by Wayne Batson
The female Dr. Kane laughed and said, “Yes, our lipo techniques are state-of-the-art.”
“Sweetheart,” Rez said, “you’re blushing.”
“Touché,” I whispered.
An hour later, the meal was punctuated with a variety of splendid cheesecakes. I pushed my chair out from the table and said, “Deanna, I think I’ll indulge in an after-dinner drink. Care to join me?” I stood and held out my arm. She took it and we made our way toward the bar.
The bartender was a tall angular woman with a glistening stud in her nose and her dark hair tied back so tightly it looked painful. Rez flowed up to the bar and ordered a cranberry juice and a ginger ale. She took the drinks and handed me the ginger ale. Then, she gestured at the table behind us and asked the bartender, “Do you know which one of these doctors is Dr. Lacy?”
The bartender smirked and said, “Dark red wine…the guy with the Drew Carey glasses.”
Rez thanked the bartender and turned back to me. “How’d you know to ask?”
“I didn’t know,” Rez said. “But I figured, a swank event like this, management would make sure the help knew all the bigshots.” She shrugged and made a wide circle toward the table. I followed.
We stood, our backs mostly to the stage, but at a natural angle for conversation. I scanned the table and found the man with the Drew Carey glasses and the dark red wine. In spite of the frames, Dr. Lacy looked anything but comedic. He had a square jaw and thin lips set somewhere between grim and thoughtful. His cheekbones were bony and prominent. His hair was close cropped, a dark brown flecked with sand and gray. His thick brows and mustache seemed darker, almost black, and his eyes were striking: dark and intense, exuding confidence. His tanned face was weathered and might be considered handsome in an avant-garde, middle aged kind of way.
But there was nothing aged or weak in his build. It might have been the cut of his tuxedo, but everything about the man looked broad and strong. Even his hands looked powerful: skin taut, knuckles large and knobby, fingers thick. It looked like with the barest squeeze, he could shatter the wine glass he held.
To his right was an older gentleman who seemed unable to speak without laughing at the same time. A chair waited empty at Lacy’s left, and satin-haired beauty wearing an emerald gown sat a seat away.
“May I help you?” someone asked, the voice low and gritty without sacrificing crisp diction.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to face Dr. Lacy more directly. “Was I staring?”
“You certainly were,” he said. “You appeared so entranced I feared you might be having a petit mal seizure.” There was a ripple of knowing laughter around the table.
I swiveled to Agent Rezvani. “See,” I said, “I told you he’d be here.”
Agent Rezvani played her part beautifully. “Are…are you Dr. Lacy?” she asked.
“I am,” Dr. Lacy replied. He wasn’t nearly as puffed up as I thought he’d be. He seemed studious and a little annoyed.
“Dr. Garrison Lacy?” she asked. “The abortion surgery pioneer?”
That apparently hit closer to the mark. “The very same,” Dr. Lacy replied, a hint of a smile appearing briefly. “What can I do for you, miss…?”
“Deanna,” she said, then blinked and shook her head. “I mean, Doctor Deanna—Doctor Rezvani, I mean. I was…well, I was hoping I could visit your clinic some time. I’d very much like to observe your post operative patient care.”
“Just post operative?” he asked, the smile vanishing instantly.
“Well, no,” Agent Rezvani said. “I didn’t mean to imply that, really…it’s just—”
“Dr. Rezvani,” Lacy said. “This really isn’t the time or place. Why don’t you make an appointment and we can discuss a time for you to come and observe.”
“Yes, of course,” Rez said. Color me impressed. Rez could blush on cue. She ducked her heady shyly and started to turn away, but then said, “Oh, and I just wanted you to know that I am so very appreciative of your stance. You are a true champion of a woman’s right to choose.”
Dr. Lacy didn’t smile on cue. He simply gave a curt nod of the head, his dark eyes never leaving Agent Rezvani. It seemed to me that there was far more than lust in that glare. I started to say something to the good doctor, when Rez took hold of my arm. She smiled sweetly but hissed, “Come back to the table!”
I followed closely behind her and we passed awkwardly through several dozen doctors and their dates dancing. We found our table empty. The moment we were seated, I demanded, “Why’d you rush? We didn’t pin him down with anything.”
Rez scowled darkly. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know how you rose up through the ranks in your organization, but I worked my tail off to make Special Agent. I don’t suck at this.”
I exhaled loudly. Pride was a waste of time. I needed information. “What did you get, then?”
“He’s not Smiling Jack,” Rez said. “Did you see a cleft chin?”
“No,” I admitted. “I focused on his eyes. Smiling Jack definitely had a cleft chin. That why you made an early exit—he’s not our guy?”
“He might still be,” she said. “Not Jack, but the accomplice.”
“But you didn’t push,” I said. “He didn’t say anything.”
“It wasn’t what he said,” Rez explained. “I thought his reactions were off. Here he is at the biggest awards ceremony of the year, and he’s likely to win. When I approach him like some star-struck groupie, he ought to be delirious with pride. That’s not what I got from his glare. You?”
“Suspicion.”
Rez nodded approvingly. “He knew I was acting,” she said. “But he doesn’t see that, doesn’t catch on, unless he’s running everything through a certain filter.” She took another sip of her cranberry juice. “Not enough to be sure.”
It wasn’t enough for me to be sure either. But at this point, I’d had all I could swallow of uncertainty. I said, “I’m going to go find out.”
I stood and shook off Rez’s cautioning touch. “I won’t hurt him,” I said. “I won’t even threaten him…overtly.” She started to speak, but I cut her off. “Look, Rez, I didn’t get this mission by accident. I don’t suck at this either.”
I left her, open-mouthed and fuming. I leaned forward and charged across the dance floor. When I reached Dr. Lacy’s table, there was a woman in the previously unoccupied seat next to him. Her back was to me. Dr. Lacy seemed about to say something to the gray bearded man on his right, but then his eyes met mine and he scowled.
And when I say scowl, I do not mean the garden variety scowl: slight displeasure, lips downturned, eyebrows slightly beetled, and a disdainful tilt of the head. No, this was full-on malice. His eyes bulged, emphasizing the darkness; brows furrowed near the point of meeting over the bridge of his nose; his lips, all the muscle of his cheeks and clenching jaws combined in the sort of snarling, tilted sneer you save for lifelong enemies.
“What…do…you…want?” Dr. Lacy asked, practically spitting each word. “Wasn’t one interruption of my evening enough?”
“I know this isn’t the time or place,” I said, determined to play the role to the end. “But I’m only in town for a few more days, and I’d heard that you’re the local authority on abortion procedures.”
“This is true,” he said. “Shame you have to depart so soon.” He went to turn away, but I held him with my eyes.
“Ah…well, you know how it is,” I said. “Anyway, knowing your expertise and your history, I thought you might have an interest in something that has recently come into my possession.”
“And what might that be?”
“It’s a turn of the century surgical knife that was used for abortions,” I said, watching his eyes carefully. “I believe it was once called a Cain’s Dagger.”
If his expression changed at all, it was a mellowing of the scowl to something closer to relief. That and his eyes. They seemed to shrink a little. He didn’t reply immediately at least, not to me. He whisp
ered to his left, and the woman turned around.
A fist of bile leaped up into my throat. My right hand went involuntarily to my pocket, and I found my fingers wrapping around The Edge. Not here, I told myself urgently. Too many people could get hurt.
“May I introduce my beloved partner Jacqueline Gainer,” he said.
She looked up at me expectantly and smiled. “Call me Jack,” she said, holding out her hand demurely. “Everyone who knows me does.”
Smiling Jack. There he was, or rather she was. Cleft chin…cleft chin and killer’s eyes.
Red herring after red herring…Smiling Jack had gotten away with murder for more than a decade by feeding law enforcement what they thought they knew and sending them searching for wild geese that they’d never find.
I took her hand properly and gave a slight nod. Before I released her hand, I gave it a not-so-proper squeeze. “Partner?” I said, then releasing her from my grip. “As in at the clinic?”
“No, as in life,” Dr. Lacy said. “Marriage is such an antiquated notion. Who needs God or man to sanction the love we share?”
I started to answer, but a finger tapped a microphone, sounding like a subwoofer-rattling bass drum on the too-loud PA system. “Good evening,” said a slight, bespectacled man on stage. “Welcome to the fifty-seventh annual Medical Innovators Awards Ceremony.” Loud applause. He started to tell more than I ever wanted to know about the ceremony and former doctors recognized by the award.
I waited for a brief pause, caught Dr. Lacy in my gaze, and asked, “What do you think about Senator Esperanzo becoming President?”
“I try to stay out of politics,” Lacy hissed.
“Think about the knife. I’ll be in touch.”
Dr. Lacy replied, “No, you won’t.” And the PA speaker began again.
I walked slowly back to Doc Shepherd’s table, and I could feel the killers’ eyes on my back and neck, unpleasant and hot. I stopped walking.
You’re gonna burn.
The realization hit me like a comet. I had had her right at the start. The camera hadn’t washed inland from the Gulf. She had gone to that stone jetty and tossed it into the turquoise water herself. I laughed at myself. I’d seen her crouching there and had even mistook her for a man, initially.
Jacqueline Gainer. Smiling Jack.
As much as I wanted to slug myself in the jaw, I couldn’t afford to dwell in the past. There had been no way for me to know, or so I told myself. I sat down at Doc Shepherd’s table a little heavier than I meant to.
“Dr. Spector, are you well?” Doc Shepherd asked. “You look pallid, like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I looked up at Doc and forced a smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “I think all that cheese is catching up to me.”
Doc laughed and turned back to his wife. Rez looked at me intently. “What did you do?” she demanded, a little too firmly for my comfort.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “But I confirmed everything. Dr. Lacy is the accessory. Smiling Jack is his wi—partner. She came back to the table. It’s them.”
“She?”
“His partner is Jacqueline Gainer, but she goes by Jack.”
“How can you be sure?” Rez asked.
I told her. I told her all of it: the dialogue, the exchanged recognition, the strange smiles—even the cleft chin.
“That’s not a lot to go on,” Rez said, though with little conviction.
I said, “It’s enough for me.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to wait until the ceremony is over, and I’m going to take them down.”
“Into custody?”
“For a time,” I said. “I need to find out where they have the other girls…if they’re even still alive.”
“And how are you going to get them to tell you that?” she asked.
I stared at her.
Rez stared at her empty cranberry juice glass. We sat in uncomfortable silence. Well, silence between us. The PA announcer went on and on and on. Now, he was beginning to speak the praises of this year’s winner, making vague references that I thought sure were meant to describe Dr. Garrison Lacy.
Rez excused herself to the restroom and returned moments later. “Okay,” she said. “I’m with you. But promise me you won’t…you won’t do anything permanent until we have the other victims safe.”
I promised, and she seemed content.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
This year’s Medical Innovator Award went to Dr. Garrison Lacy. The bile in my throat was viscous and burning.
Rez and I waited through his acceptance speech. We waited through two hours of dancing. We waited and watched as the hall began to empty. Dr. Lacy and his partner seemed in no hurry. That surprised me.
But with the clock hitting midnight, their table began to disperse. We said our goodbyes to Doc Shepherd and his friends and followed our quarry. They did not exit by the Pryiam Regency’s main entrance. They took a side hallway and headed past scores of rooms toward a distant glowing exit sign.
“This way,” Rez whispered. “We’ll cut through the pool exit and circle back to them.”
She held open the door. I walked into the pool room, steamy with humidity and sharp with the smell of strong chlorine. We rounded the pool and strode across the concrete to the exit.
Rez darted through the door ahead of me. I followed. The moment I cleared the doorframe, I felt a gun barrel pressed up against my neck. There were at least a dozen men in dark suits around me. Each one: weapon drawn, Weaver stance, ready to fire at any unusual move from me.
“John Spector,” came a deep voice. “You are under arrest.”
Chapter 34
Betrayal.
In my line of work, it comes with the territory. My boss had to deal with it. My boss’s boss had to deal with it. Shoot, even the creator of the whole branch had to deal with it, and his was the worst I’d ever heard of. I knew I wasn’t going to be exempt. Still, it didn’t prepare me for the event itself and all the complications it presented.
I’d just barely had enough time to hit the custom safety on The Edge before the FBI agents cuffed me and took the weapon from me. As they shoved me unceremoniously into the back of a black SUV, I thought maybe I should have left the safety off. Serve them right to cut off a few fingers.
The truck roared away, and I jounced around the back seat. “Whatever happened to Serve and Protect?” I groused.
“That’s police,” came the driver’s rough voice. “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity, that’s us. Now shut it!” The agent in the passenger seat as well as the two in the second seat got a hearty chuckle out of that.
I nodded. Right, right. Rez had told me that already. It was the lack of integrity she’d shown in turning me in that threw me off. “You mind telling me the charges?”
“Felony interference with a Federal case, for starters,” the agent closest to me said. He had coppery hair cut high and tight and wore sunglasses. It was past midnight, and he was wearing sunglasses.
“Maybe accessory to murder too,” the passenger agent said. He had dark hair in a tight tail and a smirk that never seemed to disappear.
“I get the interference,” I said. “But accessory to murder? That’s a stretch.”
“Not if the evidence at the butterfly place pans out,” Pony Boy replied. “Agent Rezvani said the evidence would put you at the scene. Footprints in the blood.”
Ouch. That stung even more.
“What about the suspects?” I asked.
“What suspects?” Sunglass Man asked.
“He means the doc and his arm candy,” Pony Boy said. “Rezvani was all uppity that we take them into custody.”
“Did you?” I asked, probably sounding too eager, too desperate.
“Playing your part till the end, eh?” Pony Boy asked. “Whatever. Nah, they shook our tail. We lost’em. But we got you.”
For fifteen minutes, I fumed there in the backseat. The Smiling Jac
k killers knew me. They knew I knew them. Whatever they had planned, whatever their timeline, it had just been shoved into overdrive. And it was my fault. Maybe they’d immediately kill any captives they had left, or maybe, they’d just disappear and start over. I considered my options. There weren’t many.
I could ride with the FBI, let them book me, and then attempt an escape. Or, I could completely blow my cover, escape now, and be the subject of paranormal news media for a decade. Or, I could wait and see: let them book me and see if the FBI could manage not to screw up the takedown of the Smiling Jack killers. I shook my head and released a steamy, exasperated laugh. Any of the options could jeopardize my mission. For all I knew, it could already be too late.
“Here we are!” the driver announced cheerily. “Your new home for awhile awaits.”
I looked out the window at a multiple story, gray stone building that looked like an architect’s attempt at modern art—that failed—actually resembling a child’s attempt to stack blocks. I read the low spot lit sign in the front lawn: Pensacola Police Department. “Police?” I asked. “What’s the matter, no room at the FBI inn?”
“Funny guy,” said Sunglass Man as he stepped out into the blazing glare of starlight. “If there’s no local FBI field office, we often make use of the local police department. Their accommodations might be a little less comfy, but I suppose you don’t mind.”
I didn’t mind at all. Escaping a police jail was bound to be easier than breaking out of an FBI holding tank.
Processing went quickly, I thought. Mostly, the agents just flashed badges and moved me through the building. Just a skeleton crew was on duty at the Pensacola P.D. I counted nine officers from the help desk all the way to the cell blocks. One of the nine, the staff sergeant on duty, an officer named Barker, led us through the building.
“You have a special place in the jail for Mr. Spector here?” Sunglass Man asked.
“We prefer to call them incarceration facilities,” Barker said, feigning an English accent. “We are rather full tonight, but yes, we shall find him a spot.”