Ms America and the Mayhem in Miami (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 3)
Page 31
Sheila’s expression remained stoic. She never mentioned the rape anymore. It’d been years since she made Reid give up the search, stop airing the scumbag’s profile.
Reid couldn’t understand that but he knew that every victim made his or her own choice about how to get on with the rest of their life. That’s what it was, too. There was Before it happened, and After. Before you intersected with evil, when you didn’t think it could happen to you, and after, when you knew it could.
Together they abandoned the booth, shut down the studio for the night, and rode the elevator to the subterranean parking garage. Reid accompanied Sheila to her car as a courtesy. The building was secure as a fortress. Given the hate their work generated in the scum-of-the-earth population, it had to be.
Sheila settled herself in her white Jetta and rolled down the window. She seemed to hesitate, then, “Do you want to come over to my place for a nightcap? It might help you relax.”
He couldn’t let himself go down that road again. It would be no more fair to Sheila now than it had been then. “Not tonight.” He kept his tone light.
She nodded. He got the idea his refusal came as no surprise. “Tomorrow do you want to meet here or at the airport?” she asked.
“At the airport.” The flight left at 9 AM. It’d be another short night.
“The funeral is at noon. You have the background file I gave you?”
He nodded. He had it; he just hadn’t read it. He couldn’t focus on the segment about the writer murders until the Bigelow profile aired. He was too hyped about whether a good tip might come in.
It was naïve, he knew, the triumph of hope over experience. It’d aired how many times without a tip leading to a capture? Six. That made this seven.
Lucky seven.
He let his hope rise as he walked to his own car.
*
Before dawn broke over the Potrero Hills neighborhood of San Francisco, FBI Special Agent in Charge Lionel Simpson got a phone call. He reached a brawny arm toward his bedside table, kept his voice low so as not to wake his wife. “Simpson.”
“It’s Higuchi.” Simpson’s assistant in the local field office. “Sorry to call at this hour but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Whatcha got?”
“The prints ID’ed from the blowgun that shot the dart in the Maggie Boswell case.”
Simpson sat up a little straighter. “And?”
“We got a few matches. One in particular.”
Beside Simpson, his wife hiked the patchwork quilt higher on her shoulders and snuggled deeper into her pillow. He lowered his voice. “Whose?”
“One set belongs to Annette Rowell.”
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