Ricci let his eyes rest on him. “It’s important for us to know what’s happened to her body.”
Howell’s expression was odd.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.
Ricci paused a beat.
“When a pet’s remains have to be examined during an investigation, the police bring them to a lab for tests,” he said. “Depends on the case, but they’ll usually give them back to the owner after they’re through—”
Howell was shaking his head.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
Ricci looked at him.
“Don’t understand what?”
“Viv’s alive,” Howell said.
Aware Gordian would want to see it with his own eyes, Pete Nimec had hardcopied the e-mail aboard the chopper, printing it out on a single sheet of paper he’d folded into his wallet. Behind the closed sliding doors of Sheffield’s visitor parlor now, he sat on the couch with him and heard that paper rattle in his trembling hand.
“There’s nothing else?” Gordian said. His face was chalky. “This message is it?”
“So far,” Nimec said. “Yeah.”
Gordian shook his head. “Ashley…”
“She doesn’t know yet. Meg’s been leaving messages for her to get in touch.”
“I’ll contact her myself.”
Nimec looked at him and nodded. He heard the paper rattle.
“You’re sure it’s the truth… about the tattoo?” Gordian said. “Because if Julia had gotten something like that put on her body, she’d tell me just to see my face turn red. You know her, Pete. How she is. She acts like it’s amusing when my dander’s up. She’d tell me—”
“She told Megan. Some kind of secret thing between them. I think she was going to make a presentation of it the next time you saw her.”
“My God,” Gordian said through a harsh exhalation. “If not for that poor woman… her baby… killed, shot dead… I’d think it was all some kind of hoax. That maybe someone who knows Julia found out she’d gone out of town, sent this poison over the Internet for a sick thrill…”
He let the sentence trail, recognizing the uselessness of trying to bind it in logic and reality. Nimec heard his agitated snatches of breath, the paper rattling again between his fingers in the silence of the room.
“Who’s on it?” Gordian said.
“Ricci and Thibodeau. If there are any leads, any paths they need to follow, every man, every resource, everything we’ve got is available in a heartbeat. You know that.”
Gordian nodded.
“I need to tie things up, get back home right away—”
“Boss,” Nimec interrupted. “You can’t leave Africa.”
Gordian looked at him. “No,” he said.
“Gord—”
“I know what you’re thinking. It doesn’t matter. Somebody has to be with Ashley.”
“Meg plans to stay with her, look after her for as long as she has to—”
“No, Pete. Forget it. I won’t let you decide this for me. That demand in the message… the announcement I’m supposed to make… we can’t jump to the conclusion it has anything remotely to do with the actual motive or motives for what’s happened. It could be a red herring. Meant to throw us off.”
“Or not,” Nimec said. “You really feel we’re in a position to take chances right now?”
Silence clapped down over them again. But now Gordian became very still, staring at the wall opposite him, the printout no longer rattling in his hand. The thick doors and walls of the room blocked out any sounds from elsewhere in the old French mansion.
After a long length of time, he turned to Nimec.
“The path you need to follow starts here,” he said, and put a hand to his chest. “Whatever the reason for what’s happened to Julia… those other innocents… they’ve fallen into the middle.”
Nimec said nothing for a while, and then nodded pensively.
“Find who’s at the other end,” Gordian said.
UpLink SanJo. Mid-afternoon. Their secure conference room’s sound-baffled, audio-secure walls once again enclosing them in an electronically fortified cocoon of silence. On one of those walls, a flat plasma screen jacked into a digital viewer showed an enlarged image of the e-mail Megan had received hours earlier. It struck the eye like the Mark of the Beast, a reminder that nothing in this technological age can make us impervious to its stain.
“We need to find out what evidence they’re pulling from that greyhound,” Ricci said. “We can’t wait.”
Megan looked at him. “You’re positive it’s that important.”
“I’m positive the cops think it is,” he said. “We cruised past that veterinary clinic a bunch of times. Saw a team of uniforms cooping outside in a patrol car. And I guarantee they weren’t going anywhere.”
“What makes it a sure thing is that they ain’t letting Howell in to see the dog,” Thibodeau said. “He tells us the vet be a good friend of his. Know him for years, care for every one of his hounds. Most’re more dead than alive when he bring them from the track. Some of ’em need surgery. Howell say you have to treat runners different from other breeds. They ain’t able to tolerate certain kinds of medicine or anaesthesia, need lower doses, you know.”
“One reason the cops brought the dog there is that Howell insisted on it when he found her alive,” Ricci said. “The clinic is only a few miles from his rescue center out in the boonies. Good break for him, trying to save that dog. Not too convenient for the badges.”
Megan was looking at him. “Why not?”
Ricci’s expression seemed to say the answer should have been obvious. “If they’re under orders to keep watch over it, they’d prefer bringing it someplace near an all-night diner, where they can tank up on free coffee and muffins the whole time. If it bleeds out on the way, so much the better. The dog becomes meat. They don’t have to worry about its carcass disappearing from a locked refrigerator drawer in a police lab, but a live animal in a country vet’s infirmary makes them insecure.” He paused a second. “Howell had some strong persuasion, though. The vet’s no bumpkin. Used to be with the San Francisco Zoo. Has a diploma in veterinary forensic pathology. The cops would have to call on somebody like him for the necropsy anyway… probably couldn’t find a better qualified man for the job.”
Megan was thoughtful. “And yet Howell doesn’t know why the police are so interested in the dog, am I right?”
“Right.”
“No idea despite his long-standing relationship with the veterinarian.”
“Right.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand that.”
There was a crackle of impatience in Ricci’s stillness.
“Once the vet becomes a fact finder in a criminal investigation it obliges him to clam up,” he said after a moment. “He leaks anything and it’s a violation of professional ethics.”
“I still think he’d be entitled to a general explanation,” Megan said. “Terrible as it sounds, we’re so focused on Julia, we risk losing sight of what Rob Howell’s suffered. He’s lost his entire family.”
Ricci turned toward her.
“You know how tight the cops can be with eyewitnesses in protective custody,” he said. “Maybe the dog had a clear look at the perps and they want her status kept secret till she’s well enough to make them in a lineup.”
Megan was silent. The sarcasm had caught her off guard.
“Wasn’t any call for that remark,” Thibodeau said from his opposite side. His large body shifted in his chair. “This ain’t no joke—”
“Stay out of this.” Ricci cut a hand in his direction, held his gaze on Megan. “You’re the one who might as well be joking. You don’t have the right to speak for me. You don’t know where I’m focused. You don’t know, or act like you don’t know, that the cops are putting an extra-heavy lid on things to keep us out. You sit here throwing words around a table when that e-mail on the wall says everything. We need to get busy.”