Enigma (FBI Thriller 21)

Jack pulled out his cell, then slid it back into his shirt pocket. “No need to call, that’s Chief Harbinger there, in that big honker black SUV coming toward us. Amazing timing.”

“I texted him as soon as we had a signal.”

He hadn’t seen her do that. They watched a big man dressed for the woods climb out of the SUV. He shouted, “Welcome to Magee, outpost of the brave.” A very pretty young girl scooted out the passenger door and stepped around to stand at his side. His daughter, Kim Harbinger? Why had the chief brought his teenage daughter with him?

6

WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MONDAY AFTERNOON

Savich stood beside Dr. Grace Wordsworth, a tall, thin black woman with white wings in her hair and glasses over intelligent eyes, looking down at the young man lying on his back. A single blanket was pulled up to his bandaged shoulder and an adhesive strip covered the scalp wound where Savich’s bullet had grazed his left temple. He was bone-white and lay utterly still, the slow rise and fall of his chest his only obvious sign of life. Savich saw his uninjured arm was handcuffed to the metal bed frame, an IV line in his wrist.

Dr. Wordsworth checked his pulse, put her stethoscope over his heart, and straightened. “At least our John Doe is breathing easily on his own. But he hasn’t helped us much in figuring out why he’s in a coma. His CT scan was perfectly normal—no evidence of hematoma or brain contusion. We’ve looked at his cerebrospinal fluid with a lumbar puncture, and again, there was no evidence of bleeding, or of infection. By the way, Dr. Avery, the consulting neurologist, said John Doe’s irrational behavior yesterday sounded like delirium to him, not a psychiatric illness. Something else—a metabolic problem or something toxic—may be to blame. He has some abnormal central reflexes that point to something affecting his entire nervous system. So you can relax if you were worried his head wound put him in this condition. The bullet probably concussed him, sure, but this is something else entirely.” She glanced down at her watch and its large digital readout. “We may know more after they fit him in for his MRI in a couple of hours.”

“Something else? Could he have overdosed on a drug?”

“Our usual toxicology panel showed a trace of Haldol in his system—that’s an old antipsychotic drug—but nothing else he shouldn’t have taken. As I said, there was only a trace, which means he hadn’t taken any therapeutic dose for upward of three or four days. But there are a lot of drugs and supplements out there we haven’t tested for yet that can cause neurotoxicity. We’ve sent a sample of his blood to a facility with a specialized mass spectroscopy unit to try to identify any drugs we might have missed. We’ll have to wait for the results. Some kind of drug effect is a real possibility. His blood tests show his bone marrow is suppressed, and his liver shows signs of injury for some reason. So I have a medical mystery on my hands, and no history to work with. Have you made any progress identifying him?”

“Not yet.”

“Take a look at this.” Dr. Wordsworth carefully lifted John Doe’s handcuffed wrist and pulled at a loose plastic wristband. “It looks almost like a conventional hospital ID band, but it’s not ours. I’ve never seen a psychiatric facility put such a bizarre tag on a patient, though. It doesn’t make sense. Even at a private institution, there ought to be some sort of comprehensible patient identification on it, the name of the facility, much more than this. There’s a handwritten date on it—also strange. It’s Saturday, two days ago, perhaps the day he escaped? His last treatment date?” She looked up at Savich, shook her head. “Perhaps they changed out his wristband each time he had a treatment. And look here, in small letters, E 2. Nothing else.”

Savich stared at the wide pale yellow plastic strip. Saturday most likely wasn’t the date he entered the facility, so Dr. Wordsworth was probably right, it was the date of his last treatment. But for what? And what could E 2 mean? Savich felt a tug of memory, and then it was gone. “Can’t help with that,” he said. “I

’ve checked with Metro. They’ve had no inquiries from any psychiatric facility about our Mr. Doe. Nor does Metro know who he is. His fingerprints aren’t in the system.”

Dr. Wordsworth checked the IV infusion set, made a minor adjustment. “Isn’t that unusual? Your not being able to identify someone?”

“It only means he’s never worked for the government, been in the military, or been arrested. I tried the facial recognition program, missing persons countrywide, but without any luck.” Savich wondered if Mayer had done the same.

Dr. Wordsworth said, “Our staff have been contacting all the medical facilities and psychiatric hospitals in the District, in Maryland, and in Virginia. None of them have claimed him so far. If he was in a small facility or with his family, we’d expect them to be all over this. And then I ask myself, why would a family—especially a family—put a wristband like this on him?”

Savich said slowly, “It could be he escaped from somewhere, Doctor. He thought he had a mission, and it involved a woman who’s just given birth upstairs. Why her in particular, I don’t know yet.”

“Everyone here knows you saved Ms. Moody from John Doe.”

He said nothing, only shook his head.

“There’s something else you have to see.” She pulled back the thin blanket that covered John Doe’s arms. “Look at the needle tracks on his arms. You might think he was a big-time drug addict, but those scars aren’t anything like the scars of a drug addict. They’re carefully placed and well cared for, with no sign they were ever infected. There’s no way a drug addict could do that himself. And look up here at his neck and under his collarbone. He’s had large-bore catheters placed there, such as we use for people who need long-term venous access for their treatments, or for dialysis. These scars are the result of medical care, though for what I have no idea yet.”

The hospital loudspeaker paged Dr. Wordsworth to the ER, stat. Savich quickly gave her his card. She tucked it in her pocket, shook his hand, held it a moment. “Agent Savich, I’ll let you know if the head MRI shows anything unusual, and I trust you’ll call me if you find anything that can help me. I can see you care about him. You want to know who he is and what all this is about as much as I do.” She looked again toward John Doe, shook her head, and was out the door.

Savich looked down at John Doe. He looked so very young, helpless. He now clearly remembered him saying I’m an enigma. Was that what the E stood for? And the 2? Was there another enigma who came before him? Savich pulled out his cell and called Ben Raven at Metro. “Ben, are you in the field?”

“Yep. A beating, domestic. I hate these. What’s going on?”

“Do me a favor. I’m worried about our Mr. John Doe from yesterday. He’s still in a coma, completely helpless. He claimed someone was out hunting for him, that they wanted him back, and Kara Moody. If he’s right”—he didn’t want to sound ridiculous, so he only said—“it’s possible someone doesn’t mean him well. Could you assign an officer to him?”

A pause, then Raven said, “This is your gut talking, Savich?”

“Yes, that and a couple of odd things, inexplicable things about him.”

“I’ll check with my lieutenant, get a guard cleared with hospital security for a couple of days.” Savich could see Ben’s grin as he said, “Guess you didn’t want to ask Mayer?”

“Not in this lifetime. Can you get him here as fast as you can?”