by Jason Parent
“No.” Sam fixed her gaze on his. Something in his words didn’t ring true. She squinted. “It’s something else.” Her chin dropped as she thought, then raised again as his motive slowly dawned on her. “You’re worried about a mole?”
Frank clenched his jaw. “You’re the only one here I can trust on this. Wainwright has help on the inside. Of that I’m certain.”
Sam groaned. “Yeah, inside the agency, not here. Or at least not freaking Reynolds. You of all people know what that man has been through.”
“I know not to underestimate Wainwright or his power to turn anyone to his cause.”
“Including an FBI agent like you, Frank?” Sam crossed her arms. “Maybe it’s your mysterious CI—”
“Ha!” Frank’s head rocked back as he laughed.
Heat rose in her cheeks. She had no idea what she might have said that could have been so amusing.
“My CI’s loyalties are beyond question.” Frank composed himself. “Like I said, you’re the only one here I can trust.”
Sam shook her head, then leaned into the hallway and watched Reynolds as he read his magazine. Her frustrations rising, she snapped back into Frank’s space. “Will you work with me here?”
Frank just sighed. After a moment, her anger subsided. The thought was absurd. Not Frank. Not Reynolds. Soon, I’ll be looking at Michael with suspicion. Until the possibility of Wainwright coming back into the picture, she hadn’t realized she still harbored some lingering resentment toward Frank for his involvement in Bruce’s death. And that was all it was—something she needed to let go. But as her dad used to say, the Irish were best at two things—drinking and holding grudges.
On the desk beside Frank was a small console with a few levers and buttons. Sam pointed to it. “You know how that works?”
Frank nodded. “Flick the switch and sound comes in through the speaker.” He pointed to the black box mounted in the corner to the left of the mirror, close to the ceiling.
Sam walked over to the camera and set it to record. “The camera’s on already. Let’s not advertise your involvement here by having you come into the room with me. The brass might have something to say about it. If there’s something you think I’m missing, just come over and knock. I’ll come out.”
He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and Sam stared at him with arms crossed. When he didn’t speak, she turned to the mirror. An officer had led Bowes, who looked half asleep and possibly drugged out of his mind, into the room and had handcuffed him to the metal rings on the desk. He slumped forward onto his arm, a stream of drool sliding from the side of his mouth and pooling on the table.
Sam rolled her eyes. “This should be fun.” She stepped into the hall, closing Frank in darkness behind her. As she passed the officer who had escorted Bowes into the interview room, she lightly touched his arm. “Have two coffees, black and as scalding hot as you can make them, brought over to B.”
The officer nodded and walked away. Sam entered the room.
Crinkling her nose, she sat across from her suspect. Bowes stunk like stale sweat and stained linens. He probably hadn’t showered in days. His breath was worse—chemical-induced foulness, the odor carrying on his every breath. His eyes were bloodshot and his grayish tongue lolled as he looked up at Sam and giggled. Spit bubbles popped at the corner of his lips. If he’d been ranting and raving during the night, he’d been struck dumb by morning.
“T-t-ten lith-thel Injians... st-standing in a lingh. One t-tottered home... gyahh.” Bowes hawed, farted, hawed again, and slumped forward on the table.
Just what in the hell did that doctor give him? Sam turned to the mirror and shook her head. She wasn’t able to see Frank, but knew exactly what he was thinking—maybe she should try again after Bowes could sleep off his obvious intoxication.
Maybe the coffee will help. A wisp of a smirk formed on her mouth before she could subdue it, and she glanced over her shoulder to see if either the camera or Frank had caught it, sense soothing her as she realized that even if either had, they would have no way of interpreting it or connecting it to what she would do next. She wasn’t proud of the plan she intended to execute, but even though she knew it to be wrong, she had no problem taking a shot at one who’d shot at her.
Sitting in the chair across from Bowes, she crossed her arms and legs and stared at his slumped form. As if sensing her gaze, Bowes lifted his head, his mouth slack and eyes bloodshot, and looked at her languidly, then rested back down on his arm.
Sam opened the file to a copy of the man’s driver’s license. Harlan Bowes, forty-three years old. Brown hair, brown eyes, five-foot-nine. She studied the squat, unimposing man in front of her for a moment then glanced back at his file. “No priors. Nothing in the system anyway. Nothing to suggest a violent bone in your body. You’re even an organ donor. Yet you tried to kill me yesterday. Why?”
Bowes didn’t respond and showed no sign of even listening. It didn’t matter. The question had been voiced as much for Sam as it had been for her collar. She pressed on. “It says here that you work as an assistant athletic director for Bishop O’Connell High and that you coach your daughter’s softball team. Or at least you did last year. Married with two kids—” She peeped up from the file. “Why isn’t anyone looking for you?”
Her attacker’s eyes were closed. She thought she heard the low rumble of a snore building. Where the hell is that coffee?
A knock came at the door. Sam got up and opened it to see the officer she’d sent on her errand back with a tray in his hand. Two Styrofoam cups filled nearly to the brim with steaming hot liquid sat in diagonal cup holders.
“Thanks,” Sam said, taking the tray. She closed the door and returned to her seat.
“Mr. Bowes?” Sam carefully pulled one of the cups from the tray, the liquid sloshing regardless. A drop spilled on her finger and she winced. After putting the cup down on the table, she sucked on the raw flesh. Slowly, she pushed the cup toward her suspect, angling in her seat to keep her back to the camera.
“Mr. Bowes? I got you some coffee to help clear your hea—” Sam knocked the cup over. “Oh, shit!”
Its contents spilled all over Bowes’s left hand. His eyes burst open, and he screamed in pain. He jumped from his seat, only to be yanked back into the table as the chain on the cuffs went taut. He tried to wipe his hand on his pants but couldn’t reach, then shook it in the air and tried to blow on it. “What the hell? What is this?” Bowes was instantly an entirely different man. His panicked gaze darted about the room as he tugged on his cuffs.
Sam used her own sleeve to dab his hand, the skin raw and blistering.
He jerked his arm away. “Don’t touch me!”
By then, the coffee was still hot but tolerable through the fabric. “Oh, God. I’m so, so sorry,” she said, trying to sound convincing. As of yet, no one had burst through the door to assist, so she assumed Frank had seen what she was up to and had thrown interference.
She studied Bowes closely, having anticipated the burn would sober him up a bit, but now he looked as if he’d never been drugged at all, like a little pain had snapped him out of a spell. Okay, maybe more than a little pain.
Slowly, he returned to his seat, his eyes twitching in their sockets as he glared at Sam, mind scrambling for understanding. “Where am I? What’s going on?”
“Detective Samantha Reilly, at your service. I’m the one you tried to shoot yesterday.”
“Tried to shoot?” Bowes searched her face. “What the hell are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke? Oh for the love of—” His eyes filled with anger. “You! I remember you! You brought me...” He took in his surroundings once more. “I’m in jail? I thought that was just a nightmare.”
Bowes pulled at the chain binding him to the desk until his face turned purple from straining. “Help! Help! Let me out of here! Help!”
Sam leaned forward, palms spread out on the table. “Mr. Bowes, look at me.”
When Bowes conti
nued to scream, Sam slapped the table and stood. “Look at me!”
Bowes shrunk away, face ashen, clearly terrified. “I don’t know what this is, what any of this is all about.” He raised his hands to protect his face. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
Looking at this scared little boy in a man’s body, Sam didn’t see a killer. Two decades on the job had trained her to recognize bad men, and Bowes showed no signs of being one—no hint of violence behind his eyes, no malice burnt into the bends of his lips, no evil to be found in his soul. But Bowes had tried to kill her. Something wasn’t adding up.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Mr. Bowes, but you tried to shoot me yesterday.” Sam sat down, tried to make herself less threatening by uncrossing her arms and pushing her chair back. “I have you dead to rights. You’re going down for attempted murder. Unless—”
“I didn’t try to kill you! Why would I do that? I don’t even know you. I don’t even own a gun.” He buried his face in his hands and started to cry. “This can’t be happening. Wake up, Harlan. Wake up.”
Sam sighed, not knowing what to make of Bowes’s reaction. “Okay, let’s say for a moment you didn’t try to kill me.”
“I didn’t!”
“Then tell me—what did you do yesterday?”
“I...” Bowes’s mouth dropped open as he searched for words. His head slowly shook, his eyes scanning the desk for answers that weren’t there. Finally, after several seconds of thought, he looked up. “I took a sleeping pill and got into my car—the passenger seat—and had my wife drop me off at the hospital while I slept. You see, I have this condition—”
“Let me guess.” Sam scoffed. “Messes with your memory.”
“No.” Bowes frowned. “No. It’s called agoraphobia. After a softball game, I was walking back to my car with my daughter. We were mugged.” Tears flowed down Bowes’s cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut. “That bastard put a knife to my daughter’s throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t do anything. And that feeling of helplessness hasn’t gone away.”
If he was telling the truth—and Sam could confirm it easily enough—Bowes might be worthy of her pity. It didn’t exactly add up to innocence, not even close, but something in Sam’s gut told her he might be just as much of a victim as she was. A twinge of regret twisted her stomach at the thought of the coffee stunt she had pulled.
He looked up. “So you see, I couldn’t have shot at you. I can’t leave the house. I can’t even work to support my family. I admitted myself yesterday to try and get help.” He lurched forward, fingers shaking. “You should have records of all of this. Call Brentworth Hospital. They’ll confirm everything.”
“Are you willing to sign a consent form releasing your medical records to us?”
“If it will help get me out of here, yes.” Bowes’s hands trembled as he tried to raise them to his face, once again blocked by the chain. He stared at the table, eyes shimmering with the last of his tears. “I’ll sign whatever you want.”
Sam rolled her finger on the table. “And you have no recollection of how you got here?”
“Other than you dragging me in here and throwing me into a cage? No.” He lifted his head, his face contorted into a pitiable mask of desperation, a tiny glint in his eyes seeking her out for a spark of hope. “Please, let me go. I just want to see my family.”
After a few minutes of more prodding, a knock came at the door. Annoyed, Sam took a deep breath then got up to answer it. Frank stood outside, looking as if he’d just swallowed a tarantula.
“What is it?” She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her.
“I just made some quick calls, first to the hospital. They’ve confirmed that Harlan Bowes was a patient there but wouldn’t say what for. I’ve got a guy on the inside who could get access to medical records—”
“You’ve got an undercover agent at Brentworth? What for? And with access to medical records? That’s a violation of—”
“I’ll explain later. And before you question my tactics, don’t think I believe for one second that that coffee spill was an accident.” Frank stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Look, Bowes did check into Brentworth yesterday.”
Sam knew there was no way Frank could have made those calls in the minute or two that had passed since Bowes had mentioned Brentworth. He must have started in as soon as I left the room, after Reynolds mentioned that doctor coming by. She growled, her frustration festering for the worse because she sidelined it. Instead, she diverted her focus to the more immediate question. “Frank, this is the guy who shot at us. We caught him red-handed. Of course he couldn’t have been checking himself in at the hospital then.”
“I know that. Let me finish. He actually checked in three months ago, and according to his family, my second call, he’s been there ever since. But the hospital has him listed as being there for only a few days.”
“So what are you saying? He walked in for treatment three months ago then disappeared? Where’s he been for the last three months?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“But you suspect something’s up with the hospital—where I was attacked, where I bring Michael to see his friend regularly.” She crossed her arms and seethed. “And you suspected it even before I started in on Bowes.
“Come on, Frank! When were you going to let me know? You’ve got some nerve.” She shook her head in disgust. “You know what? If you aren’t going to share information with me, then get the fuck out of my precinct!”
“We wanted to be sure. We didn’t want to bring you into this if we didn’t have to. You have a boy now, and you’ve been through so much—”
“Spare me the bullshit. I want to know everything you know, and I want it now.”
CHAPTER 11
“Here we go again,” Dylan said, laughing and throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the detail following behind them as they began their walk home from school. He still wore his North Face jacket but had opted for a T-shirt and jeans for his second day at Carnegie High. With his styled hair and All-American good looks, he still made even that look fashionable.
A twinge of jealousy flashed behind Michael’s eyes, based on an assumption that his new friend’s fine looks meant he’d had a fine life. Then he remembered how Dylan had skipped from place to place, never really staying in one area long enough to develop strong friendships or even keep those that he’d made.
Another assumption. What was it Sam had called that? He looked down at the ground for a rock to kick. Projection. Just because he’d been tossed from home to home without ever making any friends didn’t mean Dylan had been in the same boat.
And yet, he felt a kinship with the boy. Strangers in a Strange Land. He laughed, remembering the title of one of the books the fat guy at the library was always trying to get him to read since they both liked the same graphic novels. Michael kept turning him down, preferring to keep to books with pictures, but for some reason, he liked that title and felt it applied somehow to him and Dylan despite having no idea what the actual book was about.
“Everything okay, Badass?”
“Huh?” Michael looked up to see what appeared to be genuine concern in Dylan’s expression. The boy had narrowed his eyes on Michael, brow furrowed, lips pressed flat.
“Oh, yeah... I’m okay. I just daydream a lot.”
Dylan stopped and fixed Michael with a grave look. “Something on your mind? Not to sound stupid or anything, but, you know... I’m happy to listen.”
Michael shrugged. “Thanks, but really, I’m good. Sometimes, I just overthink things.”
Dylan chuckled. “Sounds serious. Fortunately for you, Dr. Dylan has the solution.” He nodded at the cop car trailing them. “But we’ve got to ditch your entourage first.”
“Entourage?” Michael scrunched up his nose with distaste. “Really?”
“What?” Dylan laughed. “Too big of a word for you?”
“I know what entourage means. I just don’t think I�
�ve ever heard it used in a sentence before, and I’m sure no one has ever used it to describe the one or two people who don’t even remotely want anything to do with me. Those two”—he jerked his head at the police cruiser—“are getting paid to follow me around.”
“Okay, bodyguards, then. Shoot me.” He threw his palms up. “On second thought, I shouldn’t say that to you since you’re in with the cops and could probably have me shot.” He laughed again, and this time Michael laughed with him. “I have to say, though. They sort of make me feel important. Like I’m a senator or something, and they’re my personal protection.”
“You look like a politician.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I sense some negativity in your tone.” Dylan placed his hands over his heart, frowned, and sniffled. “That hurts, Badass.”
Michael snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re real torn up inside.”
Their conversation lulled as they walked toward the first shortcut. Michael huffed. He knew he couldn’t ditch them. Sam would have a fit. But a stubborn pride rose within him. I’m friggin’ fifteen years old. I don’t need a babysitter.
He sighed, the pride subsiding. Don’t be stupid, Michael. Even though Dylan had seemingly let it drop, he felt he owed his friend an explanation. “I can’t. Sam would kill me.”
“Hey, man.” Dylan smiled warmly. “It’s cool. Not trying to pressure you. I just have this awesome spot I really can’t let your bodyguards know about.” He shrugged. “No biggie. We can go when you’re off home arrest or whatever. In the meantime”—he punched Michael in the shoulder—“I may have to stop calling you Badass, though.”
He stopped, and Michael turned to see him staring at his butt.
“How’s Fatass sound?”
“Fuck you,” Michael tried to say angrily but trailed off in a giggle. He punched Dylan back in the arm.
“Hey, easy, man! That’s assault! The cops are my witnesses. Why aren’t they arresting you?”
“Actually, it’s battery. The assault is putting you in apprehension of an attack, but Sam says sometimes it’s different in civil law versus criminal.”