Chapter Twenty Six
Catherine looked up from her book when she heard slight footsteps on the wooden staircase. Dr. Mkibo was carrying a tiny glass vial and a standard syringe.
"Morphine, for your pain." Dr. Mkibo's face was passive.
"Thank you, doctor." Catherine waited as the doctor drew out the liquid from the bottle, rubbed alcohol over the injection site and depressed the plunger. She could feel a chill where the liquid had flowed into her bloodstream.
"How long?" Catherine asked.
"Zolpidem takes around twenty-twenty five minutes to work." She replied, wrapping her syringe in the plastic wrapper.
"And for how long will it last?"
"We'll be good for at least six hours." Mkibo let slip a smile.
"That is, if we assume they won't be having company anytime soon."
"Yes." Her flawless, ebony face creased into a grimace. "But let's not think about that, right now."
"But what about the morphine? In another few minutes, my brain's gonna be foggier than a marsh.'
"Oh, it was just tap water."
It took all of Catherine's effort to not grin as she saw Greta Mkibo make her way back upstairs.
Sara dropped off Lindsay at Sam's, despite the girl's and her own reluctance. But if she was going to talk to Hank about Catherine, she didn't want the girl there. Lindsay was desperately trying to be strong and holding her grief in check, and the last thing Sara wanted her to have is false hope.
We Care was a privately owned clinic where the many uninsured and illegal immigrants could be treated. It was at quite a distance from downtown Vegas and the locality had a dilapidated look about it. Sara parked her car beside a station wagon. Kyle obediently followed her out and they walked towards the clinic together. The lobby was fairly busy but she saw no signs of Hank. She walked up to the pristine white desk.
"Excuse me, but do you know if a Hank Peddigrew was here?" Sara enquired.
"Who?" A stout woman gave her a bored look.
"Hank Peddigrew. He's a paramedic."
"Nope, we don't get the EMS guys here."
"Well, he might not be on duty." Sara inferred.
"What do you mean, he was a patient?"
"No, not really."
"Then I can't help you." The woman waved her hands dismissively and went to attend to a turbaned South Asian.
Sara saw that all the chairs in the waiting area were filled with either people or their belongings. She took Kyle and waited by the water cooler.
Her watch read 2:35 and she began to fidget with irritation. She then took out her phone and dialed the number that Hank had used to call her. An engaged tone filled the other side. After two more unsuccessful trials, she muttered a few expletives under her breath and shoved her phone inside her jacket. She was about to leave through the door when a thought struck her. She returned to the front desk woman.
"Ma'am, can you tell me if a Dr. Mkibo is on duty right now?"
"Dr. Mkibo?" A single tweezed eyebrow shot up. "What's your business with her?"
"Excuse me?" Sara doubled back, stung by the rather sharp tone.
"Look lady, we don't want no trouble out here."
"There won't be any trouble. I just want to talk to Dr. Mkibo. A friend recommended her to me."
"Yeah right, as if I'll believe that."
Sara took a deep breath and then procured her badge. "Ma'am, I'm from the LVPD. I suggest you call the good doctor." She took a bet on the fact that the woman wouldn't really know the difference between an officer's and a CSI's badge.
"Sh-she's not here." The woman stuttered.
"Where is she?"
"No one knows. She just upped and left the clinic for three days. All she said was she had some important work."
"Did she tell you what important work?"
"No." Her bulbous head shook from left to right. "One minute she was attending to some suicidal blonde and the next, she was leaving. She just said she needed to see to that blonde and after that she had her own affairs to attend to."
Sara leant forward. The woman was getting slightly agitated and she didn't want to create a scene. "She left with the blonde?"
"Yeah."
"Can you describe the blonde for me?"
"I didn't catch a good look. But I can get you someone who did." She leant over the counter and hollered to a nurse. "Hey Nina, come over here, will ya?"
"What now?" Nina groaned.
"The lady here wants to talk." The woman was all too eager to hand Sara over to Nina.
"Yes Ma'am?"
"I want to know about Dr. Mkibo and the last patient she saw." Sara requested.
"Oh, the blonde who went all cutter? A smart cookie, she was. She knew exactly how to fake a suicide attempt."
"What do you mean?"
Nina went on to explain. Sara feigned only a mild interest, but she was feeling a powerful rush of disquiet inside her.
"And can you tell me anything about her appearance?"
"Well, she was a pretty one. Late thirties, early forties maybe. Strawberry blonde, nice blue eyes."
Sara took out her wallet. She pulled Catherine's picture from inside and showed it to Nina. "Was this the woman?"
Nina squinted and then nodded. "Yeah… yeah… looks right."
Her pulse was now racing wildly. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"Lady, I'm pretty good with faces. I can say that I'm like 95 sure, plus or minus point-oh-five."
Sara's eyes noticed the camera perched directly across the front entrance. "Do you have the surveillance tapes from that day?"
The girl looked unsure. "I guess, but we can't show it you."
"I'm from the Las Vegas PD."
"We ain't doin' anything wrong here, officer." Nina was now trembling.
"I'm not here to charge you with anything, Nina." Sara assured her as gently as possible. "But if I have to come back with a warrant, there might be some more officers, and not to mention a possible inquiry… you don't want that, do you?"
"But… but…"
"Your patients might get freaked out seeing all the cops."
That decided for Nina. She vigorously looked sideways before disappearing into the room behind the desk. Sara found her hands getting ice cold and she rubbed it against each other. When the girl returned, it took all of her restraint to not snatch those tapes from her hand.
Catherine shivered with anticipation when she heard footsteps on the boarded stairs. It increased when an equally eager Dr. Mkibo appeared. She kept her expression neutral, however.
"You are ready?" The doctor looked at her.
Catherine nodded. She picked up the clothes lying neatly in a pile beside her. It was the same ribbed green sweater and jeans she had worn on the last day she remembered before ending up in this shithole. She hurried towards the bathroom to change. Dr. Mkibo kept one wary eye towards the stairs until she returned.
"Are you sure about this?" Catherine asked her, before they climbed up.
"I'll have to escape or else they will kill me." She replied matter-of-factly.
The two women cautiously made their way out of the basement. Catherine only vaguely recalled this part of the house from the last time she was carried up. It was poorly furnished, serving a necessity rather than relaxation.
"Where are they?"
"In a room where they have all the screens set up to monitor you." Mkibo fished out a key. "I got this from the girl. The desert's gonna be one killer if we try to cross it on feet."
Catherine smiled at the doctor.
They didn't waste any time in hurrying out of the cabin; their eyes were constantly moving around to detect any sign of danger. So far, it seemed they were completely alone.
The sweltering mid-noon heat burnt through their skins when they stepped out of the shade of the cabin.
"We should have got a gun from them." Catherine wondered aloud.
The other woman looked back towards the rickety structure and swallowed hard. "Do you think we'll need it? I kinda don't want to go back there."
"I'll do it." Without waiting for an agreement, Catherine ran back. She carefully made her way across the worn carpets and searched every room until she found the one where the two were knocked out. The muscular guy was sprawled on a revolving chair, which was in danger of caving under his bulk. The woman was in a supine position on the ground. She expected the guy to carry a weapon, but not likely a gun. She still searched him to be safe. Next she browsed through the pockets of the woman. One look at her face halted her probing fingers. Her young captor looked angelically innocent under sedation. She wondered what had prompted someone like her to take up this route.
Catherine found a gun in the woman's left hand, which was tucked beneath her body weight. She ripped out the polyethylene wrapper from a blank CD box and used it to carefully pluck the gun out of the slim fingers. The next thing that she had to do was get the tapes for the basement camera. They would prove valuable evidence. She pressed Eject for the players and collected the stack of previously used tapes. They were plenty and she didn't know which ones were important, but she didn't have time to try them out. There was a bag with a SONY logo lying under the desk and she bundled all the tapes in it. Not wishing to spend a single more second in that place, she hurried out.
Mkibo was already in the car, a late 90's Chevy sedan. She raised her eyebrows at the bag of tapes in Catherine's hand but didn't comment on it.
"You know the way?" Catherine asked.
"They did blindfold me when they brought us here." Mkibo grimaced. "But I went on a lot of field trips for learning the Nevadan flora and fauna. I know something about the desert topography and we'll just go with that instinct."
"It's better than nothing." She assured her.
The doctor nodded and set the car in motion. The two women gave one last look at their former prison and felt a potent blend of excitement and dread. They were now really close to their freedom and they could only hope that nothing spoilt that.
Sara didn't care that she had probably broken all road rules when she sped her way past the traffic. Angry drivers honked their horns at her and she had nearly come close to slamming into a minivan. She was only thankful that no police was nearby to catch her irresponsibility. When she swerved on to the parking lot of the Crime Lab, she all but flew her way to Grissom's office.
"Grissom." Sara barged into his congested working area.
"Sara, I was just about to call you." He had the kind of look which usually spelt that he was on the verge of a major case cracker. She was, however, too occupied to take notice of that.
"I have something to show you." She held up the security camera video.
"What's that?" Grissom frowned.
"I don't know yet, but I want to find out."
He looked at her face which was glowing with perspiration. But it also held an inner zeal that had been missing from her since the news of Catherine's death.
"Alright, let's get this to Archie."
At the AV lab, Archie Johnson inserted the tape into the player and let it load. The screen filled with grainy, black-and-white images. Sara recognized the front lobby of the We Care clinic. It was fairly empty, except for the few rangy immigrant patients.
"This place looks like a clinic." Archie observed.
"It is." Sara nodded absently. "Arch, can you forward it a little?"
"Sure thing." The video forwarded rapidly with the top of the screen showing the elapse in time.
"Hey, stop there." Grissom jerked. The AV tech moved reflexively and the scene paused.
"Shit, is that…" Archie's eyes widened. "She… she looks…"
"She looks like Catherine." Sara finished for him.
The young man scowled. "But the top says August the 5th. That's just three days ago. There must be some mistake."
"Where did you get this tape from?" Grissom asked, his eyes never leaving the screen.
"From a clinic in Eastern Las Vegas. And there is no mistake. The footage is indeed from three days ago."
"But that's impossible." The tech mumbled.
"Can you get a clearer picture of Ca- the woman on the gurney?
"Yeah." His nimble fingers slid over the keys expertly and the screen zoomed in on the woman's face. Then the pixel resolution adjusted and the image became sharper. So did the intake of breath from all three of the witnesses.
"Grissom, what does this mean?" Sara turned towards him, not really expecting an answer, but desperately needing his rational analysis.
"I don't know." He looked lost. "Archie, keep playing."
The three CSIs stared at the screen as if they were sighting an apparition. And they did believe it to be an apparition, because the prospect that Catherine could still be alive was too huge for their minds to correctly register.
They saw the entire sequence from when 'Catherine' was wheeled inside, out of sight, to when she was brought out. Sara saw Hank appear in the footage at around the same time that they left. Hank hadn't been lying after all.
"Get me the faces of the three people accompanying her." Grissom instructed.
Archie did as he was told and immediately the screen was bracketed into three segments, each containing a highly modified face picture. By then, Grissom was already done punching into his pager.
"Archie, can you go back and focus on the door? I thought I saw a car there." Sara said.
The screen flipped back to the frozen image from the clinic. True indeed, they could see the rear lights of a vehicle that looked black. The tech focused on the license plate and clarified it on the screen.
"I've seen that number somewhere." Sara furrowed her brow, trying to remember.
Like a flash of lightning, it hit her.
She straightened up and was ready to bolt out of the room when Grissom caught hold of her.
"Where are you going?"
"There's something I have to do… alone."
"If it is pertaining to this case, I can't allow you to go alone."
"Grissom, please, trust me on this."
"But Sara…"
"I promise I'll tell you everything. I just want to make sure." She squeezed his hand. "I'll stay in contact."
Sara plugged her headset to her ear as soon as she got in the car. She maneuvered her Tahoe out of the parking lot and into the main street.
That one meeting with her brother had planted seeds of curiosity in her mind and she had used the search engines to find the map to his place. She couldn't really explain why she did it; maybe it was because she needed to know the route in case she became desperate enough to seek her one blood relative. She remembered seeing an Explorer with that same license plate drive in when the limo was driving her out. She found the dusty SUV out-of-place in that polished neighborhood and that's why it had stuck in her memory.
Sean Sidle's sudden appearance in her life might not be a strange coincidence after all.
I won't be updating in a while, so here's a little cliffie and a whole lot of hope to keep you occupied :P
