They paused at Williams, who was still doubled over, but Sam waved them down the stairs.
“The police are on their way,” the second guard said.
“Stay here until they arrive.” Sam knelt with the paramedics as they worked on Aaron. She took his hand and squeezed, clenching her free hand against her chest and praying like she hadn’t since she was a little girl.
Sam paced through the halls of San Francisco General, pressing her hands into tight fists. Everything about the hospital made her sick to her stomach—the smells, the people who milled about and waited for death, even those waiting with hopes of life. It all gave her an eerie chill. Announcements over the loudspeakers were crackling calls of panic and desperation. People stood with their heads bowed, the low sound of crying like the constant surf of a distant sea.
Not to mention the fact that this particular hospital was where Brent practiced. He wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t. She repeated the mantra to herself without slowing her pace.
She studied the last door she’d seen Aaron disappear through as though the door itself might disappear at any minute. She’d been waiting for three hours. It was two o’clock in the morning, and every time she asked someone what was happening in there, they told her to sit down. She couldn’t sit. If she’d thought seriously about Williams as a suspect sooner, she could have saved Aaron. If he wasn’t okay, she didn’t know what she was going to do. A million thoughts, all jumbled, spun around in her brain.
She continued to walk the halls, wearing off the caffeine from her third cup of coffee. She’d had a granola bar, too, something to keep the coffee from burning a hole in her stomach, but she was tired and hungry.
The door opened, and a nurse in scrubs came through.
Sam stopped her. “Aaron Ferguson?”
The woman smiled. “Special Agent Chase, you’re in luck. He’s out of the ER, and they’re about to move him to Room 916.” She pointed. “It’s the third room from the end.”
Sam leapt forward.
The nurse caught her arm. “But you can’t go in there without his doctor’s permission. The doctor’s on his way out to talk to you.”
Sam halted, exhaling deeply, and the nurse let go. “How long?”
“Agent Chase.”
Sam turned to see a trim Japanese man with streaks of gray and a cool demeanor approaching her. His slow movements and calm expression suggested anything but an ER doctor. He put out his hand. “I’m Dr. John Okamoto.”
She shook his hand. “I’m here about Aaron Ferguson.”
The doctor nodded and motioned her to come along with him toward Aaron’s room. He walked at a slow, even pace and spoke the same way, in a voice that was steady and rhythmic. “Aaron is stabilized, although he’s still in and out because of the medications. I’m told you’re a special agent with the Department of Justice.”
“That’s correct.”
“He won’t be in any position to answer questions about the incident—perhaps not for several days, maybe more.”
“But he will be okay?”
The doctor nodded, his hands clasped together. “His vital signs are strong. He’s got considerable damage to one leg and he’s suffered a concussion, so we’ve got him connected to an I.V. for nutrients. There may need to be some surgery to the leg, but there’s no way to say how much until he’s up and about. Also, we’ve set the arm. It was a compound fracture, so that might slow him down a bit.”
The doors opened and two nurses brought Aaron through on a gurney and wheeled him down the hall.
Sam stared at him. His body was so still. Only the faint color in his cheeks and the slow, steady drip of the I.V. suggested he was still alive.
The doctor paused at the door, and Sam watched the nurses attach Aaron to the machines inside the room. “You can go in and see him, but I’d like to limit the visit. I’ll send a nurse down in about ten minutes.”
She thanked Dr. Okamoto and took a deep breath as she entered Aaron’s room.
He lay flat on his back, a breathing tube in his nose and cords connected to both arms. She heard the beep of the machine watching his pulse and saw the drip of the I.V., keeping him fed. Her chest tightened.
She stopped at the edge of the bed and looked down at him. She realized she’d never seen him stretched out. He was significantly taller than she would’ve imagined. His blond hair was curled over his forehead, his eyes closed. She brushed the hair off his face and spoke to him.
“Aaron, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” She looked around the room again, both unused to and uncomfortable with the idea of talking to herself. She prayed Aaron could hear her.
“Williams. I never imagined it was him. I should’ve figured it out sooner. I’m so sorry.” She sat beside his bed and covered his hand with hers. His hands, too, were big and manly, and she wondered if someone loved Aaron like she was starting to love Nick. She wondered if he had brothers and sisters. Were his parents alive? There were so many things she’d never bothered to find out. She needed to reach his parents and let them know what had happened. She would call first thing in the morning. Since Aaron was stable, there was no sense in waking them up.
She took his hand. “The good news is that they’ve got him. They’re interrogating the bastard right now,” she said. Strangely, she felt no relief. Her fear for Aaron surpassed her anger and outrage at Williams’ crimes.
She squeezed Aaron’s hand again and looked around the sterile room, reminding herself to send something over for him when he woke up.
When the door opened, she expected the nurse and was surprised to see Corona’s face. “Andy.”
“I heard I might find you here.” He motioned to the hallway. “Come out when you’re ready.”
He left and Sam looked back at Aaron, pushing a stray curl off his face. “Get better, you hear?”
With that, she left the room and found Corona leaning against the wall several doors down.
“I thought we might grab a cup of coffee.” He started down the hall and she went along. “Doctor says he’s going to be okay.”
She nodded.
“That’s good news.”
“What’s going on with Williams?” she asked.
“He’s squealing like a pig on the breaking and entering and leaking the stuff to the media. Your brakes, too.”
“What about the murders?”
He gave her a hesitant look out of the corner of his eye. “Nothing yet.”
She exhaled, disappointed. “But he had access to my flashlight and the gum wrapper. He’s a good suspect.”
Corona nodded. “Now that we’ve got him, we’ll work to match hair, fibers, that sort of thing. Anyway, don’t sweat it. You should be celebrating.”
“I’d feel a hell of a lot better if my assistant weren’t down the hall being fed by a tube.”
“Of course. We’re all worried about Ferguson. He’s going to be okay. I contacted his parents.”
“Thank you.”
“They’re coming down from Washington tomorrow.” They reached the cafeteria and Corona pulled the door open. He bought the coffee while Sam waited at a two top in the back of the room, away from the crowd of tired-looking visitors. What a depressing place.
Corona set the coffees in front of them and sat down. He paused and then wrapped his hands around his coffee and looked up at her. “I owe you an apology.”
She nodded. She thought he did, too, but Corona apologizing was something she’d never seen before. He was usually right. She knew this would not be easy for him.
“I should have taken the threats more seriously to start with.” He shook his head. “And I should’ve seen that Williams was losing it. Jesus, I knew he was competitive with you, but I had no idea.” He looked out the window, his eyes narrowed and sunken. He looked tired. “I should’ve seen it.”
She didn’t respond. She should have seen it, too. They all should have.
“But that’s not what I’m really sorry about.”
&n
bsp; She frowned.
“I’m really sorry that I didn’t put up a bigger fight about letting Cintrello’s guys serve that search warrant.”
Sam closed her eyes and tried to block out the image of the police in her home. “It was pretty shitty.”
“I know.”
“And I’m still not off the hook,” she added. “Not if Williams isn’t singing on the murder charges.”
“That’s why I’m here. I know you’re not a killer.”
She nodded without saying anything. Those words were no longer enough. She needed proof now.
“But to get you off the hook entirely, we’ve got to get the right guy on the hook.”
“You don’t think Williams is that guy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But if he is, we need some evidence.”
“How do you propose to get that?”
He shook his head. “Shit, Chase. I don’t have the slightest clue, but I’m hoping we can put our heads together and come up with someplace to start.”
“I’m still off the case, right?”
“Officially, yes.” He took his eyes off her and stared down at her coffee. “But I think you should take some time off—paid, of course.” He glanced up at her and rolled his hand like she’d seen in Mafia movies when they were telling someone to lie about something. “Take some time to get things back together. Do what you need to do.” He returned his hand to his coffee cup. “You know what I’m saying.”
She met his gaze and nodded. “I do.”
Then, before she could say thank you, Corona got up and told her they’d talk sometime later in the week. “I’ve got some ball-busting of my own to do,” he said as he walked away.
Chapter Forty
Sam woke up at seven the next morning, thinking about Aaron. She called the hospital and confirmed that he was in stable condition. The doctor wasn’t available, so she left a message to have him call her at home. A minute later the phone rang.
“Chase.”
“It’s Nick.”
She half smiled when he didn’t say Thomas. “I heard you got your man.”
“That’s what they’re telling me. Did Corona tell you that we verified Gerry Hecht’s story?”
“No.”
“Records show he was attacked in San Francisco, just like he said.”
“Why was he close to my office?”
“Been following you, I guess.”
“Where is he now?”
“Been living in Martinez. Then early last week he was attacked in the alley right outside your office. Broken ribs, fingers, bruised kidney, lacerations—you know the drill.”
“Williams.”
“Yep. I guess a car interrupted the attack and Williams made a run for it. Hecht called the police department after he called you. He said he thought the guy who killed the others and framed you had tried to kill him.”
“How would Gerry know it was the same guy?”
“Something the attacker said. And when he talked to the police, he told them he’d caught Williams in your car. We think Williams went back and replaced whatever he took or got out whatever he’d put there. We haven’t found anything incriminating yet.”
“That’s how he could have gotten the gum and the flashlight. Although the timing is wrong. He’d have had to do that sooner.”
“I know,” Nick agreed. “We’re working him for the murders, but we need to get our hands on Hecht again.”
Sam felt her blood start to rush. This was good news. “Where’s Gerry now?”
“That’s the unfortunate part. We sent a couple of cars up to his place this morning. Gerry’s gone. His stuff’s still in the apartment, but no one’s seen him since he was released from the hospital. We’re trying to see if there’s any contact information with the doctor, but it’s not looking good.”
Sam rubbed her eyes. “Damn. There’s no way to track his call to the house?”
“No. I wonder why he called you there. And how the hell did he get that number?”
She shook her head. “It’s listed under the boys’ names. Maybe he somehow got that.”
“Right. ‘Austin’ is on the mailbox.”
“Jesus, you think he was out here?”
Nick didn’t answer. “We’ve got guys checking through his things, looking into his background—see if he left us any clues.”
“Williams still won’t confess to the murders?”
Nick sighed. “Not a peep. We found snapshots of you in his desk, and he’s starting to squirm on the brakes, but nothing on the killings.”
“You think it’s possible he didn’t do them?” she asked.
“Shit, I don’t know. Be a lot to swallow, you know?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Not great.”
There was an odd silence.
“I want us to talk, Sam, about everything. Can I come by tonight?”
“I don’t know, Nick. I’m not really ready to think about that now.”
“But we need to talk. I want you to understand why I did what I did.”
Her mind went back to the other night, to his body, the scars. His touch. She shook her head, trying to shake the thoughts free.
“Sam. Please.”
“I’ve got another call coming,” she lied. “I’ll call you later.”
She hung up quickly. How could she trust him again? He was good with Derek and Rob, and she believed he cared about them. And probably about her, too, but was she willing to risk that? She pushed it aside and shifted her thoughts back to Williams.
She shuffled the pieces around, trying to get them to fit. He’d almost killed Aaron. He was certainly capable of murder. Was he simply holding off the inevitable by denying his involvement?
She pulled herself out of bed and dressed for her run, then started the coffeemaker. The boys were still asleep, and she tiptoed through their rooms, gathering laundry. Rob’s room, as always, was a mess. Most of his clothes were already on the floor, and it was impossible to tell what was clean and what was dirty. She did her best guesswork, even finding some dirty-looking sweatpants and a couple of T-shirts tucked in the back corner of his closet. She took the load to the laundry room and dropped it on the floor to be sorted.
One of her first lessons as a parent had been to check pockets. When the boys had first arrived, she’d loaded their clothes in the washer on hot without realizing that one pair of pants had a pocket full of chewing gum. Everything in the wash, including some of her own clothes, had been ruined.
She started her own load first and then went to the living room and pulled down the first of two binders of case notes she kept on the top shelf. She was surprised the police hadn’t confiscated them when they searched her house, but maybe they had missed them. Settled into a chair, she opened the binder and turned it right side up, wondering how she’d managed to put it back upside down when she’d last used it. She flipped to the beginning of the binder and paged slowly through her early days in homicide. Before she’d kept her daily journal, her most detailed notes had been taken on lined notepads and three-hole-punched into the binder. She had fit five years of notes into one three-inch binder. It had been, and still was in many ways, her bible.
She’d meant to go through the notes earlier, but things had gotten away from her. Paging ahead, she looked for the section on Charlie Sloan’s murder of Karen Jacobs, but didn’t find it. She frowned. Had Williams somehow gotten hold of her notes on the Karen Jacobs case? Would this prove he was involved? She stood up and had started for the phone to call Nick when something on the bookshelf caught her eye. Standing on a chair, she pulled out a book on victimology from her coursework and flipped it open. Tucked inside the book were folded pages. She opened them up and found her notes on Karen Jacobs.
How had her notes ended up in another book? Had Williams been inside her house? It wasn’t possible, was it? Putting the book back, she unfolded the notes on Jacobs. She sat down on the
couch and stared at the bookshelf, thinking. But she couldn’t come up with an explanation for why her notes were out of the binder and in another book.
Turning her attention to the notes, she reviewed what she had on the Jacobs case. Her first notes included the site and layout of the victim’s body. Karen had been Sloan’s first. The detailed study of her victimology—her background, how she’d been lured to the site of the attack, what clues were found at the scene, the six-leaved branches. Flipping onward, she read about Karen.
The next five victims followed within seven months. Each one had an extensive description like Karen’s. None of them had stood out as Karen had. Somehow that first victim of any serial murder case, like Sandi Walters now, always remained the freshest in her mind. None of the other pages appeared to have been disturbed.
She thought about the woman who cleaned the house twice a month. Perhaps the binder had fallen while she was dusting and the pages had come loose. Maybe the cleaning lady had tucked them in the other book because she didn’t know where they went. Or one of the boys could have knocked it down or even looked through it. It wasn’t as though she kept it locked up. The buzzer sounded on the washer, and she went to forward the wash into the dryer.
The wet clothes hung heavy in her arms as she lifted them toward the dryer. The smell of detergent filled her nose, and she thought how nice it would be to take a hot shower after her run was over—maybe even a bath. She loaded the dryer, added two softener sheets, and set the timer for an hour. Then, turning to Rob’s pile, she began the process of sorting through his pockets.
She tossed the whites in one corner to be washed with Derek’s and pulled the darks into the washer as she emptied the pockets. She found seventeen cents in one pocket, two bottle tops in another—one for a beer. She frowned and set them on top of the dryer. In a shirt pocket, she found a felt-tip pen without a top. Thankfully, the shirt was dark denim. She set the shirt aside to soak before washing so it didn’t stain the rest of the clothes with black ink. In one pair of jeans she found an unused condom.
“Jesus.” She wished she knew what to do with Rob. If the alcohol wasn’t enough . . . She stopped herself. At least he was being safe. He was sixteen. A lot of kids probably carried condoms. It didn’t mean he was using them—or so she told herself.
(2002) Chasing Darkness Page 28