Paula stopped and spoke with a cluster of hospital workers wearing light-blue scrubs. After a short conversation with the group, she broke away and came to John.
“John, check this out,” Paula said.
Melissa looked up. “Did you find him?”
“Do these men look familiar?” Paula said as she passed the photo she’d taken from Weber’s apartment.
Melissa took the photo in both hands and scanned the faces of the two men. She touched the image of Brice Winnow. “This is the nurse who wheeled Tommy into the dialysis unit.”
“Did you get a good look at him? You’re sure?” John said.
“It’s him?” Paula asked.
Melissa nodded.
“The dialysis unit staff confirmed it too. I showed this photo, and all of them said this guy was supposedly a registry nurse who came in to help today because they were short on nurses.”
The lieutenant joined in soon enough to hear the last part of Paula’s conversation.
“Who we talking about?” Barnes said.
“He went to medical school with Zack Weber,” John replied.
Barnes glanced at the photo. “Brice Winnow? As in Winnow, the aide to City Councilwoman Margolis? You were supposed to stay away from him. What happened?”
“Things kinda happened fast,” John said.
“But you think he’s involved?”
John stepped closer so that Melissa couldn’t overhear. “Lieutenant, listen, we’re close . . .”
“You aren’t going to get close to anything, John. I have to pull you from the case; you know that. I can’t let you investigate the disappearance of your own son.”
“I have to stay on it.”
“No, John, you can’t, and that’s final. Tommy is part of our family. Let us get him back for you. You can’t be objective, and the killer is using that leverage to get to you.”
“The lieutenant’s right, John,” Paula said. “You’re too close. The rules say you shouldn’t be part of this. Maybe it is time for someone to look at it with fresh eyes.”
John clenched his fists, and his knuckles turned white. “Thanks for having my back, partner.” He turned away from Paula and went to Melissa.
“He’ll be okay,” Barnes said.
“Only if we get Tommy back, Lieutenant,” Paula said. She went toward John and Melissa.
John couldn’t hide the disappointment etched into his face. He turned on Paula the moment she drew close. The voice that came from him sounded alien, harsh, and heavy with betrayal. “What the hell did you do? You still act like you’re working IA, out to get another scalp. Partners don’t do that to each other.”
Paula felt the eyes of everyone in the room focus on her. She reached for John’s shoulder, and he brushed her away.
“Get away from me and my family,” he said from behind clenched teeth. He turned his back on Paula, took Melissa by the hand, and walked away.
Paula stood alone under the harsh lights, but it was the glare from her fellow officers that burned. A feeling that was too familiar.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Five hours. Three hundred minutes had slipped away since Tommy had vanished from the hospital. John and Melissa took up residence in a hospital waiting room where they received the search updates. Not a single report got them closer to their son. Every janitor’s closet, dustbin, and open space in the hospital was searched, twice. John’s friend in the county search-and-rescue team brought in his tracking dog, but the bloodhound lost the trail among all the chemical and blood odors in the dialysis unit. A team recovered all the footage from Weber’s place. The killer had been careful to leave no digital trail either.
Fear and frustration form a toxic combination, a bitter cloud where self-doubt and helpless cries of panic dwell. Heaviness gathered in the room, along with darker thoughts that accompanied each negative report. The search teams came up dry. There was no sighting, trace evidence, or magic thread that promised to unravel the mystery of Tommy’s abduction.
John sat on the edge of a stiff waiting-room sofa, cradling his head in his hands. Melissa perched next to her husband, her legs tucked under her. She nibbled on a thumbnail and gazed absently at a spot on the worn carpeting. They were together but so alone with their fear.
Other cops and hospital personnel checked on them frequently at first, but even that trickled off. It was another sign, and not a good one.
John lifted his red-rimmed eyes when a chair scuffed the floor near him. Lieutenant Barnes pulled a chair close to the sofa. The lieutenant sat silently for a moment. John knew what that meant.
“Still nothing?” John said.
Barnes shook his head. “We’ve pulled this place apart, interviewed anyone who could have seen them, and showed them a photo of Tommy. Nothing.”
“What photo of Tommy did you use? I didn’t give you one.”
Barnes pulled his cell from a pocket and handed it over.
The screen displayed a photo of Tommy, one that Barnes had taken at the kid’s birthday party two months ago. He wore a silly-looking pirate hat.
“He wanted to be Captain Jack. I’d forgotten that,” John said.
“There’s nothing more to do here, John. You and Melissa need to go home, try to get some rest.”
“You know how many times I’ve said that to people before? I know what happens next.” John gave the cell phone back. “Another case comes along, and Tommy gets handed off.”
“That’s not how you work, John. You never give up on a case, and you should know that I don’t either.”
A moment of silence passed between them.
“I know,” John said. He wrung his hands, sat back against the sofa, and said, “I should be out there. This guy hit my family.”
“Tommy’s my family too. You aren’t doing any good here. Take Melissa home.”
Melissa said nothing, but her eyes moistened.
“I’ve got a trap and trace on your home phone and your cell phone for when this guy calls,” Barnes said.
“He won’t call,” John said.
“What makes you think that?”
“He doesn’t call. He wants what he wants.”
“As far as we know, this guy’s never snatched a kid before. He’s changed things up.”
“We both know what happens when a killer dissolves. Their time between kills shrinks,” John said.
“There’s more to it than that. This guy went out of his way to get to Tommy. If he didn’t want something specific, he would have grabbed someone else,” Barnes said.
“Stop it! Stop talking like that! Like Tommy’s just some piece of meat to this creep. I gave my son over to him. I handed my boy to a killer,” Melissa said.
Her outburst silenced John and the lieutenant.
She stood and looked down on the two men, first locking eyes with her husband, then Lieutenant Barnes. “All this arguing isn’t helping me get Tommy back home. So what are we gonna do that will actually help?”
“We wait for him to call,” Barnes said.
“He’s not going to do that,” John insisted.
“I can’t wait around and hope for the phone to ring—I have to do something,” Melissa complained.
“Go home, John. I’ll call you the minute I have anything,” Barnes said.
“This isn’t supposed to go down this way,” John said.
“Promise me you will let me know if he calls.”
John nodded but couldn’t say the words.
Lieutenant Barnes turned away after a quick glance at Melissa. The pain and anguish had darkened her light-blue eyes into muddy, dark pools. The lieutenant couldn’t look at her for more than a moment before his heart started to break.
Melissa waited until Barnes left them alone in the waiting room. She stood close to her husband. “Tell me the truth. Are they going to find Tommy? I couldn’t live with myself . . .”
“This isn’t your fault. I’ll get him back,” John said. He leaned to Melissa and whispered, “The man wh
o took him wants me to contact him.”
“Contact? How?” Melissa grabbed her husband’s arm.
John hung his head and exhaled. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“This all comes back to that website you found on my laptop. I started this and almost made a deal to bump Tommy up on the wait list.”
Melissa cocked her head and turned away from her husband.
“But when I didn’t go through with it, I got this guy angry, and he took it out on our son,” he said.
“It’s not your fault, John.” Melissa reached for her coat and brushed the photograph of Weber and Winnow to the floor. “I . . .” She went rigid.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“That man, the nurse who took Tommy—I’ve seen him before.”
“What—where?” John said, picking up the photo.
“I knew his face seemed familiar. He took my blood. The day we found out I wasn’t a match for Tommy, he took my blood sample. He asked about him—about us.”
“Are you sure? This guy, right here?” John said, pointing at the photo of Brice Winnow.
“I’m absolutely certain. He stuck a needle in my arm. I remember that. If he manipulated the transplant list, he could have changed the results of our tests, too.” She took the coat from John and tucked it under her arm.
“He set this in motion months ago.” John placed his hand around Melissa’s waist and guided her out of the waiting room.
The former flurry of police activity was absent in the corridor, marking a point of surrender in the search for their son. As they walked down the hallways and through the lobby, hospital staff subtly turned away, fumbled with something on their desks, or ducked into a patient room. The maneuvers seemed all too practiced. It was the dance to avoid death and those caught in its swirling current. John had done the dance before, and he knew the hollowness of the words, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Once outside, Melissa pointed out where she had parked.
John saw a black form near the car. A person waited in the shadows.
He put his hand out, blocking Melissa’s path. “Wait here.”
John stepped in front of Melissa and approached the car while his hand slipped down and released the catch on his holster.
The shadow turned, faced John, but didn’t move from the side of the car. The parking-lot lights angled the yellow glare away from the person’s features. John’s hand crept down over the pistol’s grip and tightened around the polymer surface.
The shadow took a step forward into a pool of light.
John tensed before he recognized Paula’s face. His hand dropped away from his weapon, and he said, “What do you want?”
“I have something for you,” she said.
“Paula, we just want to get home.”
“John . . .”
“Not now, Paula. I don’t know why you needed to get me kicked from the case. But now that I am, leave us alone.”
“Let me—” Paula held an envelope in her hand.
John ignored her and unlocked the car.
Melissa walked over and stood at John’s side. She hooked an arm around her husband and felt the tension coiled inside.
“Paula, it’s probably best that we leave now,” Melissa said, taking the envelope from her.
Paula turned away; a slouch betrayed the hurt she felt. She faded into the shadows behind the car.
Melissa slid a finger under the envelope flap and tore it open. She extracted a copy of the photo of the two medical students, Brice Winnow and Zack Weber. Under the photo, a page torn from a medical-school yearbook held a dozen more photos, but one had a bright-red circle drawn around the image.
“John, look.”
John sighed and took the paper from Melissa. It wasn’t the apology he expected from his partner. The circled photo was of a younger version of Winnow, but underneath, the student’s name was listed as Patrick Horn.
Horn and Winnow were the same person.
TWENTY-NINE
Melissa tossed her purse and coat on the sofa, and her shoulders fell at the sight of the big red zero that blazed on the answering machine. Hope slipped from her grasp, drifting away on the tide of passing time.
She busied herself scrubbing the already spotless kitchen and picked up the phone every minute or so, making sure the dial tone signaled the line was in working order.
John plopped down at the computer desk and went to power up the laptop. The lid was already open, and the screen sprang to life when he touched the mouse. Melissa’s Pinterest page and four blank web pages were on the screen. He tapped a number into his cell phone.
“Dr. Anderson,” Tommy’s surgeon answered.
“Hi, Doc. It’s John Penley.”
“Tommy?” the doctor asked, concern fixed in his voice.
John sighed, louder than he meant to. “No. I wanted to ask you a question about Zack Weber.”
“Oh, well, all right,” Anderson said.
“You told me that Zack Weber got the boot from medical school for falsifying test scores and grades, right?”
“Yes.”
“You said he didn’t change his own grades but did hack into the school’s system and changed the grades of his classmates.”
“Again, yes. That’s correct.”
“Was one of the classmates Patrick Horn?”
The silence from the doctor’s end of the phone lasted for a few seconds before he cleared his throat. “I suppose there’s no harm in me talking to you about that. Zack was the one who changed the grades, and from what I understand, Patrick didn’t even know about it. But he was tossed from the school along with Zack.”
“Why did the hospital allow Zack Weber and Patrick Horn to work there?” John asked.
“Zack worked in the lab, as you know. Patrick didn’t work for the hospital, but he worked for a local independent lab as a phlebotomist. I saw him a few times at blood drives before his mother died.”
“Marsha Horn, the lab supervisor?” John asked.
“Patrick was her son. I felt like I owed it to her to put in a good word for him,” Dr. Anderson said.
“How did Marsha Horn end up with Donovan Layton?”
The doctor sounded surprised at mention of Layton. “Marsha came from an old farming family. I thought she left that all behind after medical school. Until Layton came around.”
“Sounds like you didn’t care for him?”
“She deserved better. After her first husband died, she floundered around, and Layton was there to pick up the pieces. He didn’t treat her very well.”
“Any idea how Layton was with Patrick?” John asked.
“I don’t know. What I picked up from Marsha was that he was fairly heavy-handed with the boy.”
“So father and son didn’t see eye to eye?” John said.
“Stepfather. And yes, so it seemed.”
“So Patrick worked around the hospital before his mother died?”
“The independent lab runs blood drives here, not laboratory services.”
“Melissa told me Patrick drew her blood once at the hospital. How did that happen?”
An uncomfortable silence from the doctor and another creak from his chair signified that he was measuring his response. “I may have opened that door. For a few months last year, I approved a contract lab to fill in for emergency-room phlebotomists. It was the company that Patrick worked with, and he could have used that access to gain entry to the transplant center.”
It was John’s turn for silence.
“Mr. Penley? Are you still there?”
“Thanks, Doc,” John said, then disconnected the call without waiting for a response. His focus narrowed to his computer screen. He closed a handful of browser windows that Melissa must have left open—Pinterest, Facebook, and a medical financial-assistance page. The Tor dark web connection was open. He swore he had closed that application. He closed it again, clicked on a search engine icon
, and typed in “Marsha Horn” and the word “obituary.”
The Sacramento Bee obituary archives pulled up the published obituary for Marsha Jean Horn. The remembrance consisted of a few terse lines, including “Taken early from this world after a life of service to others.” There was no mention of her accomplishments or how she died.
John read the last line of the obituary aloud: “Survived by her husband, Donovan Layton.” The obituary omitted any reference to other living relatives, specifically Patrick Horn.
He reached for a binder on the bookshelf behind the computer and knocked over a stale cup of coffee. “Dammit, Paula,” John said through clenched teeth. Her lack of organization was apparently contagious. Coffee drizzled across the tabletop and made brown spatter patterns on a pile of past-due medical insurance forms.
John hopped up, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the counter. Melissa was bent over a section of grout on the counter and threatened to scrub it out of existence. She never looked up or acknowledged John’s presence. John stood for a moment; the silent sorrow formed a cold ball in his stomach.
“I’m going to get him back,” he said. The words rang with less hope than despair.
Melissa faced him with red-rimmed eyes. “Why haven’t we heard anything?”
He stepped over to her, put his arms around her, and leaned in. “I—I don’t know. Maybe he wants us to fear the unknown.”
“Well, it’s working.”
He hugged her tight, then released his grasp and took a step back. “I’m on to something that might help.”
“Is it the man, the one Paula named in the photo? That nurse?”
He nodded.
Melissa looked at the wad of paper towels in John’s hand.
“I made a mess, tipped over a coffee cup,” he said.
She wrinkled her brow. “When did you start drinking coffee at the desk? I thought that was one of your pet peeves.”
John’s arms went limp. He stared back at Melissa. His mouth tried and failed to form words.
“John, what is it?”
He bolted to the kitchen cabinet next to the refrigerator and flung open the door. The wooden door slammed against the refrigerator.
At What Cost Page 19