Road Kill; Puppet Master; Cross Wired

by Jan Coffey

“That’s what they say,” he said thinly. “But you’re a civilian. There has already been a murder out there. In fact, we’re operating on the assumption that the murder has a direct bearing on this case and the fax your contact was trying to send you.”

  He looked out the window for moment, but continued to talk.

  “Never mind the break-in at your house and the threat on Juan’s life at the hospital in New Haven. Personally and professionally, I think it’s insane to get you involved,” Bryan said adamantly. “No, we can send an undercover agent, pretending to be you. There is no way this guy knows for sure what you look like.”

  “The nurses at the hospital told me that there was a picture of me on the news and in some of the papers.”

  “We can use a look-alike. It’s been done plenty of times before,” Bryan said.

  She thought about that. It was possible they would only have one chance at find out what this stranger at Reno was doing. She understood Geary’s point in wanting to make sure they succeeded. At the same time, she understood…and appreciated…Bryan’s concerns.

  “You know, I don’t seem to be any good to Juan right now, though I desperately want to be there when he comes out of this coma. But at the same time, I certainly am no lawyer or wheeler-dealer,” she said hesitantly. “So what I’m going to ask, I’m more or less winging. I’m hoping this is how things will work.”

  Lexi gauged his expression. It was very important to her to have Bryan in her corner. So far, his support had been invaluable, and she didn’t want what she was about to say to come across wrong.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  “If I were to go through with this…go to Reno and do whatever the FBI asks me to do…does that mean I can have some bargaining power when it comes to how Juan is treated? Legally, I mean. Can I make some deals? Lessen any charges?”

  What she was saying sounded like something you’d see in the movies. Lexi wasn’t sure this kind of stuff was done in real life. Suddenly, she wished she had talked to the lawyer.

  “Of course,” he said putting an end to her uncertainty. “You’ve already been very instrumental in this investigation. But all I can say is, don’t get ahead of yourself. You should remember that, based on everything we’ve gathered, it’s really doubtful that there will be any criminal charges brought against Juan. You saw the results of the MRI. You and I both know that Juan could very well turn out to be the victim of something himself. He could be cleared of any wrongdoing without you having to do any of this.”

  “‘Could be’ is not a guarantee. And I don’t want to risk it,” Lexi said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll go to the ends of the earth to give my son another chance. This offer of getting involved, being part of the investigation, is actually a gift, an opportunity for me to do something. I don’t feel useless.”

  “Lexi, what they’re asking you to do is dangerous.”

  “Tell me what’s not dangerous these days,” she said, matching his tone.

  “These are violent criminals we’re dealing with here. They’re professionals.”

  “I have you with me, Agent Atwood, to take care of the bad guys.” She shook her head. “There’s something else. Aside from Juan, I need to do this. Not only for myself, but for all those teachers and students who have died or been wounded in all this recent school violence. These kids, like Juan, couldn’t have known where they were going or what they were doing. They couldn’t have known the danger they were in. Besides, who says this list we have in our possession is all of them. We have to find this guy. I feel responsible to do my part of it. He’s chosen me to contact. I have to be there.”

  He still didn’t seem happy with her answer, but he didn’t try to talk her out of it anymore. The brooding expression was back. She wasn’t going to lose this opportunity, though. She believed everything she’d said. And another thing that Lexi hadn’t said was that she needed to do this to help diminish the guilt she was feeling for what Juan had done. It was crazy, but she figured this was what parenthood was all about. You celebrated and mourned your child’s successes and losses as if they’re your own.

  “How do I go about making these deals…telling whoever is in charge what I want?”

  “I’ll take care of all of that for you,” he said gruffly.

  Lexi had no doubt that he would. She didn’t know how and when it had happened, but she trusted him, pure and simple.

  “But you will be going to Reno, too, won’t you?” Lexi asked after couple of moments of silence. She could hear the note of hope in her voice.

  “You can bet on it,” he said in the same gruff tone.

  “Thanks,” Lexi whispered. “The only news that can top this is getting to Buffalo and hearing a positive report on Juan from this Dr. Dexter.”

  She thought he grunted. He was like a big teddy bear—his fur definitely got ruffled when he didn’t get his way.

  Lexi looked out the window. For the first time in days she felt that positive sense of doing something, of being in charge of her destiny. It felt great to imagine there was hope.

  They were flying just above the tops of the clouds. The ride was occasionally bumpy but it was nothing compared to the roller coaster they’d put up with right after takeoff.

  She’d meant to call Allan and her attorney before leaving the house. But with everything else going on, she’d never had a chance. Right now, she didn’t think there was anything more Attorney McGrath could do for her, anyway. She was in it with the authorities up to her neck. They all would simply have to wait and see how the investigation would turn out.

  Lexi looked back at Bryan. “Do you know if it’s still snowing in Buffalo?”

  “Before we left Wickfield, the pilot mentioned there are only flurries out there.”

  “How long do we have at the hospital?” she asked.

  “Not too long. Maybe an hour,” he said. “A helicopter is picking us up at the airport and taking us to the VA hospital. These guys will take us on to Reno. Listen, why don’t you try to rest?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She looked out the window again and thought she saw small patches of clearing. Yes, she was actually seeing buildings and snow-covered earth and roads far below.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

  Lexi looked over at him and shrugged. She was amazed at how quickly she was feeling comfortable with him. He felt like an old friend. She couldn’t allow herself to think anything beyond that. But even as a friend, there was so little they knew about each other.

  “Why did you adopt Juan?”

  The question took her by the surprise. Did he mean, why did she adopt a half Mexican, half American Indian toddler? Was this about the color of his skin? It wasn’t. It couldn’t be, she told herself.

  Lexi had to fight the usual defensiveness she felt when asked these kinds of questions. She wasn’t used to talking about herself. She didn’t share her past easily with people. And her claws came out instinctively when someone was talking about Juan.

  “My question has to do more with why you decided to adopt…not so much why Juan.”

  She guessed he must have read the look on her face. “Many people adopt. There are many single parents. It’s not really that strange anymore.”

  “I don’t think it was ever strange,” he told her. “My curiosity is more about you. If you don’t mind me asking, how old were you when you adopted Juan?”

  “Twenty-seven. I’m forty-one now,” she told him. Lexi had no problem revealing her age. She was proud that she’d made it this far.

  “See? That’s impressive. How many twenty-seven year olds are ready for that kind of responsibility?”

  This was the most talkative he’d been. Actually, the most interested, she corrected. Lexi realized what he wanted. He wanted to know why a twenty-seven year old woman would decide on adopting a toddler instead of having children of her own. He wanted to know why she didn’t have a husband and pursue the dreams so many other young people had.
r />   Only a handful of people knew why. Lexi wasn’t embarrassed about it; she just preferred not to talk about it.

  She didn’t know when and how her past had become so top secret. She’d felt uncomfortable when Bryan had initially refused to tell her if he had any children or not. But he’d given in, shared a little when he didn’t have to.

  There was a lot of himself he was putting on the line for her. Bryan had made every effort to help her.

  “I’m not used to talking about myself,” she told him. “But…I’ll make an exception with you, Agent Atwood.”

  His smile made Lexi’s temperature rise a few degrees. She brushed the back of her hand against the aircraft window. It felt cool to the skin. She wished she could press her face against the glass.

  “When I was finishing my residency at Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona, I started volunteering on a weekly basis at two outpatient facilities on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Juan and his aunt were regular visitors of mine. He was a sickly toddler with a low immune system. He seemed to catch every childhood disease and take three times as long to kick it.”

  Lexi thought back to that time. Juan’s happy attitude, despite the constant fevers and colds and asthma and allergies and everything else, caused Lexi to step out of her shell and forget about her own bad fortune. He was such a bright spot. She truly looked forward to seeing him.

  “He was so smart. He was like a little old man inside the body of a toddler,” she smiled. “He understood so much. He was so sensitive. He was curious about everything around him. I’d be checking him, listening to his lungs, and he’d be trying to tell me word for word what he’d heard on the news that morning, or what the weather forecast was for the week, or he’d whisper that his aunt’s smoking was why he couldn’t breathe. He would say things that were totally unexpected of his age. A lot of kids can barely speak in sentences at that age.”

  “So you adopted him because be was a smart kid,” he said, smiling.

  “I adopted him because I knew he had no parents and his aunt wasn’t going to keep him too much longer. She spent whole days in bed because of being sick and she was a chain smoker. She had no money and barely could take care of herself. In fact, I got a sense that there might have been some kind of financial assistance she was getting from somewhere, but that was about to end.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “But what really motivated me to adopt Juan was the fact that she didn’t want him. She said she couldn’t afford to take care of a child. She told everyone about Juan’s parents and what horrible people they were to die and leave her with this burden. She said that the toddler was only staying with her short term. She’d contacted social services to find him a home.”

  Thinking about it, she felt like it was yesterday. Lexi saw Juan at least twice a month. It was very sad.

  “I think Juan understood it all. He knew he wasn’t wanted. Still, he kept up a good attitude, kept his chin up. That child’s spirit made me think so much about who I was and about what I was going through. I talked to his aunt and she agreed. You know, at the time, I adopted Juan because I thought he needed me.”

  Lexi thought about what she’d just said for a moment. She was actually talking. She might as well tell him the rest of it.

  “The truth is, I adopted Juan because I needed him,” she said quietly. “During my last year of med school I lost my father. He was my only surviving parent. We were very close. And then, six months before going to Flagstaff, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The prognosis was good, but I had to have a couple of surgeries. And after I was done with them, I knew I would never be able to have children.”

  Bryan’s hand reached for hers, and he gently squeezed it. A mix of feelings rushed through her. After so many years, Lexi was at peace with her cancer. Still, there were moments like this, when she was talking about it, that emotions avalanched down on her. Good and bad, sad and indifferent, what she’d missed and everything she’d gained, they were all there, popping in from every corner of her conscious and subconscious. Each conflicting emotion was fighting to control her mood.

  “I definitely needed him more than he needed me,” Lexi repeated.

  She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him for fear of losing control. She was on the way to see Juan, she reminded herself. She had to stay focused on what was important. She kept talking.

  “Juan filled my life with everything that was missing. He made me look outside of myself. He was this active little bundle of joy that I needed to focus my attention on. He got healthier and healthier, and he taught me how to be a mother, how to be a better person.” She laughed. “Even how to be neat and organized.”

  She looked at their hands. Bryan was still holding hers.

  “He made me happy,” she told him. “He made me whole.”

  ~~~~

  Chapter 29

  FBI Field Office

  New Haven, Connecticut

  “There will be a 6:00 p.m. flight out of Tweed-New Haven Airport,” one of the FBI clerical staff members told Hank, having just finished making all the arrangements for him. “You have to stop in Philadelphia to pick up two other members of the investigating team. You arrive in San Diego at midnight. The rest of the team will be waiting in California for your arrival.”

  Of the three names they’d been given, Donald Gray, who became Donald Tucker after his adoption, had been the only one located immediately.

  Unfortunately, the family that had adopted him had broken up. Since the divorce, the father lived in Seattle. Donald lived with the mother in California, but she had relocated to Atlanta this past fall…without her adopted son. Unlike each of the other cases, where the teenagers’ stellar academic and behavioral performance made them outstanding citizens, Donald’s early and teen years had been turbulent, to say the least. The fifteen year old had changed schools six times since first grade, the last stop being the Southern California Military Institute in Carlsbad, where he’d been dropped off in late November.

  Sometimes the added structure and discipline of such a school helped, but Hank had seen this family situation many times. It fit the profile for disaster.

  Geary had called Hank about it an hour ago, requesting that the psychologist fly to California and link up with the agents who would be going to the military academy. In the meantime, the local police and the guidance councilors at the school had been warned to watch Donald until they got letters of consent from the parents to take him into protective custody. As things stood right now, there was no legal basis to pick up the fifteen-year-old. An anonymous letter with his name on a list wasn’t enough to obtain a court order. They were following a trail, but it was not a verifiable trail…yet. This whole thing could be some lunatic playing games with them, sending Lexi what was already in the headlines and adding in whomever he wanted to the list.

  Hank believed the list was legit. At the same time, he would await the parents’ consent. Donald hadn’t committed a crime. Even the school, acting in loco parentis, wasn’t about to act arbitrarily. The problem was that Hank didn’t know how long it would take to get the parents’ permission. The only thing he did know was that they didn’t have it yet.

  So Hank was headed to California to “interview” Donald. His call on the teenager’s present psychological profile would get the wheels turning for whatever action was to follow. Meanwhile, he couldn’t stop wondering if tomorrow might be too late. The kids were succumbing to psychotic episodes in unnervingly rapid succession.

  With regard to the others on the list, Hank couldn’t understand why they still had no word on the whereabouts of Billy Ward or Roy Carter. They had the names of their adoptive families. The adoption files in state of Arizona had them documented as Billy Ebbett and Roy Naves. But the present location of their families remained a big question mark.

  Hank started gathering up the paperwork and notes he’d collected since last night, stuffing them inside his briefcase.

  “We have an
account name for the overnight package Dr. Bradley received today,” one of the agents who’d been helping him reported from the next desk.

  Good, Hank thought, pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together.

  “What do you have?”

  “California State University System.”

  Hank stared at him. “I need something a little more specific than that.”

  The younger agent shrugged. “I was just on the phone with the University Business and Finance Division. Twenty-three campuses with 44,000 faculty and staff. He couldn’t immediately tell me who or even what campus that account number was assigned to. He said it would take him a hell of a long time to track it down.”

  “I’ll bet the Auditing Department would love to hear that,” another agent said, shaking his head. “Typical state bureaucracy.”

  “That’s no good,” Hank said, thinking out loud. “We need to get the names of all faculty and graduate students who teach biology in the university system. Then we need to pare that list down to any who are or have been involved with nanoscience or nanotechnology research.”

  He continued on, giving the other agents other specific areas of research, too. It was a long shot, but they had to try.

  “Also,” he said as another thought occurred to him. “Contact the shipping department at each campus. If there is a central administrator, talk to him or her. Get someone in charge, preferably the person who negotiates the rates with the freight carriers. There must be a way that they can charge the expense of each package shipped to a specific department, if not an individual.”

  “You don’t think the Business Division knows what they’re talking about?”

  Hank shrugged. “My wife is an academic. I’m pretty familiar with how these university systems work their expenses. I’m sure there are unmonitored account numbers, but for the most part, there has to be a column for almost everything that goes out of there. For some of those administrators, bean counting is part of their existence.”

  ~~~~