Inside Out

18

“Assistant U.S. Attorney Avery Whitehead from the New Orleans District is visiting us today, kids,” Greg Nations announced at breakfast. “Let's look sharp.”

When Jet came through the kitchen door, Winter caught sight of the Devlins at the dining room table. Sean Devlin's expression was unreadable, but she was not holding hands with her husband-nor was there any laughter. That seemed like a healthy development. He couldn't help but wonder if Sean might be taking a fresh look at the wisdom of her spousal choice.

An hour after breakfast, a Navy-version Hughes 500 landed and deposited Avery Whitehead and his assistant.

Whitehead struck Winter as being one more arrogant prick in an expensive suit who felt condescension was a God-given right.

Greg led them into the dining room, where he searched them and their briefcases. Afterward, Whitehead set up at the table like a grand inquisitor, his assistant at his right elbow. When Dylan Devlin entered the room, he sat across the table from the prosecutor. Winter and Dixon followed Greg out, leaving the three men alone.

Forty minutes after Whitehead's arrival, Sean came outside, sat down in a chair four feet from Winter's, and opened her laptop. Within a few seconds she was totally immersed in what she was doing. With her hands on the keyboard and her eyes closed, she seemed to contemplate, then type. Then she read what she'd typed and repeated the process. Winter watched her fingers, thinking how beautiful her hands were. There wasn't anything about Sean's appearance that wasn't pleasing to the eye.

When Jet's cat sauntered around the corner of the house and rubbed against Sean's ankle, she set the computer on the side table and lifted Midnight onto her lap. She reached into her pocket for a small plastic bag, took out a piece of bacon, and offered it to the cat, who sniffed it before turning his head away.

Winter could see enough of the computer screen to make out the form of what was there. Sean caught him staring and turned it toward her.

“I like poetry,” he said.

“Do they teach poetry at police school?”

“You know the shortest poem in the history of literature?”

“No.” Her eyebrows rose.

“Fleas. Adam had 'em.”

She struggled not to smile. “You memorized all that? It's hardly ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.'”

Winter was fully twenty lines into that poem before she interrupted him. “You learned Coleridge in high school? That's like Frost-hardly Ginsberg.”

Winter began reciting “Howl.”

“Okay, now I feel foolish.” She cocked her head. “And you have me convinced that you aren't entirely one-dimensional. Tell me how you got interested in poetry.”

“Before I went to police school I got a degree in American lit. I taught high school for four years before I decided police work was safer.”

She studied him for a moment, then turned the laptop toward him so he could read it. “Okay, critique this.”

Winter was sorry he had asked, figuring he would have to lie politely-until he started to read it. The lines contained powerful images. Winter wasn't easily impressed, but with amazing clarity, Sean had captured a child's relationship with a distant father. It struck a chord with Winter, and not just because of his own experience.

“It's very good,” he told her after he had read it through a second time.

“That an honest assessment?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes, it is. I'd like to read more. I really would. You have a gift.”

She smiled. “Maybe I can print them out for you when I get to a printer.”

“Maybe you can publish under your new name,” he said.

She looked at him quizzically. “You mean under a pseudonym?”

“You'll get new identities after Dylan testifies and has served whatever time he ends up getting.”

She turned off the computer and closed the top with a snap. “That may be what they told you, but it isn't like that. Why would we need new names?”

It was his turn to be confused. “He wouldn't live long using Devlin.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked angrily.

He had never before seen her eyes filled with fire, and he had no idea why she was getting so upset with him for stating the obvious.

“A standard requirement in witness security dictates that you can't have any contact with anyone you knew before you joined the program. You'll get new identities and move to a new place to start over. That's just how it works,” he told her.

She smiled as though Winter was some poor, addled idiot who had just declared that candy bars had souls.

“You're quite mistaken, we'll be perfectly fine after he testifies.”

“Mrs. Devlin, when a man commits twelve murders for profit and testifies against the man who hired him to do them, a name change and a rural Argentine address wouldn't hurt. The world is getting to be a smaller place every day.”

“Murder? You said twelve murders?” Her hands trembled as she moved the cat to the floor gently, then picked up her laptop. She walked inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.

Winter followed as she strode into the dining room and pulled the door shut behind her. Was it possible that Sean imagined that her husband could testify against Sam Manelli and then go back to their previous lives as though nothing had happened? He took a seat in the living room and picked up a golf magazine.

Voices filtered through the closed dining room door-rising and falling-building in intensity. Winter couldn't make out what they were saying.

No more than a minute from the time she went in, Sean stormed out and strode down the hall to her bedroom. Thirty seconds later, Dylan followed her, shooting Winter a nasty look.

Winter stood. He could see Whitehead and his assistant in the dining room with their heads close together, talking in low tones, like conspirators. He could hear the Devlins' angry voices coming from their bedroom.

Greg hurried into the dining room. When he came back out, he said to Winter, “Tell the pilot to start his engine. They're done.”

Five minutes later, the helicopter rose and disappeared over the trees, taking Whitehead and his assistant with it.

Winter walked back into the house. Dylan was now yelling at Sean, and she was giving it right back to him. Greg stood listening in the hallway, hands on his hips.

“What started it?” Winter asked him.

“Whitehead told me you did,” Greg answered.

“I made a comment to her about their getting new names after the trial, and I think it was the first Mrs. Devlin had heard of it. It was like she didn't know why they're here. That's not possible, is it? Think maybe she thought this was summer camp for psychopathic husbands?”

Greg shook his head. “The prosecutor is not pleased that she's upset. If she's upset, Dylan's upset, and he wants Devlin as calm as possible. Whitehead said that I obviously didn't make it clear enough to the team that there were to be no conversations about the behavior that put Devlin here.”

“I didn't with him. You didn't say not to discuss that with his wife. You don't mean to tell me that nobody told her what he did?”

“Maybe we should start thinking about that security business real soon. Whitehead strongly hinted that he might mention his displeasure with both of us to the A.G.”

The cat broke from the kitchen and made a run for the front of the house, territory Jet had banished him from entering.

The animal sat beside Winter, stared down the hall, and seemed to be listening to the Devlins' argument.

“Just be glad you're a cat,” Winter said, wishing he hadn't spoken to Sean Devlin at all.