Keeper (22 page)

The plate-glass door has been replaced, and the curtains are drawn. I see movement on the patio, a silhouette, and fire another two shots, feeling the gun kick pleasantly in my hand, hearing the spent shells eject cleanly and bounce off the wall and table. Special Agent Fowler falls through the door, shocked that he’s suddenly dead. I didn’t want to kill him, I realize, I thought that would be Rich.

But I’ll get over it.

But something nags at me. Who did I shoot in the living room, then? Turning around to check, Dr. Romero is right behind me. She’s entirely unafraid of the gun or me, she doesn’t flinch when I bring the barrel up to her.

Dr. Romero says, “Look what you’ve done.” She points to the landing above her.

I go up the stairs with her watching me, but she doesn’t move. As I’m climbing, I hear the door open downstairs, and watch Natalie and Dale and Rubin all come to surround the doctor. Good, I think. They’re doing their job.

Bridgett Logan is sitting at the top of the stairs. She doesn’t look at me as I go past, but offers me a Wint-O-Green Life Saver from the roll in her hand saying, “Nice shot, stud.”

Katie Romero is sitting on the floor, the Walkman headphones on her ears, pieces of paper with crippled drawings in bright crayon surrounding her. She looks fine, except that there’s a perfect entrance wound in her left eye from my shot, and a chunk of her face is gone.

Madonna squeals from the headphones that hang on what’s left of her head.

Then the alarm was beeping and I was trying to turn it off. Neurons finally began hitting their receptors, and I realized the alarm didn’t beep, it buzzed, it was my pager that beeped, so the way to make the noise stop was to answer the page. I lurched to the kitchen, dragging my sweaty sheets after me, tripping over them. I shut off the pager and looked at the number that had been sent, but didn’t recognize it. I reached for the phone and then remembered where I had put it.

There was a black mark on the wall from the impact.

I shuffled down the hall to Rubin’s room and used his phone.

“Yeah?” Bridgett said.

“Morning,” I said. The clock over Rubin’s bed said that it was five after seven.

“Did I wake you? You weren’t answering your phone.”

I thought about explaining that the phone nearest my room was broken, and that Rubin’s was too far away to hear, but decided against it. I rubbed my eyes and said, “No, you didn’t wake me. What’s up?”

“I’m reading letters. A real education in anatomy, let me tell you.”

“Where’d you get the copies?”

“I talked to Lozano in person, got replacements. He was very accommodating.”

“How’d that go?” I asked, sitting on Rubin’s bed. One of Natalie’s shirts was draped over the bedpost.

“He wanted to know if I thought you were doing all right.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him you were off your twig. No, I said you were fine.”

“So he doesn’t think I was stalking Barry?”

“If he does, he didn’t share his suspicion with me. Anyway, I’m looking over all the threats again, and I’m wondering if you can give me a hand. There’s a lot to go through.”

“I’ve got to go cover Romero, see if we can move her. If we get settled into a new location and secured I’ll give you a call.”

“Do that. One more thing—Barry is being arraigned this morning. As far as I could tell, he didn’t tell Lozano that you skipped a groove yesterday.”

“Decent of him,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s the salt of the earth. Talk to you later, stud.”

I hung up the phone. For some reason there was no hot water in the building, which led to me taking a very short shower. I dressed, affixed holster and pager to my belt, grabbed a jacket, and hit the street. I stopped long enough for a cup of coffee and a bagel at a bodega on the way to the subway station, finished them both on the platform, and made it to the studio by eight on the dot, certain that I hadn’t been followed.

Nothing much had changed. Dale arrived a few minutes after I did, at which point Natalie called her father and determined that we wouldn’t be able to access the safe apartment until late that afternoon. I relayed that information to Felice.

“I’d like to go home,” she said softly. “I’d like a chance to clean up and get my papers and things for the conference.”

“You’re certain? I can send someone to get your things.”

Her eyes were puffy behind her glasses this morning. She put a hand on my forearm. “I want to go home,” she said. “Just for a little bit.”

I didn’t have the heart to argue.

I dispatched Dale to get the car and sent Natalie to the Gold Street apartment to secure it, then called Fowler to tell him that we would be taking Romero back to her place for a little while.

“I’ll let NYPD know,” he said. “You planning on staying there long?”

“Not if we can help it.”

“Good,” he said. “She’s still going to Common Ground?”

“We haven’t talked about it. But the answer is probably yes.”

He sighed. “Not good,” he said. “Katie’s death has pushed the news national, Atticus. We’ve got people from D.C. down here now. That conference is going to be a five-ring media circus.”

“I haven’t seen the papers.”

“It’s everywhere,” Scott said. “And it’s only going to lure more nutcases out of the woodwork.”

“We’ll deal with it,” I told him. “Marshals on scene yet?”

“They’re already covering the clinic, waiting to hear from Romero. I explained that they weren’t going to be needed for close coverage, but that didn’t sit too well with the deputy who’s running the show,”

“I talked to Felice about it,” I said. “She wants us to remain on duty.”

“I’ll pass that along. They won’t like it.”

“I can deal with bruising a few egos.”

“Let’s hope that’s the only bruising that’ll happen.”

Natalie was waiting when we arrived at the Romero apartment, and as I closed the door she helped the doctor out of the bulletproof vest. We walked up the short flight of stairs to the main floor, Natalie and Dale in front of Felice, Rubin and me behind her.

When she reached the top of the stairs, Dr. Romero stopped, wavered. I put a hand on her shoulder to support her if she fainted, but she didn’t.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, Atticus, look at what they’ve done to my home.”

There were toner stains on the kitchen counter and around the remains of the sliding door from where the CSU technicians had tried to lift fingerprints. On the floor were tom wrappers from all sorts of equipment, both forensic and medical. The spilled orange juice had dried to a sticky stain on the linoleum, and the whole room stank of juice and blood and chemicals, and just the memory of perfume. The bloodstain on the sofa where Katie had fallen had dried dark, and the smear from where I’d pulled her into the kitchen looked like a drunk had dragged a giant paintbrush across the floor.

“This . . . this was a bad idea,” Felice said.

I put an arm around her and led her to her bedroom. At least that room was untouched. Once beyond that door, Dr. Romero went straight to the bed and sat down.

“We can take you back to the studio,” I said.

She shook her head, and her mouth was clamped shut so tightly the blood left her lips, draining them white.

“You want me to leave you alone for a couple of minutes?” That earned a nod, and I said, “You just call my name, okay, Felice?”

Another nod.

I closed the door as I went out.

Dale, Natalie, and Rubin were all looking at me.

“She’s right,” Dale told me. “This was a bad idea.”

I nodded.

“What were you thinking?”

“She wanted to come home,” I said.

They all kept watching me, until finally Natalie turned her head and looked the apartment over again. She sighed, said, “Let’s get this place cleaned up.”

We got to work, and it wasn’t until I was moving furniture back in place by the bedroom door that I heard her crying. It was a soft and lonely sound, and it wanted no company.

After we finished, Natalie got on the phone to her father again, spoke quietly to him, and then hung up. She simply shook her head at me and went back to her seat on the sofa beside Rubin, who had started reading a magazine. Dale sat at the table, idly sliding the salt and pepper shakers back and forth. I tried not to pace.

Then Felice screamed, high and terrified, and I ran into the bedroom and saw only her clothes, folded neatly on the bed. Pivoting to my left as Dale came in after me, I went to her bathroom door and tried the handle; it was locked. Felice screamed again. I kicked the door just below the knob, and it flew open, rebounding back off the wall so I had to stop it from shutting again with my right hand.

She was standing in her bathrobe with a pool of bloody water spreading around her feet from where it was flowing out of the toilet. The water looked pink as it spilled past the white porcelain, then went to red on the darker floor. Dale said something as I reached for Romero, pulling her to me. Felice turned to me as I drew her in, shutting her mouth, cutting off her scream, and her eyes were wide and uncomprehending. I lifted her up in my arms and Dale moved aside as I carried her out of the bathroom, past Natalie and Rubin at the doorway, back to her bed.

Felice wouldn’t let go of me, and I had to pry one hand free to reach into my pocket. I held out the business card Bridgett had given me and said, “Natalie, call her, ask her if we can use her place, bring Dr. Romero over there
now.
Then call Fowler and Lozano.”

Natalie took the card and I turned my head to look back into the bathroom. Dale had removed the top of the toilet tank and was reaching inside, trying to stop the flow of bloody water. I looked to Rubin and said, “Get a bag together for the doctor—clothes, stuff like that.”

“Right,” he said, and headed for her closet.

I knelt down beside the bed, pulling a comer of her bathrobe back over Felice’s legs.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s just water, somebody just backed up the pipes. It’s okay.”

Her mouth was still open, her lower jaw shaking, her whole body trembling. But her eyes came back to me from wherever she had been looking. I stroked her hair and repeated, “It’s okay, Felice, it’s just water, it’s just water.” She put her other hand back around me and pulled her face to my chest, hiding and crying.

Natalie came back. She said, “Bridgett’ll be waiting for us.”

I nodded and told her to keep an eye on the door until the police came.

I heard Dale say to Rubin, “Cruel motherfuckers who did this, very cruel.”

After the police arrived, I left Natalie alone with Dr. Romero and gave Dale and Rubin their brief. Natalie had copied Bridgett’s home address onto a piece of paper, and I handed it to Dale, saying, “You’ll take Felice to Logan’s place, and you’ll lock it down. Take the car. Natalie and I’ll catch up after we’re done here. Call if anything happens, if anything turns up. Make sure Felice gets whatever she needs, but do not let her out of your sight.” Normally, one of the two of them would have given me a smart-ass answer—“What do you think we are, stupid?”—or along those lines. But this time neither of them did. Dale collared one of the cops, and the two of them went down to the car. Scott Fowler came in as they were leaving, and he took the stairs up slowly, looking around. “You didn’t clean the apartment, did you?” he asked. “Yeah.”

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. By being conscientious, we had effectively destroyed any forensic evidence.

Fowler went to talk to the officer in charge of the scene, and a few minutes after that Dale came back without the cop. He grabbed the vest off the coatrack before he came up the stairs, handing it to me as he said, “I’ve got the cop watching the car.”

Then the bedroom door opened and Felice came out, Natalie with her. Fowler and the cops stopped speaking when the door opened, turning to look, then politely turning back away. Dr. Romero was dressed now, a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt, holding a leather briefcase with both hands.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

I held up the vest, and Felice handed her briefcase to Natalie. She slipped into the Kevlar and I made certain it was securely fastened. After she had her briefcase back, Felice said to me, “Thank you.”

Fowler and two other cops helped us with the egress, and we got her in the car without trouble. Rubin and a cop sat on either side of the doctor in the backseat, with another uniform in the front next to Dale.

“Call me when you get secure,” I told him. “Understood,” Dale said. I shut his door and backed away. Felice was looking at me as the car pulled out.

I stopped to get her mail on the way back upstairs, and amongst the bills and mailers, saw an envelope that looked all too familiar. I showed it to Fowler and he took it and bagged it without bothering to open the envelope.

“We’ll read it at the lab,” he said. “Maybe get a better chance of working some useful information off it.”

“Have you pulled DNA off any of them?” Natalie asked. “Not off these latest ones. Whoever’s doing it is using a sponge or washcloth to wet the glue, not their tongue.” Scott pulled his cellular and made a quick call, asking for a courier. “Who knows?” he told us after he hung up. “Maybe this one’ll be different.”

“Only if our luck changes,” I said.

——

The police didn’t find anything significant. The toilet had been backed up with butcher’s cuttings and blood, and forensics determined the blood wasn’t human, and surmised that the cuttings were from pigs. Other than that, there was nothing. Best guess was that whoever had clogged the pipes had come in through the broken terrace door.

Two hours after Dale called to tell us they were in, Natalie and I left to join them at Bridgett’s. Fowler said he’d call us when he had details on the latest letter. We said thank you, and then took the stairs down to the street. It was nearly eleven in the morning, Friday.

On the subway, Natalie said, “Conference is tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“You been to the Elysium yet?”

“I’ll go over there this afternoon, do a walk-through,” I said.