'Still murder,' Magozzi grumbled, refusing to look at her for almost a full second.
'It wasn't a hit list, Magozzi. It was a hate list posted by a despairing, ranting drunk.'
"We should have found that connection in the victim files.'
'Did you read the trial transcripts?'
'Trial transcripts are at the end of the files, and they're hundreds of pages. The box thing interrupted us before we got that far. We should have started with them. I should have known that, goddamnit.'
Grace started clearing the table. 'It wouldn't have made any difference, Magozzi. The murders had all happened by then.'
'Not quite.'
She stopped in mid-stride on her way to the sink, holding his cereal bowl in her hand. 'You liked him,' she said without turning around.
'No. I did not. What I liked was that cereal. Bring it back.'
Grace set the bowl in the sink and then did the weirdest thing. She walked over and bent to kiss his cheek. No passion, no pity, just a connection. It shouldn't have made Magozzi feel better, but it did. 'I have something to tell you, Magozzi.'
He stood on the front stoop of Grace's house, hands shoved in his pants pockets, thinking how strange it was that he wasn't reacting. Funny. You wait and wait for things to change; for people to change. You don't work at it, mind you; you just wish and wait and only tell yourself in secret that it will never happen. And then suddenly, right out of the blue, it does.
How about that.
Chapter Forty-four
John was standing in the doorway of the Big Boy's Room, thinking of what a comedown his own bedroom and tiny bathroom in D.C. were going to be tonight.
He could hear the soft murmur of voices and went downstairs after a final, longing look at the bedroom.
When he exited the elevator, Annie, Grace, and Roadrunner were standing in the foyer next to Harley.
Annie batted her eyelashes at him - he was certain of it this time around - and in her sweet sugary drawl bid him good morning. She was wearing a sunny yellow suit with an elaborate, veiled hat, like the kind women wore to the Kentucky Derby. In her hand she had a beautifully wrapped gift dressed up with a green satin ribbon.
'Good morning, everybody. What a wonderful surprise to see you all again.'
Roadrunner was grinning. 'We wouldn't let you go without a send-off, John.' He nudged Annie like an excited kid. 'Give it to him.'
Annie extended the gift. 'This is from all of us. And please don't say something stupid like "You shouldn't have" or I'll have to slap you silly.'
Smith cocked a brow at her. 'You shouldn't have.'
Harley laughed. You're getting a funny bone, Smith. Good for you.' 'Open it up, John,' Grace said with a smile.
He took his time unwrapping it, as if that would somehow delay his plane and his imminent departure.
'Jesus, John, you must be a nightmare on Christmas morning,' Harley gave him a good-natured needle. 'You're going to miss your flight if you don't kick it into gear.'
He chuckled and pulled the lid off the box. Inside was a stack of printed pages and a tiny cassette.
'Those are from Magozzi and Gino,' Grace told him. 'That's a copy of the judge's tape from the golf course, and all the entries from his computer journal.'
John smiled. 'Sharing information,' he murmured.
'That was the deal.'
'And what's this?' He pulled a single sheet of paper from the bottom of the box. John read a short list of names he didn't recognize.
'Oh, nothing much, really,' Annie said. 'Just the names of your other murderers, is all.'
John slid his eyes to look at Harley, who was rocking back on his heels, hands shoved deep in his pockets, like a little boy hiding frogs. 'Where did you get this, Harley?' he asked quietly.
The hands came out of the pockets and opened, frogless. 'It was the damnedest thing. We got an anonymous tip this morning, took a few minutes to check out the names, and it looks like it might be the real thing. Thought you might like to take them back to D.C. and follow up.'
'An anonymous tip.'
'That's right. An e-mail right out of the blue.'
'I suppose it was untraceable.' 'It was.'
Roadrunner said, 'Kind of a cool thing to hand over to your bosses if it turns out legit, huh?'
John looked from one face to another. No one was smiling. 'Very cool,' he said finally. 'Very cool indeed.'
Epilogue
It seemed that John Smith had fallen just a little bit short of every goal he'd ever set for himself. As a kid, he'd wanted to be a superhero with a cape; instead, he'd ended up a Fed with a blue suit. In college he'd wanted desperately to be one of those glorious golden young men who raced in the America's Cup and called out magical phrases like 'Hoist the mains'l!' and 'Man the helm!' or some such thing.
Surprisingly, he'd turned out to be a natural sailor, but never found a crew that would take him on because he couldn't remember all those pesky nautical terms. They'd always seemed a little silly to button-down John. Like 'hard a'starboard.' Who thought up such things? Why not just say 'Turn right'? Everybody knew what that meant. Which was, of course, the whole point. Every exclusive club had to have its own parlance.
How strange, then, that after so many near-misses, well into the second half of his time on earth, he was learning to excel at life - the one thing he'd never really aspired to.
Once a year for all the years he'd been with the Bureau, he'd taken the boat south to the Keys; sometimes all the way to the Caribbean. For two weeks he'd dance the boat through waters that had too many colors to claim one, watched sun and moon and ocean mingle like a trio of lovers, and felt his mind slow down and finally bob and drift like a piece of flotsam on the swells. He'd stop at any port where he liked to mingle with strange and interesting people who didn't know him, which gave him license to laugh and joke and be someone else. He ate bar food on rickety piers while his bare feet swung over the water, and sometimes drank with women whose names he couldn't remember. Two weeks a year. Less than eight percent of his adult life.
He closed his eyes and smelled salt, heard the ticking of the rigging against the mast and the ruffle of heavy cloth in the breeze, and then felt the wind in his hair for the first time in years. He hadn't had it cut for three weeks now, an all-time record. Maybe he'd let it grow long like Harley's and wear it in a ponytail, just another gray-haired man reverting to the wild.
He opened his eyes when he heard the familiar clicking up the three steps from the galley, then the soft padding of bare feet. He watched as Grace and Charlie crossed the teak deck to the bow. They both liked to stand up there where the wind was always strongest, whipping Grace's hair back, making her look like one of those figureheads the Vikings used to put on the prows of their ships. Charlie stood with his head poked through the rails, the wind blowing his tongue sideways out of his mouth.
John liked watching them.