Alpha Kill - 03

by Tim Stevens

  Venn watched the doctor for a few seconds. Then he stood up. Extended his hand.

  “Thanks, Bill. That’s what I was hoping to hear. And I’m glad she’s sought out professional help. I didn’t know, but I’m pleased.”

  Soper opened the door for him. “As I said, I was sorry to hear the two of you had separated, Joe. You seemed like a good couple.”

  Venn shrugged in a what can you do gesture.

  He thanked Ms Chen, and headed for the elevator.

  His visit with Dr Soper, brief though it was, had been a success on two counts.

  First, he believed he’d guaranteed Beth a degree of protection. By intimating that he thought she was paranoid, he’d given the impression that she didn’t come across as credible in the eyes of a cop like him. That might make her appear less of a threat to whoever didn’t want her to pry further into this whole business.

  The other reason his visit was a success was that he’d noted carefully Soper’s reaction, when he’d mentioned Beth’s apparent nerviness of late. There’d been something in the man’s eyes, a slight tightening in his face, which signaled that the guy was bracing himself for something more. That he was expecting Venn, the cop, to come out with an accusation of some kind.

  Venn was convinced now that Beth was absolutely right.

  Dr Bill Soper was hiding something.

  Chapter 14

  Fil Vidal called as Venn was pulling up the ramp out of the hospital’s parking lot.

  “Got something that might interest you, boss.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I haven’t finished tracking down where all the patients were transferred to, but there’s something that keeps coming up. So far, seven out of the twelve I’ve checked were transferred to the Bonnesante Clinic, upstate near Glens Falls. You heard of it?”

  “No,” said Venn. “You?”

  “I haven’t, but I’ve done some research on it.” Fil shuffled paper. He liked to print stuff off, Venn had discovered. “Yeah... it’s a private facility, catering mostly to paying customers, but some of the health plans will fund treatment there. For a while, anyhow.”

  Venn put his phone into the dashboard holder and stuck the bud in his ear, so he could concentrate on the road. “What kind of a clinic is it? Does it specialize in any particular diseases?”

  “No. It’s a smallish place, with ninety inpatient beds. An operating theater. They take surgical, medical and OBGYN patients. No particular sub-specialisms, according to the website.”

  “Huh,” said Venn. He suddenly wished Beth was with him, so he could ask her if she’d heard of the place. “Does the website say -”

  “- Who works there?” Fil cut in. “Sorry. I knew you’d ask. I already checked. And the curious thing is, there’s no mention on the site of the names of any of the doctors. Normally, this kind of place features its attending physicians prominently. They’re the drawcards. But aside from the director of the clinic, a man named Douglas Driscoll - there’s a photo of him, and a bio - it doesn’t say anything about any of the staff. I gotta say, it’s a clean, slick website, with a minimalist feel. No clutter. So the absence of too much data might be deliberate.”

  “Still...” said Venn.

  “Yeah. It’s still a little odd.”

  Venn braked, seeing a serious gridlock problem developing ahead. Not for the first time, he reminded himself that he really needed to start leaving his car behind and using New York’s public transport system more. He wasn’t in Chicago any longer, still less in the hayseed southern Illinois town he’d grown up in. But damn, if he didn’t have driving in his blood. Dumping his wheels in order to join the trudging, grumbling queues for the subway felt like some kind of betrayal of himself.

  “Okay,” he said. “Good work, Fil. This Driscoll guy...”

  “I’m on him,” said Fil. “He’s a former MD who gave up practicing twelve years ago and went into business. He founded the Bonnesante Clinic in 2005. Still takes an active role, meeting with physicians who’re interested in joining, lobbying for funding.”

  “Since you’re ahead of all my questions,” said Venn, “I won’t ask if you’ve checked out any connection between the clinic and Dr Olivia Collins. Or her husband.”

  “I’ve checked,” said Fil, without a trace of smugness. “But there’s nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing so far. Harmony’s the one looking into Bruce Collins, so she might find a link there. But Collins isn’t on the list of donors to the clinic over the years. And his wife isn’t on its staff, that we know of. But then, like I said, we don’t know anything about its staff.”

  Venn watched the line of cars ahead of him grind to a standstill. In his rearview mirror, he saw the traffic behind him do the same.

  With a sigh, he sagged back against his seat.

  On the dash, his phone beeped, signaling an incoming call.

  Venn said, “Fil, I’m on my way back to the office. But I could be a while. See if you can find out who has attending privileges at the clinic.”

  “Will do,” said Fil.

  Venn picked up the handset and keyed the new call through.

  “Joe?”

  Venn recognized the voice of Dennis Yancy, the FBI guy in Rockford. “Yeah, Yance.”

  “Thought you might care to know. Drake may be headed for New York.”

  Chapter 15

  Ricky Thompson watched the woman get out of the car and felt his heart do a little tumble.

  She was a vision from heaven, and as he thought it, he knew how clichéd, how unoriginal, it sounded. But out here in Western Pennsylvania there weren’t a whole lot of heavenly signs, and Ricky figured this counted as one.

  He straightened up behind the counter of the shop, tucking in his shirt and buffing his sneakers one after the other on the opposite pants leg. He found himself wishing he’d scrubbed more of the grease off his hands, and hoped none of it had found its way to his face.

  The woman walked slowly toward the shop, cool, elegant, putting a lot of swing into the hips in a way that suggested she wasn’t doing it just for show, that it was the way she naturally walked. She was slim and curvy and looked exactly like a movie star. Her sunglasses put Ricky in mind of a beach on the French Riviera, a place he’d seen mostly in black-and-white in the DVDs he ferreted away at home, away from the prying eyes of his friends, who’d laugh at him if they knew.

  Ricky watched the woman approach, and saw Greta Garbo. Lauren Bacall. Gina Lollobrigida. Even a trace of Audrey Hepburn, though the woman walking toward him was sensuous rather than elfin.

  He drew himself up to his full five-feet-eleven, thinking - hoping - that maybe he was an inch or two taller than her, though it was hard to tell at this distance.

  And he thought to himself: who are you trying to kid?

  The woman heading toward the shop was stunningly beautiful, utterly poised, impeccably classy.

  Ricky Thompson, on the other hand, was awkward, shy, geeky. He was nineteen years old, the child of a single mom, with an upbringing in a dirt-poor suburb of Pittsburgh and a minimum-wage job here at Artie’s Tires and Parts, in the back of beyond off the I-76.

  He was going places, there was no question about that. While his friends hung around the backstreets and the malls, drinking beer and squabbling and bitching about life, Ricky was as often as not back home in the rented house he shared with his Ma and his two sisters, watching the films he’d bought at rummage sales and from the bonanzas on offer as the video stores in the area had shut down, one by one.

  Ricky’s mother grumbled at him, calling him a dreamer. His sisters, aged eight and eleven, laughed at him. But he studied the images and the narratives on the screen until he’d absorbed them under his skin.

  He was going to go back to school. Get his diploma this time. And then he was going on to film school.

  Ricky wasn’t a movie star in the making. He wasn’t even an actor. Rather, he was a director. He spent long hours at night, stal
king about his room or lying on his back in bed, composing shots in his head. Framing scenes. Pacing everything until it was just perfect.

  Now, as he looked after the shop while Artie, the owner, disappeared for a couple of hours, to go whoring or drinking or maybe just slobbing out on the couch in front of the TV, Ricky found himself staring at a genuine leading lady, fast approaching the door.

  And he felt utterly out of his league.

  The door opened and she stepped inside. Her smile pinned Ricky to the spot.

  “Good morning,” she said, her voice soft, with the faintest trace of huskiness. “

  “Ma’am,” Ricky mumbled, his own voice catching. He cleared his throat, tried again. “May I help you?”

  She moved over the counter, seeming not so much to walk as to glide. “I hope you can. I believe there’s something wrong with my car’s brakes.”

  Ricky glanced away, out the window. The woman had come walking up the driveway from the main road. There was no car in sight, apart from the ones sitting out there which Artie hadn’t gotten around to working on yet.

  “Where’s your car, ma’am?” said Ricky.

  The woman tipped her head. “Back there on the road. It started to list to one side whenever I braked. I decided it would be safest to stop right there, especially when I saw the sign for your auto shop up ahead.”

  “It sounds like the pads,” said Ricky, relieved that the problem was something he’d probably be able to deal with himself, rather than waiting for Artie to return. Ricky mostly did gofer stuff at the shop, but he’d picked up a certain amount of know-how about car repairs while he’d been working there, and Artie had allowed him to start taking on some of the jobs.

  He came out from behind the counter, conscious of his smeared overalls. The woman’s eyes didn’t drop down him and back up again, the way classy people sometimes did when they encountered guys like him. Instead, they stayed focused on his face. At least, he thought they did. It was difficult to tell, behind the sunglasses. Ricky wished she’d take them off. He thought her eyes would be as pretty as the rest of her.

  “The car’s only fifty yards down the road,” she said.

  Ricky hefted a toolkit and grabbed a pack of brake pads from a box. It would save time, if it was the pads that were the problem. Though he found himself in no hurry to see the woman leave.

  He walked with her across the oil-stained forecourt, noting that he was indeed an inch or two taller than her. She didn’t make conversation, and Ricky found himself tongue-tied.

  At the bottom of the drive, the road slanted backward to the right. There was no sign of human habitation for miles, just rolling fields. Down the road, fifty yards away as she’d said, he saw the car. A little Hyundai.

  As they approached it, Ricky saw something unusual. Another thirty yards back, two vehicles were parked up in a layby, end to end. Cars didn’t usually stop along this stretch. There were well-signposted rest facilities five miles ahead, and drivers normally held out until then before pulling over to rest or to pee or whatever.

  Ricky gave a mental shrug and laid his hand on the Hyundai’s door. “May I?”

  “Please.”

  He got in, started the engine. Pressed down on the brake pedal. Felt the sponginess.

  “Yep. It’s the brake pads, ma’am.”

  She nodded, half-smiling, as if she’d suspected it. As if she knew a little about cars.

  “I can replace them for you right here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ricky jacked the car up and removed each wheel in turn. The pad on the left was almost completely gone, the one on the right around fifty per cent. He fitted the new pads. While he worked, the woman stood by, her head on one side, watching with interest. Ricky did a pretty smooth job, he thought, and was pleased with himself.

  At a couple of points, he glanced along the road at the two cars parked up by the side. A station wagon of some kind - he couldn’t see the make - and a big SUV in front. He could make out vague shapes through the windshield.

  Ricky finished up, tightening the nuts on the wheels. He wiped his greasy hands on a cloth from the toolbox.

  “All done,” he said.

  She gave him that dazzling smile once again, and it was as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds.

  She reached inside her purse and brought out a wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

  And Ricky realized he didn’t know how much a job like this cost.

  Cursing himself for an amateur, he said, “I’ll need to check the pricing schedule up at the shop, ma’am. If you’d care to head back with me?”

  “Of course.”

  Just before they set off, Ricky turned to look back at the parked cars.

  Were they in trouble? The heads behind the SUV’s windshield, two of them, were completely motionless.

  He was torn. His head told him to take this lovely lady back to the office and process her payment. She was, after all, his customer. But some impulse within him urged him toward the parked cars. What if they too had broken down? Or somebody was sick?

  “Excuse me just one minute, ma’am,” Ricky said, genuine regret in his voice.

  He jogged back toward the parked cars.

  When he was ten yards away, the window on the driver’s side of the SUV slid down. A big man with a shaved head gazed out at him.

  “Sir, are you okay?” said Ricky.

  Without a word, the man nodded.

  Ricky faltered. The guy didn’t smile. Didn’t show any expression at all.

  Ah, well, forget it, Ricky thought to himself. I tried.

  He raised a hand to the man and turned to go.

  As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the guy in the passenger seat.

  There was something familiar about him, though Ricky couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He walked the woman back to the shop, in silence once again, even while he tried desperately to think of a way to make small talk, to prolong their contact. But he’d never been much good at that sort of thing.

  It was when he stepped into the shop that the realization hit him.

  On the wall behind the counter, pinned to a corkboard among a mess of receipts and notes and invoices, was a flyer. One of thousands that had been distributed across the state last night, and no doubt across the country.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THESE MEN? its headline read. Beneath were seven photos.

  Ricky’s eyes homed in on one face in particular. He’d studied the pictures for a good long time that morning, while he was sitting around waiting for Artie to come back, or for a customer to come in. And he’d memorized both the faces and the name attached to each one.

  Eugene Drake.

  Yes, there was little doubt in his mind. The man in the passenger seat of the SUV out there by the side of the road looked different than this photo. Quite a lot different, in fact. His face was fatter, his hair the wrong color.

  But Ricky had an eye for detail, and in particular for the individuality of human faces. It might have been because of his years of study of actors in the movies he loved, or perhaps conversely he’d been drawn to actors because of an innate fascination for the way they stood out from those around them. Either way, he knew the guy in the car was the same one on the flyer.

  With his heart hammering and a thrill in his gut that was at once exciting and terrifying, Ricky said to the woman: “I’m real sorry, ma’am. But I gotta make an urgent call. If you’d like to take a seat over there -” he pointed at the solitary chair, alongside a table strewn with grimy copies of American Car and Sports Illustrated - “I’ll be right back.”

  She smiled that faint smile, still saying nothing.

  There was a phone behind the counter, but Ricky knew there was another one in Artie’s office out back. He closed the door behind him and picked up the receiver.

  Damn. There was a hotline number on the flyer, but he hadn’t memorized it. And he didn’t want to go back out and look at it. The lady would see him studying th
e flyer, and he didn’t want to spook her.

  Well, he couldn’t go wrong dialing 911, even though it wasn’t strictly speaking an emergency.

  With a finger that shook slightly, Ricky punched in the three numbers.

  “Hello. Please state the nature of your emergency,” came the operator’s calm voice, almost immediately.

  “It’s not an emergency. It’s Drake,” Ricky blurted. Feeling foolish, he said, “One of the fugitives. The people who escaped from the prison in Illinois. Eugene Drake. He’s sitting outside.”

  Ricky realized as he was saying it that he ought to be more concise. More organized. He needed to state exactly where he was, and -

  “One moment, please, sir,” said the woman, and there was a click.

  A few seconds later, a man’s abrupt voice said, “Police.”

  Ricky said, less haphazardly this time: “One of the men who escaped from Horn Creek, Eugene Drake, is sitting in a car outside where I’m working. That’s Artie’s Tires and Parts, off of Interstate 76 in Pennsylvania -”

  He noticed, in a detached way, the smell of her perfume first.

  It stayed in his nostrils, something musky and expensive-smelling, even as the confusion set in.

  And then the pain.

  Ricky was dimly aware that the woman had somehow managed to slip in through the door behind him without him hearing. And she’d also, somehow, succeeded in slipping something across his throat, deftly sliding her hand in between his arm holding the phone and his neck.

  The agony lanced across his throat, pure and clean.

  Ricky felt himself jerked backward, not just his head but his whole body, so that he lost his balance. He regained it, just, by stepping back, but his center of gravity was toppling.

  He dropped the phone, from which a tiny voice was yelling, Hello? Hello? Both of his hands came up, clawing at his throat, at the wire across it that bit into his flesh. His fingers became immediately wet and slick. He felt the blood coursing down into the V of his shirt.