Ollie looked at her photo, said under his breath, “She’s very beautiful, puts a new twist on the concept of bodyguard.”
Ruth punched him. “Ollie, pay attention. The man you spoke to on the burner phone with the thick Russian accent, I wonder if he could be one of Petrov’s muscle. There could be more of them.”
Jack said, “And I’ll bet we find some of his flunkies with him at the Arcturus address on the Potomac.”
Ruth gave herself a head slap. “I just realized. That name Detective Ben Raven found in Mia Prevost’s address book—Cortina Alvarez, a woman who doesn’t really exist. That’s it, isn’t it? Cortina and Elena are the same woman. Now she may be dead along with the pilot in that helicopter crash today. But how does it all fit together?”
Shirley, the CAU secretary, stuck her head in the conference room. “Dillon, Mr. Saxon Hainny is here to see you.”
Savich rose, picked up the photo of Petrov that Ollie had printed out. “I’ll be back as soon as Saxon tells us it’s Petrov for sure.”
Savich quietly closed his office door. Saxon was sitting in front of his desk, his hands clasped between his legs, staring down at his scruffy sneakers. He still looked beaten down, folded in on himself.
“Thank you for coming, Saxon.” Savich handed him the black-and-white copy of Petrov’s passport photo. “Is this the man you saw standing behind Mia Prevost the night she was murdered?”
Saxon seemed to stop breathing. He stared at the photo and back at Savich. “Yes, those are his eyes, I remember them, staring at me and talking to her, to Mia. It was like I was nothing at all. And his hair, see how it looks like a sharp spear on his forehead? Yes, that’s him.”
“You’re absolutely certain?”
“Yes, Agent Savich. It’s him.” There was life in his face, at least for the moment, the deadly pallor gone, his eyes no longer deadened with pain. “How did you find him?”
“You gave us an excellent description of him, Saxon. We found him on an inbound flight to Washington from Moscow. If you’d never remembered seeing him, it would have been very difficult.” He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Now that you’ve confirmed his identity, we can bring him in.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sergei Petrov. He and his father are personal investment bankers to Putin and some other Russian plutocrats.”
Saxon looked blank. “He’s a banker? But why would a banker want to set me up for Mia’s murder?” Saxon began to laugh. “He hired Mia to get close to my father, didn’t he?”
Savich said nothing, only watched him. Saxon’s face leached of color again. “It was never me, was it? Mia was supposed to get close to my father, maybe hack his computer?”
“Yes.”
“But wait, didn’t Petrov know my dad would never tell anyone anything that could hurt President Gilbert or the United States? He never talked about anything remotely sensitive to either me or my mother. It was always ‘off the table.’ As for hacking his computer, I know my dad keeps everything important at the White House, and his personal laptop has some pretty high-tech safeguards I installed myself. I didn’t even build in a trapdoor for myself. No one could get into that computer.”
Saxon licked his dry lips, said slowly, so much pain in his voice Savich winced, “My missing shirt and T-shirt.” He raised his eyes to Savich’s face. “They were covered with Mia’s blood, weren’t they? And he took them.”
Slowly Savich nodded. He looked down at his watch. He had to hurry.
53
WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Sherlock looked down at Kara Moody’s rendering of the man who’d drawn her blood a year before. Midfifties with longish unkempt gray hair with a comb-over topping it off. He had a sharp chin and a large nose, but still there was something familiar about him, something that nagged at her. She’d never seen him before, had she? She kept studying the man’s face, and it struck her. She called up the photo of the man they’d videoed helping to kidnap Alex Moody from the hospital and put it beside Kara’s sketch of the older man who’d drawn her blood. “Look, Kara. Compare these. Don’t these two men look very similar to you?”
Kara glanced down at the photos, shook her head. “Oh, no. Look at them, Sherlock, the man who drew my blood could be his father. I gave him the look of a mad scientist, with all that grizzled gray hair. The young one looks, well, fit, in his prime.”
“Bear with me, Kara. Study them.”
Kara studied the photo and her drawing, frowned, then slowly raised her head. “Okay, they do look a bit alike, Sherlock, despite the obvious age difference. But look, the older guy’s comb-over doesn’t hide the fact he’s going bald, and the kidnapper had thick brown hair. It is close to the same color, I guess. And look, the younger man’s jaw is more square, no jowls yet, and that’s because he’s at least twenty years younger than the guy who drew my blood. He was in his fifties if he was a day. Maybe good cosmetic surgery could shave off ten years or so, but not this much.”
All good points, but Sherlock was still bothered. “Kara, look only at the eyes, look at how similar they are. Do you think you could have drawn in the younger man’s eyes without meaning to?”
Sherlock watched Kara cock her head as she studied her work. “Okay, their eyes do have the same almond shape, the sort of upward tilt at the corners. And the distance between the eyes looks about the same. I don’t think I could have drawn the younger man’s eyes on him. Sherlock, the man I sketched is definitely the man I remember drew my blood, not the man at the hospital. You showed me his picture, but only for a moment.” She sat back. “All right, there are similarities, I grant you that. But what could that mean?”
“I don’t know, it could be they’re related. If we identify one, we may find the other.”
“Why did you have me sketch the man who drew my blood?”
“I called the genetics department at the University of Maryland. They haven’t conducted any kind of study like the one described to you. In fact, they didn’t have your name as a test subject on any study they’d ever done. The whole incident sounded strange to me, but no stranger than anything else that’s happened to you. And I wondered if that blood draw had anything to do with your pregnancy or with John Doe, or with Alex’s kidnapping.”
She squeezed Kara and rose. “You did good, Kara, keep the faith, okay?” Sherlock smiled. “I can’t wait to meet your friend, Ms. Love.”
“Bless her, she’ll be arriving tomorrow. I imagine she’ll want to see Alex’s father. I’m glad the hospital is afraid to kick me out. They’re moving a bed into his room so I can stay with him tonight. Maybe they’ll bring in a second cot for Brenda tomorrow.”
Sherlock didn’t doubt the hospital would gladly give Kara use of a limo if she asked for it. She smiled. “Good, Brenda can tell him stories about you.” Sherlock rolled up Kara’s drawing, gave her a hug, and left her to walk back to John Doe’s room.
Her cell squawked only Curly Duck, and she had to shake her head. What had Dillon done with Moe and Larry Duck? Were they going to take turns? She nodded to Ray Hunter, the maternity-floor security guard as she answered. “Connie, what do you have?”
“Are you leaning against a wall so you don’t fall over?”
“What is it? What have you got?”
“It’s about Sylvie Vaughn. I did a background check on her. She was born Sylvie Fox, thirty-five years ago, in Baltimore. Her mother is listed as Hannah Fox. I did a background check on Sylvie’s mother and found out Hannah Fox’s address is the Willows, home of B. B. Maddox. I made some calls, found out she’s his longtime lover and for the past fifteen years, his live-in caregiver.”