Barnes and the boss arrived back at HQ about 10am, just as Kenny and Kateri were arriving, bearing coffee for all. Given that it was a 6 to 7-hour drive from Norfolk to New York City, their arrival time meant they had left in the wee hours of the morning and probably traded off driving. Somehow, they both looked with it.
Ugh. Clinton and Kateri had done the same before out of necessity, and Kateri hated driving all night with a passion.
"You would not believe the hoops I had to jump through…," Hana exclaimed, pushing open the doors to the parking garage with a thump that made Kateri flinch in surprise.
Did you sleep here last night?
Hana had still been working at her computer when Kateri had gone home about midnight to get some sleep. There were beds in the team's space, so she would not have had to sleep in her chair or on the hard, cold concrete floor or something equally awful.
And exactly how much coffee have you had to be this energetic on probably a very short night's sleep?
"…to get his service records!" Hana was continuing, as they all made their way inside. "Brock was enlisted in '95. After four months he was medically discharged with something called optic neuritis."
An eye inflammation? How in all the bloody blue blazes do you get yourself discharged for a bloody eye inflammation? Whenever it came to this low-life doc, Kateri was not exactly feeling charitable.
Some antibiotics and you should be as right as bloody rain!
"Sounds serious," Barnes replied, setting her bag down in one of the chairs at the conference table, while the others scattered to various seats around the room.
Eh, not necessarily.
Hana shook her head, agreeing with Kateri's unspoken thoughts. "It's just an infection. Couple of months on steroids, and you're back in business."
Grabbing a cup of coffee from the stash that she and Kenny had brought, Kateri perched on the edge of the conference table and looked around for her partner.
I saw his car, but I don't see him. Clinton was like a ninja sometimes. He had inadvertently scared the living daylights out of her more than once when he appeared out of nowhere so quietly that she'd never heard him coming. After he nearly got punched once, he'd learned to be a whole lot more careful.
"It's an off route of boot camp," Kenny explained further, settling down on the other end of the couch from Jess. He shook his head, lip curling, "Brock couldn't hack it."
He wanted the glory without the effort … or the pain … or the sacrifice.
"No sacrifice, no victory," that was one thing those awful Transformers movies got right … besides the awesome music.
"He never went back?" questioned the boss, his brow pinched in thought.
"No record he did," replied Hana from over by her desk.
Now isn't that interesting…
"Stolen valor," growled Kenny, face darkening. He always took such things quite personally, "That son-of-a-b***h pretended to be a veteran to impress his wife."
And one in the same unit as you…
Soldiers … you're supposed to have each other's back.
Not fake it until you make it and claim what others died for.
Land of the free 'CAUSE of the brave.
It's a betrayal of the highest order.
Hana pulled a folder from the stack of files covering her desk—how do you find anything in that pile?—and brandished it in the air. "I think she was on to him. I found an FOI request," she said, rolling her chair toward the couch and passing the folder to Jess, "in this file from her from a month ago. She was looking for his military record."
The sound of a door opening drew Kateri's attention away from the conversation with a start. Her head snapped up, and she tensed automatically at the sudden noise. Oh, there you are. It was just her partner, entering from the parking garage, phone in one hand, a grave look on his face. Kateri relaxed physically, even as her brain automatically catalogued his expression and concluded, Oh, dear, this won't be good.
"The veteran she fell in love with," said Barnes, perched on the arm of the sofa, "that explains the divorce…"
"State cops," Clinton broke in, waggling his phone, "It's about one of Brock's patients."
Oh, bloody h**l. This definitely won't be good.
Good news, Clinton most certainly did not have. He had just heard from the state cops that Leslie Varick, one of Brock's most loyal patients and the one who had revealed the existence of the Pennsylvania clinic, had been found dead in a parking lot on the outskirts of the city early that morning. A needle had been found in her arm, and her car was missing. She had been abandoned like a piece of trash.
Whatever bad choices she made that led her into this, she didn't deserve that. No one does.
The team went down to the coroner's office to see the body and try to determine what had happened and how the situation might or might not connect back to Brock. With a known junkie, the circumstances could be a coincidence, but given that she was also one of Brock's most loyal patients, the circumstances were highly suspicious.
Lt. Ruddick of the New York State Police met the team there and gave them an update on the case. "She was found early this morning dead of an overdose," she explained. "Her car is missing. Syringe was still in her arm with a partial thumb print belonging to Brock."
Kateri lingered at the back of the room next to Kenny who had his phone pressed to his ear, talking to someone. The lingering smells of the chemicals and the faintest scent of decay around the body were getting to her, making her stomach a little uneasy.
The sooner we get out of here, the better.
"He killed her for her car," Barnes said in a low tone, staring at the body of the dead woman, "He didn't have to do that."
Brock is a heartless, self-obsessed narcissist. All that matters is what helps him. He doesn't care about the collateral.
Actually, he might have a heart. It's just only interested in me, myself, I, and the royal we.
"His patients are just things to him. Obstacles," Jess growled. He turned towards the door, and Kateri noticed that a teenaged girl was now sitting, hunched over, in a chair in the hallway. That must be Varick's kid. Poor thing. Kateri knew what it was to lose a parent unexpectedly … though not like this. Jess slid open the room door and stepped outside to speak with the girl.
There was a long moment of silence, and Kateri breathed shallowly through her nose, trying to think of anything but the smell of the chemicals.
"Hey," her partner suddenly said, turning back toward the group. He had been studying his phone for several minutes and paying little attention to the ongoing conversation. "Her car was just found abandoned outside Harrisburg. Smart. He's mixing it up."
"I'll get video footage from bus stations in that area," Hana added, fingers starting to whir across her tablet.
There was a soft noise, and then Jess reappeared at the medical examiner's office door.
"Hey boss," said Kenny, looking up from his own phone, "Just got the phone dumps off of Megan's cell. The last two days, she got three calls from a burner in New York."
"That's got to be Brock," Kateri and Clinton said at the same time. They glanced at each other and smiled. It wasn't the first time they'd both had the same thought at the same time.
We're getting good at this reading-each-other's-mind partner thing.
It greatly amused their teammates when the two did that, especially on the rare occasions when they were able to hold a full conversation with half-sentences and facial expressions, catching on to where the other was going so that they did not need to fully spell things out.
We've had three years to perfect it.
Kenny agreed, "And get this, the same burner is coming from Maryland. He's heading south towards her."
Now that the team knew where Brock was and where he was headed, they could try to get ahead of him. There was just one big problem. Brock was already in Maryland, and the team was still in New York. It was a 5 to 6-hour car trip to get to Richmond, but it was only a 90-minute flight by jet. They would have to use the plane to get ahead of him.
With a long-distance case ongoing, the jet was on stand-by to be ready in short order, and about as soon as the team could get to the airport—which admittedly would take a little while in mid-day New York traffic—the jet would be ready to go. Their support staff would drive the bus down to Virginia, but it would not arrive there until the evening.
"You okay?" Clinton asked, glancing over at his partner as he followed Jess' car down the highway toward the airport. "You were looking a bit green back there at the ME's office."
"I'm fine," Kateri replied, making a face, "The chemicals were just getting to me."
I despise setting foot in ME offices.
Clinton nodded sympathetically, "And you're going to be okay with flying?" It was her partner's usual tactful way of asking if her claustrophobia might be a problem.
Kateri thought for a moment before she replied. She didn't like the idea of flying—I rarely, if ever, do, though—but the mere thought of it wasn't sending her into a tailspin either. "I'm okay right now. No triggers on this case so far, and no extenuating circumstances like the other week, either, so I think I'm alright for now."
"Let me know if that changes."
In the three or so years since Kateri had joined the team, flying had spawned four panic attacks. She was not exactly keen on going for number five.
"I will," she replied, grateful for having a partner who looked out for her.
The flight to Richmond was thankfully short and trouble free, and there was plenty of work to be done during it to keep Kateri's mind off of the fact that she was inside a small enclosed metal cylinder with no exits until they landed. Her teammates were quietly considerate nonetheless, checking unobtrusively on her from time to time, trying to keep her distracted, and occasionally patting/squeezing her shoulder—or patting her head and messing up her hair, thank you Kenny—as they went by.
Cars and personnel from the Richmond Field Office were waiting for them when they landed about 3pm. Barnes and the boss left straightway to go to the University of Richmond to track down Megan and, hopefully, with the help of Brock's very slim service record, get her to finally comprehend some hard truths. The two were finally able to track Megan down in the university library, but despite seeing her father's service record, she was unwilling to admit what was staring her in the face or to help the team in any way.
Once the bus arrived around dinner time, having made an unusually fast trip down, the team was able to get more work done faster with the access to the extra equipment in the bus. There was no further helpful information from Brock's phone records off his burner or from Megan's, but a deep dive on her financial records revealed something very interesting: an investment account under her name at a local firm.
Finding out what was up with that had to wait until the next day, unfortunately, considering the hour, so the team got two hotel rooms and settled in for a short night.
The hunt was fast coming to a close, but there was much more work to be done before they could hopefully slap the cuffs on Brock.
Kateri much preferred that to the alternative: putting him in a body-bag.
Brock being dead would remove one piece of scum from the world, but it would prevent the fallen from getting justice.