Alpha Kill - 03 (22 page)

“Gotta go, Yance.” Venn hung up and made his way back to the others. He wanted to get moving, to keep some momentum going. Soon the New York FBI guys would want to talk to him, and that would slow him up.

Venn drew Lieutenant Brady aside. “Listen,” he said. “What you asked me earlier, about why I was so interested in Brogan’s death. You were right. I wasn’t just being supportive of Beth. Brogan was tied in with a case I’m investigating. And now it seems Drake is, too.”

“Uh huh.”

“So I’m asking if you’ll give me a little latitude. I’ve told you everything that went down here just now. Let me get on with my case. I’ll do the interviews and the statements and the paperwork later. And I promise you, if I discover anything more about why Brogan was killed, or how it relates to Drake, I’ll let you know.”

“Sure you will.” Brady didn’t quite roll her eyes, but her tone suggested it. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“Appreciate it.” Venn went over to Beth and Harmony. “Come on. We’re going back to the office. There are camp beds there you can rest up on, Beth.”

Harmony nodded past his shoulder. “Jeep’s pretty shot up.”

He turned and looked. The Jeep was barely visible though all the crime scene people swarming over it.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Damn.”

He approached Brady again. “One more request. You got a squad car you can spare?”

*

T
hey sat round the office once again, Venn and Harmony and Beth and Fil, drinking coffee and caffeinated soda and working their way through a colossal pile of sandwiches Fil had ordered in from the all-night deli round the corner when he’d heard they were on their way back.

Venn was surprised and pleased to see that Beth had an appetite. In fact, she seemed ravenous, wolfing down the pastrami subs as if she’d been starved for a week. He’d half-heartedly tried to persuade her to lie down and rest, but she wouldn’t stand for it.

Although her face was drawn, her eyes haunted, and although she’d clearly been shaken anew by the events outside her apartment, Venn detected a steeliness in Beth which had been absent for a long time. She no longer conveyed the impression that she could fall apart at any moment.

A large whiteboard covered part of one wall of the office, and Venn drew three circles on it in different colored marker pens. Inside the circle he wrote, respectively, Drake, Paul and Clinic.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s link them up.”

He drew connecting lines between the Drake and Paul circles, and Paul and Clinic. Then a broken line between Drake and Clinic.

He tapped the line. “This is the key,” he said.

“Assuming it exists,” Harmony mumbled around a mouthful of corn chips.

“If it doesn’t,” said Venn, “then we’re looking at a whopper of a coincidence.”

Fil got up and traced his finger along the Drake-Paul line. “How about this one?” he said. “We’re assuming, I guess, that Drake and his cronies killed Dr Brogan deliberately, that it wasn’t just some random crime. So what’s the link?”

Beth stirred. “Those flash disks,” she said. “The ones from my apartment.”

“Yeah. I forgot about those,” Venn admitted. He took them out of his pocket and handed them to her. Beth sorted through them on her palm, placing most of them aside until she was left with four.

“These are the ones Paul gave me,” she said. “Let me use a computer.”

She wheeled her chair over to the nearest workstation, where the desktop computer was already booted up, and inserted the first of the drives.

The others hovered at her shoulders. Venn saw a long list of Excel spreadsheets. Beth began to open them, one by one. The array of figures meant nothing to Venn.

“They’re data from a research study Paul was supervising,” said Beth. “Prevalence stats on different forms of psychiatric disorder in the Bronx. Nothing especially relevant to us.”

The second drive contained Word documents and PDFs, which Beth determined were various drafts of a review paper Paul had been writing for the journal
Annals of Psychiatry
. Again, it didn’t look to be related to their inquiry.

The third drive contained far more files, again mostly word-processing documents.

“These are reports,” Beth said. “Case studies, but also court assessments. Paul’s redacted them so that the names aren’t shown – he always was a stickler for patient confidentiality. Scores of them, going back a decade.”

Venn looked away from the monitor. Something was nagging at his memory.

“Hang on,” he said. “Paul only took up his current post three, four years ago, right?”

“Yes,” said Beth.

“So some of these reports predate his time in New York.”

“Right.”

The nagging in his head was turning into a shout.

“And he worked in Chicago, before coming here.”

Fil looked up, met Venn’s eyes. “Ah, man,” he said.

Venn searched his memory quickly. “Beth, see if there are any reports from eight years ago. Even better, from seven and a half. Say the spring of 2007.”

She scrolled through the list. “Yes, here’s one. A big file, by the look of it.”

Venn peered over her shoulder. The report was set out in dry, legalistic terminology.

Phrases jumped out at Venn.

Convicted on two counts of first-degree murder.

Two concurrent life sentences.

Displaying features suggestive of psychosis, including third-person auditory hallucinations and persecutory delusions of a bizarre content.

“Hot damn,” said Venn. “That’s Gene Drake.”

The others looked at him.

He said, “Fil. See if you can get into the online archives of one of the big Chicago daily newspapers. The
Tribune
or the
Sun-Times
, one of those. Around April or May 2007. Look for mentions of Drake.”

Fil sat at the adjacent computer and tapped away, the others crowding around him this time.

“Yep, here we go,” he said.

Killer Drake Loses Appeal
, said the front-page headline.

“That’s it,” said Venn. “His lawyer lodged an appeal on the grounds that Drake had schizophrenia, which was undiagnosed at the time of his conviction. The stress of the trial and the life sentences supposedly triggered an acute psychotic episode. The symptoms were so convincing that the court ruled he could appeal against his sentence. It wouldn’t have changed the conviction, but it would have meant he’d go to a treatment facility rather than remain at Horn Creek. I guess he might have escaped more easily from the new place. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, because I’d done my part, putting him away, and I couldn’t care less what happened to him after that. But I remember reading that the psychiatrist called by the prosecution to provide an assessment wiped the floor with the shrink the defense hired. Basically, the psychiatrist said it was all bullshit, that drake was faking his symptoms. The court believed him, the life sentences were upheld, and Drake stayed at Horn Creek.”

As if on cue, Fil scrolled down, and there was the name:
Dr Paul Brogan
.

“So Brogan blows Drake’s last shot at getting out of Horn Creek,” said Harmony. “Drake harbors a major grudge, and the first thing he does when he escapes is track Brogan down and kill him.”

“Not track him down,” said Venn. “Drake already knew exactly where Brogan lived. He headed straight here from Illinois. Must’ve done, because he only escaped last night.”

Harmony dropped into one of the office chairs and swayed this way and that, looking deflated. “But that means this
is
all a big coincidence. Whatever Brogan’s involvement with this clinic business is, Drake happened to be after him for a totally different reason.”

Venn said: “I don’t know.”

He began to pace the office, forcing himself to take it slowly, so that he could think.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll ask questions, and you guys give me an answer. First: how did he know where Paul Brogan lived? Most doctors keep their home addresses even more private than us cops. I’d imagine psychiatrists in particular.”

“Some connection on the outside,” said Harmony.

“Like who? Drake’s a shrewd bastard, and a cut above your average gangbanger, but he isn’t mobbed up. He’s never had friends in high places. Who would he get to track down a doctor, especially one who’s moved away from the city?”

“He had almost eight years to work on it,” said Fil. “It’s possible.”

“All right.” Venn turned, began pacing back. “Let’s grant that it’s possible Drake bribed somebody, or whatever, to track down Brogan’s address. Next question. How did he escape from Horn Creek?”

“Like you said,” Harmony pointed out. “The power supply was sabotaged.”

“And my FBI guy thinks it was an inside job,” said Venn. “One of the guards. Now, what would it take for a guard to risk something like that? Trigger a full-scale breakout from a maximum-security facility?”

Fil said, “Money.”

“Exactly. And a
lot
of money. Prison guards aren’t exactly paid a king’s ransom, but it would still take a hell of a big sum to convince one of them to put his neck on the line in such a way. There’d need to be sizable up-front payment, too, to seal the deal. Now, Drake didn’t have access to a fortune. His assets were seized after he was busted. Even if he’d hidden away a stash, the total amount he’d gotten away with from all the raids and heists we suspected him of wouldn’t amount to all that much. Thousands, probably. No more than that.”

Beth shook her head. “It all sounds pretty tenuous, Venn.” It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d been at the computer and going through Brogan’s drives.

“Plus,” Venn went on, warming to his theme, “there’s all the other stuff. Rigging the explosives to take out the generator. That takes co-ordination, and precise planning, and expertise. One guard isn’t going to be able to do all of that. And before you suggest it may have been a network of guards – that increases the money required, because they’ll all demand to be paid.”

Harmony: “So you don’t think it was an inside job.”

“Wrong.” Venn paused in his pacing. “I think it was both. Somebody on the inside, acting as a go-between, maybe triggering the explosion on the night and sabotaging the fuel supply for the reserve generator. But also someone, or a whole bunch of people, on the outside. Not only setting the whole thing up, but paying for it, too.”

“Maybe.” Harmony stood up, cracking her knuckles in frustration. “What a night.”

Venn thought for a moment, then said, “I’ve got an idea.”

He took out his phone and dialed Rockford, Illinois.

This time, Yancy took almost five minutes to answer. “Yeah, Joe.” He sounded exhausted, but kind of upbeat too. “Christ, but those New York feds are up their own asses. Talked to me like I was some rube sitting here with a cloud of hayseed drifting around my head.”

“Well, you
were
calling from Rockford,” Venn said. “We here in the big city sometimes forget that you’ve even got phones out there.”

“Spoken like a true class traitor,” said Yancy. “What you got for me, anyhow?”

“A question,” said Venn. “When I called you this morning, you said Drake had a few visitors at Horn Creek over the years.”

“Uh huh. Shyster lawyers looking to scam him by promising they could get his conviction overturned if he hired them. Prisoners’ rights activists. Penal reform nutcases. That kind of visitor.”

“Do you have a list available?”

“Yeah, there’ll be a log somewhere. You got somebody you’re looking at?”

“Nobody in particular,” said Venn. “But I’ve got an idea.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me now, right?” Yancy said.

“Afraid so.”

“You’re such a tease. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll have someone email you the list.”

“Thanks.”

The others had caught only Venn’s side of the conversation, but it was enough for them to look at him quizzically. He said, “The breakout might have been coordinated through a visitor masquerading as somebody else.”

For a moment, he thought Beth was sick. She had started to topple sideways in her chair. Venn lunged forward, but Harmony, beside her, caught her first.

Then Venn saw her red, barely open eyes, and realized she was falling asleep where she sat.

“Come on,” he said, guiding her to her feet. “You’re getting some rest now, whether you like it or not.”

She didn’t resist this time. Harmony took over and helped Beth into one of the side offices, where a camp bed was stored.

Venn sat in front of one of the computers, gazing at the screen, feeling exhaustion start to tug at him, too.

Ten minutes and a tall mug of strong coffee later, he heard a soft ping as a new email arrived in his inbox. It was from FBI headquarters in Rockford, with the visitor list he’d requested.

“Let’s check these out,” he said, forwarding the file to Fil.

There were more than the few names Yancy had suggested. Over his eight years of incarceration, Drake had been visited no less than thirty-seven times, by twenty-nine individuals.

Running a check on each name would be laborious, but it gave them something to keep busy on. Harmony rejoined them and they divided the list of names three ways, and got to work.

*

F
orty minutes later, when the text on the screen was threatening to blur before Venn’s eyes, Fil said: “Got something.”

Venn rolled his chair over, glad for the distraction. Fil pointed at the monitor.

“This guy. Charles Vincenzo. He’s described as an outreach worker for USPRO. That’s the United States Prison Reform Organization.”

“Never heard of it,” said Venn.

“Neither have I. It’s a small outfit, a charity with no government funding. Looks innocuous enough - they’re not militant or anything, not involved in pickets. They simply visit prisons and interview selected inmates about the conditions they’re experiencing, then issue reports to the prison authorities.”

“Who presumably stick them straight in the shredder.”

“Probably,” agreed Fil. “This Vincenzo visited Drake twice in the past year. Once in March, and again at the end of August, around six weeks ago. The file your FBI guy sent helpfully itemized all materials that exchanged hands during each visit, as well as giving the stated reason for the meeting. Vincenzo handed Drake a questionnaire at the first visit, then returned to collect it at the follow up.”