She shook her head. “It has to be me. He’s expecting me.”
She fumbled in her purse, came up with a nip bottle of vodka she’d bought in the duty free shop, and twisted off the cap.
“You don’t need that.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she said, and drank it down.
Dropping the empty in her purse, she turned the handle and pushed open the door into a room that held a single patient lying in bed and facing a screen showing CNN. He was in a body cast with a neck halo. Bandages swathed his head. His left arm was gone. Both lower legs were missing above the knee. His eyes were closed.
“Hawkes?” she said in a quavering voice. “It’s me.”
The man inside the bandages opened his eyes and rolled them her way. “Deb?”
He grunted it more than said it. His jaw was wired shut.
Deb started crying. Shoulders hunched, clutching her purse like a life preserver, she moved uncertainly toward the foot of the bed, where Hawkes could see her better. “I’m right here, baby. So is Mickey.”
Mickey came into the room, feeling more frightened than anything. He waved at the legless creature inside the bandages and said, “Hi—”
Hawkes screamed. “Get him out! I told you not to bring him! Get him out, Deb!”
“But he’s—”
“Get him out!” Hawkes screeched. Monitors began to buzz and whine in alarm.
Shocked, feeling rejected, Mickey started toward the door. Then the tears came and his own anger flared.
Mickey spun and shouted. “Why didn’t you leave when you said you would? You left when you said you would, we never would have been blown up! Never!”
Somebody nudged him.
Mickey jerked awake, realized he’d been yelling in his sleep. He looked around, saw a kindly older man with a cane.
“Nightmare, son?” the old man said.
Mickey nodded, realizing how sweaty he felt under the windbreaker, the hoodie, and the vest, and then how close he was to his stop. Glancing past the older man, he scanned a woman reading a magazine, while the six or seven other passengers at the far back of the bus stared off into space with work-glazed expressions.
Time to really wake them up, Mickey thought when the bus pulled over across from Veterans Affairs Medical Center. This soldier’s done fooling around.
Already late and not wanting to miss any more of the evening meeting, Mickey got up, waited until the rear doors opened with a whoosh, and hurried off the bus.
He didn’t notice that the woman reading the magazine was now staring after him. He didn’t look back to see her get off the bus and trail him at a distance.
Chapter 29
Ali, Jannie, and I were waiting on Nana Mama to finish some last minute dinner preparations when my cell phone rang.
“Don’t you dare,” my grandmother said, shaking a wooden spoon at me. “I’ve been working on this meal since noon.”
I held up my hands in surrender, let the call go to voice mail, and sniffed at delicious odors seeping out from under the lid of a large deep-sided pan.
“Smells great, Nana!” Ali said, reaching for the lid.
She gave him a gentle fanny swat with the spoon and said, “No peeking behind curtain number one.”
My cell rang again, prompting a disapproving sniff from Nana. I pulled out the phone, expecting Bree to be calling. We had all been frustrated leaving Vincente’s apartment earlier in the day. He’d looked good for the bomber going in, and not so good coming out. He seemed even more unlikely when Metro transit confirmed he’d never once ridden the Circulator, and the US Army confirmed he’d been a cook.
But it wasn’t Bree on my caller ID. Kate Williams was looking for me.
“Dinner in five minutes,” Nana said.
I walked out into the front hall. “Kate?”
“I think I’ve got him, Dr. Cross,” she said breathlessly. “I’m sitting on the bomber.”
“What? Where?”
“Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He’s in a support group meeting for IED-wounded vets until seven-fifty. I figure you have until eight to meet me at the bus stop at Brookland–CUA.”
The call ended. I stared at the phone.
Nana Mama called, “Dinner’s ready.”
“I’m sorry, Nana,” I said, grabbing my rain coat. “I’ve gotta go.”
Out the door and down the front stairs, I ran north in the pouring rain to Pennsylvania Avenue and hailed a cab. On the way I tried to reach Bree, but it kept going through to her voice mail.
I texted her what Kate had said, and that I was going to check it out. As smart and IED-savvy as my patient was, I wasn’t holding out real hope that she’d somehow identified the bomber. But I wasn’t going to ignore her, either.
In the rain, traffic was snarled, so I didn’t climb out of a cab at the Brookland–CUA Metro Station until two minutes past eight. Kate Williams stood at the bus stop shelter, leaning against a Plexiglas wall, smoking a cigarette and perusing People magazine.
Seeing me, she stubbed the butt out, flipped it into a trash can, and smiled.
“Means a lot that you came,” she said. She explained that she’d come back looking for me the night before and saw me in the D8 bus talking to Mr. Light.
Kate put two and two together, and spent most of the day riding the Circulator and the Hospital Center bus lines. Around six, she got on the Hospital Center bus at Union Station and saw a guy she recognized, sleeping in a seat near the back.
“I didn’t think much of him, beyond the fact that I’d seen him down around the Vietnam Memorial,” she said. “But when we got close to the hospital, he had some kind of nightmare, and yelled out something about getting blown up.”
I said, “I’m sure there are lots of guys who ride this bus and have flashbacks.”
“I’m sure they do,” she said. “But they don’t wear a blue rain jacket with a logo on the left chest that says…shit, here he comes. Half a block. Don’t look. Put your hood up. If he’s been watching the news, he’ll recognize you.”
The D8 bus pulled in.
“Get on before he does,” Kate said. “You’ll be behind him. Easier to control.”
Chapter 30
I hesitated, but only for a beat. If it really was the bomber, being positioned behind him could be a good thing, especially in a confined space.
I pivoted away and climbed aboard. Gordon Light was driving. He recognized me and started to say something, but I held a finger to my lips as I ran my Metro card over the reader. I headed toward the rear of the semi-crowded bus but stood instead of taking a seat, holding on to a strap facing the side windows. When the doors shut and we started to move, I lowered my hood and glanced around.
Kate was standing in the aisle ten feet forward of me. Her eyes met mine, and she slightly tilted her head toward a man wearing a dark blue windbreaker, hood up. He was looking out the window, giving me no view of his face.
The seat beside him was empty. So was the entire seat behind him.
Kate sat next to him, blocking his exit, which caused him to pivot his head to glance at her.