Killer Weekend (27 page)

T
revalian opened his eyes to the sound of beeping. He noted the IV tubing and the finger clip monitoring his vitals. The bedside curtain was pulled back, revealing a private room, its wall-mounted television dark. No phone. Blackout curtains pulled. He wore a hospital gown, white with little blue daisies. They had a catheter in him.

   
Alive,
he thought. This was followed immediately by:
escape.
He knew how this would go down, because he'd done a few of these jobs himself. Eighty thousand patients died unnecessarily in U.S. hospitals each year. Not all of those deaths were the hospitals' fault. His being in federal custody was now somebody's worst nightmare. Phone calls were being made. Arrangements. He'd be dead by morning.

   
Escape,
he thought for the second time, taking in all the medical equipment, his wrapped leg, the elevated bed, the room. The temporary absence of handcuffs suggested the nurses needed to move or monitor him during this early going; it wouldn't last long. He was no doubt heavily guarded from the outside. With a bum leg and no weapons, he was his own biggest obstacle. A sitting duck. If he didn't make a phone call within a few hours . . .

   He looked around the room. So little to work with. Some tubes, a few machines. Too many pillows to count. He had several IV stands to work with, but they weren't going to measure up against Tasers and semiautomatic weapons.

   He strained to retrieve the purple plastic tub sealed in stretch film from the adjacent end table. There was a washbowl within the tub. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A comb. No razor.

   He wasn't going to win any footraces. For all he knew he couldn't put weight on the knee. He was trapped. They'd caught him.

   He couldn't begin to accept that.

   If he asked, they would never bring him a razor. He needed for them to bring him one
without
his asking. He spent twenty minutes lying there contemplating this dilemma before spotting the communications jacks in the wall marked EKG
.

   He reached for and pushed the button clipped to the stainless steel side rail, summoning a nurse. Three minutes later, his room door opened, and a matronly woman in blue scrubs appeared. Behind her, looking in briefly, was one of the sheriff 's men.

   Trevalian told the woman, "My chest . . . I'm having this pain . . ." He tapped his sternum. "Right in here."

   "Okay," she said kindly, though both concerned and afraid of him. "I'll let the doctor know. We'll take care of it."

   She knocked to leave the room. This was a twist he hadn't expected: The door locked from the hallway side.

H
is name is Milav Trevalian," Agent Dryer said to Walt from the other side of the front booth of the Mobile Command Center, currently parked twenty yards from the emergency room. "We have very little on him at present. U.S. Attorney's office is stalling us, basically because it's a Sunday and everyone in Washington is out on a yacht or a golf course. My guess is nothing much happens until tomorrow morning."

   "But we question him later tonight," Walt said. It was pushing eight o'clock.

   "With the doctor's permission, yes."

   "I've got him on capital murder charges—the singer, the woman we found in his bathtub. Boise is sending up forensics to process that scene."

   "That's between you and the AUSA. I have no idea how they'll want to charge him. Listen, I gave you a shout because the AG wants to see you. If you're going to do that, it has to be right now. She's at the house."

   "I can't leave," Walt said.

   "Understood. I'll pass it along." Dryer pushed some papers aside. "How is he?"

"Going to be okay."

"He saved your life."

   Walt lowered his head, the man's words resonating. His uniform shirt was speckled with his father's blood. At one time he'd thought he'd spend his life hating the man. How quickly that had passed. He needed time to decompress.

   "Hell of a thing you did, too," Dryer said.

   "It came together. It was a group effort."

   "The hell it was, but it's good of you to say so."

   Walt motioned to the back of the bus. "You mind? I've got some clean shirts back there."

   "Help yourself. It's your vehicle, Sheriff." He grabbed hold of Walt's arm as Walt passed. "The dog . . . how the hell's the dog?"

   "We're awaiting a bomb squad tech from Salt Lake." He checked his watch. "Probably here by now. He'll work with our vet."

   "A fucking dog . . . ," Dryer said, sounding exasperated. "Right through our checkpoint." Knowing he had failed and that at some point this was coming back onto him, knowing Walt's earlier warnings would come back to haunt him.

   "Yeah," Walt said. "How about that?"

A 
different nurse—young and overweight, in loose-fitting blue scrubs—wheeled in the EKG trolley.

         She maintained a professional air as she asked some questions, explained the EKG, and then helped him to sit up. She got his arms out of the nightgown and folded it across his lap. Trevalian scanned the contents of the cart.

   He had a chest thick with brown hair, but it was his nine scars that caught and held her attention. Her eyes jumped clinically one to the next, and he could imagine her explaining them to herself. Two bullet wounds, three stabbings, and four lacerations. She dispensed some shaving cream from a can and applied it to several areas on his chest. She then shaved him, rinsing the razor between strokes in the purple tub of warm water that she'd filled in the washroom.

   When she was done, she took a towel to him and told him they'd wait a minute for the skin to dry completely.

   "Could I trouble you for a refill?" He handed her the plastic pitcher of ice water from his bedside.

   "No problem." She headed into the washroom.

   Trevalian slipped his hand through the side rail and snatched a disposable razor from a box on the lower shelf of the EKG trolley. He slipped it under the covers, between his legs—let her find it there— and lay back on the pillows. He'd spiked his heart rate and pumped up his adrenaline, wondering if that might skew his EKG.

   The nurse returned with the water, poured some, and actually held the cup for him as he sipped from the straw.
Like taking candy from a
baby,
he thought.

T
revalian waited for the dinner tray to be removed and the hospital room door to shut, and the clicking of the dead bolt in the doorjamb. He checked the clock: 8:06 p.m. The nurses had been checking on him every two hours.

   He administered one last dose of painkiller from the electronic box attached to his bed and went to work disconnecting the IV tube. They had removed the catheter in the late afternoon and were no longer monitoring his vital signs, so he had little concern of alerting the nurses' station to his activities. He lowered the side rail, unhooked his leg, swung it over the bed, and waited for the rush of blood and pain to his head to subside. Then, one-handing the IV stand, he prodded the ceiling tile, and to his relief, it moved. He was reminded of placing Rafe Nagler's body bag into just such a hiding place at the Salt Lake City airport. How interesting, he thought, that things should come full circle like this.

   He moved the panel out of the way and slid it to the side, but only far enough to look vaguely out of place. The key to any ruse was psychology—to push and pull the adversary, allowing him his own discoveries. Trevalian wasn't going to make this too obvious.

   He covered the disposable razor with a towel and crushed it against

the vinyl tile floor, making sure to pick up every last speck of broken plastic. He then removed a piece of adhesive tape from his arm and taped one of the razor's two narrow blades to the end of a pen that read "St. Jude's Community Hospital." He tested it and added yet another piece of tape for reinforcement. Now it behaved like an X-Acto knife, the blade holding strongly to the end of the pen. A tool. A weapon.

   He listened carefully for any indication his crushing of the razor had been overheard. Silence.

   He checked the clock one last time, and then continued his work.

T
ommy Brandon sat across from room 26 at St. Jude's Hospital. "Furnishings compliments of Christopher Guest and Jamie Lee Curtis" read a plaque immediately below the door number.

   "You ever see her in that one with Arnold?" Brandon asked the Secret Service agent, who had the chair closer to the hospital room door. This man was technically in charge. He was also unresponsive. Brandon continued, "T
rue Lies
? Jamie Lee. That little dance she did. Funny. Really funny. And sexy? Come on!"

   Still the agent failed to acknowledge him.

   "This is what they call the technical integration of law enforcement agencies, right?" Brandon said sarcastically. "The politicians are fucking brilliant."

   "Put a sock in it, will you?" said the agent. "We start out like this, it's going to be a long night."

   Both agents saw a nurse approaching. Brandon immediately looked away, keeping his eyes on the exit door at the end of the hallway; the two men had the entire hallway covered.

   "He had an EKG not an hour ago," the agent said to the approaching nurse. "How often are you going to check on him?"

   "Just doing my rounds, Officer. Doing my job, same as you."

   "It's Special Agent," the man corrected. "I was just making conversation."

   "And I was just making conversation back."

   "We've got to search you," the man advised her.

   "I know."

   Brandon did not take his eyes off the far door. "He just came on shift. You'll have to forgive him. He doesn't realize you've already been through this three times, Maddie."

   "It's all right. Let's get it over with, please." She raised her hands out like wings. She told the agent, "You get fresh with me, and your senior officer will hear about it."

   "Special Agent in Charge," the man said, correcting her again.

   "He's still going to hear about it."

   He patted her down—gently and carefully—and cleared her. "Okay. You can go inside."

   "Gee, thanks," she said.

   She waited for the agent to unlock the door. She went inside, and he relocked it behind her.

   "It's Sunday," Brandon told him. "No one likes getting a call on a Sunday."

   "Every day's the same to me," the agent said.

   "That's kind of sad, you ask me," Brandon fired back. With the room door shut, Brandon was free to look in whatever direction he wanted. He chose to stare down the agent.

   "But no one did ask you," the agent said, determined to have the last word. Brandon could have kept playing, but decided against it. It
was
going to be a long night, and the sheriff seemed determined to keep him here—and away from his trailer—for as long as possible.

O
nly seconds after the nurse entered the hospital room there was a pounding on the door—not the casual knock that Brandon had grown used to but a frantic, full-fisted effort. Her voice barely made it through the thick door, but it sounded as if she was in a panic.

   Brandon and the agent took positions, both with their weapons drawn, and the agent unlocked the door. He stepped back, prepared for a hostage situation where Trevalian was using the nurse to startle them.

   She was red-faced, wide-eyed, and overly excited.

   "He's gone!" she said. "The bed . . . I checked the bathroom . . ."

   Brandon glanced at the agent, then punched his radio and rattled off several codes, relaying an emergency. It was quickly worked out that the agent would go in, but without his weapon.

   Brandon pulled the nurse out of the doorway. "Get gone," he said.

   The agent pulled open the door. The bed was empty. He edged toward the closet and slid the door across. Empty. Glanced under the bed. Nothing. Moved cautiously toward the bathroom, the door standing open. Checked the reflection in the mirror first—the bathroom appeared empty. He yanked the shower curtain back. No one. Then he caught it out of the corner of his eye: a ceiling panel over the bed. Slightly askew. Not like the others.

   "Clear!" he shouted. He returned to the hallway, where several more deputies had gathered. He used hand signals to direct Brandon to follow. Together they entered the room. He pointed to the ceiling panel. Brandon climbed onto the end table and popped the ceiling panel out of its frame. He poked his head inside and squeezed a flashlight past his chin.

   "Shit!" he exclaimed, his voice dampened. "Looks like a panel over the bathroom goes up into a crawl space or something." He jumped down and repeated the procedure from the countertop in the bathroom. He broke away several of the flimsily hung ceiling tiles, stretched onto his toes. "Affirmative. There's egress here." He ducked out of the ceiling and looked down. "He could be fucking anywhere by now."

W
alt had spent the last hour in the Mobile Command Center writing up a summary of events. His eyes strayed to a seating chart thumbtacked to a corkboard.

   It was a large sheet, showing tables and seating arrangements for the Shaler brunch. Of all the seats, one was marked with an X.

   Dryer felt his presence. "What?"

   "That's the seating plan for Liz Shaler's talk," Walt suggested.

   "Yes it is," Dryer agreed.

   "Why the X on Stuart Holms?" Walt asked.

   "We were reaching. On the off chance the contract on the AG came from someone attending the conference, we looked at who failed to attend. His was the only empty seat."