25
CAFETERIA
WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
EARLY TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Savich and Sherlock found Kara Moody and Dr. Janice sitting in the crowded hospital cafeteria. When Kara saw them and waved, they saw hope leap into her eyes. Dr. Janice had a hold of Kara’s hand, squeezed it. “Hello, Dillon, Sherlock. Kara and I have been having some lunch. Please join us.” She paused. “Have you learned anything?”
Sherlock leaned down, hugged Kara, whispered against her cheek, “We’ve got some good leads, and there are things I need to tell you. Things are coming together, Kara.” It wasn’t too much of a stretch.
Savich took Dr. Janice’s hand. “Is that bagel smeared with cream cheese?”
“Almost,” Dr. Janice said. “It’s nonfat, but I can almost convince myself it’s the real thing. Better for old stomachs, I guess.”
Dr. Janice had been a fixture in Savich’s life for as long as he could remember, and she was getting up there in years, no way around that, but he didn’t like being faced with that reality.
Kara scoffed. “Listen to you, Dr. Janice. I’m counting on you to be around with me to celebrate Alex’s twenty-first birthday.”
Dr. Janice laughed. “My dear, you can count on it. I might need Alex to carry me to the cake, but I’ll be there.”
Savich left Sherlock with Kara and joined the cafeteria line to fetch both of them tuna salad sandwiches. Sherlock settled back in her chair and studied Kara’s face, taking stock. She was pale, her eyes red-rimmed, but with Dr. Janice’s help, she was holding it together. She was wearing jeans and sneakers and a large white shirt with orange and yellow paint smears on the cuffs that Dr. Janice had brought her from home. “We went to your room on the maternity floor, and the nurse told us you’d come to the cafeteria with Dr. Janice. Kara, I hope you got some sleep after we left last night.”
“One of the FBI agents escorted me back to my room, and a nurse forced a sleeping pill down my throat, so yes, I slept okay.” She didn’t tell Sherlock about the nightmare at dawn that jerked her out of sleep, sweating and terrified. She dredged up a grin. “I know they would have discharged me already. I heard one of the nursing supervisors talking about it. But after all that’s happened I guess they want to make a show of support rather than push me out, afraid I might sue them. And the thing is, I really don’t want to go home—I can’t. Not yet. Not until I have Alex back.” She shook her head at herself. “And there’s John Doe. If he wakes up, I want to know.” She picked up the half of her ham sandwich she hadn’t touched, looked at it like she’d never seen it before, took a small bite.
“Sherlock, Dr. Janice and I were discussing the man who tried to kill John Doe last night. As I told Agent Haller, I can’t say he’s the same man in the video who helped kidnap Alex. He was wearing a surgical mask last night.
“Who are these people? Why did they try to kill John Doe? I saw his arms, Sherlock, all those needle marks. What did they do to him?”
“I told you we’re going to find out, Kara. Let me tell you about our interview with Sylvie Vaughn.”
Dr. Janice said, “Would you like me to leave now? This is all confidential, isn’t it?”
“Please don’t go,” Kara said, her hand on Dr. Janice’s arm. “I want you to hear everything. Please.”
“You’re free to stay, Dr. Janice,” Sherlock said. “And free to jump in with any questions you have.”
“All right, but I don’t know how much good I’ll be to you.”
“Let’s get started then. Kara, are you absolutely sure you never saw John Doe before he burst into your house on Sunday?”
“No, I already told you that. Why are you asking me again?”
“Bear with me. Think back, Kara. Is it at all possible he was at Sylvie Vaughn’s birthday party for her husband nine months ago?”
“It’s possible I didn’t notice him with everyone moving around from group to group. What about Sylvie? Did she recognize him?”
“When Agent Butler and I visited her this morning, she claimed she’d never seen him before.”
Kara studied Sherlock’s face. “But you didn’t believe her?”
“Let me say she’s a person of interest until proven otherwise. I’ll know a lot more about Sylvie Vaughn very soon now.”
“You told me not to contact her, not to tell her about Alex or his kidnapping.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I wanted to be the one to tell her.”
Dr. Janice said slowly, “You wanted to catch her by surprise, see her face, her body language when you told her?”
“That’s right.”
“And something alerted you?”
“I think so, yes.”
Kara dropped the half sandwich to her paper plate and leaned toward Sherlock. “I can’t believe that, really. We were so close. She was shocked, wasn’t she? Really worried about me?”
“She did say that,” Sherlock said. She took Kara’s hand. “But Dr. Janice is right. I felt something was off; something didn’t sound quite right. I’m sorry, Kara.
“Within three minutes of our leaving, she made a call to another number in Baltimore. We’ll know soon who that number belongs to. I asked her to send us a list of the guests at the birthday party nine months ago. She emailed a partial list to Agent Butler, and Agent Butler and Agent Haller are calling them.
“Agent Butler and I left a GPS tracker on the underside of her car. Wherever she goes, whoever she sees, we’ll know about it. Until then, we all have a lot to do.” She saw Kara looked bewildered and scared, wondering if one of her best friends had betrayed her. “Kara, could you help with that guest list? We could give you and Dr. Janice their names and photos and let you see the transcripts of their interviews. That might help us.”
“Yes, of course I can do that,” Kara said. Sherlock heard the new energy in her voice. “Dr. Janice, are you in?”
“I think it’s a fine idea. Bring on the list.” Dr. Janice raised her bottle of water in a small salute to Sherlock, knew she was helping keep Kara busy and focused outside herself.
Savich set down her tuna fish salad sandwich in front of Sherlock and handed her a bottle of water. “I heard you adding to the group looking at the partygoers.”
Sherlock smiled at him, lightly nudged his shin with her booted foot. “You heard right. They’re both on board.”
Kara said slowly, searching Sherlock’s face, “But if Sylvie did know about it, if she did set me up, then our entire friendship was a lie. It would mean she knew I was going to be drugged, maybe she knows who John Doe is.” She was shaking her head back and forth. “It’s still so hard to believe. I mean, Sylvie was one of my best friends in Baltimore. Why would she do something like that?”
“All good questions. We’ll have the answers soon, I promise you, Kara,” Sherlock continued, matter-of-fact. “One of the theories of the case has been that the kidnapper might be Alex’s father, the man who roofied you at that party. It’s common enough, child abduction by a parent, especially by a parent who has no hope of custody. We know now that isn’t the case.”
She drew a deep breath. “I have something to tell you Kara, something that might be difficult for you, something Agent Butler found out this morning while we were interviewing Sylvie Vaughn.”
Kara was staring at her, clearly puzzled. Sherlock saw her reach for Dr. Janice’s hand.
“Agent Butler got a phone call from Dr. Franz Benedict, one of our DNA specialists at the FBI. You remember we’d asked him for a DNA profile of you and Alex so we would have a DNA fingerprint to verify Alex’s identity when we find him. Dillon had also sent over John Doe’s DNA yesterday, asked him to do a rush profile so we’d have his as well, see if we could find him in a DNA database. He happened to notice that some of the DNA markers were strangely similar, something that’s highly unlikely, so he ran a paternity index. Kara, it was positive for John Doe.
“Kara, John Doe is Alex’s father.”