain ever dreamed of. She had had an FBI psychological workup done on Swisher be-fore using the files stolen from Swisher's shrink. She knew what made Joey tick, what made him run, what pissed him off, and what made him vomit.

In some ways, she knew, she was a lot like Swisher and getting closer by the day. Both of them skirted the letter of the law. Catching and punishing the guilty was uppermost in both their minds.

Her fingers sought the small, neatly wrapped box on her desk, and, using a pair of tweezers, she removed the portion of male genitals sent her by Dr. Ovierto only recently. Even Dr. O knew that she was now in Nebraska. He would continue sending his disgusting gifts not to the Bureau, but to her, to Donna Thorpe. She lifted the desiccated, bad-smelling penis mailed to her and postmarked Elmhurst, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. The note was as nasty as the contents: Fuck yourself, Donna, honey. Tommy boy would want it that way. It's his thing.

But she knew it wasn't part of Tom Sykes. She'd have the lab verify this fact, but somehow she knew it was not part of Tom.

She looked again at the signature. Ovierto had used his penname: Dr. O.

CHAPTER FOUR

Chicago, Illinois

Joe Swisher looked like a professional linebacker and he stood half a head taller than Captain Noone. Noone knew that he was also sharp-witted and streetwise. Joe smelled something wrong in Noone's suddenly reassigning a case —any case—to him.

He'd grown up on the North side of Chicago. He was thirty-seven years old. He detested being treated like a fool.

Why did Noone really want him to handle the one case Swisher had done his very best to avoid? Officially the case was known by the victim's name: Stavros. It was more than just the nightmarish, bizarre nature of the killing, which the newspapers had leapt on, that troubled Swisher. It was the resurgence of the old horrors that he'd fought back for so many years.

Mutilation killings disturbed him to his core. Having remained in vice for so long before taking over a homicide detail had shielded him somewhat from the ugliest of crimes. Big man on the force —afraid of nasty, splatter pictures and crime scenes that made him throw up, scenes that reminded him of Jerri's death.