Blood List

by Patrick Freivald

  Chapter 15

  January 9th, 8:12 AM EST; J. Edgar Hoover building; Washington, D.C.

  After another pornographic frisking and an escort through the endless hallways, Paul found himself back in the same conference room with the same piles of papers, the same nine computers, and the same large display on the wall. The team was busy rooting through documents. "Why does everybody look so pissed off?" Paul asked.

  Carl jerked his head toward the wall display, and Paul had his answer. A list was projected on the wall in digital clarity:

  Match-2 (276) Rotator cuff surgery, lived in CA, allergic to penicillin, etc.

  Match-3 (92) Alumni SUNY school, owned a Hyundai, glasses required for driving, etc.

  Match-4 (17) MasterCard, patient at South Manhattan Municipal, etc.

  Match-5 (3) Lived in NY, Lived in NJ, two children

  Match-6 (0) No matches

  Match-7 (1) Owned a cat

  Match-8 (0) No matches

  Match-9 (0) No matches.

  Paul looked at Carl. "So what do the numbers in parentheses mean?" Paul asked.

  Sam replied in his ear. "Number of matches in that category. Now shush."

  He had no experience with this sort of thing but was pretty sure that even though the team wasn't expecting Carl's ideal Match-9, they expected something higher than a Match-5 that was more significant than cat ownership.

  They spent the next few hours digging through files. Again. Looking for missed clues. Again. I'm glad I never wanted to be a cop, Paul thought.

  Every now and then they found something that the computer hadn't recognized. Paul didn't see why upgrading "Owned a Hyundai" from Match-3 to Match-4 was important or relevant, but Carl seemed pleased when he found the typo that threw the computer off track. He supposed that if there was one error, there must be more. They spent the next several hours looking.

  "I think…," Doug started to say, then stopped and studied the paper in his hand. The rest of the team exchanged hopeful looks. Doug slid himself over to the next desk and jumped to the medical files. He muttered to himself as he read. "Knee surgery. There it is again. Toradol, followed by Ultram." After a quick scan, he moved to the next victim's information. At each terminal he made a small entry.

  The rest of the team looked at each other with restrained excitement. "There he goes," Jerri muttered to Marty, hope painted on her face. Good God, she's beautiful, Paul thought.

  It took less than five minutes for Doug to complete the circuit of desks. He walked to the center console and typed, his fingers a blur on the keyboard. Paul wanted to ask what he was doing but didn't dare interrupt.

  After a minute Doug looked up at Gene, his eyes ablaze with excitement. "Why would you prescribe Toradol followed by Ultram for pain?"

  Gene's eyes widened. "I…I have no idea, Doug. Why would you prescribe Toradol followed by Ultram for pain?"

  "I don't know. They're both non-narcotic, non-steroidal analgesics. Toradol can mess you up pretty good and isn't nearly as cheap as something like oxycodone or codeine. There were some lawsuits in the mid-to-late nineties about liver damage, even some deaths." He went back to the computer and continued to type.

  "How do you know this shit?" Marty asked.

  Doug grinned without looking up and shook his head. "I'll never tell."

  Marty rolled his eyes.

  A minute passed, then another. All work had stopped except for Doug's frantic hammering on the keys. His mutters turned into a coherent statement. "Sam, please put victim nine's autopsy photos on the large screen."

  Larry Johnson Jr.'s photos appeared on screen. The body was shriveled with age, a sad, slack-jawed raisin of a man.

  "There," Doug said and pointed to the old scars on the right arm. "Does anyone else want to bet we'll find needle tracks on all of the others?"

  The whole team dove to the terminals to confirm what Doug already knew. Within minutes, Doug pointed at the updated display.

  Match-2 Arrested for drug possession (1,7)

  Match-3 No pre-1980 medical records (4,5,9)

  Match-4 Pre-1980 patient at S. Manhattan Municipal H(1,3,6,8)

  Match-5 Lived in NY City (1,4,5,7,9)

  Match-6 No matches

  Match-7 Matches deleted

  Match-8 No matches

  Match-9 Former intravenous drug user (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)

  "That," Doug said, "is not a coincidence."

  "Actually, it technically is," muttered Carl.

  "Holy shit," Marty said with a huge grin. "They're all junkies!"

  In the excitement of the new find, no one noticed Paul Renner brooding at the wall screen.

  "Guess what?" Sam said over the COM. "Until 1982 the South Manhattan Municipal Hospital ran an affiliated methadone clinic in SoHo. The building was used for a couple of years as a document storage facility for the hospital. It burned down in 1984. Arson. Unsolved. I'll have RiC look into it."

  Paul raised an eyebrow at Carl. "Who's Rick?"

  "Research and Information Processing Center. Big 'R,' little 'i',' big 'C.' RiC. They make the phone calls and ask the questions for the Special Operations Units. Us."

  "Gotcha," Paul said.

  Work continued for several hours without finding any more leads. The familiar frustration known to investigators everywhere set in. Finally, Sam's voice broke the monotony.

  "Hey, Gene?"

  "Go ahead."

  "RiC's got something for us. All of the clinic records were destroyed in the fire." There was a pregnant pause. Gene rolled his eyes.

  "But…," he prompted.

  "But an old maintenance guy there, Seth Hawkes, says that quite a few of the files were moved to their Records building shortly before the fire, when they started transferring their records to computers. Said he thinks they might still have them in a box somewhere."

  "ROAD TRIP!" Carl, Marty, and Jerri shouted at once. The team scrambled to grab laptops, PDAs, jackets, and briefcases. Paul followed Gene out the door.

  * * *

  January 9th, 6:15 PM EST; Houston Street; New York City, New York.

  Less than five hours after Doug's revelation and Sam's find in D.C., the team crawled through Manhattan traffic.

  "Oh, come ON!" Carl yelled at traffic from the passenger's seat. Although years of ruthless traffic enforcement kept the intersections reasonably clear, and the now genetically inherited knowledge that a cabbie will run you over if you're not where you're supposed to be kept the pedestrians on the sidewalks and crosswalks, no law of man or God could compete with New York City traffic on a weekday at six PM.

  Gene had arranged for a warrant on the plane, just in case they needed it. They pulled up to a five-story brick building that looked a lot more like apartments than a warehouse or office building. A blue-shirted NYPD officer walked up to the passenger side of Gene's SUV. He was already talking, so Carl rolled down the window.

  "I'm Officer Mullins. Here's your warrant." He handed the paper to Carl through the window. "Go ahead and double-park right up there." He gestured to a stretch of road a quarter of a block away. "Leave me the keys so I can let people out if I got to, you know? I'll make sure no one messes with the vehicles."

  "Thanks, officer," Gene said. He pulled up to the indicated spot, Marty right behind him. The team walked through the only door into a sparsely furnished lobby. Gene followed on his crutches. Fluorescent lights buzzed above a small security desk, and a bored-looking twenty-something girl with a gaudy gold badge pinned to her dark blue uniform served as a guard.

  She glanced at them and continued typing on her phone. Gene stood at the desk for a full ten seconds before he cleared his throat.

  "Yeah?" the girl said without looking up.

  Jerri held out the papers. "We have a warrant to enter the South Manhattan Municipal Hospital offices located in this building and to examine the documents contained therein. Your cooperation is required."

  They waited while the guard called the main office, faxed a copy of t
he warrant, and received authorization. Gene chose not to point out that the team couldn't legally be denied access. The guard handed Jerri a key-card.

  "It's the whole fifth floor. There's no elevator, so you'll have to hoof it," the girl said. She smiled sympathetically at Gene, gestured toward the door to the stairwell and went back to texting.

  Doug and Marty helped Gene up the five flights of stairs. As they reached the fifth-floor landing, the stairs continued up to a roof-access door. Jerri swiped the key-card and opened the lower door. Occupying the floor-space equivalent to four large apartments sat rows of four-and-a-half foot high, four-foot deep, three-drawer filing cabinets. The room smelled of musty paper.

  "Oh, for the love of Christ," Paul said to no one in particular. "More piles of papers to root through. Your guys' job sucks."

  The files were well organized and well labeled, so it took less than ten minutes to find the records for the methadone clinic. The overhead lights weren't that bright, and although a rectangle of orange streetlight beamed through each of the three east-facing windows, they just reinforced the gloom. Carl pulled out files and handed them off at random. There were no chairs, so they leaned against filing cabinets while they flipped through records.

  "Okay," Carl said. "It looks like the full clinic records are in these six cabinets, with patient records in these three right here." He patted the cabinet closest to him. "We either need to lug all of them downstairs or bring a scanner up."

  "I vote for bringing a scanner up," Marty said. "Why the hell don't they have this shit on microfiche?"

  "Fine by me," Doug said. Gene's foot wasn't broken, and he could walk on it if he had to, but it hurt like heck to do it. One quality scanner brought up sounded much better than dozens of trips down.

  "Does anyone smell smoke?" Carl paused at the filing cabinets and sniffed the air.

  "Yeah." Marty said as he walked to the west wall. Wispy tendrils climbed from under the baseboard. As he passed a window, a small glint of light shone from the top of the building next door. As Gene turned toward it, Marty tackled him. The window exploded inward. The unmistakable sound of a high-velocity ricochet was the only indication that a bullet was the culprit.

  "TAKE COVER!" Marty yelled, turning his dive into a roll. Windows shattered and bullets thudded into filing cabinets while the team dove to the floor. Glass rained down on them.

  Smoke poured in, faster now.

  "We're taking fire!" Jerri yelled into the COM.

  "Calling 911," Sam chimed in.

  "Stay down!" Gene yelled as he moved to the door and shouldered it open. The stairwell was clear of smoke. "Let's go!" He limped downward on one crutch with his pistol leading the way.

  He rounded the half-landing to the fourth floor, caught a glimpse of a waiting silhouette, and ducked back. Automatic weapon fire spattered off the concrete wall, sending jagged chips of concrete into the air. Gene fired several shots down the stairs to discourage pursuit and retreated back up the stairs.

  He heard the fire roaring on the other side of the wall, and more automatic fire slapped against the upper landing. "Can't go that way!" he yelled and pushed Doug back toward the fifth-floor storage area.

  They dropped to hands and knees to avoid the smoke and crawled to the rest of the team. "There's a gunman in the stairwell, and the third floor is on fire." Gene kept his voice calm and under control.

  Marty filled in the details. "The fire escape is on the west side of the building. It and the roof are both covered by a sniper." His face looked grim. "We're trapped, and fucking Renner is missing."

  "So's my gun," Carl added.

  "Fire trucks are en route," Sam announced. "SWAT teams are scrambling."

  "He's missing," Gene said. It wasn't a question.

  "He's not here," Marty continued, "and Sam can't reach him on the COM. The son-of-a-bitch set us up, Gene."

  Bright yellow flames licked out of the west wall where the first wisps of smoke had come from. The smoke was three feet from the floor and lowering. The room stank of burning insulation. Jerri looked dumbstruck. "We're going to die here."

  Doug closed his eyes. "Our only chance is to rush the gunman on the stairs." He opened his eyes. "Maybe I can buy time for the rest of you to take him out." He checked the magazine in his gun and crawled toward the door.

  "No need for heroics," Renner's voice crackled over the COM. "The sniper's down. The fire escape's clear. Move your asses!"

  Carl yanked a drawer out of a filing cabinet. "We've got to get the files out!" he yelled. He took a deep breath, stood, and ran to the north wall. He threw the drawer into the window. The glass shattered. Most of the papers plummeted with the drawer sixty feet to the ground, while the rest fluttered away in the cold January air.

  He did his best baseball slide back to the filing cabinets. He dropped below the smoke level and sucked in air. "Help me!" he cried, yanking out the next drawer.

  Marty motioned for Gene and Jerri to get to the fire escape, then yanked out a patient-record drawer and ran after Carl.

  The window that led to the fire escape was in flames. Gene dove through a wall of heat and slammed against the black-painted railing. The hard metal did its job and stopped him from plummeting five stories to his death. He did his best to slow Jerri and Doug as they flew through in turn. "Marty! Carl! There's no time! Get the heck out of there!" He sprinted down the fire escape stairs as fast as he could go, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  "GO! GO! GO!" Marty yelled, shoving Carl in front of him. After a second trip, they'd saved what files they could, but the air in the room was changing from smoke to flame. The west wall leading to the fire escape was a mass of fire. He yelled into the COM, "Gene! The fire escape's cut off!" Marty took the lead, and they crawled to the stairwell door. He pushed it open. Half a flight down, the stairs were an inferno. The air was thick with the smell of lighter fluid.

  They covered their mouths and bolted upstairs. Smoke stung their eyes and seared their lungs. Marty threw his shoulder against the roof exit, and the pair stumbled out into the blessedly cold air. The tar at their feet blistered from the heat beneath, and acrid smoke extended the building's shape upward into the cold night sky. For the moment, Marty and Carl stood in the eye of the storm.

  Marty spun and looked for any way down. The closest building was thirty feet away. The west side of the building was engulfed in flames. The staccato crackling of bursting tar bubbles rippled across the roof's surface. "Carl. I…This is going to be a fucking shitty way to die."

  Gene hit the ground at a dead sprint, adrenaline masking the brutal pain in his foot. The fire escape was a lost cause, which meant that Marty and Carl's only chance was the stairwell. He rounded the front of the building and saw fire trucks in the distance. They crawled and blared their way through traffic. Too late.

  "WHERE'S THAT CHOPPER?" he screamed.

  "En route," Sam replied, her voice as calm as ever.

  He yanked open the front door and ran in, weapons-ready, Doug and Jerri right behind him. The guard sat in her chair with her head lolled to the side. A small dark circle in the middle of her forehead belied the seriousness of the wound. The small splatter of blood and brains on the wall told the rest of the story. In her right hand, her cell phone buzzed for attention.

  Gene ran across the room and slammed his shoulder into the stairwell door. A small gas can sat at the base of the stairs. Gene sprinted up three steps at a time, and as soon as he rounded the second-floor landing, he saw the arsonist.

  Officer Mullins of the NYPD, who had greeted them with the warrant thirty minutes before, had a submachine-gun in one hand and a bottle of charcoal lighter fluid in the other. He was coaxing the fire lower with squirts from the bottle when he heard Gene pound up behind him.

  He spun to bring his gun to bear, but Gene's was up and aimed. Gene double-tapped him center-mass, then shot him in the face as he ran past. He followed the thin trail of burning liquid around the corner.

  At the
third floor, the stairwell was awash with flames. He could feel the air as it sucked past him from the lower floors and fed the conflagration above. "Sam!" He threw an arm up to shield his face from the heat, but knew no one could get through that much fire. "Get that helicopter to the roof, now!"

  "Working on it."

  He sprinted down the stairs. Doug and Jerri dragged Mullins' body toward the lobby. "Marty! Carl! Where are you?" A crash from above was his only answer.

  * * *

  On the roof, all Carl could hear was the roar of flames and the cracking of super-heated wood. The viscous, sticky tar sucked at his shoes. He backpedaled away as the western part of the roof continued to cave in, Marty half holding him up and half dragging him backward by his shirt collar. The clatter as the fire escape collapsed was deafening.

  Marty screamed in his ear, barely audible over the roaring flames. "I think I'd rather jump than burn!"

  Carl turned his back to the fire and looked over the edge. It was a long way down to the hard street below. A gawking crowd was already forming. There must be dozens of cameras down there, he thought.

  "Me, too," he shouted back. "But I'm not jumping. It's one thing for my kids to know their daddy's dead. I'm sure as hell not going to let them watch me die on YouTube."

  "I won't let that happen, Carl."

  A small object landed in the sticky tar next to Carl's foot. It was a brass baseball nested in a thin, fishnet pouch. The pouch was tied to a long, drawstring-like rope. Carl looked up through the wall of smoke and could see a long, white shape that stretched upward and away. It danced in the wind like a kite's tail.

  Carl grabbed the string and dragged it hand over hand as fast as he could while Marty picked up the slack. It was far too thin to support Carl's weight, not to mention Marty's, but whatever else it was, it was hope. The wispy, white shape revealed itself through the smoke as a string of bed sheets, blankets, and towels, all tied and retied into a long, thick rescue line. There were even loops for hand and foot-holds at the bottom. Still hauling, Carl started to giggle.