“Oh, pardon my language, but bullshit!” She could be formidable when she needed to be, and she was perfectly willing to fight back. “You make a mistake like that again, and I’ll end you, do you understand me, you sick bastard?”
When Creay’s voice returned, it didn’t sound nearly as confident. “That’s right, Lydia, I am a sick bastard. And if you want to keep me away from your granddaughter, or your daughter, or anyone else in your family for that matter, you’ll be there tonight, with the money.”
Lydia straightened up on the edge of the bed. To the degree that she’d had any doubt about what she had to do, it was gone now. “I’ll be there,” she said after a moment. “You can count on it.”
D
ARIUS
T
RAIN SAT
at his desk in the precinct house, staring at the clock. He looked over at the empty desk where Jack Cassian should have been sitting. They’d agreed to get an early start on the investigation into Leighton Creay’s life and finances, and Train was eager to talk strategy. He believed that he’d come up with a way to put some pressure on Elizabeth Creay’s ex-husband, but he wanted to bounce some ideas off his partner.
That was difficult to do when your partner failed to show up at work.
Train looked at the clock again—the tenth time in as many minutes. Nine twenty-seven. They’d agreed to meet at eight, but as yet, Cassian was missing in action. Train had called the younger man’s apartment and his cell phone, but without any luck, and he was beginning to cross the imaginary line where annoyance turned to concern. He was tempted to try Cassian’s apartment again, but he’d already left two messages, and knew leaving a third would accomplish nothing.
Train was so edgy that he pounced on the phone when it rang. He scowled as he jerked the receiver to his ear. “Train here,” he snapped into the phone.
“Sarge, it’s Jack.”
“Cassian, where the hell are you?”
“In the mountains—southwestern corner of Virginia.”
It took a moment for Train to process that. “Southwestern Virginia? What in God’s name are you doing in southwestern Virginia?” he demanded.
“I’m with Sydney Chapin. She was attacked yesterday. We’re out at the Virginia Juvenile Institute for Mental Health.”
“Wait! Slow down, for shitsakes! What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain, Sarge. I need you to do a cou
ple of things.”
Train took a deep breath. He felt like he needed more information, but then again, he knew that trust was what made a partnership work. And for all Cassian’s youth and occasional immaturity, Train had never met a cop with better instincts than his. “Okay, fine,” he said at last. “What do you need?”
“I need you to get on the phone to the Virginia State Police. There’s been a death out here at the Institute, and I don’t like the stink of it. The Institute’s a state-run facility, so it’s got to be on state land, and that means the staties have jurisdiction if they want to take it. I want you to reach out to someone over there and get someone interested. If we let the local cops out here handle it, we’ll probably never really know what happened.”
“Not the most sophisticated group you’ve ever met?”
“They’re not here yet, thank God, but judging from the surroundings, I have no doubt that Barney Fife would feel right at home. I want to make sure the state police take this over before the locals show up and start screwing up the crime scene.”
Train rubbed his hand over his bald head. “You sure this is worth it?” he asked. “I’m gonna have to burn some favors in order to get the state police interested in a corpse that far out in the western part of the state.”
“No, I’m not sure of anything,” Cassian replied. “But Elizabeth Creay talked to the victim two weeks before she was killed, and then Sydney was attacked an hour or so after she had a conversation with him. Then we show up to talk to him this morning and he’s dead. It feels pretty coincidental.”
“No doubt.” Train sat up in his chair and pulled out a directory of law enforcement personnel, flipping through to find the phone number for a captain in the Virginia State Police he was friends with. “I’ll try to have someone from the state folks out there within the hour. What else?”
“I need you to check out a PI named Salvage. Lee Salvage. He may be the guy who attacked Sydney. We need to know who we may be dealing with.”
“Lee Salvage.” Train wrote the name down. “Okay. Is this more important than the Leighton Creay lead?”
“I think so.”
“All right. I’ll back-burner that and run this down. But the first time you get the chance, I want a phone call with some sort of kick-ass explanation for all this.”
“Will do. And Sarge?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
z
Cassian hung up the phone and turned to Mayer. “Take me to the body,” he ordered.
Mayer looked for a moment as though he might object, but then he stood and nodded and walked to the door. “He’s in the basement,” he said, leading the way.
Cassian fell into line behind him; Sydney and Golden fol
lowed as well. Cassian turned to Sydney. “You don’t have to
come down,” he said.
“Yes I do.”
“Have you ever seen a dead body before?” Jack asked, the concern evident in his voice. “It can get pretty nasty.”
“I was with my mother when we identified Liz’s body,” Sydney said. She shivered at the memory, and her voice was hollow. “Think it can get any worse than that?”
Jack was unsure what to say. “Okay,” he relented. “But don’t touch anything, and let me know if you’re going to be sick, or if you need to leave.”
She nodded and Cassian turned back to address Mayer. “When was the body found?” he asked.
“Around ten minutes before you showed up,” Mayer replied. “About eight-thirty, I’d guess. We were supposed to meet at eight to go over some of the things that he needed to do today. Willie was an excellent handyman, but he sometimes lost focus and needed some direction, so I generally met with him every day to make sure he had a clear schedule of chores.”
“And he didn’t show up today?”
“No, he didn’t. I didn’t think anything of it at first; Willie was often late. After twenty minutes or so, though, I began to get concerned. Dr. Golden and I had a meeting at eight-fifteen, and we both went down to find him together.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
Mayer cast a sharp glance in Cassian’s direction. “Don’t let the administrative title fool you, Detective. I’m a medical doctor first and foremost, as is Dr. Golden. We’ve both had some training in this area. Trust me, he’s dead.”
They were in the basement, walking down the long corridor that led to Willie Murphy’s dark office near the furnace and air-conditioning units. The building’s various mechanical systems wheezed and groaned as the four of them approached, as if in a low dirge for the man who had cared for the physical plant for years.
As they rounded the corner into the office, Cassian could see instantly that Mayer was right; Willie Murphy was indeed dead.
He was seated at his desk, his body thrown back against the chair. His head was tipped backward at an awkward angle, his jaw locked open as if in some final, primal scream, his eyes open wide, staring blindly at the basement ceiling. One arm had fallen to his side, and his pale knuckles nearly scraped the floor. His other arm was propped up against the desk, the sleeve rolled up to the shoulder, just above the clear rubber strap that was wound tightly just above the bicep. Following the arm downward with his eyes, Cassian saw the instrument of Willie’s death still clinging to its victim like some twisted, sated insect, lulled into a coma of satisfaction.
It was a syringe, and from the look of it, death had followed its use almost instantaneously.
“Such a tragedy,” Mayer said. “He’d made such strides.”
“He was an addict?” Cassian asked.
“Years ago,” Golden replied emphatically, shooting a look of resentment and betrayal toward Mayer. “As far as I know, he hadn’t taken any drugs since he’d come back to the Institute decades ago.”
Mayer walked toward the body. “As far as you know,” he emphasized.
“Please, Doctor,” Cassian said, putting his arm in front of Mayer, cutting him off from the body. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.”
Mayer sniffed the air, but eased back from the body reluctantly. “‘Crime scene’ may be jumping to conclusions, Detective. It is well established that addicts often have lengthy periods of sobriety, only to go back to drugs again years later. It’s during these relapses that overdoses often occur. The addict begins using at the same dosage levels as when he was at the height of his addiction, and the body, which is no longer accustomed to having the drug in the system, is overwhelmed.”
Cassian walked carefully into the room, taking in the scene from its widest perspective. There were no windows, and it appeared that the only way in was back up the stairs and through the main lobby. “Is there any entrance or exit directly from the basement?” he asked.
“There’s a storm door on the other side of the basement,” Mayer replied hesitantly.
“Is it locked?”
“I don’t know,” Mayer said. “Probably not. Anyone who wants to enter the facility can simply walk in through the front door, so I’m not sure why we would lock any other doors. We’re a low-security facility in the middle of nowhere.”
Cassian leaned over and examined the body without touching it. “There are no needle marks in his arm, other than where the syringe is still sticking in,” he commented. “Probably rules out the notion that he’s been using regularly without your knowledge.”
“Yes,” Mayer admitted. “And if this was the first time he’d fallen off the wagon, it would be entirely consistent with an overdose, because he had no tolerance built up in his system, as I’ve already explained. There’s also the issue of his having aged since his last drug experience.”
Cassian stood up and shrugged. “You may be right,” he said. “But tell me this: from what Sydney told me from her conversation with him yesterday, it appears that Willie was a recluse, correct? Did he go to town very often?”
Golden shook her head. “Never, as far as I know,” she said before Mayer could answer the question. “He had us send out for anything he needed to do his job, and he ate all his meals in the cafeteria here.”
“I wonder, then, how he got the drugs, and what kind they were.” Cassian looked back and forth between Golden and Mayer, but neither of them seemed anxious to speculate. “I assume you keep a full store of pharmaceuticals here?” he pressed.
“We’re a hospital, Detective. Of course we do.”
“Good. And because you’re a hospital, I assume that you keep very careful track of the amounts you have on hand of all the drugs you carry, correct?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good again. The first thing you need to do is check your stores to see if anything is missing. Then, if nothing’s gone, I need you to put together a list of everyone who dispensed medication in the past forty-eight hours. An autopsy will tell us what the drug was, and that will help us narrow the field, but you need to start putting that information together now.”
Mayer stood still for a moment, and Cassian could tell he was considering his options. As a bureaucrat, the doctor was used to taking orders. On the other hand, as an administrator, he was unwilling to admit the possibility that Willie’s death was anything other than a suicide—and the notion that the drugs that had caused his death had come from the Institute itself was clearly too much to bear. “You can’t really think—” he began, but Cassian cut him off.
“Doctor, I can think just about anything. That’s my job—to consider every possibility. I follow the most likely leads in any investigation, but I’m not ruling anything out at this point. Right now, we have here a man who it appears hasn’t taken any drugs in years, who as far as we know hasn’t left the compound at any time recently, and who’s sitting here dead with a needle sticking out of his arm. Whatever drug killed him either came from the hospital’s pharmacy, or was brought in to him by someone else. You can sit here and try to protect your ass, or you can help me figure out what really happened here. But either way, I can tell you one thing for sure: I will find out the truth.”
Mayer pulled himself up to his full height, and Cassian could sense that he was trying to appear indignant. “I resent the implication that I am hiding something, Detective. We will, of course, cooperate in any way we can. Nevertheless, I don’t know where you find the gall to talk to me in that manner in my own hospital.”
Cassian smiled. “Like I said, it’s my job.”
“No.” A deep voice came from the door behind Mayer. “Actually, Detective, it’s my job.”
Cassian looked beyond Mayer, over toward the door, and saw a tall, barrel-chested man in a dark suit and striped tie standing next to Mayer’s secretary. He looked like he was in his late fifties, and he had steel gray hair cropped in a military cut.
“Dr. Mayer, I’m assuming?” the man said, looking at the Institute’s chief.
“Yes, I’m Dr. Mayer. What can I do for you?”
“The first thing you can do is clear out of this area,” the man said. “I’m Lieutenant Casey with the state police, and I’m in charge of this investigation.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Lieutenant,” Cassian said, trying to be polite while still keeping some semblance of control and authority in his tone. “I’ve made sure the area is secure and I was just telling the good doctor here to check the hospital’s pharmacy to see if anything’s missing.”
Casey looked at Cassian and flashed him a broad smile. “You’d be Detective Cassian from the big city, I’d reckon,” he said in his most polite southern drawl.
“That’s right,” Cassian replied, already sure that the relationship was going to start badly.
“Yes, sir, I was told you’d be here,” Casey said, the smile never leaving his face. “Hotshot detective from Washington,
Dee See
, from what I understand, right?”
“Well—” Cassian began, but he never finished.