What Lies Behind (18 page)

Eloise had done an admirable job of keeping it together, but with one last “Oh my,” the tears began to fall down her wrinkled face.

Chapter 33

THE POES’ HOUSE
was clean and neat, set up almost exactly like their neighboring town house, but crammed cheek-to-jowl full of sixty-plus-odd years of a traveling life. Tchotchkes, antiques, tribal masks, French furniture, Italian paintings, bookshelves full of multicolored spines and squat Zen Buddhas competed for attention from what remained of the pristine ivory walls, which were covered in expertly taken black-and-white photographs. Everything was in its place; order reigned. But it seemed almost as if the whole house was holding its breath. If you moved one thing, the entire effect would be lost, crumbling down around their ears.

Eloise saw them looking, gave them a benevolent smile. “I took the photos. Edgar was in the Army, you know, and we moved all over the world. I needed something to keep me occupied. Even when he retired, we both still had the travel bug, and we weren’t blessed with children, so it was always the two of us, off on our adventures.”

They followed her into the surprisingly modern and uncluttered kitchen. Tervis the dog heard his master and came barreling in through the dog door. He turned out to be an adorable beagle who promptly sat on Sam’s foot, begging for ear rubs.

Eloise poured out a small tot of brandy. “Sometimes Edgar likes a little drink in the afternoon. It seems to help him remember.”

They paraded back into the living room and up the stairs. She stopped at the top.

“Let’s not tell him about the boys just yet, or Amanda. I don’t want him getting upset. I’ll tell him later, when I think the time is right.”

Fletcher nodded. “Of course.”

Eloise led them to a spacious room overlooking the street out front, a den of sorts, a man’s space, with flags from various sports teams on the walls, plus more of the unusual detritus from downstairs. The room was completed with two comfortable armchairs and a flat-screen television tuned to Fox News. It was turned down low, but Sam clearly heard the words
assassination attempt at Teterboro this morning
.

Xander should be home by now. She just wanted to see him, hear from his own mouth exactly what had happened. She pushed the thought away; she needed to stay focused.

Edgar Poe was trim and neat, bald as an egg, wearing comfortable slippers, jeans and a blue denim button-down. A set of binoculars sat on the table beside him, and a sweating glass of water. He smiled at Eloise when she came in, gaily singing, “We have visitors, Edgar, isn’t that nice? This is Fletcher and this is Samantha. They want to talk about Robin and Amanda. I’ve brought you a drink to celebrate.”

His voice was gravelly, but strong. He rolled his eyes and took the drink from her, setting it next to the binoculars. “Eloise, I may be losing my mind, but I’m not an idiot. I saw the police cars. Did something happen to the boys?”

She deflated immediately, all the air gone from her sails, and her resolve with it. “Oh, Edgar. They’re gone. They’re both gone.”

He got up and folded his plump little wife into his arms, patting her on the back while she cried. Tears formed in his own eyes, and he gave Fletcher and Sam an apologetic glance. “They’re like sons to us. This is terrible. Just terrible. What happened?”

Fletcher sat on the small sofa. “We’re not sure, sir.” He gestured toward the binoculars, which Sam noticed sat on a book by the Audubon Society. “I notice you’re a bird watcher. Did you happen to see anything or anyone out of place over the past few days?”

“I did. There was a car, parked down the street, night before last. Black sedan, like the kind you see in the motorcades. Government, without a doubt. Sat there for three hours, from dark until midnight, which is the reason it caught my eye. Those people come and go around here so often they’re as common as a sneeze. But the cars don’t linger. Drop-offs and pickups, that’s all. No surveillance. And that’s what this was.”

“License plate?”

He shook his head. “It was facing us. I should have gone out to check on it or called the police. Were they staking out the joint?”

“I don’t know, sir. Has anything else caught your attention in the past few days?”

Edgar urged Eloise toward the chair next to him. Sam saw they were just close enough for the occupants to hold hands while they sat, which they proceeded to do. It brought a lump to her throat. She knew how Alzheimer’s worked. Forgetfulness was only one part of it. It was the isolation it caused in the mind of the sufferer that was the cruelest aspect.

He shook his head. “I was in Vietnam, you know. And Korea. Saw plenty I couldn’t understand, plenty I’d like to forget. Sometimes I just turn it all off so I don’t have to think about it. Other times, when my mind is still with me, I think I’d like to go back there. Talk to the families, see what happened to them. Know what I mean?” He grew silent. Tervis came to his daddy’s side, whining gently, pushing his head under the gnarled old hand.

Sam glanced at Fletcher. The initial shock of their unfamiliar faces had been enough to startle Edgar Poe to the present, but Sam saw the sharp blue eyes were beginning to lose their focus. Eloise saw it, too, handed him the brandy glass.

“Drink, sweetheart.” She gestured for Fletcher to talk quickly.

“Sir, your wife tells me you know Robin Souleyret, the sister of your next-door neighbor, the woman who owns the house, not the renters.”

He took a sip of the brandy. “Yes. I remember her. Skinny blonde, good tits.”

Eloise smacked him on the arm. “Edgar. Inappropriate.”

“What? She did. I’m old, I’m allowed to look.”

Fletcher was fighting back a laugh. Sam saw his lips twitch. “When did you meet her, sir?”

“She used to come around about eight, ten years ago. I don’t do so well with time. But she’d stop by every once in a while, have a meal. She was government, just like Amanda. Spook, I think. We talked about the war.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“Naw. Haven’t seen Amanda, either. You know, we killed a guy once, just plain scared the shit out of him. Hung him up by his thumbs in the forest. You could hear them crack when we yanked on the ropes.”

And he drifted off, staring out the window.

Eloise stood, shaking her head. She motioned for them to step out.

Fletcher wasn’t quite willing to let it go. “Sir? Mr. Poe?”

But Edgar said nothing, didn’t even acknowledge them.

“I’m so sorry,” Eloise said. “It’s not a good day. He drifts like that, in and out of time. It must be so hard for him, so confusing.”

Sam thought that was gracious. It had to be hard for Eloise, too.

They followed her down the stairs, out onto the porch. Fletcher gave her his card, asked her to call if Edgar thought of anything else that might be of use, and they bid her farewell.

Tervis stayed behind to guard his daddy while he dreamed.

* * *

Out in the yard, Fletcher sighed deeply.

“That was a waste of time. Come on. Let’s go see if anyone has found Dr. Bromley.”

Sam fell into step with him. “I don’t think it was a waste. We found out about the car. We can pull the cameras in the area, see if they captured it. Three hours is a long time to sit staring at a town house.”

“Whoa, you don’t think he was serious, do you?”

“I do. He was quite lucid when we came into the room. Sometimes a new pattern can shock the brain back to normalcy for a moment, almost like an electroshock. Seeing new faces in his own environment, the police cars—it was a change from his norm. It woke him up, so to speak.”

“So we’re going to rely on the eyewitness testimony of a guy with Alzheimer’s who doesn’t even know who he is? Sam, you know that’s crazy.”

“It’s not as crazy as you think. He was very clear about what he saw before he drifted out. I think it’s a good path to follow.”

They got in the car, and he pulled away from the curb, thinking. “All right. Let’s ask.”

He called Hart, who answered quickly, sounding ragged.

“Boss, you gotta give me more than five minutes to do everything.”

“I have something new for your list.”

“God, now what?”

“Pull all the cameras from around Souleyret’s Capitol Hill address, looking specifically at two nights ago between five and ten. We’re looking for a black sedan, possibly government.”

“Okay, I’ll get Tech on it. By the way, I just got a call from the security company who handles the address in Georgetown, the house with the cameras on the gutters? They’ve gotten permission from the owners to release the footage to us. I asked them to send it over. You know Naomi Murray, right? Down in Tech? The brunette with legs to forever and gone?”

Fletcher cleared his throat and glanced over at Sam, who was smiling.

“I recall meeting Officer Murray once or twice, yes.”

“Didn’t you ask her out once?”

“Lonnie. Get on with it.”

“Oh, sorry. Apparently, Naomi—Officer Murray—identified a gray Honda Accord on the camera. It circled the block four times, right before Emma and Cameron walked in on the scene. She’s got the plates—they’ve traced to a guy named Toliver Pryce, out in Falls Church.”

“Suspect?”

“Witness, I’d say. I thought I’d take a run out there and have a chat with him.”

“Be careful, Lonnie. Don’t you dare go out there alone. We’ve got all sorts of crazy shit going down here on the Hill.”

“Roger that. I talked to Sophie Lewis—she’s the head of the HAZMAT team from Homeland that was at the crime scene in Georgetown this morning. She’s the one who handed off the samples to the CDC. She’s got a call in to them to find out where the samples are now, and to warn them they may be unsafe.”

“How many agencies are in on this now?”

“I don’t know, the usual. Four or five at least. Plus the media. The story’s all over the place—not that the samples are suspect, but that HAZMAT was on our scene this morning. Turn on WTOP in your car, you can listen in. It hasn’t hit fever pitch, but they’ll mention it at the top of the hour. If the wrong reporter gets a bee up their nose, we’ll be fielding more than moderate interest.”

“Great. Just great. So much for keeping things quiet. All right, my man. You keep chugging. Stay in touch.”

He hung up, and Sam said, “Let’s go back to your place and talk to young Daniels. He’s got something for us. And I need a cup of coffee. I’m starting to drag.”

Fletcher nodded. “That sounds like a damn good idea. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long evening.”

Chapter 34

GWUH

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Hospital was on the corner of New Hampshire and I Street, and Robin had no problem walking right in the front doors and making her way through the corridors. Most visitors had to stop and present ID at the front desk, but Robin had pulled a few things out of the trunk of her car in order to make her ingress and potential interview go as smoothly as possible.

A wig made her hair a dirty salt-and-pepper gray; black reading glasses rested on a chain around her neck. She wore wrinkled blue scrubs and a white lab coat with the name M. Preston embroidered in blue over the pocket. She had a stethoscope sticking out of her pocket, carried a clipboard and moved with purpose.

It wasn’t hard to gain access to hospitals. With so many people coming and going—friends and family, doctors and nurses, orderlies and techs—pretty much anyone could walk anywhere with impunity. In her doctor’s outfit, she blended in seamlessly. GW had nearly nine hundred doctors on staff; she doubted anyone would bat an eye her way. It didn’t hurt that she had an old ID from a shooting they’d worked, one she’d carefully lifted off a white coat lying on the back of a chair. Her people had done some work on it, and now it could be used pretty much anywhere with a quick holograph overlay.

Her phone flashed while she was in the elevator—Lola.

The email is from one of Girabaldi’s people, message came through address labeled jkruger. There is a Jason Kruger on the rolls. Also checking on David Bromley, who was working with Cattafi. TC is in ICU, room 454.

Interesting.
So it was one of Girabaldi’s people trying to touch base with Mandy. With State this involved, Robin was going to have to move carefully and quickly before they decided to track her down and make her life miserable.

Get me everything you can on Kruger. STAT.

She sent the message, then destroyed the thread entirely. Damn it, what was Mandy up to? What was she trying to get “in”?

The elevator let her out on the fourth floor, and she found the ICU with no problem. A regular room would have been easier—there was less scrutiny—but she had enough of the lingo down from her own time in ICU that she was sure she could brazen it out.

She was lucky; they were in the midst of a shift change, and she strolled right past the nurses’ station unnoticed. There was a guard outside Cattafi’s door, and she nodded magnanimously at him, rattling her clipboard.

The cop, young, nervous, probably his first real assignment, smiled and held up a hand.

“ID?”

So predictable. She handed it over, reached for a pair of gloves. He took great pains to write down the name and handed back the ID. “Dr. Margaret Preston. Got it.”

“Thank you.” She pushed past him into the room. She’d learned the less you said, the better. Act like you’re supposed to be there, and you’re bored with the procedures in place, and the world opened.

Robin avoided the window into the room, took in the boy on the bed. A dirty white haze struggled around his body, trying, and failing, to get in. Alone, broken, clinging to life. The last person to be with her sister.

They’d trached him, the air tube rising out of his throat like a triton from the sea. His face was waxy and pale, his eyes taped closed. Arterial ports ran plasma and medicines; the ventilator hissed with obscene regularity. A quiet but steady beeping came from the heart and pulse ox monitor; the volume had been turned down. Alarms would blare if there was a problem.

This was a waste of time. There’d be no talking to him; he was clearly not going to wake anytime soon. Whether he was in an induced coma or landed himself there naturally, she wasn’t going to get anything from him in this state.

She crossed the room carefully, touched his hand. The flesh was slack, inert, cold. As the unhappy mist that clung stubbornly to him indicated, Tommy Cattafi was, for all practical purposes, dead.

A wave of grief passed through her. This man had a connection to her sister. He knew something, knew why she’d been killed. And who’d done it.

She gritted her teeth against the scream that rose in her throat, fury at the senseless deaths.

The young cop at the door looked at her searchingly as she came out. She shook her head, an indication that things hadn’t changed and she didn’t think they would. He nodded in return, a brief frown crossing his face, but workmanlike, understanding. Maybe not so young and inexperienced, after all, she thought. He’d seen enough death to know when it was staring him in the face.

To the elevator, ignoring a look from the charge nurse, though her heart sped up a little, just a teensy shot of adrenaline. As the doors began to close, she heard an alarm begin to go off, saw nurses start rushing down the hall. Someone called a code blue.

It couldn’t be. Could it?

She needed to get out, now.

The elevator was fast, not stopping on its descent, and she was whisked back downstairs, made her way out the door and walked calmly back to her car. She’d been careful not to park near the hospital cameras, taking a spot on the street instead of in the garage across from the hospital. But she grabbed a cab, just in case, had him drop her three blocks away with a five-dollar tip for the short fare, walked a block and ducked into a Starbucks to change. In two minutes flat she was hoofing it back to her car as a flowing Victoria’s Secret–haired brunette version of herself, in glamorous sunglasses, skinny jeans and knee-high boots.

She didn’t think the precautions were absolutely necessary, but old habits died hard.

Now, she had to figure out what to do about Girabaldi.

Her instincts told her to keep gathering information. Going in with all chambers loaded was the only way to approach her old boss. She’d worked with the woman long enough to know she wouldn’t admit a damn thing, so Robin needed proof, and lots of it, to force her to talk.

Because torturing her old boss for information felt wrong.

Bromley was the logical choice to talk to next, especially since she was so close to his office. But she itched to march into State and demand answers from Regina Girabaldi. They’d have words today, no matter what.

She texted Lola.

TC pointless, he’s permanently out of commission. I’m going to Bromley next.

Lola hit her right back.

Be prepared for security.

OK.

Also, overheard Metro. They’ve been up on the Hill, found the bodies. IDK details. Running call through our system.

Well, hellfire. They were moving quicker than she expected. She needed to get a move on.

Exact coordinates for DB?

Lola sent her the address in latitude and longitude, which, on their personalized phone system, kept encryption codes better than street addresses. She was even closer than she’d realized; it would only take a couple of minutes walking. She set off, keeping an eye out for tails.

The rain was past, the city smelled fresh and clean. She hadn’t been to this part of town in a while. It had changed, ever so slightly, in the way people age, a sudden shock at the sparse gray hair and expanded waist and wrinkles, then in a blink, the person you knew was back. Foggy Bottom would always be the same, regardless of the slight alterations to the veneer.

Her ears pricked. Something else that would never change in this city—the constant underlying wail of sirens.

She stretched her legs, hurrying. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, but evading detection was ingrained in her DNA, so she wanted to get off the radar, off the streets, as quickly as humanly possible.

She was less than a block away now. A cop car came barreling down the street and she casually stopped and turned toward the building on her right, adjusted her sunglasses, reached into her bag like she was looking for something. The patrol kept moving, turning onto Twenty-third with a screech, and she resumed her walk.

Bromley’s lab was on H Street, just around the corner from the hospital. She entered the building, noting the security cameras in the corners, and even though she’d been warned, stopped short when she saw the security desk and metal detector.

Damn it. You could have warned me what kind of security, Lola
.

She wasn’t going to be able to parade in here without some sort of story. She counted four guards behind the desk, a number of screens with clear shots of the building.

There was a building directory to her right. She glanced at it surreptitiously as she walked past, and breathed a sigh of relief. There was an OB/GYN office on the sixth floor. She noted one of the doctor’s names—Thornburg—then marched to the visitor’s log, wrote a fake name, inverting the names of the people before her, and Thornburg’s suite number, then got in line for the metal detector, mentally running through her current state and the odds of making it through undetected—namely, the Glock under her left arm, the knife in her bag and the variety of weapons she always carried on her person. She and metal detectors were not friends.

Three people in front of her, two now. Only one thing to do.

In her purse, she had a mini-EMP—one of her own design, perfect for just these situations. Meant to work in a five-foot radius, the electromagnetic pulse was relatively simple technology, and had saved her ass more than once. As she dumped the bag on the conveyer, she discreetly hit the button, then smoothly withdrew her hand and, under the guise of undoing her belt, dropped the mini-EMP down the front of her pants.

Without so much as a squawk, the entire apparatus around her ground to a halt.

“What the hell?” the guard nearest her muttered. “This damn thing is going down again?”

“That’s twice this week,” the man next to him said. “Piece of crap.”

There was luck. Of course, these devices were notorious for malfunctioning; she’d just played into that knowledge. They started to mess with the controls, turning the machine off, then on again, to no avail. The line of people coming into the building began to grow. After a few moments, a man behind her shouted, “Hey, I gotta get upstairs, I got an appointment.”

More security guards poured out from behind the desk and a back room, messed with the mechanism of the metal detector, tried to get it working. After a few minutes, when it was clear they weren’t in for an easy fix, they started waving people through, doing a brief visual scan in purses and gentle pat downs.

So, not that serious about their security, she thought as the man gave her buttocks a squeeze but neglected to reach under her arms. Good thing, too. She wanted to stay under the radar, and taking hostages and fighting her way in wasn’t the way to go. She could have turned and left, but that would have drawn more attention than she’d like.

Another quick pat on the rear, and she was in.

And she was on her own. She needed a new phone. Hers had been wiped by the EMP, as had the ones around her, which meant her spare was shot, too. But that could wait until she had a look around Bromley’s offices. She had to hurry, though. There was nothing she could do if someone figured out she’d been the source of the EMP, and the cops would show up here soon enough, especially if they’d already connected the two men from Mandy’s town house to the murder.

She went to the sixth floor, walked past the OB/GYN offices and into the stairwell. Down two flights, fast, boots rattling on the stairs, to the fourth floor.

The door was plain, nothing inviting about it. And locked. Not a problem. She slipped a tensioner into the lock, wiggled the twist flex into place...and the lock popped. It took ten seconds. She was rusty.

The lights were off, so she didn’t touch them, just pulled a small penlight from her bag and hurried into the gloom. The place was empty. She gave that a passing thought, wondering why. Lola said this was a private lab, but she’d expected at least one or two more people. Maybe he did his work completely alone? No, he’d worked with Cattafi. Surely there were other people around; the suite itself had several doors and the hallway angled off into another section of the floor. But it wasn’t big enough to house much, which seemed odd to her. Maybe these were administrative offices, and the real lab work was done elsewhere. There simply weren’t enough precautions in place here.

She prowled around, looking at the setup, confident she was right. This wasn’t the real lab; this was for show-and-tell. Probably for investors and others Bromley would need to impress to fund his work.

Still, the silence was eerie, and she drew her weapon.

She found Bromley in the third room, off a small lab, slumped against a gray metal filing cabinet. Very dead. A neat job of it, too. Close range, shot through the right temple, the bullet spoiling what she assumed was his magnificent brain. She took another step closer. The gun, a .9 mm subcompact Smith & Wesson, was in his right hand, his arms sprawled out carelessly against the floor.

He’d killed himself.

She touched his neck briefly; his skin was pliant, his muscles loose and slack. He was completely out of rigor—and he was fully dressed. She couldn’t check the lividity without disturbing the body, but the blood and matter on the cabinet and wall behind him told enough of the story. He’d been shot here. Not moved.

She was beginning to see a pattern. People around her sister were being systematically killed, and every one of them was supposed to look like a suicide. And more importantly, it looked like the kids on the Hill and the doctor had been taken out
before
Amanda was murdered.

She looked around, moving quickly, until she found the note.

Do I have your attention yet?

Jesus.

They’d been driving Amanda. She must have been on the run, and she must have holed up with Cattafi. A mistake that had cost her her life. But where else would she have gone?

To me. She could have come to me.

Robin pushed the thought away. It was too late for regrets.

Three different MOs—poison, shooting, stabbing—told Robin there was more than one killer out there. Multiple killers, with multiple targets, and all with a message. But who were the messages meant for? And what the hell had they been searching for? Had they found it when they found Amanda? Was she the end of the deaths?