Revenant in Death

Chapter 17

by Technomad

Rayleen Straffo

As it happened, the efficient New York emergency services were able to deal with the casualties from the explosion of Eve Dallas' powered chair, so Mame Burnside's help wasn't needed. "We're grateful for your offer, ma'am," one of the hospital's spokesmen said, "but we're on top of things. The next-of-kin of the dead and injured have been notified. If you'd like to set up a fund to help those who'll need help because of interruption of income, though..."

Mame took that hint and ran with it. "Of course I will! Jane, make a note..." and she began snapping off orders to set up a bank account for those who wished to contribute to the welfare of the injured and the families of the dead. Jane nodded and obeyed. Privately, she thought that even if Mame hadn't married money, she'd likely have been a success at any business she chose. That is, if she could have kept focus on that business. In her time with Mame Burnside, "Jane" had learned that her employer tended to leap from enthusiasm to enthusiasm, often with little or no warning.

"She's been through quite a few things in the years I've been with her," Agnes Gooch had said, one evening in bed, when they were recovering from a sweaty bout of lovemaking. "Some new interest or other will catch her eye, and for a while, she'll focus on it almost exclusively. She keeps an eye on her investments, come what may, but otherwise, we who work for her never know what's next!"

"Like Mister Toad?" At Agnes' puzzled expression, "Jane" supplied: "Like in The Wind in the Willows?"

"Very like!" Agnes smiled reminiscently. "Of course, she often picks up skills that way. One way she's not at all like Mister Toad is that she's a competitive-level driver. For quite a while, she was very much into automobile racing, and drove in quite a few races. Did pretty well, too."

"Wish I could have seen her drive!" "Jane" privately regretted that she wasn't a better driver herself. Of course, her decades in prison had not included driving lessons, and where could she have practiced, anyway? Willow could drive, but she was also out of practice. With the efficient New York public transpo system at their disposal, the two ex-cellmates seldom or never needed to drive, though.

When she was given a list of the casualties, "Jane" scanned it quickly, making mental notes. She soon found the name she wanted, and only the years of iron control prison had given her prevented her from letting out a cry of disappointment when she saw the listing: Dallas, Lieut. Eve-critical condition.

The other names on the list meant nothing to her, and she ignored them. Behind her impassive mask, she was asking How could this have happened? All that planning, for nothing? She knew she had to contact Willow as soon as she could, to figure out what to do next.

A great deal depended on what people had been able to figure out. If the explosion that had destroyed Lieutenant Dallas' chair was attributed to an accident, or some flaw in the chair itself, she and Willow were fairly safe. But if the authorities figured out that this had been a deliberate assassination attempt, they needed to take steps, as fast as they could.

When she could plausibly do so, "Jane" excused herself to go to the ladies' room. Once she was safely locked in a stall, she pulled out her phone and sent a text message to Willow's burner phone.

Willow Mackie

Willow had turned on the news the second she was safely in Rayleen's old apt. As she had expected, the explosion in Davis Park was at the top of the news.

"Authorities are investigating a mysterious explosion in Davis Park," said the hairspray head reading off the afternoon news. "It appears that the well-known Lieutenant Eve Dallas, of Icove Agenda fame, suffered some sort of malfunction to her powered wheelchair. The explosion of the power pack powering her chair killed several people and injured many more. The names of the casualties have been withheld until their next-of-kin may be notified privately."

Relaxing in an easy chair, Willow allowed herself a triumphant grin. Her perfect shot had not gone quite as planned, but it looked like the odds were good that the pestilential Lieutenant Dallas had been killed anyway! She raised a glass of non-alcoholic fruit juice in a toast to her triumph.

Some little while later, the news had stopped reporting on the explosion and had gone on to other subjects. Willow was half-dozing through an account of the previous night's basketball game between NYU and Pennsylvania when her burner phone chimed, telling her she had a message.

She picked it up, activated it and read Target still alive, but in critical condition. Need to talk soonest. RS. She frowned. She couldn't imagine how Lieutenant Dallas had managed to survive that explosion, but she knew that Rayleen had much better access to inside information than she did. She agreed completely that she and Rayleen needed to put their heads together as soon as they could.

Eve Dallas

When Eve awoke, she felt awful. She felt worse, in some ways, than she had when she'd fallen down that elevator shaft. "Ughhh..." she managed to get out. Then a hand appeared, holding her head steady, as a glass of cool water was put to her lips. She sipped, and the taste in her mouth, as though she had eaten a whole bunch of bugs, receded. When the glass was taken away, she managed to croak: "Sean?"

"Right here, Mom," came Sean's voice. Eve forced her eyes open, to see a blur that looked like Sean by her bed. "I'm mostly all right. A bad gash in my head from where I fell, mainly, and a whole bunch of bruises. They'll release me today, but I had to come in to see you. They said you were about due to recover consciousness."

"Young Mr. Roarke was here for hours, waiting for you to come around," came an unfamiliar voice. Eve turned her head, ignoring the vicious ache in it, to find herself looking at a blur in what looked to be a nurse's uniform. "He held your hand for a long time. He said that even if you were unconscious, you might be able to feel it and know you weren't all alone."

"Felt it," Eve whispered. Now she remembered the dreams she'd had. She'd had a lot of bad ones, mostly about her father, Isaac McQueen, and the other evil people she'd dealt with in a long life on the force, gloating at her. Then she'd felt a pressure on her hand, and the bad dreams had gone away, to be replaced with pleasant ones where Roarke, Peabody, Sean and the other people she loved were there. She smiled, although the effort was almost enough to exhaust her.

"Glad to know it, Mom," Sean said. He looked over at the nurse. "It looks like they're going to take you in for some tests, Mom, so I'll have to say good-bye for now. I'll be wanting to check in on Deborah Morgan. She and her brother were both hurt in the explosion."

"Good on you," Eve mumbled, as the orderlies came in to prepare her to be moved.

Roarke

Roarke was in a rare fury. Normally he kept his temper under control, but this time, it was all he could do not to lash out. "How did this happen? How could such a thing have happened?"

"We don't know, sir," said the police technician he was talking to. "Lieutenant Dallas was proceeding across the park, as she's done a hundred times before, when all of a sudden her chair exploded. We're still picking up pieces of the chair. Once we've got them all, we'll re-assemble it and try to find out what happened."

"See that you do!" With that, Roarke stalked out, Summerset behind him. His phone chirped, and when he answered it, he heard his son's voice.

"Hi, Dad. I'm just out of the hospital. Can you and Summerset come and pick me up?"

"We're on the way!" Roarke ran for his car, Summerset keeping up easily despite his age. Once he was behind the wheel, he tore off to the hospital, not noticing or caring that he was breaking nearly every traffic law ever passed in New York City.

Sean was waiting at the hospital door in a wheelchair. Roarke's heart was in his throat until his son stood up, showing that other than the white bandage around his head, he was functional. "Hop in, son! Summerset, get ready to help him if he needs it!" Summerset jumped out and took Sean's arm, gently aiding the young man as he sat down in the back seat of the armored limousine. Once his son and Summerset were safely settled in, Roarke headed for the mansion, trying to drive a little more sedately. While the NYPSD was quite prepared to be very lenient with him, he didn't want to abuse their goodwill any more than he needed to.

When they were safely behind the defenses of Roarke's mansion, they were soon settled down in one of the parlors. "What do you remember, son?" Roarke asked, as Summerset set out a selection of food. "Can you tell me anything?"

"Not much, Dad." Sean shook his head, as if to try to clear it. "All I remember was standing near Mom's chair, with Deborah Morgan and her brother not far away, and the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital."

"There were security cameras on you at the time, you know." Roarke said, accepting a sandwich and a cold drink. "Both from the Police Academy and the Davis Hotel."

"Speaking of the Davis Hotel, I heard there was some sort of explosion or fire there right after the one that got me," Sean said. "Do you think they were related?"

"I'd be very surprised to find that they weren't, son." Roarke paused to take a bite of his sandwich. He hadn't eaten since he'd got word about his wife's misfortune, and rather to his own surprise, he found that he was ravenously hungry. Summerset was also eating with good appetite. Sean had been fed at the hospital, so he wasn't tucking in quite so urgently.

"Can you get the Davis Hotel's records?"

"Easily. I don't own it..."

"Really? I thought you owned everything!"

Roarke grinned wickedly. "No, but not for lack of trying, son. The Davis Hotel is owned by the Reagan family. They've got long connections with the NYPSD themselves, so I don't anticipate any trouble getting their cameras' recordings of what was going on in that place, and who was checked in."

"We need to find out who was in that room, and what happened to them. Maybe that explosion had something to do with what happened to Mom."

"You don't say." Normally, Sean was immune to his father's teasing, but this time, he blushed. "I don't doubt but that your mother has quite a few old enemies, although most, if not all, of the people she put in prison are still there, or dead."

"Someone could also have wanted to get back at you, Dad," Sean pointed out. "You're not universally popular."

"I'm not?" Roarke made a comical moue. "I am crushed! Crushed, am I! This is my 'crushed' face!" Then his expression was intent, the look of a man on the hunt. "I'll get ahold of Danny Reagan...he's the manager of the Davis...and get copies of those recordings over here as soon as I can. I'll also want records of whoever was staying in that room. I want to know who it was, where that person was from...everything they have."

While Roarke had mellowed considerably from his earlier, harder-edged days, wise people knew not to interfere with him when he was seriously on the warpath. Danny Reagan had all the records he wanted copied and sent to him the minute he learned just what Roarke needed, and soon Roarke, Summerset and Sean were going over them.

"The police will be going over these as well, but I see no harm in us doing the same thing," Roarke commented. "Between us, we might see something that the police missed."

The videos of the explosion showed that at the moment Eve's chair had exploded, she'd just suddenly turned her back to the Davis Hotel, to sign an autograph. One second, she was reaching out to her fan for the book to sign...the next second, an explosion consumed her chair, sending her flying and striking down everybody who'd been close to her. Roarke's expression went from grim to grimmer.

"That turn may have saved her life," he said to himself. "If someone was shooting at her from the hotel, they wouldn't have expected that move at just that time."

"They found something very interesting in the room that was destroyed in the second explosion," Sean said, holding a phone to his ear. "Apparently, whoever was in there had a sniper laser. The weapon's all but unrecognizable, though. It appears to be a military model, and had a very good sight on it."

"Get the serial number, if it's still there, and we can trace its origin. Those things aren't for sale on the civilian market, as a rule. You've got to be a registered collector, and have every one of them on record with the police. As far as I know, nobody's reported any such thing missing."

The police obligingly passed along the laser's serial number. "It appears that someone tried to obscure it, but didn't do as good a job at that as could be done," Roarke commented. "The laser was rightfully the property of the US Army, and is part of a shipment that went missing a year or so ago. Some other items from that shipment have turned up here and there since then, but this is by far the biggest single one to be found."

"I daresay that the military police will be interested to see this bit of news," Sean murmured. "They've been having trouble with disappearing supplies, but it's usually things that're easily salable on the civilian market. This laser would mark whoever had it as a thief the second it was seen."

"And while it can be taken down to an extent, it's not really concealable. We're looking for someone who checked in with a large, bulky bag." Roarke snarled his frustration. "Of course, in a hotel, that doesn't narrow the parameters much, now does it?"

"What was the name of the person in Room 524?" asked Summerset. "If they've got video of that person checking in, we can at least get a description of the shooter."

Roarke called up the guest list for the Davis Hotel on the day of the explosion. "Here it is. A man from out of town. His name is, at least according to this, Hyrum Smith, from Salt Lake City, Utah." He shook his head. "There'll be a lot of men with that name in Salt Lake City. It's the name of the Mormon prophet's brother. If this is a false identification, whoever picked that name wanted us to spend a lot of time chasing false leads."

"We can contact the Salt Lake City police, and ask them if any 'Hyrum Smith' that they know of, or any man who answers to this man's description, has a record of long-distance sniping. It's an uncommon enough crime that that should shorten the list considerably."

"Good thought, Summerset. And I'll want to download the video of this character checking in, and see whether he left...or if he's still in there somewhere. It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility for an assassin to have two rooms, and hide out in one after using the other room to try to kill his target." Roarke smiled grimly, flexing his fingers. "Whoever did this is clever, very clever indeed. But I think I'm more clever still. Particularly since this is personal." The expression on his face would have looked appropriate coming out of a dark alleyway.

Rayleen Straffo

The next day, Rayleen made an excuse to Mame about wanting the day off. "Why, of course, dear," Mame said with a smile. "You're so diligent, so intelligent, and such a good worker that there's little I can deny you! Is it a young man you're off to see?"

"'Fraid not, ma'am," said Rayleen, returning her employer's smile easily. A lifetime in prison had taught her to mask her thoughts and feelings behind her face, and she could have faked any emotion at all at will. Blowing Mame an air-kiss, Rayleen headed off to her former apt, to talk with Willow.

While riding the transpo to her old neighborhood, Rayleen reflected: If I'd told her that I was off to meet a young woman, that'd probably have got me into a quarrel with Agnes Gooch. And I don't want to quarrel with dear Agnes. She's very useful, and, I have to admit, not bad at all as a bed partner. Smiling to herself at her memories, she watched the displays, getting ready to change trains when she needed to.

At the apt, she gave the coded knock that she and Willow used to alert each other of their presence. Willow greeted her warmly, but once the door was locked and they could be certain of privacy, her face fell. "Damn it, Jane," she snarled, "I had that shot lined up as well as any I've ever done in my life! Of all the stupid things to happen! If it hadn't been for that idiotic autograph hound...and, I hear, she's in the hospital herself, in a bad way, and serve her right...I'd have blown Dallas' rotten head clean off her shoulders, and got away clean!"

"Don't feel bad, Will," Rayleen said. "As far as I know, nobody's even whispered either of our names in connection with this. The police are groping in the dark, looking for clues, and we left them almost nothing to work with."

"If they trace Siegel, he might just talk," Willow pointed out.

"So what if he does? We were both in disguise, and not using our real names. Also, a man in his line of work knows what'll happen to him if he talks. In any case, 'Rayleen Straffo' is supposed to be in a coma in a prison hospital."

"But 'Willow Mackie' was released a while ago, and if they start thinking about people who do long-distance sniping, my name might turn up." Willow said, refusing to be comforted.

"I'll keep my ear to the ground. If I get any hint that they're after you, I'll tip you the wink and you can disappear. Have you any preferences as to where you'd like to end up?"

"We were talking about mercenary work," Willow mused. "I like that. Maybe we should look further into it to see what I'd have to have to get signed on with one of those outfits, a long way from US jurisdiction."

As they continued their discussion, Rayleen relaxed. Willow would be willing to go, and even if the police weren't close on her trail, Rayleen could allege that they were in order to get Willow, with her head full of inconvenient knowledge, well out of the way, while preserving her for future use.

She hadn't given up the idea of assassinating Eve Dallas, and she also still wanted to wipe out her birth family for the crime of abandoning her to the justice system. Willow, with her skills, would be a useful ally. It was also nice to have someone in the world she could relax with and be herself. Keeping up an act all day every day was tiring, although she'd had plenty of practice at that while incarcerated.