WALTER DABNEY’S CHEST rose and fell with the spasmodic twitch of someone not long for this world. It was as though the lungs were the weary rear guard holding out as the spirit prepared to exit the body.
Alex Jamison was in her late twenties, tall, slim, and pretty with long brunette hair. She sat on the right side of the hospital bed in the CCU. Ross Bogart, an FBI special agent in his late forties, with a bit of gray the only thing marring his perfectly combed dark hair, stood ramrod-straight on the left. His fingers clutched the bed’s safety rail.
Dabney lay in the bed, hooked up to a complex array of monitoring lines and tubes carrying medications. His right eye was an empty crater because the bullet he’d fired into his chin had burst from there after catapulting through parts of the brain. His facial skin was deathly gray, where it wasn’t swollen and stained purple by burst capillaries. His breathing was erratic and the monitor showed his vitals to be fluctuating all over the place. He was in the critical care unit, the place designated for the sickest and most badly injured patients at the hospital.
But he wasn’t just injured; Walter Dabney was dying.
The doctors who had been in and out during the day had all confirmed that it was simply a matter of time before the brain told the heart to stop pumping. And there was nothing they could do about it. The damage was such that no medicine and no surgery could bring the man back. They were just counting down the time until death.
Mrs. Eleanor Dabney, better known as Ellie, had arrived thirty minutes after the FBI had told her what had happened. They would have to question her, but right now the woman was simply a grieving widow-to-be. She was currently in the bathroom throwing up, a nurse assisting her.
Bogart eyed Jamison. She seemed to sense his attention and glanced up.
“Any word from Decker?” he asked quietly.
She checked her phone and shook her head. “He was going to be at the morgue with Berkshire’s body.” She thumbed in a text to him and sent it off. “I copied Todd on it,” she said.
Bogart nodded. “Good. He’ll keep Decker on track.”
They both knew that Decker was not always the best at communicating. In fact, he pretty much sucked at it.
Bogart looked down at Dabney again. “Nothing in the guy’s record to indicate something like this happening. And no connection that we can find to Berkshire.”
Jamison said, “There must be something unless it was completely random. And that doesn’t make much sense either.”
Bogart nodded in agreement and then glanced at the monitor. The dying man’s heart rate and respiration danced around like bare feet on sizzling coals.
“Chances are very good he’s going to die without saying anything.”
“But if he does say something we’ll be here,” replied Jamison.
The bathroom door opened and out came the nurse and Ellie Dabney. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with long legs and a slender waist and narrow hips. Her features were quite attractive, the jaw elegantly structured, the cheekbones high and firm, the eyes large and a pleasing light blue. Her hair was long and she had let it go naturally silver. She looked like she might have been quite the athlete in her youth. Now in her early sixties, the mother of four grown children with three grandchildren and one mortally wounded husband, the stricken woman appeared about as close to death as one could get without actually being dead.
Bogart placed a chair next to the bed for her as Jamison rose and helped the nurse guide Ellie over to the chair, into which she fell rather than sat.
The nurse checked the monitor, gave Bogart an ominous look, and left, closing the door behind her. Ellie had reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand, her forehead resting against the top of the bed rail.
Bogart stepped back and Jamison resumed her seat. They exchanged glances while listening to the woman’s quiet sobs.
“Mrs. Dabney, we can arrange to have your children brought here when they get into town,” he said after a few moments.
She didn’t respond to this at first but finally nodded.
“Do you have that information or is there someone else we can—?”
She lifted her head and without looking at him said, “My daughter, Jules, she…she’ll know that.” She pulled a phone from her pocket, tapped some keys, and passed it to him. Bogart wrote the phone number down, handed Ellie her phone back, and walked out of the room.
Jamison put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder and said, “I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Dabney.”
“Did he…did Walt really h-hurt someone? The FBI…they…they said…”
“We don’t have to talk about that now.”
Ellie turned her tearstained face to Jamison. “He couldn’t have. Are you sure someone didn’t shoot him? You see, Walt wouldn’t hurt anything. H-he…” Her voice trailed off and she placed her forehead back on the rail.
The monitor started to beep and they both glanced at it, but the device quieted down.
“We are sure, Mrs. Dabney. I wish I could tell you otherwise. There were a lot of witnesses.”
Ellie blew her nose on a tissue and said in a firmer voice, “He’s not going to recover, is he?”
“The doctors aren’t hopeful, no.”
“I…I didn’t even know he owned a gun.”
After studying the woman for a few seconds, Jamison asked, “Did you notice a change in your husband recently?”
“In what way?” Ellie said absently.
“Mood? Concerns at work? Appetite changed? Maybe he drank more than normal? Any signs of depression?”
Ellie sat back in her chair, wadded the tissue up in her hand, and stared down at her lap.
Outside the door footsteps could be heard, along with occasional running feet, the sounds of a monitor alarm, voices over a PA, and equipment and patients being rolled up and down the corridor. The air smelled like hospitals always did: antiseptic. And the air was perpetually chilly. There was also an ominous tenseness present in the CCU, as though only a monitor’s sudden warning screech separated the living from the dead.
“Walt didn’t talk about business at home. He didn’t really drink at home either, although I know that he did at business dinners and industry events, that sort of thing. I attended some with him. But he only drank enough to socialize, to get deals done, build contacts, you know, that sort of thing.”
“I understand. Were there any financial worries?”
“Not that I knew of. But Walter handled all that. We never had any bill collectors show up at the house, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did his mood change?”
She dabbed at her eyes and shot a glance at her husband before quickly looking away, as though she was uncomfortable conveying information about him to a stranger. “He had a variety of moods. He worked very hard and when business was good he was happy, when it was down, he got depressed, just like anybody would.”
“So nothing out of the ordinary?”
Ellie balled up the tissue even more and then tossed it into the trash can.
With finality.
She turned to Jamison, who waited patiently. If being around Amos Decker had taught her anything, it was patience, for both positive and negative reasons.
“He went on a trip recently.”
“Where?”
“That was the unusual thing. He didn’t tell me where. He had never done that before.”
“How long was he gone?” Jamison asked.
“I think about four days. It could have been longer. He was on another trip in New York and left from there. He called me and said something unexpected had come up and that he had to attend to it and wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone.”
“Plane, train? Another country?”
“I don’t know. He did tell me it had to do with a potential client. He had to smooth over something. The way he described it the matter didn’t seem too significant. I suppose his office would have handled the travel arrangements.”
“Okay, and he mentioned nothing to you about it when he got home?”
“Nothing. I just assumed it was business. But from that day on, there was something, I don’t know, off.”
“And when was this?”
“About a month ago.”
“And your husband has his own government contracting firm?”
Ellie nodded. “Walter Dabney and Associates. It’s located in Reston. Everything they work on is pretty much classified. It started out with just my husband, but now about seventy people work there. He has partners at the firm, but Walter is president and owns a controlling interest.” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, I guess I’ll own it now.” She looked in alarm at Jamison. “Does that mean I’ll have to run it? I don’t know anything about his business. I don’t even have a security clearance.”
Jamison gripped her hand. “I don’t think you need to worry about those details right now, Mrs. Dabney.”
Ellie relaxed and looked back at her husband. “What was the person’s name again? That Walter…? They told me, but I can’t remember. Everything is just a blur right now.”
“Anne Berkshire. She was a substitute teacher at a Catholic high school in Fairfax. Do you know her?”
Ellie shook her head. “I never heard of her. And I don’t know why Walt would know her either. High school teacher? Walt and I had our children fairly early. Jules, our oldest, is thirty-seven. And our oldest grandkid is only in first grade. And they don’t even live in Virginia anyway. And we’re not Catholic. We’re Presbyterian.”
“Right. Well, thank you for the information. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Will I need to get a lawyer?” Ellie blurted out.
Jamison looked uncomfortable. “I’m really not the one to advise you about that. If you or your husband used a lawyer or know one, you should check with that person.”
Ellie nodded dumbly and then reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand once more.
A minute later Bogart came back in. “It’s all taken care of, Mrs. Dabney,” he said. “According to your daughter, everyone except Natalie will be in by tonight.”
“Natalie lives in Paris. I tried to phone her but no one answered. And it wasn’t…it wasn’t something I could leave on a voicemail or tell her by email.”
“Your daughter Jules reached her and told her the situation. She’s trying to get a flight here as soon as possible.”
“I really can’t believe this is happening,” said Ellie. “When Walt left this morning everything was…perfect. And now?” She looked up at them. “It’s all gone. Just like that.”
Just like that, thought Jamison.