Dr. O (5 page)

"Don't sell yourself short, handsome. IH just tidy up a few loose ends and meet you later."

He watched her go, thinking how much help she'd been in both his personal and professional life, and how little he'd given her in return. He wondered why she stayed with him.

Robyn Muro often worried about the man she loved. Swisher was both enigmatic and disturbing, as well as quite easily the kindest "tough guy" she knew. He might be a "blue knight" in many respects, but he was also a black knight, doling out death to those he felt deserved death. An inner turmoil of grief, guilt, and anger had eaten away at his humanity for years now. What such emotions did to the psyche no one knew. Had such an experiment in terror and loss, depression and a life of seeking revenge ever been conducted at a university or in a laboratory? Joe

Swisher's life on the edge had taken its toll.

Joe's insomnia had led to more drink, and his drink had led to more confusion and internal struggle. He had turned away from her for support from Hiram's Old World Whiskey. And she didn't like the storm signs.

They'd talked about it, and he had made promises. But she didn't know if they were promises he could keep.

Joe was not easily understood. Yet he had no secrets from her anymore, and his motivations were straightforward enough that she should be able to help him. She saw his life as an interrupted journey. He might've done anything in life with his Michael Douglas smile, full baritone voice, and rugged good looks. But all that went by the wayside when Jerrie was so brutally killed. It made for a twisted ending to his life as a boy, and a corrupt beginning to his life as a young man. Now his every action was predicated upon that horrifying event, a multilation killing. And now Thorpe was knowingly rubbing his face in it, not allowing him to flee, forcing him to obsess on it and confront the ugliness. What would that do to Joe? Robyn feared it might become a sickness, become like carrion to feed upon continuously for the rest of his life....

Maybe... just maybe she could help him, and maybe not.

The warm shower water soothed her nerves. She al-ways washed the cop off her before leaving the precinct each evening.

"He'll bounce back. This thing with Stavros has just got to him," Peggy Olson, a fellow policewoman and friend, assured her. They stepped from the shower, draping themselves in towels and heading toward their lockers. "We've all hated people we've gone after.

Doesn't mean anything."

"Yeah, true. But with Joe, it runs deep," she said.

"It's just not like any other job."

"The adrenaline high, I know."

"Adrenaline and hatred can keep you alive, kiddo."

She rushed to finish. She was meeting Swisher outside in her civies in five minutes. She'd do a makeover at her place, later. Something had occurred to her as she'd spoken with Peggy "Peg-leg" Olson, three years a sergeant detective herself. She wanted to share her idea with Swish, but she wasn't certain how to approach him with it.

During the drive to her place, he was silent when she brought up the issue with him, saying, "Joe, you know, whoever did Stavros has nothing to do with—you know—what happened to your sister twenty-four years ago."

"I don't know," Joe replied. "Maybe all hate and all killing is linked somehow, like a virus that goes from one to another of us."

"But Joe," she tried to continue with her concern, "maybe you're too close to this kind of a case; maybe so close that it'll just ball you up in knots. Hell, Noone doesn't know what it's doing to you—"

"Not a word to him, Robyn!"

"All right, don't shout."

"I mean it."

She nodded. "Just because we're cops, that doesn't exclude us from having feelings," she said tentatively. "All I'm saying is that in some cases, strong emotions like... like this... can cloud judgement, cause more harm than we know."

"What're you getting at?"

He was always abrupt when angered.

"When judgment is clouded, procedure is forgotten, a guy like Hampton has his precious rights stepped on, and poof! he's given an open door."

"To go and sin some more."

"This Stavros case, Joe—"

"What about it?"

"Maybe... I was thinking maybe you ought to hand it over to someone less... less emotionally involved."

He looked across at her to determine if she were serious or not. "Who might that be?"

"Me."

"You?"

"Yes, me."

"And you see yourself as less emotionally involved?"

"Hey, for one thing I'm a woman and—"

"Whoa up, there! What's being a woman got to do with it?"

"Well, I don't have a penis."

"Only penis envy, huh?"

She shook her head and frowned. "Joe, it stands to reason. You see what I'm getting at?"

"No, I don't."

"Damnit, Joe, you know you do. Already, you're thinking Stavros was killed for his penis and that the killer had some perverse reason for keeping it, and—"

"That hasn't been ruled out of my thinking, no."

"But you started with that assumption!"

"Christ, why not start with that assumption?"

"Because, you're going about it sloppily. It's not textbook."

He stopped the car, biting into the curb before her apartment complex, shaking her up. Here they continued what was fast becoming an argument. "The crime is not exactly textbook either; nor is it an Agatha Christie whodunit!"

"You're not going by the book, Joe!" she continued. "You're so bent on how Stavros died that you haven't even considered the obvious!"

"And you're going to tell me what's obvious?"

"I will if you'll calm down. God, you men. You think the world begins and ends at the head in your pants."

"All right... okay, supposing I am missing some-thing on the Stavros case. You can fill me in over dinner. For now, I could use that cold beer you promised, or is that too much to ask?"

She knew he wanted time to fathom the meaning behind her use of the words textbook and obvious in relation to Stavros. She now wanted to throw it in his maddeningly smug face, but she resisted the urge.

At the very least, she had gotten him to give thought to her proposal. It would be an easy out for him, to spare himself all the hurt and grief, and no one but they would know. He'd routinely handed her other cases down the chain of command. Why not Stavros?

Swisher hadn't said another word about her proposal until much later in the evening when they were having dinner, after his third drink. She wondered how much weight she could give to what he had to say, under the circumstances.

"Who'd you have in mind to work with, Robyn?"

"What?"

"On the Stavros case."

"Peg-leg, maybe... and maybe Carter. We've got to bring her along, and there's no one better at talking to people."

"Peggy Olson and Melody Carter, sure... all women, you think?"

"Give us a chance! You might be pleasantly surprised."

'You and Peg've proven yourselves. Want to indoctrinate Carter, huh?" The thought of unloading Stavros on her and the all-girl cast seemed suddenly good, like a weight lifted off his shoulders. The proposal was, in some respects, quite appealing.

"It's bloody, you know that."

"We can handle it."

"I mean very, very bad, Robyn."

"Swish—" She had reached out, putting her hand on his, when he looked up, eyeing two men walking in at the front door. Their light-weight trench coats weren't meant for Chicago in November, a telltale sign they'd just come off a flight. Guns bulged beneath their clothes. Swisher didn't recognize either man, but he also didn't like the way they hovered near the door without coming straight into the place for a table or to the bar for a drink. He saw that they were searching the darkness for someone. The dark interior hid Joe and Robyn for the moment as his eyes and mind played over the strangers. In the past few years he had made so many enemies, both on and off the force, that he no longer took anything for granted. Too many assumptions had killed friends and partners, filling the neighborhood cemeteries with good men like Jeff Cox, Dave Veck, Mike Ward, and others. He feared one day Robyn might be too close when he was meant to be the target.

"Hold on here," he told her. "I'm going for another drink."

She knew this was a lie.

The kitchen door at Swisher's back came open just as he was slipping from the booth. Robyn saw the two men pushing through, but not their faces, since Joe's massive form blocked her view. She responded to the fact they'd come in through the rear, again in summery trench coats. She shouted a warning to Joe and raised her gun to fire at the same instant that Joe wheeled with his weapon, the barrel finding Donna Thorpe's form. Thorpe's people shouted FBI as they, too, whipped out weapons, the triggers cocked.

"Son of a bitch, Swisher!" shouted Thorpe. "Put that horse pistol away! Christ, you still carrying a .357?" She ordered her men to stand down. Cops at every table in Transfusions had dived below tables, turning them over, their weapons trained on the unfamiliar G-men. "I just want to talk to you, damnit!" finished Donna Thorpe.

The standoff was complete; the room in deathly silence. They could hear the sweat trickling down their faces.

"What the hell's the idea sneakin' up on me like that? You're lucky your face isn't in the kitchen right now," shouted Swisher in return. "I thought you were in Virginia!"

Thorpe took the dig without a word. She'd just flown in from Lincoln. "I helicoptered here. These are my men. I didn't know you were so goddamned jumpy, and I'm not thrilled at the idea my people knowing I'm asking favors of... of you. This must be Sergeant Muro. Oh, yes, now I recall." Her gaze lingered over Robyn. Robyn returned the cold stare.

"Is this Dick Tracy shit necessary?" Robyn asked.

Thorpe ignored this. "Can we talk somewhere, private, Swisher? If it weren't important—"

"Upstairs, my place, come on."

Thorpe addressed her three traveling companions. "You men, have a drink... relax."

"Swish," said Robyn, staring hard at him. "Watch your back with this woman. Last time she used you, remember?"

Swisher recalled the first time he'd ever laid eyes on Donna Thorpe. It had been at Cook County Hospital over the body of an earlier partner who'd died because Joe had not gotten to a backup position seconds sooner. By that time Thorpe had already had her boys break into Dr. Harrelson's office to steal Swisher's file. Thorpe had displayed the file there at the hospital. She had read from it and Joe had wanted to kill her; she was setting Joe up to do a little job for her or suffer the consequences. FBI blackmail, the surest kind.

"Why don't you join us, Robyn?" Joe asked now.

She was taken by surprise. "Sure."

"No," said Thorpe. "This is strictly between us. A need-to-know basis on—"

"Stuff your need-to-know shit. We know how you play."

"This is highly sensitive in for —"

"Hey, Thorpe, I have no secrets from my partner, not even about you."

Swisher took Robyn by the arm and they started down the corridor to the stairwell that would take them to Swisher's place over the bar and grill. Thorpe, fingering the small plastic box she'd held since entering, said, "Fine, enchanting."

CHAPTER SIX

Donna Thorpe laid out all the information she said she had on Dr. Maurice Ovierto, interchanging the name with his aliases. The information had been assembled, she said, by top agents at Quantico, but since Ovierto's whereabouts were now suspected to be the Chicago area, it was out of her "sector." This meant if she were to go through proper channels she'd be dealing with a man named Gerald Wymes, Chicago Field Office of the FBI. "A complete ass."

She went on to plead for Swisher's help. Swisher glanced at Dr. O's file. It was subcategorized five ways, by those victims of Ovierto's "rampage" who were caretakers, such as wardens, doctors, nurses; by random victims suspected or known to be the work of Ovierto; by police and FBI agents who'd succumbed to Dr. O's web of terror; by an emerging fourth category of highly placed scientists killed by the maniac.

The final category was a list of child victims that the madman had conducted "experiments" upon.

"Some kinda freak," said Swisher, handing the file to Robyn. He felt quite ill on seeing a photo of one of Dr. O's recent victims, a man Swisher had met, Tom Sykes.

"Unofficially, the man has a contract on his head—shoot to kill. He's too cunning and dangerous to fuck with, you understand? Trouble is, he's never the same man twice, and he's fast, lightning fast, and as thorough as —well, as God."

"What do these categories represent... to him, I mean... killing all the scientists, for instance?" asked Robyn.

"Wish we knew. Some master plan, Perhaps. Others, as with the children... we figure, just jollies. He's as mad as the mad get, you see, but he can function as one of us —as a normal human being."

"Then how do we know you're not him?" asked Swisher, half-kidding.