Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) (34 page)

Renee nearly barreled into Jordan as he stepped foot in his office. "Oh, thank God."

Jordan felt a new tightness in his jaw. Not again.

But instead of looking grim, Renee smiled, waving a piece of paper in the air. "I found her. I found her right here in Palo Alto!"

Jordan shook his head. "Who?"

"Nina Rodriguez, of course. Only now she goes by Christina Loman. She's married."

"She's here? In Palo Alto?"

"Works for a plastic surgeon named Wharton. I get the feeling Dr. Wharton's a real bigwig. Nina did a great job of covering her tracks when she left Kentucky, too. Police reports show she complained several times about a stalker in August and early September of 1998, two months after Allister's accident.

"Then, she was attacked on September 28—a young man came to her rescue. Two days later, she left town. No forwarding address—didn't tell anyone where she was going. But I found her."

Jordan could tell Renee wanted to tell the story. And even though he would have preferred just the information, he asked, "Okay, so how did you find her?"

Renee smiled, knowingly. "I have to tell you, but I'll keep it short. I figured to be a nurse, you've got to be licensed, right?"

Jordan nodded.

"So, I got her license number from Kentucky and asked if it had been transferred. Anyone who changes states has to renew the nursing license in the new state. Kentucky confirmed that she had moved out here, but that's all they could tell me. I knew she could've been anywhere.

"Well, I have an old friend who works for the California Nursing Board. I called in a huge favor, and she gave me the doctor's name and address."

"That's fantastic."

"There's more. I just called, and she gets off at four-thirty. If you go this second, you can get there before she leaves." Renee gave him a smug grin and handed over the directions.

Jordan took the paper and stared at the address. "You know, Renee, I could kiss you."

Renee blushed. "You can buy me lunch is what you can do."

"You got it." Jordan grabbed his keys and jogged toward the door.

* * *

Dropping the third
Sports Illustrated
back on the table, Jordan shifted again and looked around the waiting room. It was well after five o'clock. Casey seemed absorbed in a
Time
magazine that had to be a year old. He had seen a half-dozen patients enter the inner office and never emerge again. They probably shuffled them out some side door. He supposed people didn't want to run into someone they knew right after a nose job.

Standing, he approached the glass window in the corner of the waiting room and rang the bell again. He'd never been in a doctor's office where they locked the window. From the look of the patients he'd seen, it wasn't for security reasons. Confidentiality, more like it.

A blond woman with an obvious boob job opened the window, her open blouse a perfect view for those standing above her. Jordan wondered if the boobs had been a perk of the job.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I'm looking to speak with Christina Loman," he repeated.

The woman glanced at him as though she'd never seen him before, although he had requested the same thing twice already. From her. "And that was regarding what, again?"

"Roy McAllister," Jordan said for the third time. The woman couldn't possibly have forgotten him. From what he'd seen of the clientele, a six-foot-two black man shouldn't have been hard to remember.

"Right," she finally said. "One moment, please." The woman slid the glass closed again.

Jordan remained standing at the window, listening. He heard soft discussion and then silence.

"She's running," Casey called out.

Jordan spun around and saw a woman dressed in nurse's whites cast a nervous glance in his direction as she hurried through the parking lot. "Damn."

Casey right behind him, Jordan ran outside and headed her off before she could lock herself in a blue Honda Accord. "Ms. Loman?"

She shook her head and tried to close the door.

Jordan held it open. "Ms. Rodriguez, I'm Inspector Gray with the San Francisco Police Department. I need to speak with you."

"You've got the wrong person," she insisted.

But from the fear in her eyes, Jordan didn't think so. "You can make this easy and talk to me now, or you can make it rough and we can go to the station."

The woman hesitated, looking around.

"This will only take a few minutes, Ms. Loman. We really need your help," Casey added, softening Jordan's threats.

The woman shook her head.

"It's a long drive to San Francisco and back. Is there somewhere we could talk?" Jordan pressed.

Her body slumped in the seat, and Jordan recognized the defeat in her shoulders.

"Please," Casey added.

"There's a coffee shop across the street." She pointed to a Starbucks.

"Perfect." He held the door open and waited for her to get out of the car. "We can walk."

Nina Rodriguez got out of the car and locked the door behind her. She remained a careful distance from Jordan and Casey, as though simply by association, someone might assume her guilt. In his peripheral vision, Jordan studied her.

Inside Starbucks, Nina made a beeline for a corner table and sat facing the wall.

"What can I get you?" Jordan asked.

"Decaf, please. Black."

"Grande latte, two sugars," Casey added.

Tossing Casey a stare, Jordan ordered the coffees and brought them to the table, setting one in front of Nina. Casey took hers and pulled off the top, shaking the sugars softly before awkwardly tearing off the tops and dumping them into her drink.

As Jordan sat, his knees knocked the underside of the small table, and he tried to find space to stretch out his long legs.

Her eyes downcast, Nina was fiddling with the coffee Jordan knew she wouldn't drink.

"Do you know why we're here?" Casey asked.

Nina nodded without meeting her gaze.

Her reaction was one he couldn't quite place. As far as he knew, she had nothing to feel guilty about. But the overwhelming sense he got from her was guilt. "Why don't you tell us about it?"

"What's to tell? I don't know anything about him."

"Nina," Casey cut in. "Let me tell you where we're coming from." She put her hands flat on the table, and Nina looked at them and then away.

"He did that?" she whispered, her voice shaking.

Casey nodded. "I was an FBI agent working his case. He found me alone in an apartment. Now he's here, and he's killing children. We know what he looked like as a kid, but he's had some major surgery from what we understand. You can help us with what he looks like now."

Nina hesitated, stared down at her coffee and then back at Casey's hands. Finally, she nodded. "What do you need to know?"

Jordan opened his notebook and looked at his notes. "Tell us about your employment with Dr. Ballari in Kentucky. When did you start there?"

"January of 1994." The tone of her voice was almost robotic.

"And when did you leave?"

"September 21 of 1998."

"Can I ask why you left?"

Her gaze flickered around the room, and Jordan felt the chill in her eyes. "I felt my life was threatened."

"By whom?"

She met his gaze for the first time, and the fear was as clear in her eyes as the blue. "Roy McAllister."

"Tell us about McAllister."

"What about him?"

"Everything you remember."

"If you promise not to use my name, ever. Not in a file, not even in your notebook. He'll get it, he'll find me. I've got children to think of, Inspector."

Jordan nodded, knowing there was no way to appease her entirely, though he would speak to Renee. "Your name isn't written here at all." He turned the notebook to face her. "See?"

She scanned the page and then wrapped her sweater protectively across her front and took a tentative sip of the coffee. "He had some surgery," she began. "He'd been in a car accident—not wearing a seat belt. Went through the windshield face first. According to him, he'd been fired from a job and ran his car off the road—rolled it twice. Said it was a rough patch in his life." She shivered. "I'd seen a fair number of car accidents, but nothing like that. His whole face was—" She stopped and shuddered. "He was in terrible shape."

"Was he recognizable?" Casey asked.

She shook her head. "I can't imagine he would have been, but I never saw pictures of him from before. He made it clear that he wasn't interested in looking like himself again."

"Did that strike you as odd?" Jordan asked.

"Not really. You'd be surprised how many people want to look totally different. Before I worked there, I would've thought people might want a new nose or chin, but a whole new face—" She frowned. "How would your family know you?" She paused and stared down in her cup. "But probably one in ten want a whole new look."

Jordan poised his pen. "Tell me what you remember about him."

"He was strange—right from the start. First off, he was nearly healed by the time he came to Dr. Ballari."

"What's strange about that?"

"Usually we get patients right from the hospital's OR. As soon as the patient is stabilized, he would be brought to us. But McAllister waited almost four full weeks before coming."

"Do you know why he waited?"

She nodded and stared at her coffee for a minute. Jordan let her take her time. Leonardo scared him almost as much as he appeared to scare Nina Rodriguez.

When she looked back up, she answered, "Wanted to make sure Dr. Ballari was the best. Which he is—" She caught herself. "Was. McAllister had done his homework. He knew about all of the doctor's clients, where Ballari had studied, his technique, everything. It was almost eerie. McAllister had also checked out most of us, too. Said he wanted to know what he was paying for.

"Ballari was an artist. He could sketch a face and then etch it from flesh and bone the same way a sculptor does from clay. And McAllister knew all of it."

"Was there other stuff?"

She nodded. "It was everything, really. When it came time to decide on his new face, he picked up a magazine, flipped through it for a couple of minutes at the most, and then pointed to a man. The one he chose wasn't anything special. A model with a strong jaw, but nothing spectacular—sort of a generic appearance. All that research to find the right doctor, and he didn't even care what he ended up looking like.

"I was surprised. McAllister seemed very vain, very sure of himself. I couldn't understand why he hadn't taken the time to figure out what he wanted to look like. Everything about it was weird."

Jordan pulled his sketches out and laid them across the table, setting his coffee on the floor to make room. "Do any of these pictures look familiar?"

Nina looked at each one and then shook her head. She pointed to the one Officer Jones had done. "The face is okay—the eyes and nose. But the chin is all wrong. The chin he chose was really squared, sculpted."

Casey nodded.

Casey had been right about the fake chin. Jordan was amazed at how she figured these things out. He took the napkin from his lap and tore it into long strips, then laid them across the pictures as Casey had done in the hospital cafeteria, leaving only the noses showing. "You're sure about the nose, though."

Pointing to Jones's sketch, she nodded. "It's this nose." She turned to the sketch from Billy. "This one's too wide." She touched Elizabeth Weisman's. "This one's right, too." Picking up the napkin, Nina rearranged them to leave his eyes. "The eyes are definitely right." She looked up as if to explain. "There's not a whole lot you can do with someone's eyes. Ballari always said the windows to someone's soul are difficult to redress." She smiled softly and shook her head.

"I know this is difficult, but can you confirm any of the other features?" Casey asked.

She pointed at the cheeks in one sketch and nodded. "Those look right." Then, pushing the napkin aside, she studied all three again. "The chins are what's wrong, but it's definitely him. I'd know those eyes."

Jordan looked back at Nina. "What about the surgery? Were you there?"

She nodded. "I was there. It was awful. McAllister wanted minimal anesthesia—insisted he didn't need it at all."

"No anesthesia? What did Ballari do?"

"He insisted, of course. But McAllister fought him on it, so Ballari agreed and administered the minimum dose. McAllister hardly seemed affected by it. He was in and out through the entire procedure, mumbling." She shivered. "It was so eerie. Made everyone nervous. Of course, Ballari still did wonderful work.

"Then, when the surgery was done, he wanted to see his face." She shook her head and stared, her gaze that of someone who had encountered evil and realized what it could do. "He'd wanted to wear his contacts—he was meticulous about his sight. He argued, but Ballari refused to do the surgery if McAllister was wearing contacts. Of course, it made perfect sense. But McAllister wanted to see what Ballari was doing.