False Positive (15 page)

Throughout her life, her career—her mission—the woman had been a lightning rod for information. She drew it to her, attracting the little details that combined to build the foundations she based her life's work on. It wasn't just a passive process, though. She didn't sit back and wait for knowledge to find her. She sought it out. Dug for it. Cultivated it. Unearthed it from the most unlikely places. Eventually she was even able to harvest it from the electronic brains of the nation's most secret institutions.

The key point was, wherever the information came from, the flow was one way. From elsewhere, to her. It had always been that way. But now, for the first time, that polarity was going to be reversed. And she certainly hadn't been ready for that to happen.

The phone call had been a shock. Not the origin—she'd recognized the caller's number or she wouldn't have answered—but the subject. The demand that was made. The corner she'd been backed into. The information she was now committed to giving up.

Would she have agreed to the meeting, if she'd had more time to think? Probably. A problem had arisen, and it needed to be contained. There was no point hiding from it. That was a lesson life
had reinforced, time after time. But she still felt an overbearing sense of dread as she climbed in behind the wheel of her Mercedes.

Dread, of losing control.

Of her life. Her work. And her destiny.

Sunday. Evening
.

Ethan missing for forty-nine and a quarter hours

“Was he certain?” Hale put her whiskey glass down on Devereaux's coffee table and started to pace.

“No.” Devereaux wished she'd stop. The constant pointless movement was annoying him and her shoes were squeaking on his polished wood floor. “How could he be?”

“Do you trust him?” Hale stopped just short of the chrome-plated warship captain's binoculars that Devereaux kept on a stand by the window.

“You know the story of the frog and the scorpion, right? So, no. Of course I don't trust him. But he wasn't lying, either. And he wasn't making it up. The real question is, how reliable are his sources? Better than anything else we've got, is my guess.”

“He didn't balk too much when you told him to ask?” Hale returned to the cream suede couch, kicked off her shoes, and tucked her feet up beneath her.

“He took a little convincing.”

Devereaux had told Vernon that the price for replacing Carver in his “organization” was information about the dead hooker. It was a long shot. One Hale had been reluctant to ask Devereaux to take, given the people it would bring him in contact with. But she figured
if the FBI was right about Ethan Crane's abductor being connected to law enforcement, she had little choice. Not if she wanted the Cranes to see their son alive again.

“Vernon didn't question why you couldn't go through police channels?”

“That was the first thing he questioned.” Devereaux took a sip of his own whiskey. “I told him I could do that. But it wouldn't make me look too peachy when the person I was asking about woke up dead the next morning.”

“His information was pretty vague. He wasn't trying to put you off the scent?”

“I don't think so. I listened to his calls on the extension phone. He talked to four people. They all said the same thing. No one knew anything about a hooker being killed that night.”

“But one talked about the body being dumped?”

“Right. Only one. Vernon ran him through it, back and forth. His story held up. He said a white Honda Odyssey pulled up at the side of the street, right where the body was found the next morning. He saw its side door slide open, and a body-size bundle roll out.”

“Did he see who was in the van?”

“It was too dark for a positive ID, but he was sure there was only one person. A woman. Short. Petite. Blond hair.”

Monday. Early Morning
.

Ethan missing for sixty hours

In the closet. In the hallway. Why's Daddy so late?

Footsteps come closer. The door creaks open. The light switches on. Coats swish on the rail. Daddy's boot falls over. Right above my head. I don't breathe at all. I squeeze my eyes shut. It gets brighter, even with my eyes closed. The first board's been moved. The second board moves. The stranger's found me! He's going to hurt me. Kill me…

I try to wriggle away, deeper into the space. The bugs and spiders scatter and run. I can't move. A hand grabs me. A man's. He pulls me. Grabs me with his other hand. He drags me out. Lifts me up. His arms are crushing me. His coat is scratching my face
.

The man carries me to the kitchen. He puts me on a chair. Pats my head. Crouches down next to me, so his face is level with mine
.

It's Detective Tomcik. He's younger. He's not dead
.

“Cooper? Listen to me, son. I have some news. It's important. I'm sorry to tell you this, but your daddy? He's been hurt. Real bad.”

I don't answer. I can't think…

“Son? Do you understand me? Your daddy? He's dead.”

Devereaux opened his eyes. He was sitting up. Shivering. Everything around him was black and white, like it had been in his dream. Except the space was bigger. And the objects were different. He could see a white wall, ten feet away. A picture of his cabin. A rack of clothes. Gray drapes, covering a window. Sheets and blankets, soaked with sweat. A silver alarm clock on a nightstand. A cellphone.

A little color began to bleed into his vision, and Devereaux realized he was in bed. In his apartment. Not in his father's house. And then he knew what had happened. His dream had run its course this time. Nothing had interrupted it. He'd reached the moment when he'd found out he was an orphan.

The moment that had haunted him since he was six years old.

Whether he was dreaming, or wide awake.

Crowded from three directions by a jumble of grim, functional parking structures, the Jefferson County morgue looked like a multi-story garage itself, only with its sides blocked in. It was easily the most unattractive concrete building in a city that even the locals agreed had its share of unattractive concrete buildings. Devereaux thought that was appropriate, for a place no one ever wanted to visit.

He was there on Hale's orders, and he was on his own. Loflin was still on restricted duty following the shooting at Carver's warehouse, but Devereaux suspected she hadn't argued very hard against being kept at her desk. She hadn't even shown up there by the time Devereaux had left headquarters, a few minutes previously. He'd tried again to reach her on the phone, and was sick of hearing her voicemail greeting. She'd been incommunicado since before he'd been dragged into Captain Emrich's office the previous afternoon. Devereaux couldn't understand that kind of attitude. With Ethan now missing for close on two-and-a-half days, the only thing that could have kept him away from the investigation would have involved him being on a mortuary slab, himself.

Devereaux parked in the half-empty lot and made his way to the staff entrance. The pavement all around it was cracked and littered with cigarette butts. Devereaux had smoked when he was a kid. It had lost its appeal once he was old enough for it to be legal. And now
he smiled at the irony—stepping over things that kill you on your way to the place you go when you're dead.

Devereaux buzzed the intercom and after a couple of minutes Dr. Liam Barratt appeared in the doorway, dressed in faded blue clinical scrubs. Barratt was Birmingham's longest-serving medical examiner. Everything about him was round—his body, his face, his glasses—and he was growing rounder with every passing year. His path had crossed with Devereaux's many times, and Devereaux was amazed at how cheerful the guy always seemed, given what he did for a living.

“Cooper!” Barratt was grinning. “Good to see you, buddy! Come on in.”

“Thanks, Liam.” Devereaux stepped inside, trying not to breathe the chemicals in the air and hoping he wouldn't be there for too long.

“Tell me what you need.” Barratt turned and started past the paintings of sailboats that lined the corridor, his rubber work boots slapping against the rough carpet as he walked. “But talk as we walk. I have a group of medical students on their way in from UAB. We're introducing them to their cadavers today, and I always like to line up a few surprises for them.”

“Liam?” Devereaux hadn't moved. “Any chance we could do this in your office?”

Postmortems were to Devereaux what photographs were to aborigines. The first time he'd sat in on one he'd sworn he could see the victim's soul being hosed away down the drain at the end of the procedure along with the blood and chunks of tissue that had been left over when the body was sewn back together. The image had stuck with him through the years and now the slightest glimpse—or whiff—of a mortuary room made him reaffirm his private oath that when his own time came, he'd die alone in the woods where his body could decompose unmolested.

“For you, my old friend, we can.” Barratt checked his watch. “I remember how you feel about these things. But if I miss the chance to hide one of my TAs in the cooling locker, ready to jump out on an unsuspecting med-student, I won't forgive you.”

Barratt's office was small and spotlessly clean. Every inch of three of its walls was crammed with paintings of mountains from all around the world. The fourth was reserved for Barratt's impressive collection of certificates and letters of commendation. Below the most colorful of his diplomas there was an orange Nespresso machine on a small wooden cabinet. Barratt fired it up and cranked out two espressos. He handed one to Devereaux, then slid onto the chair behind his desk, smiling all the while.

“You should come by more often, Detective.” Barratt downed his coffee in a single gulp. “I never use the machine when I'm on my own.”

“Or we could meet at Starbucks.” Devereaux took a sip. “I prefer my hot beverages without the hint of formaldehyde.”

“I guess I'm used to it.” Barratt chuckled. “But if you didn't come for my hospitality, what do you want?”

“I need to pick your brain.” Devereaux set his cup down. “Do you remember a Jane Doe, a prostitute, brought in a couple of weeks ago? She was found on waste ground near 60th Street.”

“I half remember the case.” Barratt reached for his computer keyboard. “Let me refresh my memory. OK. Here we go. What about her, Cooper? I already sent a full report to Detective Randall.”

“I know. I've seen the report. But I need you to go beyond that. Forget the normal things you look for. For example, was there anything unusual about this girl? Even if it was just a feeling you had? Something you couldn't measure, or quantify?”

“Cooper? What's this about?” Barratt's smile had faded.

“I'm probably clutching at straws here, Liam, but it's important. There's a link to a case I'm working. A missing kid. He's been gone since Friday night, and time's running out for him. We think he was taken by a woman who was driving a white Honda. We think the Jane Doe's body was dumped out of the same car. If we can find out more about the connection, it might lead us to the boy.”

Barratt stared at Devereaux for a moment, then nodded. “OK. I'm with you.” He consulted his computer again. “Let's see. You've read the report, so you know the facts. Her throat was cut. She suffered a single fatal incision. Probably with a four-inch blade. It left no distinctive marks, so there's nothing to help you there. But if you're
looking for my interpretation, I'd say this was a utility killing. There were no hesitation wounds. No defensive wounds. Most likely it was a means to an end. Done for convenience, not in anger or for a thrill. I'd also say there's a high probability the killer has done this before, and treated it as a somewhat routine act. The only other noteworthy aspect you already know—the girl died somewhere else, and her body was moved postmortem.”

“That's good, Liam. But is there anything about the victim herself? Where she was from? Her background?”

“I'm pretty sure she's Eastern European. Probably Hungarian. Her dental work is quite distinctive. I couldn't get a match on her records, so she quite likely came here illegally.”

“Nick Randall said you thought she was new to hooking?”

“Right. Her clothes spoke for themselves, but she was well fed. There was no indication of drug use. And no recent sexual activity.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“Please, Liam. Wrack your brains. Go for a walk. Meditate. Pray, if you have to. Just give me something. A little boy's life is on the line.”

Barratt took a moment, then shook his head. For the first time Devereaux could remember, a frown spread across his face.

“OK.” Devereaux swallowed his disappointment. “Thanks, Liam. Now I need you to do two more things. They might sound paranoid, but trust me, they're vital. First, if you do think of anything, call me on my cell. Right away. Only me. Only on my cell. And second: If anyone asks, I wasn't here today.”

Physically, the woman was exhausted. But emotionally and mentally, she was on top of the world.

She'd stayed up far too late, drugging the little boy, leaving him at the hotel, and driving out to the meeting at an anonymous diner off Route Four. Looking back, she couldn't believe she'd been so nervous! How could she have thought it was too soon to present the information? Yes, it was sooner than she'd have liked. Sooner than she'd planned. But circumstances had overtaken her, and left her no choice. She'd had to lay it all out: The past, the present, and the future. Place her life's work in another person's hands. Close her eyes. And pray.

She needn't have worried. In fact, she should have done it earlier. Of course her message had gotten through! She was a good teacher. Her preparations had been thorough. Her genes were on her side. And so, of course, was the truth…