Cutting Edge

TEN

It was nine o’clock when Rob Howell finally saw the wood-burned sign marking his hidden drive in front of him. As he sloshed his Camaro toward the foot of the drive, Rob glanced up at the utility pole near the PG&E routing station across the road and didn’t see any downed or sagging phone wires, but knew he couldn’t draw any conclusions from that alone. A service outage could have occurred elsewhere in the grid, or resulted from a loose contact that would be discernible only on close inspection.

What couldn’t have been more evident was that the area had been under heavy showers for a while. The concrete circle around the station where utility workers would sometimes park had been set off the road at a slight incline, and Rob didn’t remember ever noticing a significant rain buildup on its surface. But a deep sheet of water had covered and overflowed the empty apron, gurgling down its lip to swell the drainage culvert at the margin of the blacktop.

Rob’s quick glance at the station evoked a twinge of residual annoyance at the two power-company vehicles that had sped past him in the opposite direction about five miles back, soon after he’d turned onto Pescadero Creek road at the Highway 84 junction. A van and a wagon, he recalled that he’d seen them hurrying toward him on the deluged road, slowed his car, and expected their drivers to do the same out of common sense — if not simple courtesy. Instead they’d continued along at a full tear and splashed his windshield with a blinding curtain of water that threw him into a brief swerve. Rob had been astounded by their recklessness, and was certain he’d have landed in a ditch if his experienced driver’s reflexes had been a whit slower.

But there were other things to occupy his mind right now. Pulling into the driveway, Rob glimpsed Julia’s Honda Passport straight ahead outside the rescue center, then saw his doddering old Ford pickup over to the left next to his house. These seemed sure signs that both Julia and his wife were around. The big question, then, was where?

Rob drove the thirty feet or so toward the house, coasted left onto the dirt-and-gravel track branching toward it, and suddenly heard the dogs barking like crazy out back in their pen.

A sense of foreboding crept over him. There was no way Cynth would leave them in the pen under any circumstance, not in this torrent. What they were doing outside? And what in the world could possibly be causing them to make so much noise?

As he ducked out of the Camaro to the front door, keys in hand, Rob had time to note almost unconsciously that nobody had come to the window upon hearing him pull up.

Oblivious to the accordion folder on its stand beside him, Rob paused in the doorway to wipe the soles of his shoes on the entry mat, an act of habitual normalcy in a life from which every trace of the normal was about to depart. He would never recall anything else from the time he swung off the road until after the police arrived. He would not even remember mustering the presence of mind to call them on his cell phone… this hole punched in his memory by shock and horror the only mercy availed him that day, and perhaps all that kept him sane in the countless tormented days and nights to come.

For Rob Howell, the chasm between before and after would open with that automatic, momentary pause.

So absurd and yet so natural.

Wiping his shoe bottoms on the mat.

“Cynth?” he called from inside the door.

No answer.

“Cynth? You home?”

Still no answer.

Rob moved farther through the house, saw the kitchen light was on, and found his gaze suddenly drawn to a puddle of wetness on the small section of floor visible through its entry from his angle in the middle of the hallway. Something was spilled there on the floor. Something red. Splashed across the floor tiles, tendriled out into the thin puttied spaces between them. A gleaming puddle of red on Cynth’s precious new kitchen tiles, which Rob had painstakingly laid himself not three months earlier as a fifth anniversary present to her.

His heart thumped.

“Cynth?”

Not a sound except for the greys barking outside.

Dread perched on his shoulders like some cruel taloned bird, Rob rushed into the kitchen, looked down near the feet of the table, and began screaming wildly into the silence of the house, his legs melting away underneath him, the world blurring out in a gush of tears, screaming, screaming, his wails of horror and grief rising from the bottom of his lungs until they shredded off into hoarse, hysterical sobs.

What he had seen was an abomination.

“Hey, Roger, you made it!” Hugh Bennett said in a bassoon voice, coming over from the parlor entry. “Been looking forward to this a while… heard you were finally on the way from the airport! Guess it’s been quite a haul for all of us staying here — except Tom o’ course!”

In Gabon only a few hours, Roger Gordian was not too surprised to find King Hughie waiting for him at the large colonial home of Thomas Sheffield, an expat Sedco official whose guest he would be for the next couple of days.

What did catch him unprepared was the retinue of perhaps eight or ten suited, seated Sedco executives in the parlor behind Hughie.

“Good to see you.” Gordian looked into his large, broad-cheeked face. Bushy white eyebrows ran together under the forehead like a solid raft of clouds. “Everyone’s here for dinner?”

Bennett slapped him on the back as they shook hands.

“And an informal meeting, Gabon-style!” King Hughie said. “They say people like doing business at night in these parts! And I say, great! No time beats the present for ironing out the details of tomorrow’s ceremonious occasion!”

Gordian looked at him. Did he really believe everything that left his mouth had exclamatory value?

“I hope you’ll understand that I need time to freshen up,” he said. “It has been a long trip.”

Hughie looked over at Sheffield, who had been standing beside Gordian in apparent mortification.

“Not a problem!” he said. “Tom’s got himself a damn well-stocked wine cellar… and his cook went and prepared some beee-eau-ti-ful hors d’oeuvres to tide me over while I do my sampling!”

The two police detectives arrived first thing the next morning with an attitude of impatient irresistibility.

Megan’s response was to be patiently immovable.

She had sized them up the moment they entered her office and known they were poised to intimidate. Perhaps because they were men addressing a woman, or law officers accustomed to throwing around the weight of their authority, or for some combination of those or other reasons. She didn’t really care. They had stated what they wanted. She was determined to learn more about why they had come before offering her compliance. But although they wore their game faces as well as she did, and a sense of pressing urgency could be felt on both sides of her desk, Megan thought her clearer view of their relative positions might give her a bargaining edge.

The leveler was how much their presence worried her. She couldn’t afford to let them see it.

“Ms. Breen, we need to speak to Roger Gordian about his daughter,” said the senior investigator for the third time. His name was Erickson. Probably in his late forties. Big squarish face, cornflower blue eyes, a crop of wavy, canary blond hair wet from the rain outside. He sat with his right leg across his opposite knee, wearing brown off-the-rack mufti under his open raincoat. “You say he’s traveling someplace?”

“He’s abroad on business,” she said. “In Africa. It’s no secret.”

Erickson studied Megan across her desk. “Even so, you must be able to reach him. Or his spouse.” He paused, added, “We’ve tried their residence but no one seems to be present.”

Megan converted the tension in her facial muscles to an expression of firm resolve. Erickson seemed dogged but not confrontational. He might be the one to deal with.

“I believe Mrs. Gordian is visiting with relatives,” she said. “But you have my full attention. As the senior executive at UpLink in his absence, I’m responsible for managing its affairs. They include observing Mr. Gordian’s privacy and keeping him from being unnecessarily distracted. If you’ll tell me—”

“How about you make those job responsibilities include giving us some cooperation?” interrupted the other man.

He’d introduced himself as Detective Brewer, strong emphasis on the job title. Thin, narrow-eyed, and about ten years younger than his partner. A small-town cop from Sonora who was suffering from an overkill of TV crime dramas and thought tactless and pushy equaled urban tough. He wore no topcoat over his navy suit and had left his umbrella in the stand out in her reception room.

Megan directed her response at Erickson.

“If I’m to contact Mr. Gordian, I need to know generally what brings you here,” she said.

The older cop sat very still. His eyes showing a flicker of compromise before the flat resistance dropped back over them.

“We need some information about his daughter,” he said.

Megan concealed her disappointment. It was only when she braced for the question she needed to ask that her control almost faltered.

“Has anything happened to Julia?”

Erickson took a breath, released it. Megan saw his foot move up and down over his knee.

“We have to get in touch with Roger Gordian,” he repeated again, clinging to his laconic manner.

Megan waited before she answered. Her office was silent. The double-pane glass of its windows completely deadened the lash of wind and rain against them, somehow increasing her awareness of the dark splotches of moisture on Erickson’s coat.

“So far we’ve been talking through a wall,” she said. “It’s difficult to come together that way. How about we step around it and see if it works any better?”

Brewer shook his head angrily, almost rising off his chair. “We don’t have to do anything or step anywhere. We are conducting a police investigation, and you should be aware you’re on the brink of obstructing—”

Erickson got his partner’s attention with a tap on the knee, held up a preemptive hand. He looked embarrassed.

“Consider us as having stepped,” he said.

Megan kept her eyes off Brewer’s flushed face as he settled back in his chair. Compounding his belittlement would serve no useful purpose.

“I realize that whatever has brought you here must be very serious,” she told Erickson. “And you can rest assured I’m ready to help you reach Mr. Gordian and anyone else who has to be contacted. If there’s bad news to be broken, however, I intend to be the person who does it. As a second in this company and a close family friend. But I obviously can’t until you tell me what this is about.”

Erickson sat there looking at Megan another moment, shrugged, and uncrossed his legs.

Then he leaned forward and told her.

“Still ain’t heard nothing from Africa?” Thibodeau said.

“Not yet,” Megan said. “Pete’s on his way to tell Gord right now.”

“Seems like it’s taking a while,” Ricci said.

“When I spoke to him, he was outside the city. It’s night in Gabon, and I don’t think there are any passable roads through the jungle. He’s flying back to Port-Gentil in one of our helicopters.”

“What was the problem reaching Gordian yourself?”

Megan looked at Ricci across the small conference table. “He’s staying as a guest at a local Sedco executive’s home to avoid the bugs in the hotel walls, and they’re behind closed doors having a late consultation about that affair on the oil platform. Hughie Bennett and his entire court are in attendance, and I don’t want the boss to hear this news over the phone under those circumstances.” She paused. “Better Pete tells him in person. He should be there any time.”

Ricci did not answer. His glassy calm eyes gave no clue to what he might be thinking or feeling. Megan saw her reflection in them and could not keep her own nerves from becoming exposed. That was unlike her, and she resented him for it — how much more of herself might be revealed on the mirror’s surface?

She sipped from the glass of water beside her to relieve her parched throat.

“I don’t know, Rollie,” she said. “My mind is everywhere at once. I know I’ll pull it together, but for now I just can’t center.”

Thibodeau nodded grimly.

“Soup to soup,” he said. “Be a Creole saying I heard a lot growing up. Ain’t no food for the pot tonight, we find something to put in it tomorrow.”

She gave him a thin smile. “I’ll try to remember that one.”

“Oui.”

Megan was quiet a moment. With the detectives in her office, she had called Nimec to break the news about Julia, then phoned Ashley Gordian’s sister’s house in Los Angeles, gotten the answering machine and left an urgent message for Ashley to get in touch. After that she had summoned Ricci and Thibodeau down here into one of UpLink SanJo’s underground safe rooms — a spare rectangular enclosure that was little more than the conference table and four windowless, two-foot-thick concrete walls webbed with an array of interstitial countersurveillance systems.

It hadn’t taken her long to share what she knew, and none of it was encouraging. Julia Gordian was gone from the animal shelter where she did volunteer work a number of days a week. The woman whose husband operated the shelter had been shot dead along with her infant daughter, their home a crime scene Erickson had described as beyond horrible.

“This Rob Howell,” Ricci said now. His eyes went to Megan as he spoke. “Those cops figure he’s clean?”

“He’s under no suspicion of having been involved,” she said. “His co-workers saw him arrive at the hotel Sunday morning, then rush back home — he’d forgotten a bookkeeping file of some sort. His cell phone LUDs show the calls that were placed from his car to his house and the greyhound rescue center. He uses FastTrack for his bridge tolls, and account deductions were recorded both ways at the plaza lanes off Highway One into San Gregario. He also bought gas with a credit card on his return trip. In both cases the systems show when those expenses were paid and back up his story.”

“Don’t tell us nothing about what he did before he left his place,” Thibodeau said. “Or after he got back.”

Ricci looked at him, then shook his head.

“You consider travel distances, average road speeds, and the time Howell’s call to the police was logged, it narrows things far as opportunity,” he said. “My guess is the operation was planned for when he wouldn’t be around. Pro all the way. The phone lines disconnected at their feeder pole, more than a single type of weapon used. There were fresh tire tracks showing several vehicles at the center and at the utility station near the pole.” His eyes returned to Megan. “Is Howell available? In case we need some information from him.”

“I don’t know.” She took another drink of water. Her tongue and throat continued to feel as if they were lined with sandpaper. “I suppose I should have thought to ask—”

“You done your’n fine,” said Thibodeau. “Those detectives gave you enough to think about. Ain’t likely they would’ve been generous with that information anyway.”

Ricci kept looking neutrally at Megan.

“You told me the cops found blood at the animal shelter.”

“Yes, I did.”

“That it might be Julia’s.”

“Yes.”

“What makes them think she’s not a third murder victim?”

Megan stabbed a look at him, her shoulders rising a little.

“Let’s not try to be too delicate.”

“I was asking a question.”

“About the boss’s daughter. And my good friend.”

“I have to know what there is to know,” Ricci said. “You don’t like my way of phrasing things, I’m sorry.”

But he did not sound apologetic. Megan’s posture remained very straight, her eyes green fire in a face pale with strain.

“There was blood at the shelter,” she said. “And, yes… it’s believed to be Julia’s. But Erickson suggested that whatever took place in there seems of a different nature from the violence that occurred at the house.”

“Any concrete reasons?”

“He wasn’t about to submit an itemized evidence list to me, and I didn’t press my luck. We could profit from a good relationship with him if he doesn’t shy away.”

Ricci studied her a moment.

“You find out what line those cops are working, or decide that was out of bounds, too?” he said.

In her anger, Megan could have balled her hands into fists until the knuckles were white, dug her fingernails into her palms. She held her composure and folded them on the table instead.

“Nobody broke into Julia’s SUV. There was nothing stolen from the shelter, or the house where the mother and baby were killed. Nothing to indicate robbery was a motive,” she told him. “I heard a lot of words from Erickson about processing the crime scene, looking at the evidence, reconstructing what happened without assumptions. But you were a police detective. Do you actually believe they would come right out and tell me they think Julia Gordian was abducted? Right now Julia’s status is a question. She’s a phantom. A ‘whereabouts unknown.’ I don’t even know that we’ve reached the time period when she can be officially declared a missing person.”

“Doesn’t effect what we do, except maybe giving us the chance to get a jump on the feebs,” Ricci said. “Once this gets ticketed a kidnapping they’ll be all over it.”

“I can’t see how that’s bad,” Megan said. “It’s not us against them. They have resources. Expertise in the field—”

“And we know how their main office loves sharing intelligence,” Ricci said.

He was quiet and still. The silence was like a knot bunched in tightly around his thoughts.

“Won’t get us anywhere to sit here talking,” he said at length. “I’m heading out to the scene while it’s warm. Before it gets too worked over.”

Megan wanted to catch Thibodeau’s eye but knew Ricci would not miss the slightest glance. She chose to wait, and Rollie didn’t disappoint her.

“No sense you going alone,” he told Ricci. “Better you and me get a look at things together.”

“I can handle it myself.”

“That ain’t the matter. We got to figure the local police won’t be thrilled by our visit. Be tougher for ’em to shake off two of us than one.”

Megan was quick to move in.

“Rollie’s right,” she said. “He should go, too. I’ll make some calls and pull whatever strings I can from here.”

Ricci regarded her closely. “That a suggestion or an order?”

“It’s how I want it,” she said.

Ricci kept his eyes on her a moment longer and then shifted them to Thibodeau.

“She can give you directions to the shelter,” he said, and stood. “I’ll wait down the hall.”

Thibodeau caught up to him as he was holding his palm to the biometric scanner to bring an elevator for the garage level. He looked to be sure Megan was still back in the safe room before putting a hand on Ricci’s arm.

“Keep talkin’ to me like I’m some junior rover, it’ll get settled between us in good course,” he said in a low voice. “But what you said about the boss’s girl being killed… you don’t want to give touch to that around Megan. Don’t want to go near it.”

“You think it’s something we should rule out?”

“I think we all got experience enough to know the could-be’s, and Meg sees things clearer than anybody you ever gonna meet. But ain’t no cause for you adding to her pain.”

Ricci shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “Next time we meet on the subject I’ll be sure to raise the possibility the boss’s daughter took off on a cruise to nowhere.”

Thibodeau brushed his gaze over Ricci’s face.

“Take a look in the mirror some day,” he said. “You going to see one cruel son of a bitch.”

Ricci stood there a second or two without a word. Then the elevator dinged its arrival.

“Sure enough,” he said, and turned to enter the car, leaving Thibodeau to follow him through its open doors.

There were two Sonoma police cruisers parked across the foot of the drive as Ricci’s VW Jetta approached in the falling rain. Pulled abreast of each other, the black-and-whites faced in opposite directions and had sawhorses erected on either side of them.

About thirty feet west of the blockade, Thibodeau nodded toward the right shoulder of the road.

“We might want to stop here, stroll on over to them,” he said, ending a silence that had lasted for their entire ride to the rescue center. “Be less apt to get their backs up.”

Ricci said nothing in response, but whipped the car onto the puddled shoulder.

They got out and continued toward the drive on foot, raindrops rattling hard against their umbrellas.

The cops exited their cruisers in dark waterproof ponchos, walking around from either side as officers will do when strangers come toward them, cautiously, neither trying to hide nor be too conspicuous about the readiness of their draw hands, but keeping them just near enough to their holsters to exert a subtle, nonprovocational psychic weight.

Ricci took note of their guarded stances with an evaluative eye. He had met unknown persons the same way on hundreds of occasions in his decade with the Boston force.

The first cop came forward carefully.

“Gentlemen.” A little nod. Calm, polite tone. “What can we do for you?”

Ricci told him their names, flashing his Sword insignia card in its display case.

“We’re UpLink private security,” he said. “You might’ve heard of us.”

The uniform checked the identification. He nodded.

“Sure,” he said. “Good things. I once checked out job opportunities on your Web site. There are some tough prereqs just to snag an interview.”

Ricci did not comment.

“Our boss’s daughter,” he said. “She’s your missing person.”

The cop gave another nod. He had dropped his show-room face.

“Julia Gordian,” he said. “This is a damn bad one.”

“We need to take a look around the C.S.”

The cop paused a moment. He wore his cap under the hood of the poncho and its bill shed droplets of water as he shook his head.

“Not possible,” he said. “The area’s been secured.”

Ricci stared at him.

“We drove all the way from SanJo,” he said. “Make an exception.”

Thibodeau tried to moderate Ricci’s harshness.

“We understand you got physical evidence needs to be protected and want to feel comfortable,” Thibodeau said. “And we won’t give it no nevermind if somebody from your department sticks with us, make sure we don’t disturb nothing.”

The cop gave him a curious glance. “Louisiana?” he said.

“And proud of it,” Thibodeau said. “Didn’t think anybody could hear no accent.”

A grin.

“Went down for Mardi Gras once. Beats the hell out of me how you people can take eating that spicy food.”

“Secret’s to line the gut with moonshine.”

The cop’s grin enlarged a bit.

“Look, I really wish I could do something to help, but we have rules about restricting access to unauthorized parties.”

Thibodeau made his pitch. “No special considerations for fellas you hear such great things about?”

“None I have any pull to give. You’d need to arrange for special clearance.”

Ricci briefly let his glance range over the cop’s shoulder. A crime scene van and other police vehicles stood farther uphill. Small clusters of technical services and investigative personnel were everywhere. He noticed a plainclothesman in a raincoat moving between them on the drive. He was hatless, carried no umbrella, and had both hands in the pockets of his coat.

He turned his attention back to the uniform.

“Who’s the scene coordinator?”

“That would be Detective Erickson—”

Ricci cut him short. “Then stop wasting our time and call him over.”

The cop managed not to look flustered. But his partners were drifting slowly over from outside their patrol cars.

“Unless there’s some urgent reason, my orders are to see the investigation isn’t interrupted,” he said after about ten seconds. Rain bounced off the front of his cap. “I think the best way for you to proceed is leave your contact information so I can pass it up the line.”

Ricci stared at him with cold intensity, ignoring the other three uniforms.

“The detective in charge,” he said. “Call him over.”

His expression no longer friendly, the cop looked about to react to the outright challenge.

Then a new voice: “You two Ricci and Thibodeau?”

Ricci turned and saw the man in the raincoat hurrying around from behind the crosswise-parked cars. His blond hair was wet.

“Erickson,” Ricci said.

The detective moved his head up and down, then flicked a glance at the uniforms. They backed off and returned to their black-and-whites.

“Megan Breen just called on my cell,” he said. “She told me you were coming, explained you’d like to view the scene.”

Ricci nodded.

“She’s been very cooperative,” Erickson said. “There are certain restrictions on where you can and can’t go. You guys agree to abide by them, I’ll try to return the favor.”

Thibodeau didn’t hesitate for an instant.

“Be appreciated,” he said.

Erickson nodded.

“Follow me,” he said, and then turned to walk back up the drive.

They followed.

An eight-month stint in Antarctica had raised Megan Breen’s command of her patience to a sublime level, and she had done everything she could to keep herself occupied while awaiting word from Africa and Ashley’s callback. Whatever else was happening, she had a company to manage, as she’d had an ice station to run amid a wide spectrum of crises brought on by both man and nature throughout the polar winter. Her waking nightmare had begun today with two small-city detectives arriving out of the blue to deliver the most unexpected and shocking of messages. The tense, rapidly called huddle with Ricci and Thibodeau had followed without segue in Megan’s numbed mind. But the constant reminders that it was still a day at the office were among the nightmare’s most surreal components. There were matters she needed to track in every area of operation. Routine decisions to make, clusters of problems to address, requests to grant, deny, or put on hold. Many of them were duties she would have normally considered headaches but counted as blessings right now in her attempts to stay busy. She did not expect to give better than partial attention to anything in front of her, nor stop her fears about Julia from obtruding on her thoughts. Still, Megan could only believe that being partially diverted, maintaining even the flimsiest semblance of normalcy, was preferable to giving in to the sense of helpless, useless, agonizing despair that would be the sure and terrible alternative.

When the e-mail arrived, she was at her office computer making an immense effort to focus on a contractor’s bid for the expansion of an UpLink optics and photonics R&D facility outside Seattle. On any other morning, she almost certainly would not have noticed the new inbox item for quite a while. Though she had never bothered to disable the sound notification option on her messaging program — default settings tended to remain in place on her machine out of casual apathy — Megan considered its bell tone an annoying nuisance given the large volume of electronic correspondence she received, and for the most part left her desktop’s speakers switched off. Typically, she would check for messages at semiregular intervals throughout the course of her workday — while having her morning coffee, before and after her lunch break, then again perhaps an hour or so before heading home.

Today, however, was not normal. Not typical, no. Not regular or routine by any stretch of the imagination. Today Megan had turned on the speaker volume control thinking she wanted to leave every line of communication open, and it was for this reason that she heard the chime that signaled a message had jumped into her queue. It was the tenth she’d opened in under an hour. Eight of the previous messages were work related. The last had been a nasty bit of junk mail that managed to squeeze through her software filters and, because she was distracted, trick her into opening it with a moderately devious subject line that would have been otherwise identified for what it was by her mental antispammers to prompt a quick delete. All nine were long-term or short-term ignorable.

Until this one.

This turned out to be the message Megan had sought and dreaded, and nothing could stop the cold slide of ice that began to work through her intestines the instant she read its subject, causing her to break into visible shudders as she opened it with a hurried click of the mouse.

Much as she’d tried prepare herself, nothing.

“Don’t think I have to reconstruct what happened back here,” Erickson was saying. “You can see for yourselves.”

Ricci and Thibodeau stood with him outside the rescue center’s back door, studying its demolished lock plate and frame.

“Somebody fired a lot of rounds,” Ricci said. “Wanted past the door in a rush, didn’t care about surprising anyone with the noise.”

“Right,” Erickson said. “We can thank this rain for making the ground damp enough to give us some decent shoe impressions to photo and cast. There were four attackers from the looks of things, came around from either side of the main building in pairs. Your boss’s daughter must have left those kennels out behind us, seen them closing in, and hurried through this entrance to try and get away from them.”

Ricci had closed his umbrella and crouched to examine the door frame.

“You must’ve pulled a lot of slugs out of this,” he said, running a latex-gloved finger over the pocked, splintered wood. “What caliber?”

“Nine mil Parabellum,” Erickson said. “The ammunition was fragged, but the spent cartridge casings we recovered told us right off.”

Ricci glanced over his shoulder at Erickson.

“Big, deep punch for nines, even fired up close,” he said. “There a brand name on those casings?”

Erickson gave a nod. “Federal Hydrashok.”

“Premium make.”

“That’s right.”

“Expensive.”

“Right.”

“You able to tell anything about the guns from the ejection pattern?”

“Not definitively.”

Ricci responded to the cop’s knee-jerk hedge with a look of overt impatience.

Erickson hesitated a moment, exhaled.

“Off the record,” he said, “I believe the weapons used outside this door were subs.”

Ricci considered that.

“Outside,” he repeated.

Erickson nodded.

“Were shots fired inside?” Ricci asked.

“The shop seems a different story.” A pause. “Put on those booties from my kit and I’ll show you.”

Erickson led the Sword ops through the entrance and back rooms to the area behind the sales counter.

“Be careful where you step.” He motioned to several dark brown splatters on the linoleum that had been bordered with tape. “The stains were partially dry when I arrived yesterday morning. Maybe a couple of hours old. It was clear on sight they were blood, but I swabbed and did a Hemodent test to confirm.”

Thibodeau studied them a moment, then raised his eyes to Erickson.

“You know whose blood?” he said.

The detective appraised his grave features, the cheeks pale above the dark beard.

“Julia Gordian’s purse was left on the countertop,” he said. “She carried one of those Red Cross donor cards, and her type matches.”

Perspiration glistened on Thibodeau’s forehead in the chill dampness of the room.

“Une zireté,” he muttered under his breath.

It is something atrocious.

Erickson was still looking at him. If the literal meaning of the words eluded him, their underlying emotions were easy to translate.

“I’m not saying anything for sure, but it doesn’t appear she was shot.” The cop knelt, pointed to the rust-colored stains. “The bleeding wasn’t that heavy—”

“No spray patterns like you’d expect from a bullet wound, either,” Ricci said.

Erickson glanced up at him.

“Right,” he said. “From the way the drops struck the floor and their cast off angles… you see these streaky lines trailing toward the wall… I’d guess she fell back against it in a struggle and got cut or something.”

As he spoke Ricci shifted his eyes to a much larger stain crusting the floor of the shop.

“Must’ve been a more serious wound left that one over there,” he said, gesturing across the counter top. “You have a theory to explain it, too?”

Erickson straightened and turned to him.

“The main thing you need to know is that our tests fixed the blood group as different from Julia Gordian’s,” he said.

Ricci regarded him curiously.

“Any bullets or casings picked up in the storefront?”

“No.”

“Ideas how the blood got there?”

“We’re still narrowing down the possibilities.”

Ricci tipped his chin toward the front entrance without taking his eyes off Erickson’s face.

“I can see from here that door got kicked in,” he said.

Erickson nodded.

“Wouldn’t have been hard for a strong man,” Ricci said. “It seems pretty lightweight.”

Erickson nodded again.

“Means there was probably a fifth perp,” Ricci said. “At least a fifth.”

“Right.”

“So maybe the blood stain was left by whoever came crashing through the door.”

“I told you we’re looking at the possibles.”

“You going to have more for us on them soon?”

Erickson took a moment to answer.

“We’ll see what develops,” he said. “Meanwhile, it would help if you could come up with the names of anybody who might have grudges against your employer, knowledge of his family… whatever you think is relevant.”

Ricci’s gaze remained fixed on the detective.

“Share and share alike,” he said. “I want to take another quick swing around the grounds before we leave. Got any problem with that?”

Again Erickson was quiet.

“I doubt you’ll find much that can add to what you know evidence-wise, but can’t see why not… with some stipulations,” he said. “The residence downhill is still being processed, and we’re considering whether to extend the crime scene to the woods. That puts them off limits.”

“Howell off-limits, too?” Ricci probed.

“Couldn’t stop you from talking to him if he were here, but he’s staying with family.”

Ricci grunted.

“Okay, what else?”

“I stay with you,” Erickson said. “Acceptable?”

Ricci nodded.

“Come on,” Erickson said. “We’ll start out back, work our way down to your car. So I can do you two fellas the final favor of seeing you off.”

The Sword ops showed no hint of amusement in their expressions.

A moment later they all went out into the rain.

“That e-mail, Pete. Did you get it yet?” Megan asked over his radio headset.

In the bird chopping west from the hospital at Lambaréné, Nimec could hear a distinct tremor in her voice.

“Hold on,” he said. “These goddamn gadgets… the co-pilot had to reset the display mode for me. Okay, it’s coming through now… I need a second to check it out.”

Nimec stared at the helicopter console’s multifunctional readout panel. The message on its GMSS comlink display left no question about what had left Megan so badly shaken and stretched his own control to the limit. He felt a sick, lancing anger.

Delivered to Megan’s computer from an anonymous proxy server, the e-mail now bouncing across uncounted miles of world to Nimec via satellite bore the subject line:

Nimec had opened it immediately and read the text:

Nimec finished reading it and took a deep breath.

“Those first couple of words in the subject, Meg. You know what they mean?”

“Aria d’entrata. Italian. I think it’s an operatic term for a vocal passage sung when a performer makes an entrance.”

Nimec felt that white-hot spike in his gut again. They were being taunted.

“The tattoo…”

“Julia told me she was going to have it done,” Megan said. “It must have been the last time she stopped by the office. A month ago. Maybe more. I’m not even sure Gord knows about it yet. She made me promise to stay mum, wanted to spring it on him in person. You know how she likes to get a rise out of him, Pete—”

“Meg—”

“Yes?”

“Listen to me,” he said. “The description’s to confirm this e-mail isn’t a hoax from somebody who might’ve found out what’s happened through a leak. Something of that nature.”

“There’s a lot of information,” Megan said. “The reference to the color of Julia’s eyes. Also that part about the jogging. Her greyhounds. Even her schedule.”

“She’s been watched.”

“Yes.” Megan took an audible breath. “Pete, what do you think whoever’s behind this is after? If she’s being held for a ransom, what sort of announcement can they want?”

“Wish I could give you an answer. All I know is somebody likes playing games. You can feel the spite here.”

“Yes.”

Nimec thought aloud. “The boss might have some ideas. He has to see the e-mail. I’ve got to show it to him right away.”

“I don’t know how he’ll manage to handle everything. It’s so much at once.”

Nimec was quiet. He felt the vast spread of distance between them.

“Ricci up to snuff?” he asked after a moment.

“He’s at the rescue center now. With Rollie. I haven’t contacted him about the message.”

“Better do it in a hurry,” Nimec said. He thought some more. “We need to rely on him, Meg.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“You’ve got no choice. If there are any solid leads, Ricci’s the one to find them. He’s the one, Meg.”

Silence.

“I know,” she said. “But knowing it doesn’t give me much comfort.”

Nimec stared out the chopper’s canopy into the rushing blackness of night.

“Sometimes,” he said, “we can only go with what we have.”

As far as his statement to Ricci went, Erickson had been candid: There wasn’t much of anything helpful to be found outside in the way of evidence.

Not on the grounds per se.

Accompanied by the detective, Ricci and Thibodeau had again walked back to the greyhound exercise pen and kennel, both empty now with the dogs taken into temporary care by the ASPCA. They had reinspected the sides and rear of the shop, then strode along the periphery of the bordering woods. Finally they went out front to the parking area to take a look at Julia Gordian’s Honda Passport, and the muddy vestiges of tire prints the cops had already lifted the previous day.

They were standing over by the Honda in the rain when Ricci noticed a car parked among a group of police cruisers a yard or two farther down the lot — a Ford Cutlass, standard-issue plainclothes unmarked in precinct requisition lots. Its window was open slightly more than a crack, a man in a navy blue suit working on a laptop computer in the front passenger seat.

Ricci looked more closely and saw something on the armrest beside the man. It raised a thought.

He broke away from Erickson and Thibodeau and hastened over to the car.

“Got a minute?” Ricci said, crouched under his umbrella. He motioned his head back toward the Passport. “I’m with Erickson.”

Surprised by the sudden interruption, Navy Blue glanced out at him, pushing the computer screen down out of his angle of sight.

“You one of those guys from UpLink?” he said.

Ricci nodded, came up close to the window, and shot a look inside at what he’d recognized as a pad of graph paper on the armrest. But he had no chance to catch more than the briefest glimpse of the sketch on its top page before Navy Blue reached over and turned it facedown where it lay.

“This is a crime scene,” he said. “I’ve got important things to do.”

“Like I said,” Ricci said. “Not more than a minute.”

Navy Blue continued to regard him from inside the Cutlass, his expression at once standoffish and warily curious.

A grunt. “Something I can call you besides Man From UpLink?”

“Name’s Tom Ricci.”

Navy Blue sat a moment, pushed the button to lower the window about halfway.

Ricci figured that was all he would need.

“I’m Detective Brewer,” the cop said. He still sounded suspicious. “Go ahead and make it quick.”

Ricci did, but not in the way Brewer expected. Before the other man could react, he thrust his free hand through the window, turned Brewer’s laptop toward him, and raised the lid so he could see it.

Brewer flinched in his seat.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” He pulled the computer back around, snapped it shut.

Ricci’s face was calm.

“Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “Might be none of my business, but I thought I saw you using that crime scene diagramming software. Figured I’d check for sure. Maybe offer some advice.”

Brewer glared at him. “You want advice, keep your fucking hands to yourself—”

“No harm intended.” Ricci held a low, level tone. “I was on the job once upon a time. Boston. Found out the hard way these computer sketches aren’t worth jack on the witness stand. You want to impress a jury, don’t lose your original hand sketch on that pad. Accurate’s good. Sometimes giving them a feel for what you saw can be better.”

Brewer stared at him in angry confusion. Ricci knew he wouldn’t believe his excuse for the grab. It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that he’d incidentally happened to be telling the truth about the testifying part. He’d gotten his look at the screen image. Not a long one. But long enough.

“There a problem here?”

The voice was Erickson’s. Ricci half-turned and saw the detective standing behind him. He and Thibodeau had come over from the Honda.

Ricci left the explanation to Brewer. He doubted the cop would mention anything about the laptop, embarrass himself by admitting he’d been caught off guard.

As expected, pride won the day.

“No,” Brewer said. He was trying not to seem abashed. “The two of us were having some shop talk.”

Erickson gave his partner a long look, hands in the pockets of his raincoat, water dripping from his hair.

“Shop talk,” he repeated.

Brewer nodded inside the car.

“Ricci used to be a cop,” he said. “We were comparing notes about procedures. How they’ve changed and so forth.”

Erickson’s gaze dissected him another moment and then swung onto Ricci.

“Didn’t do much comparing with me before,” he said.

Ricci shrugged under his umbrella.

“We had other things to talk about,” he said.

Erickson was silent. Thibodeau was silent. Both of them were looking at Ricci and had separate reasons for being skeptical and displeased.

“Okay,” Erickson said at last. He gestured the Sword ops toward the road. “I think maybe it’s time I walk you two back to your car.”

Thibodeau hadn’t taken his eyes off Ricci.

“Guess it would be,” he said, and started traipsing down the gravel and mud drive in the rain.

“I get to find out what was going on between you and that other detective?” Thibodeau said.

“Sure,” Ricci said. “I aim to please.”

Thibodeau waited. They were back inside Ricci’s Jetta on the shoulder of the road, rain dashing against the roof and windshield.

“Erickson was holding out on us,” Ricci said. “I knew he wouldn’t give up whatever it was and played his partner on a hunch.”

Thibodeau looked across the seat at him.

“That hunch pay off?”

“Yeah.” Ricci told him how he’d seen Brewer in the car with his graph paper and laptop, gone over to check it out, and gotten a look at the crime scene diagram on Brewer’s computer. “It was all right there for me on his screen. The stain on the floor. Its location and measurements. And an outline of a dog. The word greyhound lettered right over it.”

Thibodeau was shaking his head, his brow creased.

“A dog,” he said. “Don’t get it. Erickson said—”

“I heard what Erickson said. Kept it nice and vague for us. Except vague only works when it’s consistent, and he wasn’t making sense. The blood left behind isn’t Julia’s and he’s thinking about other possibles. Maybe one of her attackers, maybe not. But if not, who? If he isn’t looking at anybody besides Julia being in that store when things went down, it would’ve had to belong to whoever came after her.”

Thibodeau tugged at his heavy beard as it all sank in.

“Be damned,” he said. “Be damned if it didn’t slip right by me.”

Ricci stared out into the rain.

“At first I figured he was lying straight out. That the cops had somebody in custody and wanted to keep it secret,” he said. “Wouldn’t have guessed those possibles he mentioned didn’t include human beings.”

Thibodeau was quiet a moment, still plucking his beard.

“We got to be concerned with Erickson. He hear tell about what you did… how you did it… he gonna shut us out altogether.”

Ricci shrugged.

“Let him,” he said. “Gives me one less person to second guess.”

Thibodeau shook his head some more. “I ain’t trying to start a gripe, just saying you might’ve warned me. Never know when we gonna need him. We’d put our minds together, consulted, we might’ve figured a way to get the information out of him so we don’t lose his trust—”

Ricci pitched a glance across the seat at him.

“I don’t want anybody’s trust,” he said. “Just want to know why the cops are keeping that dog’s body under wraps. And where it is.”

Thibodeau started to say something, quickly cut himself off.

“Any thoughts about how you gonna do that?” he said with a kind of yielding resignation.

Ricci thrust his key into the ignition and brought the Volkswagen to life.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”