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CHAPTER 32
“Remember when I told you our bird has flown?” Johnson said as she stepped into Thomas’s office.
“Yeah?” He glanced up at her and saw the irritation in her expression. “What?” It was late afternoon, the offices beginning to empty out, the noises of the shift change, people talking, footsteps walking swiftly filtered in through the hallway.
“Well, it gets worse,” Johnson said. “He’s not just flown, but flown the damned coop. I just got off the phone with the hospital in Portland where he was to be taken. Never arrived.” She rounded Thomas’s desk and stood in front of it, not bothering to sit. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her usually smooth face was pulled into an expression of utter consternation. “The Portland PD doesn’t know anything about it, nor do the state guys. I tried to phone our favorite attorney Alex Rousseau and she’s not taking any calls right now. Convenient, huh?”
“So Jonas McIntyre is in the wind.” Thomas shook his head. Just when they were getting somewhere.
“Seems so.”
“He left with Rousseau; she knows where he is.”
“And now, once again, with Brittlynn Atwater’s statement, he just promoted himself to suspect number one.”
“Person of interest,” he reminded her.
“My ass. And if Rousseau knows where he is?” Her dark eyes flashed. “Let’s go.”
“Right. But first, I want you to take a look at this,” he said, motioning her to take a look at his computer monitor as a burst of laughter came from outside in the hallway. With an irritated look at the doorway—who could find humor on a day like this?—she circumvented the desk to stand behind him.
“I’ve seen this,” she said, eyeing the screen. “It’s a shot of the group that was assembled at the hospital when Jonas was inside, his ridiculous fan club or whatever. This is the one that includes the girl who looks like Marlie Robinson.”
“Yeah, I know. But now look at this one.” Thomas brought up another picture, a wider angle of the same assemblage, including more of the people who had attended the rally. In this shot Officer Mullins and the thin woman with overbleached hair were front and center. The Marlie Robinson look-alike was caught on one side of the picture.
“Yeah. So?” She was squinting and pointed a finger at the woman in the long coat and colored glasses. “There’s our girl again.”
“Yes, and over here—I think that’s Kara.” He indicated a group in the opposite corner where several people were exiting the hospital, and in the group was a woman with a bandage peeking out from beneath her dark hair. Her head was turned slightly, her features not caught in the camera’s lens, her body hidden by other people, but in Thomas’s estimation, the woman with the bandage was Kara McIntyre.
“Wow.” Johnson saw it, too. “They were that close to each other.”
“And over here—what do you see?” He pointed to a large man partially hidden by the trunk of a tree. All that was visible of his face was the brim of a baseball hat and the tip of his nose.
“Some dude.”
“Yeah, some dude, and what is he looking at?”
Johnson leaned forward for a closer view and her lips flattened. She drew an imaginary line across the screen with her finger. Starting with the man and the tip of his nose and through the crowd to land on Marlie—or someone who sure as hell looked like her. Most everyone else’s attention was turned toward the hospital doors, but this man was staring straight at the woman in the tinted glasses and long black coat.
“Recognize him?”
She shook her head. “The tree hides most of his face, as does the bill of his cap.” She straightened. “But maybe there’s another camera shot, from a different angle, or tape from a security camera or something from the TV stations.”
“Or selfies? Pictures posted online from people who were there.”
She was nodding. “I’ll get right on it.”
“And I’ll track down Alex Rousseau. Whether she likes it or not, she’s going to tell us where she’s stashed her killer of a client.”
“Alleged killer,” Johnson said sarcastically as she was walking out of his office. “Remember that:alleged.Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Again,” Thomas muttered under his breath, and wondered how the hell he was going to get around double jeopardy and charge the bastard again. There had to be a way.
* * *
Trudging through the snow, Jonas ignored some of the lingering pain from the accident. He’d lived through worse. Beatings in the prison yard had been infrequent but had occurred, a shiv had once been thrust into his thigh, barely missing his femoral artery. He’d lived through it all, toughened up with exercise until his body was all lean muscle. Physical pain wasn’t something he couldn’t get through. Emotional pain, though? That was tougher, no matter how devout he tried to be. He wasn’t big on the whole concept of turning the other cheek. He preferred the Old Testament ideology: “Eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand . . .”
“Exodus 21:24,” he said aloud.