Disturbed by his first encounter with the man who had, in fact, directed the course of nearly half his life, Robert took long strides into the hospital corridor outside Sanso’s secure room.
It was nearly midnight. At the end of the hall, Harlan waited for him. He was talking with a shorter, youngish-looking man, a kid really, who held an electronic device about the size of a paperback book.
Harlan turned toward Robert at the sound of his shoes tapping on the linoleum. The shorter man turned too and stuck out his free hand. A badge swung from a striped lanyard that hung around his neck.
Robert ignored him and spoke directly to Harlan.
“One hundred and thirty-four people,” he said.
Harlan blinked.
“We confirmed that number, right? No survivors? No one showing up at your office ten years later claiming to be the freaking Grand Duchess Anastasia?”
In the silence that followed, Robert heard the man with the badge swallow.
“Is it possible we missed anything?” Robert’s voice had risen enough for him to notice it himself. He dropped his tone a notch. “Is it possible there was some . . . detail we overlooked?”
“What exactly did he say to you?” Harlan asked, directing Robert away from the other man. The guy turned his back as a courtesy and fished a cell phone out of a pocket in his cargo pants. He flipped it open and started punching keys. In a few strides the DEA agents were standing next to a vending machine. Robert stared at a yellow bag of Funyuns while he relayed the bottom line.
“He said someone else survived.”
Harlan leaned one shoulder against the machine.
“Who?”
“Won’t say. Or doesn’t know. Or is making the whole thing up.”
“He has plenty of reason to be ticked off at you.”
“I couldn’t possibly be worth his time.”
“You humiliated him in that tunnel.”
“He’s beyond the reach of humiliation.”
Harlan gestured toward Robert’s face. “You . . . uh . . . something on your cheek.”
Robert rubbed the place where Sanso had touched him and felt the dried smudge of blood. He scowled, then spit on the cuff of his sleeve and wiped it off.
Harlan did not need to ask Robert why this claim, whether truth or fiction, was important to him.
“I’d be asking why a survivor wouldn’t have identified himself. Or herself,” Harlan said.
“What would be the point? After a loss of that scope? We kept my name out of the press. In fact, they came right out and said everyone died.”
“Ten to one he’s baiting you.”
“Why?”
“Power. Basic, caveman-101 power.”
Robert scoffed. “A Neanderthal megalomaniac.”
“I think my diagnosis was more to the point.” The corner of Harlan’s mouth twitched.
“But mine is a better visual.” For one moment he let himself admire the mental image of Sanso as a bow-legged, flat-faced doofus carrying a club. But then in his mind the hominid heaved the club at burning tents and sent ashes scattering like fireworks. Robert rubbed his eyes, all humor gone.
“He only said it because he knows I’ll try to verify it,” Robert admitted.
“Well, it’s something to do now that Neanderthal man’s in custody.”
“Not exactly what I had in mind.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Dropping my work week from eighty hours to fifty.”
Harlan slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll ship your butt off to Philadelphia to train recruits before I’ll let that happen.”
“I’m gonna look anyway.”
“Bet your BMW you will.”
“I’ll need your help getting authorization to reopen the case.”
“Easier said than done.”
“So I’ll have to look outside the files maybe. It’s been done.”
The men turned around.
The guy with the badge was standing right behind them. Robert’s eyes dropped to the ID. Arizona Daily Star.
“Whoa.” He directed a gaze of accusation toward Harlan.
“Pull your pants out of your backside,” Harlan said. “I only told him a couple lies about you.”
The reporter stuck his hand out toward Robert again. “Brian Hoffer,” he announced. “Daily Star.”
Robert grudgingly shook the man’s hand.
“Couldn’t help but overhear you might need a research assistant to look into this Sanso claim.” Brian held his phone up for them to see as if it were applying for the job.
“You ever hear of a private conversation?”
“No conversation I hear is private.”
“He’s a barrel of laughs,” Robert said to Harlan.
“I can help you,” Brian said.
“I don’t want any help.”
“Then maybe I can get you some information.” The reporter looked down at the device in his hand and tapped it with a small stylus. Some kind of wireless notepad. Maybe it had Internet access.
Harlan chuckled.
“Don’t you have a deadline?” Robert asked.
“Three. Two already filed hours ago. The third at 3:00 a.m.” He checked his watch. “Plenty of time. What’s it worth to you?”
“What’s what worth to me?”
“Information.”
“You’re the reporter. What’s it worth to you?”
An unreasonably happy grin split Brian’s face, shoving aside acne scars. He pointed the stylus at Robert and waggled it. “I knew we could reach an agreement.”
Robert threw up his hands and started to walk away.
“Fifteen years ago,” Brian said, reading his screen and following Robert by a few paces. “August 26.”
The date his family and friends were slaughtered. Robert turned around. "You were what—enrolled in kindergarten?”
“Third grade. There were six hospitals located within fifty miles of the massacre site at that time. Only one had a trauma center fully equipped to treat burn victims.”
“And they were overrun with people from my camp who survived only a few days. Or a few hours.”
Brian looked up, and Robert thought that this surprised look, this wide-eyed aha moment, was how the kid processed his epiphanies.
“My camp?” Brian asked.
Robert weighed an answer. “I’ve worked the case for so long I’ve come to think of it as mine.”
Brian looked doubtful. “Uh . . . all eleven—there were only eleven . . . people who survived long en—who were still . . .” Brian scratched an itch on the side of his face. “I’m sorry, man. Eleven people were transported to the trauma center—University of New Mexico Hospital—in the early morning hours of the twenty-seventh, all in critical condition. The last one passed on . . .”
“Four days later,” Robert said. But he kept his voice gentle, for some reason feeling the need to be kind to this pesky green journalist who was obviously a skilled researcher but didn’t know a hornets’ nest from a honeypot. “This is information I already have, Brian.”
Brian took a step forward as if it might stop Robert from leaving again. "What I was meaning to get to is that there were three Jane Does admitted to hospitals within two days of the mas—of the tragedy.” His eyes were apologetic. "Two at the facility where your family went; one at a smaller hospital in Santa Fe. Maybe one of them was this survivor.”
Robert leaned over to look at Brian’s small electronic screen. “These are public records?”
Brian cleared his throat but handed the device to Robert. “Not exactly.” He shrugged. “It’s from a contact.”
“All three were burn victims?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“What about any John Does?”
“Just women.”
“Did the Janes survive?”
“I don’t know that either, but—”
“Either they’re still Jane Does, which means they’re dead, or somehow they were identified during the course of their treatment. Which is it?”
“Look, it’s a lead. If Sanso’s mad enough at you to tell you the truth, the survivor could be an amnesiac. Or a coma patient. Or a wacko.”
“Or an ally of his. How else would he know someone got out of that inferno alive?”
“I’ll have to visit the medical centers in person to answer questions like that.”
“Let’s go,” Robert said, and he walked toward the exit, still carrying Brian’s device.
Brian scurried like a dog on a tile floor. “Now?”
Robert looked over his shoulder. “Not one for road trips?”
“If you’re buying the gas—”
Robert held the door open for Brian and turned to wave to his friend. “Heckuva job today, agent.”
“Don’t waste the night celebrating.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”