It is a man's own
mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
The Buddha
Act 1
J. Edgar Hoover
Building,
Washington D.C.
Tuesday, 4th
November 2008
2323 hours EDT
11:23PM in the WTF bullpit, not quite the dead of night, but
close enough for government work, and with most of the team in Washington State,
as opposed to Washington, D.C., the place just echoed every last keyclick or
scuff of paper. Daphne Worth leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes and
working the core muscle groups in her back. She really needed to get up and
walk around, or at least stand and stretch, but the file in front of her was
almost done and she wanted to get out and head home to her new wife.
Going home to her sweetie every night was nice, she could
curl up with her head in Trish’s lap and pretend there was a normal world
outside her door. But missing out on the call for the away team meant not being
there to back up Wabbit and the Monotreme and she missed her alternate-sibs,
Live Journal and SMS messaging not withstanding.
Daphs sighed and turned her attention back to the screen and
her explanation as to why the case in front of her was weird, but not
WTF-weird. She was a profiler, she could have worked it up properly, there was
enough detail to shape the initial profile, but that was what they had the
Behavioural Analysis Unit down the hall for. The Anomalous Crimes Task Force
was targeted at a very specific brand of weird; anomalous weird, cracked weird,
mad-screaming-effing-terror weird, and that was why they had sent the rest of
the team off to Seattle
on Monday, and why the case in front of her just wasn’t WTF. Making those
judgement calls on cases that came in was a big part of the reason Daphs and
SSA Esther Falkner had been left behind to hold home base. Theory said that the
home-office team was also there to do the data-mining for the away team, but
with Hafidah on-site playing combined analyst and walking broadband downlink,
and Chaz backstopping her on the analysis, theory was only taking a fraction of
their time. Potential WTF cases, on the other hand….
She finished the paragraph, scanned it for correct grammar
and saved it. If she let it sit for five minutes before a final review then the
chances were better that she would spot any howlers and avoid making a fool of
herself. Call it out the door by the stroke of the Witching Hour, which was
appropriate in a perverse, the universe hates me, kind of way.
Daphs started as she realised Esther Falkner wasn’t in her
office any more, but was standing at the entrance to the bullpen, waiting for a
break in her concentration before demanding her attention. As bosses, or at
least as bosses’ right-hand-women, went, SSA Falkner was one of the good ones
and Daphs wondered if that leadership ability was something West
Point had taught her, or something inborn that they had nurtured
like the tenderest of shoots.
“Ma’am?”
“How’s the Sunnyvale
case?” Esther asked.
“Done,’ Daphs answered, taking in Falkner’s too-perfect
carriage. Obviously she wasn’t the only one who had spent far too long at her
desk, and Esther’s spine clearly had not enjoyed the experience. “It’s not
ours. I think it’s someone using an unusual projectile weapon at close range,
maybe a slingshot or a hand-crossbow, and cleaning up after themselves. The
projectile crushes the throat and the subjects suffocate, but it’s big enough
and slow enough it doesn’t penetrate and the bruising is, pardon the term,
anomalous. I’m guessing something like a hard rubber ball as the projectile.
Even if they left it behind CSI might just take it for a kid’s toy.”
“Send it down the hall,” Falkner told her. “As is. I’ll
handle any flak if it rebounds on us, but I need you to come and look at the Taos case. I need someone
with medical training to look at it and see if they agree with me.”
Daphne raised an eyebrow. There had been five new case files
to be triaged this morning, not the usual one or two. Falkner had taken four of
those, because the Sunnyvale case file was huge
and was going to have Daphs staring at autopsied crushed throats all day, and
because they had both thought Taos
could be checked and bounced as not-WTF in fifteen minutes at most. In fact
Daphs was pretty sure she had seen the physical file in the out-box after
lunch, which suggested Falkner had had second thoughts and had taken another
swing at it.
The older woman turned back to her office and Daphs quickly
threw her Sunnyvale
assessment in the direction of Pete Pauley’s email in-box and hurried after
her. She frowned as she caught Esther up. Most of the team wouldn’t have
noticed anything more than a little extra stiffness in her stride, but in a
previous, pre-Bureau, pre-Anomaly, life Daphs had been trained to assess
injuries at a glance in uncommunicative patients and she could see that Es’ pelvis
and lumbar spine were hardly moving as she walked. That hip-swinging sashay beloved
of catwalk models was an exaggeration of how every human moved, the pelvis
tic-toccing left then right to let the stride pattern develop naturally. Es’
pelvis was currently stuck a little right high and she was rising an extra inch
or so on her right foot at each step to compensate and give her left leg space
to work.
Falkner reached her desk and sat, stiffly, as Daphne
schooled her attention back to WTF business. The EMT in her longed to tell
Falkner to start treating her back problems with the same professionalism she
applied to a case, and pretty much everything else in her life for that matter,
but it wasn’t her place to tell her that. Es would hate that anyone had noticed
for one thing, and it wasn’t so much that she refused to acknowledge the
problem as that she insisted everything else: career, case, and family, most of
all family, had priority over her own comfort.
Daphs sat in the waiting chair and Falkner waved her hand
over six individual case folders, already turned for her to look at.
“Six individuals, every social class, different sexes,
different races. All residents of Taos,
New Mexico or just a tad outside
of town boundaries. All died in accidental falls within the past 7 months. All
died from open head wounds.”
Daphne frowned and started flipping through the files,
scanning the autopsy info and pictures.
“Only open head wounds? No spinal trauma? No bleeding out? No
cardiac arrests?”
Falkner nodded. “Six lethal penetrating brain injuries with
no other injuries than Done Fell Over bruising. That’s why I should have given
this to you and not kept if for myself, but the autopsy detail isn’t really
prominent until you get into the individual case files, and it’s fairly skimpy
even then. It took me three hours into the next case before I realised what was
niggling at me. You saw it immediately.”
“You pointed me at it.”
“True,” Falkner admitted, “but you made the connections as
soon as I laid them in front of you.”
“It could still be accidental,” Daphs said, switching to
Devil’s Advocate.
“Also true, but if I’m reading these autopsy reports right,
none of the penetrating injuries had any foreign matter in them, not even bone
shards.”
“That’s inconsistent with a penetrating wound.”
“Anomalous, even.” Falkner agreed.
“What do we do? Wait for the team to get back from Washington?”
“I spoke to SSA Reyes before I came to find you. He doesn’t
see them being done there in under a week. It’s not a case that’s going to be
break quickly. Taos,
on the other hand, had four cases in 6 months, then two in three weeks. That
points to an escalation in the rate of attacks and I don’t think that we can
wait. Stephen agrees with me. If you confirmed my suspicions, which you have, then
we are to be wheels up at 0700. If we confirm a gamma then we’ll call in
back-up for the takedown, probably Bureau SWAT out of the Albuquerque Field
Office. In the meantime, go home, see your wife for a little while, you can
study the file on the flight.”
“My family will be up whatever time I get in.” Daphs pointed
out, “If yours is still up then you’ll be annoyed at them. I can handle
whatever set-up needs doing.”
Falkner shook her head. “For once I’ll be out on your heels,
the only thing to be done is arranging to courier the autopsy files to Doctor
Frost. But thank you for the offer and I will see you at the airport in the
morning.”
Daphne stood, then hesitated.
“What about the office? What if another case comes up with
everyone out in the field?”
“Then we re-evaluate on the fly,” Falkner told her, “Pete
Pauley will man the phones for us, he knows what to look for, and when to call
SSA Reyes, or me. Now go, see Tricia while you have the chance.”
*****
“Just the two of you?” Tricia asked, her breath whispering
against Daphne’s ear as they lay spooned together.
“Yeah, but we’ll be playing it softly-softly,” Daphs said.
“No tiger-hunts this trip. If we need backup we’ll call it in from the Albuquerque field
office.”
“I still don’t like it,” Trish said, “I like it better when
Chaz or Hafs are there to cover your back.”
“Esther Falkner is very capable,” Daphs said reassuringly,
“You met her at the wedding, the woman just projects capability.”
“But I don’t know
her,” Trish protested.
Daphs found Trish’s hands and interlinked her fingers with her
lover’s, then she drew both pairs of hands together over her heart, hugging the
two of them tight.
“I do,” Daphs said, “I’ll be fine. And you’re kind of cute
when you fret.”
“Am not!”
“What,” Daphs asked, twisting to face her, “Fretting, or
cute?”
“Hey!” Trish protested, then squealed as Daph’s hands
started tickling her mercilessly.
*****
“Better?” Ben Falkner asked his wife.
“Much,” Esther told him, looking at him from the depths of a
mountain of bubbles floating atop a steaming hot bath, “Sorry it turned into
such a long day, but with only Daphne and I in the office we have to keep ahead
of the tide or we’ll be swamped.”
“And today was flood tide?”
“Unfortunately. I didn’t want to miss dinner, but there was
no way I could leave before Daphne. I’ll try and make it up to Deborah and Bek,
but I’m wheels-up first thing in the morning and I don’t know how long I’ll be
in Taos, not
long hopefully.”
“They understand,” Ben told her, “In their heads if not in
their hearts. On the other hand, I’m not certain your spine understands, so
just stay in there until you’re cooked limp.”
Esther smiled ruefully, “So, how was your day?”
*****
Ronald Reagan
National Airport,
Washington D.C.
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
0627 Hours EDT
Washington
National Airport
at 0630 in the morning had all the appeal of one of the Outer Circles of Hell,
but for the ACTF it was only ever the first waypoint on their route into
wherever the heart of darkness was this week. Daphne was a couple of minutes
early for her rendezvous with Falkner, but Esther was there ahead of her,
discussing their flightplan with the Bureau pilot.
“Ma’am,” Daphne greeted her, getting a nod from Falkner in
return.
“Hey, Shannon,” she added,
“How’s the weather looking?”
“Pretty good,” the petite blonde told her, “We might get a
touch of turbulence over the Mississippi,
there’s a front trying to decide whether to play macho or peter out, but it
shouldn’t be anything too major. I was just telling SSA Falkner that the main
problem with this trip is altitude – the Taos Regional strip is just too high
and too small, I can get the Gulfstream in, but I can’t get it out without a reduced
fuel load and an intermediate stop, so we’ve agreed we’re going to Albuquerque again. Now if
you’ll excuse me, I need to go do my walkaround checks.”
“Thank you, we’ll get aboard now.” Falkner told her, waving
Daphne to proceed her up the airstairs.
The Gulfstream seemed empty with only the two of them aboard
– your tax dollars at work, Daphne thought, imagining what
some of the more rabid senators could make of it, seeing only the vote-grabbing
headline, not the efficient use of a scarce asset – aka the WTF – that the
business-jet enabled. She took her usual place at the four-top, laptop and case
files ready at hand to be spread out all across the surface as soon as they
were in cruise. Falkner slipped in opposite her, surprising her at first, but
then she realised that Mom would never allow someone even the chance to assume
that she felt too good to sit with them. The more space there was, the closer
Esther would sit.
“Don’t worry,” Falkner said, “I’ll get out of your way and
give you space to work once we’re in the air, but I’ve spoken to Doctor Frost
and she’s going to call as soon as she feels able to discuss the files. I’ll
want you to videoconference us together at that point so that we can discuss
the physical findings, so let’s take a few minutes and decide what we need to
talk about with her, what questions we need to ask and what questions she may
have for us.”
*****
[Trollcatz, Locked/Work]Leaving, on a Jet Plane
Headed South with Mom. Spate of mysteriously lethal
head-injuries in Taos.
Moderately high ick-factor, Frost consultation imminent.
[Standuponit]
Taos, rhymes with chaos. Try not to get
Frost-bite….
[Ometotchli]
Remember Mom frets less when
allowed to Mom-you. Away team is family-substitute.
PS: Try not to get ick-factor on
new green blazer.
*****
Somewhere over Virginia
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
0950 hours EDT
The monitor screen lit with Madeline Frost’s square-jawed
face.
“Good morning, SSA Falkner, Agent Worth,” she said, managing
to give the impression that she had read about greeting other humans in a
technical manual translated from the Korean by someone with no English and only
intermittent access to a less than perfect Korean-English dictionary. The words
were there, they were even in the right order, but the understanding as to why
the words were really needed had been lost in translation.
“I have read the autopsy reports you had couriered to my
office. Of necessity I have only skimmed them at this point and anything I say
may be subject to future re-evaluation. I would much prefer not to comment at
this point, but I understand that you feel that it is essential for me to give
you some guidance prior to you discussing the case with local law-enforcement
and Medical Examiner’s personnel. All that I can tell you at this point is that
Agent Worth’s assessment of the injuries is correct. Six outwardly penetrating
head injuries, with no extraneous matter in the wound tracts and only
incidental bruising are inconsistent with the aetiology of conventional head
injuries. They are, for want of a better term, anomalous. However there appears
to be insufficient evidence at this point to guarantee that the cause relates
to the Anomaly.
“Unrelated to the nature of the wound or necessarily to the
case itself, I can tell you that the autopsies appear to have been quite inappropriately
rushed, shoddy even. Any competent Medical Examiner should have realised that
the injuries were anomalous just as soon as he looked at them in detail. Even
with foreign matter in the wound they should have been flagged as suspicious,
without it, they are singularly abnormal, clearly requiring a deeper inquiry. I
would like you to teleconference me with the Medical Examiner at your earliest opportunity
after arrival in Taos.
I need to understand whether there is some reason for the inadequacy of the
autopsies that would alter my reading of the reports.”
Daphne kept the wince off her face. Frost had unremittingly
high standards; if she felt the need to tell another ME that their work was
inadequate she was unlikely to pull any punches and she was incapable of doing
anything to make the message more palatable. Being told they were incompetent
by a hired gun never went down well with doctors. Nor anyone else, for that
matter, but the incidence of God-Complexes amongst doctors was alarmingly high
and Daphne could sense the likelihood of having to throw herself in front of a
Frost-induced meltdown rising rapidly.
Daphne glanced sideways at Falkner, sitting close against
her to fit in the webcam’s pickup zone, but Esther didn’t react to her, keeping
her attention focussed on Frost’s image instead.
“Thank you, Doctor Frost. I will have Agent Worth arrange
precisely that. Now, you said outwardly
penetrating…”
Act II
Albuquerque International Sunport, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
0910 hours, MST
“Good grief, it’s colder than Washington!” Daphne protested as the
Gulfstream’s hatch opened onto a wave of cold air, Albuquerque singularly failing to live up to
her expectations. She reached hastily for her coat, glad she had brought it.
“Deserts in winter are colder than people expect,” Esther
said, already wearing hers.
Coat fastened against the biting wind that gusted in through
the hatch, Daphne gathered up her gear and followed Esther down onto the
concrete of the airport’s business aviation ramp, glancing around for any
reception committee, or even just the nearest place to get out of the wind as
it nipped at her ears and nose. Their reception committee turned out to be waiting
in the lee of the nearest hangar, climbing out of a eggplant-purple-shading-into-black
Explorer that just screamed Bureau to anyone who so much as glanced at it.
“SSA Falkner?” the woman, young enough to make even Chaz
look a seasoned veteran in comparison, asked as they angled towards her, “I’m
Agent Martinez from the Albuquerque Field Office, our SAIC asked me to meet
you. There’s just the two of you?”
Esther checked Martinez’s
credentials and badged her in turn before speaking.
“Yes, just the two of us. I requested transport?”
“Yes, Ma’am, the Explorer is yours, I’m to see that you have
anything you might need.”
“All we need is the transport and we’re on our way, Agent
Martinez. Do you have transport back to the field office?”
“I know where the taxi rank is, Ma’am.”
“Climb in the back,” Esther told her, “We aren’t in so much
a hurry we can’t drop you on the way out of town.”
*****
“Agent Martinez was so new
she squeaked,” Daphne commented as the Explorer left Albuquerque behind them and headed for the
mountains.
“And so very obviously charged with finding out what brings
ACTF into the Albuquerque
SAIC’s territory,” Esther agreed.
“I’m surprised we don’t see more of that,” Daphne said,
“Local field offices getting pissy about their territory when we invite
ourselves in.”
“Technically Taos PD invited us in,” Esther pointed out,
“And usually that’s true of either local PD or the local Field Office, so we
have an in they can’t object to, but Nikki does a lot of smoothing ruffled
feathers in the background, Brady too, his cop background helps. It is usually
only when we don’t have her with us that we see the local hierarchy territory
marking like tha—Look Out!”
Daphne was reacting even before Esther’s warning. The
big-rig in the opposite lane had been blocking a Camaro, and the idiot driving
the Camaro had swung out to pass, never mind that there wasn’t sufficient space
between the truck and the Explorer to squeeze through a pushbike. If Daphne
hadn’t spent hundreds of hours at the wheel of a balky ambulance in traffic
then the results might have made the evening news; not to mention being
personally unpleasant; as it was her frantic evasive manoeuvre put them onto
the gravel at the edge of the road in a cloud of dust as the Camaro disappeared
into the distance. The big-rig slowed for a moment, but accelerated again as
the driver decided from the view in his mirror that they had survived the
experience unscathed.
Daphne wasn’t quite so sure about the unscathed. Getting out
of the way of the Camaro had meant stamping hard on the brakes while she
down-shifted and got the nose of the Explorer turned away from the impending
crash, then accelerating hard for the margin to get them clear before braking
hard a second time to stop them hitting anything off the road. The
decelerations had been violent enough to make the seat belt grab at her, hard.
She tugged at the belt to loosen it again and turned to look at Esther.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Esther was wincing at the jolting, but at Daphne’s question
she wiped the pain off her face, rebuilding Mom’s façade of professional impermeability.
“Shaken, but not stirred,” she said, an almost unique moment
of humour from her, “Good driving. I don’t suppose you got that idiot’s licence
plate?”
“I’m glad not to be wearing his license plate!” Daphne said,
reaction starting to set in.
“Let’s take ten minutes,” Esther decided, reaching to
release her seat belt, “I think we need to check the car over before we go any
further – it took as much of a jolt as we did.”
Taos, New Mexico
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
1225 hours, MST
The Explorer got them to Taos without anyone else attempting to turn
them into a road death statistic, and the wonders of satnav delivered them to
the Taos Police Department’s station house.
“Special Agents Falkner and Worth to see Chief Preston,”
Esther announced to the officer manning the front desk as Daphne followed her
in.
“That would be me,” a voice said from behind them.
Daphne turned to see a man limping towards them, leaning
heavily on crutches. Something had made a mess of his left leg. The knee wasn’t
bending worth a damn and by the angle of his pelvis the leg was at least an
inch, if not two or three, shorter than it should have been.
“Chief Dan Preston,” he introduced himself, “And I am really
glad to see the Bureau here, c’mon back to my office and I’ll get you situated.
“Excuse the waddle,’ he said as they adjusted their pace to
match his slower one, “Vehicle Borne IED in Fallujah, the docs pulled half a Toyota out of my leg –
lucky to still have it, I guess. I was over there with the 200th Infantry
– National Guard.”
“Desert Storm was my war,” Falkner told him. “We didn’t make
it as far as Fallujah, but I did my time in country.”
Preston’s office walls were
covered in framed photographs. Half of them showed him in uniform, younger ones
as a patrol officer, more recent ones showing his increasing seniority. The
other half showed him in a different uniform, doing a different style of
policing.
“You were a sniper?” Falkner asked, studying a picture of Preston sprawled on a anonymous Middle-Eastern rooftop,
aiming a scoped rifle through a hole hacked in the parapet.
Preston shook his head,
“Never did the sniper course, but I can shoot better’n most, so they made me a
‘designated marksman’, gave me a better rifle and the opportunity to use it.”
He dropped his crutches noisily in the corner and braced
himself against the window, staring out into space.
“The insurgents had people harassing our Forward Operating Base
on and off for pretty much our whole tour. When they’re five hundred or more
metres out, lobbing RPGs round street corners or over compound walls, machine
guns and assault rifles won’t cut it, you need a marksman to fight back at
them. I’ve killed more people than any man should rightly be asked to, head
shots mostly, being able to see a torso for a centre-of-mass shot was a rare
luxury. When that IED went off and they shipped me home, I hoped I’d never have
to kill again, never have to look at another blown apart head.”
He shuddered and pushed himself away from the window,
limping awkwardly back to his seat. Daphne followed Falkner’s lead and seated
herself facing him, both of them quiet for the moment, giving him the chance to
talk while he wanted to.
“In a way, that IED, having this bum leg, maybe my whole
tour, is the reason you’re here,” Preston told
them as he handed over cups of coffee from the machine standing on the corner
of his desk. “I had to put myself on permanent desk duty when I got back here
after they released me from Walter Reed, so I’ve been spending more time
reading reports than might have been the case a couple of years ago. The last
thing I wanted to see was more head injuries, but I kept seeing them in the
accidental death reports and they left an impression. I wrote it off for
months, thinking it was just my mind making too much of them, but then I met up
with the neighbouring sheriff for a beer, mentioned it, and he had another
weird case had just happened that fell just in his jurisdiction rather than
mine. That made me think maybe it wasn’t just me, maybe something really was
happening. I remembered the circulars about reporting anomalous patterns of
crimes and decided it couldn’t hurt to send it off to you.”
“We’re glad you did, Sheriff,” Esther said, “this is
precisely the kind of pattern we’re looking for and we can’t find it unless
people like you flag the incidents for us.”
“So you really think we have a serial killer here in Taos?”
“The evidence suggests it is possible. It might still be a
coincidence, though we tend to be very suspicious of those, or it might be –
for want of a better term – a conventional serial killer, but it might be
something different, the kind of serial my team specializes in. I don’t mean
any disrespect to you or your men, but these criminals can be very difficult to
take down. If we identify a suspect, then I would prefer to bring in the
Bureau’s regional SWAT team from Albuquerque
to effect the arrest rather than use your own officers.”
Preston frowned.
“If you think that’s necessary, but it won’t be popular with
my men.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to accept that,” Esther said, “But
you should consider warning your men: if anything blows up unexpectedly, they
may need to use extreme force. We’ve had perpetrators resisting after multiple bullet
wounds. With this kind of crime, you have to put your perceptions of what is
normal aside, or you’ll find them flung back in your face when things go wrong.”
Preston smiled grimly.
“I saw men trying to fight with four or five bullets in
them, with entire limbs blown off. I’ve been emphasising that escalating to
lethal force means overkill ever since I got back. If something kicks off, then
I don’t think you’ll find us wanting. But I’ll talk to the guys anyway.”
He reached into his desk and pulled out two case folders.
“If you really think we have something, then you should have
these as well. After I sent the files off to you I realised that if one
neighbouring sheriff had something, then all of them might. I made a mite of a
nuisance of myself and two more possible cases popped up. All the sheriffs involved
are willing for you to investigate them, though I suggest you go through me for
contacting them, they’re old-fashioned country sheriffs who don’t particularly
hold with inviting in the city-boys.”
“And city-women would be a step beyond the pale?” Falkner
suggested.
Preston grinned, “Pretty
much. I think that it’ll be easier all-round if I handle it. It’ll let me be a
bit more directly involved than I’ve been of late, so I don’t object.”
Falkner shrugged; a little stiffly, Daphne thought. “That
works for me, Chief Preston. Now, do you have somewhere we can work?”
“I can try and clean out the break room,” he suggested, “But
what might work better is the rooms I’ve found for you at the Plaza Inn – Adele,
the owner, let me have their family suite for you at a cheap rate, that’s two
bedrooms and a common sitting room, might be that would make you a better
office than anything we could do here.”
Falkner nodded. “As long as it has internet and a lock on
the door, we can use it.”
“The answer’s yes, to both of those. I’ll take you over now
and you can check it out.”
“I’ll get us set up,” Falkner said, “And if you can take me
through these two new cases and any points on the first batch you think might
be significant, then I would be grateful. Can you arrange for Agent Worth to
meet with your coroner while we do that?”
*****
Autopsy Suite, Taos Pueblo
Hospital
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
1425 Hours, MST
“I don’t understand the problem,” Doctor Willard, the Taos coroner, told Daphne,
“you have my full reports.”
“Doctor Frost, our consultant pathologist, is very
meticulous,” Daphne explained, “she prefers to conduct all autopsies in our
cases, and where that isn’t possible, as in this case, she often feels the need
to discuss the findings with the coroner who did conduct the autopsy.”
“My report covered everything,” he protested once more.
Daphne bit her tongue, refraining from further comment.
Willard wasn’t impressing her, the man was probably no older than she was, but he
looked gaunt and moved and acted like someone desperately waiting for the day
he could finally retire. He seemed washed out, or maybe even wrung out, and if
he was just going through the motions, as seemed all too likely, then Frost
would tear him apart.
She ignored his protests, checked the picture being picked
up by her laptop’s webcam, then steeled herself and hit Frost’s speed-dial on
her AOP.
“Stay still, please, and let me talk to Doctor Frost,” she
hissed at the fidgeting Willard as the call connected.
Frost picked up the call at the second ring.
“I have the Taos
coroner, Doctor Willard, ready for a video conference,” Daphne told her,
knowing that the usual pleasantries were not just wasted on Frost, but actively
disliked.
“Thank you, Agent Worth,” Frost answered, “I am connecting
now.”
The laptop lit with Frost’s face and Willard instantly both
stilled and blanched.
“Your specialist is Doctor Madeline Frost!” he hissed at Daphne.
“Yes, that is correct.” Frost answered, “You have the
advantage of me.”
“Doctor Frost, Doctor Walter Willard,” Daphne supplied.
“I, I know your work on cancer, Doctor Frost,” Willard
explained, “I saw you speak at the Bethesda
conference last year and I’ve have had…” he paused, “occasion to study some of
your papers of late.”
Frost frowned, and Daphne braced herself.
“If you take the time to study papers as specialised as
mine, Doctor Willard, then I fail to understand how your autopsy work can be so
slap-dash. Each one of these autopsies should have rung alarm bells for an
intern, never mind a qualified coroner. The head wounds are singularly
abnormal, each and every one of them is grounds, on its own, for ruling the
death suspicious, and yet you signed each of them off as an accidental death
after what seems the most cursory of autopsies. I believe you need to explain
yourself, sir; not simply to me, but also to Agent Worth.”
“It’s difficult…” Willard began.
Frost snorted, “Difficult is what we do, doctor. If our work
was simple, I would not have chosen it as a career.”
Daphne winced at the implied “But you might,” but the sting
seemed to cause Willard to rally, and to do it in a direction that Daphne
hadn’t expected.
“Yes, I suppose you might very well characterise my work as
slap-dash, but I don’t work for a leading teaching hospital or a research
institute, with dozens of people to do my lab work and admin. I am the only
doctor in the county with the appropriate training, and if I need something
doing then either I do it myself, or I have to have it couriered to a lab,
which takes days, sometimes weeks for me to get the answers.
“I knew my work was suffering, I asked for a leave of
absence, but the county and the hospital refused, they said their budgets
didn’t have sufficient allowance in them for a locum.”
His tone turned bitter, “Maybe next financial year, they
said, fat lot of use that will be.”
Daphne fought to keep her eyes front, but her brain couldn’t
help replaying Doctor Willard’s haggard look and multiplying it by the anger in
his words. Was his appearance the look of someone who had lost too much weight
too quickly, or simply a thin man going through a bad patch. She couldn’t
decide, but her hand twitched the lie of her jacket, pulling it clear of her
holster.
“My wife is dying, Doctor Frost, she has a glioblastoma, with
a Karnofsky score that has progressed rapidly downwards to 40%. You know what
that means better than I do.”
Frost’s interest had clearly waned while Willard poured out
his excuses, now it positively perked up, which given Daphne knew enough
medicine to recognise that Willard had just described a fatally aggressive
brain tumour was verging on the macabre.
“Prognosis?” she asked.
“Weeks, not months.” Willard said, slumping hopelessly in
his chair.
“You realise you shouldn’t be working,” Frost said, almost
kindly.
“I know, but I told you what happened when I requested a
leave of absence, and I can’t resign…”
He paused, clearly embarrassed.
“I may be a doctor, but I’m not a rich man – I have to work,
we, my wife rather, needs my medical insurance, you see.”
Frost nodded, “I do see, doctor. That doesn’t get us around
our current problem, but it helps me to understand the reason for it. I suggest
that we work through each of the cases in turn, and you can answer any
questions of mine. And once we are done, I would be grateful if you could email
me a copy of your wife’s case notes. I may not be able to offer you any hope,
but perhaps one day they might let me offer it to someone else.”
“Agent Worth?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Doctor Willard and I are likely to be some time, and the
conversation is likely to be above even your admirable level of competence in
these matters. I suggest that you go and get a coffee or some such while you
wait.
Daphne nodded and pushed her chair back from the table. She
had worked with Frost long enough to recognise “Go away, the adults are talking” when she heard it.
*****
Carson’s Restaurant,
Taos, New Mexico
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
1930 Hours, MST
The restaurant Chief Preston
had recommended was a block or so from the Plaza, across the street from the
Kit Carson House that gave it its name. Given the name, the Old West design aesthetic
was probably inevitable, cowboy-chic meets Tex-Mex meets Pueblo. The tables and chairs looked
rough-hewn, but the supposed axe-marks were lacquered smooth, and what looked
like Native-American weaving on the upholstery turned out to be printed fabric.
“The décor’s a little clichéd,” Preston
said, stowing his crutches by the side of the table as a waitress headed for
them, “but the food is pure South-Western. I think every other restaurant in
town has tried to poach the cook, but Martha – the owner – had the good sense
to marry him first.”
“Best move I ever made,” commented the waitress, Martha, as
she reached them, “and that clichéd décor
is precisely what most of the tourists want, as well you know, Dan Preston.”
Preston shrugged and
grinned, “Reckon I do. Martha, these are Special Agents Falkner and Worth from Washington. Agent
Falkner, Agent Worth, my sister Martha. I might be biased, and there might be a
couple of places in town a mite fancier, but I don’t think the cooking will
disappoint.”
“Seeing as you’ve taken the back table, I take it this is a
working dinner?” Martha asked her brother, the sibling resemblance obvious now
that it had been pointed out.
“Yeah,” he told her, “though not so much that I won’t take a
beer. Ladies?”
“A beer would be good,” Falkner said, “though just the one
for myself and Agent Worth, we need another session with the files once we’re
done here.”
“Coming right up,”
Martha told them, setting menus in front of Daphne and Esther, “I’ll keep the
other customers near the front to give you as much privacy as we can, though
we’ll probably fill up before you’re done.”
“Would you prefer Kosher?” Martha asked Falkner, “I noticed
the Star of David on your necklace.”
“Please.” Esther told her.
“Okay,” she said, reclaiming one of the menus and rapidly
putting ticks against a selection of dishes before passing it back, “we can do
Kosher for the ones I’ve ticked, the others just won’t work – South-Western
cuisine is pretty big on mixing meat and dairy. I’ll be back in a moment with
the beers.”
“Observant,” Daphne noted.
“Yeah,” Chief Preston agreed, “I sometimes think that she
would have made the better cop.”
“Now what did you make of our coroner,” he asked Daphne, “I’ve
been worried about him.”
****
“I knew I had trouble as soon as I heard the Winslow boy
DFO’d,” Preston said, mopping up the last few
refried beans from his plate. “You’d be wrong to say his daddy runs the town,
but it’s not for want of trying, and he probably is our single wealthiest
resident.”
Both Daphne and Esther nodded, Preston had provided a quick
drive-by of all the scenes where the victims had been found on their way to the
restaurant and the Winslow residence had been in a different league to any of
the others.
“Not many twenty-two year olds living in a place like that,”
Daphne noted.
“Yeah, family money, though give Matt his due he was a
better kid than I expected, lot fewer complaints about him than his dad.”
“Does Winslow Senior have enemies,” Falkner asked.
“Rivals, lots of rivals. I guess there’s a few whose
businesses he steamrollered might consider him an enemy, but none I would
finger for taking it further. Besides, Matt could look after himself, easier to
go after his sisters.”
“First-born son,” Falkner said.
“Apple of his father’s eye,” Daphne echoed.
“Taking him out would be the way to hurt his father worst of
all.”
“Can’t argue with that, I suppose,” Preston said, “Winslow
Senior has been pretty much obsessed by this – his wife died a year ago,
stroke, losing his son so soon after this hit him hard. He’s been all but
harassing me, the city council, anyone else you can think of, and not just his
lawyers chasing and threatening, he’s doorstepped me twice personally, the
mayor more times than I can recall. He had the decency to leave Doctor Willard
alone given his circumstances, but I understand there was a private autopsy
after we released the body, and he definitely flew in investigators from some
big-city PI firm to look into the case. There may be more, that’s just the
stuff I’m aware of.”
“All of which means he’s distracted from his business
interests,” Falkner said, “that’s another potential motive.”
“Should we try to get hold of the private autopsy results?”
Daphne asked, “No disrespect to Doctor Willard, but they probably did a better
job than he did. Doctor Frost might get more from that report than from Doctor
Willard’s.”
Esther frowned, considering the proposal, “Let’s hold that
card back for now and see how things develop. I don’t want Mr. Winslow Senior
trying to inject himself into our investigation the way he did the Chief’s.
Given what we’re looking for, that’s potentially a recipe for disaster. But if
the situation arises, we will…”
She stopped mid-sentence, turning as a commotion broke out
at the door.
“Aw, crap!” Preston said as
he looked past her, “Talk of the devil and he shows on your doorstep.”
The man in the doorway was sixtyish, slight, and dressed in
a suit that had probably cost more than Daphne’s entire wardrobe. A Stetson,
decorated with silver conches on its hatband, lifted his appearance out of the
ordinary, but simultaneously injected a note of cliché.
Preston’s sister had met
him in the doorway and was arguing quietly but vociferously with him, their
words inaudible across the room, but punctuated with emphatic hand gestures,
Winslow’s mainly directed towards their table.
“Excuse me,” Preston said, using
the table to push himself to his feet, “Duty calls.”
He limped across to the doorway without bothering with his
crutches, though one or two of the diners found their shoulders being used as impromptu
supports – from their laughing reaction it was obvious that Preston
was picking people he knew to lean on and joking with them as he went.
Esther wiped her mouth with her napkin, placed it neatly on
the table beside her plate, then stood up.
“Wait here, Daphne,” she said, “No sense in both of us
going.”
By the time she got to the doorway Preston
had eased his sister aside and was standing with a hand against the doorpost
for support, and not so coincidentally blocking Winslow’s progress into the
building.
“Look, John, you know and I know that you’ll make a scene if
Martha lets you inside, and Martha has a right not to subject her other diners
to that.”
“I don’t care, I want
to know what’s going on. Word is out that you’re suddenly treating my son’s
death as murder, that the FBI are taking over the case. I have a right to know
what is going on, Matt was my son.”
“I understand that, Mr Winslow,” Esther said, stepping in
beside Preston. Her hand touched Winslow’s
shoulder, drawing him into her confidence, and simultaneously easing him back
out of the doorway and onto the street. The cold and the piercing wind sent the
muscles of her back into an instant spasm as they cut through her blouse, but
she kept the discomfort from her face.
“I’m Supervisory Special Agent Esther Falkner of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. And yes, we are looking into your son’s death, amongst
several others. I’m afraid that I can’t tell you anything more about our
investigation, simply for the fact that we only arrived today and are still
getting ourselves situated – in fact Chief Preston was still briefing us right up
until a few moments ago. I give you my promise that I will discuss this with
you, but now is not the time for that.”
“Tomorrow,” Winslow demanded, “I can clear out my morning,”
“You have to give us an opportunity to work, Mr. Winslow.
You’re a successful man, you know micro-management doesn’t work, that you have
to trust people in order to allow them to produce their best work. Doesn’t your
son’s death deserve our best work? Tomorrow isn’t feasible, because we need to
talk to the witnesses and visit the scene, but we also need to talk to family,
to understand the victim as a person, and I promise you that I will contact
your office and arrange a meeting for Friday, probably in the afternoon. If you
answer my questions about your son, then I will answer as many of yours about
the case as I reasonably can. You understand that there are constraints, that I
can’t promise you full candour, but what I can tell you, I will.”
“Friday?” Winslow asked, seemingly surprised at what he was
hearing.
“My word on it,” Esther told him, “But there may be a way
you can help us even before then. Chief Preston told me he thought that you had
arranged for a second, private autopsy?”
“I did, two in fact. A waste of time, they both said the
wound didn’t make sense.”
Esther nodded, “Nevertheless, it would help our pathologist
if she could get access to those files. She is having to work without access to
the bodies and the more reports she can have to cross-reference and analyse,
the better.”
“Yes, yes, I can do that.” Winslow told her, almost
stuttering in his eagerness to help, “In fact, I’ll go and arrange to have
copies couriered to the police station right this moment. Thank you, Agent
Falkner, and I look forward to meeting with you.”
“Friday, my word on it,” Esther told Winslow, taking his
hand to shake firmly on her promise, and transforming that motion into
something that subtly turned Winslow away from the restaurant and started him
on his way.
“Smooth,” Chief Preston told her as Winslow retreated
towards his waiting limo and she stepped back into the welcome warmth of Carson’s.
Esther shrugged, wincing as her back twinged in reaction,
“If you can use the other person’s needs to get them to give you what you want,
then there are times that that saves an awful lot of effort.”
“Makes sense,” Preston
said, “But I’ve never seen anyone else manage to send John Winslow scurrying
off like an errand boy.”
“He’s grieving,” Esther told him, “Doing something stops him
thinking about his loss.”
She paused, looking at Preston.
“Tell me, has he lost weight recently?”
****
Plaza Inn, Taos, New Mexico
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
2115 Hours, MST
Esther allowed a wince to cross her face as she stepped out
of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. The pummelling heat had helped,
but her back was clearly unhappy after the near collision. It could have been
worse, she acknowledged, she might have been at the wheel rather than Daphne,
and for all that she was a Bureau trained driver she didn’t have the sheer
experience of someone who had spent years of her life behind the wheel of an
ambulance.
She pushed the thought away as she snagged a second towel
for her hair and limped out into her bedroom. She had called the kids before
dinner, and spoken to Ben then, but that was a family call, with a different
set of rules to when it was just her and her husband in the call. She reached
for her cell.
“Hey, Es. How was your day?”
A tiny fraction of the tension in her spine drained away as
she heard Ben’s voice.
“Long, and uncomfortable,” she admitted, “You have Daphne
Worth to thank for an idiot in a Camaro not making you a widower.”
She shuddered, imagining Ben answering the door to find Celentano
and their rabbi at the door, what it would do to Bek and to Deborah didn’t bear
thinking about.
“Case related?” Ben asked, no extra inflection in his voice,
the perfect Bureau husband.
“No, just plain old vehicular stupidity. Daphne got us out
of the way before he did any damage.”
“If he didn’t do any damage, why are you in more pain than usual?”
Esther rolled her eyes, the better part of 2,000 miles
between them and she couldn’t hide her pain from him. She couldn’t hear any
difference in her voice, but clearly Ben could.
“We stopped hard, and we both got jarred about a bit. I’ll
be fine after a good night’s sleep.”
“So go to bed!”
Es sighed, “Not happening just yet, Daphne and I are having
one more session with the files. The local chief of police is great – he’s an
injured vet, so he and I hit it straight off – but there’s external political
pressure I hadn’t bargained on. I’ve bought myself a reprieve until Friday
morning, but that means we need to get as far as possible in the next 36
hours.”
“Politics, ick!” Ben said, imitating something Bek had said
earlier in the week. It made her laugh.
“Enough of me,” she said, “How was your day?”
****
Plaza Inn, Taos, New Mexico
Wednesday, 5th
November 2008
2230 Hours, MST
Daphne looked up from the files, conscious that something
had disturbed her, not immediately sure of what. She turned to look at Falkner
and grimaced. Esther was white-faced, sweat standing out on her brow, a drop
just starting to dribble away from her temple. One hand was clenched on the
wooden arm of the loveseat, the other braced on the edge of the coffee table,
as though she was trying to take the entire weight of her body through her arms.
Falkner’s breath hissed through her teeth in a wince and Daphne knew what it
was that had caught her attention.
“Are you all right, Esther?”
Stupid question, clearly she wasn’t, but you soon got to
spot the patients who weren’t going to be sensible, the ones you had to talk
into helping themselves.
“Just my back playing up a bit,” Falkner admitted, which by
her standards was a major concession.
“Rubbish,” Daphne told her.
Falkner looked startled at being so bluntly contradicted,
but the emotion flickered across her face in an instant, swallowed behind the
mask she hid her pain with
“Pardon?” she asked.
“I said ‘rubbish’,” Daphne repeated, “‘just my back playing
up’ is someone feeling a bit stiff and achey the morning after a hard game of racquetball.
You’re white-faced and sweating and the only reason you aren’t shaking is that you
won’t allow yourself to. Right now you’re hurting so much it even hurts to
breathe. Put the files away and go and lie down.”
“Doctor’s orders?” Falkner asked, her tone hovering
somewhere between annoyance and just plain startled.
Daphne sniffed. “Unlike doctors, some of us worked for a
living. I’ve seen enough people in acute pain to know when they can be left to
manage it and when they need help. You need help.”
“Okay,” Falkner said, “I’ll admit that I probably need to go
lie down for half an hour.”
Daphne’s inner demons considered asking her ‘Was that really
so difficult to admit?’, but she kept her mouth firmly shut. Some people dealt
with pain in public, but others fought a private fight and Esther Falkner would
thank no one for forcing her to deal with what she undoubtedly considered a
weakness in front of an audience. The paramedic in her wanted to help Falkner up
from the seat and through to the bedroom, the profiler in her preferred not to
have her head bitten off.
Falkner shoved down to help herself up and she almost made
it all of the way to her feet, then her left knee wobbled and she staggered,
turning almost 180 degrees as her hand clutched at the arm of the seat and she
swung around the pivot point. She hit the ground hard before Daphne could
launch herself out of her own seat and there was the unpleasantly wet gurgle of
someone losing their dinner the hard way.
“Don’t move, Esther,” Daphne told her, physically blocking
her as she tried to stand again.
“Think I might need a little help here,” Esther admitted
reluctantly, sagging against her.
*****
Act III
ER Department, Taos Pueblo
Hospital
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
0030 Hours, MST
“Reyes,” the richly textured voice said into Daphne’s ear.
Daphne closed her eyes and mentally braced herself. She felt
stupid for having to do it, but the whole situation just seemed awkward.
Talking to Stephen Reyes seemed like a breach in Esther Falkner’s trust.
“This is Worth,” she told her other boss, “SSA Falkner is in
the ER.”
“What happened?” Reyes’ voice demanded, sharpening.
“It’s not case-related,” Daphne told him, “We had a near miss
driving from the airport. I stopped hard and SSA Falkner jarred her back. She
said she was okay….”
“She would.”
“….but we were reviewing the paperwork on the case this
evening and it got worse. Worse than I’ve ever seen it before.”
“I’m surprised you got her to the ER.” Reyes told her.
“You have no idea”, Daphne thought, though now she considered
it he had known Falkner for years longer than she had and maybe he did know.
She had had to threaten to dial 911 for an ambulance just to get Esther to let
her take her to the ER and the drive had been anything but pleasant for the
other woman. The local roads weren’t in ideal condition and Esther had clearly felt
every pothole. In fact she’d been so pale by the time they got to the hospital
that Daphne suspected she was even feeling the road markings and if she could
drive around the worst of the potholes there wasn’t any easy way of avoiding a
stop line.
“What is your estimation,” Reyes asked, “Can SSA Falkner
continue on the case.”
Daphne winced. Falkner hated showing weakness, she wasn’t
going to be happy if Daphne told Reyes she wasn’t fit to continue, but she also
had a responsibility to her, not to mention the victims.
“No sir, not in my opinion. She might be mobile by tomorrow,
but I doubt she’ll be moving anything like normally.”
“And if you find a gamma, you need her moving normally. How
far did you get with the case today, did you confirm your conclusions from the case
notes?”
“Pretty much, I talked to the local coroner, teleconferenced
him together with Frost. You know they found two more cases when they talked to
the neighbouring jurisdictions?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that,” Reyes said, “But I’m not entirely
surprised.”
“They fit the same pattern, penetrating brain injury with
nothing in the wound tract. In fact Frost thinks the penetration may be
outward, not from the exterior in. We’re going to have to think through what
that may imply over mythology.”
“Okay, I’m going to give you two jobs, Agent Worth.” Reyes
said, “The first is to keep working up the case notes, the forensics and the
mythology – make sure Dr. Frost has anything she hasn’t seen. I’m sending Todd
down to help you, and I want you in a position to brief him when he arrives.
I’m guessing that will be sometime around mid-morning tomorrow depending on flights.
I don’t want you interviewing any witnesses until he arrives and you have
backup available if needed. The second job is a thankless one, I’m afraid, I
want you to keep SSA Falkner from hurting herself or trying to do more than she
can. She won’t be happy with you, but she is her own worst enemy in this
situation.”
“I’ll do my best, Sir” Daphne told him, though her inner
agent was screaming “Why me?” and “I am so screwed!” Reyes had just stuck her
between a rock and a hard place, between Scylla and Charybdis, between Mom’s
wishes and Dad’s orders.
“I know you will, Daphne.” Reyes said, an instant ahead of
the click as he disconnected the call.
Albuquerque International Sunport
Thursday, 6th
November 2008,
1030 Hours, MST
Sol Todd looked even more rumpled than usual and all of his
50-odd years as he walked into the arrivals lounge at just gone ten-thirty the
next morning. A hand rose in half salute as he saw Daphne waiting and he shaped
his course to meet her, moving through the crowd with an ease that belied his
physical appearance.
“Some of the early passenger aircraft were designed around a
figure of 200 square feet of space per passenger,” he told her, a typically
off-kilter Sol greeting, “on the idea that air travel should be a luxury
experience akin to the best ocean liners. Suffice it to say that Southeastern doesn’t
seem to follow the same design ethic.”
“You couldn’t swing the jet?” Daphs asked, handing him a waiting
coffee.
“Not for just me,” Sol told her. “After you called him,
Stephen had Hafidha check the timetables and it turned out the redeye to Dallas-Fort
Worth and then a connecting flight was actually faster than waiting for the jet
to reposition from DC and then fly me here direct. So for the sake of two hours
and the taxpayer’s dollar, here I am. How’s Esther?”
“Annoyed, frustrated, and not exactly a happy bunny.” Daphne
told him. “I left her in bed at the hotel, pumped full of hospital grade
painkillers and muscle relaxants.”
“I notice you didn’t say ‘and the worst patient you’ve ever
dealt with’,” Sol told her. “You’re destined for sainthood, young Daphne, your
loyalty is commendable, and your patience remarkable, but Stephen and I have
been here before. The others haven’t and they don’t need to know, so we just told
them that with the extra cases there was more in the case files than two agents
could get through in a reasonable time.”
There was a very polite, very indirect ‘and keep your mouth
shut’ in there somewhere, Sol taking charge without actually needing to say so.
She should resent that, not talking about patients was basic medical ethics,
but Sol managed to turn it into something no more offensive than a gentle
reminder.
They emerged into the sun and Sol squinted up into the winter
sun before pulling on a pair of mirrorshades that shouldn’t have worked for a
man of his age, but somehow did.
“Why is it always the South?” he muttered, then turned his
full focus on Daphne.
“So, fill me in on the case,”
Plaza Inn, Taos
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1310 Hours, MST
“You were right,” Sol said as Daphne let him into the suite.
Falkner was curled up on the couch, which wasn’t really long
enough for her, but she’d squeezed herself onto it, lying on her side with legs
curled. She had her head hanging over the edge, reading a file that had been
opened out on the floor.
“Right about what?” she demanded.
“Right that you would be too stupid to stay in bed. Oh,
Daphne is far too polite to call you stupid, you being SSA and all, but she
called it that you couldn’t stay in bed a minute past her being out of the
door.”
Falkner sniffed disdain at his opinion, “It was at least
five minutes,” she said, “And I need to do something, being bored makes it
worse.”
“I offered to turn the TV on,” Daphne said.
“Daytime TV? That’s worse than being bored, thank you.
Unfortunately whoever is in the next room doesn’t think so, and likes their TV
with the volume turned to 11. I was better off out here.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Maybe, but I can’t decide how it fits in.”
“What is it,” Todd asked, folding himself into a
legs-crossed position on the floor in front of Falkner with an ease Daphne hoped
she would still have at his age. She echoed him, recognising that it would save
Esther from having to twist her neck to look up at them.
“Victimology, I found a common factor.”
“I thought we had agreed that there wasn’t one,” Daphne
said.
“So did I,” Falkner admitted, “but it just suddenly struck me when I was coming
out of the bedroom, which I admit was not the most pleasant dozen steps I’ve
ever taken.”
“The point, Es,” Sol prodded.
“The point is I was thinking what a pain it is having a
party wall, then I realised that so did five of the original six victims.”
Sol saw Daphne frown, not making the connection, but his own
brain leapt on it. “And multiple residence buildings just aren’t that common
around here.”
Falkner shook her head gingerly, “No, they aren’t. I checked
the census database. Multiple occupancy units in Taos County
are only 9.7% of the housing stock, chance of 5 out of 6 victims being random
is….”
“That’s not a…” Daphne said, catching up quickly.
“No, it isn’t.” Sol agreed, “What about the outlier?”
“Trailer unit,” Esther told him.
“That’s not an outlier,” Sol said, “it’s the same phenomenon
from a different perspective. 6 out of 6 without good boundaries with their
neighbours.”
“What about the two new cases?” Daphne asked.
Esther shook her head, “Not enough detail in the case
reports to tell, they are a lot more cursory than what Chief Preston gave us, I
tried looking up the addresses online, but I couldn’t get a definitive answer.
We will have to concentrate on the first six until Chief Preston can get us an
answer for the last two.”
“Socioeconomics?” Daphne suggested, “You’re more likely to
live in a multiple occupancy unit or a trailer park if you have a lower
income.”
This time Falkner’s head shake was a bare twitch from side
to side, “You looked at the victims yourself, Daphne. The socioeconomic side of
things was all over the place. The Winslow boy’s family has a seven figure
income, that apartment complex he lived in was pretty high end.”
“So we start at the ends and work into the middle,” Sol
decided, “Daphne, talk to the neighbours of the Winslow kid, I’ll take the
trailer camp.”
“And what should I do, SSA Todd?” Falkner asked, her voice
deceptively mild.
“What you should do is lie down flat, either on the bed or
on the floor in here, but if you insist on doing something, then you can
telephone the sheriff, bring him up to speed with your idea and see if his
local knowledge can take it anywhere we can’t.”
Act IV
Taos PD HQ, Taos, New Mexico
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1415 Hours, MST
Esther Falkner dismissed her taxi outside the Taos PD HQ and
limped slowly into the building. The officer manning the front desk frowned as
he saw her and half-rose from his seat, but settled for “Are you okay, Ma’am?”
“SSA Falkner,” Esther told him, ignoring the question, “Is
Chief Preston free?”
“Let me just check, Ma’am,” the officer told her, checking
her badge before picking up the handset for a quick, soft-voiced telephone
conversation that Esther didn’t entirely catch.
“The chief says to go right on through, Ma’am. You know your
way to his office?”
“Yes, I do. Thank you, Officer Vega.” Esther told him,
steeling herself for the walk along the corridor.
Preston was seated at his
desk and waved her into one of the chairs with a welcoming smile when she
opened the door. The smile faded to a frown as he saw how she was walking.
“Or considering the way you’re moving, would you be happier
standing.”
Esther had to stop and think seriously about the question.
She finally settled for sitting, but cautiously, and twisted around so that she
could keep her right hip mostly straight.
“What happened?” Preston
asked, fixing her a cup of coffee and sliding it across the desk to her, “I
think even I could outpace you at the moment.”
“My back’s a mess,” Esther admitted, more comfortable
talking about it with a stranger, but a veteran, than she was with the team, or
even with Ben. “Has been ever since Desert Storm. I got thrown around the car
on the way here yesterday when some idiot nearly ran us off the road and my
back decided to take umbrage. I can still function, but I’m not really fit
enough to be out in the field.”
“Frustrating as… all heck, isn’t it?” Preston
said, the half-pause betraying his internal editor at work, some words not fit
to be spoken in front of the womenfolk, not even armed, badge-wearing, veteran
womenfolk.
“Yes, it is.” Esther admitted. “I’m still running the team,
but we flew down an extra agent overnight to cover for me being stuck in the
office, SSA Todd. He’s out in the field with Agent Worth right now, following
up on an idea I had. I came over to fill you in on that, see if it sparks any
other thoughts.”
“You could have used the ‘phone,” Preston
said, “I wouldn’t have objected any – I find myself using it a lot more than I
used to.”
“Cabin-fever,” Esther told him, “I needed to get out of the
hotel suite, even if I had only been stuck there for 18 hours or so.”
“Been there,” Preston said,
“Try 9 weeks in traction at Walter Reed, I was about ready to gnaw my leg off
at the hip. Anyways, what’s your idea.”
“Boundaries. 5 out of the 6 victims in your original files
are in multiple-occupancy housing, the other in a trailer park, I couldn’t tell
from the files on the extra two cases, they aren’t as complete as your case
files. We are thinking that friction with the neighbours might have been a
common issue. Not necessarily to the level of police involvement, but if you
can check for anything you might have that would be helpful. Todd and Worth are
out canvassing the neighbours, but if you have all or even some of the
information in one place then that would give us a leg up on putting things
together.
“How the Hell did I miss that!” Preston
growled, surprise side-lining his internal editor. He closed his eyes for a
moment, obviously organising his thoughts.
“I can tell you now that there had been issues with at least
two of the people involved. Possibly with the others, but I wouldn’t
necessarily see that if it was low-level stuff. The Winslow boy there was a
complaint against for playing his stereo loud in the middle of the night, I
only got involved because he flat-out denied it was his stereo – and because he
was J.P. Winslow’s son, if I’m being totally honest. It was the neighbour’s
word against his, and friction going both ways, so I told them to get some
counselling about being good neighbours, there’s some discretionary funding in
my budget for that kind of thing, see if we can head off trouble short of pistols
at dawn – didn’t do us any good in this case. Daisy-Mae Ellacott it was her
dog, yappy little rat of a thing that wouldn’t shut up, she wouldn’t allow as
there was anything wrong in her little darling’s behaviour, so I sent her for
some counselling as well. It hadn’t done any good and we were going to have to
take it to the next step before she died – no, not before she died, before she
was killed – I can say that now, not just wonder about it.”
“Can I ask you to check whether there have been similar
issues with the others?”
“Yes, Ma’am, that we can do. I’ll check the records, and I
might need to get together with the patrol officers as well, see if there’s
stuff in their individual logs didn’t make it into the central records. Take me
the rest of the afternoon, like as not, and I can bring you up to speed if we
meet for dinner again.”
“Let’s plan on that,” Esther told him, “It will give me an
opportunity to introduce you to SSA Todd. And in the meantime, I’ll head back
to the motel and do some more digging in the files.”
“If I can make a suggestion,” Preston
said, “Having one leg this much shorter plays… merry Hob with my back, there’s
a woman in town who does some wonderful stuff with massage, it keeps me a lot
more mobile than I would be without it. Might be as that would be as useful as
hitting the files, I know I don’t think as clearly when I’m in a lot of pain.
Catherine’s a might hippie-dippy for my liking, but she’s also the counsellor I
sent the Winslow boy and Miss Ellacott to see, so it might be you could kill
two birds with one stone.”
Pueblo Apartments, Taos
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1430 Hours, MST
“That heavy-metal, I won’t dignify it with the name of
music, day in, day out, blaring out like it was in the room here! No
consideration whatsoever!”
Daphne kept her head nodding and her pen scribbling, though
Janice Markham was now on at least her third repeat. She wondered if it was
possible for the Anomaly to relieve someone of the need to breathe, certainly Markham seemed to find no
need to pause mid-rant and give Daphne the chance to interrupt.
“I complained to him, knocked on his door, caught him in the
car-park, the street, phoned him at his office, nothing. I called the police
time and time again, but he was a Winslow, they were scared to act. Chief
Preston finally got involved, but he said I was being just as unreasonable in
chasing after him so much, accused me of harassing him. Me, harassing him! The
last time he had music on all night and flat-out denied it was him. Chief
Preston sent us both to counselling, told us to find a way to meet in the
middle. I told the counsellor I just needed the music to stop, I don’t want to
be chasing after some hooligan every day of my life, but he just denied
responsibility and she couldn’t get him to move. It annoyed her, I could tell,
not just me.”
She wound down, and Daphne seized her chance to regain
control of the interview and get out of the apartment before Markham went for a
fourth repeat.
“Thank you, Ms. Markham, I think that I have everything I
need. If you think of anything more then you have my card. I have to
re-interview all the rest of the neighbours, so I’ll have to leave you now and
get on.”
As the door closed behind her, Daphne shuddered. Markham probably had had
a legitimate complaint, Winslow’s stereo had looked like it could pump out some
serious decibels, but sometimes the wronged party could become as much a part
of the problem as the initial offender.
She checked her appearance in the mirror at the end of the second floor
lobby, consulted her notes and headed downstairs to the next interview, Matt
Winslow’s immediate neighbour.
Diane Wikorsky answered her door at the third knock.
“About Matt?” she asked even before Daphne could introduce
herself.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m Special Agent Daphne Worth with the FBI. I’d
like to ask you some questions about Matt Winslow if you have a few moments.”
“Of course I do, Matt was a lovely kid and it’s the least I
could do. Come on through into the lounge, it’s more comfortable than standing here
in the doorway.”
Wikorsky was an immaculately turned out thirty-something,
and her apartment had been decorated with the same attention to detail, tiled
floor, walls painted in deep umbers and terracottas, broken by hand-woven rugs
used as wall hangings, while the shelves and display cabinets held Zuni
fetishes, silver and turquoise conches and other jewellery and art from the
southern tribes. The one anomaly was a drawing board sat next to a desk in the
corner. The desk itself sported a high-end computer workstation with a very
large monitor. Evidently Wikorsky’s lounge doubled as a home-office.
“I’m an interior designer,” Wikorsky told her, “I’m lucky
enough to be able to work from home much of the time. Would you like some tea?
I’ve just brewed a pot – raspberry and passion fruit.”
Daphne weighed up the danger of getting trapped in another
prolonged interview, but Wikorsky was much less intense than Janice Marham had
been and the pot was sitting atop a tray on the carved wooden coffee table, all
ready to be poured.
“Thank you, Ma’am, that would be nice.”
“I’ll just be a moment, please take a seat while I fetch a
second cup.”
Wikorsky was back before Daphne had settled on the sofa.
“I do like your blazer,” she said, “I couldn’t get away with
that shade of green, but with your colouring you can, you have a good eye for
clothes.”
“Actually the credit goes to a friend,” Daphne told her as
she sipped at the tea, which turned out to be rather nice. She made a note to
herself to see if she could find some for Trish. “She picked it out for me.”
“Then your friend has excellent taste.”
“And yet you still picked me out instantly as law
enforcement.” Daphne said as Wikorsky transferred out of her wheelchair and
onto the other sofa.
“Nothing to do with the way you’re dressed. I see the world
from waist-height; your gun was waving in my face when I opened the door. Now
what was it you needed to ask me about Matt? The rumour is that you’re
investigating his death as murder.”
“It’s probably more accurate to say we’re investigating a
suspicious death,” Daphne told her, “A question has been raised as to how good
Matt Winslow’s relations were with his neighbours. Janice Markham in the flat
directly about Matt didn’t seem to have anything good to say about him, while
the other two residents on the second floor didn’t seem to have an opinion
either way. I wondered where you fell on the spectrum.”
“Clear at the opposite pole to the Markham woman,” Wikorsky told her, dislike
slipping into her voice. “Janice Markham is a world-class vindictive bitch,
I’ve had run-ins with her, so have half the residents in the complex.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what was your issue with Ms.
Markham?” Daphne asked, sensing the opportunity to get a second perspective on Markham’s complaints
about Matt Winslow.
“She complained that my parking space was larger than hers.”
Wikorsky said, “It is, but that’s because mine is a handicapped bay and I need
the extra space alongside the driver’s door to get my chair out of the car and
then get myself into it.”
“That’s just…” Daphne said, catching herself before she
could say anything negative about one interviewee to another.
“Stupid? Senseless? Selfish? All of the above?” Wikorsky
finished for her, “That’s Markham
for you. Matt, on the other hand, was always willing to pitch in when I needed
a pair of working legs to get something done. He just treated me like a normal
person, which is rare enough when you come with wheels. However much people
might complain about his father’s business dealings, they brought their son up
right.”
“So no problems with Matt’s music?”
Wikorsky smiled and shook her head.
“To hear Markham
talk about it, Matt had death-metal blaring out of his speakers 24/7. The truth
is Matt had pretty much the same taste in music that I do: female vocalists,
and the softer end of the rock spectrum. But to Markham it’s all unbearable cacophony. The
real problem is that there’s a design flaw in the building – there’s some
common ducting in the air-con systems for the individual apartments and they
tend to conduct sound from one apartment to another, both horizontally and
vertically. And this is where I have to make a confession. That last complaint
of Markham’s
against Matt, it wasn’t him playing his music, it was me. I had a… friend over
and we had music playing to cover ah, certain other sounds.”
Wikorsky flashed Daphne an embarrassed smile and shrugged.
“Did anyone else know it was your music and not Matt’s?”
“Matt did, I told him when I realised he was being blamed
for something I had done, but he insisted that I not tell anyone – last time I
had problems with Markham it made me physically ill. He said he wouldn’t take
the blame for something he hadn’t done, that people could take his word for it
or go to Hell, but he wouldn’t let me say anything, threatened to claim it
really was him if I said anything. How many people would do that for you?”
“How did he feel about the way the Taos PD reacted to the
allegations?”
“I can’t say that he had much good to say about them, but
the woman who really pissed him off was the counsellor the Chief sent him and
Markham to. He said Markham
just wrapped her around her finger and convinced her Matt was pretty much the
Anti-Christ. Apparently she just kept on and on at Matt as to how he had to
open his mind, embrace the truth and admit his fault. Matt dug his heels in –
understandably – and apparently she lost it, just got more and more angry with
him. He came in to see me after their session, he had a splitting headache and was
so angry at the way he’d been treated he was talking about putting in a
complaint to the Chief, but two days later he was dead.”
Wikorsky sighed, “It’s just so unfair. He was a lovely kid,
but everyone bought into the idea he was the hoodlum, because he’s young and Markham isn’t.”
“Thank you,” Daphne told her, putting down her teacup, “That
was exactly the information I needed to hear. I’ll leave you my card, please
contact me if you think of anything else I should know. I might possibly want
to talk to you again with some of my colleagues; you paint such a different
picture of Matt it may help them to hear that directly.”
“Of course,” Wikorsky said, escorting Daphne to the door,
“If it will bring justice to Matt then I’ll talk to anyone you like.”
Daphne waited until Wikorsky’s door had closed behind her,
then pulled out her AOP and hit Sol’s speed-dial as she walked rapidly out of
the apartment towards the Explorer.
Taos Hills Trailer Park,
Taos, New
Mexico
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1450 Hours, MST
Sol walked slowly through the trailer-park, soaking-in the
ambience of the place, shifting body-language and manner to fit in as best he
could. There was a likeness to the places that melded one indistinguishably
into another from one side of the States to the other, some residents doing
fine, some only one step from desperation. Wherever he was, the stories were always
the same, only the words and the actors different, and if he was there, then
inevitably so was death. Here death had come for Manuela Garcia, a fifty-seven
year old widow who had worked as a cleaner at several stores in town, found
dead on the floor of her trailer by a neighbour when the smell began to spread.
Two days ago it had been a trailer-park
in the Washington backwoods, and James Selnick, a
retired mechanic, found butchered in his bed by his daughter.
The lack of rain was a distinct improvement on Washington State,
going door to door on days when the rainfall was measured in inches, not
fractions, was a plain miserable experience, though he suspected New Mexico actually had Washington beat for lowest temperature. He shivered
in the breeze and dismissed any idea of trying to look casual by slinging his
jacket over his shoulder. Sometimes casual worked, particularly in places like
this where a suit was out of place, but other times the jacket gave him a
moment to interact with people, to see the real them, before they spotted the
badge and gun and the shields they turned to officialdom slid into place.
He found Garcia’s trailer, still standing empty, and glanced
around. A bunch of the nearby trailers were silent, suggesting owners who still
had work or other things to do during the day, but a baby cried from the
trailer to his left, its mother probably Mary-Sue Kostelnik, the woman who had
found the body, He left that one for now, frazzled teenage moms with grizzling
infants rarely made for productive interviews. His eye lit on a trailer two
down, a big man in jeans and a worn leather jacket working on the engine of a
Harley, or what had been a Harley before the customisers got at it.
‘Nice hog,’ Sol said, wandering slowly up, trying to look
inoffensive, yet interested and interesting.
The biker glanced up, disdain flicking through his eyes as
he took in Sol’s suit.
“Some might say so,” he allowed, “those as know their
bikes.”
“Spent part of my wilder days riding something very like
that,” Sol told him, “Name’s Sol, by the way.”
“They call me Lucas Brunn,” the biker told him, “and you’re
a cop.”
Busted, but some groups had senses attuned to spotting LEOs,
bikers tended to be one of those groups.
“Sol Todd, FBI,” Sol told him, flashing his badge, “I’m
looking into the death of Manuela Garcia.”
“Yeah, figured as much – hang about, ‘Sol Todd’, the same
Sol Todd as wrote ‘Life By Misadventure’?”
“Guilty as charged,” Sol told him
“Oh, man, that’s my favourite book.”
Brunn dropped his tools back into the toolbox and heaved
himself up to his feet, towering most of a foot over Sol. Brady probably had a
couple of pounds on him, but not more than that.
“Man, fancy meeting you here of all places, just let me wash
my hands because I need to shake yours! That book’s the only one I ever read
that understood bikers like me.”
Brunn plunged his hands into a bowl of murky water that
looked like it had already been used for rinsing off oily parts, he dried them
on a grimy towel, but Sol took his hand without hesitation when it was offered.
Oil and bikes went together, you got used to it, or you didn’t.
“So, Manuela?”
“Nice lady, most of the time. Beer?”
“I’ll take a soda if you have one,” Sol told him, seeing as
he was already delving into a beer fridge sat on the stoop of his trailer.
Brunn handed him a cola and parked his behind against the
seat of his bike, Sol chose to lean lightly against the siding of the trailer.
“Most of the time?”
“Manuela had a temper, and when she lost it! Whoo-man, take
a bigger man than me to go up against her when she had her gander up.”
“There was trouble because of it?” Sol asked.
Brunn nodded, turned his head to look a couple more trailers
down.
“The Brenners, three kids under 10 and she don’t control
them none. Manuela worked nights a couple of days a week, she’d come home to
try and sleep and the kids would be running up and down and hollering, Best I
can figure it out, Manuela tried to talk to their momma and it just got worse.
Wouldn’t surprise me if Brenner was putting them up to it. Eventually Manuela’s
temper went off, punches were thrown and the police were called.”
“Give the police their due, lot of places they’d just have slammed the both of
them in jail, but officer they sent to handle it tried to find a way round it,
told Brenner she didn’t keep her kids under control she’d be looking at a visit
from Social Services, told Manuela she had to learn to keep a better leash on
her temper, sent her off to see some hippy counsellor in town.”
“That work?” Sol prompted when Brunn seemed inclined to stop
talking and nurse his beer for a while.
“Not hardly, Manuela came back from there in the worst
temper I’d ever seen from her. She was talking Mexican half-and-half, so I
didn’t catch nearly all of it, but seems like the counsellor lady decided it
had to be Manuela’s fault, not the kids. She was so mad she couldn’t even see
straight, cursing the counsellor in Mexican, saying she was making her head
pound like a jackhammer. When they found her I thought she’d gotten so
worked-up she stroked-out, but stroke don’t put a hole in your head like that.”
Sol stiffened and set his soda down.
“Do you remember precisely what she said when she came back
from the counsellor? What it was she was calling her?”
Brunn frowned, “Something Spanish – Bruda?”
“Bruja?” Sol suggested.
“Yeah, ‘bruja’, that was it – know what it means?”
“‘Witch,’” Sol told him, distracted by the sudden warble of
his cellphone, “Excuse me for a moment while I take this.”
He walked a few feet away from Brunn before pressing to
connect the call.
“Sol, the counsellor the PD sent the Winslow boy to see!”
Daphne’s voice said, breathless with excitement.
“My thoughts exactly,” Sol told her, “Meet me back at the
stationhouse and we’ll brief Esther and the Chief.”
Act V
Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos, New Mexico
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1455 Hours, MST
Catherine Marquesa’s office lay not far off the Plaza, a
normal, if slightly run-down storefront, its windows frosted over with some
sort of plastic overlay and a sign that announced ‘Catherine Marquesa: Massage,
Counselling and Alternative Therapies’. Esther took in the frontage, allowed herself
one last look down the road to where Pueblo
Peak rose beyond the
town, then steeled herself against an unhealthily-high crystal and pyramid
factor and pushed the door open
Marquesa was a tall, only vaguely Hispanic-looking woman
with a froth of red hair falling down over her shoulders, dressed in a loose,
chiffony, shift-dress of that pale-blue that looked like it really shouldn’t
work with red hair, yet somehow did. She rose from where she had been sitting
in half-lotus on a drift of vari-coloured cushions and Esther was unsurprised
to see that she went barefoot in her office. Two chairs, clearly enjoying a
second, third, maybe even fourth spin on the wheel of life presumably marked
the designated positions for those in need of counselling and a stereo-system
hidden somewhere out of sight was playing softly, something with too much in
the way of Buddhist chanting to ever graduate to elevator-muzak, but soothing
in a vaguely undefined way. A fat-bellied Buddha gazed welcome at her from a
shelf and the eclectic selection of other Eastern ornamentation cluttering
every horizontal surface made it apparent that if Catherine Marquesa had been
born into the Judaeo-Christian tradition then it clearly hadn’t stuck.
“Hello,” she said, walking towards Esther, “I think I can
guess why you’re here by the way you limped through the door.”
Esther’s first glance had put Marquesa at
early-thirtysomething, but a closer look raised that to her own age. Meditation
could relax you, it couldn’t leach away the wrinkles the New Mexico sun burned into a face.
“Chief Preston recommended you,” Esther told her, “I was
jolted in the car yesterday and it’s thrown my back out more than usual. He
said you work wonders on his spine, if you can do the same for me then I’d be
very grateful.”
“Massage I can definitely do,” Marquesa said, “My treatment
room is through the back, so let’s go through there and see what I can do for
you.”
The treatment room had a lower ornament level than the front
office, but posters for various alternative therapies and lifestyles dotted the
walls. The floor was dominated by a massage table, adjustable for height and
the female form, a padded ring marking the head-end. An old metal filing
cabinet sat against the wall in one corner, a folding medical screen obscured
the opposing corner.
“I need you to strip to the waist.” Marquesa said, “You can
get changed behind the screen, there’s an open-backed gown for you to put on and
there’s a lockbox if you want to secure your valuables.”
‘Let Yoga Open Your Mind,’ a poster said from over her
shoulder, the image a Buddha sitting in padmāsana with a knowing smile, eyes
closed, a third eye looking out from the middle of his forehead.
“You teach yoga as well?” Esther asked from behind the
screen as she unhooked her holster and placed it on top of her badge and wallet
in the lockbox. She frowned at the hospital gown, having ended up in one the
night before, but slipped it on for modesty’s sake.
“Yes, amongst other things. Massage, yoga, counselling, Taos
isn’t really open enough to the alternate lifestyle for me to make my living on
any one thing, so I do a bunch of stuff,
just trying to open people’s minds as I go.”
“It sounds like you think that’s important?” Esther said,
coming out from behind the screen.
“It is important,” Marquesa answered, motioning her towards
the table, “People could be so much more than they are. All of the conflict
around us comes from people not being able to open their minds enough to
understand each other. If I can help people to open up to their potential, then
I don’t think there is anything else I would rather be doing.”
“Do you need a hand up?” she asked, studying Esther as she
limped towards her.
“I think I can make it,” Esther told her, hitching a hip up onto
the corner of the table and then sliding and rolling herself into position. The
twisting motion made her snatch a breath down, some metaphoric imp slamming
another blow with their sledgehammer into the chisel jammed into her lower
back. Her face settled into the padded ring and she let the breath out on a
slow shudder.
“Oh, sweetie, your back is a mess!” Marquesa said, “As taut
as those muscles are I don’t know how you’re moving at all. This is old
damage?”
“’91,” Esther told her, eyes studying the worn, pale blue floor tiles beneath
the table, “though, as I said, I was in a car that had to stop suddenly
yesterday and that seems to have thrown it further out that usual. It’s been
like this before, but not often, last time was three, four years ago.”
“Okay, I’m just going to start slowly and gently, see how
you react.”
Marquesa’s hands touched Esther’s back, barely brushing it,
but she felt herself twitch from her shoulders all the way to her toes. So much
for muscle relaxants.
“Lot of stress and tension
in there,” Marquesa said, fingers working outwards from the point of initial
contact, “I’ll do what I can, but you need to do your part as well. There’s a
lot of this is pain, but I think there’s other stress here. Is your job
stressful?”
“You might say that,” Esther answered drily.
“Management?”
“Of a sort, I work for the government.”
“This is the point I’d normally ask if it is interesting
work, but if it is the government then I know the interest is swamped by the
bureaucracy.”
Esther smiled, though there was no chance of Marquesa seeing
it.
“It has its moments,” she answered, “But so do the
bureaucrats.”
“You need to work on the stress;” Marquesa told her, timing
her words with the stroke of her hands across Esther’s back, “unless you give
it a way out, your body will turn that stress into extra tension in your
muscles and end up working against itself. You strike me as essentially a
rationalist, but I think you should open your mind to the possibilities of
alternate therapies. I used to be like you, I worked for the Department of
Energy at the Sandia Labs, but the stress got to me. First thing to go was my
marriage, then I had a breakdown. Yoga let me put myself back together and I
realised that old life wasn’t for me. Old, cold, rational, there is more to
life, what rationalism dismisses as the alternate is a whole different set of
truths.”
“I think you might be surprised at how open I am to the
alternate,” Esther told her, “that’s basically why I’m in town.”
“You said Chief Preston sent you over,” Marquesa said, her
rhythm changing as overtones of curiosity crept into her voice, “are you
working with him?”
“I’m afraid it’s not really something I can discuss,” Esther
told her, deciding to head off that line of conversation before she had to slam
the gates down hard.
“Oh, okay,” Marquesa said, stopping her hands for a moment,
before picking the massage up again with a different, brisker pattern, “It’s
just he normally doesn’t send people over for my massage therapy, mostly it’s
people he needs to start thinking about what they’re doing if he doesn’t want
to drag them in front of the judge. I try and help them to open their minds, however
much it takes. Some come naturally, others I have to nudge along, a few I have
to push, hard.”
Muscle relaxant or not, Esther felt every cell in her body
suddenly freeze with the certain knowledge that she was alone with a Gamma. No
gun, no partner, no backup, no one on the team even aware of where she was. It
was the nightmare scenario, the one that crept into her mind late at night,
when she hugged her sleeping daughters.
“Does that work very often?” she asked trying to keep her
tension out of her voice, “Keeping them away from the judge, opening their
minds?”
“Some people are too stupid to recognise help when it comes
to them,” Marquesa said, hands slowing. “Some won’t even acknowledge the truth
that brought them to me. I do what I must.”
Her hands stopped, then shifted, one pressing against the
back of Esther’s head, one against the
back of her neck, forcing her down against the padded ring. She was strong, Gamma
strong, but the grip wasn’t one Esther would have chosen to immobilise someone.
“I do what I must,” Marquesa repeated, as Esther gathered
herself to act, then the pain struck.
It felt like a flash-bang had gone off in the centre of her
skull: thought, logic, senses wiped away in an instant of overpressure.
Hearing returned first of all, Marquesa speaking as though
nothing was wrong, as though she was just thinking aloud, “Normally I don’t see
what happens, they close me out of their houses just like they close me out of
their minds, but my third eye has been opened, I understand everything now, and
I can reach out to them, just like I can reach out to you.”
Vision rebuilt itself amid the pain, black fading to grey, grey
peeling back to the worn blue tiles beneath the table, dotted with spots of red
now, another droplet of blood falling away from her nose, plummeting down to
splatter on the tiles below. The pain was like a hot iron being forced into her
brain, the headache to end all headaches, but Esther Falkner was no stranger to
pain, she and it had danced their dance for two decades, locked into an embrace
with no escape. She thought of Ben, of Bek, of Deborah, and she gathered her
will and forced her arms to move, one hand clenching onto the edge of the
table, the other flattening against it. One pulled, one pushed and she rolled
up and over the edge of the table, smashing down onto the floor below. She
tried to kick Marquesa with her flailing legs on the way down but the coordination
was beyond her. The impact with the floor drove the breath from her, pain
spiking up into her back, but that pain was an old friend by comparison.
Her kick might have missed, but Marquesa wasn’t used to
violence directed towards her, nor apparently to her victims fighting back, and
she had reared back from the table, putting it between herself and Esther.
Esther used the chance to get her feet back under her, no matter how much it
hurt. She had landed on her backside and it felt like her sacro-iliac joints
were tearing apart as she came up into a crouch. There was no chance of getting
at her gun, not with a code needing to be punched into the lockbox, never mind
that Marquesa was between her and it, but she was on her feet now and trained
to defend herself, and the Gamma wasn’t.
“You’re like all the rest of them,” Marquesa spat, “A closed
mind. The Buddha saw fit to enlighten me, to send me forth into people’s lives
to help them to achieve enlightenment for themselves, and those petty-minded
fools closed their minds against me. ”
Mythology, motive, mayhem; the Holy Trinity of Gamma-hood.
Esther nodded to herself as the knowledge let the case rewrite itself inside
her head; all those victims, killed by someone who only wanted to help them.
The knowledge was intellectually satisfying, but dead and intellectually
satisfied was still dead. Her nose was dripping blood like an aging tap, and
her head throbbed from a migraine on steroids.
“I can see you,” Marquesa said, walking slowly around the
table, colours flickering around her outline in a rainbow-cascade of migraine aura,
“So ready to resort to violence, just like all the other fools who lack the
emotional confidence to open themselves. I’m here to give you that confidence,
to bring you to enlightenment, no matter your fears and your anger. Open your
mind to me; or do I have to open it for you?”
“You might care to look in a mirror some day,” Esther told
her, rising up from her crouch, holding eye-contact all of the way,
“Enlightenment is something that can only come from within. If you force it on
someone, is it enlightenment, or just plain old-fashioned rape?”
Marquesa snarled and Esther felt the pressure inside her
head started to build again, the drip, drip, drip of her nosebleed picking up
in frequency. She forced the pain from her and darted into the other woman’s
reach, delivering a fast fist-strike to the face. Marquesa was fast, the blow
barely connected with her cheek, but evidently it was enough to destroy her
concentration and the pressure washed away. A flailing arm hit Esther on the
way out, too uncoordinated to call it a punch, but delivered with berserk Gamma
strength it promised bruised ribs in the morning.
“I don’t need the powers the Buddha gave me to kill you,”
Marquesa snarled, all control gone, “I’ll break your scrawny little neck.”
She charged, and Esther took a step backwards, then reached
forwards with her hands at the same time she kicked up from the ground. Both
feet connected with the oncoming woman’s torso, but one hand missed its grip,
or rather found its grip on Marquesa’s blouse collar, which promptly ripped
free. The other collar held, wrapped in Falkner’s fist, but instead of flipping
the charging woman over her head and into the wall, the asymmetrical hold flicked
her sideways into a collision with the filing cabinet.
Esther rolled and lurched back to her feet with the help of
a hand on the massage table. She put the table between her and Marquesa to give
herself a moment to catch her breath, but the other woman stood hunched against
the filing cabinet, almost hugging it. An arm dropped, then a leg bent at the
knee and Marquesa slowly peeled away from the cabinet. She hit the floor with a
thump, lying arms and legs askew, eyes staring blindly at the ceiling.
Esther watched her for a moment, then limped around the
table for a clearer look.
Marquesa’s rage had vanished, replaced by a look of startled
surprise. It was the last voluntary expression her face would ever wear. Above
the bridge of her nose, precisely where her third eye should have been, a
ragged triangular hole had been punched through the skin of her forehead, and
through the bones of the skull. Just like those of her victims, Catherine
Marquesa’s mind had been opened in death.
Esther glanced from Marquesa to the filing cabinet. Her
missed sacrificial throw had been luckier than she had any right to expect.
Marquesa had hit the corner of the metal cabinet head first, and the blood and
flesh and brain matter marked where the angled metal had punched straight into
her brain.
Esther backed away from the dead woman until her back hit
the opposite wall. She pressed against it, craving the support, then let
herself slump slowly, agonisingly down to the floor.
“You realise that my back is going to hate you for this in
the morning?” she said conversationally, but Marquesa chose not to answer.
A handful of minutes later the door punched open and Todd
and Worth came through it fast, guns out, body armour on, half a dozen Taos PD
officers hard on their heels. They slowed as they realised that they had missed
the main event, but still quartered the room, taking in the trashed furniture, Marquesa’s
body, Esther sitting on the floor, back propped against the wall. Sol moved to
make sure of the body, gun fixed on the dead woman’s forehead. Daphne turned
her attention to the other casualty.
“Esther?”
“She was the UNSUB, but by the tactical entry I’d say you
already knew that. She thought I had come for her and got the drop on me. We
fought, she died, I didn’t.”
“And you?”
Esther grimaced, “I think I’ll be okay, the blood is mostly mine,
but it’s just from a nosebleed. On the other hand I would really, really prefer
not to move right now, if you don’t mind.”
ER Department, Taos Pueblo
Hospital
Thursday, 6th
November 2008
1720 Hours, MST
The ER for the second time in 24 hours, Esther felt stupid,
and the doctor who had seen her was definitely of the opinion she had been
wilfully stupid for voluntarily putting herself in a position where someone
ended up throwing her about the room. Of course if she corrected him on that,
then she would have had to strike a blow against the idea of the Bureau’s
infallibility. So he was left thinking she was stupid, and she was left knowing
she was stupid, lying here in a hospital gown once more, smelling the same
hospital smells, hearing the same hospital clatter, waiting for the pain relief
to kick in and leave her so mentally fogged that she couldn’t remember that she
was in pain, never mind why she was in pain. They were talking about MRIs, and
checking for brain damage, but that didn’t seem like the way Catherine
Marquesa’s mythology had worked.
“How are you doing?”
Worth. Young, earnest, competent. Like a certain SSA of
Esther’s close acquaintance had once been. Though the afternoon’s events cast a
certain doubt over any personal claim to competence.
“They just pumped me full of the same babble-juice as last
night, give it half an hour and I’ll be as limp as two week old lettuce.”
Worth smiled, “That’s good, because when we found you, the
muscles in your back were taut enough to play like a violin. Sol and Chief
Preston are handling the wrap-up, I spoke to SSA Reyes, told him we finished up
here.”
“Told him I screwed up,” Esther finished for Worth. The
language surprised her, evidently the drugs were loosening her tongue.
“No, Ma’am, just that the UNSUB was dead.”
“I noticed you didn’t say I didn’t screw up.”
Worth stood silently for a moment.
“No, I didn’t,” she said finally. “May I speak frankly?”
“I may be doped to high Heaven, but I’m still a profiler,
you’ve made up your mind to say something, whether I say yes or no.”
“True,” Worth admitted, perching on the corner of a cabinet.
“No,” she continued, “I don’t think you screwed up this
afternoon. The Gamma got the drop on you, it happens. That’s why we work as a
team. As it turns out you managed without the rest of us, that’s because you
are very, very good at what we do.”
“But?”
“You are screwing up, not drastically, but you’re doing it
all of the time. You have a blind spot, Esther. Family, team, Bureau, those are
your priorities, what’s missing from that list?”
Esther shrugged, wished she hadn’t.
Worth shook her head, “Even now you don’t see it. You,
Esther, there has to be part of your life set aside for you. Family comes
first, I understand that, but you can’t give your family, the team, or the
Bureau your best if you aren’t at your
best. I’m a trained paramedic, you might be able to hide most of your pain from
the team, even from yourself at times, but I see the way you move, and that
shouts it out to paramedic-me just the way that word choices and body language
shout to profiler-me. Your back is a mess, you can’t change that, but you can’t
do your best by bulling through it, that’s the machisma answer, not the smart
one. Talk to a pain specialist, get your meds reviewed, see if there’s anything
else they recommend. Maybe there’s nothing to be done to fix it, but
approaching it in a professional manner has to be better than trying to bull
through it like a boneheaded amateur. I’d be insulting the Cowboy if I accused
him of that, and, smart as Danny is, you’re smarter.”
She wound down, looking surprised, as if she had gone
further than she intended.
“Boneheaded?”
Worth blushed, “Okay, maybe my mouth ran away with me, but
think about it, please?”
“She’s lucky, you know?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Tricia, your wife. You’re a good woman, Daphne Worth, even
if you do ream your superiors a new one from time to time.”
“Think about it?”
“Maybe I should,” Esther said, laying her head back on the bed,
“Know anyone you can recommend?”
“I’ll ask around,” Daphne said, watching as Falkner’s
eyelids fluttered shut.
J. Edgar Hoover
Building,
Washington, D. C.
Friday, 14th
November 2008
1430 Hours, EDT
“Hey, home are the hunters!”
Chaz rolled his eyes at Daphne’s greeting, dumping his
go-bag by his desk.
“If I never see another temperate rainforest it will be too
soon. I’m on the other side of the continent and I can still feel the damp.
Another few hours and I swear I would have been sprouting fungus!”
“Desert boy,” Nikki Lau mocked, trailing in past him, which
Chaz answered with “Valley Girl.”
Brady followed her, smiling cheerfully.
Daphne glanced at the Cowboy’s back, glanced quizzically at
Chaz.
“He got to play Great White Hunter in the backwoods when our
UNSUB rabbited out of town. He
enjoyed it, which can’t be said for the rest of us.”
“I know my boots will never be the same,” Hafidha said,
leaning against the doorway of the Sanctum Sanctorum. “Wendigo as a mythology? Anthropophagy
cases are gross enough at best, but cannibals in the backwoods? I felt like an
extra in a Deliverance meets The Silence of the Lambs crossover. And
it rained, constantly, my hair may never recover. I hear you, Mom and Sol
kicked butt down South.”
Daphne crossed over to her friend, “Mom mostly, we got the
job done…”
She stopped as Stephen Reyes stepped back into his kingdom
and turned his gaze on her.
“Worth.”
“Sir.”
“Good job in Taos.
Todd?”
“Consult down the hall, Sir, should be back imminently.”
“SSA Falkner?”
“At home, mandatory… no, I’m wrong.”
“Welcome home, Stephen.” Falkner said from behind him,
“Hafidha, Daphne,” she continued, acknowledgement and dismissal in one. “I
heard that you had landed and thought that I should come in and report
properly.”
Reyes nodded and smiled to himself, “Let’s take this to my
office. Ask Todd to step in when he reappears, please, Daphne.”
They moved off, Hafidha staring after them. As the door
closed behind them she turned her attention back to Daphne.
“Is it just me, or is Mom walking better than usual?”
There is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind.
The Buddha
David Gillon, 2012
