Flash Point (27 page)

‘Young lady,' General Ted said, still smiling, but not quite as good-natured and cheerful as before, ‘if there's a missing dead body out there to be found, I'm positive our men will run across it in their travels. But there are twelve terrorists who have killed over fifty people in mere days, and the time for giving them a head start to escape our clutches is over. We are putting out the shelter in place order and will be finalizing a lockdown of this city until the perpetrators are caught or dead. That is what I was sent here to do, and that is what I will be doing. We appreciate your consult and your candor, but we have a job to do, and I caution anyone who may think we should do
otherwise
to remain out of our way.'

He gave a final nod, then turned to Jenna and smiled wide, slipping right back into his grandfatherly, teddy-bear persona that Jenna was sure had gotten him many places in life. He again offered her a hand.

‘Lovely to have met you, Doctor, and please, now that it looks like you folks will get to take the evening off a little early tonight, do drive safely home to your family. I bet they'll be just thrilled to have some extra time with ya.'

Jenna smiled, tight-lipped. ‘They will, of course. Always fun to have a movie night with the fam.'

You know nothing about my family, asshole. And unless you're too intimidated, address my supervising officer with the title and respect she deserves.

With a curt nod to Saleda and Porter, General Ted Quintrell strolled with Sergeant Young and Mr Underwood toward the ER's exit door. The team followed, trading glances and raised eyebrows.

As they reached the exit to the street, Sergeant Young held the door open for them. After they'd each passed through, the thud behind them let them know the cop was gone.

‘I'll take that as kicking us out,' Porter said. ‘Fucking morons.'

‘It won't smoke them out. All it'll do is cause mass hysteria. Locking people in their homes, cops in riot gear banging on doors. It's exactly what Black Shadow wants. And they'll use it to incite every bit of fear of the government they can. Try to turn even
more
normal citizens to terrorism,' Saleda ranted, kicking at the curb before sitting down on it, collapsing her head in her hands.

The shade of dull blue Jenna kept missing by a hair today returned. This time, Jenna caught it, because Saleda had just said the word. Normal.

Jenna shook her head, pacing back and forth. ‘You're right. It's just what they want. More sympathizers for their cause, reason to fear those in authority to help them rise up. They planned this in hopes this would be the outcome, which is exactly why they won't be found by brute search, either. They're too smart for that …' Jenna stilled as jungle green flashed in. Her heart rate picked up.
Planning.

‘What?' Porter asked from where he stood on the grassy median strip. ‘What're you thinking?'

Jenna smiled despite the grim scenario, her breath catching. ‘Because they
did
plan it. This whole thing, almost to a fault. They had this scenario in mind, planned to use it to win support from everyday citizens. They
didn't
just plan it half-ass. To win a battle like the one they're waging – to win
government change
– you have to plan on the kind of heat General Teddy Boozer in there's cooking up. That way, when it does, you can use it. Which means you also have to plan for its ramifications and risks, because your target isn't to blow up a building and make a statement. Your target is an
end goal.
A
movement.
And to inspire a movement, you have to stay in sight …'

‘What are you getting at, Jenna? I'm sorry to be a complete ass, but if this is some of your Color Wonder “You can see it but only with my special markers kit” crap … Please forgive me, but I bought a six pack of Corona last night with the money you gave me for the box,' Porter said.

Jenna half-laughed, shook her head. ‘I'm just saying they figured out more than just the plan to get viewers and the plan to escape. They also figured out how to deal if something like what happened in there today went wrong. If they could take and hide the body of anyone whose identity would mean revealing their identities, too, they could keep their covers longer. Live their normal,
everyday
lives longer. Because if the movement
does
take, they'll need to be out there with it. Visible.'

‘You think they planned to kill each other all along?' Saleda asked.

Jenna bit her lip. She hadn't ruled it out, but it felt wrong. ‘No, not necessarily. I think it's more likely that with that many people flinging blades around in crowded places, they were smart enough to be ready for the very real possibility that one of their own could get hurt.
Especially
considering they recruited clumsy, untrained fighters like Hester,' Jenna said.

‘True. She almost got in trouble at the bank and had to be saved,' Porter said. ‘So you're thinking they come to every attack prepared to get rid of one of their own as part of their escape plan? Just in case?'

‘Yep. I think that's exactly what they did here, and I think they'd have been ready to do it at the bank, too,' Jenna said, the ballet slipper pink she associated with patterns flashing in. ‘And I think that bank plan is exactly how we're going to figure out what they had in mind for their worst case scenario today.'

‘Shh!' Porter hissed as Saleda grunted.

‘That was my toe,' Saleda said in a low growl.

‘Sorry,' Jenna said, taking a large step into the darkness of the hallway. It was creepy, but stepping all over each other wasn't going to make it any less so. ‘How close do you think we are, Porter? Can you feel anything yet?'

Porter's steady, even breathing was about the
only
moving air. Damn, a flashlight would have been nice. Or, you know, the ability to use their badges and investigate a place of interest like they would if General Fluff-n-Stuff hadn't set his beady black eyes on the Black Shadow investigation.

‘From what Irv's saying, we should be about ten paces from the door,' Porter relayed. Porter was their ears; Irv had hooked the team up with a Bluetooth-like earpiece, but smaller, with no glow so it wouldn't give them away in the dark. Irv had hacked into the surveillance systems at Mt. Olive Medical Center – almost forty miles away from where the bloodbath in the emergency department at Fountains of Mercy Hospital had destroyed families and incited such palpable terror in the community. This way, Irv could guide them through the dark corridors in parts of the hospital not normally visited at this hour. Even open some doors when possible.

Jenna shivered, rubbed her arms. So many goosebumps. Man, it seemed forever since they'd sat in the warm SUV in the parking lot of the little diner across the road from Fountains of Mercy, trying to regroup. She'd sipped warm coffee –
awful
but warm coffee – as they waited for Irv to tap into the surveillance videos outside the bank, its parking lots, and even those of buildings nearby. They'd scanned the footage plenty of times before, trying to peg down a lead to chase, but this time, Irv was looking for something else.

Jenna had been wearing the earpiece at the time and had just taken a bite of a stale biscuit when Irv's voice hit her ear. ‘There. Got something. They all escaped in the same vehicle outside the bank, which we all know dead-ended us at the parking garage at Fifth and Link four blocks away.'

Jenna knew all too well. The UNSUBs had exited the vehicle, fanned out, and weren't seen again. They had all left through other means of transportation, none of which were caught in the angles covered by the parking garage surveillance camera, or – that they could tell – any other cameras in the area. But this time, Irv noticed something that hadn't registered in their initial looks: the presence of a black hearse parked on the same level of the garage where the getaway vehicle had waited. None of the UNSUBs batted an eye at it at the time, so there'd been no need to give it a second thought. But right about now when they were thinking Black Shadow had a body disposal plan as an insurance policy at every stop, it was exactly the link they needed.

With a click into the same garage's surveillance, Irv confirmed the hearse still occupied the same spot. Hadn't moved. A few checks confirmed it had been stolen weeks before, but that had been enough for the team to surmise that if a hearse was the out, it only made sense for that gig's emergency dump destination to be a funeral parlor.

At first, they'd all thought for sure Black Shadow would be too smart to use the ambulance they had appropriated to be their way
into
Fountains of Mercy's Emergency Department as their way
out
, as well. It was obviously trackable. But after the bank's disposal plan and the hearse involved in it came to light, they decided that maybe the ambulance had been the perfect plan all along. After all, it was useful, especially if they needed to hide a body somewhere.

The ambulance had turned up shortly after the attack at the track beside the football field of Kegney R. Magnet Middle School, following a Fighting Phantoms football game. Apparently cheering fans, a band playing fight songs, and fresh cheeseburgers could undermine even the most devoted EMTs.

They knew this game would be going on. Ambulances have to be at all games. They staked it out, knew the EMTs left and came all the way down the hill from it. It was there for the taking.

And it had worked. Black Shadow had swapped the vehicles while everybody in the vicinity was too focused on a bunch of fourteen-year-olds tossing a pigskin to notice it.

Now, as the team tiptoed through the dark, Jenna couldn't help but imagine Charley trying to explain to Ayana why Mommy couldn't come to her mother-daughter tea party at pre-school next week because she'd been arrested for trespassing in the basement of Mt. Olive Medical, feeling through the dark for a door that would take her into the morgue. She could just hear it now:
‘A, Mommy really wanted to be here, but she needed to check to see if a missing body had been snuck into a giant freezer in the bottom of a hospital where they keep the dead people.'

‘Wait, wait,' Porter said, jiggling what sounded like a door handle or knob. ‘Irv can you buzz me in here?'

Jenna couldn't hear the answer through Porter's earpiece, but she was sure it was sardonic, egotistical, and best of all, affirmative. A few seconds later, a clicking sound snapped in the air, echoing through the quiet hall.

‘Thanks, man,' Porter said to Irv, and he turned the knob and pushed open the door.

Saleda stepped through the entrance in front of Jenna, flipping on the lights in the anteroom, no doubt the place where the autopsies and other medical exams were done before the bodies made it into the cooler that they knew to lie beyond the thick, steel door behind them that reminded Jenna a little of the bank vault Ashlee Haynie had been closed into.

‘Yep, here it is,' Porter said, leaning over one of the stainless steel counters, scanning an open manila folder. ‘Listed as— Oh, for fuck's sake …'

After the football field, Irv had done some fancy footwork tracking various traffic cameras across the city until he was able to find the ambulance that had originally been stationed at the football game before Black Shadow swapped it out, and it had showed up on the surveillance video in the ambulance entrance to the ER at Mt. Olive Medical not long after. Irv could tap into and the electronic filing system the hospital was now using to make their patient's information more accessible— ‘Yep, to me,' Irv had said as he'd perused the records.

The dead assassin had been pushed into the ER on a stretcher already covered and presented as a DOA. Black Shadow had to have either been faster than they thought was possible or their network wider than the team knew, too, because the ‘EMTs' that had wheeled in the body were met by a doctor – the patient's long-time heart physician, according to his chart.

‘What? They name him something cute like Peter Cottontail or Harry Potter?' Jenna asked, rolling her eyes.

‘Eh, not quite
that
obvious. They're smug and think they're smart, but even they wouldn't be that outlandish. No, they went subtle this time,' Porter said.

‘Define subtle,' Saleda said.

‘Stine, Franklin Newman III.'

Oh, hell.

‘Frank N. Stine,' Saleda and Jenna said in disgusted unison.

‘Yep. He currently resides in Drawer 231. The question is, who is actually in Drawer 231 and what drawer did he come from, because I'm far more interested in its newest resident.'

They all were. After the dead assassin had been rushed in by the Black Shadow members masquerading as EMT's, curtains had been drawn for privacy under the guise of keeping his hysterical wife – no doubt also a plant – from interfering with attempts to save him. Which meant when they wheeled him downstairs, as long as they were careful to swap a John Doe into the killer's designated morgue freezer drawer, then slide the dead killer into John Doe's vacant slab, anyone who happened to open up the drawer would see exactly what the folder said they would.

Jenna had her cell phone out now, Irv on speaker. Now that they were inside the steel doors enclosing the morgue, they could risk a little more noise. Especially with Irv monitoring the cameras inside Mt. Olive Medical to warn them if anyone was coming.

‘The dinosaur of a system they've got running over at Mt. Olive finally coughed up the John Doe files on record in the past year. I cross-referenced those with current occupants of our favorite morgue, and I found four. Which will it be, contestants? Will you take what's behind door number 106, door number 15, door 83, or door 182?'

Porter closed the folder. ‘Well, let's go see if we can land the grand prize.'