Roses Are Red

Chapter Seventy-Four

The next morning I arrived at Boiling Air Force Base in Anacostia at ten to eight. SAC Cavalierre and three other agents, including James Walsh, got there promptly at eight. The behaviorist from Quantico, Dr. Joanna Rodman, showed up a couple of minutes late. We took off in a Bell helicopter that was shiny black, both official- and important-looking. We were off hunting the Mastermind. I hoped he wasn't doing the same thing with us.

We arrived at the downtown Metro Hartford headquarters at nine-thirty. As I entered the office building, I had the overwhelming feeling that the place had been consciously designed by the insurance company to inspire trust, even awe. The lobby had enormously high ceilings, glinty glass everywhere, polished black-ice floors, and over scaled modern art screaming from the walls. In contrast to the grand public space, the offices inside looked as if they had been designed by either the junior architect of the firm or its resident hack. Warrens of half-walled cubicles filled large, airless rooms on every floor. There was lots of 'prairie dogging' out of the cubes, plenty of fodder for Dilbert satire. The FBI had sent agents here before today, but now it was time for the big guns to go to work.

I saw twenty-eight people that day and I quickly found out that few of the Metro Hartford employees had any sense of humor. What's there to laugh about? seemed to be the company motto. It also hit me that there were very few risk takers among the people I met. Several of them actually said, "You can never be too careful."

My very last interview turned out to be the most intriguing. It was with a woman named Hildie Rader. I was bored and distracted, but her opening line perked me right up.

"I think I met one of the kidnappers. He was here in downtown Hartford. I was as close to him as I am to you right now," she said.