MIND FIELDS (23 page)

“Guy, don’t,” were the only words she could force through her lips.

___

The rain pounded against the second story window of the Kincades’ Highlandtown rowhouse.  Richie stood by the window staring out at the reflections of the streetlights on the rain-drenched road.  He didn’t say a word, but Lara could feel his anxiety and lay half awake in bed.

“Come to bed, Richie.”

“I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

“She’s a big girl.  She told you to leave.”

“Still…”

He just stood there, holding the curtain back and staring into the night.

“Call her.”

Richie dropped the curtain. “Yeah.”

He walked over to his side of the bed and sat.  The phone on the nightstand was dimly lit, but he had no trouble seeing the numbers.  Richie preferred manual phones to the voice activated kind.  He punched in Sandi’s number and sat silently as the phone rang.

“No answer?” Lara asked as she turned to face him.

Richie shook his head as he put the phone down.  “I’m going over there.”

Lara rolled back over so that he wouldn’t see the worry in her eyes.  There was no point in protesting.  Even after all these years she could feel the fear each time he walked out the door to go to work.  Times like this were even worse, but she wouldn’t let him know.  He had more important things to worry about tonight and she wanted him focused.

Richie dressed quickly, walked over to the bedside and gave her a kiss on the forehead.  She opened her eyes.  “Be careful.”

“Always.”  He smiled and walked out the door.

___

The Chevy pick-up swerved out of the driveway and sped into the stormy night.  The bent wiper blade on the driver’s side smacked against the hood of the truck with each beat.  Guy struggled to see the road through the streaky window as the rain pounded against the windshield.  He decided to keep to the back roads, afraid that the police would be out looking for him.

“I can’t believe she didn’t take the damned drug.  Stupid bitch.”  He took another swig from the bottle of Jack Daniels, trying to soothe his frayed nerves.

Between the alcohol and the rain, it was a challenge just to keep the truck on the road.  Every muscle in his body was as taut as an anchor line in a hurricane.  He hunched forward peering intently over the steering wheel and gripping it tightly with both hands.  His neck and his clothes were soaked with perspiration in spite of the coolness of the night air. 

Acorn Creek Road wound through the countryside from southwest Baltimore toward Columbia, rejoining the main road just past the Acorn Creek Bridge about a mile from the entrance to BNI.  He was sure that he would be safe once inside the confines of Anderson’s well-guarded estate. 

Lightning flashed across the sky, briefly illuminating the pitch-black countryside with each strike.  He saw the turn onto the Acorn Creek Bridge about fifty yards up the road on the left.  He hadn’t realized he was quite so close already.

“Shit!” He hit the brakes and turned sharply onto the bridge.   The seldom-traveled road was littered with leaves, now wet from the fall storm, and the old bridge was not yet equipped with the roadside sensors which the automobile safety chips used to keep cars from veering off the road.  The truck’s safety computer chip was unable to detect the boundaries of the road as Guy made the sharp turn. The tires lost their grip as they hit the bed of wet leaves covering the bridge.  Guy was helpless as his pick-up truck slid across the road and smashed through the rickety wooden side-rails, plunging twenty feet down into the shallows of Acorn Creek.  The Chevy crumpled against the rounded boulders that bordered the riverbed and rolled into the rushing water.  The river, swelled from the prolonged storm, quickly enveloped the truck.  There was no one to notice the last bubbles of air rising to the surface as it sank.

___

Richard Kincade drove up the Jones Falls Expressway through the pouring rain.  Even in good weather, the serpentine highway through downtown Baltimore was not his favorite road, but at three in the morning the traffic wasn’t too bad.  He soon found his way onto the winding country road north of the city that led to Sandi’s home.  It was not hard to spot her house, the only one on the block with the lights on in the living room.  Richie pulled into the driveway.  Sandi’s car was still there.

He stared out the window, struggling to see the house through the rain.  There were lights on in two of the upstairs rooms.  Once more he tried calling from his cell phone and once more there was no answer. Richie put the phone into his pocket and pulled his gray trench coat tightly around his body.  He shut the car door and raised his collar up over his neck.  The rain hadn’t let up a bit.

There was no answer at the door.  He turned the handle, but it was locked.  The kitchen door proved to be less of an obstacle.  It was dark inside and he gave himself a moment to adjust to the light.

“Dr. Fletcher,” he called out.  He was not surprised when no answer came.

Richie hated carrying a weapon, but at times like this he was glad to have one.  Pulling the semi-automatic handgun out of his holster, he inched cautiously across the floor to the living room door.  There was an eerie silence disturbed only by the raindrops beating methodically against the windows.  The living room was not immaculate; he could tell that Sandi was the type of person who liked to use her living room to unwind in, not as a showroom like so many others did, but at the moment it was unoccupied. 

Up the stairs, Richie could see a dim light coming from the bedroom door at one end of the hall and the more brightly lit study at the other end.  “Doc?” he called out as he slowly ascended the steps.  It was tough working without backup.  He tried not to think of Hank.

The door to the bedroom was ajar.  Richie stood next to it with his back against the wall.  He called out one more time, again answered only by silence.  One last look down the hallway at the study door, and then he ducked into the bedroom, gun first.  He stood crouched in the doorway surveying the room.  The only light visible was coming from the bathroom. 

God, I hope she’s not taking a shower.  This could be really embarrassing.
  His knees cracked as he struggled to his feet.  “Shh,” he whispered to them. 
I’m getting too old for this nonsense.
  Walking towards the bathroom, he stopped periodically to glance back over his shoulder.  That light from the study was unnerving.  For a brief moment he was convinced that he did hear the shower, but soon realized it was just the rain slapping against the bathroom window.  He took a deep breath and ducked in.  Much to his relief, everything was in order.  No naked woman taking a shower, no sign of violence.

Only one more place up here to look,
he thought as he turned back toward the hallway
.

Richie rechecked his weapon to make sure the safety was disengaged, wiped the sweat off his palm and slowly made his way back down the hall to the study.  He could hear the faint whir of the computer’s hard drive as he got closer.  The rain had started to let up and as he crouched by the door, listening intently; he could swear he could hear his own heart ticking.  He took deep, slow breaths to calm himself and was somewhat relieved as he realized the ticking sound was actually coming from a clock inside the study.

He readied his weapon and leaped in, steadying the pistol in both hands.  His eyes darted toward the computer desk and then across the room to the floor by the window, drawn by the glare of light reflecting off Guy’s knife.  He looked around again to make sure he didn’t have any unwanted company, and then walked over to the knife and bent down. The blood on the blade was still sticky.  It wasn’t until that moment that he noticed the sparse drops of blood camouflaged against the hardwood floor leading out the door and down the hall from where he had just come.

Richie followed the trail of blood, which led down to the kitchen door, the same door that he had entered several moments ago.  He hadn’t seen the trail of blood in the darkness of the house when he entered.  Even now, it was hard to discern in the dimly lit kitchen. 

He quickly searched the rest of the house.  It didn’t take long to convince himself it was vacant.  He rechecked the computer in the study, but it provided little in the way of clues.  Richie was tempted to take the knife, but thought the better of it.  After all, he had been relieved of duty and technically he was presently in the process of breaking and entering.  “Better leave this to the boys in blue,” he said, this time out loud.  It was a comfort to hear his own voice.  Creeping around in the dark was not his favorite pastime.

Kincade went back to his car and called the station.  “Hey, Jimmy.  It’s Richie.  Listen, I need you to put out an APB on a couple of people for me.”

  “What’s up, Richie?”

“There’s a lady friend of mine who’s gone missing.”

“A lady friend, huh?”

“Not that kind of a lady friend, Jimmy.  It’s a client of mine and I think she’s in trouble.  The boyfriend’s gone too.”

“Hmm, sounds pretty suspicious, Richie.  A girl and her boyfriend out late together on a Friday night.  Next thing you know, they might disappear for the whole weekend.  Should I have the boys check all of the hotels in the Poconos to see if a guy and girl checked in to any of the rooms together last night?”

“Cute, Jimmy.  Real cute.  Listen, I’ve been through her house, and there’s a bloody knife on the floor.”

“What the hell were you doing, Richie?  You’re on suspension, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.  I remember.  Listen, like I told you, she’s a friend of mine.  She was supposed to call me and when I didn’t hear from her, I came to her place to make sure she was OK.  The kitchen door was wide open.”

“You know better than that, Richie.”

“Hey, I was invited.”

“Who am I to argue?  I’ll send a team right over.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

There was not much else to do.  Richie headed home to salvage what little he could from the rest of this night.

___

The chief called for Kincade to meet him at the station first thing in the morning.  Richie explained the information he had come across that implicated BNI in the theft of Sandi’s data.

“Look, Richie,” the chief said gruffly, angered that he had to deal with something like this on the weekend, “I told you stay away from this BNI thing.  Go take a damned vacation, would you.  How am I going to explain what you were doing there last night?”

“Who needs to know it was me.”

“Those guys in the black suits have a way of knowing.”

“You may be right, Chief, but if they give you a hard time about this, it’ll tie them into it.  I’m sure they don’t want that, even if they are on JT Anderson’s payroll.  We’ve got to find out what happened to Dr. Fletcher.  She’s the key to all this.”

“We’re on it now whether we want to be or not, Richie, but for Christ’s sake, keep your nose out of this.  I don’t want any more visits from the NSA.”

“I’ll keep a low profile.”

The chief wasn’t thrilled with Kincade’s answer, but Richie had hung up before he could say another word.

Kincade was tempted to give Paul Hingston a call, but he still wasn’t sure who the inside man was at BNI, and Hingston was a prime suspect.  Richie decided not to fan the flames.  He placed his trust in the police force.

___

By Monday morning there was still no word and Richie was starting to give up hope that they would ever find Sandi alive.  Then, at ten AM, the first clue came in.  A motorist just outside of Columbia spotted a break in the guardrail of the Acorn Creek Bridge.  It took only a few hours to determine the make of the vehicle from the paint on the guardrail.  The blue paint was from a Chevy pickup truck matching the description of the vehicle owned by Guy Andrews.

The surging river prevented an extensive search for the truck and its occupants; it would likely be too rough to dredge for weeks.  The team focused on the shores of the river downstream from the bridge.  A woman’s jacket was the only thing found; tucked safely away in an inside zippered pocket was a plastic card, the faculty ID card belonging to Dr. Sandra Fletcher.

The chief had hoped that Sandi might have just left the coat in the truck at an earlier date, that maybe she had not been with Guy when he plunged into the Acorn Creek River.  By four PM his hopes faded as a report came in from the forensics lab.  The blood on the knife found at Sandi’s house, as well as a large bloodstain found on the jacket, were both the same blood type, a blood type matching Sandi Fletcher’s.  He made the call to Richard Kincade a few minutes after four.

Richie was beside himself.  He was sure that Sandi would still be alive if he had insisted on staying with her that night.  He was determined to find out who was responsible for her death, with or without the chief’s help.  For three days he went over every clue that he had, and for three days he continued to come up with the same conclusion: he had to get inside BNI or he would have no chance of resolving this.  He went over and over the four cases of the BNI employees that Shelly Lange had told him about.  He was sure that BNI was somehow using the neurological nanobots to exert some sort of mind control, but proving it would be impossible without Sandi.  Kincade didn’t know a nerve cell from a jail cell; he didn’t have a prayer of understanding this.  There was only one option left to him.  He had to hope that Paul Hingston was the honest man Sandi had once loved, that he was not involved in this madness.  It was a long shot, but Kincade was ready to take it.

___

“Dr. Paul Hingston?”  Richie had been sitting in the lobby of Poe Towers for hours waiting for Paul to come home.

“Who wants to know?”  Paul was particularly edgy.  He hadn’t slept well since hearing about Sandi’s disappearance.  It was all over the news, and Paul had stopped watching TV a day ago to avoid the pain of seeing the morbid story.

“My name is Richard Kincade.  I’m with the Baltimore Police Department.”

“What’s this about?”

“Dr. Sandra Fletcher.”

Paul’s eyes turned down.

“See, she was helping me with this case and, well, she spoke very highly of you.  I was hoping you might be able to help me out.”

Paul was furious.  “Jesus, that’s what this is about?  You sick bastard, they haven’t even found her body yet and you’re looking for a replacement for your case? Just leave me alone. You got a hell of a nerve coming here and...”

“Look, Dr. Hingston, I’m sorry.  I think you’ve misunderstood me.  This is
about
Sandi.  I need your help.”

Paul was curious.  As angry as he was at this intrusion, he was even hungrier for any information about Sandi. “Go on.”

Kincade motioned Hingston to a quiet corner of the lobby, and they sat.  “I know that Dr. Fletcher was upset with you, that she thought you had stolen some research from her.”