Chapter 6

The dead line hummed in Whitlock's ear for a moment before he lowered the phone. He didn't look surprised. He looked like a man who had finally found the thread and was pleased to feel it strain.

The silence in the office was enough to hear the fluorescent lights buzz. Rucker had gone so still that Marisol checked him for a pulse. Poole stood with her arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the general like she was waiting for the explosion.

Whitlock pressed the receiver back into the cradle.

"Las Vegas," he said. "A strip-mall office under a medical practice name. That's not a hospital, and it's not a clinic. That's a front." He looked up at Marisol. "You see what she just told us? She didn't ask what record. She didn't ask who I was. She said 'wrong number' and hung up. That's not a doctor who's surprised to hear from a general. That's a doctor who knows exactly which body she's been asked about."

Marisol felt the word "buried" curl in her chest like a sleeping animal. She had been dead eleven days, then a ghost for a hundred. The woman on the phone had signed her name to a sheet that said "do not revive," and she had known.

"Sir," Poole said, in her worn, gravelly voice, "that phone number came from the alumni directory? A six-by-eight square in a professional membership handbook? Is it that easy?"

"It's not," Whitlock said. "The alumni directory lists working physicians who volunteer their contact. She used it as her front office. That's why I called the office line and not the cell — because I wanted her to hear my voice and know what I was asking about." He paused. "And I wanted that call recorded."