by J. D. Barker
They reached the top of the steps and as they started toward the front door, Gimble heard someone coughing. Dobbs heard it too. He began to turn toward the sound, but she stopped him. “Get out of here. I’ll go.”
He looked as if he planned to argue with her, but then he nodded and shuffled toward the front door.
Gimble coughed, covered her mouth, and swiveled back toward the sound. That’s when she noticed Vela was gone.
Chapter One Hundred Forty
Gimble
Blood stained the floor where Vela had fallen, but there was no other sign of him.
The sound of coughing came again, harsh and relentless, followed by desperate gasps.
Kepler?
Vela?
It came from above and behind.
Gimble’s hand went to her empty holster as she spun back toward the sound.
Dark black smoke roiled at the ceiling, churning and twisting like angry storm clouds. It was worse at the staircase leading to the second floor. At the top of the steps, there was a giant mass of deep gray fighting to get down, get out from above, held back only by the laws of nature but spilling into the first floor nonetheless. Tendrils of smoke reached down and out from the opening, exploring the ornate architecture in search of a meal, trying to satisfy the appetite of some beast up above, something growing larger with each passing second.
Through the haze, Gimble spotted them.
Megan Fitzgerald came through the smoke first. She stumbled awkwardly down the steps, nearly slipped, and braced herself on the wall. She had an arm wrapped around another young woman, and Gimble recognized her immediately as Nicole Milligan. Milligan’s feet were bare, filthy, bloody. She had duct tape wrapped around her head, a giant mess of it over her mouth, caught in her hair, and she seemed barely conscious. Both were covered in soot, their clothing in tatters.
When Milligan saw Gimble, her eyes went wide and she tried to pull away from Megan, nearly taking them both down the stairs in a tumble, but somehow Megan managed to maintain her grip.
Gimble raced up the steps, took Milligan’s free arm, and put it over her own shoulder. Heat belched down the stairs. Fire raged up above, eager to come down. She had to shout to be heard over it. “Where’s your brother?”
Megan shook her head. Her soot-covered face was streaked with dried tears and snot. “Mitchell killed him. He’s dead. They’re both dead.” As she said the words, the tears came again, rolling from her puffy red eyes, and her body shook with sobs.
From above came a loud crash, followed by a deep rumble.
Gimble thought about the gas building up below.
“We need to get out now!”
She dragged them down the steps. Even as the smoke grew worse and filled their lungs, she pulled them forward. They reached the door, fell. Then there were arms, hands, grabbing at them, pulling them down the sidewalk, across the lawn.
Gimble didn’t see Windham Hall explode, but she felt it. The pressure hit her with the force of a Mack truck.
Part 7
Ithaca, New York
The most fertile soil is mixed with the ash of ruin.
—Barton Fitzgerald, MD
Chapter One Hundred Forty-One
Megan
I was numb.
And I had been numb for two days.
If I spent the rest of my days numb, I thought I would be fine with that. I couldn’t sleep; I didn’t want to be awake. Every time my eyes shut, I saw Michael’s face looking at me as he lay on the floor at Windham Hall, twisted and weak, pleading for me and Nicole to get out. Even then, in his final moments, his thoughts were on saving me. He always was the selfless one. The good one.
The cemetery before me was empty.
There was only me, a reverend I didn’t know, and some worker. He skulked behind the pile of dirt covered with a sheet of cheap Astroturf and glowered at me. When I caught him looking, he didn’t bother to turn away, didn’t even shift his eyes. He scratched his stubbled chin, shoved his hand in his pocket, and stared.
The rain had started about twenty minutes earlier, and even though I’d brought an umbrella, I didn’t open it. Each icy drop on my head, on my skin, reminded me I was still standing while Michael, Dr. Rose, and Dr. Bart were ten feet in front of me and six feet under; they would never feel another raindrop.
The reverend droned on, but I didn’t hear a word.
Dr. Bart had been buried two days ago. While I was in the hospital, heavily medicated, they’d put him in the ground. I was told the funeral was well attended. Colleagues, fans of his writing, lookie-loos. I’m not sure if anyone who came could be called a friend of his. I think they were all there for the spectacle of the thing. The papers covered it; they went on and on, all this bullshit about the loss of such a prominent force in the field of psychiatry.
Dr. Rose’s suicide was mentioned on page 23 of the local paper. They’d asked me for a photograph, but I didn’t supply one. They’d printed a photo no doubt procured from Cornell, an ancient headshot where she appeared twenty years younger, a little less wrinkled, and ten pounds lighter. The smug grin was there, though. That grin followed her everywhere. Today, we put her next to Dr. Bart.
The reverend must have finished speaking about Dr. Rose, because he shuffled the five feet over to the final grave in our little family plot and gestured toward the eight-by-ten of Michael in a gold frame perched precariously on an easel. The picture was far too small for its purpose, but I didn’t have time to get something larger made.
How they found Michael’s body, I’ll never know.
When the gas in the basement of Windham Hall hit the fire on the second floor, the explosion could be heard from miles away—windows shattered for three blocks.
I don’t remember the explosion. The doctors told me I was thrown nearly twenty feet and suffered a grade 2 concussion. Nicole Milligan was in bad shape. Alive, though. The police said I saved her. The last I’d checked, she still hadn’t regained consciousness. She was in the hospital room next to mine. I stopped by before I left this morning.
Jessica Gimble, the FBI agent who’d helped Nicole and me take those last few steps and get out just before the explosion stayed with me most of the night, sitting in a chair by the window. When my eyes fluttered open and I saw her, I tried to speak but she shushed me and told me to rest. She had several bandages on her face and a nasty cut on her cheek, the kind that leaves a scar. I could give her the name of a good plastic surgeon—Dr. Rose knew a few. Her left hand was wrapped in gauze. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore no makeup.
She’d left me a note on a pad of paper:
Write down what you remember; we’ll talk when you’re better. And call me Jessica. :)
So I did, with as much detail as I could muster. When she came by later to pick it up, she told me she’d be sharing it with an LA police detective named Garrett Dobbs. I Googled him—cute guy—so I added his name to the salutation of the letter; seemed like the polite thing to do. I told them everything from Michael’s first phone call through the explosion. I didn’t leave anything out.
As much as it hurt to relive it, I did.
Somebody pulled Michael’s body from that mess. They still hadn’t found Mitchell. They would, though. Who knows what else they’d find as they dug through the rubble of that place.
The reverend went on.
The filthy gravedigger continued to stare.
I looked out over the empty cemetery through the rain.
I did my best to ignore all the people shouting behind me.
I’d turned around only once, but when I did, dozens of cameras went off—clicks and flashes and cell phones held high in hopes of getting some shot of me over the heads of the others. Television crews, reporters from every imaginable newspaper and website—they were all there. They screamed questions at me, thrust their arms forward with microphones, hoping to catch something, anything for the record. The police held them back behind wooden barricades. They all want
ed to watch me bury the Birdman Killer. That’s what they were calling Michael in the media: the Birdman Killer. How fucking stupid was that? They’d painted him as a monster, this crazy murderer who crisscrossed the country on a mad killing spree. I’d read a couple of the articles, and that had been enough. The same rehashed bullshit. None of it was true. Not a single mention of Mitchell. It made me sick. Michael was a good man. He didn’t deserve this. None of it. I’d promised the police I wouldn’t talk to the press, not until they concluded their investigation, not until they’d pieced together everything I’d told them in my written statement, but I could hold my tongue for only so long. Another day or two, and I’d set the record straight, consequences be damned. I owed Michael that much.
The reverend bowed his head and recited some prayer. I wanted to leave.
A hand fell on my shoulder. “How are you doing, Megan?”
It was her, Agent Gimble…Jessica. She had a slight Southern accent—I hadn’t noticed it before.
“How do you think I’m doing?”
She turned her back to the press, and her eyes fell on the three graves. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to bury your entire family like this. I am so sorry.”
“Why did you bring him there? If you had just taken him to jail, he’d still be alive.” I’d just learned about this last night on the news. There was talk of an internal investigation. I really didn’t care what they did to her; it wouldn’t bring Michael back.
She looked at the ground. “He was cuffed in the back of a federal vehicle. He shouldn’t have been able to get out.”
“He did, though, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
My eyes started to well up again. “Because he wanted to help me. That’s all he ever wanted to do. He never hurt anyone.”
She didn’t respond to that.
I turned to her, my voice rising. “If he was a killer, why didn’t he kill the agent you left out there to guard him? He could have easily killed him. He got the cuffs off, had surprise on his side. Instead, he just got his gun and handcuffed him to the steering wheel.” I said the next words loud enough for the reporters to hear: “Michael didn’t hurt him because he didn’t have it in him. Michael never hurt anybody. He couldn’t.”
The reverend was staring at me. I really didn’t care.
I sneered at her. “What’s to stop me from turning around right now and telling all these people what really happened? Telling them all about Mitchell? All the Fitzgeralds’ dirty little secrets?”
She squeezed my shoulder. “That’s why I’m here, Megan. We know Michael didn’t do it. We have proof.”
My heart thumped. “Did you find Mitchell?”
She shook her head. “It’s better than that. Let me get you out of here, away from all these people and back to the station. I’ll show you.” She leaned close to my ear. “When we’re done, if you want to, I’ll do a press conference with you. My office will organize it. We’ll get the truth out there. We’ll clear Michael’s name together.”
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Two
Megan
I rode in one of the FBI vehicles—a black sedan with dark tinted windows—and I was thankful for that. The driver pushed through the crowd at the cemetery with a vigor that suggested he had no qualms about running over one or more reporters should they happen to remain in the path of the federal vehicle. Several of the reporters smacked at the car as we rolled past. Another pressed a wide camera lens against my window and held the shutter button down in hopes of catching an image of me. I had no idea if the camera would work through the dark tint. I shielded my face behind my hand anyway and stared down at the floor, wondering what thoughts had gone through Michael’s head when he’d sat in a vehicle just like this one.
Nestled between a community college and a law practice, the FBI offices were on State Street in downtown Ithaca. A squat one-story building painted a hideous beige with narrow brown windows, it looked more like a bunker than an office building and screamed federal from the street.
My driver pulled up to the main entrance and opened the door for me—he was quite the gentleman. Does one tip in a situation like this? Jessica got out of the car behind me and ushered me inside. At a security desk, my purse went through an X-ray machine like the ones at the airport, and I stepped through a large metal detector. Once they’d determined I wasn’t a terrorist, my picture was taken and I was handed a visitor’s pass.
“This way,” Jessica said and led me to an elevator.
“Isn’t this a one-story building?”
“There are three basement levels.” She hit the button.
As we waited for the elevator, I noticed several people watching me. I glanced down at my black dress, wondering if maybe it was too short.
When the doors opened on level B2, we were greeted by a man in his early thirties wearing a Mumford and Sons T-shirt and carrying a MacBook. He smiled at me. “You must be Megan Fitzgerald. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Megan, this is Special Agent Sammy Goggans. He works with me back at our Los Angeles office.”
I shook his hand. “Mumford. Nice. The FBI lets you wear T-shirts?”
He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “They tried to reprimand me for it once, but I cited religious reasons. They never know how to react to that.”
They hurried me down a series of hallways to a conference room in the back west corner. We were far underground, so the only window in the room looked out into the hall. Six chairs surrounded the round table. One of them was occupied by the police detective I’d Googled.
“This is Detective Garrett Dobbs of the LAPD. He’s been working with me on this case for the past few days. I believe I mentioned his name back at the hospital.”
The detective’s right arm was in a sling. He had several cuts on his neck and face. As cute as his picture, though. Broad shoulders and close-cropped dark hair. Incredibly intense eyes. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.
A white file box was on the floor beside him.
He stood and smiled. “Hello, Megan. I knew your brother. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Jessica gestured toward an empty chair. “Would you like something to drink? Soda, water, coffee?”
I shook my head. “I have a lot to do today. I’m supposed to meet our family’s lawyer in an hour to go over information on the estate, so I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I totally understand. We’ll make this fast. Do you want your lawyer here with you? We can wait if you want to call him.”
“Why would I want my lawyer here?”
Jessica shrugged. “Some people aren’t comfortable talking to the FBI without a lawyer present, so I’m just putting it out there. If you want to call him, we don’t mind; we’ll wait. It’s up to you.”
“I’m fine,” I said, settling into the chair.
Jessica closed the door, and the three of them sat opposite me. The one in the T-shirt opened his MacBook, and I heard a tiny fan whir to life.
She produced a notebook and pen and set them on the table. She had a copy of my statement too. She set that beside her notebook. A camera lens stared down at us from the far corner of the room with a blinking red light.
“Is that on?”
She kept her eyes on me. “Yeah. They record twenty-four/seven. It’s not like on TV. They don’t give us a way to turn them on and off. They’ve got cameras all over the office. I’ve been doing this for so long, I forget they’re even there. It doesn’t bother you, does it? I imagine there are cameras at Cornell too, right? Ever since 9/11, seems like there are cameras everywhere, recording everything we do.”
I nodded.
“Just ignore it,” she said, turning toward the detective. “Dobbs, can you hand me that…”
Her voice trailed off, but he seemed to know what she meant. He reached into the file box, retrieved a manila folder, and gave it to her. She studied the contents, then placed the open folder in the center of the table. It held three photograph
s. She spread them out and pointed to the first. “That’s obviously your adoptive father, Dr. Barton Fitzgerald. We’ll talk about him in a minute. Do you recognize these other two?”
I leaned forward. “The one on the left is Mr. Patchen,” I told her. “He runs, I mean ran, Windham Hall.”
“And how do you know him?”
I shrugged. “He’d come to the house sometimes. He was friends with my parents.”
“You had no interaction with him aside from that?”
I shook my head.
Jessica gestured at the other photograph. “What about him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You’ve never seen him?”
“No.”
“Not even with your parents?”
Again, I shook my head.
She turned the photograph around and studied the man’s face. “That’s Dr. Omer Vela. He worked with the Bureau as a consultant. Apparently, he went to school with both Lawrence Patchen and your adoptive father. He may have been part of the attempt to frame your brother, Michael. We’re still trying to piece together what his involvement was.”
“Oh, I’ve got one more photograph I’d like you to look at.” This came from Dobbs. He took another folder from the box and handed it to me. It held a photo of a man in his mid-fifties. Heavyset. Salt-and-pepper hair. I didn’t know this man either.
I handed the folder back. “I’ve never seen him.”
Dobbs frowned. “His name was Roland Eads. He used fake credentials to pose as an attorney and help your brother escape police custody back in LA.”
“Oh.” I took a closer look.
“You do know him?” Jessica asked.
“Michael told me about him. Mitchell did too. Mitchell said he used to help him sneak out of Windham Hall. I know Michael went to his house. I guess Mitchell did too when he…I never met him though.”