Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (7 page)

BOOK: Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)
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10

S
orenstam queued up the video and turned her screen so Harper could watch.

It was soundless, a black-and-white video that showed a corner of the detectives' pen and Sorenstam's desk. Harper looked up. The camera was tucked near the ceiling.

The date and time ran at the bottom of the video. Eight months ago. A man sat at the desk beside Sorenstam's, white shirt, dark tie, holster on his belt. Nearby, another detective, heavyset, with a mustache, was on the phone, taking notes.

On-screen, Sorenstam walked past the camera, wearing a slim skirt and heels, talking casually to somebody. A second later, Aiden walked into view.

Even with the middling-quality video, his recovery clearly wasn't very far along. He looked thinner. His face was drawn. He held his left arm carefully, close to his side, and walked slowly, eyes on his path. He touched the back of a chair to preserve his balance. Serial tasks, not multitasking. Not like he was now.

She wondered if she should go and find him.

Sorenstam said, “He was scheduled to come back to work part-time, ride a desk while he got his strength back. This was a day he stopped by, just wanted to see people, show his face.”

On the video, Sorenstam leaned against her desk, chatting with Aiden. The detective at the next desk stood to shake Aiden's hand. Bracing himself as though he were on the deck of a pitching boat, Aiden let go of the chair, smiling.
“Good to be here. Great to see you, too, you bastard.”

As they shook hands, Aiden glanced at the guy on the phone.

Harper wasn't prepared for what happened next.

Aiden turned sharply to Sorenstam. Said something, and nodded at the guy on the phone, jerking his chin. Sorenstam said, clearly,
“What?”

Aiden pointed at the guy on the phone and called to him.
“Hey.”

The detective whose hand he'd been shaking took a step back, looking uncertain. Sorenstam raised her hands—a calming gesture.
“Whoa.”

Again, Aiden called:
“Hey.”

The detective on the phone glanced up from his call. Aiden launched himself past Sorenstam, straight at him, and attacked.

Harper touched her fingertips to her forehead. “Oh no.”

Aiden shoved the guy's chair back from the desk, on its rollers. The man pinwheeled for balance, but Aiden had height and momentum. He tackled the guy to the floor. He was yelling. Yelling directly in the guy's face. He was completely, corrosively, unequivocally losing his shit.

The detective and Aiden wrestled on the floor. Sorenstam waded in. Her face was lit with confusion and embarrassed horror. She grabbed Aiden's collar. The third detective pried Aiden loose. The guy from the phone sat confused on the carpet, saying,
“What the hell?”

Aiden had doubled in pain, but he pointed at the guy he'd dumped on the floor.

“Him
,

he yelled.

Now Sorenstam stopped the video. “He thought Detective Perez was the third shooter. He kept shouting, ‘It's him. It's the guy.'”

“Oh, God,” Harper said.

“He was completely convinced. Nothing we said, nothing we did, could dissuade him.”

“What made him think . . .”

“It was a hallucination. Fregoli is part of a constellation of disorders called delusional misidentification syndromes. You just saw what that means. His brain throws a gear, and he loses control,” she said. “He thought the shooter had wormed his way in here to destroy evidence and ruin our investigation.”

Sorenstam stared at the frozen image on the computer screen. “Did he tell you?”

“He tried to explain.” Shock and fear and empathy pinballed through her. “That was . . .” Awful. Goddamn horrible to see. “Painful.”

She tried to shove everything back behind the wall. “But it doesn't negate what I've been telling you about the shooter who escaped. Aiden and I both know it was Eddie Azerov.”

“You don't understand, do you?” Sorenstam said. “Detective Garrison didn't simply mistake another detective for the third shooter. That's not his only delusion. His delusion is
that the third shooter exists.

A weight seemed to press on Harper's shoulders.

Sorenstam said, “There is no third shooter. Gunman Zero is an illusion.”

Harper wanted to say more, but Sorenstam crossed her arms and planted her feet wide. She became a wall built of conviction and anger. And Harper knew that nothing good came of arguing with cops who were fueled by rage and certainty.

Still, she straightened her shoulders and stood as calmly as she could.

Finally, Sorenstam said, “I am truly sorry that you have been swept up in all of this. This year must have been difficult for you.”

“Kind of you.”

Sorenstam heard the chill tone that slipped between Harper's teeth.

“And I will make sure your report of an unidentified man at the memorial is noted in the investigative file. But you need to ease down. Getting Aiden mixed up in this will not help either of you.”

Investigative file? The case was closed. They had no intention of moving forward, not even if she drove into them from behind with a battering ram.

Sorenstam was waiting for her to leave. Instead, from her bag Harper took the Altoids tin containing the cigarette butts she'd collected at the park.

“He dropped them. They'll have his DNA. If Eddie Azerov is on file . . .”

Sorenstam's face said she wasn't about to spend lab time and departmental funds testing the cigarettes. Harper paused and dug deeper in her purse. She took out an artifact. It was dirty, as was the lanyard on which it hung. She held it out to Sorenstam.

“What's this?” Sorenstam said.

“My employee swipe card from Xenon.”

Sorenstam took it. “Why?”

“After the fire, I went back to work. For one day. To prove I could do it,” she said. “They gave everybody new swipe cards but never collected our old ones. So many were lost or damaged in the fire, they never bothered.”

“And?”

She breathed. This was a risk. Once Sorenstam started looking, she might peel back the layers.

“I know you suspect that the shooters accessed Xenon through a back entrance. If they did, how? Did they have a key, or a confederate, or dumb luck? So check my card out.”

Sorenstam held the lanyard carefully, as if it might contain a virus. “You think it was used to open the door for the shooters?”

“I have no idea.”

“How can that be? Was the card out of your possession?”

“Just check it out. If there's any evidence that my card was used to access the building . . .”

“Why have you waited until now to come forward with this?”

“Because the final report was only recently issued. It concludes that the investigation could not determine how the shooters got in. But today, Aiden told me you saw a car drop people by the back alley, just before the shooting started.”

“No evidence suggests that the shooters accessed the building with an employee's swipe card.” Sorenstam looked severe. “You're telling me different.”

“I'm saying my card is damaged, but maybe you can pull data off of it.”

“Why are you doing this? Did you let the shooters into Xenon?”

“No.”

“Then why would your card have data showing that they used it to access the club?”

Drew's face appeared before her. For a second, she considered telling the truth. She balked.

“I'm offering it to you for whatever you can get from it. Even one byte of data,” she said. “Because the shooter is back.”

She turned and walked out.

Her cheeks were burning. She had no idea whether she'd just saved herself or cut the strings on her parachute.

Did she want to believe there was a connection to her? Did she want to believe it was Azerov?

She didn't look over her shoulder. She feared that if she did, she'd see Sorenstam throwing the swipe card in the trash.

She opened the door, stepped into the sunshine, and looked around for Aiden. His truck was gone. So were her hopes.

Sorenstam watched the door close behind Harper Flynn. She had a bitter taste in her mouth. The swipe card the young woman had given her was scratched and worn. The lanyard was grayed with soot.

What did Flynn expect her to find? Fingerprints? Electronic evidence? Of what? She dropped the card on her desk.

On her computer screen, the image of Aiden's attack on Perez remained. She yanked the thumb drive from her computer, not caring when it said she hadn't shut down the device safely. Nothing about this last year had been shut down safely.

She sat, and forced herself not to put her head in her hands, or to think of the partner Aiden Garrison had been and should have remained, had the universe been just.

Personality changes. Depression, psychiatric issues.
She'd studied the secondary symptoms of closed head injuries.
Delusional misidentification syndromes.

She looked at the door as it slowly closed, wondering if she really wanted to see him outside, receding into the distance, ever farther. She turned away.

She picked up the lanyard. The swipe card swung back and forth. It was a plain white card with the name
FLYNN, H.
and an employee ID number printed on the front. On the back, below the magnetic strip, was printed
SPARTAN SECURITY SYSTEMS INC
. She looked up their phone number. Then she opened a search.

Harper Flynn.

Across the street from the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station, a man sat at the bus stop. A dog lay at his feet, panting. The woman from the architectural firm in the business park clicked up the sidewalk, sun in her eyes, holding the Chihuahua's leash. Traffic was light. The dog at the bus stop was a red brindle, big, all muscle aside from its huge head. Its leash lay loose on the sidewalk beside it. Its master had his arms spread across the back of the bench.

She was twenty yards from the bench when the brindled dog sat up, eyeing her and little Gigi. What was that thing? A pit-bull-brown-bear mix? It had half an ear torn off and a crescent bite scar across its face. It wore a studded black collar. Its hackles bristled and ears flattened. The woman eyed it and sped up, her dog ticking along on tiny paws, like a speck of grease jumping in a skillet.

The man lounged, arms stretched along the back of the bench, legs wide. He was facing away from her, gazing across the street. His dog growled. The man let him. What did they call this—a status dog?

He checked the time.

The red brindle growled again, a low, rattling sound.

She stopped ten yards from him. “Your dog's off the leash.”

The man ignored her. He seemed more fascinated by the woman across the street, a brunette who stormed to a MINI Cooper and got in like some kind of typhoon, before racing past, engine revving, hair blowing in the open window. At his knee, the brindled dog continued to snarl. Drool leaked from its jowls.

BOOK: Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)
10.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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