Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(61)
“Um,” said the young man. “I don’t know who, uh.” He held up a hesitant finger. “Let me make a call?”
Five minutes later, Shepard was walking down the hall with a yawning, overweight ex-cop named Jenks. “Sorry, third shift is a bitch. Homeland Security wants what?”
“I want to look at your feeds. You had two people here, and I need to see where they went and who they talked to. Let’s start with the ER.”
Five minutes after that, Shepard was down in the security dungeon, sipping burnt coffee and reviewing grainy video footage.
He knew the girl’s face from the salesman’s file, and he found her as she walked into the waiting area. She wore a floppy hat, and her face was puffy and strange, like she’d been hit in the face, but it was clearly her. The hat failed to conceal her long, narrow nose and her wide mouth. The freckles didn’t make it through the poor video quality.
Her file was far from complete, but it painted a certain kind of picture.
A wild child with a long and distinguished record of causing trouble and challenging authority. She first met the law at thirteen for driving without a license. The list went on until she went off to college, where she seemed to find some kind of focus. She’d become an independent young woman either living on the margins or charting her own path, depending on your point of view.
But Shepard already knew enough about the girl.
He wanted to know who had helped her.
In the video, it appeared to be the tall man who’d walked in ahead of her. Broad at the shoulder and physically fit, although he was favoring his left leg and his right side. He wore a baseball hat to hide his face, and he was clearly conscious of the camera, because when the intake nurse handed him a gauze pad, he turned away to take off his hat and dab gently at a darkness in his hair that looked like blood.
They’d both been beat up when their car left the road.
He used the joystick to scan back and forth, freezing the video at the clearest view of the man’s face.
“Print me a picture, please, this frame. What can you tell me about these two?”
Jenks looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s confidential information. HIPAA and that. I can’t tell you anything without a warrant.”
“This thing is moving quickly,” said Shepard. “These two people killed four of my best agents not twenty-four hours ago.”
“Jesus,” said Jenks. “I’m sorry to hear that. If you had a court order, I could tell you whatever you wanted.”
“I don’t have time for a court order. But I can tell you’re a patriot,” Shepard said, slapping the man on the back. Was that overkill? Probably not, from the man’s tired smile. “Where do they go from the waiting room? Do you have any cameras in the exam area?”
“Not in the exam areas or the bathrooms,” Jenks said as he turned back to the keyboard. “But just about everywhere else, including the parking lot. Let’s see what we got.”
29
PETER
Peter poured coffee into a pair of white china mugs and stood examining the contents of the fridge. For some reason, he was starving. Then June sauntered out of the bathroom, opened the warm oven, and pulled out a white paper bag. The smell of chorizo and cinnamon filled the kitchen.
“Breakfast burritos and fresh churros,” she said. “There’s this great food truck at the end of my running route.”
He wondered if it was too early to propose.
Her face looked much better, the swelling down a great deal in the night and the bruises fading from purple to a greenish-yellow, which she’d covered expertly with makeup. They ate on the couch with napkins on their laps and a bag of ice on Peter’s ankle. He wanted to jump her all over again, but June, now dressed in dark blue slacks and a crisp white blouse, was all business.
“Here’s my plan for today. Let me know if you have any better ideas.”
“I have a better idea.”
She gave him a look. “This is work time,” she said. “Before we try to track down those guys from the redwoods, I think we should meet that lawyer, the one who contacted my mom.”
“Jean-Pierre Nicolet,” Peter said, nodding. “He’s a pretty heavy hitter. If we’re going to approach him, I’m going to need a decent suit.”
She looked at him, maybe trying to picture him in a suit.
“I’ll tell you my idea on the way.” He got off the couch. “I’ll meet you at the car in a few minutes. I want to do something before we go.”
The house’s six-color paint job glowed in the filtered light. Leo Boyle’s dented black BMW was gone from the driveway, so Peter didn’t bother knocking.
If he hadn’t known the key was there somewhere, he’d never have found it. Even knowing the general location, it took him a couple of minutes to find the chiseled-out hollow behind a loose piece of clapboard siding. Boyle had created a weirdly excellent hiding place.
Peter wondered why the kid had told him about the key. Maybe he’d thought Peter wouldn’t be able to find it. Maybe there was something else he was tired of hiding. Or maybe he was just stoned. The old lock turned more smoothly than Peter expected.
He stepped into a small landing with peeling paint and a few hooks for coats. Steep, narrow steps wound down to a darkened basement and up to a closed door that Peter assumed led to the kitchen. Peter had worked on a lot of old homes with his dad, and the layouts were usually pretty basic unless the owners had made significant alterations.