Dr. O (20 page)

"All right, but it will be useless."

"Thanks, Dr. Boas... thanks."

"Thank me if and when it pans out."

Donna Thorpe didn't waste a moment more, leading the convergence on Pier Thirty-four at the Seattle Port Authority. The Port Authority officers were waiting outside a hulking old ship that looked as if it were bleeding rust, the name barely discernable where it had worn away: Zembabwe Jewel. Thorpe could feel her pulse racing. She sensed he was here, puttering around inside, doing something trivial like putting on his socks or going to the john. Seattle police had still been unable to locate the three John Does whose throats had been cut for their voice boxes. Perhaps, she thought, the bodies were in a refrigeration hold on board the ship. Boas had told her that two victims had been women, the third a man.

She indicated with an angry gesture that everyone was to keep down and keep still. They moved out quietly from the custom's building. "We go in with extreme caution," she told the others, four of her Nebraska men, two Seattle agents, and another five Port Authority policemen. They started up the ramp.

The ship was large, lumbering atop the water like a city dump on a barge. Odors welling up through the unused holds reminded her of dumps also.

"She's an old steamer, original registration Rhodesia," said the head of the PA men. "Now it's registered to a Mr. Bateman—"

"Bateman?" She knew he saw her shiver. She had already begun to feel certain that this was one of Ovierto's dumping sites. Like the Colorado mine shaft, it would appeal to him. Now the mention of a registration to a man named Bateman —it had to be more than coincidence, and knowing the dark sense of humor Ovierto possessed, it certainly seemed the work of the monster.

She signaled for some of the agents to go forward, others aft, as the PA officers guarded the decks. Boas was on Thorpe's arm, and now he brought out his own revolver as they descended the metal stairs into the semidarkness of a hold. The stench was unmistakable and overpowering in the dark, the odor of decaying human flesh accompanied by the sound of feeding flies and gnawing rats.

"I think you can safely say we've found his leavings," said Boas with the tone of a man resigned to the worst.

She turned on the heavy-duty lantern given her by one of the PA guys, and at the end of its flash she saw the raw, skinned body of a long-legged woman being devoured by rats.

"Jeeeeezusssss, oh, God!" she said. "You picked it, Boas."

"I'm going to need some assistance from an SPD team."

"Foster, go up and make the request."

"There's only one body here," said Boas, going closer, chasing off the vermin with gunny sacks filled with rotten vegetables.

"The other two are here, somewhere," she said.

A shot was fired in another part of the ship, far to the bow. "Come on," she said to Boas who ambled be-hind her, as she pushed through a door and found her-self in a narrow passageway, rushing forward. "I want that bastard! He's mine!"

The pair clanged along the metal walkways, up ladders and through hatches. "Do you know where you're going?" shouted Boas when suddenly she shouted, "Duck!"

Shots rang out and Thorpe fired once, twice, three, four, five, six times, drilling the man who had fired at her until his body was rammed against a bulkhead, blood oozing out of his chest where each of her bullets had hit him. Boas got to his feet, watching from below on the ladder, his eyes even with the floor above, at eye-level with the newly killed man. He'd watched the body slide to the floor in a dark shadowed corner of the room she'd burst into. It was the galley and the man had pulled down pots and pans over himself as he'd fallen backward.

"I got him! I got the son of a bitch!" Thorpe was elated. "It's over! Christ, it's over."

She was so overcome with excitement, she felt faint. Boas made his calm way past her, going to the dead man. Other agents were converging on them, someone saying, "All right! All-bloody-right! It was the rats... I fired on impulse."

"We've got a body at the stern hold," said a third agent to Donna Thorpe. "What've you got here?"

Thorpe turned when they entered the blackened galley and she said triumphantly, "While you Wild Bills were shooting rats, I got him! I got the bastard, Ovierto. I got Dr. O. Tell 'em Boas. Tell 'em!"

"It's not him," said Boas dryly.

"What?"

"It's not Ovierto."

"Pull off the makeup!" She rushed to the bloody corpse and tore at the gray-to-white hair, the scalp, the neck. There was no makeup.

She was shaken. "Who is he? Who the hell is he?"

"He fired on you," Boas reminded her.

"But who the hell is he? He's not one of ours, not PA."

Boas fished for some identification. He found the light and read, "William Rosenthaler, M.D."

"Rosenthaler! Damn, damn! Search the rest of the ship for Ovierto! Now, now! And take extreme care!" she shouted at her agents, knowing that Ovierto was not here; that he had set up Rosenthaler to stand in for him at this location as he had Deter Fomichs in Chicago.

"Rosenthaler was a friend of your father's," Boas said.

"I know that."

"I had thought he was... dead."

"He was institutionalized some years back when Ovierto got to him. Literally drove him mad. Up until yesterday, I had an agent guarding the asylum, but after the loses we sustained at the winery... he was pulled."

"Don't blame yourself, Donna."

"Who else do I blame, Doc? I'm in charge, and Washington's turned it back over to me since I pegged Chicago as his next target. Now this."

One of her agents popped his head back in. "We've found another body, stuffed in a bin."

"That's number three," said Boas. "All will have had their throats surgically removed."

"And Rosenthaler makes four," she said, staring at the man at her feet.

"Come on, Donna. I'll take charge here now," said Boas. "You get back to HQ. Come on."

Boas led her out and only the open air of the sea above decks brought her around. She straightened, pulled free of his guiding hand, and said, "I'll see you off when you finish here. Don't have to tell you —anything you find that might help, let us know. We were close this time, thanks to you, Doc."

"Yes... yes, we were."

"Too bad it's not horseshoes, huh?"

"Now there's a game I can keep up with," he said with a little laugh. He snatched out a filter tipped cigarette.

"Thought you gave that up?"

"Did... but times... like this... call for a smoke."

"It was nice having you with us, Dr. Boas. Wish you could stay."

He laughed. "You have been away from Jim too long!"

"Hey, Boas, if I weren't married..."

Now the older man blushed. "And if I weren't old enough to be your father."

She kissed him on the cheek and for a time they stared out at the harbor and the open sea in the distance, sharing the moment. It was short-lived; a few seconds later one of her agents told her that Muro had been located and returned to the Hilton.

"She'll be waiting for you," said Boas. "Go easy on her. She did what she thought was right."

"What she thought was right. That's the problem. She's a loose cannon."

"Perhaps what you need... a loose cannon."

"I've tried that route before with her boyfriend."

"Ahhh, Swisher... yes... too bad."

"She's only here to avenge him."

"And she blames you?"

"Lot of that going around."

"You can't take so much on yourself, Donna."

She looked back out at the ocean, seeing whitecaps and swells in the distance beyond. Life was getting too large and overpowering, like the ocean, she thought. But she said, "You know anyone else who's going to take it on? Even Washington has learned there's no one else, that I know more about Ovierto than anyone."

"You knew about Rosenthaler."

"Yes, a friend of my father's, and a man who knew Ovierto before Ovierto went mad."

"Are you saying he is getting closer to you?"

"If my father were alive, I'd guess him to be Ovierto's next victim."

"But since he is dead? What is the O's next move?"

"I don't know. He'll find another way to humiliate me. Although I can't think of much that is more humiliating than drilling Rosenthaler six times."

"He fired first. It was pitch in there. You did what anyone would do."

"Exactly... exactly on schedule, as we dance on Ovierto's bloody puppet strings. The evil bastard. What's his next move? Since he believes Hogarth dead... who will it now take to sate his appetite?"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Robyn Muro returned to the Hilton head-quarters of the FBI, she made out a report and saw that it was filed via the computers, stating that Dr. Hogarth and her child had died in the fiery car and that she had barely escaped with her own life. In the mean-time, Dr. Hogarth and the girl were on their way to friends in Vermont. The computer cover story, Robyn guessed, would work, because like Thorpe, Ovierto had begun to trust computers more than he did people. Of course an FBI forensics team was out at the site of the charred car by now, and so Robyn had to convince Thorpe of the strength of her plan.

To judge by the field reports coming in, somehow Ovierto was gleaning information. He had somehow tapped into the system; add hacking to his list of crimes. He could not ever be underestimated.

Everyone at HQ was as frightened as cats, waiting for Donna Thorpe to return. She had come to a similar conclusion about Ovierto's infiltration of the computer system they were using since she'd ordered no reports in or out until her return from wherever it was she had gone.

Now Thorpe and Boas burst in, Thorpe coming straight for Robyn, her anger unguarded. "You had no right to endanger Hogarth in the manner you did! What do you think we're running here, a summer camp? So you can showcase your skill with a car and a gun? This is a team effort, Muro, and you'd better learn that from this moment on!"

"Just hold on a goddamned minute!"

"No, you hold on! Inside, in the private room, now!"

Boas made an apologetic frown behind Thorpe. Robyn followed her into her private chambers.

"All right, where's Hogarth?"

"She and the child are safe."

"Don't hold out on me, Muro. Where are they?"

"En route to Vermont."

"How?"

"Greyhound bus to L.A. They'll fly from there."

Thorpe seemed to soften. "You did well pulling her out of harm's way at the winery."

"What the hell happened out there?"

"Place was set to blow. Don't know how..."

"Think I do.”

“
Oh?"

"Seems there was some friction between the husband and wife. Anyway, if Ovierto got to him—"

"But he saw Hogarth outside when he detonated the house."

"He likes his fun and games strung out. You know that better than anyone."

"So he does. He left us with a few more presents out at the docks."

"Huh?"

She explained to Robyn what had occurred at the old ship, and how she had mistaken Rosenthaler for Ovierto. "Human calling card," she said, finishing. "Now, speaking of calling cards, where's Oliguerri's notes?"

"Only if we work together, Thorpe."

"What the hell do you call what we're doing?"

"As equals."

"Equals?"

"I don't come under your FBI dictates."

"Shhhhhit, you Chicago cops... all alike, male or female..."

"That's right."

"All right... we work together on an even footing until we catch this creep."

"I have your word on that?"

"Done."

"See, I know your father was behind Pythagoras from the beginning, and that it's just possible that Dr. Maurice Ovierto knows that, too, and—"

"How did you come by that ridiculous—"

"Senator Thorpe had great ambitions... like his daughter."

"You don't know what you're talking about. My father's career involved improving the National Debt, housing for every American, feeding the poverty- stricken. He had nothing to do with Pythagoras."

"Hogarth confided in me. The truth now."

Thorpe's mouth fell open. "Hogarth told you this... this nonsense?"

Robyn saw that she was in a mild state of shock, that she hadn't known that her father was involved from the beginning.

"Rosenthaler..."

"What about Rosenthaler?" asked Robyn, probing.

"He's the man I killed on the ship. Ovierto set him up to be gunned down by me."

"Donna, it's been personal with Ovierto from the be-ginning."

"Why... how did I miss it?"

"Too close to the trees? What difference does it make. Now we know, now perhaps we can do some-thing differently."