She was almost to the door. Once she opened it she’d be in the vestibule with the clinic’s facial recognition scanner. Then through a final door and she’d be surrounded by her co-workers. The seconds drained away.
“When will my girls be safe?” She fought to keep her voice under control.
“Your evaluation of the inmate takes about forty-five minutes. About ten minutes after that, it will all be over. We will be long gone, your girls will know nothing about it.”
“And what will happen to me? Whatever I’m doing — it makes me some kind of accessory . . .”
She reached the door and paused. She checked the windows on the other side of the entrance — sometimes Mandy, the clinician who specialized in PTSD, complained the air conditioning was too cold and kept her window open. But it was sealed. So was Jake’s on the other side.
“Nothing will happen to you. If you do exactly as you have been instructed, you will return to your rational, normal life. Just make sure you do.”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER TWO
Tom lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. There were still some mornings he expected to awake at the condo in Naples, but he was gradually getting used to the new place.
A phone vibrated. He grabbed his from the side table and puzzled at the blank screen. Katie sat up in bed beside him, rubbed her eyes, leaned over and fished her phone out of her pants, which lay in a heap on the floor.
Tom watched her. He could see the curve of her spine, the tan line across her backside as the sheet fell away. She answered, “Mills,” and swung her legs out of the bed.
She listened. “Okay. Alright, I’m on my way.” She dropped the phone on the bed and pointed her toes out, slipped on her underpants, drew them up. Grabbed her pants and flapped them in the air before stepping in. Her bra was buried in the mess of clothing.
Tom propped up on an elbow, staring at her perfect shape. “I thought you were off today?”
“I’m on call.”
“No time for a shower, huh?”
She kept her back to him as she buttoned her white shirt. “CSB just got called to county jail. An inmate is dead. Apparently, it’s a real mess. I’m going to stop at the office to suit up and grab gear; I’ll shower there.”
She turned and bent to pick up her phone from the bed, a lock of thick brown hair tumbling free. She pulled an elastic tie from her pocket and drew all the hair back into a ponytail, accentuating her smooth skin, small nose, a slender cleft in her chin.
Their eyes connected. She had dark brown irises, similar in color to his.
“So, I’ll see you later?” he asked.
She slipped her holster around her waist. Her Everglades County badge was clipped beside her Glock. “I don’t know.”
Their gaze lingered, then Katie turned away, found her shoes, her bag, and headed toward the bedroom door. She stopped before leaving and turned her head.
“Good luck today, okay? This is your last session, right?”
Tom sat up and put his bare feet down on the carpeted floor. “Yeah. Then I’m officially head-shrunk and released back into the wild. Katie, what do you mean you don’t know? Listen—”
“I gotta go, Tom.”
“I know, I just . . .”
She turned a little bit more but kept her eyes averted. She was smart, she was pretty, she was an excellent crime scene technician. And it felt like she was leaving for the final time.
“Hang on a minute, okay?” He rose to his feet, naked and suddenly self-conscious despite their many nights together. He ripped the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his waist, crossing the room.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We can talk later.”
“Katie . . .”
He reached her, touched her arm, and she withdrew. “I can’t do this now, Tom. I’ve really got to go.”
“Do what now? That’s it? We’re done?”
She made eye contact. “Don’t. You’ve got your last session — you’re doing good, Tom. Almost to the end. Okay?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve jumped through their hoops, maybe they’re going to let me start catching again, and you’re leaving? What are you . . . The work is done, time to cut me loose? Like them?” He regretted the line instantly.
Katie’s face bloomed with color. “Hey — I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, okay? You lost someone very important to you. And maybe I took pity on you — I can own that.”
“Katie that’s not — you know that you—”
She put up a hand. Her expression said: you asked for this, so here it is. “No, that’s not all this has been. Not all I wanted it to be either. But it seems like it’s all you have room for.”
“What’s that mean?”
Her eyebrows went up: he knew what it meant.
She’d showed him compassion after Nick had died, and while they’d wound up spending a lot of time together over the past six months, he’d probably kept her at a certain distance. She deserved more.
She shook her head. “Bye Tom.”
“We can talk about it later, right?”
She let him kiss her, but it was brief, perfunctory.
“Be safe out there,” he said. “Okay?”
Katie seemed to force a smile. “Always.”
Tom leaned against the wall, listening as she went down the stairs. A moment later the door to his place opened and she was gone.
He let out a held breath, tossed the sheet aside and stayed leaned against the wall for another few seconds. When he heard a phone vibrate this time, he knew it was his. He moved to the bed and grabbed it off the table.
“Blythe? Hey . . . What’s up?”
“Tom, good morning. Been a while.”
He’d worked with Lauren Blythe on the case leading up to his brother’s death, and she’d left an indelible impression. Even though her phone call was unexpected and he had the day off, he suddenly felt guilty for lying in.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m good.”
“Governor Protection been keeping you busy?”
“Yeah.”
“How would you like to jump back into IFS?”
Tom started gathering his strewn about clothes. “Yeah, I mean, I’d love to start catching cases again. As soon as the state psychiatrist gives me the green light, and Turnbull is ready to—”
“Turnbull has already put in your paperwork. You’re good to go.”
He jumped into his jeans. “You talking about this thing at the county jail?”
A pause. “How did you know about that?”
His eyes fell on a couple of long, coppery hairs on the pillow where Katie had slept. “I have my sources.”
“Well, yeah, that is what I’m referring to. How soon can you meet me over there?”
He checked his watch again, thinking. The recent move to Bonita Springs put him a little bit farther than he would have been. “Half an hour?”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Alright.” He jammed the phone in his pocket and stuck his head through his undershirt. After fastening his shoulder holster and checking his Glock Gen4, he hurried out of the bedroom.
Katie had commented that he needed some furniture, but he liked the emptiness of his new townhouse. There was a clarity to it. With its arched doorways and high ceilings, it reminded him of Nick’s house.
One of the few things he’d brought from his old condo was the coffee maker, which had been set to brew an hour earlier. Tom slopped some of the hot liquid into a to-go mug, grabbed his car keys and left.
* * *
Everglades County Jail was massive, the perimeter fence topped with razor-sharp cyclone wire. It was the first stop for all suspected criminals whether they were being charged with local, state or federal crimes. Some, depending on their convictions, spent the entirety of their sentence there.
Tom pulled up to the security gate. One guard scrutinized his badge while anothe
r circled his department-issued Crown Victoria with a dog and a mirror on the end of a long pole, checking underneath the chassis. A third guard was on the phone inside the booth. He looked out at Tom, his lips moving, then nodded and hung up. He approached the car and handed Tom a generic visitor’s pass to clip to his suit jacket.
They waved him through.
An ambulance was parked near the main entrance, its lights twirling but the siren off. Two unmarked cars sat behind it — Tom recognized Blythe’s Crown Vic. He parked and entered the building, greeted in the main receiving area by a female deputy who showed him to a locker room. Florida was like most states in the US in that each county had a Sheriff’s Department. Since each county had a jail, it was the department’s responsibility to run it. Corrections officers were hired to do the grunt work, but deputies served some functions. The ones that walked you in and out were called floaters.
“We’re going to take you to the east wing,” the deputy said. “That’s where the inmates are kept who are on watch.”
Tom climbed into the forensic suit laid out for him and zipped it up. “On watch? You mean — what? Suicide risk?”
“Correct.”
“So what happened? Did someone complete a suicide?”
She returned his gaze. Tom thought she looked anxious.
“I don’t know, sir. You can put your service weapon and phone in that locker there. Pick them back up when you’re on your way out. Can stick your watch and wallet in there, too. It’ll all be safe.”
Tom stowed the items, then grabbed the bag of protective gear, which included booties, gloves, and a facemask.
She showed him out of the room and to the security entrance. He placed his bag in a plastic tub and shoved it into a tunnel where it was X-rayed, then he stepped through the metal detector.
On the other side, he was asked to raise his arms by a guard who then feathered a wand over his body.
“All set.”
The deputy rejoined him and led him along a corridor to a door she keyed for entry. They stepped into an air-locked chamber. After a hiss, the lock cracked open and they moved through the next door, down a final corridor. A group of crime scene techs were coming from the other direction, Katie Mills among them. Their eyes connected just before she passed him, and Tom thought she looked uneasy, too.
The deputy stopped at a room with a transparent door. There were two more rooms like this one, each with someone posted outside.
“We watch the inmates here around the clock,” she said.
Tom peered through the reinforced, bulletproof glass and sucked in a breath.
A man was lying on his stomach, wearing inmate fatigues, some kind of gunk splattered around him. Blythe stood near the body. At least, Tom thought it was her — she was dressed in a white jumpsuit, her face partly covered by a mask, alone in the room.
Tom opened the bag, pulled the booties on over his hard-soled shoes, wriggling into the latex gloves after he’d affixed a mask to his own face.
The deputy keyed the door and Tom stepped through.
The smell hit him right away — an acrid, bilious odor — unmistakably vomit. That and the metallic smell of blood.
There was a path laid out, marked with thin strips of yellow tape. It led to the body, then the strips widened out and encircled the area around the dead man and Blythe.
She stared down at the corpse, then looked at Tom as he approached.
“I cleared the room. Wanted a minute with you.”
“That’s romantic.”
“You know me.” Her eyes glistened in the bright overhead lights. “I’m glad to see you.”
“You too.”
“Been a couple months?”
Tom nodded. “Since October. Alan Ward’s sentencing.”
Both of them turned to the body, Tom asked, “Who’s our friend?”
“A retired auto mechanic from North Naples. Sixty-six years old.”
Tom looked around the room. There was an undressed cot, decorated with only a plain, wafer-thin pillow without even a pillow case. A stainless steel toilet and sink in one corner. In the other, an apparatus resembling a massage chair crossed with Puritanical stocks for hands and feet. Inmate restraints.
Tom focused on the body again. The man was prone, one hand sprawled above his head, which was thick with hair that was, surprisingly for his age, still mostly black. The other arm was tucked beneath him, out of sight. There were no bullet holes or slashes Tom could see. The only blood was spread around his head, mixing with the other bodily fluids. Tough to say where it was coming from since he was face-down.
The smell of vomit in the room was so powerful Tom felt his stomach binding. And he was coming to detect another, even worse, odor. Blythe said, “He defecated before dying.”
“Before?”
She flicked a look at him. “Yes.”
“So how did he do it? There’s blood there, but not enough that he bled out . . .”
“He bit his tongue almost completely off,” Blythe said flatly.
“What happened?”
“You’ll see it on the video. He had a pretty violent seizure.”
Tom saw the camera in a high corner. Then he lowered his voice, despite that the room was probably sound proof, or close to it. “You got something to tell me, Agent Blythe?”
She lowered into a squat. Tom joined her, and they locked eyes over the dead man.
“First, tell me what you think,” she said. “You’ve come in fresh: What does this look like to you?”
Tom took a beat. “Was he on anything? If he was on suicide watch, been here a day already, maybe they medicated him? Benzos or something? And he had a bad reaction?”
She shook her head. “No. They had him sign a release of information, heard back from his primary care physician, and he wasn’t on benzodiazepine or antidepressants, no antipsychotics, nothing.”
“Well, it looks to me like he took something or ate something, had this reaction. I think maybe a man on suicide watch found a way to get his wish? Poisoned? I also think you haven’t told me his name.”
The skin around her eyes wrinkled like Blythe was smiling behind her mask. But when she spoke there was no humor in her voice. “His name is Howard Michael Declan.”
It clicked right away. Their last case had involved a man named Mario Palumbo, a known drug trafficker being investigated by the County vice and narcotics bureau. Tom wasn’t supposed to be involved in it any longer, but he’d kept certain tabs.
“I know the name,” he said. “County VNB questioned Declan a few months ago as a witness in their Palumbo investigation. I’m probably not even supposed to know that much, and I honestly don’t know more.” A silence developed, Blythe seemed to be waiting. “Were they trying to get him to flip on Palumbo?” he asked. “Is that why we’re here?”
“Well, we’re here for the death investigation, but also for a security breach.”
Tom felt exhilarated but managed to lower his voice to a whisper. “Someone here is working with Palumbo?” He instantly imagined guards and organized criminals in collusion, making hand-offs, having back alley meetings. Someone at the jail murdering a potential state witness. After months of being sidelined Tom felt like he was right back in the middle of things.
At the same time, a man had lost his life. Never a good thing.
Blythe stared back, clearly excited, but warned, “We’re not there yet. Just a security breach in general.”
“Okay, we’re not there yet. What did the ME say?”
“Well, before I kicked him out, he said it looked like Declan had some kind of brain embolism. The preliminary theory is that, yeah, someone gave him a pill.”
“Okay, so . . . Who has access to these rooms?”
She rose, grunting a little, and Tom stood along with her. “That’s the interesting part. On-watch is run by the sheriff’s deputies,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a C.O. in here, the captain who supervises the jail, the sergeants. Otherwise, no one but
the mental health clinicians.”
Tom waited.
“The clinician who came in this morning is named Heather Moss.”
Blythe started to the door, sticking inside the path of yellow tape, and Tom followed. “She saw him at nine o’clock, was out of here by nine forty-six. And she left a little envelope behind. County CSB took it, but they’re passing the chain of evidence to us.” Blythe waited at the door for the guard to open up. She gave him a direct look. “Less than ten minutes after Heather Moss walked out the door, Declan was soiling himself, vomiting and convulsing.”
“So, she passed him this envelope? Some sort of suicide pill inside?”
“It’s possible.”
“And the guard on duty saw her?”
“Everglades County spoke to the captain. The deputy on shift, Rizzo, says he was distracted, looked away for a minute. So he didn’t see Heather Moss passing anything to the inmate. But the camera did.”
The door opened and they stepped into the corridor. It smelled like roses compared to inside the room. Tom tore off his facemask, wondering about the likelihood of a therapist assassin working for Mario Palumbo. “Where is Heather Moss now?”
“Well, while she comes here twice a week, her office is at the mental health clinic, a few minutes away. County is on their way to pick her up.”
Tom was already moving down the corridor, headed for the exit.
CHAPTER THREE
Heather Moss was not at the clinic.
Her supervisor, a painfully thin man with a ponytail and goatee, named Finn Shaver, gestured a lot with his hands while he spoke to Tom. “Yeah, she was in there this morning — got here late — and I thought something was wrong. She told me it had been a tough morning with her girls and she thought they all might be coming down with something. But then she was on her way to the jail, and I didn’t think any more about it. What’s going on? What happened over there?”
“Can I have a look at her office?”
“Right this way.”
Each therapist had a small room with a door for privacy and a window. Heather’s window viewed the back parking area for a Walmart Supercenter. The room was scented with some kind of pleasant incense, like sage. A small couch by the window, a Monet painting on the wall, a couple of Taoist and Buddhist books on the shelf by the couch. As therapy meeting places went, Heather Moss’s wasn’t bad; she’d made it comfortable. Tom browsed the pictures on her desk. “Are these her daughters?”
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 30