Page 64 of Bonded in Death

“There are checks and balances.”

“Yeah, and one of the checks and balances—the doctor who pronounced him—resigned and took off a couple of weeks after he pronounced Potter dead from a brain tumor. One they didn’t know he had until he died? I’m not buying it.

“I need the ashes to verify. I’m asking you to find a way to get them to me. It’s sure as hell not something I’d ask for unless I needed it. He has a kill list.”

She glanced at the board, tried a specific card. “Marjorie Wright’s on it.”

“Dame Wright? The actress?”

“That’s right. She did covert work for the Underground in the Urbans. I imagine you can verify that if you need to.”

He said nothing, just studied her for a full ten seconds.

“Let me see what I can do.”

“Appreciated. Later.”

She got up, paced. It fit. It damn well fit. Not yet explaining who and how the driver connected, but it fit.

She sat again. She needed to write the report, and carefully. She needed to give both Mira and Whitney time to read it and digest it.

And she didn’t have a hell of a lot of time herself.

When she’d written it, gave it no more than a cursory check, she sent it off.

She needed thinking time, and couldn’t take it.

Instead, she started a search on the prison doctor.

She found a number of individuals by that name, living and dead, adult and child. And a few of those who registered as doctors.

But she found no record of a Martin J. Pierce, doctor, who’d worked at the prison. None who lived or had lived in Manchester, England.

“Because you don’t exist anymore. How much did he give you, Pierce? How much to help him fake his death? Enough to wipe out your past, create a new identification, and I just bet, live a damn swanky life as somebody else.”

She contacted Feeney. He said, “Yo.”

“I need a top-grade search on Martin J. Pierce, a doctor, a prison doctor in Manchester, England. He’s wiped off the system, and he’d have done that around November ’56 or early ’57.

“If you can’t find anything, I’ll push it on Roarke.”

“You trying to hurt my feelings?”

“I need to find the bastard, Feeney.”

“That’s coming loud and clear. We’ll get on it.”

“Thanks. Listen, I’ve got a lot of data on the Rossi murder, the connection to the Urbans. I’ll fill you in as soon as I can.”

“This Pierce guy in that?”

“I don’t know if he goes back to the Urbans, but he’s in it now. Can you get somebody up there to do a deep analysis on the security feed from the terminal? On the driver—the face?”

“We haven’t hit on that.”

“You won’t. I want to know if it’s fake. A disguise. Prosthetics, masking. He’ll have had work done, changed his look, but it’s got to be more.”

“You got my interest.”

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