What Lies Behind (7 page)

Chapter 13

Georgetown
O
Street
Thomas Cattafi’s apartment

IT DIDN’T TAKE
long for the big guns to arrive, wearing their space-age polymer suits, hooked into oxygen. Sam and Fletcher were taken through a portable decontamination unit, had blood samples drawn and were told to stay put. Phones, her purse, shoes, everything, was taken away.

Sam had an awful sense of déjà vu; she’d been through something similar a few months back, when a crazed man had used a homegrown biological weapon to gas the Foggy Bottom Metro station and she’d been sitting at ground zero at the George Washington University Hospital waiting to be cleared to go home.

She pushed the thought away. No sense revisiting the past until she knew what she was dealing with. Or whom.

Thomas Cattafi. She didn’t know the name—no reason she should, really, if he was a fourth-year M.D./Ph.D. student. Two years of med school, four years of specialized research, then back to the med school side to finish the clinical rotations. A hellish tract, one few students wanted, and fewer survived. Sam was only working with the first-year forensic pathology students, the dewy-eyed youngsters who thought everything about med school was cool. Soon enough, they’d become hardened and cynical, like everyone else.

What in the hell was a student doing with a refrigerator full of pathogens? Even if he was an M.D./Ph.D. candidate, there was no reason to have the items at his home. They belonged in a lab. Cattafi was involved in something bad, that was for sure. Something this woman, Amanda Souleyret, had brought to his door?

And what about the scene felt so familiar?

Since she had a few moments of leisure, she thought back to the Hometown Killer files, the autopsy photos, ran everything through her head. Two of the women in the series had been stabbed—Terri Snow from Topeka and Jan Tovey from San Francisco. Blood everywhere, the women’s bodies found in the bedroom. The Snow crime scene was the one that struck her as familiar.

You’re reaching, Samantha.

She wanted to call Baldwin, demand a briefing, but he was on a plane. There was nothing he could do for her right now. She’d shot him an email before they took her phone, told him to get back to her the moment he landed. She had a problem, and he needed to be secure before he reached out. The last thing she needed was someone capturing the message and leaking this to the press. Hopefully they’d be cleared before he started burning up the wires.

She watched the HAZMAT team move about, smelled the intense scent of rain coming. Worried, but just a little, about whether she’d been exposed to something horrible. The refrigerator had been empty of wine and unplugged, so the pathogens weren’t at the right temperature, nor were they specially packaged. It was almost as if Cattafi had been working on something, been interrupted and hurriedly shut the pathogens away in the refrigerator. Forgotten to plug it in.

Or someone had purposely unplugged it.

When and for how long it had been turned off was anyone’s guess—it had its own power source, so they’d have to track all that down, too.

She hadn’t touched anything, and all the discs and vials she’d seen looked like they’d been properly handled and were sealed, except for the one that was cracked, leaking and smelling awful. But one never knew. A list of hemorrhagic diseases ran through her mind, countdowns, worried doctors, isolation chambers, right into visions of blood gushing from various orifices, leaking from fissures cracking open in her porcelain skin, until she shook her head to physically stop the thoughts.

There was nothing to be done right now. Everyone who’d come in contact with Cattafi for the past few weeks would have to be examined, all the crime scene investigators tested. This was a mess of epic proportion.

The autopsy of Amanda Souleyret was postponed, her body in isolation, until they knew more about what was happening. There was no sense infecting the morgue if it could be avoided.

She soothed herself with a single thought—if Cattafi had been symptomatic, they’d have already heard from the hospital. Went back to worrying about a more immediate problem.

The pack of vials and discs had seemed undisturbed, but she’d noticed there was a single spot in the tray of vials that was empty. She hoped like hell there wasn’t something missing, something the killer had taken.

And with that thought, the scene began to make more sense.

She was wrong. There was nothing familiar here. Cattafi had been targeted because someone knew about his little lab.

She watched the HAZMAT team work, moving slowly, like they were underwater. Felt a bit like she was underwater herself, isolated and alone, though Fletcher was with her.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“Mmm-hmm. Annoyed more than anything.”

“This is turning into something more than it first seemed.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “With you, it always does.” But there was humor in his voice. “Entertain me. I’m bored.”

“You’re joking, right? What do you want me to do, tell you a bedtime story?”

“While that has its own compelling set of responses, I was thinking more along the lines of what sort of work Amanda Souleyret might be doing that’s drawn the attention of the FBI.”

“Oh, it’s speculation you want. I’m good at that.” She settled herself more comfortably on the table they’d been given to sit on. “All right. You’ll find out soon enough. Souleyret is undercover FBI.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She was working for a company called Helix.”

“Explain.”

“Helix is a huge European firm with offices in several countries that run all kinds of private investigations, from industrial espionage to pharmaceutical investigations. They also work on pharmaceutical espionage. Trademark infringements, ripping off formularies, passing off generics as the real thing. There’s a more...physical component to what they do, as well. An entire division of close protection, K and R—kidnap and ransom—the whole gamut. It’s like what Xander and his buddy are doing, only on a much bigger scale.”

“Like the Pinkertons?”

She smiled, imagining Xander and Chalk in suits and fedoras. “Something like that. Perhaps a little less gunplay, a little more computer-driven research. But yes. They’re essentially detectives, and protectors of the realm.”

“And whichever realm pays the best gets their undying loyalty?”

“For the term of the contract.”

“So what’s an FBI asset doing there?”

“It’s a great place for her, really. They have unlimited funds and unlimited access all across Europe. Until we know exactly what project she was working on, we won’t know how they benefited her, but until she got herself dead, she had it good. Xander and Chalk, they’re just starting out. Competing with a behemoth company like Helix is hard.”

“And yet they’re going to try.”

“Some people want more discreet protection. That’s going to be their niche.”

“You’re good with that? Him being all heroic and stuff?”

She hesitated before answering, and he nodded, touched her knee. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me. I can see you’re worried about it, though.”

“Close protection is dangerous, especially if they start working overseas. I don’t necessarily want to see him go back into Iraq or Afghanistan. Everything that happened with Eddie Donovan, the fratricide, it messed him up. That’s all.”

“Then we should make sure to find him work here. I’ll put the word out, if you like.”

She gave him that heartbreaking smile of hers. “Thank you, Fletcher. I appreciate that.”

Jesus, no matter how much in love, in lust or whatever he was with another woman, the sight of Samantha Owens at full wattage still made his gonads clench. He decided he liked the reaction. To hell with it not being proper for friends to get those feelings.

He cleared his throat. “All right. Another question. Did Souleyret bring the pathogens into the country with her? And if so, how the hell would she transport them? If she worked in France, she had to go through customs somewhere when she got over here. How in the world could they miss this?”

“Maybe a private flight to a private airport? The last time I traveled overseas, security sent the bags through the scanner as usual, with no special scrutiny on my personal stuff, even though I had a bottle of vitamins in there. It wouldn’t be hard to package these as some sort of medicine and slip them through. You can take anything on a flight if you have a prescription for it, or it looks like it belongs. We’re sort of on an honor system.”

“Her bags would still have to be checked at the private airports, but you have a point. The question is, where did she come in, and when?”

She grinned at him again, teeth flashing white. “I guess that’s what you’re going to have to figure out, aren’t you? Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“And you’re not going to help at all, are you?”

“Hey, I’m not Nancy Drew. I’m the mind of reason here. I do the science. The mystery is yours to sort out.”

“And sort it I will. Look who’s here at last.” He waved to Lonnie Hart, who pulled his black Caprice to the curb and waved back. Fletcher was glad to see him. Hart had been his partner for years. They’d been detectives together for almost eight, partners for six. Hart had a keen mind, a laconic attitude and an ongoing love affair with his weight bench. When Fletcher moved up the ladder, he’d brought Hart along with him. Hart’s promotion was Fletcher’s only stipulation to accepting the lieutenant position.

Hart gave them an ironic salute and went to find the head of the HAZMAT team, a buxom woman named Sophie Lewis. They talked together for a moment, then he gave Fletcher a thumbs-up.

Sam knocked into his shoulder. “That looks like good news.”

And it was.

Chapter 14

DISASTER AVERTED, PROBABLY,
at least for the time being. Field tests were negative for live, dangerous pathogens, but they were asked to stay in isolation for the time being. People would stop by every once in a while to update them. Feeding time at the zoo. Fletcher was going mad just sitting here, watching. He wanted to help. Even with a tentative all clear, he needed to do something to take his mind off the idea of tiny invisible razorlike creatures multiplying in his bloodstream, inching him toward a slow and certain death.

The list of pathogens grew as the morning wore on, bacteria and viruses and diseases that were deadly and transmissible, all mixed together unsecured in the Georgetown apartment. There were names Fletcher was familiar with, or at least could puzzle out:
Clostridium botulinum
,
Salmonella enteritidis
,
diarrheagenic Escherichia coli
, SARS coronavirus, HIV. And a few he couldn’t, specifically something Sam said was a generic hemorrhagic flavivirus—as if there was anything generic about hemorrhagic viruses—plus a mosquito-borne alphavirus called chikungunya, and something in a nasty pink solution with a handwritten label: Gransef. No one had heard of that one before.

Fletcher was livid. How his crime scene techs had missed the refrigerator of doom, as he’d mentally dubbed it, was lost on him. It had taken Sam all of ten minutes to find it. There was going to be a shitstorm back at headquarters. In the meantime, he needed to find out what the hell Thomas Cattafi was doing with all these pathogens in his hidden refrigerator, and why he and Amanda Souleyret had been attacked.

And what vial, if any, was missing from the lot. The vials were in a plastic carrier, and one slot was open. When Sam had pointed it out, his stomach dropped to his knees. That lone emptiness freaked him out more than anything.

The meeting at State had been pushed back to noon. Sam had the day off but asked a crime scene tech to relay a message to her TA, Stephanie, to handle anything that might come up during the afternoon. Though unable to return to work, her insatiable curiosity was keeping her mood buoyed. He could see she was starting to chafe at being left out, like him, as the HAZMAT team began retrieving the pathogens from Cattafi’s apartment, but she watched the proceedings with bright eyes.

She’d never last at Georgetown. He’d been surprised when she accepted the position in the first place, surprised she’d agreed to upend her life and move to D.C. If there was ever a woman who should have a badge, a lifeline into investigations, it was her. Her passion for the job was clear, and while he had no doubt she was passionate about teaching, too, he couldn’t imagine it could be nearly as fun as what they’d stumbled into this morning.

At least Baldwin had talked her into consulting for the FBI. She had a gift, and Fletcher was happy someone was going to be able to use it.

Towering clouds were gathering briskly over the Potomac. With heart-stopping suddenness, the sun disappeared. He could hear gentle rumbles of thunder in the distance. Watching the curtain rise on the show, he understood how the ancients looked at storms as a form of the gods arguing. He could do with a little divine interference himself.

He needed to get cleared so he could go over to George Washington University Hospital and see how Thomas Cattafi was faring. The folks at GW had been warned to treat him as a HAZMAT, though by now, with all the people who’d come into contact with him, if he’d fucked up and mishandled any of the pathogens in his apartment, they were all screwed. The same went for Souleyret’s body—the morgue had been cautioned to treat her autopsy with the utmost of care.

Always something, Fletcher thought.

A tech came with their phones, handed them off. They were still wrapped in plastic. “They’re ringing off the hook. Deal with it.”

Sam immediately grabbed hers and started listening to messages. Fletcher did the same—a call from Armstrong, chewing his ass out for getting exposed to this shit and tying up the investigation, and by the way,
I hope you’re okay
; Hart, on his way over; Jordan, his
I think I can safely call her my girlfriend
, wanting to know if he was free for lunch on Friday, when she arrived back in town; and oddly, his ex-wife, Felicia, who rarely reached out, asking if he could take Tad this weekend.

Nothing that helped the case.

When he finished, he saw Sam was on the phone, eyes averted. She glanced his way, then hung up. He leaned over to her. “Who are you talking to? No, let me guess. Xander.”

She gave him a crooked grin. “If you must know, that was Amado. He was going to post the woman in an hour. I asked if I could stop by and watch. He agreed to wait until we finish the meeting at the State Department first. It will take them a while to set up the precautions, anyway. They’ve done some preliminary blood work to see if anything stands out. So far, she’s showing clean.”

Fletcher sighed in relief. “Good. Hopefully she hadn’t gotten into anything. I’ll go with you. I want both our eyes on this.”

“It’s going to be an interesting one, that’s for sure. None of the vials were disturbed, but the refrigerator had been turned off. The C-bot—sorry, botulism—had begun breaking down. It wasn’t perfectly sealed, and that’s what the terrible smell was. The proteins began to decompose, just like flesh.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Is botulism a hazard?”

She shook her head. “It is a disease, not an airborne pathogen, which is the only reason we’re being isolated here instead of locked down in a containment unit. No, I don’t think there’s any real danger from any of these, so long as they’re treated properly. But it’s quite convenient that he had the wine fridge built into the bar. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.”

“But maybe the killer did find it. There might be a vial missing. Hell, we’re going in circles. We need to find out what Souleyret was doing with Cattafi in the first place.”

“Yes, we do. I have word in to Baldwin. As soon as he lands in Denver, he’ll call. He told me he didn’t think her current assignment had anything to do with her death, but that was when we thought this was a domestic. Now that we’re dealing with a potential double murder, we have to approach it in a whole new light. Face it, Fletch. You’re stuck with me.”

He grinned at her. “What a perfectly horrible thought.”

Hart came by a few minutes later. Arms bulging, neck now sweating. He had a hand on the Glock at his waist, an impenetrable look spread across his face.

Fletcher put up his hands.

“Don’t shoot, Occifer. I ain’t drunk.”

“You’re demented, that’s what you are,” Hart replied. “And cleared. All the field tests are negative. You’re fine, you’re out of isolation. All the brain rot is from natural causes.” He turned to Sam with a smile. “Good to see you, Doc. This loon roped you into another case?”

“Hey, I’m your commander—you can’t call me a loon.”

Hart rolled his eyes. “Doc, I ever tell you about the time me and Fletch were down in Loudon County on a domestic? Turns out this guy’d been doing it with his goat, and the wife caught him going at it in the barn, lost it, grabbed the closest weapon and pumped him full of bird shot. Dude dies with his, ahem, boots on, so to speak. Now, Fletch here, he’s trying to figure out how we save this poor goat, so he—”

Sam was already giggling, and Fletcher reached out like he was going to smack Hart’s arm, but thought better of touching him. “Don’t you dare say another word, or I’ll bump you back to uniform. Tell me what’s happening at the hospital. How’s Cattafi?”

Hart flashed him a grin, then got serious. “Dude lost a lot of blood. He’s not giving too many signs of waking up anytime soon. His family’s on a flight in from Michigan. They’ll be in—” he checked his watch “—by one or two. There are big storms in Chicago and their plane was delayed. Your dead chick has a sister. We’re trying to locate her to do notification now. There’s not a lot of info floating around about either one of them, and the vic lived overseas. We’re trying to track it all down. I figure you’re gonna want to talk to the families when we round them up, at the very least.”

“Kind of you to save them for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. The sacrifices I make.”

“Cattafi’s parents wrecked?”

“They’re as distraught as you can imagine. Claim the kid’s some sort of supergenius. Gonna cure cancer, all that.”

“I keep hearing that. Anything on the traffic cams? I noticed one on the corner.”

“We’re looking at everything between ten and two. And we’re going to recanvass the area. There’s a camera mounted a few doors down, but the folks weren’t home when we knocked.”

“Good. Anything we can get will help. Sam, you know his professors at Georgetown, right? Can you get us in to talk to them?”

She nodded. “Of course. I’ll go set something up right now.” She walked a little ways down the leafy green street, punching numbers in her cell phone.

Hart gave him the fish eye. “What are you doing, dragging her in here? She’s a civilian, Fletcher, albeit a talented one. You can’t keep involving her in our cases. It’s not seemly.”

“Now, now, don’t get your panties in a wad. She’s a legitimate part of the investigation. Apparently, our female vic was undercover FBI. Sam’s taking John Baldwin’s place for the time being while he deals with another case.”

“Whose idea was that?”

Fletcher smiled. “Lonnie, worry not, okay? I wouldn’t do anything to compromise this investigation. She’s got a knack for this—took her all of ten minutes to dig out the hidden refrigerator. Speaking of which, I trust you’ve told Robertson I’m gunning for him?” Mel Robertson was the head of the crime scene unit—it was his boys and girls who’d screwed the pooch.

“Robertson is quaking in his size-fourteen boots.” A few spatters of rain started, and Hart popped a baseball cap onto his bald pate.

Fletcher put the file he was holding over his own head as a shield. “I’m not kidding. If Robertson ain’t gonna take this seriously, I’ll let Armstrong go after him. What sort of bullshit is this, that we can’t trust our own crime scene techs to do their jobs?”

“You sound like a bureaucrat.” But Hart was smiling. He liked the idea of Robertson getting chewed out.

“I
am
a bureaucrat. Now.”

Sam was walking back toward them, a worried look on her face. When she reached them, Fletcher shared his file folder with her.

“What’s the matter?”

She bit her lip. “Thomas Cattafi isn’t a student at Georgetown anymore. He was kicked out two weeks ago. The dean says he can’t discuss it over the phone. We’ll have to go see him to find out more.”