Acts of Mercy

FOUR

Sam slowly turned the coffee mug Trula had handed him so that he could read whatever was written on it, but didn’t want to appear obvious.

IN EVERY REAL MAN IS A CHILD WHO WANTS TO PLAY. NIETZSCHE

Well, yeah. Who doesn’t know that?

“We have orange-pecan muffins this morning,” Trula was saying. “Help yourself. I’m assuming you already had a decent breakfast?”

“Oh, sure.” He nodded, then met her questioning eyes from across the room, and felt compelled to tell the truth. “Well, actually, I had a donut I picked up when I got my coffee at that convenience place across the street from the motel.”

She appeared to look him over, as if to assess him somehow. “Sit down and I’ll make you some eggs.”

“Oh, no. Don’t bother. You don’t have to…” He protested, but there was that stare again. Trula pointed to the kitchen table, a farmhouse-style affair of planked oak with a banquette that wrapped around two sides to form an L.

Sam sat. He was still sitting when Mallory came through the back door.

“We’re having eggs this morning,” Trula told her without turning around.

“What kind?” Mallory placed her handbag on the table and smiled at Sam.

“Brown organic ones.” Trula’s sarcasm was unveiled.

“I know that.” Mallory rolled her eyes and turned to Sam. She stage-whispered, “That’s all Trula buys. There should be a sign over the front door: Abandon hope of ever eating junk food again, all ye who enter here.”

“Very funny,” Trula muttered.

“Junk food is not food.” A small dark-skinned girl of perhaps four or five appeared in the kitchen doorway. “It will make you fat and give you headaches and make your teeth soft.”

“You tell them, Chloe.” Trula smiled broadly as the girl skipped into the kitchen. “Child is smarter than most of the adults I know.”

“Chloe, this is Sam,” Mallory said. “He’s going to work with us starting today.”

“Hello, Sam.” The child approached the table solemnly, as if she, too, were sizing him up.

“Hello, Chloe,” he returned the greeting, and wondered who she belonged to.

“Do you eat junk food?” She climbed onto a chair opposite him and studied him with large brown eyes.

“Sometimes.” He nodded and tried to look contrite.

“Trula won’t let you have bad food here. She only makes good things to eat and makes everyone eat it, even if it’s something you don’t like,” Chloe confided and Mallory choked back a laugh.

“What did I make you eat that you didn’t like?” Trula turned to ask.

“Chard,” Chloe answered without hesitation, “and Brussels sprouts.”

“Chloe is Emme Caldwell’s daughter,” Mallory explained. “When Emme has to go out of town, Trula keeps her company.”

“Chloe keeps me company,” Trula corrected. “She’s my sous chef and number one baking apprentice.”

Chloe nodded and thanked Trula for the glass of milk the woman placed before her. She took a sip, then told Sam, “Me and my mommy are going to live in the house out back ’cause we can’t find one we like. Trula’s having people clean it while Mommy’s away. She went with Robert and Susanna to help look for Robert’s missing baby. Someone stoled him.”

Trula looked over Chloe’s head to Sam to explain. “There’s a carriage house on the grounds that has been unoccupied for who knows how long-at least since Robert’s owned the property-but it’s still in pretty good shape. We decided to spruce it up a bit so that Emme and Chloe could live closer to Emme’s work, and so that when Emme isn’t here, Chloe can stay with me. I’m hoping that it will be in move-in condition by the time they get back from this trip. That motel stay was too long for a child.”

“And I couldn’t have my kitty there,” Chloe added.

“Where is Foxy this morning?” Mallory asked.

“I let her out earlier,” Trula replied. “Chloe, do you want to go see if you can find Foxy while I finish making breakfast?”

“Uh-huh.” Chloe jumped off the chair and sprinted out the back door.

Trula closed the door behind her, then turned to Sam and said, “You’ll hear this soon enough, I suppose, so I might as well tell you right up front. Emme adopted Chloe as a newborn from a woman who was in prison for selling narcotics and who was killed there shortly after Chloe was born. Chloe’s father is-there’s no nice way to put this-a Mexican drug lord. A few months ago, he decided he wanted her-she’s his only child-so he put out a reward for whoever brought her to him in Mexico.”

“That’s pretty scary. Who’s the father?” Sam asked.

“His name is Anthony Navarro,” Mallory told him.

“Navarro is her father?” Sam frowned. As a former FBI agent, he knew the name well. “He’s real bad news.”

“So we hear. Emme was hoping Chloe would be safe here, but a few weeks ago, someone gave Navarro a tip that they were here in Conroy. He sent someone to look for her. Only the quick thinking of a member of Father Kevin’s parish saved Chloe from possibly being whisked away to sunny Mexico. We think the threat has been deterred for now, but who knows?” Mallory shrugged.

“We’re hoping that he’s looking elsewhere,” Trula added. “But none of us are willing to take any chances.”

“Navarro is definitely not one to mess with,” Sam told them.

Trula’s chin set solidly with reserve and she began to crack eggs into a bowl with a bit more vehemence than Sam suspected might be necessary. “No one is taking that child from her mother.”

“What Trula means is that no one is taking that child from Trula.” Mallory added. “She and Chloe are like best buds now. I pity the fool who tries to abduct that girl now. Hence the move onto the grounds here.”

Trula sniffed. “It was Robert’s idea.”

“After you planted it,” Mallory noted.

“Emme works long hours. Someone needs to watch Chloe when she comes home from school,” Trula countered.

“She could have hired a babysitter,” Mallory pointed out.

Trula fixed her with a glare, and Mallory smiled as if she’d been expecting the reaction.

“We all agreed that Chloe has to be protected,” Mallory told Sam. “And we all agreed there’s no safer place for her than here. She goes to all-day preschool at Our Lady of Angels so Kevin keeps an eye on her there, and Robert has beefed up security here at the house as well.”

“Which he needed to do anyway,” Trula said. “This big house and all these acres of grounds-for a while all he had was a puny little alarm system. Now, I’m not one to be paranoid, but when you’re Robert Magellan, you need to take some precautions. I’m glad he finally hired some guards and had the fencing and the alarms upgraded like I’ve been telling him to do for the past two years. I hate to think badly of my fellow man, but ever since Beth and Ian disappeared, and we didn’t know if they’d been abducted…” She shivered.

“How’s the search going?” Sam asked.

“It’s going,” Mallory replied. “No news. I’m thinking it’s going to take some creative thinking on their part to find that boy.”

“It was creative thinking on Susanna’s part that found the car in the first place,” Trula reminded her. “If Robert didn’t need her to run his life, he could hire her to work on cases. She’d make a crack detective.”

Sam watched Mallory open a cupboard and sort through a shelf of mugs until she found one that apparently pleased her. She filled it with coffee and returned to the table where she sat and added cream and sweetener. He craned his neck to read the writing on the mug. ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.

What, he wondered, was up with all the mugs?

“You met Susanna Jones last week as you were leaving. She’s been Robert’s personal assistant since before he even had his own company. Since the police put the case on the back burner, Susanna spent nearly every weekend traveling the route Robert’s wife would have taken to get back home from her sister’s in Western Pennsylvania. She took every side road, every mountain road, every hill and valley between here and Pittsburgh, until she found the place where Beth’s car had gone off the road and down the side of a mountain into a ravine where it couldn’t be seen from the road.” Mallory shook her head. “That’s determination.”

“I read about it online. I was amazed at her persistence,” Sam said.

“We all were. If anyone can find that baby, it’s going to be Susanna.” Trula nodded. “She and Robert and Emme together, they’re going to find that boy.”

“Let’s hope so.” Mallory turned back to Sam. “And speaking of finding someone…”

She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a file.

“This is all we have on the Ross Walker case.” She handed him the folder. “I spoke with Lynne Walker on Thursday. She’s expecting to hear from you today or tomorrow. I thought you’d want to start with her.”

“Thanks.” Sam put the file on the table next to him.

“Aren’t you going to look at it?”

“Sure. But right now, I’m going to eat the eggs Trula is putting onto one of those plates, and I’m going to drink my coffee. Then I’ll go to whatever place you’ve set aside for me to use as an office, and I’ll read everything you’ve given me.”

“Don’t you want to talk about it?”

“Not especially. Not right now, anyway,” he said honestly. Might as well put that out there, right up front.

“I get it.” Mallory shrugged. “I should probably be insulted, but I get it.”

“Get what?” Trula set a plate in front of them both.

“Sam likes to work alone.”

“It’s nothing personal,” he told her. “It’s the only way I’ve ever worked.”

“Haven’t you ever had a partner?”

“Not recently.”

“But when you were called in to work as a profiler, surely you had to play nicely with the others.”

“Mostly I studied whatever information there was and talked to the people in the field, but I rarely worked a case with anyone else.” He thought about that for a moment. “At least, not until I’d had time to digest the information and talk to a few people, get a feel for it. But even at that, I was really just giving my opinion and my thoughts.”

“Well, once you’ve had time to do a little digesting of Ross Walker’s case, I’d appreciate your thoughts on it.” Mallory took a piece of toast from the plate that Trula had placed between them on the table and began to butter it. “Actually, I’d more than just appreciate it. I’m going to require it.”

“So I should think of you as sort of the special agent in charge of the Mercy Street Foundation.” Sam nodded, glad to have the hierarchy spelled out. For some reason, he had assumed he’d be reporting directly to Magellan. Clearly he’d been wrong. It was good to get that straightened out on the first day.

“Something like that.” Mallory smiled and turned her attention to the scrambled eggs and bacon Trula was serving. “Nice analogy. I like it.”

Sam glanced at the sparkly round diamond on her ring finger and silently wished a lot of luck to the guy who’d placed it there. Mallory must have caught the look, because she grinned and wiggled her finger to catch the light with the stone.

“Pretty, isn’t it? My guy done good, don’t you think?”

“Very nice, yes.” Sam nodded, and Mallory laughed.

“You’ll meet Charlie soon enough,” she told him.

“He’s a detective in Conroy, and there are times when we need him to get a little info for us. Of course, now, with your contacts in the FBI, I’m thinking we might be able to let Charlie off the hook a little.”

“There are some people I can call on if we need to.” Sam nodded, already planning to check to make sure the details of Ross Walker’s murder had been entered into the Bureau’s computer system. “I’m assuming we have copies of all the reports from the investigating police department?”

“All the ones that were sent in by the widow. But I wouldn’t assume anything. I’m sure the Lincoln police have a lot more. Maybe they’ll even share it with you.”

“I’ll give them a call. I went to college in Lincoln. Haven’t been back in a while.”

“That’s right. I do recall reading that on your resume. Cornhusker, eh?”

“Absolutely. Nebraska born and raised.” He took a bite of Trula’s excellent eggs and wondered if she served breakfast to the staff when Robert was around.

He watched the older woman as she puttered, and wondered at her age-seventy-something, maybe?-and what her position here was. Robert’s housekeeper? The cook? Neither would explain why Mallory seemed to defer to her or why she appeared to have so much influence over Robert.

Interesting household.

“Well, I have some calls to make.” Mallory stood and gathered up her plate and her mug and her flatware and carried all to the sink where she rinsed all but the mug and opened the dishwasher. “By the way, Sam, you’re in the office two down from mine. Your laptop is on your desk along with everything I think you’ll need to get started. If there’s anything else you need, just let me know.”

“Thanks, Mallory.” He was pretty sure he remembered which office was hers.

“I’m in the process of unloading so leave everything on the counter,” Trula told Mallory.

“Okay.” Mallory did as she was told, filled her cup from the coffeemaker on the counter. “Thanks, Trula. Perfect, as always.” She waved to Sam as she passed out of the kitchen.

Trula turned to Sam and said, “I’m going outside to find Chloe. I’m going to have to get her to school soon. You can do as Mallory did and clear your own place whenever you finish.”

“I’ll do that, thanks. And thanks for breakfast.”

“You’re welcome. We usually have lunch around one for whoever is around.” She left the house by the back door, leaving Sam alone in the kitchen.

He poured himself another cup of coffee after rinsing his plate and tucked the file Mallory had given him under his arm. He looked out the back window and saw Trula sitting on the ground next to Chloe, making a chain of clover flowers. So much for getting the child to school on time. He smiled at the unlikely pairing, and went off in search of his office.

Two hours later, he’d read the file through and made several pages of notes. He’d had the benefit of having seen the file contents briefly when he’d met with Mallory for his interview, but now found himself poring over every page, looking for the bits and pieces of real information scattered throughout the wordy documents. When he felt he’d extracted as much as he was going to get from the official reports, he pulled out the contact sheet and lifted the receiver to dial Lynne Walker’s number. He caught the address of the Walker home-4172 Clinton Street-and for a moment, wasn’t sure he’d read correctly. Hadn’t his first apartment in Lincoln been on Clinton Street? He tried to remember what the building had looked like but couldn’t bring it to mind. He shrugged. Maybe it had been Calhoun Street, or the name of some other president. Buchanan, maybe. Whatever.

He took his time dialing, remembering some very good times at the University of Nebraska. There’d been that hot little blonde at the Phi Mu house. Cheryl something. At the last reunion he’d attended, he’d heard she’d gone into TV reporting. He wondered what she was doing now…

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered the phone.

“Is this Mrs. Walker?” Sam asked, his college memories swiftly put aside.

“This is Lynne Walker, yes.”

“Mrs. Walker, this is Sam DelVecchio. I’m with the-”

“Mercy Street Foundation,” she said with obvious relief. “Miss Russo said you’d be calling today or tomorrow. Thank you for being on the early end of the range. I’ve been on pins and needles all day.”

“Sorry to have made you wait.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve finished reviewing the materials you sent. Have there been any follow-up calls from the police, or any other articles in the newspapers there in Lincoln since you submitted your application?”

“No calls, no articles that I’ve seen lately. I called Detective Coutinho to let him know that I was contacting the Foundation, but I had to leave a message for him. I’m sure there’s plenty in his file that he didn’t let me see.”

“I’ll give him a call and let him know we’re on the case at your request, see if I can schedule a time to sit down with him.”

“He’s been very kind through all this. I’m sure he’ll be happy to work with you. Will you stop in here while you’re in Lincoln?”

“I’d like to do that. I’d like to know more about your husband.”

“He was a really nice man, Agent DelVecchio.”

“I’m not an agent, Mrs. Walker.” He thought it over for a moment, realized he wasn’t sure what his title was. Detective? Just plain Mister? Sam?

“Thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

He hung up, still wondering if, as a private detective, he should call himself detective. He chided himself for getting hung up on something so inconsequential and searched his notes for Christopher Coutinho’s phone number at the Lincoln PD.

The call was answered on the second ring.

“Coutinho.”

“Detective, this is Sam DelVecchio. I’m with the Mercy Street Foundation.”

“Who?”

Sam started over.

“Mercy Street,” the detective muttered. “That thing on TV?”

“You might have seen something on television, but-”

“Big money guy fronting some private agency?”

“That’s the general idea, yes. We’ve been asked to look into a case that I understand you handled last year. Ross Walker.”

“Walker, yeah.” Coutinho paused. “What’s your involvement?”

“His widow applied to the Foundation, asked us to take a look.”

“You mean, see if you can solve the case for us.” The detective’s voice developed a sudden edge. “Thanks a lot. We sure appreciate it. Since, you know, we’re basically incompetent.”

Sam sighed. He’d expected it.

“Look, here’s the thing,” Sam said. “It’s not a reflection on you. But we both know that when a case goes cold, when the evidence isn’t there and there are no leads and no suspects, it takes a hell of a lot of digging to find even one thread to tug on. If you had nothing else to do, no other cases to deal with, you’d probably find that thread, if in fact there’s a thread to be found. But you don’t have the luxury of handling one case at a time for however long it takes. I do.”

Sam let that sink in before adding, “Mrs. Walker came to us, Detective. We didn’t go looking for this case.”

Coutinho fell silent for a few moments, then said, “I appreciate you not rubbing it in that we weren’t able to solve the case. It’s been on my mind since the minute I walked onto that crime scene.”

“Let’s get something out of the way right up front. I’m not looking at this case as one you ‘weren’t able to solve,’” Sam said. “I know that if we are going to make any headway at all with this, it will only be because of the work you did when you caught the call, so let’s look at this as a sort of collaboration.”

“Do you have any idea of just how patronizing that sounded?”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is. I’m sure you guys did a bang-up investigation.”

“You know this how?”

“You got a do-gooder found behind a soup kitchen with a burger stuffed in his mouth, his chest slashed up, someone is going to want some answers. Everyone’s going to be on their best behavior because the case is going to have a profile. The heat would be on you on a case like this.”

“You got that much right.”

“So let’s stop the bullshit, and talk about the case.”

Coutinho’s manner changed and he became all business.

“A call came in around eleven on a Tuesday night. Woman said her husband was missing, that they’d put a few hours in at the mission down on Fourth Street, Pilgrim’s Place. Said she and her husband were volunteers who cooked and served dinner there every Tuesday night, that they usually finished up around ten thirty, but that night, she realized sometime around nine forty-five that it had been a while since she’d seen him. At first, she figured he’d stepped outside to talk to someone and lost track of time-she said he’s a talker-or maybe he was in the men’s room. So they start cleaning up and she asks the others if anyone knew where he was, and no one did. No one could recall the last time they’d seen him. So she’s getting worried and she calls his cell phone, but there’s no answer. So she waits a few minutes more, then calls again. Still no answer. Finally the kitchen cleanup is done, the others are getting ready to leave, and he still hasn’t turned up. They search the house, inside and out, and even go out to the street to see if he’s out there chatting, but he was nowhere to be found.”

“Could I see the statements you took from the people who were there that night?”

“Yeah. There’s not much substance. I mean, they serve a couple hundred people there every week, so during mealtime, it’s pretty hectic. No one has time to look around to see who’s doing what. They’re understaffed and the kitchen is laid out in a sort of L-shape, so you can’t see who’s working there with you. Ross Walker could have walked out the back door at any time and no one would have known, but sure, you can take a look.”

“Who responded to the initial call?”

“Couple of cruisers. They finally convinced Mrs. Walker to go on home, that maybe her husband ran into an old friend or for whatever reason needed to be alone. Both officers said their first thought was that he might have sneaked out to hook up with a girlfriend and things got carried away, but they weren’t about to say that to the wife. She went home around midnight, but called back in around three, and then again at six. By this time, she was hysterical, said she knew something terrible had happened to him. Another car went back to the mission and the officers searched the place from stem to stern without finding a thing. But after the breakfast shift, one of the volunteers took a bag of trash out to the Dumpster, and found Walker slumped behind it on the ground, between the Dumpster and the fence.”

“I’d like to see the crime-scene photos if possible.”

“I can email some of them to you.”

“Hold on for just a minute.” Sam put the phone down and went into the hall, counted doors until he found the one he believed to be Mallory’s. He stuck his head in and said, “I need an email address.”

She recited the address they’d set up for him without looking up from the file she was reading. “Sorry. I meant to give you that earlier. I’m assuming you found your laptop on your desk?”

“I did. Thanks.” He hurried back to his office and repeated the address for Coutinho as he opened the laptop and booted up.

A minute later the email appeared, the photos attached. He opened the document and studied each one carefully.

“Sam?” Coutinho said after several minutes had passed in silence.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what else to call you.”

“Sam is fine,” he said somewhat absently, the photos of Ross Walker drawing all his attention.

He went through them, one by one. “No suspects?” he asked when he reached the last one.

“We had a few of the usuals. The lowlifes that you bring in from time to time then have to let back out on the streets, but you know it’s only a matter of time before they’re back in for something big? You know the ones I’m talking about?”

“All too well. None of them panned out?”

“They were all someplace else doing other things with other people.”

Sam ran through the photos again, the detective waiting patiently on the line for him to finish.

“I thought it was real odd that the cause of death is listed as strangulation when you have all that carnage,” Coutinho said. “The ME said the guy had been strangled before any of the slashing took place.”

“All the blood at the scene, the vic was killed right there. So what are you thinking? That the killer was waiting out back for Walker to come out?” Sam frowned, trying to see it in his mind.

“Basically, yeah, that’s pretty much the way I see it. There’s only one light out back there, over the door. So Walker steps out into the dimly lit area, walks back to the Dumpster, and he’s brought down, strangled manually-there were no ligature marks on the neck, did you notice that? Then the killer drags him behind the Dumpster, stabs him, stuffs the burger in his mouth, and takes off.”

“He’s gotta be covered with blood,” Sam murmured.

“Yeah, you’d think, but there were no drops of blood leading from the alley.”

“So maybe he brought a bag or something with a change of clothes in it.”

“That’s what I figured. At least, he’d have had another shirt to change into.” Coutinho paused. “But what we couldn’t figure out is why all the drama with the knife if he was going to strangle the guy.”

“He was blowing off steam. He wanted the guy dead quickly and quietly, so he takes him out immediately. Then he gets to take his time, do what makes him happy, make his statement.”

“You think this was his way of making a statement?” the detective asked flatly.

“Yeah. I do.”

“What’s he saying?”

“When I figure that out, you’ll be the first to know.”

“We figure this was real personal, that the killer knew Walker, had some beef with him, knew his routine, knew where he’d be at that time on that night. He’s all prepared, right down to the change of clothes ’cause he knew it was going to be messy.”

“That would have taken a lot of planning, which would take it out of the realm of a random killing. The body was left where it would be found quickly, but not too quickly, so the killer has time to slip away. It could suggest a crime of retaliation, or revenge, but what do you suppose is up with the burger?”

“Maybe the hamburger has something to do with the fact that Walker was there at the mission serving food?”

“Hard to tie that to a possible revenge motive though. And revenge leads to the question, what did Ross Walker do to deserve this kind of retribution?”

“The wife says he has no enemies. The other volunteers and his coworkers all said the same thing. Everyone we talked to had only good things to say about him. Nicest guy in the world, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Loved by one and all.”

“All but one, apparently.” Sam thought it over, then added, “Assuming that you’re right, that this is personal, that it’s revenge for something.”

“What else could it be?”

“Not sure. Revenge is the obvious. But I’ve been around too long to believe that everything is always the way it seems.”

“What else could it be? The attack after the guy was already dead makes it appear personal to me,” Coutinho said, somewhat defensively. “The killer went there prepared to kill Walker, and he did just that. Why would you think there’s another explanation?”

“Something just doesn’t feel right to me. If this is payback, why the burger?”

“I don’t know, maybe burgers were on the menu that night. We can check on that. But like I just said, the guy was already dead,” the detective said pointedly and with no lack of exasperation. “He wasn’t eating that burger.”

“That’s my point.” Sam thought it through. “The burger is part of the message.”

“So you’re saying the stab wounds aren’t important?”

“Oh, they’re important, all right. Everything about this murder tells us something important. The over-the-top number of stab wounds tells us the killer was angry, either at Walker or someone else. But the posing of the body, the food stuffed in the mouth… that’s a part of the story, too. We just need to piece it all together.”

“You have a lot of experience with this sort of thing?”

“Some.”

“What did you do before you were a PI? Were you on the job someplace?”

“I was with the FBI.”

There was another pause, then Coutinho asked, “Special agent?”

“Yeah.” Sam debated, then added, “BAU.”

“That’s that behavior analysis stuff, right?”

“Yes.”

“You one of those profilers, like we see on TV all the time?”

“Nothing like what you see on TV,” Sam told him. “Nothing at all like what’s on TV.”

“But you do that, right, analyze behavior and see if you can figure out who the killer is from that?”

“That’s the short version. It’s more than that. You look at the crime scene, try to interpret the killer’s behavior before and after the crime, try to read the evidence he leaves you.”

“So you think you can figure out what motivated this guy?”

“It’s tough to do that with one victim, Detective, you know that. And there’s the conflict for us, right? On the one hand, you’re hoping that this guy has done what he set out to do-exact revenge, settle a score, whatever-and that he won’t repeat. On the other hand, with a series of victims, you see a pattern, you develop a sense of what the killer is after, what he wants.”

“His statement, like you said before.”

“Exactly,” Sam agreed. “So while it’s tougher to get a handle on the killer where you have so little evidence, you really hope that it was one and done for him. Right now, all we know is that we’re most likely looking for a man because it would have taken a lot of strength to overpower Ross Walker, who, from the reports, was a big man.”

“A little over six feet, about two hundred pounds,” Coutinho confirmed.

“So we’re looking for someone with size and strength of his own. Someone organized enough to have researched where and when to find his victim and brought with him everything that he needed, took everything away with him when he left.”

“You coming out here any time soon, Sam?”

“I’d like to get out there as soon as possible. Ideally by tomorrow or Wednesday.” Sam wondered how the Foundation handled travel arrangements.

“Give me a call and let me know when you’re coming. I’ll have a copy of the file and all the statements we took ready for you.”

“Great. Thanks. I’ll be back in touch.” Sam hung up, and headed off to Mallory’s office once again to find out how he should go about getting approval for a flight to Lincoln, Nebraska, and wondering what he’d find once he got there.