“Yes, it does. It all started with Jimmy Buffett.”
“The singer? What’s your connection?”
“I saved his life once.”
“Is that how you got the autographed guitar hanging in your living room?”
“Yes. I was a cop and assigned to protect him while he was giving a concert. When the show was over, we drove back to his hotel in a limo. As we pulled up, I got out first. There was a guy inside the lobby who struck me as suspicious.”
“What caught your eye?”
“It was summer, and he was wearing a long-sleeve Nike athletic shirt and jeans. Nobody wears long-sleeve shirts in the summer unless they’re hiding something.”
“Was he?”
“A knife, two guns, and a stun grenade. He was planning to ambush us and take Buffett out. He’d been stalking him for a while and wanted to kill him.”
“Jon to the rescue.”
He smiled at the memory. “It was one of my better moments. I took the crazy bastard down and the other cops on the detail whisked Buffett into an elevator and took him upstairs. Nobody got hurt. We arrested the perp and took him down to the station to book him. A couple of hours later I got a phone call from Buffett’s manager asking me to come back to the hotel. I went, and Buffett was in his suite waiting for me with the autographed guitar. He shook my hand so hard I thought he was going to break my fingers. Every time I look at the guitar, I’m reminded of that night.”
“Do you like Buffett’s music? I saw that you had a lot of his CDs.”
“I’m a big fan. That night had a lot to do with it.”
“If you don’t take cash, what do you live on?”
“I have a navy pension and my cop pension. That keeps me in groceries and pays my condo association fees.”
Daniels started to ask another question when her laptop made a noise indicating that an email had arrived. She went around the desk and had a look.
“It’s from the head of HR at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and it has an attachment,” she said. “Looks like we’re in business.”
The email’s attachment contained the names of every nurse employed by Dartmouth-Hitchcock during the time of the Hanover murders. There were over eight hundred names, and the list included both male and female nurses. With his help, she printed the list on the HP LaserJet printer that was stored in the closet.
They spent a half hour parsing the list and running a black line through the female nurses’ names. When done, slightly less than half the names remained, which were in random order. He got on the DMV site and used his password to gain entrance.
Daniels took the chair at the desk and faced the computer while he stood next to her and stared over her shoulder. The first name on the list was a male nurse named Ronald Colley. Daniels typed the name into the DMV search engine and hit “Enter.” A second later Colley’s driving record appeared on the screen. Ronald Colley had moved from Hanover six years ago and now resided in Boston.
“Not him,” Daniels said.
She repeated this process for the next fifty names on the list. There were no hits. It was an exhausting process, but she did not tire. People on a mission rarely did.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Starving,” she said. “What’s on the menu?”
“Uber Eats. Name your pleasure, and it’ll be here in thirty minutes.”
“I like Chinese, no MSG.”
“I’m partial to a joint called the Rainbow Palace. Any preferences?”
“I’ll let you pick.”
A half hour later, there was a knock on his door. They had run two hundred names of male nurses through the DMV’s database and not gotten a single hit. If she was frustrated, she refused to let it show. He excused himself and went to meet the driver.
Uber didn’t want customers to tip their drivers, but he slipped the guy ten bucks anyway. Taking the food to the kitchen, he doled out fried lo mein and crispy duck onto two plates, stuck some cutlery into his pocket, grabbed two paper napkins, and returned to the study. Daniels glanced up from the computer and thanked him with a smile. She balanced the plate on her lap and dug in.
“This is good,” she said. “Want to bet we find our guys at the end of the list?”
“Is that how it usually works?” he said.
“It does for me. When I do a search, the needle is always at the bottom of the haystack. I must have been born under an unlucky sign.”
“Nothing good ever comes easy,” he said.
The food was soon a memory. He stacked their empty plates and was heading to the kitchen when his cell phone rang. It was Karissa. He didn’t have time to speak with her right now and hoped she would understand.
“Can I give you a call back tomorrow?” he asked.
“Oh my God, Jon, he’s going to kill me,” she replied.
Chapter 35
Dark Journey
Karissa was screaming, her voice so loud that it came through the speaker in Lancaster’s cell phone. Daniels looked up from the computer.
“Who the hell is that?” the FBI agent asked.
“One second.” Holding the cell phone against his chest so Karissa couldn’t hear, he said, “Her name’s Karissa Clement. She helped me get my hands on her ex-boyfriend’s cell phone with the Cassandra videos, which led me to you. I’m guessing the ex-boyfriend found out and is threatening her.”
“Do you need my help?”
“I just might. Let me talk to her and find out what’s going on. I’ll be right back.”
He walked outside to the balcony and shut the slider behind him. He had lost track of the time, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the night. There was a storm churning out in the Atlantic, and an invisible moist cloth swept across his skin. He brought the cell phone up to his ear and said, “Sorry about that. You still there?”
“Yes, Jon,” Karissa said. “I’m still here. Who were you just talking to?”
“There’s an FBI agent in my condo. We’re working on a case together.”
“Sounds important. I don’t mean to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but I need your help. Zack figured out that I spoke to you, and now he’s after me.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Zack was waiting when I got off work. The hospital parking area is being paved, so everyone has to park across the street in an empty lot. I came out to my car and he appeared out of nowhere, and started talking to me in a low voice so no one else could hear. He said that someone had gone online and downloaded pornographic videos that he kept stored on his cell phone. Zack said that you’d confronted him and mentioned my name, and he put two and two together. He said that he was going to kidnap me and rape me and then he was going to kill me. He promised to make me suffer.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I sure did. They went to see him, and he denied the whole thing. There aren’t any surveillance cameras in the lot, so it’s my word against his.”
“Meaning the cops aren’t going to do squat.”
“That’s why I called you. What am I going to do?”
He stood at the balcony railing and wrestled with how to handle her question. Karissa had gone out of her way to help him, and now she was being repaid by a madman’s threats. He had to make this right and prove to her that she’d done the right thing. “You need to leave Fort Lauderdale right now. I have two gay friends in Marathon that own a motel called Captain Pip’s Hideaway. Go there and hide out. You’ll be safe. I’ll deal with Zack.”
“But I don’t have the money for a motel,” she said.
“You won’t need any money. Roger and Frankie used to be cops. Tell them I sent you, and that I want you to stay in the guest bedroom in their house. Zack won’t be able to find you there, and if he somehow did, their dogs would rip him apart.”