Megan remained quiet, staring back into his eyes. “What’s your recommendation?”
“We have to get Erickson to share that evidence from the dog. Whether he likes it or not.”
“I’m convinced,” she said. “But I also prefer we don’t alienate him. He has legal authority over the investigation and — as you’ve implied — can withhold anything he wants from us. We, on the other hand, have no license to meddle. If we plan to get somewhere we need his voluntary permission. Or maybe cooperation’s a better word. And I think the best way to obtain it would be to exert pressure on Erickson through behind-the-scenes channels.”
“Those channels have names attached to them?”
Megan nodded. She drew in a breath.
“Until now I’ve kept any knowledge about the e-mail within our organization to give us elbow room, but that changes tomorrow,” she said. “Since it’s safe to assume Erickson’s department would have put the FBI on alert for possible involvement, I can’t see a reason not to contact our old friend Bob Lang at Quantico in the meantime and ask him off the record to make a request of the local field office. That would be the San Francisco division. It won’t be long before the case winds up under its bailiwick anyway. And at that point they can share evidence with whomever they wish.”
Thibodeau was nodding as he mulled her words over.
“Sounds reasonable enough to me,” he said. “Beats going to war with Erickson.”
Ricci ignored him, continuing to look at Megan as if it were just the two of them in the room.
“Lang’s your old friend, not mine,” he said. “You want to visit wonderland with him, it’s your choice.”
A taut silence between them again. Megan’s eyes became narrow.
“What are you suggesting?” she said.
Ricci sat a moment, then slowly shrugged and rose from his chair.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re the boss, you make the calls. I just want to get back to work.”
When the phone rang in Derek Glenn’s office, he was at his window admiring the new 120-foot-tall naval ship-yard cranes that soared prominently in his view of the waterfront. They had appeared there about a month earlier, and he hoped it was a permanent spot. Keeping a vigilant and appreciative eye on the cranes had come to occupy a large part of his day, and Glenn supposed that if he ever looked out to discover them farther up or down the harbor — or, worse, altogether gone — it might be a sign he’d have to find something else about the commercial harbor that might be of interest, which had been tough before their arrival. Or something other than standing by the window to keep him occupied. Either way, it would be a development worthy of consideration at UpLink’s San Diego overflow warehouse.
His lookout interrupted, Glenn went over and lifted the receiver.
“Yup, I’m here.”
“Glenn. It’s Tom Ricci.”
Glenn was surprised. Not a word from the guy for over a year. Then a phone call, a visit, and a second call in the space of a week.
“Lo and behold,” he said. “Knew I should have explained my picking up the tab the other night was a one-time deal—”
“I need help.”
Glenn’s face suddenly became serious.
“What is it?”
“Something you maybe don’t want to take on,” Ricci said. “Might not even want to know about, because just knowing puts you in it to where you have advance knowledge.”
“As in the sort of knowledge that might not be any good for my job status?”
“Could be,” Ricci said. “Could be that won’t be the worst of it. You say good-bye right now, it’s fine. You decide to take a pass, I’m okay with that, too.”
“How long do I have to think about this?”
“Till I hang up the phone,” Ricci said. “If you’re in with me, you have to be up here tonight. Early as possible.”
Glenn thought it over a few seconds, the receiver cradled against his shoulder, his eyes wandering toward the high, reliable cranes framed by his window.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Let me hear it.”
A country route near Portola State Park, half past eleven at night, a ground mist spreading over the roots of the oaks and madrones. Under a low roof of clouds the sky was moonless and starless.
The shingle outside the square, flat, single-story brick building read PARKVILLE VETERINARY CLINIC, KENNETH W. MOORE, D.V.M., PH.D., but there was scarcely enough light seeping from the windows on the clinic’s north side — and from the dashboard of the police cruiser parked out front — for someone even a yard or two away to see the sign with his unaided eye. Discerning the doctor’s name and credentials would be almost impossible.
In the thick woods that belted the clinic’s parking lot, Ricci would have known what the lettering said without having to use his portable night-vision binoculars — the vet’s name being one among many details he’d marked while driving past the clinic with Rollie Thibodeau almost twelve hours earlier, doing a canvass for reasons he’d kept to himself. Still, he found the definition with which it appeared in the high-mag, IR-boosted illuminator tubes exceptional. A clear, close, fully stereoscopic image. It was not so many years ago that night vision optics gave you green ghosts moving among ghost-objects and a poor sense of their spacial relationships. The ability to read a sign in pitch darkness at fifty yards and judge its distance was an asset he would have coveted as a SEAL, and later as a Beantown homicide cop. He did not take it for granted.
But now Ricci’s gaze held on the sign for only a moment before shifting elsewhere. A single prowl car did not automatically mean that two cops inside made up the entire watch. There could be others on foot patrol, though he’d have bet against it.
Beside him, Glenn’s thoughts were running to the contrary as he scanned the wide pool of shadows around the clinic through his own NV binocs. A hidden frown creased his brow under a black nylon balaclava.
“This just doesn’t wash,” he said in a hushed voice. He lowered the glasses and normal darkness poured into his eyes. “The police have a murder on their hands. The daughter of a famous businessman kidnapped. A war hero. And you tell me there might be important evidence in that animal hospital. But they’ve got one cruiser guarding it. No backup I can see.”
Ricci looked over at him.
“As of this minute, it isn’t an official kidnapping,” he whispered. “Tomorrow there’ll be feds all over the place.”
“Still…”
“Don’t think UpLink. Or U.S. Army,” Ricci said. “Think small-town police force. They haven’t got many resources. Don’t have a clue anybody besides Howell knows the dog’s alive, being kept here in the middle of nowhere.”
A grunt. Glenn raised his lenses again. Both cops were slouched against their headrests, relaxed, chatter from their police radio faintly reaching the trees. They had their windows open — the driver’s window lowered about a third of the way, his partner’s almost completely down on the other side.
Glenn wished it had been the latter facing him. He would need to make a perfect shot. If he missed by a couple of inches up or down, his.50-caliber plastic sabot — fired from an original VVRS, sound-suppressed barrel, his version of choice — would either strike the driver’s window or the rack lights atop the cruiser, jolt the patrolmen into alertness, and all hell would break loose. If his aim strayed a little to the right of his desired line of fire, he might hit one of the cops. Their heads were vulnerable. Their upper bodies, too. And even discharged at its lowest barrel speed a variable velocity round could inflict serious physical damage. It was why the military shied from the term nonlethal in preference of the less-than-lethal or reduced lethality designations. A weapon was a weapon was a weapon. Glenn knew cap guns could kill under freak circumstances, and the VVRS was no toy.