Colorado Crime Scene

by Cindi Myers

  Scott scowled. “Cop work.”

  “He’s trying to find the person or group of people who’ve been setting off bombs at races,” she said.

  “And he thinks I had something to do with that.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Don’t lie to me. You’re lousy at it.” He shoved both hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “Besides, I know the score by now. Always blame the crazy person.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not crazy.” She hated the word and all the implications that went with it.

  “All right. I’m sick. Damaged.”

  Those words were even worse. “Sick people can get well,” she said. “Damage can be repaired. You’re doing well on the new meds, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s only been two days.”

  “But you’re doing well. And you’ll do even better.”

  “Are they going to let me out of here tomorrow? It’s a mandatory three-day hold, right? That’s over tomorrow.”

  “Seventy-two hours, yes.” The maximum time they could legally hold someone for psychiatric observation. After that, would Scott be free to go? No charges had been filed—she wondered if she had Luke to thank for that. “I think you should wait and hear what your doctor has to say,” she said. “If he clears you for outpatient treatment you can come stay with me. Or Dad and Nicole would love to see you.”

  “I talked to them on the phone last night. Nicole cried. Dad sounded like he was going to.”

  “They’ve been so worried about you.” She’d called them from the hospital waiting room on Tuesday night. They’d been thrilled to hear she’d found Scott, but heartbroken to learn the circumstances and that he was back in the hospital. They’d agreed to wait and see him when he was able to travel back to Texas, trusting Morgan to take care of things in Denver.

  “I don’t think I could take their hovering over me,” Scott said. “Like I was some toddler who was in danger of wandering out in the street. I can take care of myself.”

  “We’ll work something out.”

  The scowl returned. “Little sister swooping in to save the day. Except you can’t always do that.”

  The aide returned. “Ready for your appointment, Mr. Westfield?”

  Morgan slung her laptop bag over her shoulder and kissed Scott’s cheek. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  “Don’t feel obligated.”

  “I have to watch the races anyway. It’s part of my job. It’s more fun to watch them with you. You give me the insider’s point of view.”

  “My opinion today is that the US team is going to take the yellow jersey again. They’ve got an advantage in this altitude.”

  “You’d make a good race analyst,” she said.

  “Right. People are lining up to hire me.” He turned and left with the aide, but his words had sparked an idea in Morgan’s head.

  What if someone did hire Scott to analyze or provide commentary for bike races? As a former racer, he had the knowledge, and when he was well, he was very well-spoken and charming. It wouldn’t hurt for her to call a few people she knew and talk to them. Maybe one of them would give him a tryout.

  Excited by the possibilities, she hurried to her car. She was crossing the parking lot when her cell phone rang. “Ms. Westfield?” a woman’s terse voice asked.

  “Yes?” She shifted her laptop bag and juggled the phone and her car keys.

  “This is Nurse Adkins. Could you please return to your brother’s room?”

  She dropped the keys, and almost dropped the phone. “Is something wrong? Is everything all right?”

  “He’s very agitated and he keeps asking for you.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She pocketed the phone, retrieved her keys and raced back into the hospital. What had happened to upset Scott in the few minutes since she’d left him? She pressed the up button for the elevator and waited, arms crossed, feet tapping. What was taking so long? Scott was on the ninth floor, or she would have risked the stairs.

  At last, the bell dinged and the doors slid open. She had to step aside to allow an aide with a stretcher to exit, followed by an elderly man. She forced herself to be patient as he moved slowly after the stretcher, head down, taking short, shuffling steps. He took so long the elevator started to close behind him. She lunged for the door, catching it just in time and slipping inside. Then began the slow crawl upward, the car stopping on almost every floor.

  When they reached the ninth floor, she burst from the car and raced for Scott’s room, skidding in the door, but the sight that greeted her made her stop short.

  A large male orderly and a nurse who was almost as big leaned over the hospital bed where Scott lay. He thrashed against the restraints that held him and screamed obscenities, his face twisted in rage. The nurse looked over her shoulder as Morgan entered the room. “Speak to him,” she said.

  Morgan moved carefully to Scott’s side and raised her voice to be heard over his shouts. “Scott! It’s me, Morgan! It’s going to be okay. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  He quieted and stared up at her, eyes wide with fear, straining against the straps that held him to the bed. “I saw him,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Saw who?” she asked.

  He flicked his gaze to the nurse, then pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  Morgan turned to the nurse, fighting back rage at seeing her brother treated like some kind of animal. “Why do you have him restrained? What happened?”

  Morgan’s anger didn’t faze the nurse. “He was on his way to the treatment room to see Dr. Chandra and he suddenly became very agitated,” she said. “He tried to run away. When Carlos tried to calm him down, Mr. Westfield took a swing at him.” She turned to the med tray on the table beside the bed. “His doctor has ordered a sedative to calm him down.”

  Morgan suppressed a shudder at the sight of the syringe. “Let me talk to him first, please.” Not waiting for an answer, she leaned over Scott’s stiff but now silent form. “What happened to upset you?” she asked, her hand on his shoulder.

  “I saw him,” he whispered, so softly she could scarcely make out the words.

  “Saw who?”

  “It was just one of the orderlies.” The aide—his name tag read Carlos—spoke. “We passed him in the hall.”

  Her eyes met Scott’s and he shook his head, though whether in denial or warning she couldn’t tell.

  “Which orderly?” she asked.

  “One of the temps from the agency. Ricky or Rick—something like that. He walked past us, carrying a bag of dirty laundry, and your brother flipped. Started shouting that he had to get away.”

  “You have to get me out of here,” Scott pleaded, and began straining at his bindings once more.

  “That’s enough, Mr. Westfield.” The nurse took hold of his arm and inserted the needle. When she finished giving the injection, her eyes met Morgan’s, but there was no warmth there. “That will calm him down.”

  Morgan realized any protest she made at this point was useless. “May I stay with him until he goes to sleep?” she asked.

  “All right.” Nurse Adkins picked up the medication tray. “Leave the door open and call if you need anything.”

  She and Carlos left. Morgan sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Scott’s hand. “They don’t believe me,” he said. “No one believes me.”

  “I believe you. Why did seeing the orderly upset you? Did he do something to hurt you earlier?”

  He turned his face to the wall. “It’s all right,” she said. “You can tell me. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

  “It was Danny,” he said.

  She blinked, not sure she’d heard him correctly at first. “What did you say?”

  He looked at her once more, the sedative alre
ady beginning to relax his features and slur his words. “It was Danny,” he said. “He was coming to get me.” Then his eyes closed, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Seven

  “Carmichael and I checked out the address where we got the tip about suspicious activity, but whoever was living there is long gone.” Luke leaned back against his car, phone pressed close to his ear to shut out the sounds of passing traffic. A beep alerted him to another incoming call, but he ignored it.

  “Did you talk to the neighbors? Business owners? The landlord?” Blessing barked the questions in rapid fire.

  “We did. And no one knows anything. The landlord says the man he spoke to was named Smith. He paid three months’ rent in advance, in cash, and he never saw him after that. The people who actually lived in the house—a woman and two men—were quiet, kept to themselves and didn’t cause trouble. He thought their last name was Brown, but he wasn’t sure.”

  “Any description?”

  “Nothing we can use. According to the neighbors, both the men were average height and the woman was a little shorter. One of the men was balding. The woman was either a blonde or had light red hair, depending on who you talk to. One of the men wore glasses—sometimes. Are you sure the tip was legit?”

  “They were getting mail from a contact we’ve been watching for a while and one of the men—whose name isn’t Brown, but Brainard—visited a local machine shop and asked a lot of questions about explosives. The owner of the shop was suspicious enough to call in a report.”

  The incoming call alert sounded again. Probably Travis wanting to go to lunch. “Then somebody must have tipped them off, because the place is clean,” he said. “And nobody saw them leave, or remembered the license plate number on their car, or took any pictures, or anything useful.”

  “We’ve got a photo of Brainard. Not a great one, but it’s a place to start. I’ll send it to your phone and you can show it around, see if you get any better answers. And I want you to talk to the machine shop owner, too. Maybe he’s remembered something he didn’t tell the local police officer who did the initial interview.”

  “Will do.” He squinted across the parking lot toward a giant sculpture of two lanky dancers—five-story-tall modified stick figures all in white. There was an image he didn’t necessarily want stuck in his head, but it would be there now, along with the faces of his suspects, who had all disappeared, the cashier at the burger place where he’d stopped for lunch, and the doorman at the hotel where he’d dropped Agent Carmichael after their fruitless search for the suspected members of a terrorist cell who’d rented the duplex in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. “Any news of our other suspect?” he asked.

  “He’s gone underground again. We got the autopsy back on Tuesday. Definitely cyanide poisoning. We’re starting to think this might be unrelated to the bombings. Terrorists usually aim for a bigger impact. They want to take a lot of people out, not just one. This poisoning doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “Scott Westfield told his sister he saw Danny put something in one of the entrées waiting to go out to the dining room,” Luke said.

  “You should have said something before now,” Blessing said. “We’ll send someone to question him.”

  “I already tried that,” Luke said. “His doctor won’t hear of it until the end of his seventy-two-hour hold.”

  “Do you think Westfield is telling the truth? Is he making it up to get attention, or maybe to throw suspicion off himself?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like the chance to question him. He’s met me and I think he’d be more relaxed around me.” He didn’t know any such thing, but he thought it sounded plausible.

  “I don’t like it. Not given your relationship with his sister.”

  Luke stiffened. “Sir, there is no relationship.” Not that he hadn’t entertained the possibility, but the timing was lousy for both of them.

  “Do you make a habit of kissing strangers on the street?” Blessing sounded almost amused.

  Luke closed his eyes and suppressed a groan. He’d done his best to forget about that photograph. “There is no relationship,” he repeated.

  Again, the incoming call beep sounded. Luke ground his teeth together. Go away, he thought.

  “I’ll consider it,” Blessing said. “In the meantime, see what you can get me on Brainard and company.”

  He ended the call and hit the symbol to check his missed calls. As he did so, the message alert popped up. Morgan. His heartbeat sped up when he saw her name on the screen. He punched the voice mail symbol and waited for the call to connect.

  “You have one new message and three old messages,” the mechanical voice intoned. “First old message...”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He clicked through the old messages. “First unheard message,” the voice offered.

  “Luke, please call me as soon as you get this message.” Morgan spoke loudly, the words rushed together. “Scott saw Danny today. In the hospital. He’s posing as an orderly, calling himself Rick or Ricky or something like that. Nobody believes him, but I know Scott’s telling the truth. He’s terrified and so am I. I’m staying with him until I hear from you.”

  He had his keys out and was starting the car by the time his call to Morgan connected. “Thank God, you called,” she said, sounding out of breath. “The nurses made me leave Scott’s room because morning visiting hours are over. I’m in a waiting room down the hall, but I can’t see his room from here. Anyone could go in there. What if Danny tries to hurt him? He knows Scott saw him tampering with the food at the restaurant. What if he—?”

  “Calm down. I’m on my way.” He steered the car onto the street, past the giant dancers, toward the hospital where Scott was confined. “Have you contacted hospital security?”

  “No. I didn’t think they would believe me. The nurse and the other orderly didn’t believe Scott. They think he’s hallucinating or being paranoid. They wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to talk to them, either.”

  “All right. As soon as I get off the phone with you, I’ll call and talk to Security. Try to stay calm and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “All right. Thank you. Just talking to you makes me feel better.”

  The words pulled at something in his chest. “I’ll see you soon.” He ended the call, but instead of trying to find the number for hospital security, he called Special Agent in Charge Blessing. “Scott Westfield says he saw our suspect, Danny, at the hospital. The man is posing as an orderly and he threatened Westfield.”

  “Have you checked this out? Have you seen the orderly?”

  “No, sir. I’m on my way to the hospital now.”

  “Luke, do I need to point out that Scott Westfield has a serious mental illness? He could be hallucinating all of this.”

  “He could be,” Luke admitted. “But do we want to take a chance that he isn’t?”

  The only response for a long moment was silence. Luke pictured the team leader scowling across the desk, weighing his decision. “All right,” Blessing said at last. “I’ll send some men over there to check it out.”

  “You might alert hospital security. If they lock down the building now, we might be able to trap him.”

  “Do that, and we’ll have the whole place in a panic. It’s a hospital. If someone had a heart attack or a woman went into premature labor because they heard a terrorist was on the loose in the building, and it turns out to all be the delusion of a psychiatric patient, who do you think is going to get called on the carpet for it?”

  “Sir—”

  “You go down there and talk to Westfield. Assess the situation and come to me with some evidence that our suspect is there. Then I’ll think about a lockdown.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, jaw clenched. He ended the call and took the exit for the hospital.

&n
bsp; Inside the lobby, he headed for the reception desk. “I need to speak to hospital security,” he said, and flashed his credentials. Wide-eyed, the receptionist pointed to a door behind her marked Security.

  A stocky young man who didn’t look to Luke as if he was old enough to order a beer looked up from behind a desk. On the wall to his right, an array of screens showed the parking lot, elevators and other areas of the hospital. “You’ve had a security breach in the psychiatric unit,” Luke said.

  “What?” The guard gaped at Luke. “Who are you? This is the first I’ve heard—”

  “Luke Renfro, FBI.” Luke showed his creds, then grabbed the guard by the arm. “Come with me. We might still have time to stop this.”

  The young man whose name badge read Cramer shook off Luke’s hand but led the way to the elevators. He punched the button for nine, then turned to Luke. “What’s this all about?”

  “We have reason to believe one of the orderlies on the ninth floor is an imposter. He’s a suspect, wanted for questioning in a case we’re working on.”

  “Then why not just arrest him? Why all the drama?”

  “He knows we’re after him, so he’s not likely to come willingly. He could be a very dangerous man.”

  “Huh.” Cramer hooked his thumbs into his belt. “So what’s he done?”

  “He’s threatened one of your patients, for one thing.” The elevator doors opened. Luke scanned the hallway, then followed signs toward double doors. He tried the doors, but they didn’t budge.

  “They’re kept locked,” Cramer said, coming up behind him. “A nurse has to buzz you in.” He pressed a button on an intercom beside the door. “Security. Open the doors, please.”