'Yours again,' said Will, in response to the chirping from the seat beside her.
'Kaiser,' said Alex. 'He keeps calling.'
'Just answer it.'
'If he knew I was here, he'd flip out.'
Will sighed like man fed up with bullshit. He had already checked out Dr. Tarver's pathology lab, and on cursory inspection it had seemed legitimate. Now he was wasting the rest of his day here, probably for nothing.
The SIM card in Alex's notebook computer made a momentary connection to the Internet, then dropped it. She slammed her hand against the door in frustration. It was that or toss her computer out the window. She'd been trying to get online to do research, but now it was late enough for Jamie to be out of school, and he might be logged on to MSN.
'I'm worried about Jamie,' she said. 'I haven't talked to him for almost forty-eight hours.'
'He's all right,' Will said. 'He's ten years old, and he has to go wherever his old man takes him.'
'I'm worried about Chris, too.' She felt terrible guilt at leaving him alone in the hotel room.
'How many times have you tried him?' Will didn't know, because he'd gotten out of the Explorer several times to take a leak or smoke a cigarette.
'Five or six. He hasn't answered in the past hour.'
'Probably sleeping, huh?'
'I hope so.'
'Almost all the victims have taken over a year to die,' Will reminded her.
'Not Grace.'
The old detective closed his eyes and shook his head.
'I think I should go back and take him to the emergency room,' Alex said. 'Will you help me get him down to the car?'
'Sure. You point. I'll march him.'
Alex tilted her head and pointed at the tall Cyclone fence around the old bakery. 'What do you think the razor wire's for? It sure isn't to keep dogs inside. The fence alone would do that.'
Will shrugged. 'Crime's pretty bad out this way.'
Alex's cell was ringing. Kaiser again. She expelled a lungful of air in frustration, then pressed SEND. 'Hello, John.'
'Christ, Alex, I've been trying to get you for hours. Where are you?'
She grimaced, then recited her lie. 'I'm at the hotel taking care of Chris. He's in bad shape. Have you found something?'
'Yes and no. Tyler has really dug in his heels. I think he's basically Mark Dodson's puppet right now. I'm calling in all the favors I can to run deep checks on Shane Lansing, Eldon Tarver, and our mysterious nonveterinarian. I'm also pushing hard for a search warrant on Tarver's residence.'
'Thanks,' Alex said, gratified to have someone pushing in the same direction at last. 'Anything new on the background checks?'
'Lansing looks clean to me. Typical surgeon. Son of a lawyer, big ladies' man. He's moved around a lot, which is sometimes a flag with doctors, but he's only thirty-six, so maybe he's just the restless type. Like Rusk, he's invested in a lot of different ventures, most medical but some not. The radiology clinic in Meridian is a legitimate concern, and Lansing seems to be a passive partner. I suppose he could get access to radioactive material if he really wanted to, but right now he seems like the least likely killer of the bunch.'
'And the others?'
'You know Rusk. He's rich, well connected, and on his second wife. Lives like an international playboy when he's not working. The only grounds for suspicion are those business connections you turned up, but all of those are aboveboard. Not even the IRS has a gripe with Rusk.'
'And Tarver?'
'Tarver's is a little different. He was born in 1946, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the illegitimate son of an army officer. He was dumped at the Lutheran Children's Home in Greenwood, Tennessee, from which he was adopted at age seven. The adoptive family was from Sevierville, Tennessee. I worked a serial murder case around there twelve years ago. That's the Smoky Mountains. It's commercialized now, but in the 1950s it was rural, with primitive fundamentalist religion. Some of the snake churches were based there.'
'Snake churches?' echoed Alex, and Will cut his eyes at her.
'Congregations that use poisonous snakes in their worship services. Drink strychnine, that kind of crap. I don't know if Tarver saw any of that, but his foster father was a pig farmer and lay preacher. Eldon went to the University of Tennessee on full academic scholarship. That got him out of Vietnam. While I was running through rice paddies, Tarver was doing high-level graduate research in microbiology at UT. Data's pretty scarce for that part of his life, but in 1974, he went to work for a major pharmaceutical company. They fired him less than a year later on sexual harassment grounds. It must have been something pretty bad to be fired for that in 1975. He didn't actually go to medical school until 1976, but he definitely found his calling there. He's board-certified in multiple specialties, including pathology and hematology. He took the job at UMC in 1985, and he married a biochemistry professor there two years later. She died in 1998, of cervical cancer. You know the rest. He opened a free clinic with the money he inherited from his wife. He's had the pathology lab for over fifteen years. So far, no information about girlfriends or live-in lovers. The sexual harassment thing gives me a little pause-'
'And the birthmark,' Alex cut in.
'Yeah,' said Kaiser. 'It looks pretty severe in photos. I wonder why he hasn't had a buddy take it off for him.'
'I don't think he can. He told me it's some sort of vascular anomaly. It's dangerous to mess with.'
'I think we've got a weird one, all right,' Kaiser said thoughtfully. 'My antennae are quivering. We may find some kinky stuff in Tarver's house, if we ever get inside it. Webb Tyler's starting to piss me off. He's a bureaucrat to the marrow of his bones. If he has any bones.'
'He sure doesn't have a backbone,' Alex grumbled.
Will grabbed her knee and pointed through the windshield. Sixty yards away, a red van was pulling through the gate of the parking lot. The gate must have been unlocked, because the driver simply nosed through it without getting out and drove slowly toward the side of the building.
'Chris needs me,' Alex said, trying to make out the license plate of the van. It was too far away and the angle was bad.
'One more thing,' said Kaiser. 'Noel Traver is a real mystery man. On paper, he didn't even exist prior to ten years ago, as far as I can tell. He's got a driver's license but no car, and his residence appears to be the same address as that dog-breeding facility.'
'I really need to run, John. Anything else?'
Kaiser laughed. 'Yeah, one thing. I've really been calling to make sure you don't do something stupid, like break into Tarver's house or that breeding facility.'
Alex laughed, hoping it didn't ring hollow. 'I wish,' she said. 'Keep pushing for that search warrant.' She hung up before he could reply.
'Did you hear that?' asked Will. 'The driver just honked his horn.'
The red van had pulled up to a large aluminum door set in the side wall of the old bakery. As Alex stared, the door rose until it was high enough for the van to pull inside the building.
'Son of a bitch,' said Will. 'I think somebody's been in there all along.'
'He may be using a remote. Did you get a look at the driver?'
'No, the damn windows are tinted.'
The overhead door stayed up, but the van did not pull inside.
'What should we do?' Alex asked.
Will stuck out his lower lip. 'You're the boss.'
'I want to know who's in that van.'
Will laughed softly. 'I do, too. And we can find out. But it sure won't be legal.'
