“It’s fine. By the way, that was just plain rude when you yanked out that IV.”
“Man up. When I was a Ranger we used to-”
“No alpha Ralph stories, please. You heard we located Mollie’s body yesterday?”
“Yeah. At the hotel. It’s all over the news.”
“Anderson found her laptop this morning in a car parked in front of police headquarters.”
When Ralph heard the location he cussed under his breath. “So, you looking into that?”
“Well, I’d like to, but Tessa’s dad has been contacting her. He knows where we’re staying, so I don’t want her here at the house alone, however, as far as I know, they’re still processing the scene so I can’t take her with me.”
He thought for a moment. “What about Brineesha? They know each other, and Brin’s not working today. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Actually, Ralph’s wife would be perfect.
“I’ll give her a shout,” I said. “Thanks.”
We agreed to keep each other in the loop, then he hung up.
I contacted Brineesha and set everything up: I’d drop Tessa off at their house at 10:15, they’d hit the mall-oh, Tessa would just love that-then, after my briefing, I’d meet up with them at the food court at about 2:00.
It would give the two of us just enough time to get to Missy Schuel’s office by 2:30 and touch base with her before the 3:30 custody meeting.
Whew.
Based on Missy’s reaction yesterday when I’d told her that I was coming to the custody meeting, I could only imagine what she would say when I showed up with Tessa, but this was about Tessa’s future, her life, and I wanted her to be present.
All of that, later.
I gave the command post a quick call to get Sevren Adkins’s name on the radar screen. “See if he’s shown up anywhere in the system since last fall. ViCAP search, AFIS, CODIS, the whole deal.”
“Yes, sir.”
After ending the call I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already 9:16. Normally, it’s a forty-minute drive to Ralph and Brineesha’s house from here, but with Friday morning traffic it would take even longer, and Tessa still wasn’t out of bed.
10:15 would be tight. I headed to her room to wake her up.
Which might very well be the most challenging thing I would do for the rest of the day.
80
Tessa groaned when I nudged her awake.
“Turn off the lights.” She wrapped a pillow around her head.
“The lights are off. That’s the sun.”
“Well, turn off the sun.”
“Tessa, I need you to get up. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“Because something was found, some evidence, and I have to follow up on it and then get to a briefing.”
She moaned. “I don’t want to sit around lobbies all day while you meet with people. I’ll be fine here. Paul’s not gonna come by, his lawyers would never let him. Just leave me a gun or something.”
“I’m not leaving you a gun. I’m going to drop you off with Mrs. Hawkins.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
Finally, she unpeeled the pillow and looked at me. “Where are you dropping me off? Last time she took me shopping.”
A slight pause. “She did say something about the mall, but it’s just for-”
“You know how I feel about shopping,” she complained.
“Like I feel about briefings.”
“Worse.” With every moment she sounded more lucid, and I could tell it was annoying her. “Way worse.”
“It’ll just be for three or four hours-”
Tessa grimaced. “How about this: drop me off at the Library of Congress. I’ll hang out in the main reading room. Cell phones aren’t allowed in there so Paul can’t call me. And it’s the world’s most secure library. They guard it better than anything in DC except maybe the Capitol and the White House.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Whatever.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Besides, if I see him anywhere I’ll just tell a police officer that he’s stalking me and then call you. Come on, don’t make me go shopping. How’s your arm, by the way?”
“My arm is fine, and going shopping wouldn’t be that…”
Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I found myself considering her request to go to the library. In contrast to the mall, which was at least a fifteen minute drive from the command post, the Library of Congress was just down the street, so I’d be close. And Tessa would certainly be more protected in there than in public with Brineesha.
“All right, you can go to the Library of Congress. But we need to get moving. Get dressed. We leave in fifteen minutes.”
I stepped into the hall, cancelled with Brineesha, and went to collect my notes and laptop.
The scavengers had arrived sometime in the middle of the night. Rats, she guessed, but the way her head was positioned she hadn’t been able to see them clearly enough to be certain. They had bitten her ankles, chewed on the flesh next to the straps that held her down. She’d tried to scream, but gagged; she couldn’t even do that. All night she’d wrestled unsuccessfully to get free but had only managed to loosen the dirt around her, which might have been what attracted the rodents-the ripe smell that seeped out from the body beneath her. At least, now in the daylight, they’d left her alone. But her strength was gone, wasted in her useless efforts to get free. Her courage had died, her tears were used up, and now she was lying flat against the putrid corpse, exhausted. Cold. Broken. She had become again that fragile little girl, trembling under a bed on a night in May, praying to a silent God. She hadn’t prayed since that night, hadn’t ventured to believe God was there to listen. But now, with no other recourse left, she prayed. However, this time she was not asking for anyone’s life but for her own death. For a quicker and more merciful release from the terror of all that had befallen her. Death. For herself and her child. Yet even in this, the Almighty offered her only silence in reply.
81
12 hours left…
9:29 a.m.
It took Tessa less time than I expected to get ready.
She foraged in the kitchen for some food and ended up with a plate of some of the leftover Chinese from the meal Lien-hua had brought last night, and a slice of apple pie from Cheyenne.
Two distinctively different flavors.
Okay, Pat. Do not even go there.
“You can eat in the car,” I told her. “I won’t bug you about it. Let’s get going.”
She grabbed her collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and before I could ask her about it, she said, “Yeah, I know, but I promised Dora I’d finish it. I’m almost done.”
We climbed into the car and started down the driveway. “So are you a fan yet?” I asked her.
“Of what?” She was eating dessert first, and her mouth was full of apple pie. “Holmes?”
“Yeah.”
“Um.” She swallowed. “That would be a no. Doyle cheated.”
She’d contrasted Doyle and Poe to me before, and I drew from our previous discussions: “You mean by shamelessly basing Holmes on Poe’s Dupin character?”
“Well, that and the solutions to his mysteries.” Balancing the plate of food on her lap, she flipped open the book. “Okay, so this one, The Silver Blaze, the one I was reading last night. Holmes solves it when he notices…” She took a moment to page through the story. “Yeah. Here: ‘The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
… the dog did nothing in the nighttime… that was the curious incident.’”
I recognized it as one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous lines. “Sure, the dog didn’t bark-Holmes realized that it should have, and that was the clue-not what did happen but what didn’t happen that should have; the thing you would’ve expected.”
“Right,” she said, “well, it would have been curious if the dog didn’t bark, but up till that point in the story, Doyle doesn’t tell you the dog didn’t bark. It’s cheating to let your detective suddenly know something your readers don’t. How convenient is that? I mean, if you’re gonna write a mystery, you have to at least play fair and include enough clues for astute readers to solve the case.”