The second floor hallway of police headquarters was filled with scurrying officers, shouted vows of what would happen to Melice when they got their hands on him, and the incessant whine of the intruder siren.
I found the exam room overflowing with police officers, FBI agents, and medical personnel, so rather than crowd them any more, I stood beside the door and surveyed the scene. One of the downed officers appeared to have been stabbed in the neck, and since the paramedics weren’t working on him, I realized that, tragically, his wounds had been fatal. The other man was fading into and out of consciousness and had a thick bandage with a stain already spreading across it wrapped around his left eye.
Only after the siren finally stopped did I hear the announcement that the suspect was wearing an officer’s uniform, but I suspected the announcement had come too late. Too much time had passed, and Melice’s escape had been too well planned.
I saw Graysmith and approached him. “What do we know about Melice?”
“We’re sweeping the building,” he said between clenched teeth.
“We set up a six-block perimeter.”
“Video?” I asked.
“No, not in the exam rooms. Privacy concerns.” His voice became taut with resolve. “This is a police matter now. He killed one of my men. We’ll take it from here.”
“No,” I said. “We’re all on the same team, Lieutenant. I don’t care who gets the credit, let’s just nail this guy. Once we have him, I’ll have Ralph do all he can to give you full custody.”
He hesitated.
“Trust me,” I said. “I keep my promises.”
After a moment he gave me a tight nod. “All right.”
He began to step away, but I called him back. “Just a second. Can you tell me why Dunn was at the site of John Doe’s suicide the other night? It might help us out. It’s one piece that still doesn’t fit.”
Graysmith took a cautious breath, then said softly, “We’ve had more and more suspicious suicides near trolleys over the last year.
I started wondering if there was someone out there who likes tossing homeless people to their deaths. I wanted Dunn to look into it.” Graysmith’s explanation didn’t resolve all my questions, but considering the circumstances, it did seem plausible. Then he added, “Now, let’s get this creep.”
He left to find Margaret to coordinate the search for Melice, and Ralph’s eyes found me from where he stood in the middle of the room. “Pat, what do you think?” He stepped closer to me. “Melice waited until he was in here because it was easier to escape? Less security?”
“Probably.” I lowered my voice. “Plus, it’s right beside the evidence room. Melice stole the device, or at least he thinks he did.
But I’ve got the real one. Listen, he knew it’d be in there. And I think he knew the shift change was at 5:30.”
“Someone told him,” growled Ralph.
I thought of Dunn speaking with the officers who were leading Melice to the infirmary, and then of Margaret’s sudden interest in the device. “Yes. Someone did.”
While Ralph and I were talking, a number of the officers stepped past us, leaving the room to join the search for Melice, so I was finally able to approach the dead officer and study the wound on his neck. “Does anyone know what he was stabbed with?”
“Piece of metal,” someone said. “A shiv of some kind. Parkers told us that much before he passed out.” I assumed Parkers was the man with the battered face.
“All right,” hollered Dunn. “He was cuffed. Where did he get the shiv?”
I examined the dead officer’s neck more closely. A thin tip of metal protruded from the wound, but it hadn’t passed all the way through the man’s neck. Using my hand, I measured the diameter of his neck… about fifteen centimeters. Then, I compared that to the size of my hand… about ten centimeters.
“I think,” I said, “Melice might have had it with him, hidden in his hand, probably embedded at the metacarpophalangeal joint. That’s what he was picking at. He wasn’t itching, he was digging at the skin, pulling it away. We missed it. And now this man is dead.”
“Who inspected this guy?” Ralph’s fists tightened. “Who processed him?”
Detective Dunn took a flat breath. “I did. I processed Melice.”
Then he stared at the two officers, one dead, one seriously wounded.
“And I’m gonna be the one to kill him.” Then Detective Dunn thundered out of the room.
Could Dunn be Shade after all? What about Margaret? Graysmith?
More evidence, less conjecture.
Eliminate your theories, don’t try to prove them, try to disprove them one by one.
I didn’t know who to trust, but I figured as long as I had the device, Shade would come looking for me. “Ralph, meet me in five minutes at the work space I was in earlier.”
He agreed, and I went to get set up.
I’d recorded over three hours of video, but thankfully, my laptop’s media player allowed me to slide the cursor along the control module to quickly scan the footage until I came to the image of a person dressed in civilian clothes. At that point, I played the video at normal speed and saw the lights in the room blink off and then a person stepping cautiously into the darkness.
Since the person was starkly backlit and walking through the dark, I couldn’t make out a face. Unbelievable. Shade was smart.
Very smart. I had to give him that.
He took only three steps into the room, then eased backward and left, keeping his face in the shadows the whole time. Whoever it was, he was probably just verifying the presence of the device.
I checked the time on the video marker-2:58 p.m., the time we were all off by ourselves researching Melice. Anyone might have slipped in here.
Wait. Not anyone. I highlighted the footage, opened CIFER, and analyzed it.
Weight distribution, pace, posture.
Male.
That eliminates Margaret. Someone else must have signed her name onto the log.
I placed a call to the evidence room to see if Officer Kernigan could identify the person, but whoever picked up the phone told me Riley Kernigan had slipped back into unconsciousness and had been taken to the hospital.
All right then, I knew what I had to check on. It was time to decipher Project Rukh. I made a call, and then, before I could close up my computer, Ralph arrived.
“Do they need you here at the station right now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Margaret can run the FBI teams, Graysmith’ll coordinate the police. What do you need?”
“I want to find out what this device really does. And there’s one person who I think might be able to help us.”
“Who’s that? Drake?”
“No. Dr. Rigel Osbourne.”
“Wasn’t he at some kind of conference?” “He’s back,” I said. “A telemarketer just called his house. He picked up.”
Ralph grinned. “What were you selling?”
“Luggage.”
“That’s not even funny.”
“Let’s go pay the doctor a little visit.”