Clair crushed an empty Pepsi can and tossed it into the wastebasket next to Nash. “How long has it been?”
“Since he went in, or since the last time you asked me?” Kloz replied.
She shook her head. “Either . . . both . . . I don’t know. Why is this taking so long?”
“Twelve minutes since you last asked me. Three and a half hours since he got to the hospital. Three hours and twelve minutes since they brought him in to surgery.”
“This is my fault,” Nash said to nobody in particular. “I assumed the kid was CSI. He was photographing the scene; he had all the right credentials. There were a dozen other CSIs floating around, and nobody singled him out as some kind of imposter.”
“He wasn’t an imposter,” Kloz said. “On paper anyway, he was legit. I checked with his supervisor. HR records had him transferring in from Tucson two months ago. Nobody verified the transfer by phone. They relied on the electronic records.”
“Which were faked?”
Kloz nodded. “Some of the best hacking I’ve ever seen. According to his lieutenant, Watson—I mean Bishop—worked a dozen or more cases since he got here. Half his unit swore he was some kind of super-CSI. He solved two murders with only a cursory review of the blood splatter. Hell, if he had stuck around, he’d probably be running the department in a couple years.”
Clair looked confused. “But you said his fingerprints came back under a different name. How did you catch that and the crime lab or HR didn’t?”
“His fingerprints came back as two different people. One set backed up the Paul Watson persona, but a juvie record came back as Anson Bishop. I think he hacked ViCAP and created the adult match in order to fool the background checks. They wouldn’t have had access to the juvenile record.”
“But you did.”
Kloz rolled his eyes. “Well, not officially. The juvenile record was sealed. You just need to know where to look. Forget how I got it. The point is, you can’t see the name on a juvie record until you access the file, so they probably assumed it belonged to Paul Watson. It was coded as a shoplifting, not a serious enough offense to block entrance to the crime lab, so whoever reviewed his file when he first started probably wrote off the charge and moved on. That’s if they were able to see the record at all. That’s a big if. I honestly doubt anyone dug that deep, especially since he came in on transfer papers.”
“What do we know about Anson Bishop?” Clair asked.
Kloz snorted. “We don’t know shit. As soon as I figured this out, I called Porter.” He drew in a deep breath. “Crap, do you think this is my fault? I mean, if I hadn’t called Porter, they’d still be out running around chasing leads. Bishop wouldn’t have had a reason to hurt him. Fuck, I did this.”
The room went quiet.
Kloz looked around at their faces. “Come on, guys, you’re supposed to say this wasn’t my fault. That something like this would have happened anyway.”
Nash punched him in the shoulder.
Kloz jumped up, his hand rubbing the spot. “What the fuck?”
“If Porter dies, I’ll kick your fucking teeth in,” Nash growled.
“Quit being a Neanderthal,” Clair said. Turning to Kloz, she added, “Of course it’s not your fault. You tried to warn him. Any one of us would have done the same.”
A doctor with wiry glasses and dark hair entered the room from the hallway behind them, gave the two men a peculiar glance, and turned to Clair. “Detective Norton?”
Clair stood. “Yes?”
“Your friend came out of surgery without any issues. He’s a very lucky man. That knife was within an eighth of an inch of a major artery. The slightest deviation in the knife’s trajectory, and he would have bled out within a minute. As it stands, though, the wound is fairly superficial—nothing more than tissue damage. We’ll probably keep him overnight, but I see no reason for him to stay longer.”
Clair wrapped her arms around the man, nearly knocking the clipboard from his hand.
“Can we see him?” Nash asked.
The doctor pulled awkwardly away from Clair and nodded. “He just woke up, and he’s been asking for you. Normally I would never allow visitors this soon after surgery, but he made it clear you’re involved in an open investigation and he’d come to you if I didn’t bring all of you in there. I can’t have him wandering the hospital, so I’m making an exception. Please try to keep it brief. He needs his rest.” He gestured toward the hallway. “Come with me.”
Room 307 was semiprivate, and the bed nearest the door was empty. Clair felt her heart skip a beat as she rounded the corner and spotted Porter in the second bed, wired to a heart monitor with an IV line in his wrist. He turned toward them as they entered the room, his eyes glassy and distant.
“Ten minutes,” the doctor said before turning and heading back toward the nurses’ station.
Clair walked up to the bed and took Porter’s hand. “How are you feeling, Sam?”
“Like someone stabbed me in the leg with my own kitchen knife,” he replied. His voice sounded rough, congested.
“We’re going to get him,” Nash said.
Kloz approached hesitantly, his head held low. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Not your fault,” Porter said. “I should have seen the signs. There was something off about him.”
“There wasn’t anything off about him,” Nash said. “He fooled all of us.”
“What do we know about him?”
Kloz explained about the fingerprints and the juvenile record. “Aside from that, we’ve got nothing. We pulled his photo from his ID and put the image out to the press. They’re airing his mug every chance they get. The captain has done three press conferences, and he’s got another scheduled for the six o’clock news.”
Clair’s cell phone buzzed and she looked down at the screen. “Tyler Mathers is down at Central Booking. They’re holding him as long as they can, but he’ll probably be out in a few hours. He insists he doesn’t know any more than he told us. They showed him the picture of Bishop, but he didn’t recognize him.”
“Tyler Mathers?” Porter frowned. “How does he fit into this?”
Clair told him what they had learned—how Kittner was paid off to take his own life, how Tyler stole Talbot’s shoes and planted evidence.
“Watson is 4MK,” Nash said quietly. “Or Bishop, or whoever. The little fucker has been orchestrating this entire thing from right under our noses.”
Porter tried to take it all in, his mind fighting against the drip of painkillers. “I know you want to be here, but I really need you back at the station researching this guy.” He shifted his weight to the right. “He still has Emory, and now that his cover is blown I imagine he’s going to speed up his plans. She’s running out of time. We’re running out of time. Did he put an address on his paperwork with HR?”
Kloz nodded. “Yeah, but it came back as Kittner’s place.”
Porter twisted in his bed and immediately grimaced.