Mark snapped open his phone to call Dan. Only when he saw the blurry numbers did he realize his eyes were full of tears. He stayed kneeling, wiping them clear, whipsawed between sad and angry, not really understanding why. After all, he’d seen patients die before, even people who had called him friend.
He heard the floorboards creaking. “Did you find him?” Lucy asked from out in the corridor.
He tried to warn her back, but she stepped through the door.
“Oh, no!” Her hands flew to her mouth as she sank to her knees by his head. “The dear, dear man.” She reached out and ran her fingers along the side of Victor’s face, brushing the tip of his magnificent mustache.
Mark quickly turned away. Victor would never feel her simple gesture, just as in his last years he’d so rarely felt the caress of someone who loved him.
“Let’s wait in the car,” he said to Lucy. “I’m going to call Dan and treat this place as a crime scene, so don’t touch anything on the way out.”
“A crime scene?”
Mark nodded. If there was anything to Victor’s last message, his death had been damn convenient to someone.
“No forced entry, nothing broken, no suggestive marks on the body. Suspicious as hell, right?” Dan asked when Mark told him to treat the death as a possible homicide.
“I know it sounds crazy, Dan, but humor me. Too many timely illnesses have happened on this case.” Mark filled him in on what Victor had been up to and how Earl had to be admitted to NYCH.
As Dan listened, his scowl deepened, but in the end, he pulled out the yellow tape. “You realize I’m on thin ice here,” he muttered, cordoning off the driveway.
Within half an hour men and women in dark blue jumpsuits, SARATOGA SPRINGS P.D. written on the back, were crawling all over the house using Ziploc evidence bags and tweezers to collect every stray hair, thread, or broken nail they could find. A pretty blond woman, her regulation peaked cap worn backward, hunched over Victor’s computer and carefully covered the keys with a fine white powder. “Look at this, Chief,” she said, summoning Dan to her side. “Most of his prints have been partially smudged out.”
“Wiped?” Mark asked, leaning in to see.
Dan shook his head. “More like someone’s used it while wearing gloves.”
“Can I try and turn it on?”
The woman stood aside. “I’m all finished. Be my guest.”
Mark pushed the ON button, and the screen flickered to life. Against a background of tropical fish, it requested an access code. “Have you got someone who can hack into these things?”
Dan chuckled. “Yeah. They’re called kids.”
“Seriously.”
“There’s a white-collar crime unit in Albany. They’ve done a few favors for me from time to time.”
“Anything quicker?”
“We’ve got some floppies and CD-ROMs back at headquarters programmed to search for passwords,” the woman said as she packed away her supplies. “I could give them a try. But we’d need a warrant.”
The prospect of learning what Victor had found out, like scent to a hound, unleashed a rush of adrenaline in Mark. “Great. I’ll come with you-”
Victor’s phone beside the computer started to ring. They all looked at each other. Mark took the initiative, and picked up the receiver. “Victor Feldt’s residence.”
“Victor?” It was a woman’s voice. She sounded young, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Who’s speaking, please?”
“I need to speak with Victor.”
“I’m Dr. Mark Roper. Can I know who’s speaking?”
“Dr. Roper? Is Victor all right?” She sounded alarmed.
“Can I know who’s speaking, please?”
“Oh, God, what’s happened?”
“Are you family-”
He was cut off by a dial tone.
He tried *69 to get the caller’s number.
It had been blocked.
“Don’t get too excited about our CD program helping you,” the technician said on her way out the door. “Whoever was at the keyboard after Victor might have gotten in and already trashed everything, or worse, substituted new data for old, which means the original is really gone.”
3:40 P.M.
Hampton Junction
A low gray sky had slid over the valley, as oppressive as a slab of cement.
“Earl, it’s Mark. How are you feeling?” He’d asked Lucy to drive so he could use the phone.
“Mark? Frankly, I don’t feel too good.”
He sounded groggy as hell. “I’m not surprised. Melanie told me what happened to you. Are you able to talk? It’s urgent.”
“Talk’s about all I can do.”
“You’re sure you’re able? I could call back.”
“Now you’ve got me dying of curiosity. Shoot!”
Mark briefly explained who Victor was and everything that had happened to him.
“You think he was killed because of what he discovered?” Earl asked at the finish. His voice had become hard-edged, with none of its previous languor.
“If so, it was very cleverly staged. Even the lividity matched how we found him.” The purplish discoloration where venous blood pooled, then clotted in the lowest points of the body during the first hours after death was an indelible record of the person’s position when he died. A pattern that didn’t conform to how the body lay would indicate someone had subsequently moved or repositioned the corpse. “I’ve arranged to do an autopsy on him tomorrow morning at Saratoga General, so I’ll be able to pick up obvious signs of foul play. And I’m going to screen his blood for every drug I can think of that could precipitate an MI. The lab people are going to scream, but I’m on my way there now to make sure I’ll have everything I’ll need. But there may be no signs or drugs to find.”
“And you’ve no idea what he turned up?”
“Nope.”
Earl exhaled into the phone. “How can your man and whatever he found have anything to do with Kelly’s murder?”
“I’ve no idea yet. We’re going to try and get into his computer.”
Silence reigned on the line.
“Earl?”
“I’m here. Just thinking, to see if I can put any of this together.”
“What you ought to be thinking about, with opportune comas and heart attacks going around, is if someone made you sick as well.”
More silence.
Finally, Earl said, “To be honest, I’ve started to wonder the same thing. My end of the investigation has sure as hell been sidelined, if that’s the motive.”
“I’m afraid it might not end at that.”
Again more silence.
“Anyone try to get near you who shouldn’t?”
“You mean like Braden? No.”
“Earl, get somebody you can trust to stay in your room. Can Janet join you?”
“I’m not putting her in danger.”
“Then hire a guard. Jesus, man, if we’re right, you’re a sitting duck.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re sure? Why don’t I make the arrangements?”
“I said I’ll take care of it. Got to hang up now. Goddamn nature calling!”
The line went dead.
“How is he?” Lucy asked.
“Not so good.”
“Hiring a guard, now that’s a good idea. Do you think he’ll do it?”
“I don’t know. But if he hasn’t by later tonight, I will.”
The Braden mansion came into view, all its parts coated in gleaming white, again reminding him of a bird, but iced over this time, trapped in midflight. And the limousines were gone. The lack of tracks in the drive meant they’d left during the night.
“Hunting season over?” Lucy said.
She drove in silence after that, her lips drawn in a tight line. As he watched her profile in the thin winter light, her skin seemed pale, translucent even. The tiny furrows at the corners of her eyes narrowed. “Mark, may I give you some advice?”