Leaving my suite, I passed through sun-filled glass corridors as memories of Gault’s bloody career in Richmond seemed to darken the morning. Once he had been within my reach. I literally could have touched him, for a flicker, before he had fled through a window and was gone. I had not been armed on that occasion, and it was not my business to go around shooting people anyway. But I had not been able to shake the chill of doubt that had settled over my spirit back then.
I had not stopped wondering what more I could have done.
Wine has never known a good year at the Academy, and I regretted drinking several glasses of it in the Boardroom the night before. My morning run along J. Edgar Hoover Road was worse than usual. Oh, God, I thought. I’m not going to make it. Marines were setting up camouflage canvas chairs and telescopes on roadsides overlooking ranges. I felt bold male eyes as I slowly jogged past, and knew the gold Department of Justice crest on my navy T-shirt was duly noted.
The soldiers probably assumed I was a female agent or visiting cop, and it disturbed me to imagine my niece running this same route. I wished Lucy had picked another place to intern. Clearly, I had influenced her life, and very little frightened me quite as much as that did. It had become my habit to worry about her during workouts when I was in agony and aware of growing old.
HRT, the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, was out on maneuvers, helicopter blades dully batting air. A pickup truck hauling shot-up doors roared past, followed by another caravan of soldiers. Turning around, I began the one-and-a-half-mile stretch back to the Academy, which could have passed for a modern tan brick hotel were it not for its rooftops of antennas and location out in the middle of a wooded nowhere.
When at last I reached the guard booth, I veered around tire shredders and lifted my hand in a weary salute to the officer behind glass.
Breathless and sweating, I was contemplating walking the rest of the way in when I sensed a car slowing at my rear.
“You trying to commit suicide or something?” Captain Pete Marino said loudly across the Armor-Ailed front seat of his silver Crown Victoria.
Radio antennas bobbed like fishing rods, and despite countless lectures from me, he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.
“There are easier ways than this,” I said through his open passenger’s window.
“Not fastening your seat belt, for example.”
“Never know when I might have to bail out of my ride in a hurry.”
“If you get in a wreck, you’ll certainly bail out in a hurry,” I said. “Probably through the windshield.”
An experienced homicide detective in Richmond, where both of us were headquartered, Marino recently had been promoted and assigned to the First Precinct, the bloodiest section of the city. He had been involved with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VI CAP for years.
In his early fifties, he was a casualty of concentrated doses of tainted human nature, bad diet, and drink, his face etched by hardship and fringed with thinning gray hair. Marino was overweight, out of shape, and not known for a sweet disposition. I knew he was here for the Steiner consultation, but wondered about the luggage in his backseat.
“Are you staying for a while?” I asked.
“Benton signed me up for Street Survival.”
“You and who else?” I asked, for the purpose of Street Survival was not to train individuals but task forces.
“Me and my precinct’s entry team.”
“Please don’t tell me part of your new job description is kicking in doors.”
“One of the pleasures of being promoted is finding your ass back in uniform and out on the street. In case you haven’t noticed. Doc, they ain’t using Saturday Night Specials out there anymore.”
“Thank you for the tip,” I said dryly.
“Be sure to wear thick clothing.”
“Huh?” His eyes, blacked out by sunglasses, scanned mirrors as other cars crept past.
“Paint bullets hurt.”
“I don’t plan on getting hit.”
“I don’t know anyone who plans on it.”