by Allen Wyler
She punched four digits into the security lock for the doctors’ lounge. The deadbolt released with a metallic snap and she opened the door. At the coffee bar, she filled a Styrofoam cup with steaming water, selected a bag of green tea, then scanned the area for a place to sit by herself to think. The lounge consisted of three round tables, three dictation booths, several easy chairs, two couches, and a large TV. Other than two internists at the middle table, no one else was there.
She slid into a dictation booth and used the phone to call Tom McCarthy’s back line. It rang six times before clicking over to voice mail. She tried his office’s main number. Same response. Strange, she thought, he should be working at his desk this afternoon. If not, one of his office staff should have answered.
Her anxiety ratcheted up a notch. She tried to brush it off as mild paranoia but couldn’t. Not after all the strange, unexplainable things that had happened to her lately.
She chose an easy chair furthest from the chatting internists and set her tea on the side table. How ironic, she thought, to be sitting in the same chair as two weeks ago when it all started.
She is sipping tea, mulling over Baker’s strange memory symptoms when Tom McCarthy walks in. Rumpled pale blue scrubs over a lanky, six-foot frame, short, brown hair streaked with gray, a face that gives him a five-year advantage over his rumored age. Everything about him appeals to her. Even his little physical imperfections like the faint scar on his chin—perhaps a playground injury from childhood—and the irregularity in the bridge of his nose.
She knows the gossip about the sudden death of his wife six months before he relocated to Seattle and that he lives in a townhouse on Queen Anne Hill. And, of course, the big one: that he’s seeing someone.
She has the perfect excuse to introduce herself. After all, Dr. Ripley had suggested he consult on Baker. Leaving her tea, she walks over and extends her hand. “Dr. McCarthy? Sarah Hamilton.”
He shakes her hand. Unlike most males, who always check out her figure, he holds eye contact.
“If you have a moment, there’s a patient, Herb Ripley, and I would like you to get your opinion on.”
“Sure. Let me grab some coffee, and I’ll be right over.” He returns his attention to pouring a cup of coffee.
On the way back to the table it hits her. He knows where she’s sitting. Meaning he noticed her as he came in.
That initial encounter had been two weeks ago. Since then they had come to know each other a little. Professionally. Now she couldn’t stop thinking of him. More to the point, she hadn’t been so attracted to a man since Jeff. But the grapevine has him “involved” with someone like Kate, one of those K-beginning names. Not a cutesy cheerleader name, something more sophisticated.
Crap! Why do I always fall for the unavailable ones?
She felt a bit sorry for herself because the dating game for a female resident was problematic. Not only was she a slave to a call schedule from hell, but being a physician also had liabilities. Some men felt her profession one-upped their careers, making them feel inferior. Others viewed a female physician as a conquest. So her dating field seemed to narrow to other professionals who weren’t threatened. Still, the one thing disabling her social life was the residual damage from the Jeff affair. That was huge.
A girlfriend had once suggested that her training in psychiatry should give her the insight to easily deal with emotional fallout. But it didn’t. Like everyone else, she became mired in the remorse quicksand that came from playing the what if game. And it fueled her 2:00 AM bouts of insomnia during which she reviewed in excruciating detail every damn bad decision she’d made in life. Idiotic things from ignoring her mother’s warnings to stay away from hot stove burners to dating a married man.
The same questions looped endlessly through her mind. What if I’d never rotated on Jeff’s service? What if I’d had enough control to not sleep with him? After all, she knew the odds, having scoffed at other women who became involved with married men. How did she ever con herself into believing it’d be different for her? Jeff was one of those mistakes she’d never confide to Dad. Mom might understand; Dad wouldn’t.
Now she couldn’t stop thinking about Tom. About the way he talked through problems, the way he tilted his head when he was thinking. Whenever they talked, she fought the urge to reach out and touch him. She wanted to spend time together, have dinner with him, learn his life story, feel his kiss on that spot on her neck that turned her on …
Like Jeff had turned her on.
“Get over it” was the most common advice she gave to patients who dysfunctionally clung to mistakes. Not in those exact words, but with one that essentially had the same meaning. To move on with life you had to find a way to get over guilt and remorse. With her patients, she worked through a tailored progression of logic to eventually lead them to resolution. But in the final analysis, the message always became the same: Get over it.
But no matter how hard she tried, one mistake haunted her:
Up on the table, heels against cold metal stirrups, a white sheet draped over her knees, a touch of Versed to calm the senses. Then the sound of that damn suction the doctor purposely hid from sight. Then, the awful sound of as the beginnings of a human life dislodged from a warm, dark, protected, nurturing environment to be hurled along a cold plastic tube and splatter against the inside of a disposable bottle.
The two internists were gone, she realized, leaving the lounge empty except for her and the steaming cup of tea. She trapped the bag in a spoon, suspended it over the cup to strangle it with the string, and squeezed out the last drops of water.
Should she walk over to Tom’s office to see if he’s in and just not answering the phone? Or let it go for now and call him again after the holiday weekend? Or maybe wait until after she talked to Bobbie Baker and then call him? Hopefully after talking to Bobbie she would have news to share with him, like who had given her the phony prescription.
10
MCCARTHY DIDN’T KNOW much about guns other than load, aim, and pull the trigger. He’d never owned one. Never planned on owning one. Hated them. What little he did know was taught to him at age thirteen during a visit to his uncle, a trooper with the California Highway Patrol. Uncle Charles took him to a firing range where they practiced plugging 9 millimeter holes in paper targets fifty feet away. All that did for Tom was make his index finger sore from pulling the trigger.
Tom held his breath, aimed, slowly squeezed the trigger. The bullet ricocheted off something metallic—a pipe maybe—and Sikes dropped down below the tiles.
He purposely aimed high, hoping a round or two might back Sikes off long enough for him to crawl to another office and call 9-1-1. He knew if he made any sound, Sikes could easily pinpoint his position from below and shoot up through the ceiling, killing him as he had done to Washington. So the difficulty rested on moving to relative safety silently and quickly.
As he started crawling, he heard Sikes talking and paused to listen. Tom realized Sikes was describing him to someone else. He couldn’t hear the other voice, so he figured Sikes was on a phone or radio with other operatives. Which raised a scary point: If Sikes had several people with him, they must consider him dangerous. Jesus, his chances of surviving this mess dropped even lower. How many people were there?
A sinking feeling formed in his gut. Initially, the gun had made him feel safer, more protected. Now it felt like a liability, reminding him of various movie scenes, all ending in disaster. Like the final moments in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Butch and Sundance are trapped in an adobe building with about a thousand federales shoulder to shoulder across the roofs and in the windows and doors of all the surrounding buildings, their guns aimed at the only exit.
He realized he needed to get out of here before Sikes’s men could organize a sweep of the building.
How?
For the first time since climbing up here he glanced around to figure out which direction to crawl. With only slivers of light from the l
ight fixture seams, he could make out a dizzying maze of pipes and ductwork but not the main walls. But after a moment a pattern became apparent. The building—a simple rectangular footprint—was built in the early sixties when most physicians practiced solo or in small groups. Although the lower floors had subsequently been remodeled into single large offices, the ninth floor remained multiple offices to either side of a central hall that ran the length of the building. With this in mind, the pattern of light fixtures began to make sense. Round recessed cans formed rows, sprouting out to form a long line of rectangular fixtures. The line of rectangular fluorescents ran down the hall while the round incandescent fixtures served the individual offices. That put him directly above the hall. If he followed the long row to the left, he would reach the west wall, where a right turn would take him to the northwest corner, directly over a small janitorial closet. Without a master key, Sikes couldn’t open that door. At least not for a while.
Okay, then what? Sikes’s team would search every inch of building. Eventually someone would find the means to open the closet.
Well, the west stairway was across the hall from the closet. With a bit of luck, he might be able to dart to the stairway unnoticed, drop down a floor, find an open office, and the rest would be easy: Call the police and hide until help arrived.
Great, having a reasonable plan of action made him feel better.
IT TOOK FIVE long minutes of surprisingly hard work to slither silently along the suspension system to the northwest corner, a distance he could’ve walked in less than a minute. Panting from heat and exertion, he paused to catch his breath. The suffocating stale air reeked of dust and insulation. It was much darker here too. Probably because the closet lights were off.
With Washington’s Maglite clamped between his teeth, he pried up a tile with his office key, leaned forward, and swept the narrow beam of light around the closet. A gray metal janitorial cart was directly below him, and two mops in galvanized rolling buckets were propped against the west wall. The east wall was bare, and floor-to-ceiling metal shelves full of Kleenex boxes, toilet covers, and other paper products lined the north wall. The air smelled of stale mop, Lysol, and chlorine.
If he could lower himself onto the cart … He turned around, slid feet first into the opening, dropped his legs, and lowered himself slowly down. He estimated his feet were about to hit the cart when he heard a key rattle the deadbolt. With one huge effort, he hoisted his legs back into the crawl space but didn’t have time to replace the tile before the door opened. The room light clicked on. He froze, prone on the tiles, hands still clutching the steel T bars. The missing tile would be obvious as hell if anyone looked up. He knew he should move from the opening, but couldn’t risk making a sound.
He held his breath and waited.
And listened.
Someone muttered words he couldn’t understand, and then the light went off, followed by a click of the door latch.
McCarthy sucked a deep breath to calm his nerves. His hands were cramping but he didn’t move. Finally, he let go and counted one one-hundred, two one-hundred, on up to thirty while opening and closing his hands to relax the cramps. A nearby pipe gurgled. The air seemed to thicken.
Having someone check the closet so soon was alarming. He suspected it meant that hospital security was now assisting Sikes in the search. It also lowered the odds of escaping the building unnoticed. Not only that, but if a they searched the floors and didn’t find him, they’d probably circle back to look more carefully in ceiling. He had to make a break for the stairway now.
He started through the same process of lowering his legs through the opening, but faster this time. As his toes touched the cart, he slowly released more and more weight, testing the cart for balance. His arms fatigued, forcing him to let go of the struts. As soon as he did, he dropped into a crouch, but this caused the cart to roll left, forcing him to shift weight in a weird sort of dance. For a moment he struggled to maintain balance and teetered on the edge of toppling over before the cart settled down.
For a moment he didn’t move, making sure the cart was stable. He turned on the Maglite. He was facing the east wall, the door to his right, the metal shelves to his left well out of reach, especially with the narrow platform so wobbly and disastrously close to tipping over with only a slight shift of his weight.
Now what? There seemed to be no way to get off the cart without crashing it over.
He swept the flashlight over the area again, searching for a solution.
If the cart fell over, not only would the noise be horrendous, but he could seriously injured.
Think!
If by some miracle he could move the cart closer to the shelving could he climb down? Was shelving bolted to the wall or just up against it? If so, would it hold his weight without collapsing? Got to do something; can’t just stay here.
He reached out as far he dared, but could barely brush a fingertip against a shelf.
Jump and try to grab the shelving?
Doubted he had the moves.
He looked down at the top of the cart, shifted his weight slightly to give himself a half-inch advantage and tried for the shelf again. This time he snagged the bottom lip with two fingers. He hesitated, doubting the wisdom of what he was about to do, but saw no alternative. He tugged gently. The wheels squeaked as the cart inched toward the shelf. It was enough to allow him a better grip. He gave another tug, this time harder. And again the wheels squeaked and the cart lurched another inch. He repositioned himself, tugged harder, and pulled the cart against the shelves. He took hold of two vertical struts, put one foot on a shelf, and used the foot other to push the cart away, then quickly climbed down to the floor. For a moment he paused to massage the creases the struts left in his fingers.
He put his ear against the door and listened for sound from the hall, but he couldn’t hear anything through the thick wood. He checked his cell phone, but as he suspected, there was no signal at this end of the building, a notorious a dead zone.
Okay, so what were his options? Stay here and hope to hell they didn’t return? There was no reason for Sikes to suspect he had made it out of the building yet, making it likely they’d search this floor again. He had to take the chance and try to reach the stairs. Once there it’d only be a few flights down to where a hall connected with the larger building complex.
Carefully he turned the doorknob. To his surprise the latch made no sound. He cracked the door far enough to peek out but could only see a narrow swatch of the hall. At least that area was clear. Then he heard a male voice from down the hall. He shut the door but held the knob to keep the latch from clicking. He stood still, breathing hard, heart racing, praying they wouldn’t come back here. Very slowly, he let the latch reseat into the jamb and let go. He decided to wait two minutes—by the clock—before risking another look.
Leaning against cold concrete wall he tried to think. Classified documents? DARPA? What the hell was Sikes talking about?
11
“SECURITY, MAY I help you?”
Sikes said into the phone, “There’s been a shooting. Suite nine-twenty, Magnuson Pavilion. Send an officer. Hurry.”
He hung up, figuring that like most nonprofessional security organizations they’d probably take their own sweet time responding. And as soon as someone did arrive and saw the situation, they’d freak and call in the real cops. By then, enough time would’ve passed that Womack and Lewis should have McCarthy. Sure, it’d save time to call the Seattle cops directly, but the advantage of doing it this way would be flattering the rent-a-cops. They’d eat up the fact that a government agent allowed them to make the obvious decision. No one’s ego would be bruised. Besides, you never knew who you might need as a friend. Bottom line: This strategy gave his crew the most time.
Maybe, he reflected, over the past few years he’d learned something. A series of bruised egos was the primary reason his rocketing military career went sideways three years ago. That, and beating the holy shit out of a sm
art-mouthed OCS thirty-day wonder at Fort Bragg. After that clusterfuck any dream of a Pentagon posting and higher pay grade vanished. He’d been reassigned to a small special detail under Cunningham, where he knew he would stay until he could muster out with full retirement benefits.
In three more years his twenty years would be up and he could start pulling down a good pension, drink beer in the sun out on the Gulf, fish whenever he wanted. Or maybe even partner with his brother-in-law to start that charter fishing service they’d been jawing about all these years. To top it off, he could earn some extra bucks working security at the nearby Indian casino. Maybe tour the country every other year in his RV that, so far, spent most of the time in the shed. They could spend a summer in northern Michigan, winter in Tucson. Yeah, life outside of the military would be sweet!
He would build that house Doreen selected from the Palm Harbor catalog: the Magnolia. A three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,584-square-foot beauty. A solid prefab, not a trailer trash single-wide like Dad’s. They had already paid off the lot in full. A sweet acre and a half he picked up on the cheap in the months after a hurricane devastated the area. It was just a tad down the road from Gulfport, smack in the middle of the Redneck Rivera. Even before the hurricane, he knew that was where he wanted to retire. So when prices plummeted in the aftermath, he snapped it up for pennies on the real value. He smiled at the wisdom of his decision.
He glanced at the phone still in hand, dreading the next call to Colonel Cunningham. How could he explain the total fuck up here in the office? Killing the civilian, well, that could be explained. But Washington’s death? Even if he sold the story that McCarthy shot him, there was always the question of how McCarthy got the drop on them in the first place. His mission was to drain intel from McCarthy and then, if necessary, kill him. Not the other way around.