A murderer.
I had to explain what I knew without appearing crazy. Handing him a mug of steaming coffee, I said, as calmly as I could, “I think there are terrorists in the area.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“Pardon me?”
“Some creepy little guy named Simpkins was in my office last week claiming that there was some kind of foreign subversives working in our area. He didn’t look legit and we didn’t know what the hell to do with him.”
I reached into my chest pocket and pulled out the half-shredded business card of Harold Simpkins, and silently handed it to him.
All that came out of his mouth was, “A-hem… Okay… ”
Then I simply quoted, verbatim, the messages I’d seen in Keyes’ room, and her claims that ISIS was planning to attack with missiles, as well as the supposed existence of “Alpha Charlie.”
Harris’ face seemed frozen. I was scared that I looked like a madman.
Then, though I didn’t want to, I told him about my little adventure at the house on Emmaus Church Road, the previous night.
By the time I was done, Harris was sitting on the edge of his chair. The veins in his neck and forehead were bulging. He growled, “I’ve gotta report this ta the sheriff in Chapel Hill right away,” and then stood and walked straight out to his car.
While Harris went to his car and made several calls, I took a moment to look over what was left of my dying orchids. Even dried and uncared for, they were still beautiful to me.
The detective was breathing hard but smiling when he returned. Slapping me on the back, he said, “Good God, Dr. James, I should chew ya’ out for snoopin’ around on yer own like that! But — wow! You did somethin’ big.”
I thought about what I should do next. When you’re accused of murder, you become wary of your own actions. You question everything. You feel like you have to prove something. “I’ll confront Keyes myself,” I said.
“No! Not yet. For God’s sake, just stay cool. Watch her like a hawk and see what you can get her to admit to. I have to alert all the agencies up and down the line. Damn. This is getting bad. First Simpkins, then there were two foreigners seen walking around the hospital Penthouse rooftop a couple a days ago, now this.”
That got my attention. I blurted out, “Jackson City Hospital? The Penthouse?”
“Yes. Do you have any idea what the hell they might be doin’ up there? I woulda’ called hospital security or sent a patrol car over, but the way Waters is so crazy, I figured if they were Waters’ men, he woulda’ thrown a fit.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I changed the subject: “I’m beginning to like her, frankly. Elizabeth Keyes, I mean.”
“Well, maybe this will help ya a bit: Because of the… ahem… recent murders… I called Odessa, Texas, and did some checkin’ on Elizabeth Keyes. There’s no record of her being born or attending high school in that area, like she claimed on the application she gave ta your office. She did train briefly at St. Mary’s, but the rest of her story doesn’t check out.”
“Here’s a question for you, Detective: If she is lying, and she and Waters are working with ISIS and—?”
“And planning a terrorist attack?” Harris finished my question.
I shrugged.
“I’m going to call my buddy up at Camp Peary,” he said, “who’s in touch with the anti-terrorist people in DC. I’ll go through him.” His voice was thick with tension. “You stay with Keyes.” He hesitated, then said what I knew was coming. “Doc, if her story doesn’t check out with the CIA, we’re going to have to arrest her.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Harris’ alert, “Up and down the line,” set in motion Chapel Hill’s Sheriff, Jonathan Stone, and three of his patrol cars. They raced to Fordham Road and waited less than five minutes before two cars of the State Police, and a minute later, a SWAT team roaring up in a van, arrived. The cars surrounded the decrepit old house. Stone got all the agencies coordinated with the SWAT team, and then sent them in. They kicked open the front and rear doors simultaneously and moved quickly through every room. The house was vacant. They went to the garage. The Cadillac and Ford truck were not there.
As the SWAT team searched the land around the buildings, Sheriff Stone and the State Patrol Chief explored the house. People had been staying there for several weeks. The food in the trash containers was fresh, probably served last night. The water had been turned off the past six months, and the toilet was overrun with excrement. Piles of human feces were scattered over the property. All the sinks had been used as urinals.
The occupants had made a hurried evacuation during the night. Tire tracks gave evidence that a truck and a car had been parked in the garage. Fingerprints were everywhere, as was DNA material. The state lab in Raleigh came to take evidence, in an attempt to identify the persons who’d illegally occupied the residence.
As soon as he reached his desk, Harris called his friend, Roy Perkins, the Field Operations Commander at Camp Peary. Harris told him about the notes citing a missile strike in America, men on top of the hospital, the discovery of what looked like a safe house, and his weird visit from Simpkins. At last, Harris asked, “What’re we supposed to do about all this?”
“Pete, I need you to come out here to the base.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“We need to have a little talk.”
Roy Perkins stood only five feet, three inches tall, and was balding, but Pete Harris and others considered him a giant. Perkins lived at the center of the anti-terrorist effort on the east coast of the United Stares. Harris had met him first during a combined-agency Emergency Preparedness exercise that Perkins had hosted at the base for all the law enforcement officials and first-responders in the southeast. Afterward, they’d talked about the finer points of fishing over beers at the officers’ club until the place closed up for the night.
When Harris finally arrived at the base, Perkins ushered him into his office and said, without any introduction, “We can’t discuss any of this on the phone — if that can be helped.”
“No problem at all, Roy. But what the hell is all this? There’s something going on around The Jackson City Hospital, and I need to know what it is.”
“There’s a man in the area. A real hot shot. ‘Alpha Charlie’ they call him—”
“I’m aware of Mr. Alpha Charlie,” Harris groaned.
“He goes to Afghanistan and does contract work with drones. It’s rumored that this guy is preparing to do his Iraq and Syria contracts from the States, somewhere near Peary,” Perkins said. “It’s possible that a foreign cell may be here in The States with specific instructions to take him out.”
“So this Keyes individual—”
“We’re going to check into her right now. If she’s in deep, it may take a little time to find out who — and what — she is.” A grave look came over the compact little general’s face. “We’ve heard the code name ‘Quasart’ before. If a message was indeed sent from Quasart to Keyes, then we simply must use Keyes to find Quasart. Have this doctor guy stick to her like glue, but don’t give our position away by bringing him too much into the loop. I’ll talk to Surveillance. I’ll have her phone tapped.”
“Listen, Roy, there’s something else I should mention: Two different cops, both of ‘em mine — Jackson City guys — over the past two nights — have reported that men in black suits and hoods were behind the hospital, in Mariner’s Wood.”