“She’s asleep, and she won’t wake up, and -”
“Is your mother a heavy drinker?”
“No!” he replied in outrage. “She works for the FBI. She went right to bed last night, right after she got home from work. She -” And there it was, right on the night table. “Oh, God. There’s a pill bottle here…”
“Read the label to me!” the voice said.
“P-l-a-c-i-d-y-l. It’s my dad’s, and he -” That was all the operator needed to hear.
“Okay – we’ll have an ambulance there in five minutes.”
Actually, it was there in just over four minutes. The Wolfe house was only three blocks from a firehouse. The paramedics were in the living room before the rest of the family knew anything was wrong. They ran upstairs to find Dave still holding his mother’s hand and shaking like a twig in a heavy wind. The leading fireman pushed him aside, checked the airway first, then her eyes, then the pulse.
“Forty and thready. Respiration is… eight and shallow. It’s Placidyl,” he reported.
“Not that shit!” The second one turned to Dave. “How many were in there?”
“I don’t know. It was my dad’s, and -”
“Let’s go, Charlie.” The first paramedic lifted her by the arms. “Move it, kid, we gotta roll.” There wasn’t time to fool around with the Stokes litter. He was a big, burly man and carried Moira Wolfe out of the room like a baby. “You can follow us to the hospital.”
“How -”
“She’s still breathin’, kid. That’s the best thing I can tell you right now,” the second one said on the way out the door.
What the hell is going on? Murray wondered. He’d come by to pick Moira up – her car was still in the FBI garage – and maybe help ease the guilt she clearly felt. She’d violated security rules, she’d done something very foolish, but she was also a victim of a man who’d searched and selected her for her vulnerabilities, then exploited them as professionally as anyone could have done. Everybody had vulnerabilities. That was another lesson he’d picked up over his years in the Bureau.
He’d never met Moira’s kids, though he did know about them, and it wasn’t all that hard to figure out who would be there, following the paramedic out of the house. Murray double-parked his Bureau car and hopped out.
“What gives?” he asked the second paramedic. Murray held up his ID so that he’d get an answer.
“Suicide attempt. Pills. Anything else you need?” the paramedic asked on his way to the driver’s seat.
“Get moving.” Murray turned to make sure he wasn’t in the ambulance’s way.
When he turned back to look at the kids, it was plain that “suicide” hadn’t yet been spoken aloud, and the ugliness of that word made them wilt before his eyes.
That fucker Cortez! You ‘d better hope that I never get my hands on you!
“Kids, I’m Dan Murray. I work with your mom. You want me to take you to the hospital?” The case could wait. The dead were dead, and they could afford to be patient. Emil would understand.
He let them off in front of the emergency entrance and went off to find a parking place and use his car phone. “Get me Shaw,” he told the watch officer. It didn’t take long.
“Dan, this is Bill. What gives?”
“Moira tried to kill herself last night. Pills.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Somebody has to sit with the kids. Does she have any friends we can bring out?”
“I’ll check.”
“Until then I’m going to hang around, Bill. I mean -”
“I understand. Okay. Let me know what’s happening.”
“Right.” Murray replaced the phone and walked over to the hospital. The kids were sitting together in the waiting room. Dan knew about emergency-room waiting. He also knew that the gold badge of an FBI agent could open nearly any door. It did this time, too.
“You just brought a woman in,” he told the nearest doctor. “Moira Wolfe.”
“Oh, she’s the OD.”
She’s a person, not a goddamned OD! Murray didn’t say. Instead he nodded. “Where?”
“You can’t -”
Murray cut him off cold. “She’s part of a major case. I want to see what’s happening.”
The doctor led him to a treatment cubicle. It wasn’t pretty. Already there was a respirator tube down her throat, and IV lines in each arm – on second inspection, one of the tubes seemed to be taking her blood out and running it through something before returning it to the same arm. Her clothing was off, and EKG sensors were taped to her chest. Murray hated himself for looking at her. Hospitals robbed everyone of dignity, but life was more important than dignity, wasn’t it?
Why didn’t Moira know that?
Why didn’t you catch the signal, Dan? Murray demanded of himself. You should have thought to have somebody keep an eye on her. Hell, if you ‘d put her in custody, she couldn’t have done this!
Maybe we should have yelled at her instead of going so easy. Maybe she took it the wrong way. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Cortez, you are fucking dead. I just haven’t figured out when yet.
“Is she going to make it?” Murray asked.
“Who the hell are you?” a doctor asked without turning.
“FBI, and I need to know.”
The doctor still didn’t look around. “So do I, sport. She took Placidyl. That’s a pretty potent sleeping pill, not too many docs prescribe it anymore, ’cause it’s too easy to OD on. LD-50 is anywhere from five to ten caps. LD-50 means the dose that’ll kill half the people that take it. I don’t know how much she took. At least she isn’t completely gone, but her vitals are too goddamned low for comfort. We’re dialyzing her blood to keep any more from getting into her, hope it’s not a waste of time. We’ve put her on hundred-percent oxygen, then we’ll zap her full of IV fluids and wait it out. She’ll be out for at least another day. Maybe two, maybe three. Can’t tell yet. I can’t tell you what the odds are either. Now you know as much as I do. Get out of here, I got work to do.”
“There are three kids in the waiting room, Doctor.”
That turned his head around for about two seconds. “Tell ’em we got a pretty good chance, but it’s going to be tough for a while. Hey, I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. The good news is, if she comes back, she’ll come all the way back. This stuff doesn’t usually do permanent damage. Unless it kills you,” the doctor added.
“Thanks.”
Murray left to tell the kids what he could. Within an hour, some neighbors showed up to take their place with the Wolfe children. Dan left quietly after an agent arrived to keep his own vigil in the waiting room. Moira was probably their only link with Cortez, and that meant that her life was potentially in danger from hands other than her own. Murray got to the office just after nine, his mood still quiet and angry when he arrived. There were three agents waiting for him, and he waved them to follow.
“Okay, what have you found out?”
” ‘Mr. ‘Díaz’ used an American Express card at The Hideaway. We’ve identified the number at two airline ticket counters – thank God for those credit – checking computers. Right after he dropped Mrs. Wolfe off, he caught a flight out of Dulles to Atlanta, and from there to Panama. That’s where he disappeared. He must have paid cash for the next ticket, ’cause there’s no record of a Juan Díaz on any flight that evening. The counter clerk at Dulles remembers him – he was in a hurry to catch the Atlanta flight. The description matches the one we already have. However he got into the country last week, it wasn’t Dulles. We’re running computer records now, ought to have an answer later this morning – call it an even-money chance to figure his route in. I’m betting on one of the big hubs, Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, Chicago, one of them. But that’s not the interesting thing we’ve discovered.
“American Express just discovered that it has a bunch of cards for Juan Díaz. Several have been generated recently, and they don’t know how.”
“Oh?” Murray poured some coffee. “How come they weren’t noticed?”
“For one thing, the statements are paid on time and in full, so that dog didn’t bark. The addresses are all slightly different, and the name itself isn’t terribly unusual, so a casual look at the records won’t tip anyone off. What it looks like is that somebody has a way to tap into their computer system – all the way into the executive programming, and that might be another lead for us to run down. He’s probably been staying with the name in case Moira gets a look at the card. But what it has told us is that he’s made five trips to the D.C. area in the past four months. Somebody is playing with the AmEx computer system, somebody good. Somebody,” the agent went on, “good enough to tap into a lot of computers. This guy can generate complete credit lines for Cortez or anyone else. There ought to be a way to check that out, but I wouldn’t be real hopeful about running him down fast.”