Dr. O (23 page)

Robyn lifted the message rubber-banded to the skeletal left hand as she stared at the beautifully set diamond on a lacey ribbon of green gold on one finger. One of the hands was larger than the other, a male's hand, while the left, with the ring, was a female hand. Donna used tweezers to pry open the message. It was a sick rhyme that read:

Sykes was fun

and Bateman more,

but nothing compares with a mothering whore

and a bastard's corpse...

They helped vent my spleen in a rollicking cemetery scene

Here in old D.C.

at beautiful St. Francis of Assisi...

It came clear to Robyn. She hit an intercom button and called for assistance. Several agents responded quickly to her call for any information on a graveyard disturbance in the area.

"Something went out over the wire about ten this morning," said one of them.

"Where at?"

"Assisi, about an hour away."

"Are Thorpe's parents buried there?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. What's this all about?"

"Christ... Christ... the bastard's turned into a ghoul, a body-snatching ghoul. Can you get me out to the cemetery?"

"Right, no problem. Come along."

She told another agent to tell Thorpe that she would check out the cemetery, assess the damage done, and get back to her.

On the way, Robyn realized that not only was Ovierto in D.C., but that he had been in the city for some time. She prayed he had not done any more harm to Donna than he had already inflicted. She detested the maniac for his methods, for Joe's sake, and now for Donna's.

At the large cemetery the roads swelled and rolled about the graves like a park path. The groundskeeper who had called the police earlier was excited to learn that the FBI had been called in and said it was no ordinary case of cemetery tampering, that it was an out- and-out body-snatching. In fact two bodies were missing, a couple by the name of Thorpe. Robyn wanted to see the empty graves and the ground around them. She called for the local police, asking them questions of the crime scene as it had originally been found, and when the police questioned her interest she grew angry.

"The man was a goddamned senator, and that interests the FBI." The other agents, rather enjoying her performance, didn't reveal the fact she was not FBI.

Soon she heard from Donna, who was on her way out.

Robyn told her she could take care of matters there, but Thorpe was stubborn and she was coming on.

At the graves' bottoms, far below the headstones with her parent's names engraved on them were two gaping holes where the coffins had rested, their fronts smashed open. Donna didn't need to see this. It was obvious he was trying to break her as he had Rosenthaler, to send her over the edge.

Robyn tried to stop Donna at the gate, pleading with her, telling her that she was playing right into the maniac's hands. "He wants you to go in there and stand over those empty graves and keel over, kid. Don't you see that? Don't you see it?"

"Out of my way." Donna made the car lurch forward, tearing away from Robyn, but Robyn held onto the side, walking swiftly, continuing to plead.

"They were never here anyway, your parents! Their bodies, yes, their husks, empty shells, but not them, Donna! Donna!"

Thorpe stopped the car she was driving and rested her head on the wheel, crying. Robyn reached in and held her head in her hands, saying, "Go on, cry it out."

"I don't want to cry," she said. "I want to kill him."

"You and me both."

She dried her eyes. "Then let's get back to work."

"Now you're talking."

"How did he do it? Two graves in one night, one man?"

"He had help... lots of help, according to the local cops. Probably hired help."

"I got the paper sent to documents. They're trying to learn what they can from it. Strange stationery, almost like rag paper."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

Robyn came around, got into the car and saw that the other woman was staring out at the silent cemetery, her parent's grave sites out of the line of their vision, over a gently sloping hill. Noise rose from that direction, where the other agents and the locals were talking over the horror of it all. "Come on," said Robyn, "let's get out of here."

"Yeah... you're right... you're right. And thanks, Robyn."

"What do you suppose he's done with their remains?" Donna Thorpe asked Robyn hours later at headquarters, out of the blue.

"I wouldn't even hazard a guess... not with this guy"

"Profile guys can't even get a fix on Ovierto."

"It'd be a lot easier if they had those Pentagon files," replied Robyn. "Like the business of his having bouts with some disorder?"

"What's that?"

"Something I saw as I was rushing through the in-formation General Wright so graciously provided us."

"What kind of disorder? What was the name?"

"Iiiiiy... can't recall, Poppy something or other."

"Damnit, think."

"It looked like paprika or poppyriaya. Noticed it just as Wright returned."

She called for Boas to come over to her temporary office here. Boas did so, and on entering he greeted them both warmly. The pleasantries over, Thorpe told Robyn to tell Boas what she had seen on the reports on Ovierto.

Boas nodded several times and grunted.

"What does that sound like to you, doc?" asked Thorpe.

"Porphyria?" he asked.

She said, "Spell it... no, no, write it out for me."

He did soon a chalk board behind him.

"That's it," said Robyn.

Donna asked, "Are you certain?"

"Absolutely."

"All right, Boas, tell us what you can about the disorder; is it rare, for instance, and is there medication for it, and if so would it have to be prescribed?"

"All of the above."

"Now we may have his Achilles heel! We've got to contact every M.D., every pharmacy —put it on their damned computers that we want to know about any dispensing of the drugs someone in his condition would require until we can check them out. If we move fast, before he has a chance to replenish his supply—"

"However you want to handle it, Inspector," said Robyn.

"We alert every agent, get the entire agency on this."

"Good thinking," said Boas, writing out a list of the kinds of medication a man of Ovierto's age would re-quire to combat the disorder. "Primarily this new miracle drug called tertracychterane, for advanced cases."

"Now, we turn the tables on him," Thorpe said firmly, the image of her parent's bones in an evidence box clearly before her. She had obviously returned for the ring, however, and had recovered this, for it flashed at Robyn from her finger.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Time passed. And then came more time. A long day and night stretched into two.

And they waited to hear from the villainous Dr. O, who had chosen to let time pass in order to drag out Thorpe's anguish over her parents' remains.

Robyn Muro had watched helplessly as Donna had taken first to drink and then to self-recriminations. She spoke often of having missed her chance to kill Ovierto the first time around. Any reassurances Robyn gave her that she'd get another chance fell as flat as cliches in a hospital waiting room. Robyn stayed close by her side, but there was nothing she could do to ease the pain, and the waiting was taking its toll on her as well now. She imagined it was like waiting for a strike force in a war, a strike force you knew was coming at you, but there was no escape —only the waiting.

"Let's get out of here," she suggested, "go to dinner," she pleaded, "see a movie, maybe... anything."

"You go ahead. I'm not very good company lately."

They were at the apartment they'd shared since arriving in D.C. Robyn was no longer on the payroll of the CPD, and a threat hung over her head that if she did not soon return to active duty there she'd be terminated. All of this news seemed not to phase Donna in the least, and for this reason Robyn was beginning to get annoyed with her. Finally, she said, "Look, we've got to talk. I'm going back to Chicago in the morning, pick up my duties there. I've been offered a lieutenant's position—"

"Joe's old post?"

"Yes."

"And lieutenant's pay?"

"Equal pay, yes."

"Maybe we'd better talk at that. Let's find a bite."

They took a cab to a restaurant a few miles from the apartment and were soon seated opposite one another and looking into one another's eyes over a bottle of Zinfandel. "I haven't been very pleasant to be around lately, I know," said Donna. "My husband is... he called last night... filing for a divorce... wants custody of the children..."

"Oh, jeez, Donna, I had no idea. I'm... what can I say that won't sound hollow?"

"It's just that now I need you more than I ever did," she replied. "And I wish you'd reconsider... stay on."

Robyn looked away. "I don't know."

"I've got papers in the works for you to become an agent, Robyn. We... the department... need you. I'm not just being selfish here. I mean it."

Robyn reached across and placed her hand on Donna's, saying, "I'm sure you do."

The restaurant was large and busy and bustling with people and waiters and the noise of dishes, but Robyn felt for a moment as if they were completely alone, the only two people on Earth who understood the enormity of the problem they referred to as Dr. O. Donna said, "You've been a great comfort to me, you know?"

"How? I haven't done anything. I haven't known what to do."

"Just being near, Robyn."

They'd ordered earlier and now their meals arrived. Robyn dug into her pasta salad while Donna cut into a Quiche Lorraine. After a few bites, Donna tensed, her fork jabbing at something in her food. It was a finger bone with a message wrapped about it. Donna lurched away from it, shaken and cringing. Robyn grabbed it up whole in her napkin and said, "Stay calm, kid... stay calm. See if you can place our waiter! It could be him

Robyn tore open the message as Donna tried to pull herself together, to find the professionalism that Ovierto had so carefully eroded, and to fight back.

Robyn kept saying, "He's here! Somewhere here! We've got a shot at him."

"What... what does it say?" Robyn read from the note:

Your parents' parts are on ice for now, perfectly preserved, save for the parts I've had to use to convince you that I am serious. Now, Donna dear, you'll hold hands with me or their bones will be cleaned and sold for what they'll bring. A simple ransom is all I require: your parents for Pythagoras. And you're to come alone. No girlfriends or boyfriends in the department.

"Where? Where is the drop?"

"Upstate New York at the Massena, New York dam on the St. Lawrence Seaway where the locks are. He says you'll know what to do when you get there. He says if he smells backup agents, you'll never see the bones."

"Let me see that," she said, a tinge of the old toughness returning to her voice. "The bastard's holding two dead people hostage."

"And he brought the message right to us and we never saw him."

"Don't take another bite of your food. No telling what's in it."

"Where's the guy that waited on us?"

"Come on!" she said, stuffing the note and the finger bone into her coat pocket, rushing for the kitchen, where a confused maitre d' tried to stop them. Robyn flashed her badge at the man and he relented. Donna pushed through the kitchen, staring at the people there, forcing her way to the rear door and out into the night. Robyn caught up as she prepared to fire at a figure in the distance who was walking away.

"You're not sure it's him, don't do it!"

A dog came bounding up to the man she was about to shoot. The man tore a stick from the dog, threw it and the dog gave chase.

"There!" said Robyn, pointing to a figure in an over-coat running deeper into the park.

"Come on!" They ran after the fleeing man, going deep into the park, below a viaduct and along the water's edge. In the distance stood the Washington Monument, lit against the sky. The fleeing man was running in the direction of the Lincoln Monument. If he got across the grounds he could hail a cab and disappear into the city.

He had a good lead on them and he appeared only as a shadow on the horizon. He could be a jogger, an-other mistake. Thorpe couldn't afford any further mistakes and she slowed in her pursuit, saying to Robyn, "We've got to split up! You that way. Circle around. I'll meet you on the other side. He gets a cab, and we've lost him. And remember, he a master at disguise and sleight-of-hand."

"Got it. Go!"

They didn't see one another for ten minutes, each continuing in a dead heat after the fleeing shadow they prayed was Ovierto.

Robyn came up from the south end, and in the distance she saw Donna coming on fast. Between them, climbing a restraining chain link fence, was the man in the overcoat, lumbering over into traffic, trying to hail a cab on Constitution Avenue, where the cars whizzed by like electronic flashes.