longer any doubt in the room.
Mollender was next to speak up.
“Dr. Thomas Landrew drowned,” he said grimly. “ ‘Avid sportsman and prominent anesthesiologist drowned while kayaking on the Chesapeake.’ ”
“When?” Nick asked.
“Just three weeks ago. April eighteenth. This is terrible. I actually knew about his accident. Landrew did the anesthesia on me when I had a hernia fixed a few years ago. He was a terrific guy. I just glossed right over his name.”
Nick wrote “Maryland” next to Landrew’s name.
Mollender continued.
“Kimberly Fox is dead too, assuming she’s the same Kimberly Fox on the board here. She was killed near her family’s home in Utah. Skiing accident, it says here. Broke her neck. No details. No mention that she worked at Shelby Stone, but it does say she was a nurse.”
“She could have moved,” Jillian said. “Nurses, especially younger ones, are constantly changing hospitals. Like Belle.”
“Mass murder, one by one,” Nick muttered.
“Oh, no, I’ve got another hit,” Noreen said shortly. Her voice quaked with a raw mix of fear and anxiety. “Cassandra Browning-Leavitt. Killed here in D.C. Shot from the woods while she was jogging along Rock Creek. No witnesses. Believed to be a random event. No suspects.”
“I remember Cassandra now,” Jillian said. “She was still working at Shelby Stone when she was killed. They sent a notice around after it happened warning people to be careful. That was a while ago. Maybe back in February.”
For a minute, two, nobody could speak. Nick felt a band tightening around his chest.
“Washington. Chicago. New York. North Carolina. Utah. Maryland. Somebody is killing these people and doing it in such a way that it doesn’t appear to be murder,” Nick said, “or at least not deliberate murder, and certainly not serial murder.”
“I knew it,” Jillian said viciously. “I told them. I told them all she’d never kill herself.”
“With these deaths so spread out across the country,” Mollender said, “who would think to link them?”
“We would, that’s who,” Nick answered. Then he drew a line through the names of those they had confirmed dead, including Belle. “That leaves us four people we haven’t accounted for yet. Roger Pendleton, the perfusionist; Yasmin Dasari, the surgical resident; Yu Jiang, who was a medical student at the time; and Saul’s video editor, Annette Furst.”
Noreen nodded. She kept her gaze fixed to her computer screen, her fingers sweeping across her keyboard, while her computer mouse remained in a state of constant motion, expecting to find death notices posted online for at least three. Mollender continued his search for other victims as well.
“I’m not getting anything on Dasari or Jiang. But I logged in to our intranet at Shelby Stone,” Mollender said. “Pendleton is listed as still being an employee. I have an address for him. Phone number too. According to this, he lives in Alexandria, Virginia.”
“Let’s hope that’s true,” Nick said.
“What, that he’s in Alexandria?”
“No. That he lives.”
CHAPTER 42
“There are three possible reasons Pendleton’s not answering his phone,” Nick told Jillian. “Either he’s not at home, he’s busy, or he’s already dead.”
Jillian grimaced at the notion.
“Why are they doing this after so many years, Nick? It’s pure evil. Could a branch of our government really be responsible?”
“I wish I knew. I really do. Maybe people from Mohammad’s terrorist organization are finally exacting revenge for his death. Even though we know he wasn’t the one who died that day, maybe they don’t.”
“It’s a thought, but terrorists usually go out of their way to take credit for acts of vengeance like this, and we haven’t heard a word.”
“Six people dead.”
“At least.”
Nick gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckle force, frustrated that so many answers still eluded them. Before they left her office, Noreen had handed Nick two leather cases, each containing a copy of the operation that she had burned to DVD. Now, Jillian held them in her lap, a reminder, she said, that Umberto and Belle were with them on this journey until the end.
The traffic was moderately heavy, and Nick estimated they were still ten minutes away from Roger Pendleton’s address in Alexandria. The Mole had volunteered to stay behind with a still-shaken Noreen, and to continue searching for information about the surgical resident and the medical student, neither of whom had proven that easy to find.
During the drive, Jillian wrote a note for Pendleton, begging him to call either of them as soon as possible. Twice she had tried to reach him at home and through the page operator at the hospital. Nick had also phoned Don Reese, but his call to the detective went straight into voice mail.
“Maybe we should call nine-one-one,” Jillian suggested, “let the authorities take it from here.”
“Remember what Reese told us? We’re in deep here too, Jill. If the police are going to get involved now, better if it’s Reese’s call how and when. In the meantime, we need to warn Pendleton to be careful.”
“I just hope that we’re not too late.”
“Me too,” Nick said with a heavy sigh. “Me too.”
Pendleton’s modest split-level ranch was the last house on a tree-lined dead-end street. The idyllic, family- friendly setting made the reason they were there even more disturbing. Nick pulled up along the grassy tree belt and had opened the driver’s side door when Jillian grabbed his arm and pulled him back inside.
“We can’t just go rushing in there, Nick,” she said. “We have no idea what we’re up against. I don’t want to see any more death, and I… don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Nick took hold of her hands. “Nothing’s going to happen to either of us. Trust me on that, Jill. We’ll knock on the door, we’ll leave the note, and then we’ll look for Pendleton at the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to sound like such a baby. That video really got to me-the thought of that man in the surgical gown calmly standing there, murdering Umberto. It’s as if he had no soul.”
“Well, thanks to you I’m reconnecting with mine,” Nick said. “I have an EMDR session later on. I intend to work at it the way I used to when I was studying organic chemistry or training for a climb.”
Jillian squeezed his hands, then caressed the stubble on his face.
“Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
Side by side they proceeded up the flagstone walkway to Pendleton’s red-painted front door, with Jillian clutching a copy of the DVD. All was eerily quiet save for the crunch of loose slate and the white noise of birdsong on the warm afternoon breeze. The yard was small, but well maintained, with no toys to suggest Pendleton had kids.
Nick peered into the living room through a small opening between the drapes, but could see only a few feet inside. There was no movement. He rang the bell, then tried the door. Locked.
“Maybe he’s at work,” Jillian said. “I don’t trust Shelby Stone’s page system.”
Nick pressed the doorbell a second time and they listened to a cascade of chimes reverberating inside the house.
“Let’s try around back,” he said, growing more anxious.
Suddenly the door swung open.
The man standing there was dressed in hospital scrubs and had a cell phone pressed between his ear and
