ColdScheme (26 page)

Chapter Sixteen

The next day, Field called his agents and the trio went to
meet with the Chairman.

“Should I return this?” he asked, shaking at me the sheet of
paper with twenty-one account numbers my father dictated to me last night.

Once again the feeling of uncertainty washed over me. I
didn’t know what to tell him.

“Patterson was set up but he was the mastermind behind the
implants,” Field said, prompting me with a forward head thrust to endorse his
statement.

“Meg!” He raised his voice when I still wouldn’t reply.

“I’m no longer sure of anything, Field,” I finally said,
blinking to banish my fatigue and confusion.

“You tossed and turned all night, mumbling,” he said.

“Not all night,” I said, cracking a feeble smile.

His expression softened. “No,” he said, “but you’re still
struggling with many issues that won’t let you get a good night’s sleep.”

“It’s not over, Field,” I said quietly.

“It’ll take some time to get at the minor players in this
scheme. Blank had years to develop the infrastructure of his US organization
and populate it with operatives. However, Blank’s offshore principals are
probably threatening him already, because two billion dollars is still sitting
frozen in those accounts. It’s just a matter of time before Mr. Blank either
retires for ‘health’ reasons or disappears altogether. Now that we have retired
the bomb-maker, the FBI and the BPD can continue in a more relaxed atmosphere.
We’ll set up a taskforce to keep digging into the—”

I interrupted him. “Have we retired the bomb-maker, Field?”

“I spoke with Mattis and Bourke while you were in the
shower,” he said, turning his profile to me. “Your colleagues are still at
Mongrove, collecting evidence but they already found several scraps of paper
filled with chemical formulae. It seems Dr. Patterson was a ‘bright boy’ who
liked to scribble down the results of his brainstorms while enjoying his
fast-food lunches and dinners.”

“What kind of formulae?” I asked.

“Mattis is not an expert on chemical and biological warfare.
He showed it to one of the Mongrove resident doctors with background in
microbiology. He thought it looked like some kind of new synthetic virus,
something along the lines of instant Ebola in terms of liquefying internal
organs, hemorrhage and death. That would be consistent with the kind of toxin
we think figured in the pacemakers—a two-tiered virus. Tier one results in
instant death, while tier two is something that renders tier one virus flat in
seconds. We’ll be sending those scraps of notes to Atlanta’s Center for Disease
Control and Prevention.” He turned and shook his head at me, smiling, “Relax,
Meg, Patterson was our man.”

I tried hard to smile back at him but something kept
tightening my throat.

“But Dr. Patterson was an impostor, Field,” I said,
dry-voiced. “The real Dr. Patterson is buried in Peru.”

For a moment his eyes flickered with uncertainty then he
said, “Meg, Patterson functioned as a doctor at Mongrove for four years. He had
to have some medical background. He could have been an expelled medical
student, even a bona fide doctor who, for whatever reasons, lost his medical
license. You know, a brilliant ‘hacker’ of medicine.”

I didn’t think so.

“I’m going to take a look around at Mongrove but I have to
pick up my partner. Would you mind giving me a lift to our headquarters?” I
asked.

“If I finish our meeting with the Chairman early I’ll join
you,” he said. “Meanwhile, if you need to convince yourself that Patterson was
the mastermind, why don’t you go and talk to Smeddin? Your medical examiner is
another fan of popular mechanics—and research journals. Besides, you can check
if he’s already finished Patterson’s autopsy.”

“Why would Joe have to autopsy Patterson’s body? He was
shot. What’s there to…” My voice trailed off when I saw his pushed up brows.
“Oh, come on, Field, get real!” I moaned. “You don’t think Patterson would have
tried out his deadly pacemaker product on himself?”

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “You believe that
Patterson was just an accomplice so…his overseer might have implanted him with
the pacemaker device, to assure eternal cooperation, something like Brick’s
case.”

My mouth crept open. I hadn’t considered this angle yet.
Then I caught Field’s grin.

“You’re laughing at me,” I said, grimacing. He came over and
put his hand around my shoulders.

“Sorry, Meg. I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

* * * * *

When I entered our headquarters I met with an almost eerie
silence.

“Mary Lou,” I asked our dispatcher when I stopped at her
desk to see whether Ken was in. “Why is it so quiet? Aren’t Baltimore citizens
worried anymore that they’ve been implanted with a chest-bomb?”

“We couldn’t cope anymore. Bourke appealed to Commissioner
Walton and got a permission to implement a temporary sanity-saving solution.
All the phone lines save 9-1-1 have been routed to electronic message screens,”
she said.

It may have been a sanity-saving measure but electronic
messaging didn’t reflect very well on BPD. Mary Lou must have seen what flashed
on my face.

“Walton is giving a press conference as we speak,” she said.
“The criminal who was exploding Baltimore citizens has been shot dead. Everyone
should calm down and make a regular appointment for a medical checkup with
their doctor to put their mind at ease. Walton is stressing the fact that the
victims lived for years with the bomb in their chest—normally. You look tired,
Meggie. You should take time off once all the reporting and news conference
shit dies down.”

In a couple of weeks Jazz would be out of school and summer
would be upon us. Vacation sounded ideal. The mere thought of being able to
take time off should have at least cheered me up. It didn’t but I didn’t want
to worry Mary Lou for too long.

“Is Ken in yet?”

She made a face. “He came in with Brenda. She gave her
statement and then he drove her home. Do you want me to get a hold of him for
you?”

I told her to give Ken a message that I was going to
Mongrove and asked her to get me a car since my Acura was sitting under my
carport.

There was still a marked police presence at Mongrove. I saw
half a dozen police cruisers haphazardly parked around the entrance and there
would be more unmarked sedans sitting in the parking lot. The receptionist
raised her head when I knocked on her window, waiting without saying anything.

I took out my badge and she nodded to go inside.

I flipped my badge to show my shield and fitted it inside my
jacket breast pocket so the officers I met en route to Patterson’s office
wouldn’t stop me.

“Are you back or you’ve never left?” I asked Sven when he
came toward me as I walked into the office that didn’t look much different from
how I saw it looking last night. Other than a few plastic baskets filled with
paper and files, the officers conducted their search neatly.

“My washroom break counted as a nap,” he said, chuckling.
“The FBI contingent left. It’s just the BPD now.”

“Inspector Weston told me that you found scraps of paper
with chemical formulae,” I said, waiting.

“Agent Mattis took most of them with him but I knew you’d
want to go have a chat with Joe, pick his brain, so I ‘put aside’ a couple for
you,” Sven winked at me.

“Withholding evidence?” I murmured. “What about greasy
fingerprints?”

He made a face. “We’re all one big happy team, Meg and we’ve
already checked for prints. None. Doctors wear latex gloves, especially when
jotting down notes. And these days, staff at fast-food joints wear plastic
gloves too so food paper bags are print-free.”

He gave me two palm-sized scraps of brown utility paper,
scribbled with formulae. Other than chemical symbols for carbon, oxygen and
nitrogen, nothing else made sense. I turned them over but the reverse side
didn’t have any notes, just half of what looked like a fast-food place logo.

“Do we know where Patterson ordered his meals from?” I
asked.

Sven motioned at one of the large, black plastic garbage
containers. “We cleaned out his desk—and even some of his files. He was a real
junk-food freak. Salerno’s Pizza, A&W, Pete’s Chilli Grill, Denny’s, Mamma
Dimitri’s, McDonald’s, Nando’s Chicken, Mike’s Tacos—food bags from what seems
like every other fast foot outfit within greater Baltimore area.”

“A&W, McDonald’s and Nando’s Chicken don’t deliver,” I
mumbled.

Sven gave me an injured look. “He was the Chief Resident
honcho, Meg. He’d send out his underlings to fetch his chow.”

“All the way downtown Baltimore? We’re in Brooklyn,” I said,
for some reason uneasy.

“Franchise, Meg. There’s McDonald’s and A&W just up the
street,” Sven said.

He was right. Most franchised fast food had outlets all over
Baltimore—but not Nando’s Chicken.

“I talked to Brenda’s friend, Valerie,” Sven said. “Her
statement supports what Brenda told us. Valerie was late coming to meet her
because she was helping settle down the agitated patient who broke his
stitches. The piles of junk-food wrappings bothered me too so I asked Valerie
about her boss. She said Patterson frequently accompanied his patients to
Hopkins, when they had to have surgery or other medical procedure that couldn’t
be done here. He’d bring back tons of junk food from uptown and downtown and
share it with his staff. He could not only fly a chopper but small aircraft.”

“Didn’t Valerie think it strange that a Chief Resident would
accompany patients to Hopkins?” I asked.

Sven smiled. “No. She thought he was just a dedicated
doctor. Most of his female staff loved him.”

“Why?” I was taken aback.

Sven shrugged. “From what they told us, he flirted with them
but never hit on them, if you know what I mean.”

“You did make sure that all this glowing character reference
for Dr. Patterson got to our Commissioner in time for him to include it in his
press statement,” I said, grimacing.

He laughed and waved me on. “Walk around, Meg. See for
yourself. Other than the futuristic formulae that might turn out to be a recipe
for chicken soup, there’s not much in this office to incriminate the suspect…I
shot,” he finished with a lot less bluster than before.

“He was a suspect and definitely implicated in the scheme,
Sven,” I said, trying to ease his conscience. “He was…” I stopped before the
rest came out—an accomplice. Sharing information with a colleague about the
case was one thing. But what I had were only feelings and doubts, not
information that could be substantiated with evidence—facts.

Sven left to oversee collection of whatever could be
considered evidence and I walked around Patterson’s spacious but drafty office.
Now that all technology has been either dismantled or shut off, the air grew
stale and officers opened windows. The iron bars driven into the old masonry
were rust-free. They must have been a relatively new addition. Patterson’s
constant hints about the underfunded state of his facility were just like the rest
of him—lies, illusions.

I walked between the steel grey filing cabinets but even
though our people would have finished dusting for fingerprints, I didn’t get an
urge to open the drawers. I didn’t doubt that if I did all I’d see would be
patients’ files.

After about ten minutes, when I saw that my presence was
surplus and inspiration didn’t visit me as I walked around, I headed for the
door. Two officers squeezed by me, carrying a large plastic garbage bin filled
with balled and crumpled paper food bags.

“Evidence?” I asked.

“Nah,” one of them said. “Just garbage.”

“Mind if I take this?” I pointed at a fist-sized ball of
brown utility paper with a few red and green specks visible in the folds. He
shook his head, his eyes narrowing with amusement.

“Thanks,” I said, picking it out and putting it in my purse.

“We went through his garbage pretty thoroughly, fingerprint
guys too,” the cop said.

“I know,” I said, turning my back to them.

“A souvenir, Sergeant?” I heard him
snicker. “Too bad the evil mastermind’s dead. Otherwise you could have asked
him to autograph it.”

“I’ll hold a séance,” I said over my shoulder and increased
my stride.

* * * * *

I called Ken. His cell phone went into
messaging. That was unusual but not worrisome. Bourke could have asked him to
stand by while Walton was giving a press conference, to provide details if
required. Or he could be fussing over Brenda, sputtering platitudes but still
not staying the words Brenda wanted to hear, “Will you marry me?”

I called Field and the messaging situation repeated itself.
I wanted to talk to him, not leave a sterile report. I hung up and decided to
call Joe.

“We missed you last night,” I said.

“The victim didn’t die of an exploded chest. These days I
don’t make field trips for mere bullets,” he said, sounding tired.

“Brenda was the hostage, Joe,” I said, waiting.

He was silent for a long time then said, “I know. I wanted
to come when forensics called but I figured Ken would be there. I’d have been
surplus.”

“A hostage victim can always use another comforting pair of
hands,” I said.

“I already talked to her. It’s not like we can develop any
kind of relationship other than professional. Brenda was just using me to get
to Ken. She said as much. I didn’t mind. She’s a very nice woman, charming and
warm-hearted.”

His casual confession surprised me but I believed him.
Brenda’s campaign, initially subtle, wasn’t working so she went for the
sledgehammer.

“That’s very sporting of you, Joe. But not even a courtesy
trip? He was your colleague.”

“What are you talking about? That’s not what the paperwork
that came with him says.”