The Survivors (9 page)

EIGHT

A
t first light, I woke and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The French doors to the balcony were ajar. Scottie was out there, asleep in one of the sling chairs. As I watched, he twitched and mumbled something. A bad dream. I eased the doors shut and took my coffee to the living room.

During the night, I kept thinking about those papers of Scottie's, wondering what other information was there. I took them out of his backpack.

There were more bank and phone records and credit card bills. Too much detail for a quick run-through. Lower in the stack I came to four stapled reports. The top one said, “Examiner's Autopsy, Final—Alan Ryan Oakes.” I skipped a few pages in and found diagrams of a human skull, marked with x's to show the entry and exit points for the bullet that killed my brother. My eyes swam. The other autopsies were for my parents and Ron. Maybe someday I'd be able to face them, but not yet.

I moved on until I came to a faded sheet. It was a receipt from a shop in Sterling, Virginia—AllPro Sports. Under “Purchaser” was the name Lori Tran. She'd bought a Smith & Wesson 586 revolver for three hundred eighty-five dollars.

Scottie shuffled in with a cup of coffee. I'd been concentrating so hard I hadn't heard him come in from the balcony. He sat down next to me on the sofa.

“What's this receipt for?” I said.

“Lori Tran was a friend of your mother's, her hairdresser. She bought the gun for her.”

“I always wondered where she got it,” I said. “Why Virginia? And why not buy it herself?”

“There's no waiting period for handgun purchases in Virginia.” He laughed at my surprised look. I hadn't really expected him to know the answer. “That was in one of the newspaper stories. Your mother lived in Maryland, so she couldn't buy a handgun in Virginia. Tran lived over there—in Herndon, I think. Your mom offered her five hundred dollars; Tran said yes. She ended up doing a year of probation for it.”

Five hundred dollars. That would have been nearly half of what was in the bank account. Had we always lived so close to the edge? I remembered Christmas, birthdays. There were never any complaints about money.

I put the page back with the rest while he yawned and took a swig of coffee.

“Did you have a good night?” I said.

“Good enough.”

“You sleep outdoors a lot of the time?”

“Sometimes,” he mumbled.

So he didn't talk much in the morning. I could relate to that. “I'll get us some breakfast. There's a spare towel under the sink in the bathroom if you want to take a shower.”

He nodded and stared glumly at the floor.

“We'll work it out with the FBI, Scottie. I don't think you should go to work today, though. Let me make some calls, see what I can find out.”

“Whatever you say.” He smiled, but it wasn't very convincing.

When I heard the shower come on, I took my phone out to the balcony. It was too early to call my lawyer friend. Besides, I had another problem to deal with first. I didn't think I should leave Scottie alone today. Felix would be up, in his sunroom reading the newspaper.

“Yeah, who is it?” he said when he picked up.

The whole world seemed in a lousy mood today. “Good morning to you too.”

“Cal—sorry. Couldn't think who the hell would be calling this time of day.”

“I need a favor. Scottie Glass came by my place last night and ended up staying over. He's pretty upset about the FBI thing.”

“He's just going to have to—”

I talked over the top of him. “I've got an idea to try to help him. I'm going to need the day to put things together. Can I leave him with you?”

“You think I'm some kind of boarding kennel?”

I stayed quiet, letting it lie there.

Felix huffed into the phone. “He can stay until I say he's got to go, how's that sound?”

“Like about as good as I'm going to get. We'll be there in an hour.”

The next call was going to be trickier. I got the number from the incoming calls list on my phone. It rang straight through to voice mail.

“Agent Weston, this is Cal Henderson. I've been thinking about what you said. I'd like to help you out with Scott Glass if we can arrange something that's going to be in his interest. If you have a few minutes, I'd like to see you this morning. I'll be at my office after eight thirty, or you can reach me on my cell.” I gave her both numbers.

When I told Scottie I was going to take him to a friend's house, he argued, but not for long. He agreed it would be pretty boring sitting around my place all day. We had good luck with the traffic and got there well ahead of my predicted hour. Felix was out on the porch, along with Coop. From the way Scottie stayed behind me, I could tell he had a problem with dogs. “Does he bite?” he said.

“Only food and strangers,” Felix replied.

“Am I a stranger?”

“He'll let you know.”

For once, Coop behaved, following at a dignified pace as Felix came down the steps. “Toss this to him,” Felix said, handing Scottie a dog treat. “He'll love you for it.” Scottie did as he was told, and Coop snatched it with a toothy “clomp” that sent Scottie hiding behind Felix. “I was kidding about biting strangers,” Felix said.

Scottie laughed uneasily. “I know.”

Felix eyed him for a moment and said, “Cal, I'll walk you back to your car.” He waited for me to get behind the wheel before he whispered, “What should I do with him?”

“He was a fanatic about watching TV when we were kids. Let him find a science fiction movie. If that doesn't pan out, put him to work in your garden.”

“Yeah,” Felix grunted, imagining how much free labor he could get in one day. “What did you tell him about me?”

“Just to stay away from your porn stash.”

Felix glared at me.

“I can kid, same as you. I told him you were a friend and retired, that's all.”

“You didn't tell him I was a psychologist?”

“I figured it might scare him off.”

Scottie had backed into the corner of the yard, putting a cypress shrub between him and Coop. “It looks like he doesn't need much reason to be scared,” Felix said.

“That's only the tip of it. He always wears that hat to hide the dent in his head, where he was shot. He's never gotten any help beyond physical therapy. He's a whole graduate psych seminar, all by himself. Just your kind of patient.”

“Only he's not my patient.”

“No, he's not.” I started the car. “But you two will get along fine.”

Felix put his hand on the steering wheel. “You're not getting away that easy.” He waited for me to shut the engine down. “You can't fix every stray animal that walks through your door, Cal. That's especially true of this one.”

I stared straight ahead.

“Go ahead, get mad,” Felix said. “You know I'm right. If he really needs help, he'll be better off with someone who has some distance.”

I pulled his hand off the steering wheel. “I'm going to talk to the FBI, that Agent Weston. Then I'm going to call in a favor from Tim Regis, the lawyer who went to Southern Cal with me. Tim knows the Justice Department inside out. He can help sort out Scottie's legal problems, and then we'll worry about what comes next.”

“I'm worried now, Cal.”

“Well, don't be.” I fired up the engine and got out of there before I said something I'd regret.

I was halfway to my office when my phone rang. The District of Columbia makes it a hundred-dollar offense to use a handheld phone in the car. After a couple of tickets, I learned my lesson and had Bluetooth installed. I clicked the button on the steering wheel. “Hello?”

“Dr. Henderson, it's Jamie Weston. You wanted to talk to me?” There was a thump and she said, “Hey, watch it.”

“Where are you? It sounds like quite a crowd.”

“Outside the Metro station by my office. It's like a cow barn this time of day. So what can I do for you?”

“I'd like to see you, if you have a few minutes. Your office is on 6th Street, right? I'm only a few blocks from there now.”

“Um, I'm on my way to get coffee. Let's meet there.” The crowd noise around her was dying down. “So . . . what do you like?”

That was an odd way to put it. Not, “What can I get you?” or “What would you like?” Maybe it was only an innocent slip, but it left me wondering. With a patient I'd unlock that door, usually with something unexpected. “What do I like? How about . . . quiet walks on the beach.”

“What?” She laughed. “I meant coffee.”

“Sure you did. Black, medium.”

“Simple things for a simple man.” She gave me the address of the coffee shop and hung up.

By the time I got there, she'd bought the coffee and found a table. She spotted me through the window and waved. Her eyes were puffy, and she was wearing the same blue pantsuit as yesterday. She'd probably spent the night waiting for Scottie in Mount Pleasant. Being tired didn't kill her smile, though.

“Doctor Henderson, have a seat. So you've heard from Mr. Glass?”

I eased into the chair. “What makes you think that?”

That smile again. “Why else would you leave a voice mail for me at six forty in the morning?”

“I did speak to him, and I don't think he's a threat to anyone.”

She took a sip of her coffee. I caught the syrupy scent of hazelnut. “I appreciate your opinion, but if you saw the e-mails he sent, you'd know we can't leave it there.”

I didn't want to get into the details—whether I'd read the e-mails, if I'd actually met with Scottie or just had a phone call. “Scott isn't any kind of master criminal. You seem to be devoting a lot of energy to such a small fish.”

She cocked her head to the side, making a silent question.

“I know you staked out his house last night. I drove up there looking for him, and I saw you and Agent Cade in your car across the street.”

“That was you,” she said. “I had a bet with Cade. You just cost me ten bucks.”

I took out my wallet and laid a ten on the table. “That'll cover it. Now tell me: Why all the attention to a case like this?”

“First you tell me why this matters to you. You said you'd barely met the guy.”

“You know Scott was injured as a boy. Shot in the head.” She nodded slightly. So they'd dug into his background. I was going to bet they hadn't connected me to the shootings. My name—Henderson—wouldn't give them a clue.

“I assume you're worried about the e-mail messages Scott sent to Eric Russo.” She gave the slight nod again. “Scott found out that Russo talked to the woman who shot him only an hour before it happened. It's natural for him to want to follow up, to see if Russo remembers the conversation or if there is anything else he can tell him about that night. Even though it's been years, it's normal to want that kind of information. It helps with closure.”

“It sounds like you had a pretty useful talk with Mr. Glass.”

“He told me about Russo and filled me in on some research he'd done. He said in addition to Russo, he'd contacted some people from Braeder Design Systems.”

At the mention of Braeder, her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Glass said something about Braeder Design to Russo's assistant, but I didn't know he'd been in touch with anyone there. Braeder is a highflier. This could mean extra trouble for Glass if he's made threats to those people.”

“There've been no complaints so far, or you would have heard about it.”

“Still, I'll have to check it out,” she said.

I gave a silent curse. I needed to be careful not to spill anything else. She made it so easy to open up, let everything come out naturally. I wondered how much of that was just a skill learned on the job. “Scott came to me for help. It's an interesting case, a childhood trauma that's come back to give him problems. I want to do what I can, and I honestly don't think he's a danger to anyone. Now, I answered your question, so answer mine. Why so much attention for a few angry e-mails?”