The Stranger You Seek

19





It may or may not surprise you to know that I am a very good patient. I’m not one of those people who complain about lying still and gripe about wanting to get right back to work. Nope. Not me. I have absolutely zero problem with sleeping, watching TV, and eating dinner off a tray. I would have appreciated a side order of Demerol in one of those little paper shot glasses, but apparently they don’t give drugs for concussions. Oh no. They like to keep you up. A couple days of immobility and someone peering into your pupils every half hour or so, that’s what you get. When Rauser told me how lucky I was because the patient in the room next door had twenty broken bones from a car accident and had to take heavy painkillers, I fantasized about lifting a few Dilaudids off her bed table while she slept. It seemed like such a waste to be here and not get at least a little messed up. It’s the hospital. It’s guilt-free drug use.

Neil, who had spent most of his adult life testing mood-altering substances on himself, took my complaints so seriously that he disappeared for most of the day and returned with a batch of his homemade hash brownies and some green and white capsules that he swore would make my eyes roll back in my head. I tossed the unidentified pills into the garbage when he wasn’t looking and put the brownies aside.

I was in Piedmont Hospital in Midtown with no memory of the trip here. I had been out cold for four hours before I opened my eyes to a throbbing headache and the men in my life staring down at me—Rauser, Neil, and my dad, all three needing a comb and a fresh shirt and reeking of tobacco smoke. I was quite surprised to be here, to be anywhere, really. I remembered seeing the railing coming at me and in a moment of terrifying clarity thinking I’d been wrong, that it was about more than just watching, the whole thing was a setup, that this person was behind me and wanted to kill me, disable my vehicle, acquire and toy with me, torture me and God only knows what else. In those spinning-out-of-control seconds, I think I flashed on every crime scene and bloody photograph I’d ever seen.

“Am I in heaven?” I whispered weakly, really playing it up.

Rauser rolled his eyes. “She’s normal.”

My father, an earnest man who never really got my sense of humor, kissed my forehead and touched my face with his rough hands. “No, baby, you’re in the hospital.” He said it slowly and very loudly, as if I had been brain-damaged.

Thanks, Dad.

“Your mother’s gone for some coffee. She’ll be right back. Diane’s with her.”

“You let Mother have coffee? Oh, good. That should help my headache.”

“I shoulda had some decent seat belts put in that old car,” my dad went on. “I didn’t even think about it. Those old lap belts just don’t do the job.”

After almost forty years with my mother, my father had learned to accept responsibility for everything. If it went wrong, Dad was to blame. There were rarely exceptions. Guilt was just part of life with Mother.

“This isn’t your fault.” I held his hand—it hurt to move—and looked into his pale, watery blue eyes. “Teaching me to drive like a redneck, now that’s your fault. How’s my car?”

“Beat up bad as you are,” he said, and tilted his head toward Rauser. “Aaron had it towed over to the police station until we send it somewhere for fixin’. Sure is a good thing he saw you on the road.”

Rauser gave me a wink and I realized he had lied to my parents about what had happened out there on the interstate. But what exactly had happened out there? An accident? Or had the Impala been tampered with? Had I been followed? Had they captured a stalker? Was it Wishbone? I wouldn’t get the answers until I had some time alone with Rauser. And that wasn’t going to happen as long as my parents were hanging around. Might as well settle in and let everyone fall all over themselves to care for me.

A muffled ring came from Rauser’s pocket. He pulled out his phone and answered, listened, said “Give me a half hour,” and snapped the phone shut.

He leaned over me and brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “Chief wants to see me,” he said, and rolled his eyes again. Rauser never liked being invited to Chief Connor’s office. He said it was never good news. He respected Connor but their paths had split years ago. Jefferson Connor understood the politics of success, knew instinctively when and where to insert himself. Rauser had done quite the opposite thing, butting his head up against rank and policy a little too often. Connor not only enjoyed the privileges of position, the guy clearly loved the responsibilities of a bureaucracy. Rauser had resisted anything that might prevent him from working a case hands-on. When he had finally accepted the promotion and the responsibility of the Homicide unit, he’d made the chief agree that he wouldn’t be chained to the establishment. Connor had reluctantly agreed. Jeff Connor had not finished his climb, Rauser said. Connor intended to be attorney general one day and Rauser believed he’d get there.

“I’ll check on you later,” Rauser told me. “Howard, you make sure she stays in bed, okay?”

“You bet,” my dad answered as the door opened and my mother walked in balancing coffee cups. Behind her, Diane had a stack of vending-machine doughnuts in cellophane. Rauser grabbed one out of her hands on his way out.

“Oh, you poor darling. You look just awful!” Mother exclaimed. She had a beaming round cherub face, Debbie Reynolds on prednisone. She set the coffee down and patted my hand. “Bless your little heart.”

Diane was smiling down at me. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked her.

“Not when my best friend is in a car wreck. Margaret’s fine with it. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been dipped in shit and rolled in cornflakes.”

Everyone laughed except my mother, who slapped my father’s arm and scolded, “My Lord, Howard, do you see what you’ve taught your children?”

“Jimmy doesn’t talk like that, Mother. Just me,” I said.

“Yes, but Jimmy’s gay,” Mother cried, and, inexplicably, hit my father again.

My convalescing came abruptly to an end two days later. Having found nothing more in my condition to cause concern, Piedmont Hospital was kicking me out. Weary of daytime television and Jell-O, I had decided to leave peacefully.

I was moving slowly, packing the few things I had into a small roll-on. My head ached, and the bite on my shoulder from the yappy accountant still burned. I slipped into the shorts, black sleeveless V-neck, and sandals that Rauser had thoughtfully retrieved from my apartment along with a few essentials—notebook, pens, toothpaste, hairbrush, underwear, and tampons. I hadn’t asked for the tampons, but Rauser assumed, as he always did, that when I appeared grumpy, I needed tampons. I decided to present him with a box of his very own the next time he so much as raised an eyebrow at me.

I brushed my teeth and looked in the mirror at the scrapes and bruises on my forehead, chin, cheeks, and arms. Had I rubbed elbows with the killer that night at the airport? Had I made eye contact, maybe even smiled at him?

I had been reading the Wishbone letters obsessively and I was more convinced than ever that the next murder would come soon. The killer was in a ramped-up state, writing, taunting, feeling invincible. And because I had appeared at a crime scene with Rauser, because I had been hired to help explain the killer, he was trying to pull me in too. He wanted to show me, and everyone, that we weren’t so smart after all.

Neil had delivered background files on Anne Chambers, Bob Shelby, Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto, David Brooks, and William LaBrecque. Six victims now that we could name. Six victims! Six human beings slaughtered to satisfy a psychopath’s appetite for blood. It made my heart ache. Reading the files, I trolled the information we had to piece together psychological sketches and risk assessments based on each victim’s lifestyle—friends, social gatherings, professional life, habits, even illnesses. Notes on three-by-five cards clung to the hospital wall with pieces of blue painter’s tape someone on the hospital housekeeping staff had turned up for me.

APD was not able to determine if I’d been followed from the airport the night the wheel came off my car and took off without me across the interstate. By the time the first officer arrived, followed minutes later by Rauser, it was all over. A civilian had seen the accident and pulled over to help me. The police, knowing they were there to intercept whoever might be following and intending me harm, assumed the worst when they found a man opening my car door. They forced the good samaritan to the ground on his stomach, cuffed him, and hauled him into the station, where he was questioned so thoroughly and for so long we are all certain he will never again commit a good deed. He said he saw the Impala swerve without warning and run off the road into the bridge railing. No one else had stopped, he swore, although several cars had shot by, not even slowing. He might have saved my life that night by stopping. I would probably never know, but I imagined the killer driving past the scene, disappointed by the presence of a do-gooder he hadn’t counted on.

The crime lab concluded that my left front wheel had been tampered with. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t found any physical evidence beyond the marks that suggested tampering with a tool that wasn’t made to fit the nuts on my wheel. No DNA. No prints.

We knew now that while the hourly parking decks at the airport are under constant surveillance, the long-term parking decks have cameras placed only in strategic areas—the entrance, the exit, the elevator and stairs. Cameras at the entrances and exits are pointed in two directions—at the driver and down, to record the rear of the vehicle and plate numbers. All those tapes would be carefully examined. However, there were dozens of other ways to get into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson. MARTA trains ran directly into the airport, and of course there were taxicabs and shuttle buses.

We were hopeful about something else, though. Inside, the Hartsfield-Jackson terminals are like a Vegas casino, Rauser said. No place to hide. The tapes from several cameras and locations inside and out of the airport were at APD, and Rauser had a couple of cops going over them, following my route from the gate to the exit, studying the crowds milling around me. Anything of interest would come to Rauser’s attention.

I was beginning to think about the piles of mail that would be waiting at my office and the voice messages. I still had not even delivered the tapes I’d confiscated from Roy Echeverria in Denver to the rightful owners. I so did not want to do that looking like I’d been in an automobile accident. Bribing Neil into tucking in his shirttail and delivering the tapes seemed like a good idea. Old-fashioned chocolate cake from Southern Sweets usually broke him down.

“Hey, you,” Rauser said from behind me. I spun away from the notes on my hospital room wall. “Let’s sit down and talk for a minute before I take you home, okay?”

Uh-oh. Nowhere in my memory had Rauser ever uttered those words. He was standing in the door looking massively serious. “So you know what the political climate’s like here, right? These cases are attracting a lot of attention and everybody’s upset and worried.”

“About me?” I asked, and felt myself sinking. I’d always felt a little outside the circle anyway. It didn’t take much to make me feel even more outside. It suddenly occurred to me perhaps that’s why I’d agreed to get involved at all—my own insecurities. Was I trying to patch up my own ego, prove at last to myself and everyone else that I wasn’t really the fraud I felt like deep down? “This is what the chief wanted to see you about?”

“Here’s the thing,” Rauser said. “Television journalist over at Channel Eleven got some background on you. Personnel records from the FBI, information about the rehab center you checked in to.”

Oh boy!

“File just showed up on the reporter’s car,” Rauser said. “It was enough to make them start digging.”

“What do you mean just showed up? Who made it show up? Those records are confidential.”

Rauser was silent for a few seconds and I knew there must be more. “Listen, Keye, Channel Eleven put together this, well, this goddamn report about the investigation and the individuals involved. They got an on-camera interview with Dan. He talked about your marriage and your drinking.”

“Dan?” I repeated, and the fiery hot sting of betrayal burned my eyes.

“If it helps at all, it’s not just you they’re slicing up,” Rauser said. “I look like a goddamned idiot. Channel Eleven was decent enough to send us a preview so we’d have time to patch together a response before the shit hits the fan. I gotta tell you that what I saw isn’t good. The chief’s pretty hot about it.” He poked at my pillow with his fingers. “We need you to not have a visible presence at all, but I could still use your advice … unofficially.”

I was silent, sensing another shoe was about to drop.

“The chief hired Jacob Dobbs to be the public face of the task force.” Rauser waited, just letting that hang in the air. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. “He the one you told me about at the Bureau?”

“Yes. He’s the one.” I made a quick sweep of the room to be sure I had all my things.

A woman in pink scrubs bustled through the door with white roses, a couple dozen of them, long-legged and stunning against dark green foliage. “I’m so glad I caught you,” she exclaimed, in the high sunshiny voice that volunteers use on the sick and injured. She looked like a blonde cupcake with pink icing. “Aren’t these gorgeous? Somebody must love you.”

She set them on the table, beamed at Rauser and me. When neither of us smiled, her smile fizzled and she left the room. I felt like I’d just kicked a puppy. “What exactly does no visible presence mean?” I asked Rauser, and plucked the card from the center of the roses. “And unofficially—what does that mean, Rauser? Because you needing my unofficial advice sounds to me like I just stopped getting officially paid.” I tore open the envelope, getting a nasty paper cut for my efforts.

“Now just hang on.” Rauser held up both palms. It was the only calming signal he seemed to know—palms up, body moving slowly backward as if he’d accidentally cornered a coyote.

A gift certificate from Goodyear tumbled out of the card. It was for a tire rotation and inspection. I sighed. I fully expected to see my father’s scrawl for a signature, but I was wrong.

Regular maintenance is so important.



Sorry to hear about the accident, but congratulations on your prime-time debut!



W.