Connie Mendez walked in, fiddling with the buttons on the white tech coat she was wearing over her pink pajamas, pajamas like Natalie’s, also covered with Hooley’s blood. Natalie went to her immediately, hugged her. “How is he, Connie?”
“They let me stay near him until they wheeled him into the OR. He was awake again, Natalie, and he smiled at me. Then they locked me out and gave me this jacket and showed me to a bathroom to clean up.
“I called Luis at the house and spoke to Detective Fisher from Metro, Agent Savich. He wants to speak to you about the crime scene tomorrow. He said he put an APB out for the wounded man, alerted the local hospitals. I don’t think there’s much chance he’ll show up at one, though.”
Savich said, “Natalie, would you please go outside for a moment, I want to have Connie tell me exactly what happened. Then I want you to tell me. That way, we should get everything.”
Natalie pulled the lab coat around her. “I’ll go to the nurses’ station, see if they can tell me how the surgery is going.” Savich waited until she was out of the room, then said to Connie, “Tell me exactly what happened, Connie.”
Connie drew a deep breath, gathering herself. “Okay, they shot at each other at nearly the same moment, and Hooley hit him, in the side, I think. He staggered back and threw the knife, right into Hooley’s chest. The bullet didn’t slow the guy. He got up that rope and over the wall as I was firing at him. I was still too far away. No, that’s an excuse. I missed, I got in two shots, and I missed him. Me, who used to live at the firing range.”
Sherlock said matter-of-factly, “You know as well as I do what an adrenaline rush can do to your aim, and a moving target who can fire back at you. You’re never close enough, especially in the dark. We’ve all missed, Connie.” Sherlock lightly laid her hand on her arm. She felt the rippling flesh from the adrenaline rush.
Connie slowly nodded. “But still—let me get on with it. By the time the gates opened enough for me to squeeze through, all I saw were the taillights of a car as it sped away. Even wounded, even with that uneven gait Hooley said he had, he was fast. I can’t tell you the make of the car, the license, anything. He was too far away and it was too dark.
“All I’m sure about is that it was a man. He was dressed all in black, even a black ski mask. The rope he used to climb over the wall was still on the ground where he left it. I was too worried about Hooley to secure it. Natalie and I waited together with him until the ambulance arrived. Both of us kept yammering at him, but he never woke up.
“Luis—Luis Alvarez—he’s the other bodyguard, and Mrs. Black’s driver, stayed behind with the police. I told him about the rope. Maybe we can trace—something.”
Savich said, “Davis, will you get Natalie? I’ve got some questions for her. Connie, thank you.”
When Natalie walked back into the waiting room, Savich said, “You okay, Natalie?”
She sat down and Perry moved to sit beside her. “Yes, I’m together again.”
Savich said, “Tell me about the alarm system. I assume the intruder managed to turn off the alarm?”
Natalie was getting herself together. Now she was furious. Look at her, falling apart like an idiot heroine in a gothic novel. She straightened, said in a clear, strong voice, “As you know, windows on upper levels with no external access usually aren’t alarmed, but Brundage was thorough. Since I like fresh air all year around, he had a different alarm installed specifically for our bedroom, set to go off only if the window was pushed up higher than twelve inches, which it never was.”
Savich said, “So this guy figured once he’d turned off the house alarm, he was home free.”
Natalie nodded. “He had no way of knowing about the separate window alarm. It’s powered from my bedroom.”
Perry said, “The question is, how did the guy disable the house alarm?”
Davis said, “Anyone with enough experience and the general specifications could disarm the system. Just as someone gave your own alarm code to Carlos, Perry, the person behind all this could have also given the intruder the alarm code to Natalie’s house alarm.”
Davis sat quietly, his hands clasped between his legs, his coffee untouched at his elbow as he listened as Savich asked Natalie to run through it all again from the moment she awoke to the arrival of the ambulance.
He looked over at Natalie, who was rubbing her arms, staring down at the faded green squiggles on the carpet beneath her sneakers, splattered red and black, still unlaced. She could have tripped and fallen on her face. But she hadn’t. He admired her greatly in that moment.