Some Gave All (15 page)

She knew “Hellmouth” was another pop culture reference but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what it was from. What the heck.

“Like in
Ghostbusters
,” she said.

“Yeah.” He sounded a little vague. Maybe… disappointed? She winced. She needed a book on this or something. Maybe there was an app.

His phone rang. He took it. “Yeah, hi, big guy.” To Tess, he mouthed, “Vincent.” He said into the phone, “Sure, no problem, of course, bring it over. Oh, good, okay, that too.”

He disconnected and kissed the back of Tess’s hand. “He wants me to take tissue samples off Private X’s finger. Also, the guy had a military ID card on him but it was a fake. He’s bringing that, too. He said Cat sent you photographs and fingerprints. Off her phone.”

“Yeah, I opened them when I was in the kitchen.”

“That’s so cool.”

Tess glanced at the clock on his computer. Nearly nine! How had the time flown? She had to go to work. Suddenly, with all her heart, she wanted to stay. She wanted to sit beside J.T. in her bathrobe and perform computer searches and float theories about the murderer’s means and motive. She did not want to face another angry mob demanding that she make their streets safe. That was why cops got the big bucks.
Not
. Yeah, putting their lives on the line day after day, against criminals who carried semiautomatic weapons and grenades and wore body armor. Go up against that for a public that mistrusted them. Stand up to creatures who could rip your sternum from your chest with a nonchalant tug.

She still believed in what she was doing, and she was proud to be a cop, but she understood that the department had to earn back the public’s trust. Ending these homicides would be a giant step in that direction.

She put her phone to her ear and called her secretary. “Hi, Senya. How’s it looking?”

“It’s bad, Captain,” Senya said. “Oh. Detective Chandler just poked her head in. Yes, it’s the captain,” Senya said away from the phone.

Cat was on the other end in record time. “You have to get rid of him,” she bit off. “He told me that my chakras need tuning, for God’s sake.”

Tess grimaced. “Has he done anything wrong? I mean, besides diss your chakras? Because I can’t start a file on him for being a New Age weirdo.”

“Tess.” J.T. leaned toward the monitor and pointed. “We have a match.”

Tess leaned forward too. “Cat, J.T. just got a facial match on Private X. Here’s his name: Theodore Coffey.” She spelled it out for Cat. “Date of birth… he was forty. From Los Angeles.”

“Malibu is in Los Angeles County,” Cat pointed out. “Sky the vegan king’s old stomping grounds.”

“Do not tell me that he’s a vegan,” Tess said, groaning.

“He
is
. Except he got permission from his guru to wear regulation leather shoes, even though it really bothers him. And it really bothers me that he and Coffey are both from the same part of the United States.”

“Cat, ten million people live in Los Angeles County. And that’s not what’s interesting. What’s interesting is that Coffey is already supposed to be dead. Killed in action in guess where. Afghanistan.”

“Beast,” Tess, J.T., and Cat said in unison.

“Give me the finger,” J.T. said, and grinned.

“I heard that,” Cat said. “Vincent’s on his way over with it. I wish I was too. You have got to unpartner me. He brought gluten-free donuts this morning.”

Tess couldn’t help a grin. “Tofu-filled? Because those are the best.”

“
Tess.
”

“No, listen. It’s not weird that he’s from Los Angeles and so is dead Theodore Coffey. But it
is
weird that he’s here a week early. Janice said that he said he was going to take some time off before he started here. But he practically came to the precinct straight from the airport. When I asked him about it, he said he wanted to ‘jump right in.’”

“But into what?” Cat asked rhetorically.

Tess pressed her lips into a thin line. “Exactly. But he would
know
that that would look suspicious to us. If he’s involved, wouldn’t he have lain low so he wouldn’t attract our attention?”

J.T. held up his hand. “Like in
The Princess Bride
, when Westley is trying to figure out which goblet is poisoned. The reason he survives is because he knows that they’d know and that he’d know that they know.”

Tess stared at him. “You have a TV reference for every single thing in the world.”

He huffed very slightly. Maybe a police detective wouldn’t have noticed it, but she
was
a police detective. She was trying his patience. Because she lived in the real world.

“
The Princess Bride
is not a TV show. It’s a movie,” he said. “And the Hellmouth is from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
”

This relationship is doomed.

* * *

Vincent arrived about an hour later. He, Tess, and J.T. stared at the computer monitor, hoping for results. They had uploaded the fingerprints of Private X, also known as Theodore Coffey. Vincent took in the complex pattern of whorls and swirls on both sides of the screen. A definite match.

“Run it again,” he told J.T.

“I’ve run it three times,” J.T. retorted. “And it’s come up the same each time. Those fingerprints do not belong to Theodore Coffey. They belong to Richard Howison. And Richard Howison is currently listed as deployed in Okinawa.”

Vincent exhaled. “How likely is it that the system is giving us a false reading?”

“Pretty darn
un
likely,” J.T. said. “I can give you the statistical degrees of uncertainty if you want. Of course, one can concede that it can make errors.”

“Even Data made errors,” Tess said, sounding strangely proud of her statement.

“Then, if the result is correct,” Vincent began, “Coffey is an alias or Howison is, but the point is, this guy was undercover.”

“Maybe this guy had plastic surgery to pass as Theodore Coffey,” Tess speculated. “Hey, why didn’t you two ever do that with you, Vincent?”

“Where would we have gotten major plastic surgery done?” J.T. asked, making a quarter-turn in his office chair to face her square on. “At the Spies R Us Plastic Surgeons Lair? We
are
just regular people, you know. Except for Vincent.” He swung back to his keyboard. “I’m bringing up the photographs Cat sent us on Tess’s phone.”

He did so. The dead man’s face filled J.T.’s largest monitor. Before Vincent could make the request, J.T. zoomed way out and guided the mouse to roll over the image very slowly as the three inspected it.

“There,” Vincent said. He pointed to a shot that Cat had taken as the man’s head had lolled toward Vincent’s chest, exposing the skin behind his right ear. A shiny purple scar proved Tess’s theory.

“We could assume that Richard Howison is a ranger, if he’s undercover army. Elite fighting forces.” Vincent held up a plastic bag containing the military ID card he’d taken from the corpse’s pocket. “This identifies him as Major Alan De Graizo.”

“This guy has more names than a character in a Russian novel,” J.T. muttered. “Let’s see how far down we can drill with
this
alias.”

J.T. squinted at the name and typed it in. The screen filled with red letters that proclaimed
TOP SECRET CLEARANCE PASSWORD REQUIRED ALL OTHER ACCESS DENIED
.

“You’ve got your firewall up, right, buddy?” Vince asked tersely. Muirfield had been able to tie Vincent to Catherine because she had uploaded an old photo of him with two of his friends from Delta Company. They had wiped her computer clean and initiated a manhunt for him. Their lives had never been the same.

“My firewall’s up but with security tech it’s like playing an infinite game of Submarine, you know? We’re hidden for now, but if they lob something new at us and they get the right square…” He made an explosion sound.

“Then get out of there,” Tess said. “It’s not like we’re going to be able to come up with the password while we’re standing here.”

“Try ‘Chimera,’” Vincent said.

J.T. complied.

WELCOME, MAJOR HOWISON
, the screen said. Now in blue letters.

J.T. opened a drawer and pulled out three surgical masks and a container of computer monitor wipes. He handed out the masks; everyone put one on. Then he turned off every single computer except for that one, and draped the top of the screen with several wipes, arranging more wipes at the bottom of the monitor.

J.T. grabbed a pen and wrote on a yellow sticky note,
For all we know, some tech is staring at us right now
.

By mutual unspoken agreement, they walked out of potential viewing range. J.T. wrote on another sticky,
Bugs? Cameras?

We just did an electronic sweep yesterday
, Vincent reminded him.
Place was clean.
And suddenly it was three years ago when they spent a good part of each day making sure they were still safe, still off the radar. Some people kept track of trash day, they’d kept track of sweep for bugs day. Vincent felt the walls closing in again and anxiety nibbled at his nerve endings. He could actually sense his hormone levels rising.

I’m supposed to be free now. All this is supposed to be over
, he thought.

In an act of defiance, he tore off his mask and walked outside into the busy New York sunshine. A driver in a car studied him and Vincent lowered his head, just like in the old days. A homeless man shuffled down the street and Vincent narrowed his eyes. Was he undercover?

A helicopter flew overhead. He flinched. Then he moved in a slow circle, taking in a hundred pairs of eyes, a dozen people talking on cell phones, and his heartbeat pounded harder and harder.

I’m surrounded.

A hand touched his shoulder and he whirled around so fast he staggered. It was Tess. Her big brown eyes were filled with concern. She put both hands on his shoulders, steadying him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “My blood pressure’s ramping up and I’ve got the cold sweats.”

“You’re afraid?”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Yes,” he said after a beat. “I want to run. Everything in me is shouting at me to flee.”

“Like when the other beast attacked you?” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Vincent, this must be some kind of residual effect of the thing that set you off. Maybe there was some chemical in the warehouse last night, or on Howison’s ID. Something is affecting you but it’s not real. You’re here, with us.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled. Another. He stared into her eyes and saw reassurance there. “He wanted me to go in his pockets. He wanted me to take something. All I found was the knife, an ammo clip, and the ID. And I took them all.”

“Maybe there’s something on them. Like a chemical that elicits fear.”

“But you’re not reacting.”

“Maybe you have to be predisposed. Like cross-species DNA must be present for it to take effect. We’ll check it all out.”

“I don’t think he wanted me to be afraid. I don’t know. Maybe I missed something. I was hurrying.” He thought back. “You know, he mentioned Tiptree by name and it was in connection with a serum of some sort. I remember when Lafferty lost it. I always assumed she was moving into rage because that’s what I’ve felt every time I beast out. But what if she felt fear? And they figured that out and they used her response to create a serum that causes terror?”

“That makes perfect sense,” she said. “There have always been efforts to demoralize the other side into not fighting. Displays of power, propaganda that questions the morality of the confrontation—or persuades the fighters that they are going to lose, so they might as well give up. This would take warfare to a new level.”

“Your tax dollars at work,” he said sourly. “The people who funded Muirfield still have access to huge amounts of money. After we shut Muirfield down, it would start burning a hole in their pockets. They’d find a new project, or finesse the results of the old one.”

“Well, it’s working. You’re scared. And all of New York is scared, and you know that New Yorkers scare easily.”

“I hate being scared. It makes me feel helpless.” He quirked a grim smile. “Which is exactly what they want. But knowing that doesn’t help me. I can tell myself that I
know
I shouldn’t be afraid, but it doesn’t stop me.”

“You’re trembling.”

“I can’t seem to stop. I think I’m just going to have to ride it out.”

“Then come inside.” She looked around at the busy New York street. “It’s sensory overload out here. It’s even scaring
me
.”

That brought a little smile to his lips. Together they walked back into the club. J.T. looked up. He still had on his mask. The sight unnerved Vincent but he fought it back.
It’s just a mask. It’s still J.T.

“You okay, Vincent?” J.T. asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” Vincent said, at the same time that Tess cut in, “He’s having some kind of reaction. Can you examine the ID he brought you, see if there’s any kind of drug adhering to the surface?”

“Reaction?” J.T. half-rose from his chair. “Of the very violent fugue variety?”

“No, J.T.,” Vincent said. “Just… more fear.” He wiped his face with his free hand. “I was telling Tess that Howison—or whatever his name really was—wanted me to find something in his pockets. He told me to take it. Those were his exact words. I’m wondering if he had something else on him—maybe an antidote for whatever this is. I think whatever is affecting me is a distillate of some kind of pheromone that triggers terror.”

“Well, if it’s in his pockets, that would be too bad since you performed a home-grown cremation,” J.T. said.

“Maybe it was left behind,” Tess offered. “I mean, the military makes structures that can withstand nuclear bomb blasts. Why not a small bottle or a vial that can survive a fire?”

Vincent reached for his jacket and gloves. “I’m going back to the warehouse to look around.”

“Wait until I check these objects,” J.T. said. “You might not need to go.”

“No. Arson investigation will be combing through the ashes. I need to go
now.
”

“If arson’s there, they won’t let you get anywhere near the scene,” Tess argued.