Hand of Fate (11 page)

Jun lifted one shoulder. "No such luck. Just a black-and-white printer. But I'm not certain the label actually originated from the publisher. It could have been dummied up. The edges are a little blurry. It could just be from fading or handling or exposure to the elements. Or it could be a fake. It wouldn't be hard to scan in their logo."

It seemed like one dead end after another. Were they looking at terrorism? Nic wondered. Her stomach felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down at jagged rocks below. First Seattle, then Portland--when would it end? Or was this the beginning of the end?

She shook off such grim thoughts. This had to be different from the terrorist attack up north. In fact, it already was different. In Seattle the killers had targeted an office building, not individuals. In Portland, Fate had clearly been the target, as evidenced by his name on the mailing label. In Seattle the killer, a still unidentified Middle Eastern man, had been so clumsy that he had died with his victims. But Fate's kille
r c
ould have been a thousand miles away when his victim took his final, fatal breath. In Seattle, there had been no warning. But Jim Fate had received threats so unsettling that he had asked for help. Help that she and Allison had been too late to give.

On Nic's hip, her phone buzzed. She looked at the display. Tony Sardella.

She said, "Excuse me," and then got up and walked into a corner of the room. She might as well have put it on speaker--she could hear the table go dead silent behind her. "Yes?"

"Nicole. We've got the results of the initial EMIT screen." "And?"

"Negative on sarin."

"So if it wasn't sarin, what was it?" She could feel the attention behind her sharpen.

"That I don't know. Most likely, some kind of opiate. I've ordered blood tests to try to quantify and qualitate which one was in play. Could be morphine. Could be something else. But for now, all I can tell you is that whatever caused Fate's death, it wasn't sarin. It's too bad the paramedics shot him up with the wrong antidote. If they had given him Narcan before he was too dead to revive, they might have saved him."

"How long will it take to pin down exactly what it was?"

"These tests take time." Tony sighed, and Nic heard his exhaustion. "Even if we move it to the head of the line, it's still going to take a week or two. Maybe more. You can't speed up a chemical reaction."

"Keep me posted," Nic said. After hanging up, she turned to the alert faces and told them the news. She saw the relief in the circle of listeners. One of the guys from headquarters was already gathering his briefcase and jacket.

"John will want to hold a press conference right away," Leif said.

"Let people know that Jim Fate seems to have been the only target an
d t
hat this wasn't sarin, and that it was more than likely not terrorism."

John Drood, the special agent in charge, had less than six months to go until he bumped up against the FBI's rule that forced agents to retire at fifty-seven. He was having trouble even contemplating letting go. A press conference would be right up his alley, allowing him to stand in the spotlight once more as he reassured Portlanders that there was no reason for worry.

But, Nic wondered, was that really true?

Chapter
17 Channel 4 TV

Cassidy drove to work with one eye closed. It seemed the only way she could focus. She kept flashing back to waking up in the tub, her hands floating like starfish.

Yesterday felt like a terrible nightmare. Today seemed just as unreal. Jim couldn't be dead, could he? And all the plans he had talked about had died with him.

"Pull yourself together, Cass," she said out loud. Once she walked through the station's double doors, she had to hit the ground running. The events of yesterday would spin off into several dozen stories today. Yesterday she had been the disaster reporter. But that wasn't her--or anyone's--normal beat. Today she would be back to being the crime reporter. And it was clear what crime would be number one on everyone's mind: Jim Fate's murder.

Working in TV news meant you had to be able to perform at a second's notice. Today it felt to Cassidy like she would need more like a couple of hours. It wasn't enough to write a good story. You had to be able to look into that camera and convince people that you knew what you were talking about. You couldn't be threatened or nervous or silly or inarticulate. You couldn't fumble your words or lose you
r t
rain of thought. Yesterday she had managed it, but today it seemed impossibly out of reach.

The last person Cassidy wanted to see this morning was Jenna. So of course, the intern was the first person she saw when she walked into the station.

Jenna looked like she had spent the first part of her day skipping through a meadow and singing. Her tanned cheeks had a rosy glow. Her long hair fell down her slender back like a blonde waterfall. And her unlined face, Cassidy thought sourly, was practically dewy.

"We are all so proud of you, Cass--" Jenna broke off. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Her tongue felt thick.

"Are you sure the air where you were yesterday was okay? You look, um, you look like you don't feel well."

Cassidy hurried to the restroom. In the mirror, she regarded herself with horror. Her hand must have slipped when she applied her eyeliner. On the left side, the line was slender and neat. On the right side, it was so thick that her eye looked like it belonged to Amy Winehouse. Amy Winehouse on her way to rehab.

The thought of rehab brought Cassidy up short. She had never done anything quite as crazy as falling asleep in the tub. But there had been two or three times when an entire package of cookies or cheese disappeared in the middle of the night and she had no memory of what had happened, just the clues of crumbs in her bed and a crumpled package in the garbage can.

Should she have taken her doctor's mumbled warnings more seriously? Was Somulex hurting more than it helped? But the very thought of not having it, of having to go to bed at night knowing that she wouldn't sleep, made Cassidy's hands grow cold and her stomach contract. She had to take Somulex. She had to.

Besides, yesterday had been one of the hardest days of her life. She deserved a little slack. So what if her hands had been shaky while she was putting on makeup? So what if she hadn't noticed? Before she went on camera, she would have to redo her face anyway for high-definition TV. She took a travel packet of makeup remover cloths from her purse and wiped both eyes clean. Then she hurried down the hall for the morning story meeting.

She was the last to walk into the conference room. As soon as she stepped over the threshold, everyone jumped to their feet and started clapping. Even though Cassidy knew it was for her, she had to suppress the desire to look around to see who they were really applauding. Jenna was jumping up and down like a high school cheerleader, Jeff Caldwell actually looked teary eyed, and Anne Forster, who covered the business news, was clapping her hands so hard they must hurt. Even Brad was applauding, although his smile looked like someone had hooked the corners of his mouth and yanked them up.

"Great work yesterday, Cassidy," Eric said, "you and Andy, great work! No other station had live footage from the scene. No one else had reporters who were willing to put their lives on the line to report the story at the source. But you were there, and you did the work. And if something like this had to happen, at least it happened during sweeps month!" As people settled back into their chairs--and Jenna on her ball--he added, "We'll be adding the footage into all our promo commercials for the news. 'Channel 4 Action News: there when you need us!'"

He picked up his dry-erase markers. "We need to brainstorm about follow-up stories. Except for sports and weather, everything today is going to tie back to yesterday. So what should we cover?"

"The key question, obviously," Brad said, "is what exactly happened yesterday. Was it terrorism? Or something more personal?"

Eric wrote "Terrorism?" in purple.

"We should also do the whole wake-up call story," Anne said. "If this attack had been more widespread, would Portland be ready?" "Wake-up?" went on the board in green.

Jenna alone had raised her hand. When Eric nodded at her, she said, "I was thinking that maybe we, like, could do some personal stories about the people who got hit by cars?"

"Vignettes" went on the board in red, with no question mark. Next Eric wrote "Jim Fate" in purple and circled it.

"Since you knew Jim Fate personally, Cassidy, why don't you work on his backstory as well as anything you can find out about who might have wanted him dead and why."

"Now, that could be a miniseries," Brad said, and then seemed surprised when nobody laughed.

Chapter
18

KNWS Radio

Inside KNWS it was eerily silent. Everywhere was mute testimony that people had fled in panic. Coffee cups lay on their sides in slowly drying puddles, a spill of papers was scattered next to the receptionist's desk, and a purse sat in the middle of a hallway. Nic, Leif, Karl, and Rod--all members of the ERT--were here to gather whatever evidence they could. On the short drive to the station, Nic had been surprised to hear KNWS broadcasting, and even more surprised to hear Victoria Hanawa behind the mike. No one was being allowed in or out of the studio until it had been searched, so the radio station must have found another way to broadcast.

Leif consulted his notes. The others followed him as he walked past the receptionist's desk and took a right turn down the hall. The farther in they ventured, the more Nic was surprised by how cheap the radio station's office looked. The visitors' area had been decorated with leather couches, polished wood, and a vase of hothouse flowers. But once they were past the part that was visible to the public, it looked as if the minimum amount of money had been spent to cram the maximum number of workers into the space. Most of the floor was a rabbit warren of cubicles separated from each other by shoulder-high partitions. Leif led them down a narrow corridor with scuffed walls barel
y f
ar enough apart for two people to pass each other, and then turned left down a second hallway. On their right was a row of closed doors with unlit red lights that read ON AIR.

Leif pointed at a door near the end. It was ajar, and through it Nic could see a small room separated by a glass wall and a door from the radio studio behind it. The floor of both rooms was littered with discarded medical supplies and spent injectors from the first responders' frantic attempts to save Fate from what had turned out to be the wrong poison. Nic wondered how they would feel once they learned that a simple dose of Narcan might have done the trick.

"That's the studio Fate was in when he died," Leif said. "His office is across the hall and a couple of doors down. Nic, why don't you and Rod take that, and Karl and I will take the studio."

With her gloved hand on the knob, Nic paused to look at the caricature taped to the closed door to Fate's office. Like most caricatures, it featured a giant head supported by a tiny body. The most exaggerated feature was the right hand, which held a microphone. Literally, the hand of Fate. In Nic's opinion, you made your own fate. You took responsibility for what you did and didn't do, and even for what happened to you.

In stark contrast to the tiny cubicles the rest of the workers occupied, Fate's office reflected the outsized personality of its owner. A painting of a bald eagle hung next to a huge American flag. Farther back sat a cherrywood desk and credenza. Dozens of framed awards and signed photographs of Fate with various famous personalities hung over the desk. A shadow box displayed a camouflage baseball cap touting the Second Amendment.

"Sweet," Rod said as he walked over to the computer.

It was one of the expensive new Macs that Nic could only afford to look at online. When she touched the space bar, the screen sprang t
o l
ife. She was tempted to click around, but lately the computer forensics lab had been warning about encryption codes and destructive software. So instead she simply shut it down. While she took a seat in front of Fate's desk, Rod unplugged the computer, wrapped it in the pink antistatic bag they had brought with them, and gave it a temporary evidence tag. After they were finished, one of them would drive the computer across the river and deliver it to the lab, where it would be assigned a bar code. You had to maintain the chain of custody "womb to tomb" by documenting who took what, when, and why. Any break in the chain might be a crack big enough to let a killer wiggle free.

It was a little strange to sit in the leather desk chair. The last person to sit here must have been Jim Fate. The pad was compacted a bit to the shape of his larger body. Nic lifted her eyes to the rows and rows of photos and awards. What had it been like to he Jim Fate? Had these tokens of his success reassured him, inspired him, or prodded him to acquire more? Had he liked watching the impression they made on visitors--or was the "brag wall" more for his own eyes, his own needs?

With her gloved hand, Nic slid open the top desk drawer. In it she found the usual loose change, paper clips, pens. Fate seemed to favor the rollerball variety, black with a fine tip. A half-dozen brochures for a gold investment company featured a grinning Fate on the front and touted the company as "the exclusive precious metals sponsor for The Hand of Fate." A little farther back was the good stuff. A flash drive, which she handed to Rod to bag and tag for the computer forensics lab. A business card from a well-known--and female--executive, with "Call me!" scrawled on the back.