Tell No Lies Page 22

  Chapter 42

  By 11:00 P.M. they dispensed with any pretense of not watching the time and Molly Clarke retrieved her digital alarm clock and set it on the rug, where they could view it like a television set. Theresa and Daniel occupied the same cushioned chairs they’d sat in before, leaving Molly more room on the couch to shift nervously.

  “God,” she said. “It’s been surreal. Being at the center of this … this thing. This morning I made the mistake of turning on the TV. The reporters seem gleeful, almost, to have this to talk about. The Tearmaker. A city in panic. Like it’s some video game. But I’m the target. I’m the one who…” Her voice trailed off.

  “We have two cars outside,” Dooley said. “Men at all the entrances, in the stairwell, at the elevator. No one’s getting in here.” Her Motorola squawked, and she turned down the volume, held it to her ear. A quick scowl. “Copy that.”

  Molly had come off the couch, standing on bare feet. “What? What was that?”

  “Our guys in the field. All the suspects seem to be accounted for. Asleep in their beds.”

  “Unless they snuck out,” Clarke said. “It’s hard to watch every window, every door, isn’t it? I mean, you said there are six of them. And that’s just the ones you know about.”

  Dooley put on a smooth smile. “We’ve dedicated a lot of resources to this, Molly.”

  “Why can’t you just hold all the suspects in custody for the night?”

  “Uh, because this isn’t the Soviet Union.” Dooley caught her tone. Generated a placating expression. “Look—we’re gonna keep you safe.”

  “Then why’s there an ambulance on standby outside?” A sudden beeping issued from Clarke’s watch, and she literally left the ground. Settling, she grabbed her chest, twisting her sweatshirt above her heart. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  She headed into the kitchen and stirred her medicine into water, the spoon dinging around the glass.

  Daniel said quietly to Dooley, “What?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “I can read your face, Theresa.”

  “I don’t like this. I don’t know what I don’t like, but something’s off. He knows you’re getting the death threats on time now. And he knows we’re looped. There’s no way he’s getting in here. But he doesn’t strike me as someone who bluffs.”

  Clarke turned to face them from the kitchen, wiping her lips. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “The Giants,” Dooley said. “Lincecum’s been losing velocity on the two-seamer.”

  Clarke finished what was left in the glass and returned to her vigil on the couch. At the half-hour mark, they gave up on small talk. At 11:46, Clarke sobbed quietly for a few moments, then fell quiet again. At 11:57, she broke the silence again. “Countdowns are horrible. It’s like I’m waiting for the place to blow up.”

  Dooley said, “We had the entire building safed by—”

  “I know. But still.” She bit her lip. “Someone wants to kill me. And I have no idea why.”

  11:58.

  “Do you have any idea how helpless that makes me feel?” She pressed a hand to her mouth, breathed awhile.

  11:59

  “I guess we never can know what we do to affect other people,” Clarke said. “Maybe I was rude to someone on the bus. Maybe I didn’t tip a waiter enough. Or maybe something worse. I could’ve demeaned a patient or—”

  “You can’t blame yourself for being targeted by a psychopath,” Dooley said.

  “I’m not blaming myself. I’m just … I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  They watched the clock in silence.

  The red digital lines reconfigured.

  Midnight.

  Clarke made a noise in her throat. No one spoke for the entire minute. Daniel could hear Clarke’s quick exhalations. The smell of Dooley’s perfume—something light and citrusy—lingered.

  The clock changed again.

  “Okay,” Dooley said, standing. “Okay.”

  Clarke’s hands stayed clasped in her lap, but her fingers were trembling.

  Daniel took note, then said to Dooley, “Maybe we can sit awhile longer?”

  Dooley let out a breath and eased back down into her chair.

  They waited, avoiding one another’s eyes, watching the clock until 12:30 and then 1:00. Finally, by some mutual unspoken agreement, they all shifted and rose.

  Clarke looked pale with fatigue. A bit unsteady on her feet, she walked them to the door.

  Dooley paused. “We’re gonna keep a full team on through the night,” she said. “And you’ll have someone with you tomorrow.”

  Sweat glittered on Clarke’s forehead, and she raised a palm and wiped at it.

  “You’ll be okay,” Daniel said.

  Clarke’s eyes fluttered. She fell hard against the wall, banging it with her shoulder. Then she toppled to the floor.

  “Shit,” Dooley said. “Shit.” She leapt up, grabbing for her radio.

  Daniel was on his feet, too, instantly, rushing for Clarke, who lay sprawled flat on her back. Her body stiffened, arching onto her heels and the back of her head. Vomit streamed down her cheek. Daniel hit the floor hard on his knees, leaning over her, using his finger to clear her mouth so she wouldn’t choke. She convulsed violently and arched again, this time to her side like a speared fish. Eyeballs prominent, pupils dilated, purple creeping beneath the surface of her face.

  Frantic, he cupped the back of her head to protect it. “Get them in here now.”

  “I called!” Dooley shouted. “They’re here–they’re here!”

  He felt her breeze past him. She flung the front door open, yelled. Footsteps thundered up the hall, and two paramedics burst in.

  The lead man said, “Hemophiliac, right? Do not hit or jostle her.”

  They moved Daniel brusquely aside and knelt over Clarke, sliding a large-bore IV into either arm. Black-and-blue marks dappled her thin neck. Wine-red splotches moved across the whites of her eyes, spreading like storm clouds. Her rigid body convulsed in bursts, as if the bones were trying to pull through the skin. Her bulging stare held a terrible awareness—she was experiencing every second of this.

  “Subconjunctival hemorrhage, ecchymoses—”

  “Run the saline wide open.”

  “Call the ED, tell ’em to get factor eight on standby.”

  “Pressure here. And here.”

  “Gentle … gentle…”

  “What tripped her?” Dooley said. “What tripped her?”

  The skin of Daniel’s face tingled, a thousand needle pricks. He lifted his gaze to the stretch of kitchen counter visible through the doorway. The medicine canister rested beside the empty glass marked with milky residue.

  “The meds,” he said. “He put anticoagulant into her meds.”

  One of the paramedics paused, mouth still to the phone. “Pull vitamin K, and FFP from the blood bank. It’s bad.” He hung up, helping lift Clarke onto the stretcher. “Step back. Move.”

  Daniel and Dooley skipped out of the way.

  As Clarke passed, she arched again, her head twisting to the side. A tear of blood rolled over her eyelid and streaked down the pale skin of her temple.

  Chapter 43

  The following morning the Brashers’ kitchen felt like a tomb. The dawn chill wouldn’t depart the walls and floor. And the silence. Leo sat at the top of the stairs facing the front door below. Perfect posture, rigid spine, hands on his knees. Swimming in one of Daniel’s button-ups with the sleeves cuffed, Cris stood at the counter, sipping the mint tea reserved for when she and her stomach were upset and staring blankly out at the early-morning haze muffling the Bay. And Daniel slumped in the tree-house alcove of the living room, gazing through plate glass at the ticky-tacky houses on the swelling chest of Twin Peaks. All those little boxes looked just the same, sure, but pop them open and you’d get a good dose of Left Coast variety. All the colors of the city, a rainbow array of ethnicities. A story beneath each roof, the in
evitable tribulations and heartaches, charmed interludes and quiet tragedies. And yes, barbarity, too. Like, say, poisoning a hemophiliac with superwarfarin in an effort to make her bleed out beneath her own skin.

  Molly Clarke had been rushed to the hospital, mercifully located a half block away. She’d been quickly stabilized in the emergency room and moved to the ICU, even managing to sit up and take fluids after a few hours. As a UCSF nurse, she’d received extra attentiveness, her colleagues cycling through to check on her, and she’d been left in good company with around-the-clock guards. Dooley had made arrangements for her to be moved to another hospital out of the area, where she’d check in as a Jane Doe. When Daniel had finally headed out of the ICU last night, Dooley had jogged to catch him at the elevators.

  “I know it feels like we’re being outplayed, but you saved her life today.”

  Daniel gestured at the crowd of cops and medical staff up the hall. “We all did.”

  “You made the call to wait with her longer. You saw she was still scared, that she needed us there. If we’d left when I wanted to, she’d have bled out alone in the apartment while I patrolled the lobby.”

  He could tell by the set of Dooley’s mouth that this was hard for her to say.

  “We have different jobs,” he’d told her, “which means we have to have different concerns. Mine aren’t any more noble than yours.”

  The words echoed now as he sat at the window. He, Leo, and Cris remained spread throughout the second floor as if fearful of proximity, facing different directions, trapped in their own bubbles of dread.

  A soft thump sounded at their front door.

  Before Daniel could turn his head, Leo was on his feet—impossibly quick for such a sturdy man. The noise carried Daniel up off the couch, and Cris whirled, her mug clanking down on the marble.

  Leo said, “Stay here.”

  His footsteps light down the stairs. The creak of the front door. Cris and Daniel watched each other. A beat. The door thumped closed. Footsteps back up.

  Leo appeared, holding the newspaper. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  Daniel reached him in a few quick strides. The florid headline: SERIAL KILLER LOOSE IN THE CITY. And the subhead: “Tearmaker Claims Fourth Victim.” A picture of Molly Clarke, who was listed as being in critical condition.

  He felt the heat of Cris at his shoulder, then heard a quick intake of air.

  “That’s her?” Cris said. “That’s Molly Clarke?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Why?”

  “I know her,” Cris said. “She treated me. During some of the radiation sessions.”

  His grip tightened on the newspaper. A horrible notion tugged at him.

  Leo had faded back a few steps, giving them space.

  Cris shifted her weight, and the pinpoint tattoos on her sternum came visible, a mini-constellation. “What does that mean?” It was clear she was doing her best to stay calm, but still, the realization had brought up a flush of fear on her neck, her cheeks. “That can’t be a coincidence. Can it?”

  He looked down at the screaming front page. The newspaper print left a smudge on the meat of his thumb. He felt the air go out of him.

  “I’m not sure.” He swallowed dryly and moved toward the stairs. “But I’ll find out.”

  Chapter 44

  A conference room in Homicide had been cleared out, a makeshift war room dedicated to the Tearmaker. When Daniel arrived, Dooley got one look at him and told the others to take a coffee break. As he surveyed the inner sanctum with awe, she paced like a great cat before a dry-erase board sporting a spiderweb of connections between map locations, photos of the victims, and rap sheets of Daniel’s group members. Stacked on a rear table were sheaves of motorcycle registrations and profiles for the employees of Metro South—even some for workers in the neighboring buildings. Clearly, SFPD had pulled out all stops; assembling this much data must have required a staggering number of man-hours. An array of mounted TVs, tuned to local stations and CNN, popped up visuals about the Tearmaker, the nickname also looping through the news crawls. One reporter had resorted to scared-man-on-the-street interviews about the newly branded killer. Dooley’s expression—fury iced with disgust—made clear how she felt about the nickname’s leaking. Daniel found himself watching the screens with horrified interest until she muted them so he would focus.

  He trudged over and sat in a chair near the latest case files, taking a moment to shape the cyclone of thoughts that had consumed him on the drive over. Trying for patience, Dooley waited. In the background the slick logo of the Tearmaker—a hockey mask with tear tracks—finally vanished from ABC7, replaced by footage of the Gilroy Garlic Fry at AT&T Park.

  Daniel spread his hand on the nearest stack of papers. “Marisol Vargas was a professor.” His throat was raw, his voice soft and scratchy. “But her field—it was something medical, wasn’t it?”

  Dooley finally stopped pacing. She lowered herself into a chair carefully, as if she’d grown suddenly fragile. “Public health.”

  “Did she ever work at UCSF?”

  “No. Not full-time at least.”

  “Look into it,” Daniel said. “There’ll be a connection. And Kyle Lane. An M.B.A., right? Where’d he work before he moved to the health-food company?”

  Dooley grabbed a file, scrabbled through the pages. Then stilled.

  Daniel said, “UCSF, right?”

  She gave a little nod. “Grants and funding.”

  “For the oncology department.”

  “Doesn’t say.” Dooley tapped the file, her forehead lined with thought. “So there’s a medical connection between Clarke, Lane, and Vargas. How does Jack Holley fit in? He was a security guard.”

  “Did he ever guard—”

  “Nope. Not UCSF, not any hospital. From the beginning I oversaw his case myself, remember? I know his entire employment history.”

  “Call and check.”

  “Daniel—”

  “Trust me.”

  Keeping her gaze on Daniel, Theresa picked up a phone, poked at the numbers with the end of a pen. As she routed through various menus and departments, Daniel zoned out. His blinks grew longer and longer, and then Dooley was repeating his name.

  His head snapped up, the sore muscles of his neck making him grimace. “Huh?”

  Her eyes were intense, alive. “I had the security firm search every single one of Holley’s time sheets. Seems they swung him off his usual job for a one-week period. He usually worked jewelry stores—that’s why we missed it—but they got a request to beef up security at UCSF Medical during some big animal-rights protest. The dates were…” She flipped through her notepad.

  Daniel said, “Fall 2009.”

  Dooley’s mouth fell open a little. “October fifth through eleventh.” She wet her lips. “Daniel? You want to tell me what the fuck is going on here?”

  He took a deep breath. Readied for the plunge. “The paper this morning. Cristina recognized Molly Clarke. She was treated by her.”

  “Treated?” Dooley said.

  “There were closed trials at UCSF,” he said. “Experimental therapy—the radiation seeds?—for heart-cancer patients.”

  “Cristina had heart cancer?”

  “Yes. It’s rare, but she got it.”

  “And?” Dooley was clearly fighting for patience.

  “The study is the connection. Between the victims.”

  “But why?”

  His frustration flared. “I don’t know.”

  “If the victims are connected,” Dooley said, “then Cris is connected, too. You’d better—”

  “We have a guard at the house,” Daniel said. “Before I left, I asked him to stay at her side at all times.”

  Dooley was still putting it together. “If your wife was involved in the study, that means the killer meant for you to get those first death threats. Those envelopes weren’t accidentally put in your box—he just wanted it to look that way. And if the suspect’s in your group like we thin
k…”

  “Then he—or she—chose me. Just like you guessed before.”

  “Why would they have wanted to involve you like this? I mean, you’re not just another victim. You’re the goddamned focal point.”

  “You said you can tell when people are lying, Theresa, so look at me closely.” He leaned forward. “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe Cris does.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “I’ll do the same.” She rose, tugged open the door, and shouted into the hall, “I want every warm body in here! We just got our first no-shit lead.”

  * * *

  Dooley’s questioning of Cris gave them nothing more, and after she was finished, Daniel got on the phone with her. She was rattled and bewildered, and he promised to keep her abreast of any developments. Cris wanted to run down the hill for a few things—the last week had left the refrigerator and cupboards sparsely stocked—and he made her promise to keep Leo with her at all times.

  At Dooley’s request he stayed on in the war room. DAs were called, judges pinned down, and leads flew across monitors and phone lines. The inspectors braced for a dogfight from the pit bulls on the hospital’s legal team, but they proved cooperative, supplying information readily as the subpoenas came in. Predictably, human-resource files were turned over first, patient records to follow. Over the course of the morning and afternoon, the picture slowly resolved.

  On her sabbatical in 2009, Marisol Vargas had consulted with the oncology department, acting as a project manager for a smattering of studies. During his tenure at UCSF, Kyle Lane had secured and overseen the funding for numerous trials, and Molly Clarke had served as a dedicated nurse during that period for oncology, hematology, and infectious diseases. The only project all three had overlapped on was the experimental brachy study in which Cris had participated.

  And yet the inspectors’ initial pass through the records of the trial, aided by hospital administrators, had yielded no red flags.

  “So,” O’Malley said, “who’s gonna get the next death threat?”

  Daniel grimaced at the thought of another gray interdepartmental envelope arriving in his mailbox.