“It wasn’t worth it to have all my old stuff trucked across the country. I’ll get some new stuff.”
They were standing facing each other in the empty living room. Douglas Madigan downed the rest of his champagne and set his empty glass on the oak floor. He straightened, took her glass, and set it next to his. “Lacey,” he said, taking her upper arms in his hands, “I’ve missed you. I wish you had come home for a visit, but you didn’t. You didn’t write me or call. You left a hole in my life. You’re beautiful, you know that? I’ll bet all the guys are always telling you that, or just staring at you, even with your hair all frizzy around your face, even with those baggy jeans you’re wearing and that ridiculous sweatshirt. What does it say across the back? Dizzy Dan’s Pizza? What the hell is that all about?”
“Nothing, Douglas, just a local place. And no one seems to have noticed my soul-crushing beauty at all. But you’re kind to say so.” Actually, she’d gone out of her way at the Academy and now at Headquarters to dress very conservatively, even severely. As for her hair, she’d always worn it pulled back and clipped at the base of her neck. But this was Saturday. She was in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair loose around her face. Since it wasn’t raining and there was next to no humidity, Douglas obviously didn’t know what frizzy was.
“You’re looking good, Douglas. But you never change. Maybe you just get better.” It was true. He was six feet tall, had a lean runner’s body and a thin face with soulful brown eyes. Women loved him, always had. Even her mother had never said a word against Douglas. He charmed easily. He dominated just as easily.
“Thank you.” He touched her hair, then sifted it through his fingers. “Beautiful. It’s auburn, but not really. Perhaps more Titian, but there’s some blond in there too and some brown. Ah, you know I didn’t want you doing this silly FBI thing. Why? Why did you leave me and do this?”
Leave him? She said in her low, calm voice, the one she’d practiced and practiced at the Academy when she took courses in interviewing, “I always wanted to be in law enforcement, you know that. The FBI is the best, the very best. It’s the heart of the whole system.”
“The heart? I doubt it. As to your always wanting to be in law enforcement, I don’t remember that. You started out as a music major. You play the piano beautifully. You were playing Beethoven sonatas since you were eleven years old. You wanted to go to Juilliard. I remember you dropped out of the Fletcher competition. I always believed you weren’t quite of this world. You seemed to live for your music. Of course we all changed after Belinda. It’s been a very long time now. Seven long years. Your father didn’t appreciate your talent, didn’t understand it since he didn’t have any at all, but everyone else did. Everyone was worried about you when you sold your Steinway years ago, when you stopped even playing at parties. Hell, you even stopped going to parties.”
“That was a long time ago, Douglas. Dad isn’t particularly disappointed in me now. He hoped I’d finally do something worthwhile. He hoped this was my first step to growing up. He only acted cold to me because I hadn’t asked him to help me get in. He was dying to use his pull, and I didn’t let him.” Actually, she had blackmailed him. When the FBI agents interviewed him after she’d applied, he’d not said much of anything about Belinda or how Lacey had changed. She’d told him straight out that she’d never speak to him again if he did. He’d evidently glossed over everything, and very smoothly. She’d gotten into the FBI, after all.
She still missed her piano, but that missing was buried deep down, so deep she scarcely ever thought of it now. “Yes, I did sell it. It just didn’t seem important anymore.” A piano was nothing compared to what Belinda had lost. Still, though, she would still find herself playing a song on the arm of a chair, playing along with the music in a movie or on the car radio. She could remember when she was nineteen playing on the arm of a young man she was dating.
Douglas said, “I don’t remember much from that time, to tell you the truth. It’s blurred now, distant, and I’m grateful for it.”
“Yes,” she said. But she remembered; she had lived it and held it deep and raw inside her since that awful night. He moved closer to her and she knew he would kiss her. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to. Douglas had always fascinated her. Seven years. A long time. But still it didn’t seem quite right.
He did kiss her, just a light kiss, a touch of his mouth to hers, a brief remembrance, a coming back. His mouth was firm and dry. The kiss was so brief, she didn’t get the taste of him, just a whisper of the tart champagne. He immediately dropped his hands and stepped back.
“I’ve missed you. I had to listen to your father yell and curse that you’d lost it and gone off the deep end when you told him you were changing your major to Forensic Science. ‘Fingerprinting, for God’s sake,’ he told me. ‘She’ll be wasting herself lifting some goon’s damned fingerprints from a dead body!’”
“You know there’s lots more to it than that. There are a good dozen specialties in forensics.”
“Yes, I know. He wanted you to go to law school, of course. He still thought there was hope after you finished your Master’s degree in criminal psychology. He said it would be helpful in nailing scum. Your dad, the judge, is always forgetting that I’m a defense attorney.”
“I just changed my mind, that’s all.”
“That’s what I told the FBI guy who came doing a background check on you. I figured if you wanted to go into the FBI, then I wasn’t going to stand in your way.”
What did Douglas mean by that? That he could have told the FBI that she was unstable, that she’d gone around the bend seven years ago? Yes, he could have said that. She wondered if anyone had told the FBI that? No, if they had, then she wouldn’t have been accepted, would she?
“I know my father was positive when the agents came to interview him.”
“Yes, he told me you’d given him no choice. I said good for you, it was your life and he should keep his mouth shut if he ever wanted to see you again. He was pissed at me for a good month.”
“Thank you for standing up for me, Douglas.” She had assumed at the time that the people doing the check on her background just hadn’t considered it all that important. But they had, evidently, and they’d asked questions. “I had no idea, but I am grateful. No one dredged up anything about that time. Do you know that you haven’t changed? You really are looking good.” He was thirty-eight now. There were just a few white strands woven into his black hair. He was very probably more handsome now than he had been seven years ago. She remembered that Belinda had loved him more than anything. Anything. Lacey felt the familiar hollowing pain and quickly picked up the champagne bottle. She poured each of them another glass.
“You’ve changed. You’re a woman now, Lacey. You’re no longer a silent kid. You still have a dozen locks on your door, but hey, this is D.C. I’d probably have a submachine gun sitting next to the front door. What does the FBI use?”
“A Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun. It’s powerful and reliable.”
“I have trouble imagining you even near something like that, much less holding it and firing it. Ah, that sounded sexist, didn’t it? You spoke of change. As for me, perhaps I haven’t changed all that much on the outside, but well, life changes one, regardless, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes.” She was the perfect example of what life could do to a person.
“You’re on the thin side. Did they work you that hard at the Academy?”
“Yes, but it was a classmate of mine—MacDougal—who worked me the hardest. He swore he’d put some muscle on my skinny little arms.”
“Let me see.”
He was squeezing her upper arm. “Flex.”
She did.
“Not bad.”
“My boss works out. Don’t picture him as a muscle-bound, no-neck bodybuilder. He’s very strong and muscular, but he’s also into karate, and he’s very good. I was on the receiving end of his technique once at the Academy. Just the other day I saw him eyei
ng me. I don’t think he liked what he saw. I’ll bet he’ll have me in the gym by next Tuesday.”
“Boss? You mean this Savich character?”
“I suppose we’re all characters in our own way. Savich is a genius with computers. One of his programs helped nail Russell Bent. He’s the chief of the unit I’m in now. I was very lucky that he asked for me. Otherwise I would have ended up in L.A. chasing bank robbers.”
“So may I take you out to lunch to celebrate your first case? How about we have lunch at one of the excellent restaurants you’ve got in this neighborhood?”
She nodded. “How long will you be here, Douglas?”
“I’m not certain. Perhaps a week. Did you miss me, Lacey?”
“Yes. And I do miss Dad. How is his health?”
“You write him every week, and I know for a fact that he writes you back every week. He told me that you don’t like the telephone. So he has to write letters. So you know he’s just fine.”
Of course Douglas knew very well why she hated phones. That was how she’d been told about Belinda. “Soon I’ll probably be into e-mail full-time. My boss is really big on e-mail, and so is everyone else in the unit. It’s weird, you don’t hear all that many phones ringing.”
“I’ll write my e-mail address down for you before I leave. Let’s go eat, Lacey.”
“You look like a prince and I look like a peasant. Let me change. It’ll take me just a minute. Oh yeah, everybody calls me Sherlock.”
“I don’t like that, I never did. And everybody has to make a stupid remark when they meet you. It doesn’t suit you. It’s very masculine. Is that what the FBI is all about? Turning you into a man?”
“I hope not. If they did try, I’d flunk the muscle mass tests.”
Actually, she thought, as she changed into a dress in her bedroom, she liked being called Sherlock, just Sherlock. It just moved her one step further from the woman she had been seven years ago.
It was at lunch that he told her about this woman who claimed he’d gotten her pregnant.
8
SAVICH STOPPED by her desk Monday morning and said, “Ollie just told me that you still didn’t have any stuff for your apartment. I thought you were going to take care of it this weekend. What happened?”
She looked over at Ollie Hamish and cocked her elbow at him, tapping it with her other hand. He waved back at her, shrugging.
Why should Savich care if she slept in a tent? “A friend from California came into town. I didn’t have a chance.”
“Okay, take off today and shop yourself to death.” Then he frowned. “You don’t know where to shop, do you? Listen, I’ll call a friend of mine. She knows where to find anything you could possibly invent. Her name’s Sally Quinlan.”
Lacey had heard all about James Quinlan, presumably this woman’s husband. She’d heard about some of his cases, but none of the real details. Maybe when she met Sally Quinlan, she’d find out all the good stuff.
It turned out that Sally Quinlan wasn’t free until the following Saturday. They made a date. Lacey spent the day learning about PAP, the Predictive Analogue Program, and all the procedures in the unit.
That Monday evening, Lacey found two lovely, but small, prints at Bentrells in Georgetown, which would probably look insignificant against that long expanse of white wall in her living room. She bought some clothes at another Georgetown boutique. When she got back to her apartment, there was Douglas waiting for her. He’d been busy Sunday, hadn’t even had time to phone her. She said, “I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”
He nodded and took her to Antonio’s, a northern Italian restaurant that wasn’t trendy. Over a glass of wine and medallions of veal, he said, “I guess you want to know about this woman, huh?”
“Yeah, you dropped that bomb and then took off.” She fingered a bread stick. “If you don’t want to tell me, Douglas, that’s all right.”
“No, you should know. Her name is Candice Addams. She’s about your age, so beautiful that men stop in midstride to stare at her, smarter than just about anyone I know.” He sighed and pushed away his plate. “She claims I got her pregnant and I suppose that I could have, but I’ve always been so careful. Living in San Francisco, you’re probably the most careful of any American.”
“Do you want to marry her?” Odd how it hurt to say the words, but they had to be said. Although she didn’t know what she wanted from Douglas, she did realize that she valued him, that he attracted her, that he amused her, that he stood up for her, at least most of the time. And he’d been there for her through it all. She’d been closer to him during those awful months than to her father. Of course no one was really close to her mother. That was impossible.
“No, of course not. She’s a local TV reporter. I can’t imagine that she wants to have a baby now.”
She felt suddenly impatient with him. “Haven’t you spoken about all this with her? Does she want to have the baby? An abortion? Does she want to get married? What, Douglas?”
“Yeah, she says she wants to marry me.”
“You said she’s smart and beautiful. You said you always wanted to have kids. So marry her.”
“Yeah, I guess maybe I’ll have to. I wanted to tell you about it in person, Lacey. I don’t want to marry her, I’m not lying about that. I’d hoped that someday you and I could, well, that would probably never have happened, would it?”
“I don’t know,” she said finally, setting down her fork. The medallions of veal looked about as appetizing as buffalo chips. “There’s been so much, Douglas, too much. I’m very grateful to you, you know that. I wish I could say that I wanted to be with you—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What will you do?”
“I’d turn her down flat if you’d have me, Lacey.”
She wondered in that moment just what he’d do if she said yes. She’d thought several times in the last few years that she was a habit to him, someone he was fond of, someone he would protect, but not as a woman, not as a wife. No, she was Belinda’s little sister and she probably always would be in his mind. She dredged up a smile for him. “I hope she hasn’t given you an ultimatum.”
“Oh no, Candice is far too intelligent to do that. I’m hooked, but she isn’t pulling at all on the line.”
It was his life. He had to forget and move on. It had been seven years. And as for her, well, she would move on as well, toward the goal she’d always had, toward the goal she would pursue until the monster was caught and dead, or she was.
She’d heard that Russell Bent had gotten himself a hotshot lawyer who was claiming police brutality and coercion. The press was speculating that the lawyer might get him off. She wouldn’t let that happen to him. Never.
On Thursday, Savich said, “I don’t want you to flab out on me, Sherlock. You don’t live more than a mile from me. My gym is right in between. I’ll see you there at six o’clock.”
“Flab out? I’ve only been out of the Academy for two weeks. And I’ve walked every square inch of Georgetown since Monday, shopping until I dropped, just as you ordered me to do. Flab out?”
“Yeah, you haven’t been lying around, but your deltoids are losing tone. I’m an expert. I can tell these things. Six o’clock.”
He strolled away, singing, “Like a rock, I was strong as I could be. Like a rock, nothin’ ever got to me . . .” He walked into his glass-enclosed office. That wasn’t country-and-western, that was a commercial. Was it Chevrolet? She couldn’t remember. She watched him sit down at his desk and turn immediately to his laptop.
Flabby deltoids, ha. She grinned toward his office. He was just being a good boss; that was it. She was new in town, and he didn’t want her to get lonesome. She shook her head and went back to work. She jumped a good six inches when a woman’s voice said from behind her, “Don’t even consider going after him.”
Lacey blinked up at Hannah Paisley, an agent who’d started with the Unit some six months before. She’d been in the Bureau five years. She was very t
all, beautifully shaped, and was very smart. Lacey had seen her do her dumb blonde act on a witness at the Academy, on video. She’d made the guy feel like the stud of the universe. Then he’d spilled his guts. She was very good, which was why she was loaned out on sting operations. She also seemed to have a sixth sense about killers, which was why she’d joined this unit. Lacey envied her this ability.
Hannah wanted Dillon Savich? She was jealous because Savich thought Lacey was flabby? What was all this about? “I wasn’t going after him, Hannah. Actually, I was just thinking that he was a jerk, criticizing my deltoids.”
“I know. I was joking. Are you doing work on the Radnich case?”
Lacey nodded. Was Hannah joking? She didn’t think so. She didn’t need this. Hannah gave her a small salute and went back to her desk and computer.
Lacey was working with Ollie Hamish on the Radnich case. It had flummoxed everyone, including Savich. It wasn’t the “who” of it that was driving everybody nuts; it was the “how.” Lacey was feeding in more data they’d just gotten from the various local police reports and the autopsies and the forensic evidence, and in the back of her mind, she was also trying to figure out how this weirdo guy could have gotten into four nursing homes—the count as of today—and strangled old women with no one seeing a single thing. The first nursing home was in Richmond, Virginia, eight months ago. Then four months ago, it happened again in northern Florida, home of the nonagenarian. Norma Radnich was the old woman strangled at the South Banyon Nursing Home in St. Petersburg, Florida. They’d been called in by the SPPD only after this last murder. To date there were no leads, no clues, no guesses that were helpful. The Profilers were working on it now as well. Ollie was committed to this one. He was the lead agent on it, and Lacey wanted it that way.
She wanted to go digging. She’d figured out how to access everything she needed. Perhaps tonight after Dillon let her leave the gym she would come back here and work. If he didn’t kill all her body parts, if she’d still be able to walk once he was through with her.
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