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Thirty-Six

It took a lot of convincing and negotiation, but Madison finally got Troy to leave her side and go into work the next day. By the time he’d left, it was nearing ten thirty, according to her cell phone. She’d spent enough hours in the hospital bed, but as long as she was stuck there, she could still do something.

She started with her voicemail, but it didn’t hold much excitement. There was just one message from Dr. Talmadge’s office telling her to call. She was certain it was to inform her she was pregnant, but life had served the news another way. She made the call anyway just to completely rule out any fears of cancer. It turned out they were just wanting to notify her of the pregnancy. Just. As if it wasn’t going to change everything.

Next, she selected Terry from her contacts list. Surely, she could work the investigation from the hospital if she had to, but she’d at least like some updates.

Terry answered on the third ring. “Maddy?”

“I need you to bring me something to do. A laptop from the station, maybe some of Carson’s journals or access to those files that were unlocked.”

There was silence on his end.

“You there?”

“Yeah, but shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Just get in here. I’m going mad.” With that, she hung up, trusting that Terry would appease her and come in.

But what she really wanted was to get out of the hospital and back to her life. She adjusted her position and groaned in agony at the pain emanating from her ribs. They would have had her on medication, but due to the baby, it probably wasn’t as high—or as powerful—a dose as would have been preferred.

And all she craved was a cup of hot coffee, regardless of whether or not she’d be able to keep it down. It was hard to focus in on how her stomach felt with her other injuries having her foremost attention.

She still couldn’t remember too much about the accident. The images were only surfacing as blurred and disconnected. Beyond her conviction that it was a black truck, she couldn’t recall much else—except for probably the most important factor. She’d recognized the driver. But every time she tried to concentrate and bring the face into focus, her head would throb.

She even tried to conjure all the potential players—the people who could have wanted her injured or worse. The same suspects kept recycling in her mind. Someone related to the Carson murder, the corrupt cops, the mob, or Roman Petrov himself.

Had he even died? It wasn’t unthinkable that he’d staged his death, but why return to the same name? He was an arrogant bastard though, and his death had been on record for over twenty years. He might have supposed enough time had passed. A man like Roman could have many reasons for wanting to fake his death, but the foremost that Madison could think of was to escape prison. Again, it circled back to why use that name again? If this Roman Petrov was the Roman Petrov.

“Why can’t you just sleep?” Terry entered the room with a laptop under his arm and a charging cable in hand.

“Oh, come on. Where’s the fun in that?” She pushed the button on her bed to sit up straighter, changed her mind and angled it a bit more again. Gravity wasn’t her friend right now.

“You know if Troy finds out—”

“He won’t find out, and even if he does, he’s not my boss.”

Terry looked away.

“You’re afraid of Troy.”

He met her eyes and pinched his fingers on his free hand. “Just a little.”

She laughed, then stopped abruptly and gripped her side. “You really—”

“You want me to leave?”

“Come on, don’t be like that.” She held out her hands to receive the laptop and the cord.

“Let me set it up right for you.” He put the computer on the wheeled table used for her water and meals, then proceeded to hunt for an outlet, plugged it in, and tugged the charging end through the handle on the bed and wound it there. “Ready for when you need it. Just a feeling, but I’m sure you’ll run the battery dry.”

“Thank you.”

“Uh-huh. Now, I better get going before a nurse gives me the boot.”

“Oh, no, not until you update me.”

Terry looked over his shoulder to the doorway, and Madison suspected he must have snuck past the nursing station. He took a deep breath that lifted his shoulders and sat in the chair to her right.

“How did things pan out with John Clayton and his knives?” she asked.

“He didn’t do it. At least we can’t put him in the area of the attack, and the knives from the Pig King and his apartment aren’t a match for the stainless in Carson’s wound.”

“So you had to cut him loose.”

“Yeah.”

“Was the stainless steel ever linked to a specific brand of knife?”

“Nope. Just run-of-the-mill.”

“Okay, well, we keep moving forward. Do we know the con man’s real name yet?”

“You’d be the first to know…well, after me.”

It was disappointing and frustrating it was taking so long to find Abbott. She’d checked her email just before her voicemail, and she still hadn’t heard back from the prison on Long’s cellmates. “And what about Shannon…” She couldn’t bring her last name to mind.

“Shannon Keller. Nothing’s turned up on her.”

“Don’t tell me it’s another fake name? Did you try a reverse search using the address she rented from Stevens to see what name kicked back?”

“Yeah, and no luck. Just the landlord Jerrod Stevens.”

“If we could find her, she could possibly lead us to Abbott.”

“Yes,” Terry dragged out, “but you’re missing the part where I can’t track her down.”

Madison tried to think about how to go about finding this Shannon woman. “What if we got ahold of Keller’s rent checks? Maybe the account’s still active and the bank will have her number and her current address.”

“Okay, I can give that a try.” Terry pointed to the laptop. “I loaded all the unlocked files from Carson’s hard drive that seem to pertain to Abbott.”

“And nothing with his real name?”

Terry shook his head. “Not that I could find. I don’t think that Carson uncovered that before she died.”

“Huh,” was all she said, but she was thinking that it might poke a hole in their theory of Carson confronting Abbott. Even if she had proof of his conning other women—if he had—there’d need to be a real name to charge him with the crimes.

“Anyway, I really need to go.” Terry got up, was midway to the door and turned. “How are you doing anyway?”

“I’ll be fine. You know it.”

“Suppose I wouldn’t expect anything else. Take care, and I’ll stay in touch. I know you will.” He smirked and left the room.

She turned on the laptop, and as she waited for the log-in screen, she recalled Terry’s question about how she was doing. Honestly, she didn’t want to give it too much thought. She was going to be a mother, and it didn’t matter how many times that reality slammed into her consciousness, it was hard to process.

Having something else to occupy her mind was going to be a blessing.

She went to the file manager and got to work. There were several text files and quite a few JPEGs. She clicked on the first one and arrowed from one to the next. It was definitely Saul Abbott based on the picture Lana had provided them. The shots were taken at different times of day, in various locations that she couldn’t readily identify. After she rolled through them, she put her attention on Carson’s text documents. There were eleven files, and she started with a file called Deceived.

When it opened, Madison was faced with a list of names. A quick comparison told her they matched the file names. She guessed that Deceived was the master overview file with the others providing more individualized information. She scanned the women’s names: Maria Barker, Melody Anderson, Natalie Reese, Margie Torres, Linda Chapman, Elizabeth Evans, Kathy Burke, Erica Murray, Hannah Wade, and Jane Maxwell.

Madison opened the file labeled Reese. As suspected, it was a background file on the woman. When she started dating Abbott, for how long, details of their relationship, how much he took her for. Reese had started seeing Abbott nine and a half years ago, not long after he got out of prison, according to Carl Long. Abbott hadn’t wasted any time getting to work, but Madison wondered what had sent Abbott to prison in the first place.

The other files were much of the same information.

She read until her eyes got heavy and she couldn’t resist closing them anymore. She slipped into a deep, dreamless slumber.