Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“I do. So where is he? And why do you think my sister would be interested in him?”

Roach shook his head.

“No idea. I don’t stay in touch with the old crew much. You see, something bad, real bad, happened on FOB Savannah where we were stationed.”

Jillian saw the pain in Roach’s eyes intensify. He set his fork down. Instinctively, she reached across and set her hand on his.

“Can you talk about it?”

“One of the locals turned out to be a terrorist-a suicide bomber. The guy’s cover was running a health clinic for the people just outside the wire. Fury was always helping him out with supplies, volunteering his off-hours to treat Afghan patients and such. Some thank-you he got.”

“What happened? Did the terrorist kill Fury?”

“Well in a way, maybe.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“This bastard drives his truck onto the base. Checkpoint has no problem letting him in. He’s a regular. But once inside, he plows his rig right through the front doors of the hospital. Blows himself and the truck to kingdom come. Garrity was there, right on the running board of the truck from what we heard, trying to break the window and get at the guy. He survived, by some miracle. I heard that one of the guys he worked with saved him somehow. The hospital was leveled. Most of the others didn’t make it, including his fiancée.”

“Oh, my God.”

Jillian wasn’t certain she could continue the conversation. She sipped some water and stared at the wall behind Roach, suddenly spent. Images of Belle at her vibrant best flashed through her thoughts. She wondered what Nick Garrity’s fiancée looked like.

“You okay?” Roach asked.

“No.”

“Oh, I understand.”

“I think you do. Any idea where Garrity is now?”

“Like I said, don’t keep in touch with the old crew. But I wanted to give you this. Thought it might help you to track him down. It’s been in my bureau drawer since he sent it to me.”

Roach fished into his pocket, withdrew a folded newspaper clipping, and passed it across. It was an article from The Washington Post about the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit and its director, Dr. Nick Garrity. There was a byline, but no date.

“Nick mailed this article to me a few years back,” Roach said. “He was trying to raise money to keep this RV on the streets. It’s like a roving clinic, helping down-and-out folks get decent medical care. That’s Nick.”

“I’ve heard about this program-even thought about volunteering at one point.”

“I sent him what I could. A hundred if I recall right. I would have sent more if times weren’t so hard.”

“I’m sure he appreciated any amount you could manage. Is the RV still in operation? Do you think Garrity is still in Washington?”

“It’s possible. Like I said, haven’t been in touch with him since.”

“I wonder what the connection between Garrity and Belle could be. She left D.C. right after she graduated. I can see her volunteering on something like Helping Hands, but she wasn’t licensed yet when she left for-”

Jillian stopped mid-sentence when her cell phone began ringing.

“Excuse me,” she said, retrieving her flip phone from her purse. Her brow furrowed when she didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

The reception was weak and between the bad connection and the din of the diner it was hard for her to hear.

“This is Scott Emberg.”

“Who?”

“Emberg. Scott Emberg,” he said louder. “I’m the president of our Oak Grove Condominium Association.”

“Oh, jeez. Scott, yeah. Is everything all right?”

“Not exactly. There… um… was a fire last night. A big fire.”

“Oh, God!” she exclaimed. “Is everybody okay? Was anybody hurt?”

“Everybody is fine, thank goodness. Two units suffered minor damages, but I’m afraid yours was where the blaze started. Much of it was destroyed.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, especially the first floor. The fire inspectors are going over it now. I’m really sorry, Jillian. I would have called you sooner, but the cell phone number we have wasn’t the right one. I had to wait until I could get it from the management company. I didn’t see the second floor, but there’s nothing left on the lower level. Nothing at all.”

Jillian’s heart sank as she stared in disbelief at the devastation that for six years had been her condominium-the first place other than her parents’ that she had ever owned. The front door to her unit had been hacked away and the entryway marked off with yellow plastic ribbon.

She leaned against the scorched brick to keep herself from collapsing. If it weren’t so tragic, condo association president Scott Emberg’s assessment of the damage would have been laughable. The walls weren’t blackened, as he had described. Most of them, on the first floor at least, were simply gone. Only the support struts remained, though those were transformed into something akin to the logs burned nearly to charcoal and ash in a fireplace.

Mountains of dark soot, littered with unrecognizable forms, created an alien landscape across the living room. Jillian’s throat tightened as she gazed at the large pile of debris in the center-Belle’s things, packed in carefully labeled cardboard cartons, and now just so much soot.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Her words were a muffled whimper. “I’m so sorry.”

Jillian’s nostrils filled with the acrid stench of burnt plastic and vinyl. Her lungs felt raw. Bile percolated into her throat. For five minutes, she knelt on the ash and sobbed. Finally she rose and took several cautious steps inside.

The stack of Nick Fury comic books had been incinerated. It had been stupid not to leave them someplace safer. Jillian glanced about and laughed ruefully at the irony of that thought. There was nowhere safer-at least not in her world. The comics had seemed unusual for Belle to have, but not that significant. What else had been lost that might have shed light on Belle’s killer, she wondered. She felt no compulsion to sift through the charred remnants to prove what she knew in her heart-there was nothing left.

At the doorway to the combination sunroom and study-the only significant addition she had made to the place-Jillian spotted the V-shaped burn pattern just above the gnarled metal baseboard heater. According to Emberg, the fire inspector had pegged that spot as the source of the blaze. A subsequent call by her to the Arlington fire department supported that conclusion. According to the chief, it had taken investigators only a few hours to rule the conflagration accidental. The clothes inside a plastic bag left up against the electric baseboard heater had ignited, setting a nearby stack of similar bags ablaze, as well as a wastebasket and its contents. The telling signs, the chief explained, were the uniform V-shaped burn pattern and lack of any trace evidence of an accelerant.

Despite there having been a lot of green plastic storage bags around from the move, Jillian was almost certain she had not left any of them near the baseboard, and had turned off the heat before leaving for the airport. Or had she? She hadn’t been thinking clearly since Belle’s death, and in the rush to make the flight to Charlotte, who knew what details she might have overlooked? The weather had been unseasonably cool lately, and the study, beautiful as it had been, seemed to accentuate extremes in temperature. If only it had been warmer, perhaps this would not have happened.

Wondering if the damage to the upstairs had been as total as that around her, Jillian checked the ceiling. The panels had melted away, exposing blackened wiring and support beams. Miraculously, however, the exposed floorboards, though scorched and streaked black with soot, seemed intact in most spots. Perhaps the upstairs wasn’t as badly damaged as Emberg had indicated.