Enigma (FBI Thriller #21)(13)
“Lots of people are jumpy about small planes their first time out. You’ll be fine when we fly back. You ready to dance with the devil when we catch him?”
“Looking forward to it.”
Jack opened the door, grabbed his backpack, and walked down the airstairs, Cam behind him. She stood a moment, content to breathe in the clean warm air and feel the gentle breeze ruffle her hair and dry the sweat from her forehead. It was so quiet, so peaceful with the engine off, and only trees around them, enough to build a city.
Jack pulled out his cell, then slid it back into his shirt pocket. “No need to call, that’s Chief Harbinger there, in that big honker black SUV coming toward us. Amazing timing.”
“I texted him as soon as we had a signal.”
He hadn’t seen her do that. They watched a big man dressed for the woods climb out of the SUV. He shouted, “Welcome to Magee, outpost of the brave.” A very pretty young girl scooted out the passenger door and stepped around to stand at his side. His daughter, Kim Harbinger? Why had the chief brought his teenage daughter with him?
6
WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MONDAY AFTERNOON
Savich stood beside Dr. Grace Wordsworth, a tall, thin black woman with white wings in her hair and glasses over intelligent eyes, looking down at the young man lying on his back. A single blanket was pulled up to his bandaged shoulder and an adhesive strip covered the scalp wound where Savich’s bullet had grazed his left temple. He was bone-white and lay utterly still, the slow rise and fall of his chest his only obvious sign of life. Savich saw his uninjured arm was handcuffed to the metal bed frame, an IV line in his wrist.
Dr. Wordsworth checked his pulse, put her stethoscope over his heart, and straightened. “At least our John Doe is breathing easily on his own. But he hasn’t helped us much in figuring out why he’s in a coma. His CT scan was perfectly normal—no evidence of hematoma or brain contusion. We’ve looked at his cerebrospinal fluid with a lumbar puncture, and again, there was no evidence of bleeding, or of infection. By the way, Dr. Avery, the consulting neurologist, said John Doe’s irrational behavior yesterday sounded like delirium to him, not a psychiatric illness. Something else—a metabolic problem or something toxic—may be to blame. He has some abnormal central reflexes that point to something affecting his entire nervous system. So you can relax if you were worried his head wound put him in this condition. The bullet probably concussed him, sure, but this is something else entirely.” She glanced down at her watch and its large digital readout. “We may know more after they fit him in for his MRI in a couple of hours.”
“Something else? Could he have overdosed on a drug?”
“Our usual toxicology panel showed a trace of Haldol in his system—that’s an old antipsychotic drug—but nothing else he shouldn’t have taken. As I said, there was only a trace, which means he hadn’t taken any therapeutic dose for upward of three or four days. But there are a lot of drugs and supplements out there we haven’t tested for yet that can cause neurotoxicity. We’ve sent a sample of his blood to a facility with a specialized mass spectroscopy unit to try to identify any drugs we might have missed. We’ll have to wait for the results. Some kind of drug effect is a real possibility. His blood tests show his bone marrow is suppressed, and his liver shows signs of injury for some reason. So I have a medical mystery on my hands, and no history to work with. Have you made any progress identifying him?”
“Not yet.”
“Take a look at this.” Dr. Wordsworth carefully lifted John Doe’s handcuffed wrist and pulled at a loose plastic wristband. “It looks almost like a conventional hospital ID band, but it’s not ours. I’ve never seen a psychiatric facility put such a bizarre tag on a patient, though. It doesn’t make sense. Even at a private institution, there ought to be some sort of comprehensible patient identification on it, the name of the facility, much more than this. There’s a handwritten date on it—also strange. It’s Saturday, two days ago, perhaps the day he escaped? His last treatment date?” She looked up at Savich, shook her head. “Perhaps they changed out his wristband each time he had a treatment. And look here, in small letters, E 2. Nothing else.”
Savich stared at the wide pale yellow plastic strip. Saturday most likely wasn’t the date he entered the facility, so Dr. Wordsworth was probably right, it was the date of his last treatment. But for what? And what could E 2 mean? Savich felt a tug of memory, and then it was gone. “Can’t help with that,” he said. “I’ve checked with Metro. They’ve had no inquiries from any psychiatric facility about our Mr. Doe. Nor does Metro know who he is. His fingerprints aren’t in the system.”
Dr. Wordsworth checked the IV infusion set, made a minor adjustment. “Isn’t that unusual? Your not being able to identify someone?”
“It only means he’s never worked for the government, been in the military, or been arrested. I tried the facial recognition program, missing persons countrywide, but without any luck.” Savich wondered if Mayer had done the same.
Dr. Wordsworth said, “Our staff have been contacting all the medical facilities and psychiatric hospitals in the District, in Maryland, and in Virginia. None of them have claimed him so far. If he was in a small facility or with his family, we’d expect them to be all over this. And then I ask myself, why would a family—especially a family—put a wristband like this on him?”