in the morning.” He sighed. “But if you want my take on it, they’ll track him to a deserted house or a parking lot, and another dead end.” His black eyes narrowed. “He’s just playing games. That’s all.”
“Games. He almost killed a woman!” Tank exploded.
“To him, it’s just a game,” Carson replied calmly. “Cat and mouse. He’s playing you.”
Tank looked menacing.
Carson’s face softened just a little. “I know what she means to you,” he said quietly. “I’m not downplaying how serious it could have been, if she’d taken more than one of those Malathion-laced capsules. I’m telling you how he feels about it.”
“How do you know so much?” Tank asked.
“Men work in patterns,” he said surprisingly. “I was a math whiz in college,” he added. “Top of my class, in fact. I have a photographic memory, which came in handy when I majored in history as an undergraduate. History, as you may know, is mostly case law. I had in mind being another F. Lee Bailey,” he mused. “But I dropped out of law school just before graduation, due to...personal matters.” He straightened. “What I’m saying is that people have habits that make them predicable, like equations. This man shows a few traits that may help us track him down.”
“Such as?” Tank asked, mellowing.
“He’s a master of disguise. We know that already. He’s single-minded, methodical, careful, and he knows how to tamper with pharmaceuticals without being caught.” He shook his head. “So how is it that this careful, methodical man leaves a trail a kindergarten child could follow?”
Rourke and Tank exchanged glances. “We were just discussing that,” Rourke confessed.
“He’s keeping you off your guard, unbalanced, by placing Merissa and Clara in danger,” Carson continued.
“So?” Tank asked.
“He’s afraid that you’re going to remember something that will hurt him, point him out to the authorities. He’d like to kill you, but he can’t get close enough. So he’s keeping you focused on the women instead of the past.”
“He may have a point,” Rourke said.
“There’s another thing,” Carson continued. “Remember what I said about the man I worked with who was an expert at covert poisonings?”
“I do,” Tank said.
“You met him once, too, I believe,” Carson told Rourke. “The red-haired fellow who was always talking about sharks.”
“Sharks!” Tank straightened.
“What?” Carson asked, diverted.
“Sharks.” He paced, touching his forehead. “Sharks. Why can’t I remember? Someone was talking about a man who mentioned sharks...”
“Carlie,” Carson said quietly. “In Cash Grier’s office.”
“Yes!” Tank turned. “Remember, she said the rogue agent came into Cash’s office and he was talking about sharks and how misunderstood they were. She said he told her he liked to swim with them in the Bahamas!”
“Sharks. Disguise. Poisons. The Bahamas.” Carson’s eyes narrowed. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”
“Why did you want us to meet you here?” Rourke asked as the other man pulled out his cell phone.
“The man we’re looking for knew that Merissa kept her headache pills in her bedside table, and that she was starting to get a headache. How?”
The men looked at one another.
“I missed a bug. We missed a bug,” Carson told Rourke.
“Impossible!” Rourke said angrily. “I ran the rooms four times, just to make sure!”
“You were out of sight yesterday,” Tank said, “when Merissa took the medicine.”
“Only for thirty minutes.”
“About that time, I was driving Merissa home. Where was Clara?”
“I don’t know, but we can ask,” Rourke said, leading the way into the restaurant. “If she was out of the house at all, that gave him the opportunity to sneak in another bug.”
“How about the capsules?” Tank asked. “That would have taken time. The doctor said it was an almost perfect job of tampering.”
“He knows she has headaches. All he lacked was the opportunity to place the capsules.”
“Why not when he was bugging the place?” Tank wondered.
“I imagine he makes it up as he goes,” Rourke replied quietly. “He plans, but he plans as situations develop. He might have learned about her headaches for the first time after he placed the bugs. The tampering could have taken place over a period of days.”
“Yes.” Rourke paused. “And he might have counted on Merissa’s father to take her out for him, along with her mother.” He glanced at Tank’s hard face. “The man is unbalanced. Brilliant, but unbalanced.”
Clara saw them come in and motioned them to the booth where she was sitting. She smiled. “We could eat while we’re here,” she suggested. “Then, if I could impose on you to drive me by the hospital...?”
Tank said as he slid into the booth, “I’ll go, too.”
“Clara,” Rourke began after they’d ordered barbecue plates, “when Carson was out placing his surveillance units, did you leave the house at all?”
She blinked. “Why, yes, just to run by the drycleaners and leave a comforter. I wasn’t gone five minutes. Why?”
Tank and Rourke exchanged glances. Tank nodded.
“Don’t say anything in the house that you’d mind being overheard,” Rourke told her. “You must be extraordinarily clever. I’m not going to remove the bug he’s just placed. Let him think we’re too dim to realize it’s even there.”
“Bug? I don’t understand,” she began.
Tank explained how they thought the bug was placed, and how the intruder knew where Merissa kept her headache medicine.
“Oh, goodness,” Clara said heavily. “I opened my big mouth. Just like I did, telling them where Bill was, and I got him killed,” she added sadly. “Then there’s that other man. The one Merissa told us about, that she saw in her mind, a man who knew about this intruder and was going to tell on him...”
“You can’t save the world,” Rourke said heavily. He gave her a weary smile. “I know. I’ve been trying.”
She smiled weakly. “I see your point. It’s very hard, though, to know something and not be able to warn anyone.”
“In that case,” Tank told her, “you have to consider that some things just happen the way they’re meant to. We can’t see very far down the road. God can.”
“Okay.”
Carson came back in. He slid into the booth beside Clara. “I’ve put some things in motion,” he said. “There’s been a development back home.”
“What?” Tank asked.
“It seems that Cash Grier managed to track down the man who attacked Carlie’s father with a knife. He turned up in the morgue in San Antonio. He was poisoned.”
“Good grief!” Tank exclaimed. “Merissa told him that there was a man who knew him and was thinking about going to the authorities. He said he knew who it was and he’d take care of him.” He groaned. “It’s going to hit her hard.”
Rourke’s one eye narrowed. “Don’t tell her.”
“The man had a rap sheet seven pages long,” Carson added. “One of his arrests was for rape. He’s no loss to the world.”
“Did he talk to the authorities?” Tank asked. “Do you know?”
“He made a phone call before he died. It was to a police officer in San Antonio. They’re trying to contact the officer to see if a conversation even took place. One more minor detail.”
“Yes?” Tank asked.
