Gordian heard the tapping of computer keys.
“Yes, it’s right up in front of me.”
“Okay. Keep me posted on any developments. Doesn’t matter what hour it is.”
“Understood,” Cody said.
Gordian took another breath.
“I suppose that’s it,” he said. “Hang tight, I know you’ve got hell on your hands.”
“We’re doing our best, Mr. Gordian,” Cody said.
His voice dropped into that hermetic tunnel of silence again.
Gordian cradled the receiver and sat looking out his window in sober contemplation. Rainwater splashed against the glass, washing down its surface in long rippling streams. From his angle, he could see nothing of the street below, no pedestrians scurrying through puddles for someplace dry, no cars crawling along with their windshield wipers on. Mount Hamilton too seemed beyond the reach of his vision, rendered a gray, featureless blur by the heavy curtains of moisture blowing across the sky.
It was, he thought, as if the world was made of rain.
Only rain.
As Gordian had been assured, Cody’s next call was to Pete Nimec. He was not in his office, and the recorded greeting on his voice mail said he would be away overnight and checking his incoming messages regularly. His cell phone number was given for emergencies.
Cody quickly terminated the connection and dialed it.
“So you want me to be your, what, eyes and ears around the world,” Ricci said. He crouched and put a log into the woodstove opposite the comfortable leather sofa where his visitors were seated. “That about it, Pete?”
“Not quite, if I may interject a point or two,” Megan said, glancing at Nimec.
He gave her a shrug. They were in Ricci’s spacious living room, a mid-1980’s rear addition to a Colonial home built a century earlier, with natural wood plank walls and glass sliding doors that gave onto the water-front deck where they’d been talking until a few minutes ago.
“The person we select will be responsible for implementing and coordinating security functions at UpLink’s various international and domestic sites,” she said. “He or she will be second in authority only to Pete. But I want to stress that we’re primarily here so you and I can get acquainted, and to gauge your interest in us.”
“And yours in me,” Ricci said, facing her.
They exchanged looks.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a unique and demanding job. We naturally want to see if you’ve got what it takes to meet its challenges.”
Ricci considered that a second, then nodded.
“Fair enough,” he said. “You still assembling your candidate list?”
“The only other person whose qualifications we’re presently weighing is a current member of our Brazilian team named Roland Thibodeau. And to be frank, his interest in the position hasn’t yet been determined. I plan on speaking to Rollie sometime within the next couple of days.”
Ricci turned to Nimec. “How come you wouldn’t tell me anything about the reason for this visit over the phone?” he said.
“If I’d tried, I would have heard a click in the receiver before the words were finished leaving my mouth. Figured it would be best to come and talk. See how you felt about it face-to-face.”
Ricci silently took three sheets of newspaper from a shallow wine crate beside him, crumpled them, and pushed them underneath the grille of the stove. Then he struck a match and held it to the newspapers to start them burning. Flames crackled up and licked at the bottom of the log.
When the log had caught, he carefully shut the glasspaneled door of the stove and looked at Megan again.
“I figure you’ve heard the long sad story of how I lost my badge,” he said.
“Pete gave me his take on it,” she said. “I’d already gotten another from the papers.”
“You can see why I like using them as tinder then,” he said.
She smiled a little.
“The thought had occurred to me,” she said. “In light of today’s events, it also strikes me that you have a knack for making enemies in the wrong places.”
Ricci hesitated for the barest moment. “You read the version where they say I’m an uncontrollable maverick, or the one where I’m called an outright disgrace to the Boston police department?”
“Both, actually, but I tend to ignore the descriptive nouns and home in on the bare facts,” she said. “A kid falls to his death from an Ivy League campus rooftop. The group of frat boys who were up there with him claim it’s a terrible hazing accident. Too many beers, reckless behavior. As the city’s chief homicide detective, you head what everyone expects to be a perfunctory investigation, until the coroner’s report reveals there was no alcohol in the deceased’s bloodstream. You start digging around, find out the boys who were on that roof are heavily into dealing drugs and other unsavory after-school projects, then find out there’s been some bad blood between the group leader and the kid who was killed. The alpha gets charged with first-degree murder; his friends deal down in exchange for their cooperation as state’s witnesses. There’s a trial and he’s found guilty, which should mean a mandatory twenty-five-to-life sentence. But the jury’s verdict is overturned by the judge and he walks on a technicality. Something about an error in how certain evidence was processed by the medical examiner’s office.” She paused. “How am I doing so far?”
Ricci’s eyes held to her firmly.
“You don’t mind, I’ll wait for the next part before rating you,” he said.
Megan nodded. The log in the woodstove popped and spat sap, flames flaring brightly around it.
“Next you do a spate of media interviews repudiating the judge, arguing that the error shouldn’t have been enough to get the case into Appellate Court, let alone warrant nullification from the bench,” she said. “Even more seriously, you allege that the judge was bought and paid for by the killer’s father. They go on television with their counterclaims, say you have some kind of personal ax to grind. A number of details from your departmental records are leaked to the press, including information that you’d received counseling for problem drinking and depression while on the force. There are stories that you have a bad attitude. When it’s all over, the kid is still free and you’ve turned in your badge. The general impression is that you were given the choice of either resigning or being discharged without pension.”
She sat quietly again, watching him.
“That’s not bad, far as it goes,” Ricci said. “But there’s also what you left out.”
“I didn’t want to sit here giving a recitation,” she said. “It might be better to hear the rest from you. If you care to tell it.”
Ricci nodded. “Sure,” he said. “In the interest of good public relations.”
She waited without comment.
“The murdering little prince’s father was a Beacon Hill millionaire,” he said. “I learned during the trial that the judge belonged to the same A-list country club as Dad, which in my opinion ought to have been enough to have him removed from the case. Prosecution could’ve taken it up in district court, but didn’t, and since it’s their call I couldn’t let myself worry about it. After the trial’s over, though, I hear from a couple of staffers at the club that there were three separate meetings between Dad, the judge, and the oak wainscoting while the jury was in deliberation. One of them’s the manager, a solid guy who’s been working there forty years and has no reason to be spinning tall tales. Came forward out of feeling guilty, like the other two.” He shrugged. “They denied it later on, when I went public.”
“Somebody cured their guilt,” Megan said. “Money and power being the prescribed remedy. If I’m to believe your version.”