Chapter 9 - The Costly Mistake
They went three days later.
The Marshal's name was Dennis Ozawa. He was a compact man in his fifties with a wedding ring and a daughter's photograph taped to the inside of his credential wallet, and he did not talk much. He drove with both hands on the wheel and he checked the mirror every ninety seconds, which Erin recognized as a habit from someone who had been followed before.
"You've done this kind of thing before," she said.
"I've served subpoenas on facilities that didn't want to be served." Ozawa glanced at her. "I've never served one on a facility that was actively hiding a person. That's a first. But the paperwork is the same."
"And if they refuse?"
"Then I call a judge. And if the judge says I'm right, then they don't refuse anymore."
"And if the judge says you're wrong?"
Ozawa was quiet for a moment. "Then I take you home and you get a lawyer and I file a report that says what I saw, and the report goes into a system that nobody reads, and then we see what happens. That's the worst case. That's not nothing."
Erin looked out the window.
"I need you to understand something," she said. "If they have him, and if they move him, and if he disappears, I don't think I'm going to be okay. I don't think I'm going to be any version of okay. So I need you to do everything you can."
Ozawa looked at her in the mirror.
"That's the job, ma'am," he said. "That's always been the job."
Her phone rang before she could answer him. It was Avery.
"Where are you?" Avery asked.
"In the car. Fifteen minutes out."
"Erin, I need to tell you something and I need you to hear it. I called a contact at the contractor this morning — a lawyer I went to JAG school with, someone I trust — and I asked him a hypothetical. I asked him what would happen if a federal subpoena was served on a facility that was holding a patient who was not on any public roster."
"And?"
"And my friend said, and I quote, 'The facility would comply, because facilities that don't comply get closed.' And then he said something else. He said, 'But you should know that the patient in that hypothetical would be moved within twenty-four hours of the subpoena being signed.'"
Erin's blood went cold.
"When was the subpoena signed?"
"Yesterday afternoon. Four o'clock."
She looked at the Marshal's dashboard clock. It was 5:58 pm.
"Ozawa," she said. "Drive faster."
Ozawa hit the lights.
It was her mother's old number, which had been disconnected for three years.
She answered.
"Erin." It was her brother's voice. Weaker than she remembered, slower, but unmistakable. "Don't come."
"Michael—"
"Don't come. They know you're coming. There's a plan to move me tonight and they are going to say I attacked a nurse and they are going to put me in a psych hold and then I'm gone. Don't come. Get a lawyer. Get the press. But don't come."
The line went dead.
Erin sat in the back seat of the car and stared at her phone.
Ozawa said, "Ma'am?"
She had two choices.
She could turn the car around and follow the plan she had spent two weeks building. The subpoena would be served on a facility that would turn out to be empty. She would spend six months in court and eventually lose. Michael would be gone.
Or she could go in now and be wrong.
She looked at the Marshal.
"We need to be there in twenty minutes," she said. "Not forty."
Ozawa looked at her. Then he nodded.
They arrived at the facility at 6:12 pm. It was a low gray building with a chain-link fence and a sign that said Chesapeake Rehabilitation Partners, Inc. There was no press. There was no Congressman Reyes. There was only Erin Walsh, a U.S. Marshal, and a subpoena.
The security guard at the gate was polite. He made a phone call. He came back and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, we don't have anyone by that name here."
"Then you won't mind if we come in and look."
"I do mind, actually. You'll need to come back with a warrant."
"I have a subpoena."
"A subpoena is not a warrant."
Ozawa stepped forward. "Sir, this is a federal subpoena. You are required to permit access to the records of the patient identified in this document."
"I'm required to follow my employer's instructions, and my employer says come back with a warrant."
Ozawa looked at Erin.
Erin looked at the building.
And then, through a window on the second floor, she saw a face.
It was thinner than she remembered. It was paler than she remembered. The left arm ended below the elbow. But it was her brother, and his eyes found hers through the glass, and for one second he was the loud, funny, terrible-at-calling-home man she had grown up with.
Then a hand pulled him back from the window.
Erin was running before she knew she was moving. She was at the fence before the guard could stop her. She was shouting her brother's name and she was crying and she was not an Air Force captain anymore and she was not a plan.
She was a sister.
Ozawa caught her arm. "Ma'am. Ma'am. I need you to stop."
"He's in there. I saw him. He's in there."
"I know. And if you go over that fence, everything we have is gone. Do you understand me? Everything. You will be arrested and charged and your brother will disappear and nobody will ever know we were here."
Erin stopped.
She stood at the fence with her hand wrapped in the chain link and she cried.
May you like
Ozawa stepped back. He pulled out his phone and called someone. He spoke for a minute and then he looked at her.
"There's a federal judge in Baltimore who owes me a favor," he said. "I'm going to get a warrant. It will take four hours. Go get your lawyer."
