Sweepers (37 page)

Mcnair’s eyes had a speculative look in them. “Come again, Spock?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of them. It’s an optical weapon-like an electronic flash-bang grenade, minus the bang. It emits a blast of light centered on the color frequency of a particular group of rods and cones in the human eye. Puts the brain in stimulus-overload condition. Total disorientation for about a minute.

Plenty of time to disable a guy. Or wrap somebody and stuff him in a car, or a bag.”

Mcnair was making notes. “And which government organization carries these nasties?”

“Silly question, Detective.”

“I knew that,” Mcnair said. “Okay. Docs say they’ll probably let you out after morning rounds. Your dog’s down at the Maryland Staties’ K-9 unit kennels. That’s a barracks out on the Bladensburg Road, and one of my people retrieved your Suburban. It’s out front.”

“Thanks. Where’s Karen?’ “Down the hall, actually. They admitted her.

Gave her a sedative, and they’ve got a shrink laid on for the A.m. Like I said, they didn’t hurt her, physically. She must be one selfcontrolled lady. I’d a gone snakeshit, mummied up like that.”

Train shook his head. “Assuming this was Galantz, I’ve conjured up a theory about why he snatched her.”

Mcnair closed his notebook and raised his eyebrows.

“This guy is after Sherman,” Train said. “She’s been with Sherman, and he probably thinks they’re an item.

Maybe he thinks she’s Elizabeth Walsh’s replacement. Grab , then lure Sherman to some dark and lonely place. Have some fun with both of them.”

Mcnair grinned at him. “And?”

“And what? What’s funny?”

Mcnair tapped his notebook once with his fingertips and stood up, stretching. “And,” he said. “Optical weapons.

Telephone bugs with built-in transceivers. Like you said, those are federal toys.” He paused. “We found the place up in the haystack where they hid her. Probably hid themselves there, too, all day-the whole time we were there looking. Your theory doesn’t read, G-man. This is a steelyeyed motherfucker. He could have had Sherman’s ass anytime he wanted to. You wouldn’t be holding back on me by any chance?”

“Moi?”

“Yeah, you, G-man. Like, for starters, who was the second guy?”

Train let out a breath and frowned. He kept underestimating Mcnair. But he was also very reluctant to tell him anything about Jack.Sherman.

Besides, after what Galantz had done to Karen, Train personally wanted a shot at him.

“I’m not holding back, Mcnair,” he replied. “But my bosses might be.

Didn’t you tell me you scrubbed Admiral Sherman’s personal scene?”

“Yeah. Clean, just like he said. Except that he’s now considerably richer than he was. Although it’s interesting that two hundred fifty large came and went already.”

“The money’s gone?”

“Yeah. Says he gave it to some Catholic charity.”

Train nodded, thinking about that locked investigation report. “I’m going to pull the same string, but inside Navy channels. I’ll share anything I find. Promise.” He put a sincere expression on his face, hoping the lie was plausible.

But Mcnair was shaking his head from side to side in mock wonder. “Sure you will,” he said. “Tomorrow’s Thursday. How’s about we meet, say Friday? Pull it all together.

“We can try,” Train said. “My mind has all these earnest plans, but my aging body is probably going to disappoint both of us.”

Mcnair laughed. Then he got up, went to the door, and looked both ways up and down the corridor. He came back over to the bed and pulled Train’s Glock and knife out from under his jacket. “Here,” he said. “The ER turned these over to us.” He gave Train a steady look, one bespeaking years of experience as a cop. He held the gun in his right hand, pointed down toward the floor. Train felt a spike of fear as he looked into Mcnair’s eyes. For just an instant, the friendly detective had been replaced with someone else.

“Keep the Glock handy, G-man,” Mcnair was saying.

“Me, personally? I think you’re in over your head.” He reversed the gun, handed it and the knife to Train, then turned and left the room.

Train lay back on the bed after Mcnair had gone, the Glock lying cold between his thighs under the covers. Nurse brings a bedpan, he mused, it’s gonna be a contest to see who pees first. This thing tonight had been close. If that Park Police helo hadn’t been airborne, he would have gone sailing over that dam fight behind Karen and spent the next few months rolling around in the rotor at the foot of the diversion dam, along with the six other people who had drowned there in the past year.

He wondered how well Karen was bearing up. Let’s go find out, he thought.

He opened his eyes and looked around the semiprivate room. The other bed was not in use; the dividing curtain was pulled back against the wall.

He wasn’t hooked up to anything. He found his clothes, still damp, hanging in the bathroom, but he opted for a dry Johnny from the closet.

He tucked the Glock and the knife between two towels on the closet shelf and went to find some coffee and then, hopefully, Karen.

Karen lay on her back and listened carefully. A moment ago, there had been a scratching sound on the door to her darkened room, as if something or someone wanted in. A scratching sound, she was sure of it.

Her body was tense, almost rigid, but she was very warm, sweaty. She wanted to push her damp hair out of her face, but her arms were leaden.

She worried about that sound. She could see a rim of subdued light framing the door to her room, especially at the bottom. She focused on the bottom, watching that line of light. There, a shadow. Then it was gone. She closed her eyes and then opened them again. Everywhere she looked, there was a curious red-purple halo. She had seen that before, but she couldn’t remember where. She wanted to close her eyes again, but she was scared she would miss something, whatever had scratched on the door. She stared at the line of light until her eyes hurt, then remembered to breathe.

She should be safe. No more bags. Her skin crawled at just the thought of the word bag. Her last memories of the bag were of ice-cold water -leaking in from the partially opened zipper when they had thrown her in the river. That utterly helpless feeling of being carried away, down the surging Potomac, toward the cataracts. Wondering if the ominous cold around her lower extremities was water, and if the bag would fill before she got to the falls. In her panic, she had actually managed to rip the tape around her legs, but her hands, her hands had remained stuck. She had rolled and rolled in the water, her face alternately submerged and then free, all for nothing.

There, scratching.

She forced herself to look back down at the line of light along the bottom of the door. And she stopped breathing.

There were two black shadows obstructing the line of light.

Someone was out there, waiting. Waiting to see if she was awake. Then there was a purple corona of light from the corridor growing all around the door, and someone was pushing it open-a man, dressed in dark clothing, maybe in black. She couldn’t quite see his face-all that light from the doorway put him in silhouette-but he was familiar.

And he was holding something, something long and shiny, over his left arm, like a big cape. Something familiar. Fabric of some kind. Shiny.

She knew what it was but couldn’t form the word. Couldn’t move as the man came closer, saying something, indistinct at first, but then louder.

Whispering it. Raising a black-gloved fist and whispering.

She yelled and woke up, to find that she was sitting on the edge of her bed, bare feet swung out over the cold floor, her body trembling, her hands clutching the sheets along the edge of the bed in a death grip that was hurting her fingers.

The room looked as if it would start spinning if she moved another inch.

A dream, she told herself. Just a dream. She looked around carefully. A hospital room. Must be the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. She sank back against the pillows. She felt drugged and dirty. Her face hurt where the tape had been taken off, there was a bump on the side of her head, and there were some sore spots along her left side.

Alive, and lucky not to be on the bottom of the Potomac.

Unable to hear anything, she had had no idea of what was happening when the helicopter lifted the bag out of the water, and for one heart-stopping moment she had thought she was in midair, going over the falls. And the incredible relief when she felt the vibrating floor of the aircraft under her, and helping hands peeling her out of that bag.

She had tom the tape off her eyes and mouth as soon as her hands were free. The helo crewman had given her a quick once-over, not trying to speak in a the noise roaring through the open hatch, and then he was gone, back out on the skid, holding the rescue cable in one hand and concentrating on something below, something in the glare of large searchlights. She had been stunned when Gutter had come crawling out of nowhere to lick her face, his whole posture one of abject apology. She remembered the noise, the spray billowing up from under the helicopter, looking like white smoke from some awful fire below, the dipping and weaving of the aircraft as the pilot positioned the bouncing machine in one turbulent hover after another, a fleeting glance of rapids and distant black trees over the crewman’s shoulder. Now she knew what real terror was like. It was cold, cold in your core, cold your insides turn to liquid and your mouth taste’d metal, like right now.

She took a deep breath and got up and ran to the bathroom as a wave of nausea boiled up in her stomach. She barely made it in time. It was several minutes before she was able to get up off her knees, turn on the bathroom lights, and wash her face with hot water. Then she realized there was a shower. She didn’t hesitate, shucking her hospital gown and standing in the hot water for a long, long time.

When she finally felt clean and her stomach seemed to be relatively calm, she turned the shower off and dried herself.

There was a bathrobe on the back of the door, and she put it on and went back to the bed.

There was a knock on her door, low, almost tentative, but definitely someone there. She found herself holding her breath and then saying, “Yes?’ ‘ She was vastly relieved to see Train’s large gleaming head poke around the door. He had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, and he was wearing a ridiculously small Johnny and white socks. He looked over his shoulder and then edged through the door, which shut behind him.

“Hey, Counselor. You look, um… “

“That good, huh, Train?” she replied, trying to follow his lead, keep it light. But it didn’t work. She felt her face get rubbery and her eyes filling. And then he was sitting on the edge of her bed and she was in his arms, wailing like a baby while he patted her back and told her that it was all right, that they were safe. When she was finally still, he grabbed a handful of Kleenexes from a box on the bedside table and wiped her eyes and face. Then he kissed her forehead and looked into her eyes.

His eyes were luminous. Up close, she saw that he had pronounced crow’s-feet in the comers of his eyes. He held her hands in his, and they felt like two warm, calloused paws.

“Wanted to do that for a good long time,” he said. “Under better circumstances, of course.”

“These are pretty good circumstances, considering,” she replied. Then she reached for his face and gave him a long, lingering kiss on the lips. She felt him stir in response, but then she sensed that he was imposing control on himself She felt slightly embarrassed as they stopped, feeling as if she should look away, but for some reason, she couldn’t.

The affection in his eyes was right out there, fully visible.

She tried to summon up that demure look-away expression, the one she’d used to deflect the interest in men’s eyes since Frank had died, but she couldn’t find it, and suddenly she didn’t want to. Train must have sensed what was going on in her mind, because he put a finger up to her lips.

“Slowly,” he whispered. “Let’s not screw this up.”

She smiled at him and reached for his hands again. “No, let’s not,” she said. “I’ve been in limbo for a while, Train.

Observing all the proper conventions. But after tonight … well, I don’t want to put off life or living anymore.”

He nodded his understanding. There was a rattle of some kind of trolley outside in the hallway, and he stood up to pull a chair right next to her bed. “Considering the circumstances, neither one of us should ever go to Vegas. We used up every ounce of luck tonight, and then some. So, tell me what happened.”

They exchanged stories. As she began hers, he extended the coffee cup and she sipped some and then handed it back.

He drank some while he listened, an unconscious small intimacy, which she registered even while she was talking.

When she had finished, he just sat there, his face grim. She realized he felt responsible.

“I know. I should have taken the dog,” she said.

He nodded absently. “And I should have trusted my instincts and gone out there when I first thought about it. Oh well.”

“We’ve got to talk to Sherman,” she said urgently.

“About what his son said. There were two of them.”

Train got up and went to the window. At the moment, he was sick of the Sherman business. What he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her for the rest of the night. He rotated the venetian blinds.

Karen’s room had the same view of the same parking lot, which was still empty. There was a hint of fog hovering over the of grass beyond the parking lot. Three hospital corpsmen in their orderly uniforms were smoking cigarettes out under the ER portico.

“I think we have to talk to Carpenter first,” he replied.

“Mccarty’s orders were pretty specific. Back off the Sherman matter. I don’t know if that’s because you had gone missing or if those were orders from Carpenter given before you went missing. Either way, Sherman is being isolated.”

“Sherman is getting the shaft,” she said, sitting up straighter in the bed. She was silent for a moment. “On the other hand, it got awfully up close and personal today.” She was starting to feel cold again. “Train.”