“We really should put some alcohol on that.”
“No way.”
“What time will you leave ERF?”
“I don’t know. Depends.”
“I’ll see you before I head back to Richmond,” I promised as I returned to the lockers and began drying my hair. Scarcely a minute later, Lucy, not given to modesty either, trotted past me wearing nothing but the Breitling watch I’d given her for her birthday.
“Shit!” she said under her breath as she began yanking on her clothes.
“You wouldn’t believe everything I’ve got to do today. Repartition the hard disk, reload the whole thing because I keep running out of space, allocate more, change a bunch of files. I just hope we don’t have any more hardware problems.” She complained on unconvincingly. Lucy loved every minute of what she did every day.
“I saw Marino when I was out running. He’s up for the week,” I said.
“Ask him if he wants to do some shooting.” She tossed her running shoes inside her locker and shut the door with an enthusiastic clang.
“I have a feeling he’ll be doing plenty of that.” My words followed her out as half a dozen more DEA agents walked in, dressed in black.
“Good morning, ma’am.” Laces whipped against leather as they took off their boots.
By the time I was dressed and had dropped my gym bag back in my room, it was quarter past nine and I was late.
Leaving through two sets of security doors, I hurried down three flights of stairs, boarded the elevator in the gun-cleaning room, and descended sixty feet into the Academy’s lower level, where I routinely waded through hell.
Inside the conference room, nine police investigators, FBI profilers, and a VI CAP analyst sat at a long oak table. I pulled out a chair next to Marino as comments caromed around the room.
“This guy knows a hell of a lot about forensic evidence.”
“And anybody who’s served time does.”
“What’s important is he’s extremely comfortable with this type of behavior.”
“That suggests to me he’s never served time.”
I added my file to other case material going around the room and whispered to one of the profilers that I wanted a photocopy of Emily Steiner’s diary.
“Yeah, well, I disagree,” Marino said.
“The fact someone’s done time don’t mean he fears he’s going to do time again.”
“Most people would fear it–you know, the proverbial cat on the hot stove.”
“Gault ain’t most people. He likes hot stoves.” I was passed a stack of laser prints of the Steiners’ ranch-style house. In back, a first-floor window had been pried open, and through it the assailant had entered a small laundry room of white linoleum and blue-checked walls.
“If we consider the neighborhood, the family, the victim herself, then Gault’s getting bolder.”
I followed a carpeted hallway into the master bedroom, where the decor was pastel prints of tiny bouquets of violets and loose flying balloons. I counted six pillows on the canopied bed and several more on a closet shelf.
“We’re talking about a real small window of vulnerability here.” The bedroom with its little girl decor belonged to Emily’s mother, Denesa. According to her police statement, she had awakened at gunpoint around two a. m.
“He may be taunting us.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Mrs. Steiner described her attacker as of medium height and build.
Because he was wearing gloves, a mask, long pants, and a jacket, she was uncertain about race. He gagged and bound her with blaze orange duct tape and put her in the closet. Then he went down the hall to Emily’s room, where he snatched her from her bed and disappeared with her in the dark early morning.
“I think we should be careful about getting too hung up on this guy.
On Gault. ”
“Good point. We need to keep an open mind.”
I interrupted.
“The mother’s bed is made?”
The conversation stopped.
A middle-aged investigator with a dissipated, florid face said,
“Affirmative,” as his shrewd gray eyes alighted, like an insect, on my ash-blond hair, my lips, the gray cravat peeking out of the open collar of my gray-and-white-striped blouse. His gaze continued its surveillance, traveling down to my hands, where he glanced at my gold Intaglio seal ring and the finger that bore no sign of a wedding band.