Run the Numbers

Chapter Five

Don had finished the preliminary profiling on this case and was anxious to show the encrypting algorithm to Charlie to see how difficult it would be for the thieves to crack. He was just pulling up to the house as his father was trying to open the front door whilst holding three full bags of groceries.

"Hey Dad, I'll get the door." Don called, as he jogged over to the front door and opened it for him.

"Donnie I wasn't expecting to see you tonight. I thought you had a date."

Don stopped and turned back to his father slapping his hand to his forehead.

"Damn, Julie, I forgot all about her. Something came up and I need to talk to Charlie about it."

Alan Eppes walked to the kitchen and was setting the bags down on the counter.

"Well he must be around, his bicycle is out front."

Don went over to the stairs leading to the second floor and called out to his brother but got no answer.

"Maybe he's in the garage." Don muttered, and started for the back door. As he passed by the window looking out over the side yard he saw a bloody hand print on the glass and a cold dread filled him like a bucket of ice had dropped into his stomach.

"Oh my God!"

Alan, who was putting the groceries away, turned at the sound of his older son's voice.

"What is it?"

Don ran to the back door and yanked it open. He stepped out and scanned the area quickly with trained eyes, and almost instantly found the puddle of blood covering a patch of the side walk that ran along side the house. Alan stepped out right behind Don and saw what he was looking at.

"Oh God, Charlie! Charlie!"

He was shouting and ran to the garage to try and find his youngest son. Don took a breath and forced his training to overcome the panic that was rising like bile in his chest. There were bloody prints near the puddle. Some were clearly dog prints but there was also the outline of a sneaker. The electric drill was in the bushes next to the house which seemed odd and he looked up. All he could see was the edge of the roof so he backed up carefully so as not to disturb the scene until he was back far enough to see nearly to the peek of the roof. There was a dish up there that hadn't been there before.

Alan came out of the garage in a state of near panic and Don had to restrain him so that he wouldn't inadvertently walk over the area and destroy the traces that would allow Don to find out where Charlie had gone to.

"Dad, did you or Charlie have a direct TV dish installed?"

The absurdity of the question in light of what they had found stopped Alan like a slap in the face.

"What?"

Don pointed up to the roof and Alan followed his gaze.

"I don't know what that is."

Larry was walking up the side yard to where Don and Alan stood looking up at the roof completely unaware of the situation.

"That's the dish I gave Charlie this afternoon so that he could link to the university's mainframe at night. He couldn't wait to install it."

Both Dan and Alan turned to Larry white faced and Larry's smile vanished

"What's wrong?" he said, looking at their faces.

"He must have fallen off the roof." Alan said, in a strained voice.

Larry looked toward the house and saw the blood on the sidewalk and dropped the satchel he was holding.

"Oh my… Oh Charlie. Where is he?"

Don held out his hand to keep Larry from getting closer to the evidence. Don stepped over to the blood carefully looking over the scene.

"He fell from the roof and landed here. But what made him fall? He would have been careful up there and it's not that steep."

Larry saw something over by the garage and went over to see what it was.

"I'm afraid this might have something to do with it."

He bent down and picked up a baseball and held it up for Don to see.

"If he was hit with a baseball wouldn't it be closer to where he fell?"

Larry looked up at the roof to where the dish was and then down to where Charlie had fallen.

"Not really no, you see it's like billiards, this ball would have traveled in the opposite direction than what it hit."

Don realized that Larry was right and he should have realized that immediately. His fear for Charlie was getting in the way of him thinking clearly.

"Of course,... idiot!" he said, under his breath.

Larry didn't really hear Don and just kept talking.

"But if he fell off the roof then where is he? I mean is that …" Larry was looking truly horrified and pointing at the blood on the sidewalk "… if that's Charlie's… I mean there is an awful lot of it…" Larry was nervously scratching his head and looking up to the roof "Dear Lord this is all my fault."

Don looked down at the spot where Charlie had fallen.

"There are dog prints, so if a neighborhood dog came over it must have roused him. He got up probably dazed and confused and stumbled."

Don pointed at the bloody hand print on the window.

"These are his sneaker marks, he stepped in the blood and walked… no look at the gate, he was staggering out to the street."

Don ran out to the front of the house and found droplets of blood and began following the blood trail with Alan and Larry following close behind. He found another bloody hand print on a lamp post and knew he was moving in the right direction.

Don was amazed that Charlie had managed to get nearly two blocks from the house with such a serious head wound. The blood trail led them to Grant Park close to the family home where they came to the park bench that Charlie had fallen over. Don looked around and saw a discarded rubber glove and a plastic packet that would have held a gauze wrap and there were tire tracks close by from a heavy vehicle.

Don pulled out his cell phone and called Terry Lake. He explained what had happened and that Charlie must have been taken to a local hospital. The nearest one to their house was California Medical Hospital on Vermont.

"Call the local police and see if there were any reports of injuries in Grant Park and meet me at the hospital."

He looked at his father who was ashen and looked more frightened than he had ever seen him.

"It'll be OK Dad, let's get to the hospital. I'm sure he's there."

Terry Lake, Don's partner, arrived at California Medical Hospital just as Don and his father did. Larry followed a few minutes later. Terry stepped up to Don who was at the Emergency Department reception desk showing his FBI badge and demanding entrance to the ER.

"Don, the LAPD was called this afternoon about a man found in Grant Park; the apparent victim of a mugging. It could be Charlie."

Just as she was saying this, a doctor who was looking extremely stressed stepped out to the reception desk and escorted Don and the others back to the lounge.

"I'm Doctor Castor and I was treating a young man this afternoon who came in with a severe head injury. The police officer who came in with him thought that the man had been mugged because he had no wallet or identification on him."

Don pulled out a photograph of Charlie and showed it to the doctor.

"Yes that's him."

Larry stepped forward and said, "He didn't have his wallet. I did."

Don spun around and looked incredulously at Larry.

"It was in his satchel which he asked me to bring by the house after classes. He wanted to take the satellite dish home and install it."

Doctor Castor said, "Who is this man? He was unable to tell us what had happened or even his name."

Don looked stricken for a moment but before he could say anything his father burst in.

"He has amnesia? How badly was he hurt doctor?"

Don put a reassuring hand on his father's shoulder and said, "His name is Charlie Eppes and he is my brother. Where is he doctor?"

Two police officers came into the lounge just then.

"Doctor can you work with our sketch artist to get a picture of the kidnapped patient and the man who took him?"

Don knew instantly that they were talking about Charlie and said "Kidnapped? Are they talking about Charlie?"

One of the officers said, "Excuse me sir, but who are you and what interest do you have in our case?"

Don was feeling very tense but kept his emotions in check. He pulled out his badge and showed it to the officers but looked at Doctor Castor for confirmation of his suspicions.

"An orderly came to take him to the X-Ray Department for some additional films. After an hour when they hadn't returned I called the Radiologist on duty who told me that he hadn't ordered any additional films. I called the police immediately but before they could get here a man was found murdered in the ER loading dock. It seems that your brother was kidnapped by this orderly. I thought that perhaps the police had been correct in the fact that he had been attacked and that his attacker had returned for him."

This wasn't adding up.

"Doctor you say that like you did not believe that he had been attacked."

Doctor Castor took a seat at the table. "When I first examined your brother he had a serious head wound to the back of his skull but he also had a large welt over his left eye. This injury looked to me like someone who had been hit in the face with something small and round. It didn't feel like an attack to me, it seemed more like an accident of some kind but obviously I was wrong."

Don sat down as well and said, "You weren't wrong Doctor. Charlie was hit with a baseball and fell of the roof of his house. He somehow managed to get up and wandered obviously dazed into the park where he was found and brought here. The evidence of that is clear and unmistakable. What I can't understand is why would someone kidnap him. You said that he didn't even know his own name is that correct?"

"Yes that is true. He suffered a skull fracture and there was significant enough swelling to the occipital lobe that it is not at all surprising that he had a short term as well as long term memory instability. This will most likely been a temporary situation and his memory should return as the swelling subsides."

Alan heaved a shuddering sigh as he had holding back the emotions he felt hearing of such a devastating injury to his youngest child. Don was also exceptionally upset hearing about Charlie's injuries but he remained focused and continued to question the doctor.

"So you essentially knew nothing about him nor did anyone else. Is that correct?"

"Well not exactly. We were in the process of contacting local universities to see if they had a mathematics professor gone missing. You see when your brother initially went down to the X-Ray Department the orderly came and told me that he had over heard someone complaining about some charges on a bill and mentioned all of them. Your brother added them up in his head. The orderly who was with him couldn't believe it and tested him with a calculator and he was able to multiply huge numbers in his head faster than the calculator could."

Don had a deep tingling creep down his spine and he asked, "Were you in a private area when this orderly told you about Charlie's abilities?"

The doctor frowned and shook his head "No I was out at the sub acute desk. There were several people around. Why would that matter?"

Don and Terry exchanged a look and she pulled out the photos of the men who had stolen the encrypted data from Bio-Gen. Don took them and handed them to the doctor.

"Do any of these men look familiar to you?"

Doctor Castor looked over the photos.

"This is the man who took your brother." He said, pointing to Dr. Trevor Baker.

Terry and Don exchanged another look and Alan said, "Who are these people Don? What do they want with Charlie?"

Don knew that his father was extremely distraught over all of this and he deserved an answer but he couldn't talk about this in front of all of these other people.

"Dad, there is a case that I'm working on but I can't talk about it right now. I promise I'll tell you everything when I get back to the house."

Don turned to Larry and said, "Can you take my father home?"

Alan shook his head at this statement and got a very stubborn look in his eyes.

"Don, what is going on? Who has Charlie?"

Don put his hands on his father's shoulders and said, "Look, there is nothing that you can do here. I'll find him Dad. I promise you I will find him."

Alan didn't want to go, he wanted answers but he realized that there was no point in getting in Don's way. His eldest obviously knew who had taken his brother and why; and Alan also knew that Don would not rest until he had found Charlie so reluctantly he left with Larry.

Once Larry and his father had left Don turned to Terry and said, "So what were they doing here?"

Terry turned to Dr. Castor "Can we see a list of male patients that were brought in today? We think that this man…" and Terry pointed to the unidentified man in the still shot from Bio-Gen's surveillance camera "…may have been a patient here."

Doctor Castor picked up the photograph and said "Well that tattoo would be easy enough to spot. Come with me and we'll ask the other attendings. If this fellow was here someone would remember it."

Dr. Castor led them out of the lounge and it only took a couple of minutes for a nurse to recognize the man in the photograph.

"Yes this guy was brought in by a couple of other men. They said they found him on the street. The patient died of a drug overdose, cocaine I think. He is down in our morgue."

Don and Terry went down to the morgue and took finger prints of the man as well as photographs. The LA crime lab was to take the body and process any trace finding immediately and get them back to the FBI directly to Don's attention. As they left the hospital Don was talking on his cell saying, "Background checks on Reed and Baker have turned up nothing useful so I want to know everything about this guy, where he lived, where he went to school, any relatives, what he had for breakfast and I want it before midnight."

He hung up the phone and Terry placed a hand on his arm.

"They won't hurt him, they need him to crack that code."

They had reached the car and Don slammed his fist on the top of it,

"And as soon as he does they will kill him."

Terry knew Don very well and could hear the stress in his voice. His fear that he would never see Charlie alive again showed clearly in his face.

"We'll find him before that happens Don."