Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

"Naturally, Tegg was asked to leave and was told in no uncertain terms that he would never be accepted in any residency program. if he applied, all would be revealed. He went on to veterinarian school-I wrote a recommendation for him."

"Was he ever charged for that killing?"

"This is medicine, Miss. Matthews. It wasn't murder. It was a mistake. Mistakes happen."

"There were no lawsuits?"

"Yes, there was a lawsuit.

That's one of the reasons he was dismissed. The school had to dismiss him immediately in an attempt to defend its position on this. To clarify it. That is precisely why no other program would have ever taken him."

She took some notes while her thoughts were still fresh. She looked up and asked. "Do you remember the patient's name? The one who was killed?"

"You don't forget an incident like that," he explained. "His name was Thomas Kent."

She wrote this down as well. She underlined it.

Thomas Kent 3 P. m.

When Daphne cleared the jetway at SEATAC airport she saw Lou Boldt and an airport security patrolman anxiously awaiting her, standing away from the steady stream of departing passengers.

Boldt reached out, took her briefcase in one hand and her upper arm in another. They walked fast. He steered her over to a shuttle cart that was waiting for them. The air was electric with urgency. Sharon's time was running out.

Boldt said, "Maybeck's cooling his heels in Interrogation.

Shoswitz wants you part of it." Before she had a chance to ask, he answered, "He was busted at a dog fight by the County Police who weren't aware of our investigation or our surveillance. It's a mess. There's a lot of screaming going on."

They climbed onto the cart, and it hurried off almost before she sat down, throwing her into the seat. She said, "We're running out of time. You know that, don't you?"

"We're taking an amphibian to Lake Union to save time. Tractor trailer carrying chemicals overturned on 1–5. Traffic's been diverted to 99. Nothing is moving. There's an hour delay at least. Don't look at me, it was Phil's idea."

"The lieutenant spending money?" she said over the repetitious beeping of the cart's pedestrian warning system. "There's a rumor going around that one of the church groups pressured the mayor about Sharon's whereabouts. Whatever happened, the lid is coming off this thing. KING radio ran a story about our finding remains along the Tolt. They're trying to draw Green River comparisons. We're sitting on the rest of it, but Phil suddenly.wants results."

"It's about time." Boldt said, "Yes. That is what it's about." The cart pulled up at gate A-7, where a charter pilot awaited them. Daphne handed her keys over to the airport security man who was going to return her car to the department. Boldt and the pilot shook hands. The three. of them hurried down a flight of stairs and out to the waiting plane with its overhead engine, wheels and short pontoons. The plane looked so tiny compared with the huge jetliners.

Daphne shut her eyes in terror as they landed on Lake Union seven minutes later. From the plane, they were chauffeured in a patrolcar, sitting in the back, contained by a cage, the doors without handles. "You know, in seven years I've never ridden back here," she said.

It had been too loud to talk on the plane. in a strained voice Boldt informed her, "Immigration's computers kicked dozens of names. We failed to realize how many commuters travel between the two cities on a daily basis. It's a long list and it's going to be a bitch sorting it out. To make matters worse, we've been unable to get a list of the various employees, and that's the first list we wanted to check Immigration against."

"One step forward, two steps back." "Doin' the policeman's polka," he said, making her smile.

The car braked severely. She looked up to see they were already at the Public Safety Building. The driver let them out. Boldt was still carrying her briefcase. The frantic pace lent an urgency that she now felt physically as well. She was taking short, quick breaths. Her heart was racing.

Shoswitz met them on the ground floor; the driver must have called in their position. This kind of treatment was heady. Shoswitz wouldn't allow anyone else on the elevator with them. As the three of them ascended, the lieutenant asked Boldt, "Well?"

"She's pretty much up to date."

"What can you tell us about Tegg?" the lieutenant asked her. "And I want it all. Guesses, hunches, anything. I've got a meeting with the captain in-" he checked his watch, "ten minutes. Go!"

She had tried to bring her thoughts together on the flight down from Vancouver. These last few' minutes had rattled her. The elevator car reached the fourth floor. Shoswitz hit the stop button, preventing the doors from opening. He was waiting for her to brief him.

She said quickly, "Tegg is a paranoid. He's running from his past, trying to prove himself. In his mind, he's better than everyone, yet everyone's against him. Outwardly he could very well be Joe Normal, a good doctor, a good husband, a good father. But inside he's paranoid. He thinks of everyone as inferior to him; he tolerates them, but that's all. He's quick to blame, and he has an explanation for everything. He's Mr. Right. Mr. Perfect. By now he's found some way to put a twist on his killing a man named Thomas Kent-killed him in surgery-but half of him knows that this twist is a lie, that he's lying to himself, and that's been eating away at him a long, long time." "How dangerous?" Shoswitz asked. "To our people?"

"Violent?

I doubt it. But he's worth being afraid of. He was at the top of his class, so he's plenty brainy. He has a scientific mind, which means he'll think in patterns and subsets, very linear and logical. He's always two or three steps ahead-in his thoughts, in his surgery, in his life. He's likely to be obsessive-very few hobbies or distractions to take him away from his work.

He's a control freak. Millingsford said he used to intimidate the nurses, that they were afraid of him, and that fits with what I'm thinking. He still intimidates his coworkers. He's Likely to be exceptionally strong-minded, strongwilled. But psychologically speaking, his strengths are his weaknesses. They can be exploited."

The lieutenant nodded and looked up at Boldt. "Okay?" he asked.

"Any questions?"

"Okay with me." She grabbed Shoswitz by the arm. it was the wrong thing to do. "We have to bypass the red tape, Lieutenant. We have to go straight at this guy. And fast." Shoswitz pulled his arm free, reached down, and punched the Emergency Stop button. The doors slid open. Unexpectedly, they were showered in a blinding array of camera flashes and a dozen questions being shouted at them simultaneously. Shoswitz and Boldt contained Daphne between them, and the three of them, arms raised fending off the lights, surged through the throng of reporters. "No comment," Shoswitz kept shouting back.

As they pushed into Homicide, the press was kept at bay.

Shoswitz issued orders to the first patrolman he encountered, "I want them kept in the press room, understand? Not up here." To Boldt he said, "I gotta leave you two now." To Daphne he said, "This is where you earn your meal ticket, Matthews. We need to break this guy. We need for him to give us Tegg in a handbasket. You're the one who said it: Your friend Sharon is running out of time."

She wanted to hit him for saying that. Where had he been this last week? "Don't worry about him," Boldt said as Shoswitz hurried out of earshot. "I'm not worried about him," she said. They reached the one-way glass that looked in on Interrogation Room A. "It's him I'm wondering about."

On the other side of the glass sat Donald Monroe Maybeck.

Boldt had never seen teeth like that. He and Daphne studied Maybeck through the one-way glass. Boldt said, "As far as he knows, all we have him on is the gaming charge, the pit bulls. But the other arrests were allowed to post bail immediately, so he's got to be wondering why he's still here." Teeth like a junkyard dog, a grotesque gray brown. Despite the no-smoking sign he smoked a nonfilter cigarette, holding the smoke in so long that when he finally exhaled it left as a thin gray ghost. "We can book him on a list of charges, but none of them except this pit bull fight is going to stick, and it's a misdemeanor. The laptop was out of his possession-we, a bunch of cops witnessed it being stolen. He or an attorney can use that to his advantage. Even with the password, he can claim someone put that database onto the laptop while it was out of his possession. Things like that are tricky to prove. Proctor won't go for it, I promise you. I'm betting he killed Connie Chi, but we have yet to connect him to it. ID has that condom has the sperm. We can make like we're going to run a DNA typing. We can humiliate him: Make him jack-off for the lab boys. But proof? A match? Maybe, maybe not. What I'd like to do is wear him down, crack him open, and get a full confession on his involvement with Tegg and his murdering Connie Chi. Slam-dunk him."