by Cat Connor
“Sure it is,” I growled. “Take Doctor Crowe away.”
Anger fermented inside me. Another Willis character this time from The Sixth Sense. Surely, Hawk would eventually run out of movies or characters?
I see dead people.
A squeal down the street heralded Lee’s impending presence. Moments later Lee strode up the driveway, looking pissed and flushed. He pointed behind him and muttered, “Damn kids! I don’t look anything like him.”
All I could do was smile.
His eyes smoldered under a deep frown. “You want me to leave you outside and get your home declared a crime scene?”
“Not so much.” A lot of effort went into controlling the smirk that rose every time anyone squawked or squealed after Lee.
“Shall we do this?”
“Yes, let’s.”
I followed Lee into the hallway.
“Where do you know he went?” Lee asked.
“My office and the kitchen, for sure.”
“Let’s start in your office then.”
Mac’s computer was on. The screensaver spiraled photographs I hadn’t seen in a year and a half across a black background. Lee moved the mouse and the pictures of Mac and me disappeared.
Nothing seemed to be missing from the room. Sitting on our shared desk were two new digital cameras, two computers, a printer, an iPod, and untold music CDs.
I had a habit of taking jewelry off while I was at my desk. Behind my keyboard was a jumble of bracelets and rings, both gold and silver.
“Robbery wasn’t his intent,” I commented.
“No it wasn’t, he could’ve made a few dollars with the stuff on your desk.”
“What did he want?”
Lee was looking through the history on Mac’s computer. There was recent activity, as the screensaver suggested. But he couldn’t find anything in recent history. According to the computer, nothing was uploaded or opened. He hadn’t even had a peek at Mac’s Outlook. It seemed that all he’d done was turn on the computer.
“There’s nothing here Ellie.”
“Why would anyone break in and turn on a computer?
Lee shook his head. He clicked on the start button then the ‘turn off’ icon. We watched as Mac’s computer powered down. The webcam light went out then blinked back on.
“Did you see that?” I asked pointing to the now-active camera.
“Well, that’s interesting. He did upload something. A little program that can turn webcams on while the computer is apparently off.” Lee reached over and pulled the webcam’s USB plug out of the computer. “That should solve that problem.”
“I’m not convinced.”
Lee pulled a silver rectangular object from his pocket and adjusted the thin aerial on it.
“This will only pick up active signals. But if that little dick planted something else it’s probably active.”
I scurried from room to room, turning off everything I could remember that was wireless and was back in the office with Lee fairly quickly. His toy beeped and burped and flashed it’s way around the house. I thought it was going to burst into flames in his hand.
“I think it’s got issues,” I said, as it squealed like a pig on the stairs and would not shut up no matter what Lee did.
Lee persevered, sweeping each room and checking everything possible in the vicinity of the over-active machine’s alarmist behavior.
Finally he shut the detector off. “Stupid thing. Think it’s developed a fault.”
“You think there is anything here?”
Lee gave me one of his serious looks. “I don’t think he was in the house long enough to plant anything clever.”
Good enough.
I toured the house again this time turning everything back on. We walked into the kitchen and both avoided the obvious display on the counter in the middle of the room. I checked all the kitchen drawers, looking for anything missing or out of place and found nothing. With a sigh I turned back to face the island counter. Lee and I stood shoulder to shoulder looking at photographs fanned out like playing cards.
“We are avoiding the obvious question,” I said. “How did Dr. Crowe know where I live?”
“Because Hawk told him,” Lee replied.
“And Hawk knows this how?”
Lee shrugged. “He knows altogether too much and I wish I knew how.”
Then I suddenly felt like Gopher from Disney’s Winnie the Pooh movie. “I’m not in the book you know.” It wasn’t as if I needed more proof that someone was feeding information to Hawk. But I certainly had it.
Like any self-respecting law enforcement officer, I kept latex gloves in the cabinet underneath the sink. We pulled them on. Lee disappeared then returned with his camera, he took several pictures of the display. When he was done, I lifted the photographs and looked through them.
I’d seen most of them before in Christchurch. I skimmed past the ones of Carla. They made my skin crawl. I handed the new pictures to Lee, one at a time.
“Nice shot of us boarding the plane,” I said, as he looked at the first one in his hand. I passed another. “Don’t you love how this person captured the essence of this scene?” The picture was of me arriving at the Christchurch police station with Doc, followed by Rowan and the band. “Hey, that’s out of order.”
Lee nodded. “Yeah, it is. I wonder why?”
I shrugged. The guy who set them out could be stupid, or it could be something. I looked at the next picture in my hand, Rowan disembarking an airplane. I looked again then showed it to Lee. It wasn’t what it seemed.
“Someone watching Rowan, being photographed by our Unsub?”
“Who the hell is that person?” Lee asked, squinting at the corner of the picture. “Magnifying glass?”
I produced one from a kitchen drawer and thrust it into his hand.
“Look, Ellie,” he said and pushed the photo and magnifying glass under my nose.
“He’s under surveillance. Who?”
“I’ll try for a clearer picture and run it through a few data bases,” Lee muttered. He gathered the rest of the pictures and headed off to my office.
Tell me it’s a nightmare.
Lee returned grim-faced and holding his notebook, some papers and a pen. “Maybe spooks or NCIS.” He scribbled some notes in his notebook then handed me the pen. “Not sure how I got your Grange pen but it was in my pocket.”
I put the pen in my jeans pocket. “You borrowed it at the airport this morning.”
A light went on behind his eyes. He remembered. “I’m still struggling with the whole leaving New Zealand at night but arriving home in the wee small hours of the same day. We got home before we left New Zealand.”
It was not easy dealing with International Date Lines. My mind turned back to NCIS, spooks and Rowan.
“This makes no sense, why would they be watching Rowan?”
“This must have something to do with the military connection to Hawk.”
“How many flags went up when you ran the face?” I asked with much curiosity.
Lee grinned. “Three big red ones.” He thrust the paper at me.
I read it, gave it back with a shrug and said, “Add it to the pile.” We were collecting too many requests via military channels to keep out of the way. If this was a military operation, then someone needed to fill me in. Noel Gerrard needed to fill me the fuck in.
I called and left a message for NCIS Special Agent Noel Gerrard.
Twenty-Seven
Bounce
So many thoughts converged as I tried to sleep that my dreams twisted into truly hideous events and I gave up. I wasn’t dealing with the dizziness when I lay down, or closed my eyes, terribly well either. A late night call from my father-in-law, to remind me of a family event the next day, bugged me. I begged off because of the case but he insisted I drop in for a few minutes.
It was Beatrice’s birthday after all.
Celebrating my barmy mother-in-law’s birthday wasn’t high a high priority
for me. I couldn’t decide which was the worse fate, being in the same room as my brother-in-law or having my house broken into by a movie character.
Instead of sleeping, I used my personal laptop to read the conversations from the chat rooms. It made for interesting reading. I was pretty sure I’d narrowed Hawk down to one of two screen names. Dave Addison or Maddie Hayes. Both names from the 1980s television series Moonlighting. Of course, Bruce Willis played Dave Addison.
I broke the news to Lee after I’d made the morning coffee. He was about as happy as I was. While he was drinking his first coffee, I announced a brief stop at my in-laws on our way into the office. There was no way to soften the blow, so I just blurted it out.
“Bob wants me to drop by – it’s Beatrice’s birthday.”
He almost spat his coffee across the counter. “It’s never good when any of us go there.”
We stopped at the nearest 7-Eleven on the way and picked up a box of chocolates for Beatrice. Turning up empty-handed would make the experience way worse.
The usual chaos associated with Mac’s family awaited us, even at nine in the morning. Bob apologized in advance for anything Eddie might say – he’d overheard a conversation Bob had with my father the day before. My brother-in-law Eddie started in on me as soon as Lee and Bob fell into conversation in the kitchen.
He was expounding the virtues of family and how some people should never be parents. Actually, I thought he was talking about himself but then he astounded me by telling me I was one of those people. He’d heard that I was considering adopting a child and felt it was in my best interests to tell me that it was a bad idea.
I was in no mood to play along. He was huffing and puffing through tightly-pursed lips. I suspected his anal sphincter looked like that too, as it tightened around the broomstick manifestly residing up his bum.
His eyes squinted in a nasty fashion.
My left hand slipped into the back pocket of my jeans. With my fingers curled around the object, I pulled it out and let my hand fall by my side; my fingers opened the blade without the need of my eyes. I felt it lock into place.
Could he see what was in my hand now? If he could, he didn’t react.
I waited.
His lips tightened.
Must be one hell of a straw he’s sucking on.
I swapped the cold blade to my right hand. His eyes never left mine.
“You have no idea how much I detest you,” I replied. “You are to never go near my child. Make sure you understand that, Eddie. Never.” My hand tightened around the handle of the blade.
He huffed with pent-up rage.
“If you adopt that child, that will make her my niece,” he said with glee. His eyes narrowed some more. It seemed impossible to me that he could see anything beyond his stumpy eyelashes and the fatty bags under his eyes.
“No, Eddie. She will never be your anything.”
My honesty went unappreciated. He scowled and his eyes disappeared altogether.
“The court will never let you adopt if you are going to deny her a family.” His words smacked of a thinly-veiled threat.
“I have family. Carla will have family. You are not part of it. You are not related to me, you moron.”
“I was a deputy sheriff,” he said, full of self-importance. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“You were fired for being drunk on the job,” I said. My strike was surgical in its delivery.
He balked. His face blanched. Spittle flew as he hissed, “I resigned.”
If that hit a big nerve then my next statement would damn near detonate his head. “You made up a mental illness to allow yourself an excuse for failure.”
He stammered out, “It’s real. I have it.”
I let it go, no sense arguing with the wannabe insane. Eddie was the faux-relative no one wants and no one can get rid of.
I watched, calculating the time it would take for his gasket to blow. I started a countdown in my head.
Mac spun in his grave.
Ten, nine, eight.
A thick vein began to throb in Eddie’s forehead.
Seven, six, five.
He turned a pretty shade of purple.
Four, three, two.
His right hand formed a tight fist, his body shook.
One.
My right hand slipped forward – I saw the sudden shocked look on his face – then I jabbed upward fast and hard. I twisted and pulled. I took a step back to watch what would happen next. He clutched his throat. Blood spilled between his fingers. He grabbed at his throat with his other hand.
As if that would help.
It was fascinating. He stared at me with those hateful, patronizing eyes. They didn’t seem patronizing as the color drained from his face and poured over his shirtfront. I saw the gorgeous velvet red dripping off his elbows and onto the floor.
A hand clamped over my hand. The knife I held disappeared. Someone spun me around and grabbed me by both arms. An intense face met mine.
“What in the hell do you think you are doing?”
I watched his mouth move; the movement enthralled me. The sound seemed delayed, like a badly-dubbed spaghetti western.
“Ellie?”
“Lee?” I returned.
I turned my head slightly to better view the corpse; for an instant, it was the bloodied body of Gloria Rowe. I straightened up and looked at Lee: it didn’t make sense.
“He’s alive?” I couldn’t believe my bad luck. Eddie was still alive.
He was still freaking talking.
Amazingly enough there wasn’t a mark on him.
“What did you think?” Lee asked. His expression mimicked one I’d seen on Mac’s face more times than I cared to remember. He was worried.
I’d crossed way over the line.
I opened my hand and stared at the pen Rowan had given me and then put it back in my pocket.
“Nothing,” I said.
Lee turned to Eddie and said, “You should make yourself scarce.”
Eddie’s mouth flapped; words failed him at first then spilled out in an almighty rush, “She’s a bitch! I don’t know what my brother ever saw in her. She should not have a child in her care.”
He postured, posed and pointed. “Mac had a lucky escape, dying like he did. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was to blame.”
Lee glanced at me as Eddie crumpled to the floor clutching his nose. Blood poured from between his fingers.
“Did you hurt your hand?” I asked.
“Not really,” Lee replied.
I smiled and called out to Bob, “Eddie needs some ice for a broken nose … and we’re leaving.”
Lee and I hurried out the back door. A blast of cold wind hit my face bringing something familiar with it.
I just couldn’t place it.
Twenty-Eight
Learn To Be Still
We didn’t go straight to work. I asked Lee to take me to Fairfax Inova hospital. The whole interlude with Eddie was alarming. I’ve always believed I had a predisposition to insanity and that seemed to be pointing right to it. Lee waited for me in the car while I hurried through the main entrance and up to my neurosurgeon’s office. I managed to convince his nurse that I needed to see him immediately. She was all of twelve and still wore braces. Last time I saw her it ended in a Doogie Howser flashback. I fought it this time, with everything I had.
My long-suffering neurologist listened to my tale of woe from Christchurch, how I was really fine but just a bit dizzy at times. He sat in silent contemplation as I retold the stabbing of Eddie. After a short neurological exam he suggested, pending an MRI, it was possibly BPPV or benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. The worse thing was the visual disturbance during the attack. It’s a tad dangerous when I can’t see properly. He also ran through the Epley maneuver and instructed me to do the same simple exercises twice a day for the next few days.
He also said no to driving. I convinced him BPPV was not a big enough deal to have me removed from th
e case. On the plus side, he declared Eddie deserved everything he got and my mental balance was not an issue. I was imaginative. Leon suggested if I ever retired, I should try my hand at writing.
There was a certain amount of guilt associated with my visit to Leon’s office because I hadn’t told Kurt what was going on.
It was early afternoon when we arrived at work. Lee was still apologizing about breaking Eddie’s nose. I imagined he’d been going over the incident while waiting for me.
“Will you stop!” I said, walking next to him along the corridor that led to our offices.
“I shouldn’t have done it, Ellie. He’s not right in the head and I hit him.”
Lee was going to beat himself up over the incident all afternoon. I grabbed his arm and stopped walking.
“Listen to me. Eddie is a lunatic but he knows what he’s doing and that crack about me being responsible for Mac’s death … was designed to get him hit.”
In all honesty, I didn’t think Eddie was far off the mark.
“I shouldn’t have done it. I know better than that.”
“Yes, you do. So, don’t do it again,” I replied. “Consider yourself smacked across the knuckles SSA Davenport, and move on.”
He smiled. “Is that official?”
“Abso-fuc’n-lutely.” I hoped Eddie would not go spouting his poison at the courts; his special brand of bullshit would drag things on unnecessarily.
“All righty then.”
Lee and I grinned at each other then moved on to my office. My office wasn’t only my office; I shared it with Lee and Sam. It was a sizable room and needed to be. Misha called with news: we had something to chase, not just chat room conversations. The photographs, the break-in – the web cam being turned on, the lovely email Hawk sent me, the last picture of someone watching Rowan – he was here all right. Hawk was playing his games, as he did before. He was determined to involve us as much as he could. Sending someone to my home ensured we’d stay actively involved. The thing I couldn’t figure out was why he wanted it like that and why he wanted a camera in my office. Guess he couldn’t get his rocks off any other way. Misha was heading out on Hawk’s trail. I checked my watch.
“What time did Misha say he’d be in?”