twenty-two over seventy-eight.'
'Excellent!' Sandy noted. It was the best reading all week.
'Pam...'
'What's that?' Sarah asked.
It took Doris a moment to go on, still wondering if this were life or death, and if the latter, what part of eternity she had found. 'Hair... when she was dead... brushed her hair.'
Dear God, Sarah thought. Sam had related that one part of the postmortem report to her, morosely sipping a highball at their home in Green Spring Valley. He hadn't gone further than that. It hadn't been necessary. The photo on the front page of the paper had been quite sufficient. Dr Rosen touched her patient's face as gently as she could.
'Doris, who killed Pam?' She thought that she could ask this without increasing the patient's pain. She was wrong.
'Rick and Billy and Burt and Henry... killed her... watching...' The girl started crying, and the racking sobs only magnified the shuddering waves of pain in her head. Sarah held back on the toast. Nausea might soon follow.
'They made you watch?'
'Yes...' Doris's voice was like one from the grave.
'Let's not think about that now.' Sarah's body shuddered with the kind of chill she associated with death itself as she stroked the girl's cheek.
'There!' Sandy said brightly, hoping to distract her. 'That's much better.'
'Tired.'
'Okay, let's get you back to bed, dear.' Both women helped her up. Sandy left the robe on her, setting an ice bag on her forehead. Doris faded off into sleep almost at once.
'Breakfast is on,' Sarah told the nurse. 'Leave the restraints off for now.'
'Brushed her hair? What?' Sandy asked, heading down the stairs.
'I didn't read the report -'
'I saw the photo, Sarah - what they did to her - Pam, her name was, right?' Sandy was almost too tired to remember things herself.
'Yes. She was my patient, too,' Dr Rosen confirmed. 'Sam said it was pretty bad. The odd thing, somebody brushed her hair out after she was dead, he told me that. I guess it was Doris who did it.'
'Oh.' Sandy opened the refrigerator and got milk for the morning coffee. 'I see.'
'I don't,' Dr Rosen said angrily. 'I don't see how people can do that. Another few months and Doris would have died. As it was, any closer -'
'I'm surprised you didn't admit her under a Jane Doe,' Sandy observed.
'After what happened to Pam, taking a chance like that - and it would have meant -'
O'Toole nodded. 'Yes, it would have meant endangering John. That's what I understand.'
'Hmph?'
'They killed her friend and made her watch... the things they did to her... To them she was just a thing.'...?ill? and Rick,' Sandy said aloud, not quite realizing it.
'Burt and Henry,' Sarah corrected. 'I don't think the other two will be hurting anybody anymore.' The two women shared a look, their eyes meeting across the breakfast table, their thoughts identical, though both were distantly shocked at the very idea of holding them, much less understanding them.
'Good.'
'Well, we've shaken down every bum west of Charles Street,' Douglas told his lieutenant. 'We've had one cop cut - not seriously, but the wino is in for a long drying-out period at Jessup. A bunch have been puked on,' he added with a smirk, 'but we still don't know crap. He's not out there, Em. Nothing new in a week.'
And it was true. The word had gotten out to the street, surprisingly slow but inevitable. Street pushers were being careful to the point of paranoia. That might or might not explain the fact that not a single one had lost his life in over a week.
'He's still out there, Tom.'
'Maybe so, but he's not doing anything.'
'In which case everything he did was to get Farmer and Grayson.' Ryan noted with a look at the sergeant.
'You don't believe that.'
'No, I don't, and don't ask me why, because I don't know why.'
'Well, it would help if Charon could tell us something. He's been pretty good taking people down. Remember that bust he did with the Coast Guard?'
Ryan nodded. 'That was a good one, but he's slowed down lately.'
'So have we, Em,' Sergeant Douglas pointed out. 'The only thing we really know about this guy is that he's strong, he wears new sneaks, and he's white. We don't know age, weight, size, motive, what kind of car he drives.'
'Motive. We know he's pissed about something. We know he's very good at killing. We know he's ruthless enough to kill people just to cover his own activities... and he's patient.' Ryan leaned back. 'Patient enough to take time off?'
Tom Douglas had a more troubling idea. 'Smart enough to change tactics.'
That was a disturbing thought. Ryan considered it. What if he'd seen the shakedowns? What if he'd decided that you could only do one thing so long, and then you had to do something else? What if he'd developed information from William Grayson, and that information was now taking him in other directions - out of town, even? What if they'd never know, never close these cases? That would be a professional insult to Ryan, who hated leaving cases open, but he had to consider it. Despite dozens of field interviews, they had not turned up so much as a single witness except for Virginia Charles, and she'd been sufficiently traumatized that her information was scarcely believable - and contradicted the one really useful piece of forensic evidence they had. The suspect had to be taller than she had said, had to be younger, and sure as hell was as strong as an NFL linebacker. He wasn't a wino, but had chosen to camouflage himself as one. You just didn't see people like that. How did you describe a stray dog?
'The Invisible Man,' Ryan said quietly, finally giving the case a name. 'He should have killed Mrs Charles. You know what we've got here?'
Douglas snorted. 'Somebody I don't want to meet alone.'
'Three groups to take Moscow out?'
'Sure, why not?' Zacharias replied. 'It's your political leadership, isn't it? It's a huge communications center, and even if you get the Politburo out, they'll still get most of your military and political command and control -'
'We have ways to get our important people out,' Grishanov objected out of professional and national pride.
'Sure.' Robin almost laughed, Grishanov saw. Part of him was insulted, but on reflection he was pleased with himself that the American colonel felt that much at ease now. 'Kolya, we have things like that, too. We have a real ritzy shelter set up in West Virginia for Congress and all that. The 1st Helicopter Squadron is at Andrews, and their mission is to get VIPs the heck out of Dodge - but guess what? The durned helicopters can't hop all the way to the shelter and back without refueling on the return leg. Nobody thought about that when they selected the shelter, because that was a political decision. Guess what else? We've never tested the evacuation system. Have you tested yours?'
Grishanov sat down next to Zacharias, on the floor, his back against the dirty concrete wall. Nikolay Yevgeniyevich just looked down and shook his head, having learned yet more from the American. 'You see? You see why I say we'll never fight a war? We're alike! No, Robin, we've never tested it, we've never tried to evacuate Moscow since I was a child in the snow. Our big shelter is at Zhiguli. It's a big stone - not a mountain, like a big - bubble? I don't know the word, a huge circle of stone from the center of the earth.'
'Monolith? like Stone Mountain in Georgia?'
