Blood Born Page 22

  Margaret finally looked away from her tea. She rose unsteadily, wincing from her aching back, and went to the coat closet by the front door. There, she pulled a shoebox off the top shelf and opened it.

  I have no choice.

  She had no idea what kind of handgun lay inside. Silver and shiny, it smelled of gun oil as she freed it from the rag it was wrapped in. It was like a spy’s pistol: small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. Henry had purchased it in the early years of their marriage, when his job took him into DC. He never used it, as far as she knew.

  It would probably blow up in her face if she tried to fire it. It probably needed to be cleaned or something, but she didn’t know how.

  I still have to find her.

  She wasn’t sure how she would be successful when the pros had not been, but as a mother, she had to try.

  Chapter 14

  The end of Detective Christina Randall’s supplementary investigation report (case number 110709H359-P) read as follows:

  “I was forced to flee in Sergeant Tucker’s vehicle for my own protection. I struck one UPA”—short for Unidentified Primate Animal—“with my front bumper as I entered Monument Drive heading north. Several UPAs pursued until I outpaced them. I radioed for assistance as I returned to the scene by an alternate route. Arrived simultaneously at scene with PFCs Keller, Brown, and Pina. All the UPAs were gone except for the one I shot/killed. Officer Pina and I administered CPR on Serg. Tucker as PFC Keller stood guard with his weapon in ready position, and PFC Brown walked northward up Monument Drive to scout for UPAs. By that time, helo unit 626 arrived to assist in securing scene. EMS arrived within 20 minutes and declared Serg. Tucker DOS.”

  She stopped to swallow thickly and wipe her eyes. The chronicle of her friend’s death deserved something more than cold, mechanical prose. She glanced around at the office area, looking for someone who could give her some support—just a short remark like, Yeah, he was a great guy, I’ll miss him too would be enough. But she was alone. All routine investigations were still on hold, after all. The place felt quiet and forgotten, as if she were the last practitioner of a forgotten and unimportant faith, toiling away uselessly and vainly in some isolated tower. The gloomy darkening of dusk didn’t help her mood. She continued tapping away on her computer:

  “EMS transported Tucker to morgue. Federal field team A-280 arrived 1716 in a van and two support vehicles. Special Agent F. Albrecht showed DHS credentials before taking custody of the UPA body. They transported it away in their van approx. 1720.”

  She suppressed the urge to add the qualifier “king-shit assholes” to her description of the feds. They had swooped in on the empty lot where Tucker was killed with all the self-importance of Greek gods arriving from Mount Olympus. They didn’t seem to give a damn about the cops standing there in shell-shocked silence.

  Ah, screw it. She could type whatever she liked, but she doubted the report would be read anytime this year. There were simply too many UPA-related attacks to process, and the fact that the victim was a respected police officer made no difference. Strange that in such a crisis there was still so much paperwork to fill out. You would think during a system-wide breakdown it wouldn’t be as important to document every little thing. She checked off the case status block for “active” before electronically filing the report for a supervisor’s approval, whenever that might be.

  She glanced at her phone. Again, she wondered what to tell Margaret Connolly about her daughter. The voicemail the woman left late last night—which Randall hadn’t heard until this afternoon—sounded so plaintive and defeated. We’re still looking for her, and you’ll be the first person to know if we find her would sound so impersonal and insubstantial. She dreaded the tearful recriminations that would surely follow; she’d heard it all before from others like Margaret. But victims’ families needed to learn that a detective wasn’t obligated to call them with daily updates.

  Still . . .

  Ah, what did it matter anymore? The National Guard was swooping in to lock the whole area down, and all local and state law enforcement was effectively federalized for the duration of the emergency.

  Margaret can just sit tight and be patient, Randall thought. She’s not the only one with a crisis.

  Yeah, but I really should call her back. She just wants to find her daughter.

  Randall imagined that even now Margaret’s home phone was ringing—but it was a different caller. Automatic dialers were calling every phone number in the DC region with recorded messages from governor’s or mayor’s offices. According to the news, these phone calls were telling people the nation’s capital and surrounding counties were under attack from an unidentified terrorist operation using bio-engineered animals. The president had not ruled out the possibility that it was the work of an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Only one or two hundred of these animals were believed to be at large, so the president was confident they would soon be neutralized. Residents were therefore still urged to stay indoors and stay calm. The public was not encouraged to evacuate the area as that could potentially spread the pregnancy-related contagion.

  So, now the truth came out. Sort of. No more smoke screens about rabies-infected bears, with a strange request for pregnant women to come forward because they could somehow be at a greater risk. Now it was just a flat statement: don’t leave the area. You might spread it.

  The rest of the news wasn’t much better, and Randall couldn’t help refreshing her internet browser every ten minutes to check for updates. Click: pictures of the jam-packed roads out of town as people disobeyed the request to stay put. Click: hastily written analyses by “cryptozoologists,” with the thinnest veneers of actual credentials, sounding off with their wacky theories about the creatures’ origins. Click: reports of how financial markets had gone into seizures as they realized the capital of the world’s most powerful nation was bugging out.

  But what she was really looking for was press coverage of the more unusual things she’d learned about or been exposed to on her own—except she could find none. At least she had the notes in her file. They would stay there until they fit into the big picture somehow. She called it her jigsaw file. Nearly every case of hers had one at some point. The first jigsaw puzzle piece for this particular case was the mashed produce she found at the Asian Grocery-Mart. Randall took out her notes and frowned at them. Why would a UPA be interested in a bunch of bell peppers and then not even eat them?

  The next puzzle piece was a copy of a police report from Friday night, filed not long after Daniella Connolly’s rape behind the movie theater. A UPA allegedly broke into a nail salon and a coin laundry at the Yorktowne Plaza shopping center, not far from Fairfax Hospital. According to the Japanese owner of the nail salon, the monster made itself sick by either eating or humping various kinds of nail polishes and laundry detergents.

  The third jigsaw piece in her file was a simple question she’d written on a post-it note—a reminder, really, that many questions remained about what exactly the creatures were and how they operated. The note read, “Pre-rape bite = taste test for ovulation. Post-rape bite = ??”

  Puzzle pieces. Fit them all together, and you got exactly jack shit.

  Randall paused to blow her nose—damn allergies again—before turning to her final mystery. This one was bookmarked on her web browser. It was a website containing a condensed history of World War Two. She was reading it because of what Sergeant Tucker said shortly before he died. He said that the site of the old German POW camp, which the CalPark Fertility Clinic scientist fraudulently listed as his home, equated to some sort of statement from the man.

  You don’t think the bigfoots were caused by rabies or contaminated water, do ya? he said. Use your mind, Christina. It’ll come to you.

  She wanted to cry. I can’t—I can’t use my mind on this one, not without you. I don’t belong on this job. My nose is running and my breasts hurt and I need sleep and I feel like I’m on the verge of menstrual cramps but I don’t get them and wha
t the fuck am I still doing here?

  Randall squeezed the bridge of her nose, hoping the pressure would hold the tears in at the same time it pinched off her dripping sinuses. She just wanted it all to end, everything.

  Sighing, she dialed a phone number. She was relieved when an answering machine picked up. “Hi, Margaret,” she said, remembering the woman’s insistence she be addressed by her first name. “This is Detective Randall returning your call. I’m sorry to say that we have nothing new to report about your daughter. Rest assured we’re doing everything in our power to find her, and you’ll be the first person to know if we do. I promise I’ll keep you updated weekly about the investigation’s progress—but keep in mind that if I don’t call you, that doesn’t mean we’re not looking anymore, okay? I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you at this time. Bye for now.”

  She hung up. God, I hate doing that.

  Okay, so stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get back to work. Find her daughter. Solve this thing. Do what you can.

  . . . And at that moment, it clicked where she heard that company name before, CalPark Fertility Clinic. Cursing, she pawed through her case file on the bigfoots until she found Officer Heager’s interview notes of Margaret.

  Victim’s mother: Margaret Connolly, Heager’s notes read. Age 52. Profession: doctor at CalPark Fertility Clinic @ Tyson’s Corner.

  “My god,” she whispered. She stabbed her phone’s redial button.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Randall considered the possibility that Margaret and the German POW-lovin’ fertility scientist were wrapped up in this mess together. She didn’t believe in coincidences—no detective worth her deerstalker cap did. Yet she had a hard time believing Margaret Connolly had any culpability in the Beltway bigfoot crisis. The lady just didn’t seem the type. If she did know anything about the bigfoots’ origin, then she surely would have rolled on someone by now, given what had happened to her daughter.

  No, it seemed more likely that Margaret was innocent. Maybe Daniella was raped simply because of her proximity to her mother’s place of business—a place Randall felt progressively more certain had something to do with the monsters.

  Yeah, great chain of evidence you got going there, Chrissy. Lots of “seems” and “maybes” and gut feelings. A judge is going to buy into that in a heartbeat, uh huh.

  Or maybe—and this was more terrifying—Daniella was just a random victim. As it turned out, there were dozens of bigfoot rapes before Daniella and perhaps hundreds after her. Evil in this instance was an equal-opportunity employer, no special connections required.

  She sighed and looked away from her computer long enough to blow her nose. When the hell was Margaret Connolly going to call back? It was almost nine p.m. This isn’t about Daniella, but I need you to call me as soon as you get this, she’d said, then left Heager’s cell phone number. The cell phone in question was now switched on and hooked in permanent residence on her belt. That’s another one I owe you, she thought, thinking of her friend. She hoped that by now he was safe on some Naval hospital ship far from here. But as for Margaret Connolly . . . damn. Saying that her message didn’t concern Daniella might have been a mistake. A big one.

  Somebody walked past the hallway door to the office wing, talking loudly about traffic chokepoints and command coordination. Randall rubbed her face, which felt hot and puffy.

  That’s where I need to be: far from here, like Heager.

  But she had a job to do. She needed to find that scientist, Nick Schaefer. She had placed an all-points bulletin for units to watch for Schaefer’s vehicle, a silver Camaro, but she didn’t expect much return on it. Everyone was occupied with bigfoot control.

  That was the trouble: those damn general orders suspending normal police operations. She couldn’t even get a warrant sworn out to search the fertility clinic because there were no magistrates on duty to sign one. The general orders were supposedly to free everyone up to deal with bigfoot incidents. Oh, the police would still stop a robbery or drug deal if they saw one going down in front of them, but right now those weren’t law enforcement priorities. The most laughable part of the situation was that the orders were supposed to make police work easier.

  So no search warrant, no getting into the fertility clinic. Not that she could easily get a warrant in this situation, anyway. Affidavits to obtain warrants must be specific about why you need to search a property, spelling out exactly what you expect to find that would link a suspect to a crime. The Fourth Amendment didn’t provide for searches based on half-assed suspicions.

  Screw it. She was upset enough about Tucker’s death to consider breaking in.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A few minutes later, Randall was seriously considering that option—she even began searching her desk for a spare set of surgical gloves so she wouldn’t leave fingerprints—when a different idea occurred to her. Where would the land records on the vacant lot take her? She owed it to her professional and moral integrity to at least explore that avenue before taking the law into her own hands—not to mention exhausting the dozens of other private and public information sources she could use to find Schaefer, if only she were patient enough.

  Sighing, she slammed her desk drawer closed—she couldn’t find the damned gloves anyway—and clicked onto the public website for the Fairfax County Department of Tax Administration, Real Estate Division.

  Within moments, she brought up the tax record for the land plat on Monument Drive.

  Parcel ID: 0562 01 0070A

  Tax District: 80000 (Springfield)

  11620 Monument Drive

  Land (SQFT): 526,339

  Unimproved

  Owner Name: Nicolae C. Schaefer

  Owner Mailing Address: same

  Book: 11997 Page: 1306

  Zoning Description: C-6 (Community Retail)

  County Historic Overlay District: No

  Click Below for Values History

  Randall was at once pleased and frustrated with her finding. Pleased because the record clearly showed Nick Schaefer owned the vacant lot where Sergeant Tucker was killed. Frustrated because it didn’t give her a clue how to find him. Owner mailing address was “same”? How did he receive his tax bill?

  She was also confused by the “No” response as to whether the lot was part of a historic overlay district. These districts were special zoning classifications given by the county to protect historic landmarks. Places like Sully Plantation and Pohick Church had them. It didn’t make sense that the vacant lot wasn’t part of a historic overlay district because it clearly contained a marker for the German POW camp. Instead, it was zoned for retail. Schaefer could make a mint if he sold the land to a developer wanting someplace to build a shopping center. Did he erect the sign himself?

  I think our little science boy is making a subtle statement, Tucker said just before he died.

  Damn, this was making her head hurt.

  She returned to her first question about the lot: how Schaefer was receiving his tax bills if the lot’s mailing address was listed as “same.” She tried to remember whether she saw a mailbox on the lot and decided that she hadn’t.

  C’mon, think, Chrissy. Your mind is working about as well as a bridge of wet noodles.

  How was he receiving mail from the Commonwealth? Not just his tax bills but his DMV notices as well (no doubt a violation of title 46.2 of the Virginia Code)?

  Randall rubbed her eyes, trying desperately to sort it out—then pounded her fist on the desk.

  A forwarding order. From the post office. Duh.

  She reached for the phone.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The U.S. Post Office in Merrifield was a major distribution hub for the region and was open until midnight on weekdays. Normally, when Randall phoned her informant there at this time of the evening, she had no trouble reaching him.

  But this wasn’t a normal evening. The area had been under siege for the past four days. Nobody in commerce or government had reported to work today, und
erstandably preferring to stay near family and home. Still, this was the first real workday since the shit hit the fan, and Scott Blaine did take seriously the unofficial post office motto about “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” The saying didn’t mention anything about “nor states of emergency,” but Scott was always a good one for coloring outside the lines. That quality made him invaluable to her.

  But getting hold of him proved too much to hope for. Randall allowed Scott’s number to ring fifteen times. The post office was too cheap even to give her friend voicemail.

  The instant before she touched the disconnect button, the line clicked. A voice said, “Blaine here.”

  Randall sucked in a breath. “Jesus.”

  “I feel like I should have a snappy comeback for that. Randall?”

  “Yes. Hi, Scott.”

  “You’re really lucky you got me. I was just powering down to go home. The facility’s empty here. It’s spooky.”

  “Then I won’t keep you. I just need to know if you can find me a forwarding order for an address.”

  She had a hard time speaking through the relief that flooded her body. At least something was going right tonight. She realized that if she hadn’t reached him, she probably would have shelved this investigation for now and gone off to hunt bigfoots like she was supposed to.

  “You must be crazy,” Scott said.

  He went on to bitch about accessing private records without authorization. If she wanted that kind of information, then she could damn well file the proper paperwork, like everyone else.

  Randall waited for him to stop ranting before she said, “So. Are you on your computer? What did you find out for me?”

  “Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”

  “I heard you, but you’re still going to give me what I want, aren’t you?”