Дэвид Балдаччи: The Fix

She nodded. “The Bureau is taking the lead on this since Dabney was a contractor for them and it happened on their doorstep. So I’m your girl.”

Decker turned away from her and said to Milligan, “Has the FBI assigned a team to the case yet?”

Milligan nodded.

“Who’s the team? Do you know them?”

“I know them very well, because they’re us .”

Decker blinked. “Come again?”

“Bogart’s team, meaning us, has been assigned to the case.”

“But we do cold cases.”

“Well, that’s what the meeting today was about. They were changing our assignment. Cold to hot cases. And since you were on the scene of this one, it made sense to let us work it. So we’re a go.”

“Even though I’m a witness to the crime?”

“It’s not as though there’s going to be any doubt as to what happened, Decker. And there were lots of witnesses to what he did. They don’t need you.”

“But I came here to do cold cases,” protested Decker.

“Well, we don’t get to decide that, Decker. The higher-ups do.”

“And they can just pull the rug out from under us like that? Without even asking?”

Milligan attempted a smile, but when he saw the troubled expression on Decker’s face, the look faded. “It’s a bureaucracy, Decker, and we have to follow orders. At least Ross and I do. I guess you and Jamison could call it quits, but my career is locked up with the Bureau.” He paused. “We’ll still be catching bad guys. Just for newer crimes. You’ll still get to do what you do so well.”

Decker nodded but hardly looked appeased by Milligan’s words. He looked down at Berkshire’s body. The pulse of blue assailed him from all corners. He felt slightly sick to his stomach.

Wainwright glanced over and registered on the name on Decker’s ID. “Wait a minute. Amos Decker. Are you the guy who can’t forget anything?”

When Decker didn’t say anything, Milligan said quickly, “Yes, he is.”

Wainwright said, “Heard you guys have solved quite a few old cases over the last several months. Principally the Melvin Mars matter.”

“It was a team effort,” said Milligan. “But we couldn’t have done it without Decker.”

Decker stirred and pointed to a purple smudge on the back of Berkshire’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Let’s have a closer look,” Wainwright said. She gripped a magnifying glass set on a rotating arm and positioned it over the mark. She turned on a light and aimed it at the dead woman’s hand. Peering through the glass, she said, “Appears to be a stamp of some sort.”

Decker took a look through the glass. “Dominion Hospice.” He looked at Milligan, who was already tapping keys on his notebook.

Milligan read down the screen. “Okay, got it. It’s over near Reston Hospital. They handle terminal cases, obviously.”

Decker looked down at Berkshire. “If the mark is still on her hand, presumably she went there today. A shower would have taken it off.”

“Do you think she went to visit someone?” asked Milligan.

“Well, she wasn’t exactly terminal, until Dabney killed her.”

He abruptly walked out without another word.

Wainwright looked at Milligan with raised eyebrows at this sudden departure.

“He kind of just does that... a lot,” said Milligan. “I’ve sort of gotten used to it.”

“Then you’re a better person than I am,” replied Wainwright. She held up the Stryker saw. “Because if he kept walking out on me like that, I might just clock him with this.”

Walter Dabney’s chest rose and fell with the spasmodic twitch of someone not long for this world. It was as though the lungs were the weary rear guard holding out as the spirit prepared to exit the body.

Alex Jamison was in her late twenties, tall, slim, and pretty with long brunette hair. She sat on the right side of the hospital bed in the CCU. Ross Bogart, an FBI special agent in his late forties, with a bit of gray the only thing marring his perfectly combed dark hair, stood ramrod-straight on the left. His fingers clutched the bed’s safety rail.

Dabney lay in the bed, hooked up to a complex array of monitoring lines and tubes carrying medications. His right eye was an empty crater because the bullet he’d fired into his chin had burst from there after catapulting through parts of the brain. His facial skin was deathly gray, where it wasn’t swollen and stained purple by burst capillaries. His breathing was erratic and the monitor showed his vitals to be fluctuating all over the place. He was in the critical care unit, the place designated for the sickest and most badly injured patients at the hospital.

But he wasn’t just injured; Walter Dabney was dying.

The doctors who had been in and out during the day had all confirmed that it was simply a matter of time before the brain told the heart to stop pumping. And there was nothing they could do about it. The damage was such that no medicine and no surgery could bring the man back. They were just counting down the time until death.

Mrs. Eleanor Dabney, better known as Ellie, had arrived thirty minutes after the FBI had told her what had happened. They would have to question her, but right now the woman was simply a grieving widow-to-be. She was currently in the bathroom throwing up, a nurse assisting her.

Bogart eyed Jamison. She seemed to sense his attention and glanced up.

“Any word from Decker?” he asked quietly.

She checked her phone and shook her head. “He was going to be at the morgue with Berkshire’s body.” She thumbed in a text to him and sent it off. “I copied Todd on it,” she said.

Bogart nodded. “Good. He’ll keep Decker on track.”

They both knew that Decker was not always the best at communicating. In fact, he pretty much sucked at it.

Bogart looked down at Dabney again. “Nothing in the guy’s record to indicate something like this happening. And no connection that we can find to Berkshire.”

Jamison said, “There must be something unless it was completely random. And that doesn’t make much sense either.”

Bogart nodded in agreement and then glanced at the monitor. The dying man’s heart rate and respiration danced around like bare feet on sizzling coals.

“Chances are very good he’s going to die without saying anything.”

“But if he does say something we’ll be here,” replied Jamison.

The bathroom door opened and out came the nurse and Ellie Dabney. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with long legs and a slender waist and narrow hips. Her features were quite attractive, the jaw elegantly structured, the cheekbones high and firm, the eyes large and a pleasing light blue. Her hair was long and she had let it go naturally silver. She looked like she might have been quite the athlete in her youth. Now in her early sixties, the mother of four grown children with three grandchildren and one mortally wounded husband, the stricken woman appeared about as close to death as one could get without actually being dead.

Bogart placed a chair next to the bed for her as Jamison rose and helped the nurse guide Ellie over to the chair, into which she fell rather than sat.

The nurse checked the monitor, gave Bogart an ominous look, and left, closing the door behind her. Ellie had reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand, her forehead resting against the top of the bed rail.

Bogart stepped back and Jamison resumed her seat. They exchanged glances while listening to the woman’s quiet sobs.

“Mrs. Dabney, we can arrange to have your children brought here when they get into town,” he said after a few moments.

She didn’t respond to this at first but finally nodded.