The Buck Stops Here (35 page)

“Pink Panther?” Hydro said. “Where are you?”

“I am so sorry,” I said again. “Triple A got there just as I was hanging up the phone, and they changed the tire so quickly I thought I could catch you at the tree. Where are you now?”

“I’m at the mall,” he said, sounding exasperated. “Out in front of the shopping center.”

“I’ll be there in just a minute.”

After I hung up, I let out a long, slow breath. Then I ran as quickly as I could back across the campus to my car. From there I easily found the road to the shopping center, where we made the exchange without any trouble. To prevent accidental exposure, he had put the inhaler in a Tupperware container along with a printout about its chemical composition. I took it from him and thanked him for a job well done.

Hydro was sweating, but then, so was I! He seemed both frightened and excited by the whole thing, and as we talked, I felt bad, for he had bought—hook, line, and sinker—Paul’s story about me being an FBI internal affairs officer. I let him keep that notion.

He even asked me how to go about applying for an FBI job himself. I took my best guess while trying to sound as though I knew what I was talking about. I suggested that he go to the FBI’s website and said that all of the information he might need would be right there.

“Can I use you as a reference?” he asked as I climbed into my car.

I looked back at him grimly.

“Sure,” I said. “Just tell them the Pink Panther sent you.”

Forty-One

By the time I got back on the interstate, I knew I would be late for my appointments with the Family HEARTS board members that Phillip had set up for me. As I drove I dug out their information and called, rescheduling two of the meetings for Friday. I didn’t cancel the third one, because I thought I could still make it. It was at 8:00
P.M.
with a woman named Sandy Norris. I seemed to recall Veronica talking about her. She was a friend whose daughter had a rare disorder of some kind.

I dialed Tom’s number next, but I was disappointed to get his voice mail. I left a fairly cryptic message, that “the substance had been verified” and that someone had, indeed, been intended for the “pearly gates” just as I had suspected. I hoped that message would lend gravity to the situation on his end, and that Sparks would be kept safe—at least until I could talk to him.

Finally, I called Gordo in Georgia. He didn’t answer, so I left a message. While I waited for him to call me back, I thought about what I needed to do. Though I hated the thought of being in possession of the deadly ricin, I was also extremely excited, because the knowledge I had about the contents of the inhaler gave me some incredible leverage with James Sparks. The bottom line was that it was time for Sparks and me to have a confidential conversation, free of the possible electronic surveillance of the federal prison telephone system.

There were only two ways I could accomplish that, however. One was to fly to Georgia and see Sparks in person. The other was to somehow get Gordo into a meeting with Sparks in a private room and have the conversation over a scrambled telephone. I thought the second idea was worth a try.

Gordo called me back 15 minutes later. Before I told him what I needed for him to do, I asked what had happened on his end so far. He said he had managed to sneak a peek at Les Watts’ telephone records for the past few months, but there were no long-distance calls on them to Louisiana. He also got a bit more information from Watts about his side job. Apparently, the guard really was just a paid go-between for James Sparks and someone on the outside. Watts delivered messages back and forth and got paid once a month, the amount dependent on how many messages had been exchanged.

Gordo had not been able to get Watts to tell him who the person on the outside was, how he got the messages to this person, or how, where, or when he was paid. I had a feeling that we had already pushed our luck in this matter, and I told Gordo that he didn’t need to deal with Watts anymore.

“Good. He was nice at first, but we’ve run out of things to talk about. Now he’s just about the most boring mark I’ve ever worked. If I have to sit in his living room and listen to his long drawn-out fishing stories one more time, I’ll go nuts.”

“Well, you may not be so happy when you hear what I need for you to do next.”

“Oh, boy. Lay it on me.”

I told him I needed for him to have a meeting in the prison with Sparks. “The only way you’ll be able to get in to see him is as an attorney,” I said. “I’ll say you’re working for me, which is true, and set it up with the warden. What I need for you to do is get a scrambled cell phone and a nice suit. You’re going to have to look the part.”

“But I’m not an attorney. I can’t pull that off.”

“Well, the warden has the right to ask for proof that you are an attorney, but he’s not required to. He certainly never asked for anything from me, even though I was ready to give it to him. So chances are he won’t ask for anything from you either.”

I went on to say that I would request a private conference room from the warden. Once Gordo and Sparks were in there alone, he was to call me on the scrambled phone so that I could talk to Sparks directly.

“Okay, I see a couple problems here,” Gordo said. “First off, where am I supposed to get a scrambled cell phone? The Feed and Seed store? I’m in the middle of the boondocks here, Callie.”

“Try Albany. It’s a fairly good-sized town. I bet you can find a cell phone store or two. Maybe a Radio Shack.”

“You paying for the new suit?”

“Of course. Put it on my bill. But no Armani, okay? Try to keep it at a couple hundred. You want to look nice, but you don’t want to look too nice.”

“One final problem,” he said, “and it’s a big one. What about Les Watts? Nice suit or not, he’s going to recognize me.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Probably the best we can do is work around his schedule. Do you know what time he gets off tomorrow?”

“Not a clue. I could call him and find out.”

“Do that right now, if you don’t mind. Ask him what his hours are tomorrow because you want to know if he’d like to go fishing after work.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “As long as I don’t really have to go.”

We hung up and I continued driving along the elevated roadway. Five minutes later, Gordo called me back.

“He got the noon to eight
P.M.
shift,” he said. “He wanted to go fishing in the morning, but I said I had to work.”

“And you weren’t even lying,” I replied. “I’ll call the prison first thing in the morning and try to set the appointment for nine or ten. You be ready to roll. Right now, you’d better hustle on down to Albany or all the stores will be closed.”

“All right, Callie,” he said, sounding doubtful. “I hope this works like you think it will.”

I felt better after hanging up the phone. I would call the warden tomorrow first thing and request a morning meeting in a private conference room between one of my “associates” and James Sparks. I didn’t think there would be any problems there.

All that remained right now was what to do with the inhaler itself. Now that I knew it was filled with a lethal poison, I was very uncomfortable having it in my possession. I tried to think of where I might be able to store it, but every idea I came up with had problems. The in-room safe at the hotel was simply too close for comfort. I needed some other secure location, a place where there was absolutely no chance that anyone else might stumble upon it. A safety deposit box would be ideal, but it was too late in the day to find an open bank. I considered getting a locker at the airport or a bus station or train station, but I was afraid that might somehow endanger others. I needed a less populated spot.

When the elevated road ended and I dipped down onto the regular road, a billboard caught my eye. A “U-Store-It” storage facility was off of the very next exit.

As it turned out, the place was perfect. It was located out in the middle of nowhere, rows and rows of storage rooms with plenty of vacancies. I rented the smallest one they had, a tiny three-by-five climate-controlled room, and bought a big padlock from the man at the desk to keep it secure. Following his directions, I found the room and put the Tupperware container with the inhaler into it.

Having done that, I got back onto the interstate and raced to my appointment with Sandy Norris. I was embarrassed by my appearance, but there wasn’t much time to make a switch. I pulled into a gas station and did the best I could, quickly changing into the outfit I had brought along and running a brush through my messy hair. I didn’t even bother trying to refresh my makeup. It had been a long day, and at this point all I really wanted was a hot shower and a comfortable bed.

Still, this was an appointment I needed to keep. I was drawing near the end of my Family HEARTS investigation. The sooner I met with some of the board members, the sooner I could wrap it up altogether and focus exclusively on my own investigation.

I checked my image in the mirror and then ran back out to my car. After plugging the address into my GPS, I headed over the Mississippi River Bridge to an area known as Gretna. The house was easy to find, a cute little Victorian-style home on a quiet, dead-end street. I parked out front and made my way to the door, stepping over several toys once I reached the porch.

I rang the bell, hoping this would be a quick and easy appointment and then I could be on my way.

Forty-Two

Sandy Norris answered the door, an attractive but tired-looking brunette with a rag in one hand and spray bottle of cleaner in the other.

“Perfect timing,” she said as I stepped inside. “My husband just took the kids for a walk.”

She led me to the kitchen and suggested I sit in the chair at the end of the table.

“We just finished dinner,” she said, “so you’ll have to excuse me if I clean while we talk.”

“No problem.”

I would have thought the woman a neat freak for cleaning during a meeting, were it not for the food that seemed to be splattered all over the kitchen. It looked as though a pressure cooker had exploded in there. Besides food all over the table and most of the chairs, there were splatters on the cabinets, counter, the front of the stove, and even on the ceiling.

“Rose is a bit tough at dinnertime,” she explained as she ran the rag over the oven. “Food either goes into her mouth or across the room.”

I offered to help, but she insisted that I relax, she was used to it. Sure enough, she wiped everything down quickly and efficiently.

“I don’t want to rush you,” she said as she went, “but we’ll only get about fifteen minutes of peace and quiet before they come back, so please don’t feel that we have to waste time in idle chitchat.”

“Okay,” I said, startled but not offended by her bluntness. “I’m here to talk about Family HEARTS, but I suppose we should start with your own situation first, if you don’t mind. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about your daughter.”

“Sure,” she said, pulling out a step ladder from beside the refrigerator, climbing up, and tending to the splatters on the ceiling. “Our daughter Rose has a rare disorder known as mucopolysaccharidosis. I know, that’s a mouthful. MPS for short.”

“MPS.” I repeated.

“Basically,” she explained, “MPS is a genetic disorder caused by the body’s inability to produce certain enzymes. Rose was born with it, though we didn’t even know she had it until she was in school.”

“What happened?”

Sandy told me their very sad tale, that her daughter had seemed completely normal until the middle of first grade, when she suddenly started regressing. Rose had been learning how to read, and then she slowly lost that ability. She had been perfectly well behaved, and then all of a sudden she started becoming a bit of a problem child—being hyperactive, throwing tantrums, acting out.

“It’s almost like she stopped growing up and started growing down,” Sandy said. “Little did we know, that’s exactly how the rest of her life was going to play out. Bit by bit, she has lost her use of language, memory, coordination, cognitive function, and so on. At this point, even though she is thirteen, it’s more like living with a one-year-old. A very big one-year-old.”