"What sport do you play?" I asked him.
"I play for the Yellow Jackets," he answered brightly, for he had found a co-conspirator in his quest to stay up past bedtime.
"The Yellow Jackets?"
"That's my Little League team. You know, we beat everybody around here. I'm surprised you haven't heard of us."
"I'm certain I would have heard of your team if I lived here. Wren. But I don't. " He regarded me as if I were some exotic creature behind glass in the zoo. "} play basketball, too. I can dribble between my legs. I bet you can't do that."
"You're absolutely right. I can't. I'd like you to tell me about your friendship with Emily Steiner." His eyes dropped to his hands, which were nervously fiddling with the edge of the blanket.
"Had you known her a long time?" I continued.
"I've seen her around. We're in the same youth group at church." He looked at me.
"Plus, we're both in the sixth grade but we have different homeroom teachers.
I have Mrs. Winters."
"Did you get to know Emily right after her family moved here?"
"I guess so. They came from California. Mom says they have earth shakes out there because the people don't believe in Jesus."
"It seems Emily liked you a great deal," I said.
"In fact, I'd say she had a big crush on you. Were you aware of that?" He nodded, eyes cast down again.
"Wren, can you tell me about the last time you saw her?"
"It was at church. She came in with her guitar because it was her turn."
"Her turn for what?"
"For music. Usually Owen or Phil plays the piano, but sometimes Emily would play guitar. She wasn't very good."
"Were you supposed to meet her at church that afternoon?" Color mounted his cheeks and he sucked in his lower lip to keep it from trembling.
"It's all right. Wren. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I asked her to meet me there early," he quietly said.
"What was her reaction?"
"She said she would but not to tell anybody."
"Why did you want her to meet you early?" I continued to probe.
"I wanted to see if she would."
"Why?" Now his face was very red and he was working hard to hold back tears.
"I don't know," he barely said.
"Wren, tell me what happened."
"I rode my bike to the church just to see if she was there."
"What time would this have been?"
"I don't know. But it was at least an hour before the meeting was supposed to start," he said.
"And I saw her through the window. She was inside sitting on the floor practicing guitar."
"Then what?"
"I left and came back with Paul and Will at five. They live over there." He pointed.
"Did you say anything to Emily?" I asked. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he impatiently wiped them away.
"I didn't say nothing. She kept staring at me but I pretended not to see her. She was upset. Jack asked her what was wrong. "
"Who's Jack?"
"The youth leader. He goes to Montreat Anderson College. He's real fat and's got a beard."
"What was her reply when Jack asked what was wrong?"
"She said she felt like she was getting the flu. Then she left."
"How long before the meeting was over?"
"When I was getting the basket off the top of the piano.
"Cause it was my turn to take up the collection."
"This would have been at the very end of the meeting?"
"That's when she ran out. She took the shortcut." He bit his lower lip and gripped the blanket so hard that the small bones of his hands were clearly defined.
"How do you know she took a shortcut?" I asked. He looked up at me and sniffed loudly. I handed him several tissues, and he blew his nose.
"Wren," I persisted, "did you actually see Emily take the shortcut?"
"No, ma'am," he meekly said.
"Did anybody see her take the shortcut?" He shrugged.
"Then why do you think she took it?"
"Everybody says so," he replied simply.
"Just as everybody has said where her body was found?" I was gentle. When he did not respond, I added more forcefully, "And you know exactly where that is, don't you. Wren?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said almost in a whisper.
"Will you tell me about that place?" Still staring at his hands, he answered, "It's just this place where lots of colored people fish. There's a bunch of weeds and slime, and huge bullfrogs and snakes hanging out of the trees, and that's where she was. A colored man found her, and all she had on was her socks, and it scared him so bad he turned white as you are. After that Dad put in all the lights."
"Lights?"
"He put all these lights in the trees and everywhere. It makes it harder for me to sleep, and then Mom gets mad. "
"Was it your father who told you about the place at the lake?" Wren shook his head.
"Then who did?" I asked.
"Creed."
"Creed?"
"He's one of the janitors at school. He makes toothpicks, and we buy them for a dollar. Ten for a dollar. He soaks them in peppermint and cinnamon.
I like the cinnamon best'cause they're real hot like Fireballs. Sometimes I trade him candy when I run out of lunch money. But you can't tell anybody. " He looked worried.
"What does Creed look like?" I asked as a quiet alarm began to sound in the back of my brain.
"I don't know," Wren said.
"He's a greaser'cause he's always wearing white socks with boots. I guess he's pretty old." He sighed.
"Do you know his last name?" Wren shook his head.
"Has he always worked at your school?" He shook his head again.
"He took Albert's place. Albert got sick from smoking, and they had to cut his lung out."
"Wren," I asked, "did Creed and Emily know each other?" He was talking faster and faster.
"We used to make her mad by saying Creed was her boyfriend'cause one time he gave her some flowers he picked. And he would give her candy'cause she didn't like toothpicks. You know, a lot of girls would rather have candy than toothpicks."
"Yes," I answered with a grim smile, "I suspect a lot of girls would."
The last thing I asked Wren was if he had visited the place at the lake where Emily's body had been found. He claimed he had not.
"I believe him," I said to Marino as we drove away from the Maxwells' well-lit house.
"Not me. I think he's lying his little ass off so his old man don't whip the shit out of him." He turned down the heat.
"This ride heats up better than any one I've ever had. All it's missing is heaters in the seats like you got in your Benz."
"The way he described the scene at the lake," I went on, "tells me he's never been there. I don't think he left the candy there, Marino."
"Then who did?"
"What do you know about a custodian named Creed?"
"Not a damn thing."
"Well," I said, "I think you'd better find him. And I'll tell you something else. I don't think Emily took the shortcut around the lake on her way home from the church."
"Shit," he complained.
"I hate it when you get like this. Just when pieces start to fall in place you shake the hell out of them like a damn puzzle in a box."
"Marino, I took the path around the lake myself. There's no way an eleven-year-old girl-or anybody else, for that matter-would do that when it's getting dark. And it would have been almost completely dark by six p.m." which was the time Emily headed home. "
"Then she lied to her mother," Marino said.
"It would appear so. But why?"
"Maybe because Emily was up to something."
"Such as?"
"I don't know. You got any Scotch in the room? I mean, there's no point in asking if you got bourbon."
"You're right," I said.
"I don't have bourbon."
I found fi
ve messages awaiting me when I returned to the Travel-Eze. Three were from Benton Wesley. The Bureau was sending the helicopter to pick me up at dawn. When I got hold of Wesley he cryptically said, "Among other things, we've got rather a crisis situation with your niece. We're bringing you straight back to Quantico."
"What's happened?" I asked as my stomach closed like a fist.
"Is Lucy all right?"
"Kay, this is not a secured line."
"But is she all right?"
"Physically," he said, "she's fine."
10
The next morning I woke up to mist and could not see the mountains. My return north was postponed until afternoon, and I went out for a run in the brisk, moist air.
I wended my way through neighborhoods of cozy homes and modest cars, smiling as a miniature collie behind a chain link fence raced from one border of the yard to another, barking frantically at falling leaves.
The owner emerged from the house as I went past.
"Now, Shooter, hush up!" The woman wore a quilted robe, fuzzy slippers, and curlers, and didn't seem to mind a bit walking outside like that. She picked up the newspaper and smacked it against her palm as she yelled some more. I imagined that prior to Emily Steiner's death, the only crime anyone worried about in this part of the world was a neighbor stealing your newspaper or stringing toilet paper through your trees. Cicadas were sawing the same scratchy tune they had played last night, and locust, sweet peas, and morning glories were wet with dew. By eleven, a cold rain had begun to fall, and I felt as if I were at sea surrounded by brooding waters. I imagined the sun was a porthole, and if I could look through it to the other side I might find an end to this gray day. It was half past two before the weather improved enough for me to leave. I was instructed that the helicopter could not land at the high school because the Warhorses and majorettes would be in the midst of practice. Instead, Whit and I were to meet at a grassy field inside the rugged stone double-arched gate of a tiny town called Montreal, which was as Presbyterian as predestination and but a few miles from the Travel-Eze. The Black Mountain Police arrived with me before Whit appeared, and I sat in a cruiser parked on a dirt road, watching children play flag football. Boys ran after girls and girls ran after boys as everybody pursued the small glory of snatching a red rag from an opposing player's waistband. Young voices carried on a wind that sometimes caught the ball and passed it through the fingers of trees huddled at borders, and whenever it spiraled out of bounds into briars or the street, everybody paused. Equality was sent to the bench as girls waited for boys. When the ball was retrieved, play went on as usual.
I was sorry to interrupt this innocent frolicking when the distinctive chopping noise became audible. The children froze into a tableau of wonderment as the Bell Jetranger lowered itself with a roaring wind to the center of the field. I boarded and waved goodbye as we rose above trees. The sun settled into the horizon like Apollo lying down to sleep, and then the sky was as thick as octopus ink. I saw no stars when we arrived at the Academy. Benton Wesley, who had been kept informed of our progress by radio, was waiting when we landed. The instant I climbed out of the helicopter, he had my arm and was leading me away.
"Come on," he said.
"It's good to see you, Kay," he added under his breath, and the pressure of his fingers on my arm unsettled me more.
"The fingerprint recovered from Ferguson's panties was left by Denesa Steiner."
"What?" He propelled me swiftly through the dark.
"And the ABO grouping of the tissue we found in his freezer is 0-positive. Emily Steiner was 0-positive. We're still waiting for DNA, but it appears Ferguson stole the lingerie from the Steiner home when he broke in to abduct Emily."
"You mean, when someone broke in and abducted Emily."
"That's right. Gault could be playing games."
"Benton, for God's sake, what crisis? Where's Lucy?"
"I imagine she's in her dorm room," he replied as we walked into the lobby of Jefferson.
I squinted in the light and was not cheered by a digital sign behind the information desk announcing WELCOME TO THE FBI ACADEMY. I did not feel Welcome this night.
"What did she do?" I persisted as he used a magnetized card to unlock a set of glass doors with Department of Justice and National Academy seals.
"Wait until we get downstairs," he said.
"How's your hand? And your knee?" I remembered.
"Much better since I went to a doctor."
"Thanks," I said dryly.
"I'm referring to you. You're the only doctor I've been to recently."
"I might as well clean your stitches while I'm here."
"That won't be necessary."
"I need hydrogen peroxide and cotton swabs. Don't worry." I smelled Hoppes as we walked through the gun-cleaning room.
"It shouldn't hurt very much." We took the elevator to the lower level, where the Investigative Support Unit was the fire in the belly of the FBI. Wesley reigned over eleven other profilers, and at this hour, every one of them had left for the day. I had always liked the space where Wesley worked, for he was a man of sentiment and understatement, and one could not possibly know this without knowing him.
While most people in law enforcement filled walls and shelves with commendations and souvenirs from their war against base human nature, Wesley chose paintings, and he had several very fine ones. My favorite was an expansive landscape by Valoy Baton, who I believed was as good as Remington and one day would cost as much. I had several Baton oil paintings in my home, and what was odd was that Wesley and I had discovered the Utahan artist independent of each other. This is not to say that Wesley did not have his occasional exotic trophy, but he displayed only those that held meaning. The Viennese white police cap, the bearskin cap from a Cold Stream Guard, and silver gaucho spurs from Argentina, for example, had nothing to do with serial killers or any other atrocity Wesley worked as a matter of course. They were gifts from well-traveled friends like me. In fact, Wesley had many mementos of our relationship because when words failed I spoke in symbols. So he had an Italian scabbard, a pistol with scrims hawed ivory grips, and a Mont Blanc pen that he kept in a pocket over his heart.
"Talk to me," I said, taking a chair.
"What else is going on? You look awful."
"I feel awful." He loosened his tie and ran his fingers through his hair.
"Kay" -he looked at me"-I don't know how to tell you this. Christ! "
"Just say it," I said very quietly as my blood went cold.
"It appears that Lucy broke into ERF, that she violated security."
"How could she break in?" I asked incredulously.
"She has clearance to be there, Benton."
"She does not have clearance to be there at three o'clock in the morning, which was when her thumbprint was scanned into the biometric lock system."
I stared at him in disbelief.
"And your niece certainly does not have clearance to go into classified files pertaining to classified projects being worked on over there."
"What projects?" I dared to ask.
"It appears she went into files pertaining to electro- optics, thermal imaging, video and audio enhancement. And she apparently printed programs from the electronic version of case management that she's been working on for us."
"You mean from CAIN?"
"Yes, that's right."
"What wasn't gotten into?" I asked, stunned.
"Well, that's really the point. She got into virtually everything, meaning it's difficult for us to know what she was really after and for whom."
"Are the devices the engineers are working on really so secret?"
"Some of them are, and all of the techniques are, from a security standpoint. We don't want it known that we use this device in this situation and use something else in another."
"She couldn't have," I said.
"We know she did. The question is why."
"All right, then, why?" I blinked back tears.
&n
bsp; "Money. That would be my guess."
"That's ridiculous. If she needs money she knows she can come to me."
"Kay" -Wesley leaned forward and folded his hands on top of his desk"-do you have any idea how valuable some of this information is?"
I did not reply.
"Imagine, for example, if ERF developed a surveillance device that could filter out background noise so we could be privy to virtually any conversation of interest to us anywhere in the world. Imagine who out there would love to know the details of our rapid prototyping or tactical satellite systems, or for that matter, the artificial intelligence software Lucy is developing…"
I held up my hand to stop him.
"Enough," I said as I took a deep, shaky breath.
"Then you tell me why," Wesley said.
"You know Lucy better than I do."
"I'm no longer so sure I know her at all. And I don't know how she could do such a thing, Benton." He paused, staring off for a moment before meeting my eyes again.
"You've indicated to me that you're worried about her drinking. Can you elaborate on that?"
"My guess is she drinks like she does everything else-in extreme. Lucy is either very good or very bad, and alcohol is just one example. "I knew even as I said the words I was darkening Wesley's suspicions.
"I see," he said.
"Is there alcoholism in her family?"
"I'm beginning to think there's alcoholism in everybody's family," I said bitterly.
"But yes. Her father was an alcoholic."
"This would be your brother-in-law?"
"He was very briefly. As you know, Dorothy's been married four times."
"Are you aware that there have been nights when Lucy didn't return to her dormitory room?"
"I know nothing about that. Was she in her bed the night of the break-in? She has suite mates and a roommate."
"She could have snuck out when everyone was asleep. So we don't know.
Are you and your niece getting along well? " he then asked.
"Not especially."
"Kay, could she have done something like this to punish you?"
"No," I said, and I was getting angry with him.
"And what I'm not interested in at the moment is your using me to profile my niece."
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