Olsen almost charged into the bullpen, Devitt on his heels. Haseejian was on the phone at his desk; Healey was just hanging up. "Anything new?" he growled to the room at large as he crossed to the inner office, tearing his off his suitcoat and hanging it on the rack before circling the desk and picking up the phone. Devitt wandered to the coffee stand.
Healey appeared at the doorway with a piece of foolscap in his hand. "I found out who owns the apartment building and I'm just going to give him a call, get the list of tenants. Norm's on the horn to Greg Delphy, at home." Delphy ran their Records Department. "He's asking for a couple of people to come in tonight so we can get the backgrounds on -"
"Tell Norm if Delphy gives him any trouble, let me get on the line. I don't care how much overtime it's gonna cost, I want at least two records clerks assigned to us until we get this done, you got that?"
"Yes, sir," Healey nodded, turning on his heel and striding across the bullpen to his partner's desk.
Devitt entered the small office with two cups of coffee, setting one on the desk in front of Olsen.
Nodding his thanks, the older man ordered, "Close the door," as he dialed. He waited a beat; Devitt did as he was told then sank into one of the guest chairs. "Yes, this is Captain Olsen. I need to speak to the Chief. Tell him it's urgent." Olsen picked up the cup, smiling at Devitt and winking.
# # # # #
Mike's office door opened and Olsen strode to the centre of the bullpen, Devitt in his wake. Every eye in the place turned in his direction, a couple of detectives, like Healey, putting their hands over the mouthpieces of the receivers at their ears.
"I just got off the phone with the Chief. He now knows everything we do. He's with us a hundred percent and we have the power of the entire department behind us if we need it. We also have his not inconsequential clout, and he's willing to bring in the Mayor if we need him as well." He looked at each man individually. "So, let's get this done, shall we… Let's bring Mike home."
Every man in the room nodded.
"All right, then, what have we got?"
"I just heard from Forensics" Haseejian responded. "They went over the car Mike was driving and there are a bunch of prints on it, of course, except on the driver's door handle, the rear view mirror, the gear shift and the steering wheel - like it was wiped down."
"That figures," Devitt growled.
"Did they try the back of the side mirror?" Olsen asked. "That's always a good place to find a print."
The Armenian sergeants brows shot up. "Good point. I'll call and ask them." He snorted to himself, impressed by the captain's perspicacity. "And, ah, they went over all that crap left in the apartment and they got some fingerprints off the chip bags and snack wrappers. But so far there's no match to anybody in the system."
"What about the blood on the carpet?" Devitt asked.
"O-positive," Haseejian replied. "Same as Mike… and about forty percent of the population…"
Olsen exhaled loudly and nodded.
Healey hung up. "That was the building manager," he said, pointing at his phone. "He's gonna put a list of the tenants together for us. He's gotta go into his office to do it. He said it should be done in about an hour. He's over on Sacramento."
"Send a black-and-white to pick it up," Olsen instructed.
Healey nodded and turned back to the desk, picking up the phone again.
"Gentlemen," Olsen addressed the room. "It's going to be a long night, and we can't really get started until we get that list from the manager. There's only 16 units in the building so it won't be a long list." He looked around the room. "Norm, Dan, Bill, Lee - I want you guys working on the list. The rest of you, I want you working your C.I.'s. Talk to everybody who may know something. A Homicide detective doesn't just disappear without someone knowing something. And try to find out who was squatting in that building… I think that's the key to all this." They were all staring at him, nodding. "All right, go. And good luck…"
After the others had left, Olsen looked at the remaining small group. This was Mike's core, the men he trusted above all others, the ones who would walk through fire for him. He smiled wistfully.
"Listen, fellas, ah, while we have the time, why don't we take a break and get ourselves some dinner… 'cause I have a feeling it's going to be a quite a while till any of us gets the chance to eat again."
As everyone nodded, getting to their feet and putting their jackets on, Olsen looked at Steve's empty desk. He had a promise to keep, not only to the young man lying in a hospital bed but to the man whose name was on the door behind him.
# # # # #
Healey glanced at his watch. 3:25. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his fingers into his tired eyes.
They had received the list of tenants just before 10, then he and Haseejian had spent some time down in Records going over the list with the researchers. The material started trickling up soon after, and each officer in the room took a file as the appeared. They were going through them with a fine-toothed comb, examining every detail, hoping they didn't miss something that could turn out to be the vital clue they needed.
Exhaling loudly, he ran a hand through his hair then rubbed the back of his neck. He picked up his empty coffee cup and got to his feet, working the kinks out of his back as he crossed to the coffee station.
As he started to pour from the fresh pot, not quite sure who had made it but hoping it wasn't Olsen, he saw Haseejian snap to attention in his chair, staring at the file in his hand. "What?"
Without a word, as if he hadn't heard, Haseejian got slowly to his feet, his eyes still on the file, and started to walk towards the inner office.
"What?" Healey repeated a little louder, putting the coffee pot down and following.
"Captain," Haseejian said sharply as he stopped through the door and two heads snapped up, frowning. "Ah, Captains," he corrected himself, "this might not be anything but, like Mike always says, I hate coincidences." He held up the file.
"What is it?" Olsen asked, taking his reading glasses off.
"One of the tenants used to be a nurse, for almost twenty years. She was fired two years ago but won a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. According to her file here, she didn't go back to work. She lives with her son… her adult son. And she has a record, sort of." He looked at the captains and raised his eyebrows then looked back at the file. "She was arrested for Forcible Confinement last year but the charges were dropped when the homeless man she was accused of detaining refused to press charges."
Healey was looking at the file over his partner's shoulder and slipped the DMV photo from under the paperclip at the top of the folder. He stared at it for several seconds, shaking his head, then he set it on the desk in front of Devitt.
The grey-haired captain froze, his eyes widening. "Holy crap…" he breathed, staring at the photo then very slowly turning it around for Olsen to see.
Putting his glasses back on, Olsen picked up the photo, his eyes snapping to Devitt's. "We talked to her." He sounded both alarmed and worried. "She's in the apartment right beside the empty one."
Haseejian nodded. "4B."
No one moved, contemplating the implications. "He could still be in the building…" Devitt said eventually, putting voice to what they all were thinking. "That would explain why no one saw him being taken out…"
"What's her name?" Healey asked.
"Carole Webster," Haseejian answered. "Her son's name is Oliver."
Olsen looked up. "I want to find out everything we can about her in the next couple of hours, because I want to be standing at her door again when the sun comes up. I want to know why she was fired, so somebody needs to call the hospital. And if they spout that 'privilege' crap, you just let me know and I'll sic the Chief and maybe the Mayor on them.
"I want to know about that Forcible Confinement charge - everything. And I want to know all about that son of hers and if we have to worry about him. So somebody's got to wake up that building manager or the superintendent, if there is one, and see what they know. And I want to get a search warrant." He looked at Devitt. "Roy are you still tight with Judge Rinder, tight enough to wake him before dawn and get him to sign a search warrant based on what we've got?"
Devitt nodded. "I think so. He owes me… but more importantly, he owes Mike a lot more."
"Good." Olsen smiled almost sadly. "Good work, gentlemen. Now let's go the final mile, and hopefully we'll get Mike back sooner than later, and I won't have broken a promise."
While Healey and Haseejian frowned slightly, Devitt smiled.
# # # # #
It was just before 5 am when Healey and Haseeijan trudged into Mike's office and dropped heavily into the two guest chairs. The captain was lying back in the swivel chair, his eyes closed and his mouth open; he was snoring softly.
The two sergeants looked at each other; both were loathe to wake the older man but they had more information to impart. Healey softly cleared his throat and Olsen snapped awake, briefly flustered. Noticing his colleagues watching him with soft smiles, he cleared his throat loudly, picking up his glasses from the desk and putting them on. He looked out into the bullpen with a frown. "Where's Roy?"
"Waking up Judge Rinder," Healey offered with a chuckle.
Haseejian raised the papers in his hand. "We've got more information."
Olsen leaned over the desk. "What've you got?"
"Carole Webster was fired from St. Francis for 'behavioral problems'," Haseejian read from the paper, making air quotes with his tone.
"Behavioral problems? What the hell does that mean?"
Haseejian tilted his head. "Well, they weren't going to tell me at first, 'privilege' and all that, but I, ah… I persuaded them. Seems she started stealing things, though they couldn't prove it, and she started dressing like one of the doctors and treating patients… even referring to herself as a doctor and dressing down the other nurses in front of patients…. They said she was warned many times but she didn't stop so they had to release her. She cried foul, hired a good lawyer who was going to tie the hospital up in red tape for years so they settled and she walked away with a tidy sum, and her pension intact." He raised his eyebrows.
Olsen frowned. "What about the Forcible Confinement charge?"
Healey shook his head, exhaling loudly. "Turns out she had her son bring a homeless guy who was going through the D.T.'s up to the apartment to 'nurse him back to health' by tying him to a bed and 'administering' to him. Turns out the homeless guy yelled loud enough some of the neighbors heard him and they called the cops. He just wanted out, he didn't want to press charges so they eventually let it drop, with a warning." He shrugged as Haseejian and Olsen shared a look; it sounded disturbing yet somewhat hopeful.
Healey shuffled the papers in his hand. "And I finally got ahold of the building super - he wasn't too happy I woke him up but when I told him who I was, he came around pretty fast. Anyway, he says he's only bumped into the son, Oliver, a few times in the three years he's been the super, and the kid is big and strong but he's not too bright. The super called him retarded. But he says he doesn't know if the kid can be violent or not but if he was, well, like I said, he's a big, muscular kid."
Olsen sat back, digesting the new information. The spectre of a large, strong, mentally-challenged young man added an entire other dimension to their dilemma.
Haseejian leaned forward. "So what do you think? We go in as soon as we get the search warrant… or we sit on the house and wait till the kid leaves, for some reason?"
Olsen shook his head. "That could take too long, and if Mike's in there, and he's as hurt as we think he is, I don't want to take that chance. I want to get him out as fast as we can." He looked at Healey. "Call the super back and ask him if he has a key to that apartment. That way we won't have to knock."
Haseejian and Healey nodded, sobered by the seriousness of the situation.
Olsen leaned forward, resting his forearms against the desk. "Listen, ah," he began quietly, "I don't want to bring an ambulance with us unless we're wrong and we've taken one out of service unnecessarily… but, ah, can one of you tell them we might be making that call and give them the address so they're ready if we need them…? And notify the M.E.'s office too… just in case…"
Closing his eyes, a lump forming in the back of his throat, Healey nodded.