by Jan Coffey
She nodded and looked at her son’s bedside table. “I assume the police were the ones who took Juan’s phone. There’s another phone in my bedroom.” She led the way down the hall.
“Have you figured if anything was taken from upstairs?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t even know if they came upstairs or not. My pearl necklace is still sitting on my dresser, and I had sixty-seven dollars in cash that is sitting next to it.” She stopped in the doorway to her bedroom and pointed. “Nobody touched any of it. There’s the phone.”
Photos of Juan at various ages covered the walls and shelves. Lexi’s file had made no mention of a husband, and from what he’d gathered talking to different people at the hospital, there seemed to be no current boyfriend, either. The closest family was her brother and his wife who lived in New Jersey. Her son seemed to be her entire life. He walked toward the phone.
“You don’t think someone needs to be here for what Detective Simpson and his men are doing, do you?” she asked, leaning a shoulder against the doorway.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching for the phone.
“Baltimore,” she said. “I doubt if there are any flights leaving from Hartford in this weather. I’d rather have a car there, anyway, so I’m driving.”
“In this weather?”
“You drove in it. So can I. I have an all-wheel drive vehicle sitting in my garage.”
“Detective Simpson told me downstairs that the governor is declaring a state of emergency. The worst of the storm is yet to come. They’re going to shut down the state roads and highways. Only emergency vehicles are allowed to be out at all.”
“Being a physician has its advantages. I’m considered emergency personnel,” she said confidently. “Look, I’ve driven in this kind of weather my whole life. Also, I’ll be heading south. The weather can only get better as I get closer to Baltimore.”
Bryan decided this was as good a time as any to tell her. “Juan isn’t in Baltimore. He was taken to Buffalo.”
She was speechless for a couple of seconds. She walked inside the bedroom, sat down on a love seat across the way from him, and stared at him. She looked like she was trying to decide if he was telling her the truth.
“Agent Luna said they were taking Juan to Baltimore.”
“There must have been a change of plan.” He shook his head. “My connection with Hank kept breaking up, but that much I heard clearly. I can give you more information once I talk to him.”
“Buffalo.” She glanced at her watch. “If I leave now, I can—”
“Please, just sit there. Don’t move,” he ordered. “Let me make this call first.”
Her look told him that he’d better be quick or she’d be gone.
“Do you have a name and address for this hospital?” she asked.
“No,” he barked. “Hold on until I’m done with this call.”
She glowered at him and glanced down at her watch again.
Bryan turned his attention to the phone in his hand. There was a message on the caller ID. “Forwarded fax.”
She took the phone out of his hand and looked at it. “Whenever my fax at home acts up and doesn’t accept a document after three tries, the fax automatically gets forwarded to the number at my practice.”
They were finally getting a break. Bryan pushed to his feet. “Is there any way the people who broke into your house could have found that out?”
“Not unless they saw the message on a receiver. Juan’s phone is gone. And there’s a phone in the kitchen. That’s still there. If someone looked at it, I guess they could have seen the same thing there, too,” she said.
Bryan took Lexi’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “You take me to your office and let me check out that fax, and I promise I’ll take you to your son myself.”
“Today.”
“Today,” he repeated.
She was out the door before him.
~~~~
Chapter 22
In spite of her talk, Lexi’s car wasn’t anywhere near as good in the snow as the SUV they’d been driving before. Sitting behind the wheel, she was relieved to at least make it out of the driveway. Still, after all her bravado about being able to drive to Buffalo in this weather, she had to save face by making it to her office in downtown Wickfield. She had to do it without sliding off the road, too.
From what Detective Simpson had told her before they’d left, the forecast was that the slow moving storm was dumping another eight to ten inches on northwestern Connecticut before moving off midday. Lexi looked at the clock on the dash. The display read 4:58. Midday was still too many hours away.
“Did Agent Gardner have any more news of Juan when you called him?” she asked.
“The helicopter has landed at the Buffalo VA hospital. The transfer went very smoothly.”
“How is Juan?” she asked. Her cell phone was out of charge. Her answering machine was in pieces. Even if Agent Luna had left her a message, she would never know.
“The same. They told Hank that he did pretty well with the flight.”
With these people, being in a coma was obviously considered doing “pretty well.”
“Can I be more involved with my son’s care once I get to Buffalo?” she asked him. The car was crawling down the steep hill.
“I don’t head this investigation, but considering your background, I would consider you an asset.”
She appreciated the expression of confidence, but something in his response made her cast a side glance at him. “But you don’t look convinced that they would.”
“I think you should take one step at a time,” he said reasonably. “I’ll try to do everything I can from my end to keep you close to Juan.”
As a person of science, Lexi considered herself reasonably skeptical, but she wasn’t an untrusting person. At the same time, she was not one to rely on just anyone when she could manage for herself, particularly not someone she’d just met. Life had given her a few hard lessons in that area.
She lost her mother at age seven, and she and her brother had dealt with her father’s ongoing bouts of depression until he passed away while she was in medical school. And then she’d been diagnosed with cervical cancer at an age when most were planning their future careers and families. She’d had to get through that on her own. Allan had been working in South America that year. Donna and the girls were with him. She didn’t think it was fair to disrupt their life. She’d learned at a very young age that independence was the key to survival.
In the case of Agent Bryan Atwood, she found that she was trusting him. She was allowing herself to rely on him. She believed he’d do what he was promising her. At the same time, she already understood his reserved nature. He was a man of few words. He definitely didn’t offer information; she had to probe.
They turned out of her street, and she found the road clearer. The town had at least tried to plow here. The snow was falling heavily, and the windshield wipers were having difficulty keeping up with the wet snow.
“When we were on our way to Wickfield, you mentioned something on the phone to your partner that sounded like…maybe that you’re investigating the organization that helped me with Juan’s adoption?”
He waited a couple of seconds to answer her. Lexi wondered if she was crossing the line as far as what he could or couldn’t tell her.
“Did I?”
“I’ve answered a zillion questions of various law enforcement officers, but none have asked about the adoption. If you do need any of those records, I have them all. I can show them to you. Names, agencies, phone numbers. It could save you some time,” she explained. “In fact, I keep a copy of all the records in a safe at work.”
He still didn’t say a thing.
“You’re trying to solve a case. I’m trying to help my son. I think we both know that Juan’s actions this past Monday were not that of the standard teenager wanting to take revenge on his classmates and teachers, a
nd going crazy.” She darted another glance at him. “I haven’t called my attorney since we left the hospital. I’m cooperating, trying to help you. I’d appreciate the same treatment.”
“I told you before, I’ll take you to Buffalo today.”
Lexi shook her head, disappointed.
“Law enforcement bullshit,” she cursed, hammering the wheel.
“What law enforcement bullshit?”
“This investigation is ongoing,” she said, using a mock official tone. “So you can’t know anything since you aren’t one of us.” She glowered at him. “That bullshit. Damn it, I’m trying to help you! That’s why I’m taking you to my office, handing you whatever this fax is that you’re looking for. I’m not stupid. I know I could hand this over to my attorney and use it as a bargaining chip in Juan’s case.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and Lexi wished she knew what was going on behind that brooding expression.
“And as far as someone taking me to Buffalo,” she continued, letting the steam escape for a change. “I could hire a driver to take me. So there. This is all shit…shit…shit.”
“You just ran a stop sign,” he told her.
“So ticket me,” she snapped back.
Thankfully, there was no traffic on the road, and no traffic cops, either.
Lexi was disappointed that she couldn’t break through Agent Atwood’s shield. She took a couple of deep breaths, adjusted her steely grip on the wheel, and looked around at the houses perched closer together as they neared the center of Wickfield.
“By the way,” she said. “I’ve decided it can’t be me. You must be always like this.”
“Always like what?”
“Like the way you are now. Brooding to the point of grouchiness. When you talk, it’s always to the point. You ask a lot of questions, but you feel it’s beneath you to answer. I’d bet money that you’re this way with your wife and children, too. It’s not healthy,” she said before he could put a word in edgewise. “Especially with teenagers. That’s no way to develop trust, no way to build a relationship.”
Lexi stopped herself, realizing what she was saying. She was giving him a lecture about parenthood when her son was accused of a violent crime. Her exhaustion of the past few days was turning to frustration and anger. She couldn’t let herself burn the one bridge that was standing, though.
She couldn’t look at him, but she decided not to run the next stop sign. Her office was just around the next turn.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m the last person who should be lecturing anyone about parenting right now.”
“Oh, you’re talking about parenting. I thought you were talking about me.”
Lexi felt her ears burning. She had to wait for two trucks, one plowing and the other spreading salt and sand, to go by before she could turn into the alley that led to the lot behind the building.
The snow on the front walkways was still undisturbed. And there were no cars, no footsteps, nothing marring the pristine snow in the back of the building, either.
“Even though this is an official investigation,” he said wryly, “I suppose I can say, judging from the looks of things, that the intruders at your house haven’t been here.”
He was right. It was clear that no one had been anywhere near the building since the snow started. Lexi was suddenly glad that Peter, the guy who plowed their lot in the winter and took care of the landscaping in the summer, hadn’t come in yet.
Her car balked at the deep snow in the lot, slipping and sliding until she finally managed to park near the back door that the doctors and office staff used to get into the building. She reached over the seat for her hat, gloves, and jacket. Bryan put a hand on her arm.
“You need to know something. Even though I’m very aware of how cooperative you’re being, there are things I just cannot tell you about this investigation. How confidential do you keep your patients’ privacy?”
Lexi looked at him. “Very.”
He didn’t say anything more, but the look he sent her said it all.
Lexi pulled on her hat and gloves. She didn’t bother with the jacket. “All I have to say is that you’d better hope you never have a heart attack on an island where I’m the only doctor.”
She took her keys and stepped out of the car. She was almost certain she heard him chuckle.
Lexi pushed through the snow ahead of him. At the door, she put the key into the lock.
“How many ways are there to get inside the building?”
“To get inside the building? Four. To get inside my office? Two,” she explained. “The patients come through the front door and take the elevator or the stairs to our office. Until next spring, while we’re doing some renovations, only the staff come in this way.”
“How is the security system?”
“The building has locks and an alarm system.” Lexi turned the key in the door. “We have another alarm system for our office.
“You should let me go in first and make sure no one else is here,” he told her.
She shook her head. “Just in case someone was camping out here since before the storm started?”
He didn’t seem completely convinced, staying very close to her as she went through the steps of unlocking the outer and inner doors and disarming the building security system.
“Does this have a motion sensor?”
“No,” she replied. “The office does, though.”
“Why don’t you arm this one again?” he suggested as soon as they were in.
Lexi nodded and complied. Starting for the stairs, she turned on the lights as she went through. The familiar surroundings and smells boosted her confidence. She was as much at home here as she was at her own house. It was Juan that made the other a home.
“Does this hallway lead to the front door?”
“Yes.”
She led the way. The small elevator was halfway down the hall. Jack Zebo had his dentist’s office on one side of the hall and on the other side was the Black Pearl Antique Shop. Lexi watched Bryan take out a pocket light and look through the glass doors into each of the rooms as he went. When he was satisfied, they backtracked and went up the stairs to the second floor.
Lexi unlocked that door, stepped inside and disarmed the alarm.
She nodded down a narrow corridor. “These doors are my partners’ offices and beyond them are examination rooms. The receptionist and book keepers are located opposite the elevator.”
“With your permission, I’m going to poke my head into each of these rooms.”
“Go ahead,” she told him. I’ll turn on the lights from here.”
She switched on the lights at a panel near the back door and then followed him, stopping at the door to her own office. She glanced inside. It felt like a lifetime since she’d been here.
Her gaze fell first on an eight-by-ten framed photo sitting on her desk. Her boy. The picture had been taken at the end of last summer when she and Juan and her brother’s family had taken a vacation for a week on Cape Cod. Juan had let his black, wavy hair grow until it reached his shoulders. His dark eyes were full of mischief as he pretended he was taking a bite out of the foot-long bluefish that was still dangling from his fishing line.
Tears rose up in Lexi’s eyes, and she quickly looked away, trying to focus on the rest of her office. She’d expected piles of paperwork on her desk, but everything was neatly organized with paperclips and notes attached to each file and piece of paper. She had no doubt that Pat, their office manager, had been staying late every night to take care of these things.
Bryan appeared in her doorway. “Looks good.”
Lexi felt a little flustered the way he filled the doorway. “You didn’t expect to find someone hiding in a closet, did you?”
He nodded, looking past her. “Nice office.”
She turned around and tried to look at it through his eyes. The room was small, neat, and packed with professional books and journals. It represented too much of her type-A
personality.
“Thanks, it’s me.” She figured he probably couldn’t even fit behind the desk.
“The FBI didn’t take all your computers,” he commented, pointing to the laptop sitting at the corner of her desk.
“That’s because this one is mine. I only bought it at Christmas, and it’s never left this office.”
He smiled and walked in, looking at the frames on her desk and walls. “You don’t have to get upset. I’m not going to take it away.”
She didn’t know how to take his attempt at humor.
“You wanted to look at the incoming faxes,” she said.
He motioned to her to lead the way, but there wasn’t enough room to go by without brushing past him. He was too tall and broad. There was also something about his smile that made him look almost boyish…and very handsome. It was a stupid feeling, but she was actually flustered.
She gathered her protective cloak of professionalism around her. “After you,” she told him.
He stepped out into the hall. Lexi went past him and led the way to the receptionist’s area.
“This is the main fax machine for our practice.” She took stacks of paper and the report out of the tray.
“I was told there was an aborted fax to your house.”
“Here it is. One forwarded fax,” she said looking at the report.
She put all the faxed documents on one of the desks and went through them. Bryan was right beside her, looking over her shoulder. Lab reports, letters from other doctors, insurance statements, billing documents, more lab reports. There was nothing that didn’t belong.
“That fax didn’t come through,” she said, looking up at him, disappointed.
“The problem must have been at the other end.”
“Is anyone checking out the number that it was sent from? Maybe there’s still someone there who would answer the phone.”
“We’re already checking that angle out.”
Lexi wondered if he was still planning to take her to Buffalo. She wasn’t going to ask. She knew somehow he’d keep his word.
“This person, whoever he is,” Bryan said reflectively, “has tried to communicate with you through a phone call and a fax. I assume you’re listed in the phone book.”