The Dirty Secrets Club

by Meg Gardiner

  He looked at her. He was wheezing. A trickle of adrenaline ran down her chest. He hadn't been wheezing before.

  "Daniel, can you breathe?" she said.

  He whispered something. She leaned closer. All her fear returned, black and huge, like the big bad wolf.

  His lips moved. No sound. He mouthed, "Jo. Love."

  "Danny."

  He grabbed for breath. She saw his chest catch. Saw his nails. Blue in the nail beds. Shit. She leaned away and yelled out the door at the second PJ.

  "Patient in respiratory distress."

  Daniel squeezed her hand.

  "Come on, Danny," she said. "Hold on."

  He gulped with pain. She squeezed his hand. "Dammit, Beckett, we're almost out of here."

  He touched her face and looked at her with green eyes.

  "We're going home, Beckett. You and me," she said.

  He squeezed her hand. His eyes told her he was going, but not home.

  She went frozen with understanding. With the clarity that absolute zero bestows. His eyes were clear, and for a second he fought the pain, to tell her he knew the truth, and she needed to know it, too. He was a doctor. He knew he was already gone. His spirit was just holding on for a few final seconds, looking out at her from the wreckage of his body, telling her good-bye.

  And then he was across the border.

  Everything after that was swallowed in the unbridgeable gulf that had just torn open. All noise, all light. The waves, the turbines of the Pave Hawk, her grief. She lost it. Not crying, but shouting at him, and then she was being pulled out of the chopper, wet and trembling, fighting every inch of the way, and who the fuck was the man dragging her away from Danny?

  "Doctor, the surf's swamping the chopper. You'll drown," he said.

  Let go. Let me go. That's my husband in there. Let me go. We have to get him out.

  Strong arms went around her, clutched her tight. She smelled his flight suit, saw a name tag reading Quintana, refused to hear what he was saying.

  He held her hard and wouldn't let go. When he put his lips against her ear, his voice was gentle.

  "I'm sorry. They're dead."

  29

  The blue October sky hurt her eyes. Church bells were ringing.

  They seemed to reverberate in her chest.

  Gabe leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. "Jo, you didn't kill Daniel."

  "Don't humor me. I know what people said behind my back."

  He looked perplexed. "What are you talking about?"

  She felt a catch in her throat. "That day. Back at Moffett."

  The 129th had flown her back in the Pave Hawk to Moffett Field. On the flight, pitching through the sky, Quintana sat beside her. Nobody spoke. When they landed, she climbed out in a daze. She wanted never to approach another aircraft again. Not a helicopter, a jetliner, a paper airplane. She shucked off the Pave Hawk like a snake shedding its skin and walked away from it.

  She now knew that she was already in shock, which hits the grieving and turns the world dim and glassy when a spouse dies. She learned that in the bereavement group, when Tina finally dragged her there, physically, and sat with her through the first meeting.

  She walked with the rescue crew to their HQ building. They wrapped her in a blanket, got her coffee, sat her down on a plastic chair under fluorescent lighting. They walked down the corridor and talked to the unit's commanding officer. She stared at the wall. She heard subdued voices. Survivor, she heard. The guy's wife.

  Triage, she heard. And, under his breath, the second PJ talking about Daniel.

  Now, under the shimmering Halloween sunshine, she looked Gabe Quintana in the eye. "He said, 'Even a paramedic should have caught it.'"

  Gabe gazed at her for a long, breathless moment. She kept herself from looking away. She felt like she was going to splinter.

  "I made a mistake. And it killed him," she said.

  Gabe looked at her for another second. Still grasping her hand, he stood up and led her across the plaza. "You had nothing to do with Daniel dying."

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "I don't know. Someplace where you can get this outrageous notion out of your head."

  Her face felt hot. "I heard him, Gabe. The other PJ talking to your CO. He said that Emily was a black tag."

  Unsalvageable. And that was the verdict of the medical examiner. Emily Leigh had been critically ill, physically frail, and the injuries sustained in the crash of the air ambulance were too severe to treat. Jo could not have saved her.

  But Daniel had not been a black tag. He was desperately injured, but quick action could have saved him. He had internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, and cardiac tamponade. The pericardium, the sac surrounding the heart, was damaged during the crash. It filled with blood, which prevented his heart from beating. That killed him.

  Gabe led her away from the plaza. "The letter was delivered to your house?"

  "Via UCSF. They sent it to my office, and the med center forwarded it. So maybe they don't know where I live."

  "Good." His hand was hot. "Who do you need to talk to?"

  "About the note?" She tried to think, but her mind remained stuck on the moment that her life, her plans, her understanding of herself and her role in the world had screeched to a stop in the face of staggering failure.

  "Mother of God." Gabe stared straight ahead. "You've been carrying this for two years?"

  She didn't answer. She didn't think she could speak. She had thought she was out of the woods. She'd fought her way back to daylight thanks to her family and friends, and with the support of the bereavement group. That's why she had taken over as facilitator—to give back. She thought she was out of the dark.

  Now this.

  "Is this why you got out of emergency medicine completely? Why you stayed with forensic work?" Gabe said.

  "Yes." She felt angry that he didn't seem to understand. "First, do no harm."

  His eyes had become remote. He pulled her across the plaza, holding her hand.

  "You've retreated behind the Hippocratic oath?" he said.

  "Not retreated. It's the pledge every doctor takes, the foremost duty of every physician. Help, but don't put lives in danger. It's what I live by."

  "So you've sealed yourself off from the living?"

  "Cheap shot, Quintana."

  She couldn't tell whether he felt furious, or pained. She couldn't tell what she felt more, furious or pained.

  Sealed herself off from the living? He didn't understand. Every time she looked at him, she heard an echo. She heard him tell her that Daniel was with the dead.

  "You don't deserve this." He pulled her to a stop. His eyes were flat with anger. He put his hands on either side of her face. "Do you hear me?"

  She heard her pulse rushing in her ears. She heard, Hey, mutt. She could almost hear the smile in Daniel's voice.

  Get it together, Beckett. This was no time to subside into self-pity.

  Time to be a junkyard dog.

  She looked up at Gabe. "I hear you."

  "Good."

  He lowered his hands. She looked at the note, telling her she was being initiated into the Dirty Secrets Club.

  "No more secrets. It's time to drag all this shit into the light," she said.

  "I'm with you. What do you want to do?"

  She stared into the sunlight. The wind lifted her hair from her face. "Dig."

  "Where?"

  "Into the person who's at the center of my investigation. Callie Harding."

  The key to the note, the key to all the deaths, the key to finding Pray, lay with the dead prosecutor. And Pray's identity lay not just in Harding's psyche but her criminal work.

  "Let's talk to the U.S. Attorney's Office. I'm taking this to Harding's boss, and this time I'm going to get some real answers."

  30

  Jo's truck streamed along in traffic on Van Ness, heading downtown

  to the Civic Center. Leo Fonsecca was at the federal courthouse. Gabe was
a silent, fuming presence in the passenger seat.

  He snapped his cell phone shut. "Nobody in the unit has been contacted about the air ambulance crash. It wasn't us who leaked the story."

  "Thanks. I'm relieved." She guessed she was. She guessed Gabe regarded this as a matter of honor. "Frankly, it wouldn't be hard to find out what happened that day. It was in the papers. Anybody with enough determination could dig up plenty of information."

  "Anybody with an agenda, you mean. And money." He looked at the anonymous letter.

  On the street, people were already dressed in Halloween costumes. Two glam rockers swanned along the sidewalk on roller skates, covered in enough gold lame to gild the dome of Saint Peter's.

  The light ahead turned red. She stopped amid a pack of cars. "Thanks, Gabe. For coming with me."

  "This is something we have to stop."

  He made another call and got a fellow grad student to cover for the seminar he was scheduled to TA that afternoon. The light turned green.

  He glared at traffic. "This isn't just about you. It's about lies somebody's telling about you. And they're doing it to maneuver you into a position where they can hurt you."

  They passed the War Memorial Opera House. Long red banners flew from the facade, swirling in the breeze.

  Jo shifted gears. "This will sound strange, but Callie Harding's death has parallels to another case where I performed a psychological autopsy. The Nagel case."

  "What happened?" Gabe said.

  "It was an apparent instance of a sexual fantasy going fatally awry. But nothing was the way it first seemed, and that gave me the professional creeps." She changed lanes. "I have the same feeling with this case."

  "Why?"

  "Jeffrey Nagel was twenty-nine, single, lonely, a computer programmer who lived in a garage apartment. When he didn't show up for work one Monday, his boss came knocking. He and the landlady found him."

  "Bound and gagged?"

  "Hanged."

  She checked her mirror. "Nagel was found suspended from a metal bookshelf that was bolted to the wall. The noose around his neck was padded with a chamois cloth. He was nude from the waist down. There was Swedish bikini pornography on his computer monitor, and copies of Hustler scattered across the floor. A stool was kicked over near his feet, just out of reach. It looked like a case of autoerotic asphyxia."

  "But the police thought it was suicide?"

  "The police thought it was an accident. They were wrong. It was murder."

  Gabe looked at her, curious. "How did you find out?"

  "I retraced Nagel's last week. He had gotten involved in a gay fling with a man he met at a computer convention. I went back into his e-mails and online activity. The hookup turned out to be pathologically jealous of Nagel's online friends. He wanted Nagel all to himself. When Nagel balked, he killed him." She looked at Gabe. "Nothing is as it seems. It seemed like a solitary death, but somebody was lurking in the background. That's what I'm getting the feeling is going on with this case. There's something in the shadows. We have to shine a light on it."

  "Before Pray, or the Dirty Secrets Club, gets to you," he said.

  "That's the plan."

  Jo and Gabe crossed the plaza in front of the federal courthouse. The building was blue glass and stone. Trees shivered in the wind. Leo Fonsecca was pacing back and forth in front of the courthouse steps. He looked small and rumpled, staring at the checkerboard paving squares of the plaza as though figuring out where to place himself on a life-size chessboard. When Jo waved to him, he ran his palm over his thinning gray hair and shot a look at his watch.

  "I have voir dire starting in ten minutes," he said.

  He looked so inoffensive, with wide blue eyes, a harmless fringe of hair the color of marshmallows, sunken cheeks, rimless glasses. Like a squirrel elder. But she knew he was an iiberprosecutor, that his milquetoast facade hid a masterful tactician.

  Jo stuck her hands in her back pockets. "I won't waste your time, Mr. Fonsecca. I just need you to tell me what you know about the Dirty Secrets Club."

  "I have nothing to tell."

  "But you've spoken to the police about the club?"

  "I'm in the loop. Why are you here?"

  "Callie Harding was a high-powered prosecutor in your office, but she was neck-deep in a club that revels in dubious and even criminal activities. And you have no comment? No reaction?"

  "Do you need my moral opprobrium in order to complete your psychological autopsy?"

  He was annoyed, but Jo sensed no disgust at Callie, and no fear that she had compromised his office or any prosecutions. Either he was a tremendous poker player, or he had nothing to worry about.

  "The Dirty Secrets Club runs on the principle that no single member should keep information about everybody who belongs. They meet in small groups. They almost run it along a cell structure." She turned to Gabe. "Wouldn't you say?"

  "Typical of subversive groups," he said.

  Fonsecca frowned up at Gabe. "Who are you?"

  Jo said, "Pararescueman, retired sergeant in the Air National Guard, and a guy who used to chopper into Afghanistan to rescue his buddies from the Taliban under heavy fire. He knows about subversion."

  Fonsecca's lips pursed.

  "What she said," Gabe said.

  Jo brushed her hair out of her face. "The club is supposed to run on trust. Members don't have an internal e-mail system, or send each other memos in triplicate."

  "So?"

  "Callie kept records of everything her playmates did. She was quite methodical about it. I found most of the records on her iPod."

  "If you're trying to needle me into beginning an investigation, or thinking to scapegoat my office for Callie's deeds, don't."

  Okay, she thought. Let's see if he's holding any cards close to the vest. "In that case, I'm going to go public with the existence of the club. I'll call the Chronicle."

  "I can't believe the police department wants you to do that."

  "Five members of the club have died in the last five' days. Some of them took others with them. I'll shout from the rooftops to warn people they and their families might be in danger."

  "Don't."

  "Why not? I'll call Your News Live. One of their reporters was murdered this morning. I'm sure they'll put me on camera."

  Fonsecca's eyes were wide and watery. His lips pinched white.

  Jo turned away. "Come on, Quintana. This is fruitless."

  He put on his sunglasses. "Okay, Doc."

  They walked away and didn't look back. Jo took her phone from her back pocket and began punching in the television station's number.

  "Miss Beckett, wait."

  She looked back. Fonsecca walked toward them, smoothing down his hair. She flipped her phone shut and waited for him to cross the chessboard plaza.

  "Don't call the press." He looked at Gabe. "Excuse us, please."

  Gabe glanced at Jo. She nodded, and he strolled out of earshot. Fonsecca lowered his voice.

  "You mustn't go public with the existence of the Dirty Secrets Club. You'll only jeopardize more people."

  "Why?" she said.

  He scanned her face as if looking for cracks in her resolve. He took off his rimless glasses, cleaned the lenses with a silk handkerchief, and put them back on. He straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin.

  "Because the Dirty Secrets Club isn't a playhouse for rich crooks. It's a sting operation."

  For a moment, Jo thought she had heard him wrong. The wind was gusting and traffic was slurring along behind them. But Fon-secca's blue eyes were sharp and resentful.

  "The Dirty Secrets Club is a sting?" she said.

  "You seem dubious. The DSC is an operation Callie set up to elicit criminal confessions. It's run in concert with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. And it's doing its job brilliantly."

  "This whole thing is a scam?"

  "Calm down, Miss Beckett."

  "It's Mrs. Beckett, or Dr. Beckett. What the hell is go
ing on?"

  A red flush climbed his neck. His voice remained bland. "It's a sophisticated undercover operation, and it's taken several years to set up. Revealing its existence could compromise important investigations."

  "Talk, and fast, Mr. Fonsecca."

  "The club is a subterfuge, designed to draw people out. It's like the 'you've won a free car' ruse that convinces criminals to turn up at auto dealerships, where the police are waiting to arrest them."

  A sting. Holy stinking shit. "And Callie had the perfect scam in her back pocket, because in law school she and her friends had trash-talked about inventing a Dirty Secrets Club."

  "She was a brilliant strategist, Dr. Beckett," Fonsecca said.

  "And she set it up with herself at the center. She went undercover."

  "Brilliant and dedicated. Hasn't everybody been telling you that?"

  "Yes." Damn, this was what had seemed so creepy about Callie's involvement in the club. She thought about it. "This was Callie's secret."

  He nodded.

  "She wasn't a confessor. She was a trapper. She was setting out bait and waiting for high-flying suckers to step up and take it."

  "Don't feel sorry for the members of this club," he said.

  "What instigated it?" She recalled the words of Callie's ex-husband. Some people say she held grudges. "Was it tenacity, or vindictiveness? Was she after somebody in particular?"

  "I can't reveal operational information. That could jeopardize ongoing investigations."

  "How big is the club?" she said.

  Fonsecca looked away. Gabe was standing on the far side of the plaza, arms crossed, looking relaxed and utterly ferocious. Jo would have smiled, but her stomach was about to cramp.

  "Do you know?" she said.

  "That information, I believe, is far beyond your remit."

  "Oh, my God. You don't know, do you?" Her head felt hot. "Who else knows what the club really is? Does Lieutenant Tang?"

  "No."

  He didn't ask her to keep her mouth shut with Tang. He knew he was losing his grip on the information. But he'd already lost hold of a lot more.

  "It's out of control, isn't it?" she said.

  He no longer looked harmless. He looked cornered. "Let's call it a victim of its own success."