Each of Grattin’s facilities was supposed to have its own licensed practical nurse, but the low pay and lousy benefits guaranteed a constant shortage of help at all levels. Laurie Teegue, the current LPN at Madison Road Nursing Home, was pulling duty at two other homes and working fifteen hours a day, with no overtime.
They followed her to work outside the town of Marmaduke, Arkansas, gave her a few minutes to get to her tiny office, then barged in with badges on display. “FBI,” they said in unison. One closed the door as the other motioned for her to sit. They wore matching outfits—khakis, navy blazers, white shirts with no ties—as if by dressing down they would not attract attention. Casual as they tried to be, they were still seriously overdressed in this rural outpost.
Laurie fell into her undersized chair behind her disheveled desk and tried to speak. Agent Rumke held up a hand and stopped her. “We prefer that no one knows we’re here, okay? We come in peace, though we have a warrant for your arrest.”
Agent Ritter whipped out some papers, tossed them on the desk, and said, “One count of dispensing an unauthorized controlled substance known as Flaxacill. Ever heard of it?”
She ignored the papers and shook her head. No.
“Who’s the boss of this place?” Rumke asked.
“We don’t have one right now. Can’t keep one.”
“Makes sense. Look, we’re serious about keeping this quiet. So, if someone asks just tell them that we’re a couple of accountants from the home office going over the books. Got it?”
“Whatever. You’re going to arrest me?”
“Not yet. We’re going to offer you a deal that will keep you out of jail and all of this quiet. You want to hear it?”
“Do I have a choice?” She took a tissue and rubbed her eyes.
“Sure you do. You can tell us to get lost, at which time we’ll handcuff you and give you a ride to the jail in Jonesboro. There, you can call a lawyer to try and get out.”
“I’d rather not go that route. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Ritter said, “That’ll be for the jury to determine, if it gets that far. However, the deal we’re prepared to offer will allow you to avoid juries, courts, lawyers, reporters, everyone. You don’t even have to tell your husband.”
“I think I like this deal. What’s Flaxacill?”
“An illegal drug made in China and shipped stateside by the U.S. Postal Service. We think that in your company it’s commonly referred to as vitamin E3. Ever heard of that?”
“Sure.”
“Who gets it?”
“Advanced dementia patients. Do I need a lawyer?”
“Only if you want to go to jail. Listen to us. Here’s the deal. You cooperate with us and help us track down the drug. You act as an informant against your employer, and if things go as planned then the indictment against you will be dismissed.”
“What happens to my employer?”
“Do you really care?”
“No.”
“Good, because they don’t care about you. This is a widespread investigation in fifteen states that will uncover a huge Medicare fraud. Your employer may survive, probably not. If I were you I’d stop worrying about the company and cover my own ass.”
“My brother’s a lawyer in Jonesboro.”
“We know. He specializes in bankruptcy and doesn’t know beans about criminal law.”
She stared at Rumke, then she stared at Ritter. Both were about thirty, cocky, smug, and they knew everything and she knew nothing. They had the power to slap the cuffs on her wrists and march her out the front door, on display for all her patients and coworkers to see. She also had four kids at home, the oldest being eleven, and the idea of their mother sitting in jail was overwhelming. She began to cry.
The following day, Laurie went to the pharmacy during lunch and lifted a bottle of E3 capsules. She chatted with the pharmacist and learned that the vitamins and supplements arrived by overnight shipment once a week from a company warehouse in Texas. The controlled substances were hand-delivered each Wednesday morning by a courier from Little Rock.
Rumke and Ritter alternated their visits to collect the evidence. They were working eleven other nursing homes in northeastern Arkansas. The task force was targeting a hundred Grattin facilities in fifteen states, and after the first month not a word had leaked up to the headquarters in Houston.
The burner rattled for the first time in a week, and Bruce stepped into his office to chat with Dane. She was in Houston, skipping a yoga class and waiting on a friend for lunch. The big news was that she had seen a divorce lawyer the day before and the first visit went well. She was in no hurry to file, though she was sick of living in the same house with Ken Reed, who was seldom at home. The daunting issue was strategy. Did she have the guts to allege adultery and go through the nightmare of trying to prove it, and risk a long ugly court case? She wasn’t sure. If the plans fell into place, Mr. Reed and his company would soon be drowning in all manner of litigation, both civil and criminal.
Bruce knew little about the FBI’s investigation and had no idea about when to expect big news. An agent in Washington called once a week with a five-minute update that was a waste of time.
“I really worry about you, Bruce,” Dane said. “You’re just so vulnerable, just sitting there in your little store where anyone can find you.”
“And do what? Gun me down in the streets? What would Reed and his boys gain by coming after me? They can’t stop the publication. They tried that with Nelson, which, the more you think about it the dumber it gets. The guy was writing a novel that was complete fiction. Reed finds out about it and assumes that when people read the book they’re going to automatically assume he based it on Grattin and their Medicare scam gets uncovered. Kind of a stretch, right?”
“No. Reed didn’t know the book was fiction. He thought Nelson was writing an exposé, a real story about his company.”
“Still, killing him scored no points for the bad guys. The book was finished.”
“They’re nasty people, Bruce. And they are desperate. I think Ken sees it all slipping away.”
“I don’t care, Dane. I’ve changed phones and email addresses and I’m still being careful, which by the way is tiresome. We’re leaving Saturday for a month on Martha’s Vineyard. Noelle wants a change of scenery and there’s nothing happening here at the store. The island’s dead. I’ll be okay. And you?”
“I’m fine. Just keep in touch.”
Bruce ended the call and stared at the phone. If not for his latest wedding vows, he would really like to see Dane again.
Go, Nelson.
Sooner or later, as they say in the trade, luck swings your way.
The sniper hiked a quarter of a mile uphill, through thick woods and without the benefit of a trail. The perfect spot was deep in the trees. He and his partner had walked it four hours earlier and now knew the terrain. He found his perch, a thick white oak with low branches, and he climbed up forty feet and rose above the tops of the other trees. Down below, three hundred and eighty yards away, was the rear patio door of a sprawling and gaudy country home owned by Mr. Higginbotham, the largest asphalt paving contractor in western Ohio.
Higgs was off to Vegas with the boys, a gambling trip he made several times a year. He was now certain that his younger second wife was seeing one of her ex-boyfriends while he was away. The sniper had never met Higgs and wouldn’t know him by sight. Their contract had been arranged by a trusted broker. Higgs had hired some good investigators who had hacked phones and passed along the terrible news that a rendezvous was planned for this afternoon around 4:30, after the housekeeper left.
Once secure and wedged between the trunk and a limb, the sniper slowly opened his case and began assembling his rifle, a military-grade beauty that cost twenty grand. In his business, one could never have enough weaponry. He had never used it before in a live situation, though after hours at the range he was confident he could hit anything at five hundred yards or less. He adjusted the scope, took a close look at the patio door, and shoved in three cartridges. Hopefully he would use only two. Each could be worth a million dollars.
The house was isolated on a paved country road without a neighbor in sight. All the toys were down there: a large, odd-shaped blue pool, a tennis court, a separate garage where Higgs stored his vintage cars, and a small barn where the missus kept her horses. His kids were with the first wife on the other side of the county.
At 4:40, a black Porsche Carrera appeared and slowed and turned into the drive. The sniper embraced his weapon. The driver parked at the rear of the house in such a way that his car could not be seen from the road. Perfect for the sniper, who followed it closely through the scope. Romeo got out—thirty-five years old, plenty of thick blond hair, thin, dressed in jeans. He strode across the patio like a lucky man, stopped at the door for a truly needless but nonetheless nervous glance around, then went inside.
4:41. How long would they last? Under normal circumstances there would be no hurry, but this was a fling and they couldn’t tarry. A proper warm-up, the deed, some pillow talk, perhaps a postcoital cigarette. He’d take the under at forty minutes.
He lost. At 5:28, forty-seven minutes after entering the house, Romeo emerged, closed the door behind himself—no sign of her—and sauntered, perhaps a step slower, to his car. When he touched the door latch, the sniper pulled the trigger. At about the same split second, a six-millimeter bullet from the .243 caliber rifle entered the target’s head just above his left ear and exited through a gaping hole on the right side, taking most of his brain with it. Blood and brain matter splashed against the windows and doors of the car as the target fell hard to the ground.
The sniper extracted the bullet casing from the chamber, reloaded the semiautomatic, and trained his sights on the patio door. With the distance and density of the woods, he had no idea if Mrs. Higginbotham heard the shot, but he suspected she did. He saw a silhouette race through the den. Moments passed, then the patio door opened ever so slightly as she looked at the shocking scene near the Porsche.
Decisions, decisions. What does one do in these situations? To call for help would be to initiate a scandal that would dramatically alter her world, and certainly not for the better. The police would bombard her with questions, but she would have no answers. Her husband would probably beat her and then hire every lawyer in town to make sure she was left in the streets, penniless.
What was a girl to do? She had no idea and she wasn’t thinking clearly.
Her lover was obviously dead. Or was he breathing? She made the fateful decision to sprint out, take a look at him, and then try to think of the next move. But there would not be one. She opened the door, took one step, and the sniper fired. A millisecond later the bullet hit her in the teeth and rocked her head back so violently that she fell into the brick wall beside the door. She was wearing a short white bathrobe, black string panties, nothing else, and as the sniper scanned her with his scope he thought, Such a waste. She was tanned and toned without an ounce of extra body fat. Her fatal flaw had been a penchant for illicit sex, though she never dreamed she would die for it.
The sniper quickly unsnapped the scope, unscrewed the barrel, and with a few precision moves had the rifle back in its case. He strapped it to his back and began his descent from the white oak. There was no hurry. It would be hours before the bodies were discovered. He and his partner had big plans for a steak dinner in a few hours at Harvey’s Rib Shack in downtown Dayton. Over champagne and fine wines they would replay the perfect kills and drink to a two-million-dollar fee. They would check the newspapers in the morning for the shocking story, perhaps see a quote or two from poor Higgs out in Vegas as he reacted with shock to such cold-blooded killings, then they would separate for a few months until their next job.
But a rotted limb changed everything. For an ex–Special Ops known for his sure-footedness, back in the day anyway, such a mistake was unbelievable, though he would not remember it and never have time to analyze it. Head down, he fell fast and hard with nothing to grab onto and no time to brace for an ugly landing. He hit the hard ground with his forehead, and his neck snapped with such force that he knew he was dead. He blacked out and had no idea what time it was when he opened his eyes again. It was dark. He wanted to check his wristwatch but he couldn’t lift his hands. Nothing was moving. The pain in his neck was so excruciating that he wanted to scream. Instead, he stifled a groan, then another. He was on his back and twisted at the waist in an awkward shape that he wanted to adjust, but nothing, not a damned thing was moving. Except for his lungs, and they were labored. He couldn’t see the case with his rifle. His cell phone was in a rear pocket but nothing was within reach.
When he wore a real uniform and stalked enemies around the world, he had always kept a cyanide pill in a pocket to end things quickly if the situation called for it. He closed his eyes and dreamed of a pill now. This was not the way he wanted to die.
Even if she found him, his spinal cord was crushed. Trying to move him would just make matters worse.
She heard the groans before she stumbled upon him. She fell to her knees and looked into his eyes. “What happened?” she hissed.
“I fell,” he grunted. “My neck.”
“Did you get them?”
“Yes, both. Then I fell.”
“What the hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I heard sirens down there. We have to move.”
“I can’t. I’m paralyzed. I can’t move anything.”
“Bullshit, Rick. I’m getting you out of here.”
He closed his eyes and groaned even louder. She stood and walked around the tree, straining for a glimpse of the house, but she could see nothing. With a small laser flashlight, she found the case with the rifle and debated what to do with it. If she took it, and if she got caught with it, she would be toast.
And what to do with him? The fool broke his own neck. Trying to carry him downhill through thick terrain for at least a mile would cause even more neurological damage. She knew that basic truth from her training.
Through his own stupidity he was about to get caught. But not her. And the two-million-dollar fee would not be divided. In the distance she heard a siren.
She walked to a spot beside him and looked down. He opened his eyes and saw her remove a small automatic from her pocket. “No, Karen, no.”
She aimed at his forehead.
“No, please.”
And she fired twice.
To say Rick Patterson was half dead when they found him would be to seriously overstate his condition. With a crushed spinal cord, two gunshot wounds to the head, half his blood drained to the ground, a pulse of 28 and a diastolic blood pressure of 40, he was well beyond half dead. A crew of first responders and paramedics worked on him for an hour under the tree until he was stable enough to be airlifted to a Cincinnati hospital where he underwent eleven hours of surgery. Forty-eight hours later, he was still listed as critical.
And he was not yet Rick Patterson. There was nothing on his body that revealed identity, address, phone number, nothing. A detective with the Ohio State Police obtained a search warrant and took a partial set of fingerprints while the suspect fought for his life on a ventilator. The prints were finally matched to a U.S. Army veteran, one Rick Patterson of Tacoma, Washington. A brother said he worked in private security. Ballistics tests quickly matched his sniper rifle to the carnage on Higgs’s patio, but his two head wounds were caused by smaller bullets from a handgun. Back at the scene, the landscape was scoured with little to show for the effort—a few ineffectual boot markings and some tire tracks.
For days the great mystery baffled the police. The killings of Mrs. Higginbotham and her lover, Jason Jordan, were solved, but who shot Patterson and got away? And why? And who paid him for the contract killings? Mr. Higgs was already being investigated and had hired lawyers.
For days Patterson refused to die. He clung to life with the help of machines and wonder drugs and a tenaciousness the doctors rarely saw.
And on the ninth day, he began to talk.
Bob Cobb had just finished a long walk on the beach, and was pouring a cold beer into a frosty mug for a rest by his pool, when the phone rang. It was Agent Van Cleve from the FBI office in Jacksonville. Bob had met him a month earlier when he began snooping around the island.
Van Cleve asked if Bob could stop by the office tomorrow. Since the office was in downtown Jacksonville and at least an hour away, Bob was hesitant. He was writing these days and, as always, behind, and really didn’t want to kill a day with the FBI.
“It’s rather important,” Van Cleve said. “And we need to discuss it here.”
Bob knew that if he pressed he would get nowhere, so he reluctantly agreed to rearrange his entire day and appease the FBI.
He arrived promptly at 10:00 a.m. and followed Van Cleve to a small room with large screens on three walls. Van Cleve was antsy and eager and obviously on to something. As he dimmed the lights he said, “Got a couple of videos for you.”
The first one, in color, was from a tiny camera inside the sniper’s rifle scope. Van Cleve was saying, “This happened two weeks ago near Dayton, Ohio. The guy getting out of the Porsche is the boyfriend, not the husband, and he’s sneaking into the house for a quickie with the wife. Hubbie is in Vegas with the boys but he left the contract behind. Lover boy goes inside, they tango for forty-seven minutes, and then the fun starts. Here he comes, out the door, walks to his car. Bam. Half his head is blown away by the sniper, who’s almost four hundred yards away. Twenty-six seconds pass and the missus decides to check on him, and, bam, she loses half of her face.”
“This is pretty awesome,” Bob said.
“I thought you’d like it.”
“May I ask how you got this?”
“The sniper was/is a dumbass who, for some unknown reason, thought it would be cute to film a couple of his greatest hits. Doubt if he planned to post this on Facebook, but more than likely he wanted to present it to the husband. Who knows? A dumb move. Big story in western Ohio. You see it by chance?”
“No, missed that one.”
The front page of the Dayton Daily News appeared on another screen with the bold headline: Wife and Lover Dead in Contract Killing. Below it were large photos of the two victims, then a smaller photo of Higgs the husband.
Van Cleve continued, “The sniper was in a tree, and after the killings he somehow fell and snapped his spinal cord. He couldn’t move, so his partner shot him twice in the head, sort of like finishing off a dying animal. The law of the jungle. The police there, along with the FBI, made the smart decision to keep quiet about the sniper, who appears to be a professional. Damned good shot, just not much of a climber. Anyway, not a word in the press about him, so far.”
Van Cleve clicked a button and another video ran through its warm-up. “Here’s where things get good. The sniper is still alive and four days ago he started talking.” The image was of Rick Patterson in a hospital bed, on a ventilator, his head wrapped in heavy white gauze, tubes and wires everywhere, and five stern-faced men in dark suits staring at him. Van Cleve paused the video to say, “That’s him, along with his lawyer, a U.S. attorney, a federal magistrate, and two FBI agents.” On the other side of the bed were two doctors in scrubs. The wide camera angle was from the foot of the bed and it conveyed a scene that was truly hard to grasp.
Van Cleve said, “Patterson is not expected to survive. He has two small but steady brain hemorrhages that the doctors can’t seem to stop, and even if he did hang on his life is pretty much over. He knows it. And so he’s talking, or, rather, communicating. Obviously, with all the tubes and crap in his mouth he can’t talk, but he has regained some movement in his hands. He can scrawl out messages and grunt his approval. Along with all the other wires and tubes there is one that runs to an audio unit. It’s all being recorded in the U.S. Attorney’s office across town. Obviously, he’s in no condition to answer questions but he insisted. He’s very motivated. His doctors objected at first, but hell, they’ve given him a death sentence so how much does it really matter?”
The judge could be heard explaining some basic legal principles to the patient, who held a black marker and moved it awkwardly across a whiteboard propped on his stomach.
The U.S. Attorney leaned in a bit lower and said, “Now, Mr. Patterson, I’m going to ask you some questions, all of which have been approved by your lawyer. Please take your time. We are in no hurry.”
No hurry, Bob thought to himself. Two leaky brain hemorrhages and a broken neck and the man is dying by the minute.
“Were you involved in the planning and murders of Linda Higginbotham and Jason Jordan?”
He wrote the word yes, and the U.S. Attorney repeated it for the record.
“Did you in fact kill both of them?”
Yes.
“And you were paid for these killings?”
Yes.
“How much?”
Two.
“Two million dollars?”
Yes.
“Who paid for the killings?”
A long pause as Patterson slowly scrawled the words: Don’t know. His lawyer said, “He says he doesn’t know.”
“All right, more about that later. And did you act alone?”
No.
“How many accomplices did you have?”
One.
“And his name?”
Without hesitating, Patterson wrote the name: Karen Sharbonnet.
“And where was this person during the killings?”
No response.