21
Andrew Crosse held his hands like a church’s steeple in front of his face and he gazed down at the table. Things were not going his way. The news he recently received about May Baker was bothering him. She’d travelled to the States and even managed to contract an attorney. “How much did this attorney know”? It was of great importance May Baker and, most of all; this attorney didn’t make any contact with Anthony.
He could deal with the police force. He had out witted them for so long that it had become second nature to him. The moment Baker would receive his GPS implant and injection, the real work could finally commence.
However, Crosse had other things to take care of first. He changed into another outfit and left the house. Outside his driver was waiting for him. He stepped into the passenger’s seat of his own car, the driver pulled away slowly.
The city was full of life; bright lights embellished the avenues of downtown LA. When they stopped at a traffic light, Crosse gazed at a young couple. They were engaged in a tight embrace. He remembered his own youth when he lived in the Quantock Hills in the South Malone area of England. He hadn’t had many girlfriends, but there was one who had stolen his heart. She was the youngest daughter of John Barrow, who lived with his family in the nearby town of Somerset. Their romance had been short but passionate. Like many fathers back then, John Barrow was very particular of who he allowed to court his daughters. Andrew and Anna were therefore forced to meet each other in secret.
*
By the time Anthony was wheeled into the operating theatre he had been briefed by Doctor Phillips. Because he had to be alert he received a local anesthetic. The surgeons needed to be able to adjust the frequency of the implant.
As he lay on his back one of the surgeons asked, “Are you ready Mr. Baker? Tell us when you feel anything,” Doctor Phillips said. Her hair was tided back in a ponytail. Anthony had seen her already when listening to her during the briefing. He asked himself whether she’d dyed her hair too, like his wife. It was going to be a hell of a surprise for her when he turned up home cured, no more games for her to play.
“There shouldn’t be any problems, but if you need more pain relief let me know.” A man dressed in a light blue pajama said. His mouth was covered with a white mask.
The other people in the theatre wore green cotton suits, in the same fashion as the Blue man. Anthony wondered why Doctors wore masks; it couldn’t be only for the infections. No there had to be more behind the facade. Although he had seen the face of Doctor Phillips, the other people in the room were unknown to him. If he was to meet one of them in the streets here in LA later, he’d pass them without knowing who they were, let alone surgeons who’d operated on him.
“I’m making a tiny incision in your right eye,” Phillips started. “As I have told you before we will use a laser for this.”
Why did some people use the word we when they were speaking about themselves? Anthony wondered.
“You won’t be able to see any of the cut after the operation is finished,” The Blue man said.
“It’s obvious he won’t see anything,” one of the other people present replied.
“Come on lads, no fooling around, let’s concentrate on the job,” Phillips said.
This is just a job for them, but lying on the table is another cup of tea.
Doctor Phillips sat down on a swivel chair and put a pair of microscopic glasses on. She looked a bit like a patient at the opticians, wearing a strange eye apparatus with the different strengths, Anthony thought. The glasses were connected to a cable which was plugged into a computer. In her hand she held a pen like tool.
“Ok, here we go,” she said as if it was no big deal, but for Anthony it was. They’d put some drops in his eye so that it remained open and didn’t dry out. Blinking now would be out of the question.
A red light at the end of the tool slowly increased the opening in Anthony’s tear-duct. A few minutes later the doctor was finished and carefully pushed an equal size tube through the duct. When that was done she held her hand out and said, “Camera please Cody.”
One of the assistants held a stainless steel platter which contained a minuscule item. A pincer lay beside it.
Ah! So there is another name, good. With a bit of luck I’ll hear the other names mentioned as well, you’ll never know.
Doctor Phillips positioned the camera and an image appeared on the computer screen.
“Would you like to watch the procedure, Mr. Baker?” she asked. “We can give you a mirror so you can see the screen.”
Anthony had always been fascinated by doctor’s series and operations on TV, but seeing his own operation? He would never have dreamed of getting the change.
“May I?” Anthony asked.
“Sure, you may,” the answer came.
Anthony held the mirror and watched how Doctor Phillips placed the chip onto the optic nerve at the back of his eyeball. She used a miniature pincher which she operated from the outside. Every detail was clearly visible on the computer screen thanks to the microscopic camera.
After the operation Doctor Phillips said, “Once we have injected the chip, you’ll receive a remote control. The chip is sending electrical messages to the optic nerve in your eye. From there on the messages are send to the visual cortex in your brain.”
*
Several days had passed since Rodrigo’s funeral and each morning the family visited his grave. Standing there in the morning sun, Jose felt alone. He hadn’t felt like this ever before in his life. Even being in the company of his family couldn’t change the desolate feeling. Breaking the silence at the grave, Jose spoke without looking at his wife, “I have to do something, will you be all right with the kids for a moment?”
Sophia first glanced at her husband, then at her children. After a deep sigh, she nodded. “All right, I’ll see you back in the apartment.”
Jose hugged his two young sons and daughter. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Waving at them, he walked away. Outside at the gate of the graveyard, he stopped a taxi.
Sarah’s face lit up when she answered the door of her apartment. She welcomed her unexpected guest with open arms. In the middle of the threshold, they held each other for a long time. Inside, Sarah glanced at the man. She noticed parts of his dark hair had turned grey.
“I missed you so much, Sarah. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve missed you.” Jose gazed into her eyes. There was only one thing he wanted to do of at this moment, to drawn into those eyes.
*
“How do we ever find Anthony in this metropolis”? May studied her Chardonnay at one of the tables in the sparsely lit Ensenada. The restaurant was one of the finest in Korea town. A chandelier hung from the ceiling and shined its icicle lights down onto her glass. Her plan with the cigarette had worked out as she hoped. Within five minutes someone knocked on the hotel door and when she told the person she was locked in, it didn’t take long before she was freed from her prison.
For a moment she looked at the wall where a photo of the Arc de Triumph hung behind Peter Black’s back. Then she cast her eyes down again, staring at the white table cloth covering their table. This was going to be an expensive evening. She wished she could be with Anthony right now. Being away from him was becoming harder by the hour. Knowing he was somewhere here in LA made her anxious to be with him even more. If she could only hear his voice, just to hear if he was all right.
A waiter approached their table carrying a tray with three giant white bowls. Both Anna and May gazed with big eyes at the crab legs sticking out of the tomato based seafood chowder.
“We can use the media. I went ahead and placed a personal ad in the Times yesterday. If we’re lucky, your husband will see the ad and contact me. It’s only a matter of time until I receive the call,” Peter said while he looked at his bowl.
Reaching for the salt, Anna’s pale Irish fingers accidentally touched Peter’s hand. He was muscular and tanned.
*
It didn’t matter what Garnham and Adams had told her, Sarah refused to let go of Rodrigo’s case. Officially, she’d done so, but the death of Jose’s son was too serious to forget. She couldn’t pretend nothing had happened. She discovered there was a greater connection between the cases than she was led to believe. Luckily for her the murder of Mr. Taoldo had opened the road for her again. She sneaked in via the back road to investigate Rodrigo and the TRS case, using Taoldo as a cover. She’d only been looking at the tip of the iceberg. God knew what was beneath the surface. Now Garnham refused to work with her any longer, she’d contacted an informant. Although this went against the rules of the department, it was her best option. She was prepared to risk the consequences for her friend.
She sat in a corner of a busy bar and leaned forward over the table as she strained to hear what her informant said. They met in a shabby, rundown place near the beach. Loud music emerged form large speakers, caused Sarah to miss a word here or there.
“He’s not who he claims to be. We’ve been after him for a long time.
It is very hard to trace a man who has so much experience in impersonating someone else. It’s rather hard to determine who he really is.” The man across the table poured the remainder of the wine into his own glass. He finished the white Sauvignon in one big gulp.
Back home Sarah opened a large envelope, which she received from Dr. Simon. The envelope contained three smaller envelopes. They each held a set of Polaroid’s of the lab at TRS and the fire at Ellis’s house. Further, the large envelope contained the preliminary report and photos of the Mendez case.
First she took Rodrigo’s photos and spread them out over the floor in the living room. Sitting down in front of the photos, she crossed her legs. Shabty joined her, not quite understanding what was happening. Sarah couldn’t help her stomach turning when she spotted Rodrigo’s disfigured face.
There had been little or no evidence at the crime scene, which she thought was rather odd. The little evidence the forensics had found was either placed at the scene, or had been completely useless.
However, in spite of everything, the killer had made one mistake. He didn’t know Dr. Simon was the best pathologist in the country. Hour after hour, Sarah went through every photo and scrap of evidence. Moving a hand through her hair, she stared at the pile of information spread out over the floor. The carpet was no longer covered just by Rodrigo’s crime scene photos, but also by the forensic reports of both him and Edgar Ellis.
Many times this way of working had been Sarah’s last resort when she was stuck on a case. This time though, it didn’t seem to much good, Shabty, who had to move out of the way to make space, lay reluctantly in his enormous green plastic dog basket in a corner of the room. With his eyes half closed, he gazed at Sarah.
She ploughed for hours through the pile without getting any closer to an answer. What am I missing?
She seemed to be going around in circles. Had the informant in the bar lied to her? Or is this a one man show?
She found it difficult to believe that one man could be capable of causing such havoc. There must be other people involved. She got up from the floor to make another brew, when her foot slipped over the clutter. Breaking her fall with her left arm, Sarah glance at a few words scribbled on the back of one of the photos. The photo in question which was found in the debris of Edgar Ellis’s residence, was heavily damaged, but some of the words were still partly visible.
She’d handled the photo several times but it never occurred to her what was written on the back could be a valuable clue. What was left on the image portrayed one of the replica houses in the ghost town of Calico in the Mojave Desert. The words on the back read, “‘my d est Ed r farm e Sto “ Although the fire had damaged the rest of the words, it was easy enough to fill in most of the blanks. The last word must be some kind of place. Next Sarah guessed someone, probably a woman, invited Ellis to come to her farm. This could very well be the place where Ellis was hiding right now. Seconds later she was on the phone.
*
A grey Mitsubishi Launcher with tinted windows drove along South Main Street and passed the Ronald Reagan state building. Despite the late hour there were still many tourists taking pictures of the building. Cedric Garnham and Officer Burnett were driving along in silence. Once out of the city they took Highway 14 to San Fernando.
“Did you have any luck with the missing scientist yet?” Garnham’s driver asked.
“As a matter of fact, I have. He was involved with a white doctor from South Africa named Narette Phillips some years ago,”
“That doesn’t sound very South African to me. What kind of relationship were they in?” Garnham moved in his seat to face Burnett.
“They were madly in love.”
“So what happened, are they married?”
“Not quite. The doctor’s husband found out about them and forced his wife to break up with Ellis. Phillips seemed to have been very violent with her threatening her and Ellis’s lives.” Garnham moved his head so that his little eyes met Burnett for a moment.
“Did he actually hurt his wife, physically I mean”? Garnham asked.
“He beat her up right after he’d got wind of the affair. She ended up in the hospital with a broken check-bone.”
“I’ll guess. Phillips never signed the divorce papers.”
“Yeah and Phillips is her maiden name.”
Three hours into their journey, darkness fell and a million stars were lightening up the ink black sky. The absence of the moon made the stars appear bright and powerful. With only themselves and the radio for company, the men continued on their way. Eventually a great building appeared in the beams of their car.
The house stood behind an electric power pylon in the middle of a desolated carpet of half dead scrubs and other low vegetation,
“We might want to board up the windows, the weather man is expecting a tornado“, Garnham said.
“We’ll see,” Burnett answered and they entered the steps of the building.