Gone(35)

“Driver is an eighteen-year-old,” she said. “Took his father’s truck without asking. Maybe had some sort of a tiff with him. They found THC in the kid’s urine, alcohol in his blood.”

“Okay,” Rondeau said. So that was that, maybe.

“What’s the word on Ms. Leifson?”

“She’s critical. They’re prepping her for surgery. Pretty extensive injuries. To her head, her neck. It sounds like the kind of thing where she could be paralyzed.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” Gates had a neatly folded handkerchief she used to periodically dab at her eye. He saw she had some scars around it.

“Yeah, thanks.” He couldn’t get the infected patient out of his mind. It was sticking for some reason, the idea of an infected person with contaminated blood. Stokes said Kemp’s film, Citizen Farmer, dealt with animal-borne diseases from the meat industry. He regarded Gates. “You’re pretty sure this was just an accident?”

“What are you thinking? Our missing family — your missing family case — we’ve got some intersection between that and this?”

“I don’t know. What I’d like, if you can do me a huge favor, is to keep me in the loop on it.”

“Of course.”

“I mean, what we know is that the truck is registered in the name Meyers, and that’s the young driver’s father, that checks out. And he’s coming in hot, way hot, doing close to thirty miles an hour to the ferry lot when he impacts with Ms. Lieberman.”

“Leifson.”

“Yes, Leifson. Sorry.”

“Anything interesting at the scene? I came straight here, over the bridge.”

Gates hesitated. “Well, there are some jurisdictional prickers. I put CSI on crash reconstruction, even though we’ve already got the data from the vehicle computers — every now and again reconstruction can tell us things the computers can’t, but the computers are pretty reliable. Everything from how fast the cars were going to when the brakes were applied.”

“Were they?”

Gates gave him a probing look. “Yes. The driver applied the brakes in the last few seconds.”

“How many seconds? Maybe it was just an involuntary action? Maybe he . . . ?”

“Meant to ram her? I’ll try to find out, Detective Rondeau. That’s what my job is. But I got a late start. I’ve been fielding overflow calls on your Kemp case all morning.”

Rondeau knew Gates was a tough investigator. She’d been through hell on the college killer case. She’d gotten glass in her face — that was why her eye was messed up. “I’m sorry, I’m not implying anything.”

“Lots of calls going through BCI get redirected up here,” she explained anyway. “Depending on their origin. Not all calls go to Incident Command, unfortunately. There’s a shortfall.”

“I understand.” Stokes had reported similarly. “Anything solid?”

“We follow up everything we can. Some of these, though, like the one we got just this morning . . . I mean, the things people come up with, right?”

Rondeau felt a flutter in his chest. “Tell me.”

“Oh, ah, just that the whole thing, you know, has to do with the Indian Lake Project.”

The name of the place tolled familiar; Indian Lake was where Addison Kemp had a business and a second home. “I don’t know what that is — the Indian Lake Project.”

“Ah, yeah — you’re not a native, right? Okay, so, this Indian Lake Project theory is about secret CIA drug testing.”

“I see.”

Gates elaborated. “Indian Lake is supposedly one of the sites where the CIA did the experiments in the 70s. They used orphaned children, or so the more sinister versions go.” Gates seemed disgusted by the idea. “Some people think the experiments are ongoing. And Indian Lake is a main site.”

Whether or not the story was nonsense, the fact that it connected Addison Kemp was enough to crank Rondeau’s heart rate some more. “Someone following that one up?”

“We’re stretched thin, Detective. This one didn’t even make it to triage. You know how it goes; most people think these conspiracies are as ridiculous as a faked moon landing.”

All the manpower is on the search, he thought. And it’s a waste. We’re not going to find the family that way.

He stood up a little too quickly. He suddenly needed to find Millard. He stuck out his hand and Gates shook it, without getting up.

“Thank you, Detective Gates. I’ll be in touch.” He hurried out of the waiting room.

*

He found Millard in the cafeteria, gobbling down peanut butter sandwiches. Rondeau took a chair. He had no appetite. He waited while Millard ate, thinking again how his brother-in-law seemed calmer, while he was on edge.

The clock was ticking. Connie’s accident may not have had anything to do with the missing family, but he couldn’t get the sick patient out of his mind. Vague suspicions and a random caller claiming the Indian Lake Project had something to do with the Kemps weren’t reasonable grounds for ignoring protocol.

He knew it wasn’t right to be so wary of the government, the FBI. It wasn’t fair to the Kemp family. It wasn’t fair to any of his fellow investigators, keeping them out of the loop on something as important as that phone call four hours ago. Not only was it unfair, it was, really, kind of insane. It wasn’t the workings of a rational mind, was it?