Two days ago, her FBI-issued cell phone had suddenly stopped working, and for whatever reason, the powers that be couldn’t issue her a new phone with the same number. Typical government bureaucracy, always making things more difficult than they were.
The next message was from her mother. “I need to know if you can watch Angela overnight next week. Jake’s taking me to a bed-and-breakfast up in Bodega. Let me know. If you can’t, maybe I can call your neighbor, Rainie. Angela seems to like her.”
Nothing about their argument two days ago. Not that she’d expected anything. It was the same each year, had been ever since Sydney brought up the idea of going to San Quentin and facing her father’s killer. A little over four years ago, when Sydney had joined the FBI, a psychologist who was teaching one of her academy classes on the psychology of murder had posed the question, asked her if she’d ever thought about facing her father’s killer, finding out why he’d done what he’d done, not just from a victim’s standpoint, but also from that of a special agent.
At first the thought horrified her, but then, the more she thought about it, the more she realized he might be right. Go to San Quentin, face him, find out his reasons for committing the murder, find out why he continued to deny his guilt when the evidence was overwhelming. Carefully she’d broached the subject with her mother. And while she hadn’t expected well-wishes for what she’d suggested, she had hoped for a modicum of understanding. Instead it turned into an emotionally disastrous argument, with her mother insisting that Sydney be examined by a psychiatrist, and even her stepfather, Jake, declaring that her entrance into law enforcement was a mistake.
Perhaps she could have gone, not told her mother, but that somehow seemed dishonest, and so she put it off each year, reminding herself that she wasn’t the only victim here. Her mother’s feelings should also be taken into account, though Sydney knew that part of those feelings were simply her mother’s attempt to protect her in the best way she knew how.
But this year had been different, perhaps because of the impending execution, now just ten days away. Her mother, worried that Sydney was going through with what she called her “insane idea,” had enlisted outside help. She’d called an old family friend, Donovan Gnoble, who just happened to be a U.S. senator, and told him what Sydney had planned. That resulted in a call to her office last Friday from his office in Washington, D.C., begging her not to go through with this idea. “For your mother’s sake,” he’d said. “She deserves some peace after all these years. If nothing else, think of her and how she feels. And if you just let it alone, in a couple weeks he’ll be gone.”
Exactly my point, she thought, jabbing the button to play the next two messages. Both were from Scotty telling her to call him, that it was urgent.
When they were living together, he was hardly ever home, and it seemed they never had the time to sit down, talk, but the moment she moved to the opposite side of the country, it was like he had her number on speed dial.
They’d met at the academy in Quantico, where he’d been assisting with the firearms training, though they hadn’t started dating until after she’d graduated. To say he was ambitious would be an understatement. Scotty had his entire life planned out, knew where he was going, what he wanted to do. And she’d liked that about him, because in many ways it reflected how she preferred to live her own life. Structured, planned, scheduled. Black and white. That was, in essence, how she’d survived since her father’s murder. There was no chaos with order.
But neither was there spontaneity, as Scotty had pointed out.
That she didn’t like to look at too closely. Their breakup was not entirely her fault. Hard to be spontaneous when the other half is always away from home, working some big political corruption case. So when Dixon was promoted and transferred out West, she took that as a sign, put in for a transfer herself.
Not that Scotty had any intentions of giving up that easily. He seemed to think all Sydney needed was a little time apart, and once she got it, they’d be back together. With a frustrated sigh, she glanced at the clock, figured with the three-hour time difference, he’d be up for work anyway, so she might as well get it over with now. He answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Scotty.”
“Syd?” He cleared his voice, “What time is it?”
“Late. Got called out on a sketch. Were you sleeping?”
“Yeah. I’m actually not at home, just having my calls forwarded to my cell.”
“Where are you?”
“Hotel. I tried to call. You okay with the anniversary and everything?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure? I heard you’re taking the day off today, but when I tried to call-”
“New cell phone,” Sydney said, then gave him the number. One of these days, she was going to have to have a talk with whoever was feeding Scotty his information about her and her life-and she had a fair idea just who was doing it. In the meantime, she decided to play the whole thing down, because the information highway in her office was a two-way street, and the last thing she needed was for anyone working with her to think that she couldn’t handle the stresses of her personal life. “And I’m taking the day off because… I want to paint,” she said, eyeing the blank canvas on the easel in her kitchen. “You know how much it relaxes me. In fact, I’m painting right now.” She plucked a wide brush from a coffee can filled with brushes sitting on the counter, then, holding the phone close so he could catch the sound effects, she dunked the brush in her water glass, swirling it around at warp speed. “Acrylics.”
“Sydney, we need to talk. I’d thought I’d come by.”
“What do you mean come by? Where are you?”
“In San Francisco.”
“This is not a good idea, Scotty.”
For once, however, he wasn’t demanding she reconsider her position about their relationship. Quite the opposite. “I know you said you needed space, but this isn’t about that. Besides, I was worried about the article.”
“What article?”
“The one that came out in yesterday’s Chronicle. The fact he’s getting new attorneys. You did read the paper yesterday?”
She looked at the newspaper on her coffee table, tossed there when she’d left for her morning run, untouched when she’d gone into the office on her day off yesterday to catch up on paperwork, because she knew she was taking today off. “No,” she said, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. Phone to her ear, she walked into her living room, sat on the couch, removed the rubber band from yesterday morning’s paper, and flipped through it, finding the article about five pages in.
“You there, Syd?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her gaze was fixed on the photograph of Johnnie Wheeler, the man convicted of killing her father, and what stood out to her was the damned scar on his cheek.
“Syd?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“I’ll call you back.”
She hit the off button, then tossed the phone on the couch, trying not to look at the photo, feeling as shaky as she had when she’d finished that sketch in the hospital. She tried to take a calming breath, told herself it was just a photograph. It couldn’t hurt her. Finally she forced herself to look. It was the same picture she’d seen of him several years ago, when she’d worked up the courage to read the investigation report. Wheeler’s photo had been included in that report, and though she did not want to see the eyes of the man who’d killed her father, she’d found her gaze drawn to the photo anyway, was surprised by the scar she’d seen on his cheek. Even now, staring at the news photo, it was the same.