“It’s back?” Tracy rushed to the front entry, and then peeked out through a gap in the miniblinds’ slats. A blue sedan, Air Force standard-issue, sat parked across the street, down two houses. Her heart sank. “I’ve seen one several times, including at my accident. The jerk didn’t stop. I’m not sure who’s been driving them, but O’Dell was in one at Adam’s funeral.”
“Well, O’Dell isn’t driving this one,” Janet said. “I didn’t recognize the man.”
Tracy stumbled back to the kitchen, feeling weak and queasy. “Hell, it could be anybody. Maybe the OSI. Jackson threatened to have me courtmartialed. Hackett is on the warpath, and O’Dell is right there with him Janet grabbed a mug from the cabinet and filled it with hot coffee. “Threatening phone calls and notes, someone messing with your car, and now you’re being followed …” She sat down at the table across from Tracy. “I realize you’re sick, but I figure you’re bent on continuing this investigation regardless of who is on the warpath or any courtmartial threats. Am I right?”
Tracy hadn’t told Janet about the note. How had she known about it? Had it been a warning, not a threat? One from Janet? Unsure, Tracy considered lying, but this was Janet, and Tracy trusted her. She nodded. “You’re right.”
Janet put down her cup. “Then it’s time to get smart.”
“What?” Tracy sipped at the soup. It burned going down her throat and hit her stomach as spicy hot as if she had swallowed a quart of jalapeiio peppers.
“You’re in dire need of a little strategic Intel and career warfare advice.”
Career warfare?” Tracy lifted the spoon. “I hate even the sound of it.”
“You don’t have to like it, just be good at it.”
“I’m all ears.”
Janet took a drink of her coffee, then wrinkled her nose. “When’s the last time you ran some vinegar through your coffeepot, for God’s sake?
This stuff tastes like it was boded for a week in a cauldron.”
“I didn’t know you were supposed to.” Tracy shrugged and took another bite of soup. It didn’t burn going down nearly as much as the first bite.
“Now you do.” Janet tilted her head, then spent the next two hours briefing Tracy on operative drills, rules, and tricks of the Intel trade she’d picked up over the years on making discreet inquiries, handling rental cars, checking cars and houses for bombs, and a multitude of other incidental helpful hints for one wanting to survive. “Got it?”
Tracy’s head swam. “I’m not sure. Covert methods just don’t come natural to me.”
“Of course not. Even kids have to learn to lie, Tracy. When you get down to brass tacks, this is no different except for the reasons making it necessary, of course. You’ve made a point of living your life walking the straight and narrow. Now, you have to tiptoe out of the sun into the shade a little. It’s not going to feel natural or comfortable without experience. The actual art of the craft is, well, an art. It has to be learned just like every other kind of art.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all any of us can do. I wouldn’t have given you this little crash course, but you’ll need it. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Janet frowned and dumped her coffee in the sink, looking uncomfortable. “By the way, Randall called the office three times this morning.”
“He’s trying to make nice.” Tracy sipped from her cup. “I chewed him out for recruiting Paul to put pressure on me.” The man was a pig, cutting and running and then calling Paul.
“That explains it, then. He doesn’t often sound humble. I suggest you let him grovel a while. It’s good for the soul.”
“Groveling is good for his soul?”
“Not his, darling. Yours.” Janet grabbed her purse and briefcase. “Eat, and then go back to bed. I’ll check your window and door locks on my way out. These threats have me edgy. So does that sedan.”
“Me, too.”
“Wanna stay at my place for a while?”
“No, thanks.” She dabbed at her chin with her napkin.
“I won’t be frightened out of my own home.”
Janet nodded knowingly, then went to check the locks.
Tracy sipped soup from her spoon. These days, it seemed she couldn’t win, and Adam had nothing else to lose. Four men were dead and everyone wanted someone to blame. Adam was convenient, particularly now that he was dead. But dead or alive, how could any of them, especially Randall-he was a doctor, for God’s sake not care if an innocent man was falsely accused?
Provided Adam is an innocent man.
Her stomach twisted, rioting. Adam would care. She knew it as well as she knew she was going to lose her lunch.
She made it to the bathroom just in time.
After rinsing her mouth, she wobbled her way back to bed. The closed blinds at the windows made her bedroom dark. Physically sick and sick at heart, she clicked on the bedside table lamp.
A thick file folder lay on her pillow.
Her heart thumped a staccato beat. Burke’s Intel file. Janet had to have left it here when she’d checked the window and door locks. Damn, she was good. Tracy could never swear under oath where she’d gotten the file. “Smart, Janet. Very smart.” Tracy settled back against her pillow and opened the file.
Within minutes, she was engrossed-and impressed and terror-stricken. Some of his missions had been life threatening, some near-suicide. All had been dangerous enough to turn hair gray, and there were a lot of them. For Adam, endangering his life had been just another day at the office.
She admired that, but she didn’t like it. The reason why glared at her. Motivation in his case. Would a man who routinely risked his life performing missions for his country commit the crimes against his country that Adam had been accused of committing?
She mulled over the possibility and her eyelids grew heavy, then heavier. She needed sleep but fought it, wanting to keep reading about Adam. He really was a remarkable man … Startled awake by the phone, Tracy jerked, scattering the papers from Adam’s, file that had been spread across her chest. She fished for the receiver and found it buried in her tangled bed coverings. “Hello.”
“Tracy Keener?” a man asked.
“Yes?” Her worry alarm sounded. The man was a stranger; she didn’t recognize his voice.
“It’s safe.”
When it’s safe to meet, I’ll call. Sergeant Phelps, Maxwell’s friend from the hospital’s emergency room. “Where and when?”
“Right away,” he said. “Fourth floor, rooftop patio.”
She didn’t have to ask what building. She knew he meant the hospital.
“They lied to you, Captain.” He sounded shaky, extremely agitated and nervous. “And I think they’re lying to everyone else, too-including me.”
Chapter 14.
For security reasons, the lights remained on clock in the hospital waiting rooms. Tracy had learned on a former case, and tonight, she was that bit of trivia glad to see the policy in effect. She was worried enough about making this meeting with Phelps without having to do it locketless and in the dark.
Still under construction, the fourth floor was deserted and eerily quiet. Orange tape and floor cones blocked off the staff elevator, new carpeting lay uninstalled in rolls against the walls, and with every step, her sneakers lightly squeaked on the concrete floor. The wallpapering was half-done, and signs taped to the door frames warned: Wet Paint.
The fumes and paper paste burned her nose. Twitching it, Tracy stepped inside what would be the nurse’s station for Four North and scanned past a low row of white cabinets to a tinted glass door, leading outside. A halogen lamp burned there, slanting light across the concrete floor and up the six-foot-high stucco walls. Clearly, this was the rooftop patio.
A red sign with white lettering that read “Automatic was stuck to the tinted glass at eye-leavel and a sensor camera had been attached to the wall above the frame. She stepped closer, in front of the sensor’s electronic eye, but the door didn’t open. Maybe it wasn’t yet operative.
To the left, she spotted a light switch on the wall. Was around the it for the overhead fluorescent, or for the door? It could be either. In case of a lock-down, the hospital had to have a way to deactivate the motion sensors. Yet if it was for the overhead lights, turning it on could summon Security. Taking the risk rattled her, but what other option did she have?
Sweat beaded at her temples. Before she could talk herself out of it, she flipped the switch.
The door slid open.
Blowing out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d held, she rubbed at her stomach. Her muscles were still in knots about coming here. It. was definitely stupid on Janet’s Smart-Factor scale. She stepped halfway outside. A chill wind hit her in the face. About thirty by twenty feet, the patio was as deserted as the rest of the fourth floor. The only things out there were two white metal tables and matching chairs, and an urn-type ashtray-an odd thing to see at a hospital these days. It probably wouldn’t be there post construction. Too many lawsuits to risk having smoking areas anymore. Was there a camera above the outside of the door as: well as inside it? She looked up, spotted one, then stepped out into the sultry night.
The door slid shut behind her.
Wobbly from flu and nerves, she sat in a chair facing the door, hoping Phelps hadn’t changed his mind and coming here hadn’t been a mistake.
Minutes trickled by. Twenty of them. Sick and uneasy as hell, she accepted it. Phelps was a long shot that hadn’t panned out. A no-show. Something, or someone, had scared him off. As spooked as he had been on the phone, it wouldn’t have taken much. Damn it. Couldn’t she get a single break in this case?
The door opened. A small man about forty, balding and wearing thick black glasses, stepped outside, wearing a white uniform and sneakers. “Captain Keener?” he whispered.
“Yes.” She stood up.
“Don Phelps’ The wind lifted his collar, blowing it against his neck. “Sorry about the timing on this. I had to be sure it would be safe, I’ve got a wife and two kids counting on me.”
“I understand. This is a touchy case and getting involved in it carries a lot of risks.”
Phelps nodded emphatically. “Max tells me you’ll protect me as a source.”
Sergeant Maxwell, the guard from the facility. “I will.”
“All right, then. I don’t have long-I told them I had to run down to the lab-so let me get to the point. I was working in the ER the night they brought Adam Burke in. He was out cold-clearly drugged-though that wasn’t put into the records.”
“Why would it be omitted?” If Burke were on drugs, wouldn’t that strengthen the case against him?
“It shouldn’t have been. That’s what made me sit up and take notice. My boss personally took care of Burke. That’s unusual, too. He normally sticks to the administrative side of things. I got drafted to assist him with Burke. I’m an orderly, but we were swamped that whole night. Lots of patients complaining of chest pains and nausea.”
Chest pains and nausea. Two of the symptoms Adam had claimed he’d felt before passing out in Area Fourteen. “Were the patients mainly military members?”
“No, ma’am. It was strange. We see a lot of chest pains here-high-stress jobs, you know? Especially around fiscal year-end. But we don’t usually see it happening to kids. That night, I’ll bet we had a dozen kids in here, complaining of chest pains.”
A coincidence? Her instincts ruled against it, But how in the world could it be proven? She’d have to work on that. “That does seem strange,” she told Phelps.
Nodding, he braced a foot against the wall, leaned back, and lit a cigarette. “Anyway,” he said, exhaling, “when you asked my boss what Burke had been wearing when they brought him in, I happened to hear you. I also heard my boss’s answer.” Phelps grimaced and the wind slicked his thin hair back from his face. “He lied to you, Ma’am. Burke wasn’t wearing standard BDUS. He was wearing chemical gear. His face was bare, but his skin had indentations consistent with the markings of having had on a chemical mask until just before he’d been brought into the ER.”
Tracy’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Did you see the mask?”
“No, ma’am. Only the marks on his face.”
“How did Burke arrive here?”
“The records say by ambulance, but a Black Operations team brought him in. I recognized some of the operatives from training.”
“Where was he brought in from?” Asking couldn’t hurt, though she didn’t dare to hope.
Phelps drew on the cigarette, and shook his head. “Sorry, just the bogus report on that.”
“Why would your boss lie and withhold information about Burke?” , “I don’t know.” Phelps rubbed at the back of his neck, extremely uncomfortable. “The only thing that makes sense is that someone told him what to include and omit from his notes.”
“Is he a gutless wonder who’d rather fold than fight?” she asked.
“Frankly, yes, ma’am.” Phelps let his foot scrape down the wall to the floor. “But if you ask me that openly, I’ll deny it.”
Career warfare. Tracy was beginning to understand what motivated it. “If you were to speculate, what else would you deduce from your boss’s actions?”
Phelps looked her straight in the eye. “I’d deduce that someone higher up the chain of command doesn’t want the truth to come out. Everyone thinks Burke is guilty. I admit I did, too. But the boss lying, well, it got me to wondering. And then when Burke supposedly died in the fire-”
“Supposedly?” What was that about? Burke was dead. There was no supposedly to it.
Phelps again checked to be sure they were alone on the patio. “Hospitals are the same as everywhere else. They’re full of gossip. And rumor has it, the corpse of a homeless John Doe found over in Area Fourteen disappeared from the morgue the same night Burke died in the fire.” .
Tracy’s nerves sizzled. She wanted to believe it, for Adam, but could she? “If that’s true, wouldn’t word of it have been made public by now?”
“They say the hospital board and the OSI are keeping it quiet because of all the bad press lately. They figure if this got out, it’d raise all kinds of questions.”
“Ones no one wants to answer.” That grain of truth in Burke’s story grew stronger, ran deeper inside her. And bad press would lessen the odds for Project Duplicity being funded. But why refuse to autopsy Burke, then Raising doubts, maybe. Like Janet had said about discreet inquiries. Give people a reason and their imaginations don’t run wild. The fire was the reason, and it was obvious. Do an autopsy, and you raise doubts.