Passed out, then.
“Sir,” Laura called out, loudly. “Sir, can you hear us?”
There was no response from the man on the couch.
Nate stepped forward, past her. He moved to the man’s side, squatting down in order to take his pulse. “He’s alive. Just passed out.”
“Must have drunk himself into a stupor,” Laura muttered, moving to join Nate. She shook the man’s shoulder, then again a little rougher, raising her voice. “Sir, wake up. We need to talk to you.”
At length, there was a mumbled, incoherent noise from the man, and then his eyes flickered blearily open. If he was surprised to find a couple of strangers in his home, he didn’t show it. He just stared at them dully, then screwed up his eyes—perhaps in pain. If he’d drunk enough to pass out, he was probably nursing a hell of a hangover.
“Are you Dr. Richard Fairmont?” Laura asked, loudly. Partly to make sure that he understood her. Partly because she knew it would make him wince, and he was either a dangerous medical fraud or a killer.
“Not anymore,” he said, brushing them aside and struggling to sit up. His hands groped for a bottle at his side and found it, pressed into the cushions. He lifted it and squinted, then sighed at finding it empty. “Go away. I don’t want any dreams today.”
“We’re not a dream, sir,” Nate said, with a patience that Laura didn’t quite feel. “You’re awake. We’re FBI agents. We’re here to ask you some questions.”
Dr. Fairmont blinked at him, staring at the two of them for a few seconds. He looked down at the empty bottle in his hand, as if considering whether it was real or not. Apparently, the feel of the cool glass on his hand was enough to tell him that it was.
He moved quicker than Laura would have thought possible for a man in his state. He flung the glass bottle at the ground between Laura and Nate, making it shatter into pieces. The two of them flinched aside, away from the flying shards, and in that instant he was gone.
He lunged between them, jumping over the glass in his bare feet, and shot toward the front door—which they had left open after entering the house. By the time Laura turned around, with Nate still getting to his feet, he was outside, gone down the street.
She cursed and began to race after him, hurtling through the hall of the house and outside. She had to pause for a moment to look to either side, spotting him running off to the right. He was only dressed in a robe over a vest and boxer shorts, no shoes or socks, nothing to keep him warm below the knee. It was probably a shocking sight for the neighbors, too. He’d just shot out of there like a bat out of hell, apparently with no regard for even his own health.
Laura had several advantages. She was younger, she was fitter, and she was wearing shoes—and she was sober. A fact that she somewhat regretted at times, but now it would help. Behind her she was dimly aware of Nate’s heavy boots running out of the house, but he didn’t follow her. She assumed he was taking a different direction, just in case they needed to head the guy off. That was standard practice for them, after all.
Laura normally relied on her visions to help her in these situations, but nothing was coming. She hadn’t had time to touch anything in the house—hadn’t wanted to. It was all so grimy, and the stench of alcohol didn’t help. She was almost afraid of it. Like if she touched something and found it sticky she might end up licking her fingers just to get a taste of it. But now she had no way of knowing which direction he was going to go in, and some kind of wild adrenaline was pushing him faster than she’d expected.
They flashed by house after house, until Laura was right on him. Almost caught up.
“Stop!” she shouted. She didn’t want to have to tackle this guy down. He was old, and probably frail in at least some way, and the street was paved. That would mean injury for him—scrapes, cuts, and bruises that were harder to recover from for a man of his age. Maybe even a dislocated hip or a popped knee.
He ignored her, but he must have heard how close by she was. He must have, because he suddenly darted to the side, down a narrow side street, and Laura had to skid to a stop so she could turn and follow him, losing precious seconds.
But it didn’t matter, because Dr. Fairmont had run right into Nate’s broad chest, and was now struggling to breathe from the impact as Nate held him up.
“Dr. Fairmont,” Nate said, only just out of breath. “I think you’d better come with us to the precinct.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Nate took a sip of the instant coffee from the precinct’s machine, wishing that there was some kind of law for places like this to have decent coffee instead of the hot, brown water they normally served. It did almost nothing for his tiredness, tasted like garbage, and in the end only really succeeded in making him feel more weary.
But he drank it out of habit anyway.
“Maybe we should make the next one a double shot,” he said, nodding at the matching cup that Dr. Fairmont was holding. He’d stopped swaying quite so much in his seat, but now he was starting to shake. Clear signs of alcohol withdrawal. Nate wasn’t confident he would be useful to them for very long, but he’d rather get the guy sober enough to talk than try to get him back into action with an Irish coffee.
“If the machine does it,” Laura said, sighing into her own cup. “Or maybe I ought to send someone on a run to a local place. Get something that has actually been in the vicinity of a coffee bean.”
Nate wanted to chuckle at that, but then he remembered that he wasn’t talking to her. Not outside of a professional capacity, anyway. He looked at Fairmont closely instead, trying to assess his level of competency.
“What do you think?” he asked. “You need another coffee to get you back with us?”
Fairmont shifted in his chair, throwing back the last of his unspectacular plastic cup. “I would rather know what this is all about,” he said, and for once the slur on his words was gone.
Nate glanced at Laura, who nodded just subtly. They were on the same page. He seemed ready enough. For an alcoholic this severe, maybe this was as good as he was going to get. Once the withdrawal really set in, it could be powerful enough to stop him from being any use to them at all.
“Dr. Fairmont, what were you doing yesterday evening?”