In Plain Sight

13 The Doctor

“Well you look like hell,” Iggy observed as Alex dragged himself downstairs the next morning. Alex grunted at him and poured himself a large cup of coffee.

“Doctor Halverson called me yesterday,” Iggy said.

“Who?”

Iggy sighed and waited for Alex to take a few slugs from his coffee mug. “Doctor Halverson called,” he said again.

“Oh. The researcher from the University,” Alex said, his sleep-deprived brain finally making the connection.

“He said they’ve identified three separate strains of the pathogen.” Iggy paused as if what he had said were self-evident. When Alex failed to do anything but stare at him blankly, he continued. “It appears the disease gets weaker with every generation.”

“So it isn’t perfect after all?”

“It’s still not natural,” Iggy said. “No disease in recorded history is fatal after just two hours.”

Alex shrugged. He wanted to do right by Father Harry, but it was Friday and if he didn’t talk to James Van der Waller’s insurance company today, he’d have to wait till Monday. Since Captain Rooney’s meeting with the Chief was at ten o’clock Monday morning, he didn’t have that kind of time.

“I’ve got a full day,” he said. “But if Halverson finds anything that can help me track down Charles Beaumont, or whoever’s behind this, call Leslie.”

Iggy promised that he would, and Alex reached for the phone on the kitchen wall.

“It’s about time you called,” Danny said once the police operator put the call through to him. “You know we’ve only got today left to save my job, right?”

“Sorry, Danny,” Alex said, feeling like a heel for spending time on the Monograph. “What have you got on Callahan Brothers Property?”

“Not much,” Danny said. “A couple of court cases where they were sued for not paying claims, but they won all of those. The rest are cases where they went after people who tried to cheat their clients. It’s all pretty regular.”

“That’s it?” Alex was astounded.

“I asked the boys over in fraud,” Danny said. “They said that Callahan Brothers recover stolen property fairly regularly. Much more often than their competitors.”

“Like maybe they’ve got a goon squad who leans on people till they talk?” Alex asked.

“Nobody knows,” Danny said. “Or if they do, they aren’t talking. I suggest you quit wasting time and get your butt over there and ask them.”

“Yes, boss,” Alex said and hung up.

The offices of Callahan Brothers Property were on the top floor of an elegant brick building that had once been an upscale hotel. The lobby alone looked like it had been built by John Astor; it was elegant and stately with marble floors, carved Art Nouveau rails and moldings. The building’s elevator had an operator, an elderly gentleman in a red velvet waistcoat who directed the car with smooth efficiency. Callahan Brothers occupied the entire top floor of the building, and the elevator let Alex off right in front of a large desk manned by a receptionist. She was young, maybe nineteen, with plump cheeks and dark hair, which hung around her face in ringlets. Her lips were red and thin, her eyes were blue and there were freckles on her nose.

“Can I help you?” she asked as Alex approached.

“I’m Alex Lockerby. I’m here regarding James Van der Waller’s claim,” Alex said, handing her his card. “I need to see whoever is handling his case.”

The girl’s face changed from the pleasant smile to a sour frown as she passed the card back.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t discuss matters relating to clients without the client present. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Alex didn’t move to take the card.

“Listen sweetheart, if you want me to go, I’ll go. But first I suggest you take that card and give it to the man in charge of Van der Waller’s claim. It’d be a mistake if you didn’t.”

The girl’s expression wavered between confidence and doubt. In the end doubt won.

“All right,” she said, standing up. “Please wait here. I’ll be right back.”

She stepped around her desk and made her way to a set of elaborate double doors on one side of the foyer. A moment later she was back with a blocky man of medium height. He had a square jaw with close-set eyes and a Roman nose, not at all what Alex pictured when he thought of an insurance agent. He looked more like a bouncer.

Alex kept his smile pasted to his face. If this was an attempt to intimidate him, he intended to show them it failed.

“I’m Arthur Wilks,” the blocky man said as the girl took her seat behind the receptionist desk once more. He handed Alex’s card back. “I wanted to tell you in person that I have no intention of discussing my clients with you. If you insist on bothering Miss Harding, I’ll have to call the police. Now please leave.”

Alex took the card and tucked it in his shirt pocket, removing his note pad as he did so. He flipped the top few pages while Wilks glared at him, then started writing. “How do you spell Wilks?” he asked. “I’m sure the police will want to get it right when they arrest you for impeding a police investigation.”

Alex expected Wilks to protest but instead, he just glared at Alex for a long moment, then sighed. “All right,” he said. “There’s no need for that. Follow me.”

Wilks turned back toward the double doors. After a moment, Alex followed. He hadn’t strapped on his 1911 in a few days and his rune-covered brass knuckles were in his room at the brownstone. It occurred to him that if Wilks wished him ill, he might have a nasty surprise waiting for him behind those doors.

Alex breathed a sigh of relief when the doors led to a wide hallway with offices on either side. Inside each office, well-dressed men and women were busily working, filling out forms or making phone calls. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Wilks’ office was at the end of one row in the corner, with big windows all around giving him a wonderful view of the city core and Empire Tower. Along the inside walls were dozens of plaques, awards, and framed newspaper clippings. Most dealt with the recovery of missing or stolen property. The blocky man was clearly an important man at Callahan Brothers Property.

“All right,” Wilks said once he’d shut his door. “What do you want?”

There was a distinct trace of Brooklyn in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“You used to be on the job,” Alex said, seating himself before Wilks’ large mahogany desk. Wilks looked startled, then nodded.

“Fifteen years,” he said. “How did you know?”

Alex pointed to a framed newspaper article hanging more or less in the center of the wall of awards. Unlike the others, this one was yellow with age.

“The headline says that a police detective was responsible for finding a stolen thoroughbred horse,” he said. “Was that when the Callahan Brothers noticed you?”

Wilks raised an eyebrow, then nodded.

“I see you’re pretty good yourself,” he said. “Now what’s all this got to do with James?”

Alex crossed his legs and leaned back, still holding his notepad.

“Why did you tell Mr. Van der Waller not to report his theft to the police?”

Wilks took a deep breath, then pointed to the wall of awards behind Alex. “You see them?” he said. “I got them for recovering property. I was a robbery detective, Mr. Lockerby. And I learned that people who steal things, do it for one of two reasons. Either they want whatever it is for themselves, in which case they have to stash it somewhere. If you look long and hard enough, you usually find it. Or,” he continued, “they steal stuff to sell it for money. In that case they have to have someone to sell it to. Now in the case of art, you know, paintings, statues, that kind of thing, sometimes the thief has a buyer lined up before the theft. With loose jewels,” he shrugged, “those, they have to fence.” He pointed out the window in the general direction of the diamond district. “Sure, there’s plenty of guys in the jewelry business who don’t really care where their stones come from, as long as the paperwork is right. Provenance, we call it in the trade. Now, since the thief doesn’t have any paper trail, he’s got to sell the stones to someone who can forge one. That gives the stones provenance.”

“Very interesting,” Alex said. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

Wilks smiled. “There’s only a handful of fences in the New York area that can move high end stones, and I know them all,” he said. “I told James to hold off because I was sure I could get his property back.”

“You reached out to these fences and told them to call you if they came across Van der Waller’s property?” Alex guessed. “What makes you think they would?”

Wilks laughed an ugly laugh and jerked his thumb at a filing cabinet behind his door.

“I got enough on each of them to put them away for twenty years,” he said. “But I’m not a cop anymore. It ain’t my job to catch crooks.”

“So when you have a case, you lean on your network,” Alex said. “The rest of the time you leave them alone. No wonder your record of recovering property is so good.”

“I know all the good fences,” Wilks said; he smiled and thumped himself on the chest. “And the cops know the rest. If one of my clients has something go missing, I know just who to squeeze.”

Alex pictured Jerry Pemberton, beaten and missing fingernails.

“Who did you squeeze about Van der Waller’s missing stones?”

“That’s a trade secret,” Wilks said. “I’m sure a runewright understands that.”

Alex did. Wilks didn’t have to tell him anything and he had no leverage with the man. As a former cop, he knew that P.I.s had little to no pull with the real police.

“When do you expect to have the stones back?” Alex said. Wilks’ grim smile turned sour and he didn’t answer.

“What happened to Jerry Pemberton?” Alex asked, quietly.

“Who?” he asked. For the first time, Wilks looked surprised.

“The customs agent who was in on the robbery with the thief. Someone beat his partner’s name out of him, then set him on fire.”

Wilks’ face flushed and he jumped to his feet.

“Get out,” he roared. “I don’t have to listen to this from you.”

Alex didn’t move.

“But you will have to listen to the police,” he said. “Right now they don’t know that you told Van der Waller not to call them. I’m sure they’d find that fact interesting enough to come down here and talk to you.”

Wilks turned a greenish color and he sat down.

“I didn’t have anything to do with any beating,” he said. “I already told you how I work. I don’t go after the thieves, I let them come to my contacts.”

“Maybe you got tired of waiting.”

“I never heard of any Jerry Penballer—”

“Pemberton.”

“Whoever,” Wilks barked. “I never heard of him, and I certainly didn’t kill him.”

Alex hated to admit it, but he believed Wilks. Firstly, Wilks would have waited a few days, at least, for his fences to hear something. Killing Pemberton had been an act of desperation, perpetrated by someone motivated to get their hands on the missing stones. Wilks, on the other hand, was like a spider in a web, just waiting for the thieves to come to him.

“All right,” Alex said, flipping his notebook closed. “I take it, you haven’t heard anything from your people about the stones?”

“No,” Wilks said. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out an oblong book, opening the cover and turning it around so Alex could read it. It was a checkbook with a draft written out to James Van der Waller in the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was dated yesterday.

“If I haven’t heard anything by the end of today, I’ll take this check over to James myself.” He fixed Alex with a hard stare. “I may be a bit rough around the edges compared to the rest of the stiffs who work here, but I’m legit.” He closed the book and put it away. “Callahan Brothers Property always pay our claims.”

Alex stood up, putting his notebook away.

“Good to know,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”

“I’m sure you can find your way out,” Wilks sneered, not rising from his desk.

It was a long elevator ride back to the ground floor. Everything seemed to point to Callahan Brothers, but now Alex wanted them to be his insurance company. Not that Wilks would take his business.

A row of phone booths encased in polished wood lined the wall in the building’s elaborate lobby. Alex should have called Danny, but he wasn’t ready to admit he had nothing, so he dialed his office number instead. Leslie picked up after the third ring and she sounded harried.

“There you are,” she said when she heard his voice. “Everyone’s called for you this morning. It’s like Grand Central in here.”

“What have you got?” Alex sighed.

“Danny called twice wanting to know how you made out at the insurance company. Then Doctor Bell called, said he’s over at the University and wanted you to join him. He said to follow the police cars and you’d find him.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Lastly Miss Rockwell called, wanting to know if you’d made any progress finding out what happened to her brother. She, at least, was polite.”

Alex closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he said. “Sounds like I’d better go see what Iggy wants.”

Leslie snorted. She didn’t approve of Alex calling a septuagenarian doctor Iggy.

“If Danny or Evelyn call back, tell them I’ll call them as soon as I can.”

Leslie promised that she would and wished him luck.

The university was south, past the core, near Washington Square Park. It would take close to half an hour to get there by crawler and he hadn’t eaten all day. His stomach growled at him, but Iggy’s mention of police cars meant something important was happening. He pushed his hunger aside and headed south.

The campus of New York University covered a few city blocks, but Alex had no trouble figuring out which building he needed to visit. As Iggy had predicted, half a dozen police cruisers were parked along the street beside a four-story building made of yellow brick. All sorts of horrors paraded through his mind as he approached. Maybe Dr. Halverson had accidentally infected someone in the lab and now they were all dead. Maybe Iggy had been there.

No. Leslie had just talked to Iggy, and he told her about the police cars. Alex took a deep breath and tried to focus. What he needed was a sandwich and a cigarette.

When he reached the entrance, there was no uniformed officer there, another good sign, but his gut was telling him something was wrong. It wasn’t until he saw the tall, blond man in the gray pinstriped suit loitering in the hall that Alex realized what form the danger had taken. He plastered a smile on his face and kept his pace steady.

“Agent Warner,” he said, when he reached the young FBI man. “If you’re looking for old books, I hear the University’s library has a few.”

Warner’s eyes narrowed at the sight of Alex.

“Shouldn’t you be helping some little girl find her lost balloon?”

Alex chuckled and clapped Warner on the shoulder. “That’s what I love about you FBI types,” Alex said. “You’re all so witty.”

Warner snarled and batted Alex’s hand away.

“You’d better mind your manners, scribbler,” he snarled. “The boss lady may want to handle you with kid gloves, but that doesn’t mean I have to.”

“I think,” a new voice cut in, “that what Agent Warner meant to ask is, what are you doing here, Mr. Lockerby?”

Alex turned to find Agent Davis emerging from a door with the word Pathology panted on it.

“I’m here to see Dr. Halverson,” Alex said, putting on an easy smile.

Davis’s smile looked just as insincere as Alex’s. “What business do you have with the Doc?” he asked.

Alex took a deep breath and kept his smile in place. These two were really beginning to get on his nerves, which, when he thought about it, was probably just what they were trying to do. If he gave them any excuse, they’d arrest him and throw him in a holding cell for as long as they could get away with. Some other time it might have been fun to force their hand, but not today.

Too many people were depending on him today.

“Doctor Bell called me,” he said. “Asked me to come down right away, so here I am.”

“Who’s Bell?” Warner asked Davis. The elder FBI man checked his notes.

“The consultant,” he said after a moment. The two of them exchanged a long look, then Davis stepped away from the door so Alex could enter.

The room beyond was crammed with lab equipment, workbenches, burners, and beakers of every description — and policemen. Alex saw Lieutenant Callahan standing next to a gray-bearded man with immensely thick spectacles who wore a white lab coat. Alex ventured a guess that he was the famous Dr. Halverson. He seemed to be explaining something highly technical, since Callahan and his detectives kept stopping him every few seconds to write in their notebooks.

“Well, well,” a honeyed female voice washed over him. “You do turn up in the strangest places, Mr. Lockerby.”

Alex looked toward the back of the room and found Sorsha Kincaid leaning against a lab table with the air of someone who was waiting for something to happen. Unlike when she came to his office, she wore a dress with a white jacket over the top. The dress was pale blue to match her eyes, and it clung to her slender form in a very appealing manner. To Alex’s surprise, Iggy stood next to her with a warm smile on his face.

“Why, Miss Kincaid,” Alex said, slapping his poker face back in place. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

She smiled a warm, genuine smile and shook her head.

“Not for me,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you for some time. It was very rude of you to keep me waiting.”

Alex had no idea what she was talking about and he had to keep reminding himself that the dazzling smile she kept flashing him was probably the one a shark shows just before it makes you its lunch.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, with a mock bow. “I wasn’t aware you were expecting me.”

Sorsha turned to Iggy and looped her arm in his. “Doctor Bell here simply wouldn’t explain Dr. Halverson’s results to me until you got here,” she said.

“And I stand by it,” Iggy said. “I hate having to explain things more than once.”

“You could have just asked Halverson,” Alex said. Sorsha frowned.

“No,” she said then, replacing the frown with a knowing smile. “I’m afraid that Halverson is far too brilliant to be clearly understood. Whereas Dr. Bell is so very eloquent.”

Iggy actually blushed.

“Well now that I’m here,” Alex said. “I guess Dr. Bell can explain.”

“Not quite yet,” Sorsha said. Alex felt the temperature in the room go down several degrees, figuratively at least. “This is the second time this week I find you tangled up in my investigation, Mr. Lockerby. I’d like to know why you are here.”

“You think this has something to do with your missing book?” Alex said. He hadn’t actually considered that this might be the work of some deranged runewright, but Iggy had said the disease was man-made. Could something in the Archimedean Monograph be that dangerous? Sorsha smiled but her ice blue eyes were hard.

“The incident at the mission was unnatural,” she said. “Doesn’t that suggest magic to you, Mr. Lockerby?” She tisked at him and Alex caught himself blushing. “I though you were smarter than that. Now, why are you here?”

“Father Harry was a friend of mine,” he said.

“Who?” Sorsha asked. Alex strangled the urge to yell.

“The priest who ran the mission,” he said. “I’m here to make sure that the person who killed him,” Alex chose his next words carefully, “sees justice.”

Sorsha looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “All right. But if I find out you’ve lied to me—”

“I know, I know.” Alex held up his hand. “You’ll have me drawn and quartered.”

“Something like that.” A cold, deadly smile crawled up Sorsha’s lips.

“If you two are quite finished,” Iggy said, exasperation in his voice. He waited until they both turned to him before continuing. “I’m afraid you’re wrong about this being magical, Miss Kincaid,” he said. “At least not in the way you mean. If this had been some kind of curse or rune, there wouldn’t have been trace bacteria in the blood samples.”

Sorsha nodded, a look of irritation on her face.

“Magic wouldn’t leave normal, biological traces,” she agreed. “So what is it then?”

“I think it’s some form of Alchemy,” Iggy said. “This disease has three distinct stages. The first takes the longest to be fatal. The affected person doesn’t even look sick for the first hour. After that, however, they deteriorate rapidly and death occurs about three hours later.”

“How do you know this?” Alex asked.

“We’ve tested it on mice,” Iggy said. “Now, the first person sick becomes infectious as soon as they begin to show symptoms, but their bodies are already producing the second type of the infection.”

Sorsha’s face was a mask of concentration. “So only the first person has the original disease,” she said. “The next group gets the second type.”

“Just so,” Iggy said. “That type is fatal within two hours of being infected.”

“What about the third type?” Alex asked.

“People with the second type produce the infection in its third phase,” Iggy said. “The third phase is just as deadly as the second, but people with the third type of the illness can’t infect anyone else.”

“So the first person can infect people,” Sorsha said. “And those people can infect others, but after that the disease just stops.”

Iggy nodded, then turned to Alex. “Now do you see why I called you down here?”

“No idea,” Alex said.

“Think about it,” Iggy said. “A disease that only kills for a short time and then stops, leaving no chance of an outbreak. This disease is not some horrible accident or magic gone wrong, it was designed this way. It’s a weapon.”