Chapter 19
Nineteen
“Zoom in on her face,” Nadine Goodman ordered her cameraman.
Agent Vivian Grace, along with newly reinstated Special Agent Ryan McBride, stood aside as Dr. Kurt Trenton was hefted into a waiting ambulance. According to Nadine’s source from Birmingham PD, a bomb had been attached to the victim’s chest and the word godless was written across his forehead.
Nadine knew Dr. Trenton. His reputation in the medical world was unparalleled. His wife served on a dozen charitable committees. He had two brilliant children at the prestigious Altamont School.
Special Agent in Charge Randall Worth’s unannounced press conference last evening hadn’t mentioned anything about an ongoing case, only that Ryan McBride had been reinstated and temporarily assigned to the Birmingham field office.
Obviously whatever case McBride had been brought here to solve had not been solved.
There was something going on that no one was talking about.
In her eight years as an investigative reporter, Nadine had never encountered a case with a tighter lid.
No one knew anything. She had spoken to Katherine Jones upon her release from the hospital and gotten nothing.
The Byrnes refused to answer any questions regarding their daughter’s abduction.
And now an elite surgeon is tossed into the mix?
Was the same perpetrator committing these abductions? All three had taken place at historic landmarks. Dozens of police officers were involved, and yet no one knew a damned thing. If they did, Nadine would have gotten something from someone, and her sources were bone-dry.
She supposed it didn’t help that charges related to the break-in at McBride’s bungalow were pending.
She was very good at what she did. Some called her ruthless. She, on the other hand, called her methods survival of the fittest.
There were two consistent details in this puzzling investigation: Ryan McBride, whom she had already exposed, and Agent Vivian Grace, a rookie and the newest agent at the Birmingham field office.
Why wasn’t Aldridge or one of the other more senior agents partnered with McBride?
Just another aspect of this strange investigation that made no sense.
“Let’s do the final segment with the departing ambulance in the background,” Nadine instructed her cameraman.
She would get this out of the way, then hang around the hospital to see if she could get an interview with someone . . . anyone. Afterward, she was going on another digging expedition.
Before this day ended, she would know all there was to know about Special Agent Vivian Grace.