Point of Control (2 page)

C
HAPTER
4

Monday, March 16, 1:55 p.m., Washington, DC

Detective Jocelyn Larson inhaled a quick dose of nicotine vapor before she walked into the department’s forensics building. She loved that the vapor had almost no smell and didn’t ruin her breath or her clothes. The joy of smoking, without the disgusting part or the guilt. At her age and with her body type, she was tired of taking crap for her bad habit.

At the security counter, she showed her badge. “I’m here for the John Doe autopsy.”

The woman behind the safety glass barely glanced at the ID. “Lucky you.” They’d had this exchange a few times. Jocelyn was a career detective, all of it spent in DC, and had attended more autopsies in this building than was healthy for the soul.

The desk clerk pressed the button, the door to the left buzzed, and Jocelyn headed past the crime lab to the morgue. In the small front room, she pulled on a gown, hairnet, and booties, grateful she didn’t have to wear the gear at crime scenes, because technicians collected and processed the evidence. Inside the autopsy center, stainless steel and constant disinfecting didn’t mask the slight stench of decay that hung in the air.

An assistant medical examiner looked up from her microscope. “If you’re ready, we’ll get started.” The ME had a fresh young face, but the rest of her body was covered in puffy blue scrubs.

Jocelyn stepped toward the table. The John Doe who’d been shot and robbed in the Bellevue area lay on the shiny steel table, already uncovered. Why did she always get the bodies with no ID and no fingerprint match in the database? The ME pulled her tray of sharp instruments next to the table and turned on a bright overhead light. None of the autopsy would bother Jocelyn, except the Y cut into the chest with the saw. But that was later, and she would be a little numb by then.

The twenty-minute inch-by-inch search of his skin was uneventful, except for the ME’s comment about his hands. “He appears to have some damage to the tips of his fingers, possibly from chemical burns. But it’s not recent.” She looked up at Jocelyn. “I’ll know more after I send a tissue sample to the lab for analysis.”

Jocelyn tuned out for a moment, wondering what else she could do to identify this guy—short of running a dead-face photo in the newspaper.

“This is interesting.” The medical examiner’s voice held surprise and excitement as she lifted something tiny with a pair of long-handled tweezers.

“What is it?”

“Some kind of microchip, and I found it under his tongue.”

What the hell?
Her investigation hadn’t turned up any witnesses, but based on the location, she’d assumed some gangbanger had killed the man for his cell phone and wallet. The microchip made her rethink that. Clearly, the victim had hidden the chip from his assailant. What was on this bit of silicon that made someone kill him for it?

C
HAPTER
5

Monday, March 16, 6:23 p.m., Washington, DC

Bailey sat in the Dulles Airport terminal reading the file on Milton Thurgood, a brilliant metallurgical engineer who’d discovered an acid-and-heat method for extracting rare earth metals from mining operations. He’d also been arrested several times for public meltdowns in which he shouted at and sometimes accosted strangers. Once he’d come after his wife with a shovel, but when police responded to the disturbance, she convinced them to let it go, claiming her husband had simply forgotten to take his medication. Thurgood obviously had violent tendencies, and if he’d quit taking his meds altogether, he might have been capable of plotting and carrying out a murder. Which could also make him unpredictable and hard to locate. The background data, which had likely come from the Australian Federal Police, didn’t include Thurgood’s actual diagnosis. Too bad. Mental disorders fascinated her.

Her own mental condition was often referred to as
antisocial personality disorder
, which sounded more palatable than
sociopath
, but they weren’t the same diagnosis. The public, and even most mental health professionals, wrongly assumed all sociopaths were criminals or forces of destruction, just like people with ASPD. The truth was that sociopaths, an estimated 4 percent of the population, were specifically defined by their inability to empathize with other people or feel guilt about their own behavior. Those qualities alone didn’t make them criminals. Instead, sociopaths fell along a continuum. Those on the moderate-to-low end, like herself, didn’t take any pleasure in hurting anyone. They just didn’t suffer guilt if it happened. Her emotional experiences were different from other people’s too. If various emotions were like colors for empaths, hers were shades of gray. Low-end sociopaths included a lot of high achievers, such as rapid-rising CEOs and politicians. Not to mention some law enforcement personnel, who were attracted to the career because it offered both power and a firm structure to help keep themselves in line.

On the high end of the continuum were those commonly thought of as psychopaths, because they enjoyed tormenting and sometimes killing people. Many psychopaths were also brilliant and successful, but others lacked intellectual capacity or ambition and were often frustrated by their mediocre lives. Those types often ended up in prison. Sociopaths were as varied as any other group that shared a single characteristic or belief.

An elderly man approached and gestured at the empty seat next to her. “Excuse me. May I sit here?”

“I’d prefer that you didn’t.”

He looked taken aback.

Bailey smiled and shrugged to lessen the sting. She had to be true to herself when she could. He shook his head and walked away. She went back to reading. But there was little else about Thurgood that was helpful.

Her cell chirped and Bailey pulled it from her satchel. A 303 area code. Denver, her hometown, where her father still lived, but it wasn’t his number. He didn’t call often, so this would probably be bad news. “Andra Bailey here.”

A robotic voice said, “You have a collect call from the Denver County Jail. Press One to accept the charges.”

Her father had been arrested.
Damn.
She accepted the call.

After a short recorded message, her father came on the line. “Andra, thank you. Beth is in New York at a conference, and I didn’t know who else to call.” Beth was his third wife, and her absence explained why her father, also a sociopath, had stepped out of his behavior construct.

“What did you do?”

“I got into a fistfight, and the other man went to the hospital. I’m charged with assault.”

Oh hell.
At sixty-two, her father should have been long past that kind of impulse. This wasn’t his first altercation, but the last one had been ten years ago, and he’d offered financial compensation to the victim to drop the charges. Bailey was grateful not to be a male sociopath; they had more violent tendencies. But the fact that her father, a university professor with a long history of stability, could fail to control his impulses meant that she was always at risk for the same thing. For the first time, the thought caused her real fear. She never wanted to be fired again and have to start over with a new career or in a new location. Or worse yet, end up in jail. Most negative consequences didn’t faze her, but those definitely did.

“What can I do for you?”

“Wire ten thousand in bail money to Express Bail Bonds and have them post it for me.”

“As soon as I can. I’m in the airport, waiting for a connecting flight to San Jose.” Bailey kept her voice low, even though everyone around her was preoccupied and heading to the same city.

“You’ll find a Western Union as soon as you land?”

“Of course.” She owed him. He’d bailed her out of a few scrapes in high school and college, before she’d learned to control her dangerous impulses. Plus, she loved him and wanted to help. “Call your lawyer too.”

“I already did.”

“Can you get out of this?” An assault conviction could ruin his teaching career. She might have to help him out financially. He’d never been good with money and probably didn’t have much saved. She spent hers freely too, but she had also made some great stock picks, so she had a nest egg.

“I don’t know.” Her father didn’t sound upset. But he rarely did.

“I can’t come to Denver now because of this assignment, but if I can help out later, let me know.” She would do what she could—until his situation became too boring or uncomfortable to be around. He would understand when she walked away. Others didn’t, especially after becoming attached to her. Another reason her friendships were few and seldom lasted.

“Thanks, Andra.”

An overhead voice announced that her flight was boarding. “I have to go. We’ll talk again later.” They hung up without saying good-bye, a mutual understanding.

She’d known from an early age that her father wasn’t like other people, especially other fathers. He hadn’t hugged her when he dropped her at the babysitter’s or school, and he hadn’t reacted emotionally to her accidents on the playground or bicycle. Being impulsive and fearless, she’d had plenty. In her early years, she’d assumed his indifference was because her mother had died and he was sad. When she was eleven, he’d sat her down and talked about sociopathy, both his and hers. He’d apparently known, or assumed, since she was a preschooler that she had the disorder too. A particular incident when she was five had convinced him. During their sociopathy talk, he’d brought up the kindergarten incident, and she had remembered the day vividly. In recalling it at the time, she’d cemented the episode in her mind, because it had been a turning point for her.

The playground slide was hot from the sun, but she used it anyway—a beautiful afternoon in late May. Kindergarten was over for the day, and her teacher had let the kids out to play for the last few minutes before the adults arrived to take them home. Puffy clouds drifted across a blue sky, and she felt happy to be outside.

Jack’s mother was the first to arrive. He picked up his backpack and waved at her. “Bye, Andra. My mom’s here.”

“Bye.”

She saw her babysitter’s car pull to the curb outside the playground fence. She would have time for one more ride down the slide.

The boy in front of her in line, Mark, turned to face her. “Why don’t you have a mother?”

He’d asked her several times before, and she didn’t want to talk about it. “You already know.” She decided not to get on the slide.

As she walked away, he grabbed her arm. “My dad says your mom ran away.”

What?
Confused and angry, she shouted, “That’s a lie!”

“Don’t call me a liar! Just because your mother’s a cheat.”

A cheat?
Not her mother! Her mother was dead. Bailey decided not to get mad or hurt, because she hated those feelings, and they didn’t fix anything. But she had to put a stop to Mark’s meanness about her mother. She pulled her fist back and punched him in the face as hard as she could.

He staggered back, holding his nose as blood gushed from it.

Intense feelings pulsed in her body. She didn’t understand them, but she liked them. “Don’t ever say that again!” She stepped forward to hit him in the stomach.

Their teacher was suddenly there and grabbed her arm. “Andra, no! We don’t hit each other.” The teacher bent over to look her in the eye. “Tell him you’re sorry.”

She rarely regretted anything—except not having a mother—and didn’t understand the concept. “I’m not sorry.”

“You should be. We don’t solve our problems with violence.”

That didn’t make sense. She’d solved her problem with Mark with one punch to his mean face. She pulled free of the teacher’s grip, ran through the opening in the fenced yard, and climbed into her babysitter’s car.

Later at home, she asked her father, “Why did Mark say Mom left? He called her a cheat too.”

Her father sat quietly for a long moment, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Finally, he said, “Your mother did leave us. But I didn’t want you to know. I shouldn’t have lied.”

Her mother hadn’t wanted to live with them? An ache she’d never felt before filled her stomach. “Why? I don’t understand.”

“It’s complicated. But it was mostly about me. I’m hard to live with.”

Mostly?
“She left because of me too?”

For a moment, he looked hurt. “She just couldn’t handle being a parent. She loved you.” He hugged her, a rare moment. “I love you.”

Her father went off to make dinner, and confusion set in. Her mother loved her, but had walked out of her life anyway. Her father loved her, but had lied to her. Adults could not be trusted. Love could not be trusted.

She’d been expelled, and her father had explained how, in the next school, she would have to obey rules even when she didn’t understand them. And she would have to apologize even if she didn’t mean it. It was her first realization that she was different from other kids. Eventually, she learned not to be violent.
If you hit, you sit—
in the principal’s office, grounded in her room at home, or in jail. Confinement was the worse consequence of all. That early incident with Mark had also been her first exposure to the internal conflict she would face her whole life—should she do what came naturally to her, or what was socially acceptable? Her own perspective always seemed more logical than others’, but when she acted on it, she usually ended up alienated or in trouble.

Later, in college, when Bailey had studied the literature on sociopaths, she wondered if her condition was based purely on the genetics passed down from her father or whether a lack of bonding with a mother had stunted her emotional growth. Or maybe her own lack of emotion had driven her mother away. Did genetics dictate how her mind worked, or had her experiences caused her brain to form pathways of antisocial thinking? Or some combination? Either way, she had to live with it. There was no treatment for sociopathy.

The hardest part had been to develop a sense of self. In high school, she’d been a chameleon, adapting her music and clothes and speech patterns to mimic whoever she was around. She’d done those things to fit in and make people like her, but also to manipulate people for her own benefit. Her father had eventually encouraged her to find or create her own identity, ideally through a career that would provide expectations and guidelines. Years later, he’d been surprised by her choice of the FBI, but being an agent was now her identity. It also gave her a code of ethics to live by, to compensate for her lack of intrinsic morals. She knew she would adapt and remake herself if she ever lost her job, but without a core sense of self, it would be challenging.

At thirty-nine, she’d already done all the self-analysis she could handle. A quick check of her phone indicated she still had twenty minutes until her flight took off, so she called the Australian scientist’s wife again. Mrs. Thurgood hadn’t answered earlier or returned her call. As the phone rang, Bailey calculated the time difference. It should be around one in the afternoon in Australia.

A soft voice with a lovely accent answered. “This is Leslie Thurgood. Who is calling, please?”

“Agent Bailey, US Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Goodness. What could you possibly want with me?”

“I’m looking into your husband’s disappearance, and I need to ask some questions.”

“But why? The Australian authorities say he walked away.” The woman made a muffled sound of grief. “Not that I believe it.”

“What do you think happened?” It was always good to hear what people closest to the scene had to say.

“Milton is obsessed with his research. Wherever he is, he’s working.”

“He didn’t tell you anything about where he was going?”

“No. And I’m mad as a cut snake. He’s had some fuckups before, but this one’s bonzer.”

Was she a little drunk? “Did your husband ever talk about Nick Bowman?”

“Aye, he did. Especially after the award was announced, but not so much lately. Why do you ask?”

“Nick Bowman has been murdered.”

Mrs. Thurgood sucked in a quick breath of air. “I’ll be stuffed. But don’t think my Milton offed him. I know he’s a bit bonkers when he’s off his pills, but he’s been taking them.”

Would she have known for sure if he’d stopped? “How was he behaving in the weeks and days before he left?”

“The same. Working hard. No peculiars.”

“Your husband took a flight to Los Angeles. Who did he know there?”

“Don’t know that.”

This was getting nowhere. “Where do you think he is?”

Mrs. Thurgood muffled a cry. “I don’t know. But it’s not like he’s gone walkabout. He’ll be back.”

“Did anything unusual happen recently? A problem at work? A job offer? A birthday?” Sometimes people reacted strongly to external events.

“He got a call he didn’t want to talk about. He took the phone in the bedroom and it lasted a while. Milton said it was about his extraction process and not to worry.”

A recruiter? But why the secrecy?
“Was he having an affair?”