53
WASHINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Sherlock looked down at Kara Moody’s rendering of the man who’d drawn her blood a year before. Midfifties with longish unkempt gray hair with a comb-over topping it off. He had a sharp chin and a large nose, but still there was something familiar about him, something that nagged at her. She’d never seen him before, had she? She kept studying the man’s face, and it struck her. She called up the photo of the man they’d videoed helping to kidnap Alex Moody from the hospital and put it beside Kara’s sketch of the older man who’d drawn her blood. “Look, Kara. Compare these. Don’t these two men look very similar to you?”
Kara glanced down at the photos, shook her head. “Oh, no. Look at them, Sherlock, the man who drew my blood could be his father. I gave him the look of a mad scientist, with all that grizzled gray hair. The young one looks, well, fit, in his prime.”
“Bear with me, Kara. Study them.”
Kara studied the photo and her drawing, frowned, then slowly raised her head. “Okay, they do look a bit alike, Sherlock, despite the obvious age difference. But look, the older guy’s comb-over doesn’t hide the fact he’s going bald, and the kidnapper had thick brown hair. It is close to the same color, I guess. And look, the younger man’s jaw is more square, no jowls yet, and that’s because he’s at least twenty years younger than the guy who drew my blood. He was in his fifties if he was a day. Maybe good cosmetic surgery could shave off ten years or so, but not this much.”
All good points, but Sherlock was still bothered. “Kara, look only at the eyes, look at how similar they are. Do you think you could have drawn in the younger man’s eyes without meaning to?”
Sherlock watched Kara cock her head as she studied her work. “Okay, their eyes do have the same almond shape, the sort of upward tilt at the corners. And the distance between the eyes looks about the same. I don’t think I could have drawn the younger man’s eyes on him. Sherlock, the man I sketched is definitely the man I remember drew my blood, not the man at the hospital. You showed me his picture, but only for a moment.” She sat back. “All right, there are similarities, I grant you that. But what could that mean?”
“I don’t know, it could be they’re related. If we identify one, we may find the other.”
“Why did you have me sketch the man who drew my blood?”
“I called the genetics department at the University of Maryland. They haven’t conducted any kind of study like the one described to you. In fact, they didn’t have your name as a test subject on any study they’d ever done. The whole incident sounded strange to me, but no stranger than anything else that’s happened to you. And I wondered if that blood draw had anything to do with your pregnancy or with John Doe, or with Alex’s kidnapping.”
She squeezed Kara and rose. “You did good, Kara, keep the faith, okay?” Sherlock smiled. “I can’t wait to meet your friend, Ms. Love.”
“Bless her, she’ll be arriving tomorrow. I imagine she’ll want to see Alex’s father. I’m glad the hospital is afraid to kick me out. They’re moving a bed into his room so I can stay with him tonight. Maybe they’ll bring in a second cot for Brenda tomorrow.”
Sherlock didn’t doubt the hospital would gladly give Kara use of a limo if she asked for it. She smiled. “Good, Brenda can tell him stories about you.” Sherlock rolled up Kara’s drawing, gave her a hug, and left her to walk back to John Doe’s room.
Her cell squawked only Curly Duck, and she had to shake her head. What had Dillon done with Moe and Larry Duck? Were they going to take turns? She nodded to Ray Hunter, the maternity-floor security guard as she answered. “Connie, what do you have?”
“Are you leaning against a wall so you don’t fall over?”
“What is it? What have you got?”
“It’s about Sylvie Vaughn. I did a background check on her. She was born Sylvie Fox, thirty-five years ago, in Baltimore. Her mother is listed as Hannah Fox. I did a background check on Sylvie’s mother and found out Hannah Fox’s address is the Willows, home of B. B. Maddox. I made some calls, found out she’s his longtime lover and for the past fifteen years, his live-in caregiver.”
Sherlock sighed. “That gives Sylvie a reason to go to the Willows, to see her mother.”
“Yeah, but listen to this. We had the video of the dark blue Toyota SUV that picked up the man and woman who took Alex from the hospital on Parker Street. Bolt had stayed all over that. We never did spot them on any of the cameras on I-95, so Bolt started checking businesses on the side roads that run parallel to I-95. He spotted the SUV on a security video pulling into a taqueria, where there are no cameras, and that’s where they made the transfer, because five minutes later a white delivery van with the same driver pulled back out into traffic. Bolt went right back to the I-95 video recordings, spotted the van exiting from I-85 in Anne Arundel County, not far from the Willows. What kind of coincidence could that be? We have a CSI team at the taqueria now going over the blue Toyota SUV, looking for the kidnappers’ fingerprints. We already know the car was stolen. I gotta say Bolt and the tech teams working with him were high-fiving and guzzling down their drink of choice, Mountain Dew.”
Sherlock whooshed out a breath. “Connie, tell me Bolt was able to follow the van right up to their front door.”
Connie laughed. “Afraid not, but never fear, grasshopper. We couldn’t see the license plate on the commercial van, but on a hunch I checked out all the vehicles registered as being owned by Gen-Core Technologies. They own six of that same model, all white.”
“Connie, if Dillon ever falls down on the job, will you marry me? I think it’s time we meet Mr. B. B. Maddox and his family and have a little chat. I’ll meet you at the Willows in forty minutes. We’ve got a double-pronged approach going here, Connie. Dillon is on his way to Baltimore, to the university. He’ll let us know what he discovers.”