THIRTY-THREE
Mitch rushed through the emergency room doors carrying Claire. Steve was driving Lowe to FBI headquarters in order to print and interview him. Lowe wanted a written guarantee of protection before he talked, and Meg was already working on it.
Mitch went to the nurse’s station and said, “I have an emergency. This woman was drugged and crashed into the river.”
“Are you her significant other?”
He couldn’t reach his badge. “Special Agent Mitch Bianchi, Federal Bureau of Investigation. My badge is in my wallet.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” The triage nurse walked around to Mitch, bringing a gurney with her. “Put her down here. I have some paperwork for you to fill out.”
“Can’t you just see what’s wrong with her?”
“We will, but I still need to know her name, any medications she’s allergic to, health insurance.”
“She lost her identification in the river,” he said. “Her name is Claire O’Brien. She works for Rogan-Caruso Protective Services, I’m sure she has insurance through them. She’s twenty-nine. I don’t know if she’s allergic to anything.”
“What kind of drugs was she taking?” the nurse asked, shining a light into Claire’s pupils.
“Stop that!” Claire exclaimed and batted at the nurse’s arms.
The nurse said, “I’ll need to restrain her. If she’s on PCP or-”
“She wasn’t taking any drugs,” Mitch said, taking Claire’s hands in his. “Claire, honey, hold tight. This nurse wants to help find out what’s wrong.”
“Don’t leave,” Claire said, her eyes frantic. She looked like a trapped and frightened animal, ready to bolt.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” He said to the nurse, “Someone drugged her. I don’t know what with-it was probably something slipped into a drink.”
“Has she been drinking?”
“Half a beer, a couple hours ago.” He thought back to their argument at the Rabbit Hole. “She was rubbing her head as if she had a headache, but I don’t know if that means anything. She passed out while driving, has been alternately lethargic and intensely paranoid. Her muscles were stiff when we first brought her out of the river, her hands like this.” He made his own hands into claws. “And she’s been shaking the entire time.”
While Mitch talked, the nurse examined Claire’s vitals and eyes, then put an oxygen mask on. Claire had a bump the size of an egg on the front of her head, likely from when she hit the steering wheel, and small scrapes and cuts from Mitch pulling her from the car and hauling her up the slope. He took her hand. Claire was not a woman he ever expected to see in a hospital looking disorientated. Claire had far too much life and energy in her.
“You’ll have to leave us-” the nurse began.
Claire shook her head back and forth and tried to talk, but the oxygen mask prevented it. She squeezed Mitch’s hand, her eyes fearful and wild.
“Do a tox screen for psychotics, LSD, or Rohypnol. I think they’re detectable in the urine,” Mitch said.
The nurse eyed him suspiciously. “Do you know something more?”
“I’ve been in either the military or law enforcement for nearly twenty years. I’ve seen this kind of reaction before.”
“I’ll add the tests. I need to undress her to finish the preliminary exam and then send her to X-ray to make sure she doesn’t have any internal injuries. If you could please step out-”
Claire moaned, “Noooo.”
“Let me stay, please,” Mitch said. “She had a terrifying experience in the river.” So had he. Unwillingly, a picture of Claire, dead and bloated, trapped underwater in the truck, hit him and he became queasy. She’d been drugged, unable to fight back, unable to do anything but die. . and she would have if they’d been five minutes later. The truck would have sunk and he would have passed by, unaware that Claire was drowning. .
He pushed the image from his mind, stared at Claire’s scared blue eyes, squeezing her hands. They were so cold. But she was alive.
The nurse handed him a stack of papers. “Fill this out while I get her ready for the doctor. You can do it in triage.” She wheeled the gurney around a corner, then pulled a curtain around Claire.
“No wonder you’re so cold, sweetie,” the nurse said. “Your clothes are soaking wet.”
Mitch scrawled the information he knew-Claire’s name, address, birth date, employer. . he skipped what he didn’t know.
“There’s a patient here about to go to surgery. It’s her dad. They need to talk before he goes on the table.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything,” she said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, wherever they prep someone for surgery.”
“Name.”
“Thomas O’Brien.”
“I’ll check.”
The nurse had put Claire in a gown, and wrapped her in blankets from a warmer. “I’ll be back.”
Mitch sat next to Claire. “Do you remember what happened before you went into the river?”
“River?” she mumbled through the oxygen mask. She squinted, then pulled the mask off.
“You should-”
“I can breathe.” She was still shaking, her skin ghostly. “Everything is too bright.” She kept her eyes squeezed shut.
“You’re in the hospital.”
“I know.” She took a deep breath. “It was strange. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t even panic. It was like I was out of my body. That sounds so stupid.”
“Did anyone have the opportunity to drug your drink?”
“Drink? I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t even have half the beer-” She stared at him and it was as if her memory returned and she remembered who he was and that he’d lied to her. Her entire expression changed, from worried and confused to guarded.
She averted her eyes. “I want to go home.”
“The nurse is getting the doctor. We need to find out who drugged you and why. Why’d you go to Isleton in the first place?”
“You think I’m going to tell you?”
“We’re on the same side.”
“Are we?”
Sitting next to her, Mitch spoke softly. “I told you my father was a prosecutor. I had tried to please him, never did. And then-” Mitch took a deep breath. “When he died, I went home to help my mom clear out his office. I went through his private files. Found information that he knowingly prosecuted three innocent men.” He remembered that weekend. Everything he’d believed about his father, a man of honor and truth and justice, vanished. He’d been trying his entire life to understand why he and his father were constantly at odds, feeling guilty that he didn’t want to follow his dad into law. The arguments they used to have about everything!
“I got two of the men out of prison by turning over the information to the new D.A. But one of the men was already dead. He’d spent ten years in Corcoran for a murder he didn’t commit, because, according to my father, ‘I knew he was guilty of other felonies, but we didn’t have the evidence.’ ” All the lectures about the Constitution and the rights of individuals and government, all destroyed after Mitch read that.
“I think your father is innocent. I don’t know how, but everything doesn’t add up. I think you have more information than we do. Why’d you go to Isleton today?”
“I was trying to find out what got Frank Lowe and Taverton killed. I thought that would lead to their killer. Did you talk to Professor Collier?”
“We have agents working all airports, monitoring his passport and credit cards. We’ll find him.”
“Unless he’s dead. I found out something else about Collier. He worked for the same law firm that
