Peril (23 page)

Watching Brett work brought his partner's other case to Nathan's mind.

“How'd that interview go with Amy?” he asked.

Brett turned to face him. “Very interesting. Not quite sure what to make about what's going on.”

“In what way?” Nathan asked.

Brett put on a pair of gloves, straightening them over his fingers. “If I didn't know any better, I'd say I witnessed Zoe give a firsthand account of her murder.”

“But you interviewed Amy—the recipient.”

“Exactly.”

“Zoe's dead.”

“Cold in the ground.”

“Now, there's what I miss. Your sense of utter compassion.”

Brett rubbed his forearm over his forehead. “I'm not kidding about what I said. Amy knew what music was playing on Zoe's headset when she was attacked. How can you account for that?”

“Probably heard it somewhere.”

“Listen, I didn't graduate detective school yesterday. Amy's mother swears she doesn't even know who Taylor Swift is.”

“Come on . . . even you know who Taylor Swift is, and you're completely out of touch with country music.”

“Let's just say that Amy leads a relatively sheltered life.”

“Okay, so she knows about the music. Not exactly something to build a murder case on.”

“Ah, one thing we agree on. But Amy mentioned something that forced me to go back to the park, several times I might add, to take another look around the crime scene.”

“Excellent. Did you find anything?”

“A set of dog tags. Just like Amy described them. Lying just a few feet from where Zoe's body was found.”

Nathan paused his searching and stared at Brett. “You're serious? This isn't you just trying to pull my leg and then razz me about it for the whole rest of our lives together?”

Brett pointed a finger at Nathan. “For one, you and I are not married so our partnership's not going to be a 'til-death-do-us-part kind of thing. And two, I am absolutely not joking. Got the name, rank, and serial number. The whole nine yards.”

“Did you locate the guy?”

“Not yet. Got a couple of other people on it. Chief Anson's not crazy about the working theory.”

Nathan smiled. Not long ago he'd been in the same position.

Brett closed a notebook he'd been perusing. “I went back and talked to your trusty mental health doc, Vanhise. He thinks it could be possible. Says there's documentation that transplant patients have had these experiences.”

Nathan had difficulty reasoning it in his mind, but he was always open to theories if they could be proven. Wild goose chases were fine if they
could hold up in court and get guilty men into jail. Had there ever been a case of a memory transferred between donor and recipient that led to an actual conviction?

The sound of wood knocking against wood brought Nathan's eyes back to Brett at the dresser. “Find anything?”

Brett shook his head, his brown eyes feigning surprise. “Just the smoking gun.”

Nathan frowned. “If only it ever was that easy.”

“Sometimes it is that easy. I don't get what has you so perplexed. This is the chipmunk in the forest. Not the zebra.”

A reputation was hard to get past, and Nathan's held its own special circumstances. To his department, he was an ace detective. His record for clearing cases could be rivaled by few others. However, he was feeling the pull to leave exacting justice for the deceased in favor of saving the lives of the threatened. Serving with SWAT, even in a limited role, allowed him to revive the negotiator inside and they seemed happy to have an ex-FBI man covering the role. The joy of seeing hostages set free was one of the things Nathan loved most about police work.

With gloved hands, Nathan picked up the calendar from the desk. “Everything is just too perfect.”

“If I found you dead, it wouldn't surprise me to find your crime scene in such a pristine state either. Your ghost would probably be tidying up. Maybe he didn't want to leave a mess for his wife to clean.”

Nathan neared the body. “See the surgical scar on the left side of his head? The wife says it was a voluntary procedure for research.”

“So?” Brett shrugged, standing by the dresser on the other side.

“Since when do recruits do voluntary brain surgery?”

“Nathan, you're not known to be a conspiracy theorist. I, on the other hand, love to entertain a few. It's a chip, of course.”

“As in computer chip?”

“Absolutely. You don't think the military would be into something like that? Implanting chips?”

“And what would the purpose of said chip be?”

Brett rubbed his hands together devilishly. “Let me give you just a few morsels off the top of my most genius mind. One, a spy camera. Hard to detect. Soldier doesn't have to be wired. Doesn't have to carry recording equipment to gather intel. Two, a tracking device. Three—”

“All right, I get it. You need to stop listening to that radio program at night. It only adds to my insomnia when you talk about these things. It's why I can't read the book of Revelation.”

Brett smiled. “You think outside the box your way. I do it my way.”

“It's just that I use sound police theory.”

“Wow. You're usually not this feisty until much later in the day.”

Nathan ran his hand through his hair. “Let's go over what we know. About a year ago, he had this surgery. Wife doesn't really know what it entailed. His career was on the upswing. He was just promoted.”

“Maybe he couldn't take the extra responsibility.”

“His wife says it was something he was looking forward to.”

Brett pulled the top drawer of the nightstand open. “Okay, I'll agree with you on that. He's got new uniforms hanging in the closet.”

Nathan lifted the planner from the desk. “Also, he has appointments set. Nothing appears to be canceled. Why kill yourself now?”

“We do know regardless of what the surgery entailed, the wife states he was having some complications.”

Nathan set the planner aside. “Remembering too much. Can that really be a complication? Some women might consider it an improvement to the male condition.”

“On that radio program you're so fond of dismembering, I remember some neuro-type doc talking about a person who could never forget anything and how much it plagued her. It's like her brain was never quiet.”

Nathan pulled down one of the composition notebooks from the desk. “I wonder if that's why he was keeping these.”

Brett turned his direction. “What are they?”

“They remind me of something my grandmother does. She records every single part of her day. What she ate. Who came to visit. Who she got mail from.”

“Don't you think that would be more of a test?”

“How so?”

“Well, say you got this surgery and one of the complications was that you began to remember everything. Or, at least in the beginning that's what you thought was happening to you. So to test yourself, you begin to record every little thing you do and then go back and quiz yourself to see if you're actually right.”

Nathan thumbed through the pages. “Actually makes sense. Look at you using deductive reasoning.”

“The other thing this doc talked about was how every bad decision in the woman's life plagued her. Her mind played this continual loop of memory, and she could see every decision and how it played out in her life. It's like you when you get into overanalyze mode—like now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those moments we all want to forget. The bad decisions we make. For a while, we might sit around and ruminate, but eventually, we do move on and probably don't think of them as much. Sure, one or two might easily come to mind—”

“You allude to Raven Samuals's case.”

“Sure. For you as a negotiator, it sidelined you when those people died, but you've worked your way back. For this woman, it's like she's stuck with all these moments. There is no filter.”

Nathan put the journal down and ran his thumb over the group of ten. “What you bring up is a good point. Our brain does provide a service to us by filtering out the extra noise and cataloging only the most important things. So, was he just trying to quiet the noise? That's why he killed himself?”

Brett turned back to the body. “I don't know. But what I do know is there isn't anything suspicious. Nothing that would lead me to believe that someone else forced those pills down his throat.”

“We'll have to wait for the toxicology screen and autopsy to know for sure. What is the name of the prescribing doctor on those bottles?”

Brett picked one up and a slow whistle escaped his lips. “Cue the
Twilight
music. Dr. Thomas Reeves.”

Nathan grabbed his iPad from the desk. “Great. Now I'll be forced to talk to my father-in-law. Actually, why don't you do it, since I have an obvious conflict of interest?”

“Fine. Why is that television so loud?” Brett left the bedroom.

As Nathan finished searching, his pager vibrated.

“Nathan, you better get in here!” Brett called.

“Just a minute!”

He viewed his pager. SWAT was requesting his assistance on scene.

Leaving the bedroom, Nathan turned the corner and saw the grieving widow sitting beside Brett on the couch.

“What's going on?” Nathan asked.

Brett pointed to the television. “They're reporting that three armed men have taken hostages at Sacred Heart. They just showed a photo of the hostage takers. Some grainy image a parent took in the parking lot.”

Nathan knew what Brett meant to say. The police wanted control of any images in a volatile situation. How had the media obtained these? Most likely from a citizen and not law enforcement or anyone tied with the hospital.

It was the widow who spoke. “That's one of Brian's friends. He had the surgery, too.” She turned and faced Nathan. “That's when all of our trouble started—when he volunteered for that procedure.”

Chapter 28

1030, Saturday, August 11

M
ORGAN STOOD BACK AS
Scott pointed his weapon at the lock to the pharmacy door. He fired three consecutive shots, causing small plumes of dust and smoke to fill the hallway. Morgan pushed through the damaged wood and began to scan the meds.

What she hadn't anticipated were the resultant screams of terror from the other side of the PICU main entrance at the sound of the weapon being fired. It was the first moment she'd seen a look of uncertainty cross Scott's eyes.

She turned to face him. “You're going to have to let me call out. They're going to assume you shot someone in here.”

“What's the hospital plan for someone being taken hostage?”

“Plan? We rehearse a single armed person flipping out. Not a trio of mercenaries. Isn't that what you are? Trained military?”

His eyes widened at her assessment.

Morgan turned away and scanned the nearest shelf. “We have an alert we rehearse. It puts the hospital in lockdown. We're to get the patients in a safe place. Ask me about a fire, a tornado, a bomb threat, and I'm all over that. You are never expected to be
inside
my unit.”

“Seems like poor planning.”

“Yeah, well, you can run it by JCAHO on their next visit. Are you going to let me phone the police? Let them know you haven't hurt anybody?”

“Not yet.”

Morgan's stomach turned. How would the hospital feel if she stole some Tums and Valium? Would she be able to access the narcotics she needed for her patients? Where was the vial to make the vasopressor drip for Bree? She pulled the dopamine vial from the shelf. One item on her checklist found.

“I need some IV bags. The liter size,” Scott said.

The tension in Morgan's chest increased. “What for?”

“To build explosives to rig the doors.” He kept the weapon aimed at her and smiled. “Aren't you glad you asked?”

Her hands trembled. His casual, pleasant response was the most disturbing thing he'd said so far. Morgan stepped to the left and found the cache of fluids. Scott stepped in front of her and gathered up six bags in the crook of one arm. With his free hand, he adjusted the weapon. “Let's go to the desk and make that call. Don't say anything I wouldn't say.”

She walked back to the nurses' station with the medicine vials clutched in fisted, raised hands. Her sister-in-law was seated at the desk. A Hispanic male, whose name had not yet been mentioned, remained by the door. The other mercenary,
Dylan
, she remembered, lumbered about the room like a bored gorilla looking for food.

Morgan picked up the handset and dialed the operator.