Chapter 2
Saturday morning McCormick awoke before the alarm went off. It might have had something to do with the notion that he was on a deadline, with only thirty-six hours to nail this thing, one way or another, before Westerfield insisted on moving back to his own digs.
He found the two of them in the kitchen—the doc leaning a little to his bad side and poking at a plate of eggs. Hardcastle appeared concerned. Mark helped himself to a cup of coffee and tried not to look too superior about his skills in the prophecy department.
"Taken your pills yet?" he said, in the mildest, least judgmental tone he could muster.
Westerfield muttered something that might've been yes, but sounded like it had a couple of extra, less-positive words attached.
"Well, good," Mark nodded, again very mild. Then he frowned. The man really did look fairly done-in. "We could stop off back at St. Mary's—"
Westerfield shot him a sharp glance, and then a second one, almost as annoyed, at the judge. Mark got the distinct impression the topic had already been raised and vetoed before he'd gotten there this morning.
"Okay," he said, "not the hospital. But you don't have to go with me this morning. You could just hang around here and get some more rest." He'd thrown the 'more' in there as a hypothetical; it didn't really look like the man had gotten any so far at all.
But still stubborn, it appeared. The annoyed look was hardening into something more like irritation. Mark caught a subtle shake of Hardcastle's head; this must have been on the agenda earlier, too.
"Listen," Westerfield said. He took a slow, deep breath. He appeared to be summoning deep reserves of patience that he didn't usually have to call on. "You don't know what either of these guys looks like. Besides, neither one of them is likely to trust another stranger at this point."
"Yeah, I suppose." Mark gave in with a nod, taking down a plate for himself and scraping the last of the eggs out of the pan. "But we'll take the truck." He glanced at the judge. "Okay? Easier to get in and out of. You weren't planning on going anywhere this morning, were you?" he asked pointedly.
"Nah," Hardcastle smiled thinly. "I do my best work on the phone."
"No calls from Frank yet?"
"It's only been about sixteen hours, kiddo. When did you develop such confidence in the LAPD?"
"You never know, every once in a while things work the way they should." He put the plate on the table and sat down. "I'll call back here," he added flatly, "every couple of hours, just in case he comes up with something important."
"I'll take notes. I promise." The judge was grinning, though it had an odd edge to it.
Westerfield had stopped even pretending to eat. He was studying the exchange. He finally frowned at Mark and said, "You could always just come right out and say it—'Stay put, I don't want you heading out solo on this.'" Both men shot him nearly matching looks of aggravation.
"Just a thought." The doctor shook his head. "Never mind."
00000
As a compromise, their first stop was St. Mary's—in part so that Westerfield could have his dressing changed, but officially so that he could spread the word, in the ER and up on the psychiatric ward, that he should be notified if Louie Preta showed up.
"You've taken care of him quite a bit?" Mark asked, as they walked back to the truck slowly.
"Yeah," Westerfield nodded, "for years now."
"Is he dangerous?"
"Oh," the doctor appeared to ponder that for a moment, "he's delusional sometimes. Might be combative once in a while, mostly when he gets frightened, but most of the time he's manageable. It'd be better if he'd take his meds." Westerfield turned his head to study the younger man. "Why?"
"Ah, I thought maybe . . ."
"What?"
"Oh, seems like you might be the kind of person who might cover for someone."
"You mean if Louie had taken a shot at me?" Westerfield looked surprised. "Well he didn't. That much I'm pretty sure of."
Then he appeared to turn inward, as though he was thinking through the reasoning for something he already knew the answer to.
"But, yeah," he finally said, "if he had done it, I'd sure as hell hate for the police to try and arrest him. They'd wind up killing him. He's big, and he's not very coherent when he gets scared, which is just about anytime someone in a uniform shouts at him. It'd be signing his death warrant to send the cops after him as a suspect."
Mark studied him, trying to figure out if he'd heard the whole truth, or only what he was supposed to know. He finally wagered another guess.
"It happened kinda fast, huh? You probably didn't even realize you'd been shot at first."
The glance he got from the older man was almost startled.
McCormick nodded at this. "Yeah, feels like being punched. Takes a minute to sort things out . . . and there were two guys right there; one of them was Louie. He's the one you got the better look at. He's big, and he was standing right next to you."
Westerfield frowned, but voiced no objection. "Not quite in front, just a little to the left."
"Did you even see the other guy holding a gun? Did you see him at all before Louie moved in?"
The silence was pretty profound. Mark sighed.
"There was a witness," the doctor said firmly. "That detective, Mawson, he said there was someone who told them Louie intervened."
"Yeah," Mark replied quietly. "But that'll be somebody from the neighborhood, maybe someone who knows him, a friend, someone who wanted to keep him out of trouble."
"He doesn't make friends too easily," Westerfield said dryly, but there was an unexpectedly anxious edge to it and he finally went on, in a softer, less assured tone, "Could I have put together that much gestalt? There was another guy. Really. Besides, if Louie had wanted me dead, I'd be dead. He was pretty damn close to me when the gun went off." He frowned again, apparently aware of how that had sounded.
"No," he added definitively. "Not a chance." He shook his head as he reached for the handle of the truck. "Not Louie."
00000
It was between meals at the mission, and the stout, gray-haired woman who seemed to be in charge came down on them with a look of amazed delight, rapidly tempered by concern.
"Doctor, I heard, but my goodness, from what they said I hardly expected you'd be up and about. You look—"
She cut off whatever judgment she'd been about to voice and replaced it with a welcoming smile and a hand on the man's good elbow, to escort him to a seat at one of the tables. Mark followed behind, keeping his 'I told you so' to himself as well.
Westerfield made quick introductions. The woman was Helen Walterman. No, she hadn't seen John Doe. No one had seen him the day before, after the incident, either.
"Maurice came in this morning—you know Maurice? He said he'd seen Louie over by the food depository. Said he was in a bad way. I called the number that the police left us—talked to a nice officer, but Maurice said it had been pretty early in the morning when he'd seen him."
"Did you call the other number?" Mark asked quietly. "The one the doc left."
She pulled a scrap of paper out of her apron pocket and studied it briefly before holding it out. "This one?"
Mark nodded.
"Yes, I got an answering machine but I thought I might have misdialed, or someone wrote it down wrong. It wasn't yours." She looked back down at Westerfield.
"What time was that?"
"About an hour ago."
Mark grimaced. "Not twenty minutes after we'd left."
Westerfield looked up, caught his eye and said, "Might have stepped out for a bit. It's a beautiful day."
"Hah," Mark said with just a tinge of bitterness. "Blues skies and nice views of the ocean are not what get that man's blood pumping. Not when the damn game's afoot." He shot a brief look and an apologetic smile at the mission lady. "Sorry . . . Do you have a phone I might use?"
She pointed silently toward a hallway, leading to the back. "Second room on the right."
McCormick gave a quick, thin smile and headed that way. The room was small, and the phone was ancient and rotary. He dialed the estate slowly, though not very patiently. Five rings and then the answering machine clicked in. He heard Hardcastle's voice tell him what he already knew. '. . . not home right now, you can leave a message after the—'
He hung up abruptly. He would have eventually regretted the message he wanted to leave. He perched there, hip hitched on the edge of desk, fuming. A moment or two of that and he reached for the phone again, dialing a nearly equally familiar number, though he wasn't sure if he'd reach the party in question on a Saturday morning at the office.
This time there was a live human being on the other end but he barely got a 'Hello' out before Mark interjected—
"Dammit, Frank, he's gone off, hell knows where and—"
"Who?"
Mark pulled up short for a second, and then said, "Hardcase, who else?"
"Oh, jeez, Mark, you had me worried for a sec. Thought you meant Westerfield." There were some sounds of motion, someone talking in the background, he couldn't make out the words but the tone was awfully familiar, and Frank said, "You wanna talk to him?" thought it wasn't entirely clear if he was addressing Mark or the person in his office.
"He's there, huh?" McCormick muttered. "Figures."
"Yeah, well, he wanted me to check on some things, and the list was so long I told him to come down here and do it himself. And, hey, we got a call from the mission; a lady there says one of the other clients spotted Louie earlier this morning. I sent a squad around to the place but he'd taken off again. Like chasing smoke."
"Yeah, we're over at the mission now." Mark sighed wearily. "We'll have a look around, but . . ."
"Sure you don't want to talk to—"
"Nah, tell him we'll see him later."
He heard Frank's good-bye and something that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle in the background. He was fair-to-middling sure that Hardcastle hadn't planned to yank his chain, but the timing must have entertained the hell out of him. He hung the phone up and sat there for a moment, feeling slightly angry. Then he shoved that aside.
He's a competent adult. An ex-cop. He wouldn't do anything stupid.
He couldn't help it. The worry was still there. He'd seen what Dr. Henry's drug could do, the crippling memory loss that came from only a brief moment's exposure. He got up slowly, shook his head, and tried to rearrange his face in an expression that wouldn't lend itself to too much analysis from Westerfield.
He stepped out into the hallway and from there back to the front room. Mrs. Walterman was sitting alone at the table near the door. He blinked once, looked around, and closed the space between him and the empty seat next to her in a few steps. This time he knew better than to panic straight out.
"Bathroom, right?" He smiled thinly.
The woman shook her head nervously and pointed toward the front door. "I told him maybe he should wait for you, but I think he saw—"
What he might or might not have seen was lost. Mark had already spun on one heel and was through the door, standing in the bright morning light, breathless and squinting. A quick and anxious survey of the street showed him nothing, no hint of which direction the man might have taken.
'Ought to be able to outrun him.' Mark recalled Hardcastle's words with a sickening thud.
Not if you don't know which way he went.
He stood there for only a moment more, in frozen indecision, his mind still ticking over the possibilities. The man was on foot—cabs weren't all that common in this part of town and, besides, he was a competent adult, a psychiatrist— he wouldn't just duck out on you.
Mark took a deep breath and got his bearings. The lady inside said she thought he saw something. The only somethings worth running out the door after would be Doe, or Louie.
To the left was a street corner. Half a block down to the right, two storefronts past the mission, there was an alley. Mark made his decision almost subconsciously, and turned right. As he approached the break between the buildings, he heard a voice, not Westerfield's, but one that was deeper, more guttural—anxious but not particularly angry.
". . . couldn't let'em frag ya, Capt'n. Just couldn't. You my ticket home and all. Owed ya. Shoulda rung his neck but I let him hightail it. I shoulda—"
"You did okay, Preet, you did just fine."
McCormick let out a nearly silent breath of relief. The calm voice of reason was Westerfield's and he sounded like things were under control. Of course he pretty much always sounds that way. He edged in as close as he could to the alleyway without showing himself
"But you should let me bring you in—"
"Don't need no R&R," the other voice had risen a notch in belligerence. "Doin' fine. Just fine."
He was close enough to hear Westerfield's quiet sigh. "You back to drinking?"
"Some . . . just a little." The other man had gone sly, maybe a bit embarrassed, but the slurring was noticeable.
"And the cops—"
"No cops, uh-uh. None of that shit. Not gonna let them touch me—" The anger was abrupt and unexpected.
"They just want to ask you some questions . . . about what you saw. You just tell them like you told me."
It was hard to make out the last bit, under the other man's steady, anxious cussing. Mark was moving forward even before he heard the sudden, hard thud of something hitting metal.
They were standing halfway down the alley, with Westerfield half-leaning against the wall, and the other man, half a head taller at least, in front of him. Both looked over sharply as McCormick rounded the corner. The taller one had a raft of hair—long, unkempt—and a beard. He was burly under a battered fatigue jacket.
Mark had him pegged at 250 pounds, and it really didn't matter how much of that was muscle if he got mad enough.But Westerfield, within an arm's reach of the guy, looked more surprised than worried, and the noise had obviously come from Preta dropping one ham-like fist on the lid of the dumpster that was next to them.
Now he was backing off, two steps slowly, eyes on Mark the whole time.
"No cops," he muttered again, this time low, nearly a growl. Then he turned and moved down the alley with surprising speed. He was around the back end and out of sight a moment later.
Westerfield slumped a little. Now that Preta was gone, his bland, non-judgmental expression had taken on a shade of real concern, but he also looked a little peeved.
"Did it sound like I needed rescuing?"
Mark shrugged nervously but didn't back down. "Guess it's one of those things I'd rather do before it's obvious."
This got him a half-hearted, possibly embarrassed smile. "You have a point there." He sighed regretfully. "I suppose the productivity of that session was dropping off pretty rapidly. I usually draw the line when they start pounding on things."
"So this is the guy you're sure didn't shoot you?"
"Very sure," Westerfield said. He took a step forward and, without the wall for support, swayed just slightly. He shook his head and muttered "Too damn much adrenalin. And never let them get you backed up against a wall."
"Yeah, tell me about it." Mark got him under the good arm. "I think we'll take a break."
"Okay." The older man frowned. "I really am off my game today." Then he said, "But you can see what I mean, if the cops went after him. And this is one of his better days. Really. He's oriented. He's in the here and now. He's pretty focused."
"A good day, huh? Now I know why you're always telling me I'm not crazy. You've got standards."
They were back out to the sidewalk. Mark paused their march for a moment.
"I still gotta call it in . . . to Frank at least." He looked over his shoulder to the now-empty alleyway, then back at the still-frowning psychiatrist. "Don't worry. He'll have to notify dispatch, then they'll send someone 'round. Louie was moving pretty fast. He'll be long gone by then. Like chasing smoke."
00000
He'd gotten the doc settled in the truck, then went back and offered reassurances to Mrs. Walterman and borrowed her phone again. This second call to Frank was even briefer, and he carefully avoided the specifics of how Westerfield had encountered Louie. It helped that Frank didn't really want to chat after getting the bare bones of it.
Mark heard Hardcastle in the background, peppering Harper with questions even before he'd hung up the phone. Now there was a guy who'd be looking a little more closely at the details. McCormick sighed as he recradled the receiver.
The lunch line was beginning to form as he made his way out the door. Ms. Walterman was too busy to give him more than a nod.
He hoped his nod back was an unspoken reminder for her to keep the phone number handy in case Doe showed up. He hoped John Doe was an average-sized guy who wasn't prone to military flashbacks. He hoped the judge had made some amazing discoveries that would distract him from extracting a point-by-point recital of the morning's events.
He trudged back to the truck.
00000
Mark shot a quick glance at the man on the passenger side as they pulled into the back drive at the estate. They'd both caught sight of the empty spot where the 'Vette was usually parked in the garage. Westerfield's eyebrows had gone up one notch, though it appeared more surmise than shock.
"He's with Lieutenant Harper," Mark said flatly. "Frank invited him down there. Must've been right after we left." He tried not to make it sound like he was apologizing for the man; he couldn't really explain why he'd need to do that anyway.
The doc nodded as he climbed down slowly out of the cab. McCormick looked at him appraisingly.
"You can handle the stairs, right?" he asked, pointing to the half-flight that led along the side of the garage to the kitchen door.
Another nod, this one looked wearier. Mark suddenly felt like he wasn't the only one not looking forward to a detailed analysis of the morning's events.
"The lieutenant will call us, won't he?" Westerfield asked. "I mean if his men locate Louie."
"Probably."
"Good," the older man said quietly. "I'd like to be there if they're going to question him."
"Why?" Mark asked. He realized it had come out a little abruptly.
The psychiatrist didn't look put out, though. He seemed to be giving the simple question some thought.
"Well, might help if there's somebody there who gets the context. Help the police to understand. Louie gets some pretty impressive episodes of 'flight of ideas', a bit manic sometimes."
Mark let him precede up the steps, staying just behind with a ready hand. He left the explanation undisputed, though it sounded incomplete.
They were barely in the kitchen. McCormick had only a moment to glance at the note sitting on the table. He pocketed it, then pulled a chair out for Westerfield and turned to fetch him a glass of water. He was at the sink when he heard the front door being opened and a gruff greeting.
"Back here," Mark hollered.
A moment later the judge himself appeared, in the doorway of the kitchen, bearing a pizza box and an expression of barely-contained curiosity.
"Ah, more one-handed food," Westerfield smiled wanly.
They didn't bother moving into the dining room. Mark got out paper plates and napkins and they divvied it up right there in the kitchen.
But once they'd gotten settled at the table, Hardcastle's simple "Well?" couldn't be put off any longer.
McCormick let Westerfield tell the story. He was surprised at how rational it sounded, from the psychiatrist's point of view. He'd seen Louie Preta walking by, shoulders slouched, eyes down. The man had obviously not seen him. He didn't appear agitated, but there was no way to tell from his posture how much the preceding day's events had disturbed him.
"But my feeling—" Westerfield looked up sharply from that, interrupting himself. "You know a lot of it is instinct really. There are damn few objective findings in my line of work." This got him a surprisingly understanding nod from the judge.
The doc accepted this with a quick duck of his own head. "I just felt like I could approach him. Me . . . he knows me. And, anyway," he looked a bit more rueful, "you'd stepped into the back, Mark. If I'd waited, if he'd gotten further down the street, gotten out of sight, if we'd both gone charging out of there after him . . . "
He let all the other possibilities set there for a moment and then finally added a sincere-sounding, all-purpose 'sorry,' directed at the younger man.
Hardcastle said nothing right off the bat. He merely sat there for a moment, contemplating the piece of pizza he wasn't eating and probably assembling a pretty accurate impression of the few moments after Mark had realized the doc was missing. He finally took a deep breath and cocked his head.
"So, did you get anything useful out of him?"
Westerfield frowned. McCormick watched this part pretty closely. The hesitation was subtle, maybe it meant nothing at all—'there are damn few objective findings . . .'
Mark had a sudden and profound empathy for that statement, but his instinct was that he'd arrived too late for the most important part of this morning's exchange between the doctor and his uncooperative patient. Of course there was no way for Westerfield to be sure of just when he'd gotten there, after all, he'd been out of sight around the corner of the building until the very end.
He had a moment of guilty inspiration and said, "Tell him, Doc," with insistent certainty.
Westerfield glanced over at him, looking slightly startled. Then his frown was back, and deeper, as though he was fighting the habit of a lifetime's practice of reticence.
Then he let it out, with a sudden exhalation. "Not all that much, really. Louie didn't recognize the man—not by name or sight—and that would probably mean he wasn't from the neighborhood. I asked him about John Doe, too. He said he only met him one time, at the mission, right before Doe went into St. Mary's. He said something odd about that."
The other two men waited, more or less patiently, as Westerfield pinched the bridge of his nose, as though he was trying to get that bit exactly right.
"He said, 'He's the type.'"
"What type?" Hardcastle asked, not quite so patiently. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Not sure. I would have gotten back to it, but Louie had moved on. He does that. Sometimes he's hard to redirect."
"That 'flight of ideas' thing?" Mark asked quietly.
"Yeah. Always a little. I usually get more out of him that most people can. He'll listen to me some of the time. I can focus him some. That's why I said it'd be a good thing if I was there, if he gets picked up by the police . . . if he lets them pick him up." The doctor lifted his good shoulder, as if to relieve a strain, then let it sink back down again.
"And then," Westerfield said, "he got himself worked up, and he did something that, well, might've sounded alarming."
"He whacked the dumpster," McCormick added an aside, in answer to the judge's look of puzzlement. "I came hustling around the corner to see if things were under control and Louie ran off"
"They were under control," The doctor protested mildly, and then, at Hardcastle's look of disbelief, he added a more rueful, "Well, they mostly were."
Mark thought the doc had glossed over a few points, but the story basically stood as an accurate account. He made no comment.
"So, now what?" Westerfield finally added. There was a weary edge to his tone.
"Well," Hardcastle raised an eyebrow, "you look like you could use a rest, maybe another pain pill. The mission will call us if Doe shows up, and Frank'll let us know if they find Louie."
The doc made a face. "The pills," he said with a touch of disgust, "are why I need a nap."
Mark eased back from the table. "Like I said, first day after is the worst. It'll get better."
"Uh-huh." Westerfield stood slowly, "but you'll wake me up if anything happens, right?"
Both men smiled reassuringly in a suspiciously similar manner. Their guest just shook his head and headed for the doorway without trying for a firmer promise.
The judge's expression hardened into something more interrogatory a moment after the other man had departed, and the question came almost before they heard the first footfall on the stairs.
"What the hell happened out there?"
McCormick winced slightly. He had a few years of practiced reticence of his own to deal with, but he almost immediately realized that full disclosure was the only way to go on this one. He took a deep breath.
"I only misplaced him for a minute or two, ya know," he said defensively. "It was while I was on the phone to Frank."
"That first call, huh?" Hardcastle made a face. "You saw I'd left you a note, by the way—"
"Yeah," Mark grudged, feeling in his pocket for it, "but the note was here and I was there. How the hell was I supposed to know you were behaving yourself?"
"Because I said I would." The older man's expression had evened out, but still looked stern.
Mark sat quietly for a moment before he said, "That hasn't always been enough." He almost hadn't said it, but in the end it slipped out, little more than a mutter.
"It's been three years. How long before you trust me on this one again, kiddo?"
He'd been looking down at the floor, and the quietness of the older man's response took him by surprise. He jerked his chin up. He supposed it might partly have been company manners—mostly not wanting the company to feel he had to come back down and mediate—but the look of disappointment on Hardcastle's face was another matter altogether. Mark tried to recapture the annoyance he'd been working with earlier that morning.
"Might help," he finally said, "if you weren't so damn glib about it. I shouldn't be the only one who takes that damn stuff seriously."
He stopped there, determined not to play the 'I almost died' card, and most certainly not the one that trumped even that.
"'Glib', huh?" Again the mildness was astonishing; it was as if he'd seen the hand that Mark was holding. Hardcastle did little more than shake his head. "Okay, so you're saying it's not enough that I do the right thing; I've got to be sincere about it, too?"
Somehow, he managed to say all of it without a hint of a grumble, and no detectable irony. It was a pretty damn effective display of sincerity.
Mark cracked first. It was only a smile, but it slipped precariously into a grin a half second after Hardcastle started grinning, too.
"Yeah," McCormick stifled a laugh and still kept his voice down. "That's about it . . . and no chortling with Frank about how flipped out I got, just because you didn't pick up the phone when I called here—"
"I didn't chortle"
Mark looked disbelieving.
"Well," the judge conceded, "might've been one quick chort—but I had left a damn note."
There was a brief conceding shrug from McCormick. That was as much as he was going to give and Hardcastle seemed to settle for it.
"So, what did happen out there?" he repeated.
Mark gave that a careful frown, then picked up the story from where he'd left off.
"I came out from using the phone; he was gone. The lady said he'd seen something. I didn't hang around to discuss it; I tore out of there. I guess I picked the right direction. I heard a voice, Louie's, around the corner in an alley. I missed the first part—the part he told you about—but when I got there the guy sounded pretty excited."
"But coherent?"
"Yeah," Mark answered after a quick moment's thought, "I'd say so. But what he said sounded like he was still in the military. He called Westerfield 'Captain', and he said he couldn't let him get 'fragged'." Mark frowned. "You know what that means, right?"
"Yeah," Hardcastle replied grimly, "troops murdering their own officer, making it look like a combat death."
Mark nodded. "I heard guys talk about it, in Quentin . . . anyway, he said he couldn't let that happen, and that the doc was his 'ticket home'."
"But this Louie guy was pounding the dumpster, you said? Sounds kinda flakey."
"Well, the doc was trying to settle him down, get him to check into a facility, I think. But the pounding didn't come until after that. Louie was talking about 'R&R'," Mark conceded, "but after I stepped in and he ran off, the doc said he'd actually been making a fair amount of sense."
"Yeah," Hardcastle scratched his forehead. "But is it the metaphorical kind, or the regular kind?"
Mark hesitated a moment, wondering if he should raise the other issue. The judge looked up at him abruptly. He seemed to sense the unspoken evasion.
"What else?"
"Oh," McCormick shrugged, trying not to imply too much significance, "I asked Westerfield this morning if Louie was dangerous—I didn't get an unqualified 'no' on that, by the way—and then I asked him if Louie might've have actually been the shooter."
Hardcastle nodded once, as if the thought had also occurred to him.
"He didn't give me a quick 'no' on that one, either. I don't think he was necessarily covering for Louie, more like he honestly wasn't sure. But later on, after he talked to the guy, he was." Mark shook his head worriedly. "It might be that he's going with his instincts on this, too, and I'd sure like to know what he's basing it on."
Hardcastle appeared to be pondering, maybe even still back at the possible metaphor. He finally sighed once and said, "You should just go ahead and ask him."
"Me?" Mark tried not to look as surprised as he felt. "I dunno, I was kinda hoping you would." He paused for a moment and then said, "You guys are more like friends, you know?"
It was Hardcastle's turn to look surprised. "Well, what the hell are you, then?"
"Well . . ." McCormick frowned, "friends, I guess. But it's different. Anyway, I already asked, and it didn't get me very far. Maybe he'll listen to you."
"Hell," the judge grumbled, "he listens to everybody; it's getting him to answer that's the problem."
Mark nodded glumly, still frowning. "Hey," he finally added, "what'd you do this morning. Besides behave."
Hardcastle's slight grin didn't seem forced.
"Tidied up," he said with an air of unexpected cheerfulness. "Made sure all the loose ends were still tucked in."
"And are they?"
"Yeah, either tucked in or awaiting trial. All the folks in the People's Freedom Army got nice long sentences. The Fringe Wacko Task Force says they don't have any close associates—they were a real splinter faction. The threat assessment on Dr. Henry's drug is officially low."
Mark's frown had turned dubious.
"Well," the judge conceded, "it probably helps that now everyone who knows about it also knows that if you handle it without high-level hazmat gear, you're liable to wind up forgetting why you wanted to use the stuff in the first place."
McCormick nodded to that. "What about Doe? Anything?"
"Nothing. But all Frank has to work with is a couple of descriptions. There's nobody reported missing who's a likely match, and, really, if this guy had taken a hit from Henry's drug that was heavy enough to make him forget his name, well, he probably would've died, the way Henry's lab technician did."
"I suppose."
"But Louie met him, huh?" Hardcastle smiled speculatively. "Small world."
"We gotta find him. He's the key."
"Yeah," the judge nodded, "I'd say so."
"We aren't going to just sit here and wait for someone to call, are we?" Mark glanced down at his watch, all too aware that he'd already burned up a considerable number of hours with very little to show for it.
"Well," Hardcastle scratched his forehead again, "you are. I mean, what if Doe shows up at the mission? Somebody's got to wait here for the phone to ring. And Phil really did look about done in. No sense you and him running around without something solid to go on."
"And what are you going to do?" McCormick asked suspiciously.
"Don't worry. I'll behave. I'll go back over by Frank, see what kind luck his guys are having. Maybe check on a few more things myself."
"What kind of 'things'?" Mark tried to keep the question low-key.
Hardcastle grimaced. "Okay, that's enough. You and the doc were out there conferencing in an alley with a guy who still thinks it's 1968. All I'm going to be risking is a little eye-strain. You clear on that now?"
Mark hesitated a moment, then nodded sullenly.
"Good." The judge was on his feet, checking his own watch. "Call me if you head out again. I'll be in Frank's office. And I'll call you if I'm going to be anywhere else."
