Dues of Mortality (22 page)

“
Just
tell me what you heard,” Roberts had requested from the
tourist.

“
I'm
not sure if I even heard it right, sir,” he'd answered. People
always came with the “sirs” when they felt the weight of
a badge, even when they weren’t the person of interest.

“
Just
tell me anyway.”

The
witness looked thoughtful, like he was genuinely putting the words
together as he recalled them. “It sounded like...a male voice
said... ‘You just killed two of your own men’.”

Roberts
choked. That's why his witness was so hesitant. CPD's police scandals
were national news. He'd probably been acutely aware of them and
didn’t know who to trust.

“
Or
it could have been 'You just killed two
of
them
'
?
I can't be sure.”

He
couldn't be sure? Terrific!
Seeing as all the males in the
scenario were either dead or missing, they'd probably never be sure.
Roberts pulled on his chin.
Bullshit!
I am sure!
In fact, that was the one song in the juke that
Roberts absolutely refused to play.
Jonesy
wasn’t dirty!
He didn’t look down on the job the way dirty cops did,
resenting the hours, the risk, the shitty pay, and getting passed
over. Jonesy dreaded retirement; he didn’t welcome it. And
Bowen? The full grown boy scout without the neckerchief? His virtue
was in full swing. That starry-eyed kid couldn’t even find
“disgruntled” in the dictionary. Officer Lou Percy was
the only one Roberts couldn’t really speak for. Percy had a
record of going through partners with some frequency. That hinted
toward an inability to mesh with his colleagues. However, those same
colleagues unilaterally praised Percy as a righteous cop...just not
one they would want to invite to a poker game.
No,
there were no bent badges in this
, Roberts thought.
This
was something else
.

Jonesy
had done everything right. He had put Glenda in a near vacant motel,
on the other side of town, where human traffic was predictable and
any mouth-breathers would likely stand out like a snowman in a
soccer-field. And although he was a complete jerk about it, the
doughnut kid offered them a good description of a man in a dirty blue
flight jacket, looking like he lived in a landfill. That was the same
guy Glenda Jameson described as her overly-modest rescuer and that
the bank cameras revealed passing by two hours before her attack. The
kid testified that Bowen had bought the vagrant a pastry at Amy Joy
Donuts, where he was working the counter, just minutes before the
murders. Damned if that couldn’t bounce around a few million
distorted ways in the press. A cop buying a doughnut for the guy
who
may have killed him just minutes later? The late-night comedians
never had it so easy. The coroner’s report wasn’t back
yet, but it looked like Percy and Bowen were both killed with Jones’s
gun, but not necessarily by Jones. That would suggest that the
vagrant—who the kid said looked too weak to scratch his own
ass—somehow took out three cops and kidnapped Glenda Jameson
all by himself. Roberts had trouble believing such a guy hadn't
raised a single red flag with Bowen.
For Pete's sake, the kid saw
fit to buy him lunch, not throw him to the ground and cuff him
.
Besides, if it was the same guy that saved her in the alley, why
would he kidnap her now? The motel manager said the couple whizzed by
the office and Glenda
appeared
to be going along willingly. Were they fleeing
together
?
If so, were they running from danger of being killed or danger of
being
caught
? It
all defied rationality. Each latter event seemed to contradict the
explanation of the former, leaving a broad circle of confusion. And
be he hero or villain, this vagrant was a frigging ghost. No name, no
face—the brim of his baseball cap had negated all the
cameras—and getting a decent set of fingerprints from a motel
room was like trying to find the shortest blade of grass in Forest
Lawn. Roberts would, of course, make a trip through the local soup
kitchens and shelters to try and pick up a scent, but homeless people
were the worst in terms of witnesses. They almost never talked to
police, and if they did, they were often insane or high as a kite or
both.
Just who was this guy?
Roberts kept asking himself. Where did he fit into this? What was he
doing in that neighborhood, just blocks from the same motel as Glenda
Jameson? Coincidence? Fate? To a cop, coincidence was usually nothing
more than an excuse to go home early, and fate was what happened when
you weren’t paying attention. Roberts shook his head, wondering
just how long this would go on before he would catch a break.

Thank
God for Capt. Horace Penfield
, he thought.

Anyone
else would have had Roberts washing his car for a month to buy twenty
four hours of press silence on this. Forty-eight would have been
better, but even without the potential for leaks that was pushing it.
A manhunt for a triple cop killer wasn't exactly something you put on
the back burner. Nonetheless, Roberts
had
to have some breathing room to fill in the blanks with regard to
Kelmer, Block, the vagrant and that all-too-convenient robbery. There
was an invisible hand behind this, he surmised; possibly a
well-manicured one. If he was going to rap its knuckles, it was good
to know Penfield had his back...for now. Roberts sighed heavily.
Please let this woman have
something useful
.

The
six-foot-four security guard felt like a hairy albatross around
Roberts’s neck as they strode to the research labs. One of the
little, chrome, antiseptic hoverbots brushed Robert's ankle as they
advanced. From the outside, Roberts had taken in the site of the
BioCore everyday as if it were a monument in a foreign country. Now
that he was inside, he saw that it
was
a foreign country. The place seemed like something out of an old
James Bond movie—vast rooms of state-of-the-art equipment on
virtually every floor, and people sputtering around like worker drone
bees dressed in everything, from dust repellent lab-coats to
high-grade Hazmat suits. In some areas there were nothing but huge
laboratories with the occasional supply closet and carefully marked
culture appliances running between. Everything was clean, organized,
and operated on a precision scale. A week working in a place like
this and Robert's would slit his wrists with a broken beaker. He
scratched the back of his head, curious.

The
network of labs was an impressive collage of the best medical and
biotechnological advancements in the world. Millions of square feet
of tile, glass and mortar formed both a financial and physical
lynchpin between the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital’s
Health System and Case Western Reserve University, ultimately to form
the world's most proficient example of biomedical unity. It was
Cleveland's golden goose. The list of people your average Clevelander
could name that had never worked there was getting shorter by the
day. Yet, there was one thing that those in Robert's circle just
couldn't understand: Competing corporations from all over the
country, or at least some branch of them, were effectively under one
roof. Wouldn’t there be a major temptation to crack the other
guy’s vault? Researchers were chosen from a wide variety of
universities and biological studies departments. How could anyone be
sure they weren’t being spied on? It must have made for one
fascist-looking policy on office romances. Though, from what Roberts
had heard from people like Camille Cosgrove, Jerome Wallace was
definitely the type who might take to trading a little security for
absolute control. Wallace’s initial financial backing of
BioCore was Cleveland’s big bang that kicked it past Boston and
San Francisco as biotech meccas. Since then Wallace had continued to
devour land at an exorbitant rate while simultaneously sneezing on
everyone else’s dinner plates. The steel industry, for
example—a genuine staple in the archives of Cleveland’s
history—had taken a real body blow since BioCore went up.
SiPlus high-performance would be gone before the year was out.
Damn
shame
, Roberts thought. His hometown would never be the
same.

After
an extended march, Roberts and his escort walked into the largest
microbiology lab on the floor. Roberts's eyes were virtually
assaulted by the blinding luminescence and the place absolutely
reeked of sterility. It was overflowing with microscopes, holographic
computers and a whole host of machines Roberts had never seen before.
And, of course,
people
who looked more
mechanical
than any of it. Roberts suddenly felt learning-disabled. He knew
squat about what they were doing, short of what he had seen on the
Health Channel.
How could the
cure for cancer not be in this place?

The
guard branched out an ape-like arm, grabbing a gray coverall from a
nearby rack and stuffed it in Roberts’s face.

“
Put
it on,” the guard said, his voice sounding like a busted pipe
organ. “Gloves are in the pocket.”

Roberts
donned the coverall and slipped on the cellophane gloves from the
single pocket.

The
guard reached for his own cover-all, but stopped midway and
redirected his hand to his earpiece.

Roberts
started to ask a question.

“
She’s
over there,” the guard said, nudging his chin forward. “The
little Spanish lady with the glasses.”

Roberts
gave a nod and then sauntered over to his subject while the guard
remained by the entrance, as Roberts guessed he had just been
instructed. Not that Roberts would have been inclined to conduct the
interview with the big ape standing over him. He got the feeling that
cooperation from the guard’s boss was being offered at a
premium. He also imagined the walls of this place had big enough ears
that those in charge may find benefit in selling visitors a false
sense of security.

Roberts
had talked to only two other researchers at BioCore this morning.
Both told him virtually identical accounts of Kelmer’s actions
the day before he disappeared: he seemed fine, and no different than
usual. Whatever that was. Kelmer was the last kind of guy any cop in
his right mind would want to investigate. The man was a social
shut-in, an island unto himself. He'd never dated inside the
office—or for that matter outside it—and rarely
socialized openly with his colleagues. The man couldn't find the
nearest water-cooler with a GPS. He had never casually given anyone
his phone number nor invited them to his home. It was as though
Richard Kelmer had become one with the ether whenever he left the
building. The only real shot Roberts had at discovering anything
about him was in a Dr. Carmen Ruiz, a fifty two-year-old biochemist
who worked with Kelmer longest under the Millenitech banner at
BioCore. She’d had a good three years side-by-side with Kelmer,
and Roberts figured even the most deserted islands got the occasional
flyover.

“
Dr.
Ruiz?” Roberts inquired.

The
doctor was so totally engrossed in her work that she shot from her
seat like a bottle rocket when he addressed her.

“
I’m
sorry, doctor. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She
jabbed her middle finger under her glasses, rubbing an eye and
looking at Roberts as if he smelled. “Can I help you?”

“
I'm
Detective Andrew Roberts of the Cleveland Police Department. I’d
like to talk to you about a colleague of yours, Dr. Richard Kelmer.”

“
I
haven’t seen him. He was supposed to be here helping me run
these damn tests on these damn tissue samples.”

“
Yes,
well, apparently no one has seen him for nearly three days. I was
hoping that someone he worked with might be able to give me some idea
of where he’s gone.”

“
Oh,
damn it! I knew it! I knew he was going to quit and leave me to do
every goddamn thing by myself.”

Roberts
laughed under his tongue. He'd never heard such bitter irritation
expressed so...
charmingly
.
It was downright cute.
She
was downright cute. Caramel brown eyes glimmered with irreverence
behind the elliptical frames of her glasses and her petite hourglass
frame had just the perfect hint of thickness.

“
How
do you know he was going to quit?” Roberts asked.

“
He
told me he was going to quit.”

“
He
did? When?”

“
He
mentioned it a couple of times last week, but I never believed he’d
walk away from the work. Damn it! Now I’m going to have to wait
for another researcher to qualify, and I’ll have to reorient
that
person. I can’t do all this
by myself. Damn it!”

Roberts
started to speak.

“
Wait
a minute,” Ruiz said. “Why are the police looking for
him? God almighty, he didn’t shoot up a McDonald’s or
something, did he? I can’t say I’m surprised. They keep
telling us to watch out for the quiet ones.”

Roberts
raised a hand at the little woman. “He’s not been accused
of anything. I just really need to find him. I’ve already
talked to two other colleagues of his here at BioCore. They told me
you worked closest with him. Is that right?”