Devil Wind (Sammy Greene Mysteries) (16 page)

Slipping into the men’s room off the empty corridor, Miller pulled out his cell and speed dialed a contact, initiating a prearranged call to the nurses’ station. Several minutes later, he opened the bathroom door a crack to see the one nurse staffing the floor head off in the direction opposite his destination. Quickly, he crossed the corridor and entered suite 501.

Annoyed at having to risk being seen, Miller shook Prescott awake.

“Wha—? You—?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I only have a few minutes. We’re almost in the homestretch. I need to know you’re a hundred percent on board.”

Prescott sat up, eyes wide. “Of course I am. This was as much my plan as yours.”

Miller gave him a pointed look. “When the game is over, neither of us will be taking credit. Understand?”

“Of course.”

“So what do you think Bishop heard?”

“Not sure,” Prescott admitted sleepily. “The cardiology fellow said there’s some spy center in the basement recording everything. I’ve got a real estate deal I need to keep private—among other things.”

“I’m sure you do,” Miller said. “But, if he’s referring to the Incident Command Control Center on B3, don’t worry. We’ve got that covered. My man will make sure none of your conversations ever happened.”

“That may keep me clear in superior court, but I’m concerned about home court. If Bishop gets suspicious and starts asking Julia questions, I could face some tough cross-examination.”

“After all these years, she still controls the purse strings? Stop worrying about Bishop. If that happens, we’ll just remind him that curiosity killed the cat.” Miller’s expression left no doubt about the sincerity of his threat. “You get some rest now, and make sure you’re discharged before Friday. Operation Y2K goes off at midnight sharp.”

At the door, Miller looked both ways to be sure the coast was clear before hurrying off to the elevators down the corridor. He didn’t see the nurse at her station—she was still on a well-engineered wild-goose chase at the other end of the ward. And he didn’t notice Reed, on his way to check on Prescott, standing behind the open door of the adjacent empty suite.

Back in his high-rise office, oblivious to the pink streaks of the rising sun painting the gray sky outside his panoramic window, Miller was crouched over his monitor and keyboard, worming his way into the confidential files of the secretary of the army.

It took only a few minutes to find the file he sought. Uploading it, he scanned page after page. Franklin Bishop, MD, FACP, Col. USA, Ret. Age 61. Divorced, no kids. Born in a working-class suburb of Houston, Texas. Attended River Oaks Prep on a football scholarship. Eschewed Texas A & M for West Point. Medical School at Baylor. Internal Medicine residency at Walter Reed, Cardiology Fellowship at Baylor under DeBakey. Spent 29 years in uniform, starting with two tours in Nam. Stationed at Brooke, Stuttgart, Madigan, Tripler, and many years at Walter Reed. Exemplary performance reviews from all his superiors. Made Colonel two years early. Buzz about his being up for flag rank. Billeted as assistant chief medical officer in Desert Storm.

Then came the bump in the road. In the last days of the Gulf War, Bishop was wrapping up a tour of duty in Saudi Arabia when he began drinking heavily and behaving erratically. Enough to have him sent to Germany for a psych evaluation. According to the medical record, while going through the DTs there, Bishop insisted he’d lost a burn patient because of a test weapon used to target civilians, claimed his demand for an army investigation had been denied, that no one believed him. The psychiatrist who diagnosed alcoholic delusions secondary to PTSD suggested immediate discharge.

Miller shook his head, remembering his concern in nineteen ninety-one. If the resonator was going to be a trump card in the next theater, he couldn’t afford the other side hearing about those early trials. His team had had to bury all evidence that the building collapse in the desert had been anything other than an accident. A few well-placed calls to some very important people had undermined Bishop’s credibility, gotten him shipped stateside to a Walter Reed psych unit and a one-way ticket back to Houston. Miller had hoped that Bishop would’ve learned his lesson, kept his curiosity in check and his mouth shut. Now he wondered if the man might just become another loose end he could ill afford.

Closing the army file, he picked up the intel his own people had just gathered covering the seven years since Bishop’s return to the U.S. Though the doctor had joined Alcoholics Anonymous, his already rocky marriage soon dissolved. For months he stopped practicing cardiology, instead volunteering as a GP in recession-ravaged Houston clinics. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he was offered the post of chief of cardiology at Houston Medical. Given Bishop’s history of alcoholism and breakdowns, that seemed surprising.

Miller read a little further until he discovered the nugget he’d been hoping for. Well I’ll be damned. It wasn’t just the glowing letters of reference from Donald Graves Senior that helped piece together the story. It was the yellowed photo of Frank Bishop, high school football star and his then-steady girlfriend, Julia Graves, along with the nineteen fifty-nine OB-GYN’s note documenting a D&C perfomed on the girl. Obviously, eighteen-year old-Bishop had gotten sixteen-year-old Julia pregnant. In exchange for his silence about the pregnancy and his leaving town, he not only received no jail time for what could have been construed as statutory rape, but got recommendations from her rich father—first to West Point and then, years later, to the hospital board in Houston. Not quite seventeen, Julia Graves, post-abortion, became Mrs. Neil Prescott. From the notes in the file, it looked as though Julia had a hand in bringing Bishop to LAU Medical.

Well, adultery was definitely something he could hold over Bishop’s head. Sometime tomorrow he’d give the good doctor a call to make that clear.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Christmas Day

Saturday

Near the end of another overnight shift, De’andray slowed his plain wrap to a crawl. The red MINI Cooper convertible had several parking tickets flapping on its windshield. De’andray nodded at his partner, and pulled his car behind the small vehicle. Parking on most Bel Air streets had been banned since the fires started and the neighborhood had gone on red flag alert. The two detectives stepped out into the predawn and walked over to check out the abandoned convertible.

“Wash me,” Ortego said as he ran a finger across the sliding roof, leaving a trail in the ash that had covered the MINI Cooper like a layer of gray snow.

De’andray brushed off dust from the driver’s window and peered in. An opened makeup kit was strewn on the floor of the passenger side, along with two round hairbrushes and a bottle of Fuze low-cal juice. On the backseat were a pair of New Balance running shoes with frayed laces and a can of spray-on tan. Nothing unusual for L.A.

He ambled over to the windshield and lifted up the wiper to grab one of the tickets. Shaking it clean in his hand, he strode back to his car and called in the license and ticket information. “Got a twenty-eight or twenty-nine on this plate?” he asked the dispatcher.

“Nada. Let’s see if we can locate the owner’s name and address.”

He could hear the clicking of a computer keyboard as she talked.

“Okay, here we go. Car’s registered to a Sylvie Pauzé, twenty-three twenty-five Ashland Street. No outstanding tickets.”

“Thanks.”

“Dee?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“I think I remember something. Let me check.” More clicking. “Yep. That’s the same address we sent the black-and-whites out on last night. For the girl that died in the fire.”

De’andray whistled, turning to Ortego, whose brow was puckered. “Now that’s something I didn’t expect.”

Leaning back in his chair with eyes closed, the guard nearly fell over when Sammy approached his desk a little before six a.m.. Obviously surprised to see visitors in the building this early—let alone on Christmas morning. But a call upstairs found her father in, evidently expecting her.

As the elevator accelerated skyward to his thirty-sixth-floor suite, Sammy’s stomach lurched downward. Gravity or nerves? She couldn’t honestly say as she stepped from the car and headed toward 3601. At the entrance to the suite, she hesitated. Part of her heart hoped her father was reaching out for reconciliation, the other, hurt so often before, just wanted to avoid more pain. She took a deep breath, then with feigned bravado, walked inside, past the deserted reception area into a long, heavily carpeted hallway. At the far end, she found the corner office belonging to Jeffrey Greene, CEO.

Through the half-open door she could see her father seated behind a large mahogany desk, his back to a wall of glass that framed the city, his head bent over in concentration. For several seconds she stood quietly at the door, studying him with a measure of skepticism and curiosity. It was just past dawn, yet he appeared to have rolled out of bed, clean-shaven, perfectly coifed and dressed to the nines, the cut of his dark suit obviously custom. And for a man of fifty, he had the trim build of someone much younger. Probably contoured by a personal trainer. Everything in the picture bespoke money, confirming what Sammy had just read online. Dear old dad was doing very well, Sammy thought with an unwelcome dash of bitterness honed by years of separation.

Without knocking, she strode inside and sat in one of two chairs facing the desk. “How’d you find me?” she demanded, her tone angrier than intended.

Jeffrey looked up and flashed a smile that Sammy guessed to be the expensive handiwork of some Beverly Hills cosmetic dentist. She didn’t recall such evenly spaced, white teeth from her last visit as a college student.

“Is that a nice way to greet your father?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Trina heard your show—”

“Trina.” Sammy couldn’t keep disdain from her voice. “Sounds exotic.”

Jeffrey lifted a gilded frame from the corner of his desk and held it up to Sammy. “She’s a remarkable person. Can’t wait til you meet her.”

The woman in the photo did indeed look exotic and, Sammy had to admit, beautiful. Dark haired with piercing dark eyes. She guessed Trina’s age to be late thirties, though with the wonders of plastic surgery—especially in this town—she might be a decade or more older.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were in L.A.?” Jeffrey asked. “It’s been what? Two, three—?”

“Six years,” Sammy corrected.

Jeffrey ignored the hostile edge. “Well, you look terrific.”

Sammy felt her cheeks redden, “Bubba meisa.”

“Huh?”

“Yiddish for baloney.”

“You sound like your grandmother.”

“Well, she raised me,” Sammy snapped.

Jeffrey rose and came around the desk to stand in front of her. “How about a hug?”

   It would have been easy to refuse. For so long she’d grown accustomed to disappointments from this man. “It isn’t necessary.”

Jeffrey leaned against his polished desk. “Hey, Sammy. I know I haven’t always been ‘Mr. Father Knows Best.’ I know an ‘I’m sorry’ won’t cut it with someone as bright as you. But, we’re both adults now. And I have changed. Really. I’m a new man.”

“You mean you’re a rich man.”

“Yes, I’ve got money. Finally. But that’s what we all needed. You make it sound terrible.” He waved his arm around the beautifully appointed office. “Look at this, Sammy. I made it. I’ve worked damn hard for what I’ve achieved.” With a look of contrition, he reached out to her. “Would it really hurt to give me another chance?”

Sammy stayed silent for a moment, searching his features for guile. It wasn’t there. His remorse seemed genuine. She certainly wasn’t ready to trust him, but she wanted so much to feel a father’s arms around her that she found herself rising as he walked over and enfolded her.

“That was nice,” he said, stepping back again. “Hungry? I know a twenty-four-hour deli on Fairfax where we can get some breakfast.”

“No, uh, thanks,” Sammy said, feeling off balance. “I’ve got to get ready for our station’s food drive for the homeless.”

“Yeah, that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” Wary, Sammy’s heart began beating faster.

Jeffrey walked over to a coffeemaker sitting on his credenza, poured some of the steaming brew into two mugs and handed one to his daughter. “Still take it black?”

Nodding, Sammy had to smile at the jogged memory. Though her short visit with her father the summer after her freshman year had ended badly, she’d returned to Ellsford with a shared love for java straight. It was a habit she’d yet to break.

Jeffrey sat back down behind the desk and opened his top drawer. “Until we heard you on the air last night we didn’t know about your event. Nice thing you’re doing, by the way.” That winning smile again. “Sorry I didn’t have time to browbeat any of my friends to help out. But Trina and I would like to provide some of the food. We’ll have it delivered later this morning. And here,” he said, handing Sammy a check, “is a small donation.”

Sammy was stunned at the amount. “Ten thousand dollars! That’s unbelievably generous.” Hesitating for a moment, she folded the check and placed it carefully inside her pocket.

Jeffrey beamed. “It’s the least I can do for such a worthy cause. Besides, our firm is doing the renovations on the Canyon City Hall site. Never hurts to give something back. Right?”

“I suppose,” Sammy’s response was tentative, her caution flag raised. Jeffrey Greene, an altruist?

“By the way, you know who helped finance the remodel of that old building?”

“No—”

“Congressman Prescott.”

“Really?” Sammy squirmed, aware that her father was studying her reaction.

“Really. Neil isn’t what you said on your show. He cares about those less fortunate.”

“As long as they’re not in his backyard.”

Jeffrey chuckled, “I’m afraid Neil’s let himself get a bad rap with the press. I’d love for you to get a chance to meet him and see what a mensch he really is.” His expression brightened. “You know, I could arrange for you to have a private interview. You could do a story on Neil’s ‘Keep America Safe from Terror’ bill that’s in committee.”