DIAGNOSIS: ATTRACTION (15 page)

He returned to his seat, and she pulled up a chair next to his, reading the message he’d started writing.

From Matthew Delano to Detective Thomas Harrison:

You may be aware of a murder and fire in Harford County at a mansion that was being used by mob boss Derek Lang as a house of prostitution.

He paused and looked at Elizabeth as she kept reading.

An investigation of the scene will determine that Lang was shot by one of his own men, someone named...

“Tony,” she supplied.

“No last name?”

“Not that Lang said.”

“Okay.”

She went back to reading.

Tony, who was shot in turn by another one of Lang’s operatives, a man named Southwell, who subsequently ran into the basement. I also believe you will find, when you examine Southwell’s gun, that it was the same weapon used to kill Polly Kramer, who was sheltering Elizabeth Forester, the woman known as Jane Doe when she was brought into Memorial Hospital suffering from amnesia.

He stopped and looked at her. “All right so far?”

“Yes.”

As a social worker for the city of Baltimore, Elizabeth Forester had discovered a pattern of abuse involving Derek Lang. When he learned she was investigating him, he sent men to apprehend her. As they were pursuing her through the city, she was involved in a one-car accident. She was taken to Memorial Hospital suffering from amnesia. When she could not be identified, a nurse at the hospital, Polly Kramer, volunteered to take Elizabeth home.

I became involved in the case because I was the physician on call. Lang’s men tracked Elizabeth down at Mrs. Kramer’s house. Elizabeth was able to escape, but Mrs. Kramer was unfortunately killed by Lang’s man, Southwell.

He stopped again. “Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Now comes the tricky part.”

“Because there’s no way we’re going to betray Donna Martinson and the women we rescued,” Elizabeth supplied.

Matt nodded.

Lang was trying to kill Elizabeth because, through her job as a social worker, she had discovered that he was forcing women into prostitution, and he wanted to keep her from acting on that information. We are confident that the results of the ballistics test will clear up the questions about Mrs. Kramer’s murder.

He signed it
Matthew Delano, MD.

“I guess we have to wait for a response before we can do anything else,” he said.

“Do you think that will get us off the hook?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

He continued silently.
The problem is that we can’t give away the location of this safe house or the identities of the women.

Yeah. That could be a deal breaker.

* * *

T
HEY
DIDN
’
T
HAVE
long to wait for a reply.
A demand came back pretty quickly that Matt and Elizabeth surrender themselves.

They politely declined. And the detective must have expedited the ballistics test, because it was only six hours later that they were given confirmation that the same gun had killed both Polly and Tony. Once that was established, Harrison asked to meet them at a neutral location.

“He could be lying to us,” Elizabeth said. “On the TV shows, they don’t have any compunction about saying whatever it takes to get people into custody—or to confess.”

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting we have an advantage. We can sway his thinking.”

She gave Matt a worried look. “It didn’t work with Lang.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Do we know why?”

“Maybe because his own nasty image of himself was so much a part of him that he wouldn’t listen to anyone else.”

“I hope that’s true. And I hope it’s not true of Harrison.”

They negotiated through email for several hours and finally agreed to meet the detective early in the morning alone in the parking lot of a shopping center where they hoped they could make a quick getaway, if necessary.

* * *

M
ATT
AND
E
LIZABETH
said goodbye to the women they’d rescued and also Donna Martinson.

The women from The Mansion were still adjusting to their new freedom, but Donna took Elizabeth and Matt aside with a worried look on her face.

“Can you keep them out of any investigation?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Matt answered.

“But it might not be possible,” she countered.

“I think it is,” Matt said, praying that it was true. “In any case, we won’t be coming back here.”

They left Donna still looking worried.

In the car, Matt picked up on Elizabeth’s troubled thoughts. “We can only do our best.”

“Which better be good enough.”

On the way to the shopping center, they discussed how they would handle the detective.

“The first question is—can we trust him?” Elizabeth asked.

“I think he’s gotten a pretty good idea of what kind of people we are,” Matt answered.

“Not telepaths.”

He laughed. “No. Innocent victims caught in a mess they didn’t make. And he’s going to want to go to bat for us.”

“We hope.”

“We’re going to reinforce that.”

They stopped in an area where a few cars were parked and watched the place where they’d said they would meet.

Harrison kept his word and drove up alone in an unmarked car across from a fast-food restaurant.

Matt and Elizabeth made him wait for ten minutes before pulling up nose to tail with his vehicle.

The driver of each car rolled down his window so they could talk.

The detective began with “You know I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”

“We understand, and we appreciate it.”

“Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff if you’re innocent?”

“We told you Derek Lang was running a house of prostitution,” Matt said.

“And bringing women illegally into the Port of Baltimore,” the detective added.

Matt winced. He hadn’t disclosed that information, but Harrison had figured it out. “We were hoping to leave out that part.”

Elizabeth jumped into the conversation. “His death has stopped the traffic, and we don’t want to involve any of the women, but we want to make sure we’re not murder suspects. That’s why we’re meeting like this.”

Leave the women out of it,
Matt said, projecting the suggestion to the detective.
Leave the women out of it. They don’t have to be involved. Lang’s dead, and Delano and Forester were innocently involved.

He repeated the silent words over and over, and they watched the man’s face, both of them praying that he was going to come to the right conclusions.

“What exactly happened at Lang’s bordello last night?” Harrison asked.

Chapter Sixteen

The tricky question, Matt thought.

“We went to rescue the women. Lang caught us there. He tied Elizabeth up and started torturing her. He had the guy named Southwell take me away to the basement.”

“And how did you get away?”

“I was able to escape when the shooting started upstairs,” Matt said. “Elizabeth was tied up when one of Lang’s guards came in and shot him.”

“Why?” Harrison asked.

“No idea,” Matt answered.

We were there at the wrong time,
Matt silently added.
We must have walked into a dispute between Lang and one of his men. We were lucky to escape with our lives.

“I guess you were lucky to get out of there alive,” Harrison said, and Matt breathed out a little sigh. The guy was buying it.

“The guard named Tony shot Lang. Southwell shot Tony.”

“And how did you get away?”

“I untied Elizabeth, and we fled.”

“How did the fire start?”

Matt shook his head. “No idea.”

We were lucky to get out alive,
Matt repeated.
You don’t want to punish us for rescuing a bunch of women who were in a terrible situation through no fault of their own.

Harrison looked at Elizabeth. “You had amnesia. How did you get your memory back?”

“Bits and pieces started coming back to me.” She cleared her throat. “Dr. Delano helped me by using hypnosis. Finally I remembered enough to know about Lang.”

“And why didn’t you come to the police?”

“I’d seen Lang at a reception talking to a police official.”

Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “Which one?”

“I don’t remember.”

Harrison snorted. “Convenient.”

You know we’re good citizens. You want to help us, and Lang’s death closes the case,
Matt suggested.

“I think Lang’s death closes the case,” the detective said. “But I’d like an official statement from both of you about your involvement.”

“At the station house?” Matt asked.

“Yes.”

If we could just disappear, I’d go that route,
Matt said to Elizabeth.
But it’s kind of inconvenient not being able to get to our money.

And having a criminal investigation hanging over us.

Still he wished to hell he could read the man’s mind. This could be a trap, or it could be the key to getting them out of trouble, but they’d still have to dance around the part about the women.

They followed Harrison to the station house, agreeing on what they were going to say as they drove.

There was a bad moment when they went inside, and Harrison took them to separate rooms.

Matt saw the look of panic on Elizabeth’s face.

Just tell him what we agreed on. And if we have any questions, we can confer.

Harrison asked them each to write an account of what had happened since Elizabeth had crashed her car into a lamppost. He wrote about treating her, having Polly take her home, and Lang’s thugs coming after her.

And he silently checked in with her several times, seeing that she was writing a similar account without using exactly the same words.

The part with the women was tricky, but Elizabeth pled client confidentiality, and Matt said she had given him only minimal information about them.

* * *

H
ARRISON
CAME
IN
to read Matt’s account and ask a few questions.

“So we’re cleared of any involvement in Mrs. Kramer’s murder?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you for taking care of this.”

“I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being manipulated,” Harrison said.

Matt kept his features even. “We’ve just told you what happened to us.”

“Uh-huh. Are the two of you planning to stay in the Baltimore area?”

Matt hesitated. He had been thinking about what they had to do next, but he didn’t want to share that with the detective.

“I think we’re going to try to decompress,” he said. “But we haven’t made any firm plans.”

“And while you were with Elizabeth, the two of you hooked up.”

“Yeah,” Matt clipped out.
And I don’t want to discuss it.

To his relief, they were out of the police station a couple hours after they’d entered.

* * *

H
AROLD
G
ODDARD
HAD
checked his clipping service and his online sources four times day, looking for any item that might pertain to Matthew Delano and the woman named Jane Doe. He knew the doctor and his patient had disappeared after the woman who’d taken in “Jane” had been murdered.

He also scanned through the online version of the
Baltimore Sun
—where an interesting item caught his eye because it involved Dr. Delano. A crime boss named Derek Lang had been shot to death in a bordello he owned outside the city. One of his own men had turned on him, for unknown reasons. And another one had taken out the killer.

Interestingly he’d been using the same gun that had killed Polly Kramer, the nurse who had taken in Jane Doe. And there was another piece of information at the end of the story. The woman who had been known as Jane Doe was actually named Elizabeth Forester.

Harold went to his Solomon Clinic database and looked up the Forester woman. He wasn’t surprised to find out she was on the same list as Matthew Delano—the list of babies born as a result of fertility treatments by Dr. Solomon.

As he read that piece of information, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He’d been putting together men and women from the clinic, and here were two of them who had found each other all by themselves.

What were the odds of that? What were the implications? What were they going to do next?

He started digging for more information and found out where each of them lived, although he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to find them in separate dwellings.

They’d be together.

From the article it wasn’t clear exactly how they’d been involved with the crime boss, but it seemed they’d escaped from a dangerous situation.

What was their next move?

He didn’t know these people, but he had a good guess about what they were going to do. Swift and Branson had gone to Houma to investigate their backgrounds. He’d bet his government pension that Delano and Forester would do the same. Did he have to kill them? Or could he head them off?

Perhaps his first move was to send someone to search her house and his apartment.

* * *

“I
GUESS
WE
CAN
get back to normal life,” Elizabeth murmured, as they headed for the car.

“What’s normal?”

“If you put it that way, I don’t know. But we should start by telling Donna Martinson that she and the women are in the clear.”

“Right.”

They made the call, both of them happy to relieve the director’s mind.

“What now?” Matt asked.

“I want to go back to my house and get some clothes. And now that I’ve got my memories back, I thought of something else. My baby book. Maybe it has some clues.”

“I guess it’s all right to go there.”

“You’re not sure.”

“Old habits die hard.”

They drove to her neighborhood and parked out front, then walked to the back.

“I know you wanted to look at some of the papers in the office, but I think we should skip that for now,” Matt said as they approached the door.

She answered with a little nod. “But I should get a spare key, so that we can lock up when we leave.”

She went to the office, opened the middle desk drawer and took out the key she kept on one side.

“At least they left it. You know, I’m going to have to do stuff like get a new driver’s license.”

“Yeah. Maybe they’ve got you in the computer, and you just have to call up, explain what happened and ask for a new one.”

She grimaced. “First I’d have to prove who I am.”

“You have a point.”

She looked at the name tags she’d saved from conferences. “I guess they’re not going to accept those. But that gives me an idea. If I stop by work, they’ll know me at the office.”

“And as your doctor, I can verify that you were the woman I treated for amnesia at Memorial Hospital.”

“I hope all that’s going to work.”

“Let’s get your clothes and get out of here.”

“And that baby book.”

They climbed the stairs, and Elizabeth took a suitcase from her bedroom closet. She opened drawers, taking out T-shirts and jeans. Then she took some clothing from the hangers in the closet, glad to have some of her own things.

“The baby book is in a box at the top of the closet—on the left,” she told Matt. He reached up to the shelf and brought down the book. It had a padded exterior covered with faded pink silk. In gray letters it read My Little Girl.

He handed it to Elizabeth, and she held it carefully.

“I guess my mom was excited about having a baby.”

Opening the cover, she flipped through the pages. In the front was her birth announcement and then congratulatory cards.

She could sense Matt’s restlessness as she went through the contents.

“Bring it along. We’ll look at it later. I want to get out of here while the getting’s good.”

The words were just out of his mouth when they heard a door open and footsteps on the first floor.

They both froze, and she gave him a panicked look.

Did you lock the door behind us?
Matt asked.

Yes. Do you think it could be one of Lang’s men down there?

I’m betting they got out of town—the ones who could still travel.

So who is that?

I’d like to know. But we’ve got one thing going for us. He’s taking his time. He must not know we’re here.

They listened as whoever it was pawed through kitchen drawers, then ambled down the hall to the office. After he rummaged around in there for a while, he headed for the stairs.

It sounds like only one intruder.

Unless he’s got a lookout down there.
Get behind the door.

Elizabeth flattened herself against the wall, waiting tensely as she read what Matt had in mind.

The man apparently didn’t know his way around the house. When he reached the second floor, he walked into the guest room, stayed for a few minutes, then headed for Elizabeth’s bedroom.

As he walked through the door, Matt hit him with a bolt of power. He staggered back, but he stayed on his feet and pulled out a gun.