But now she was speaking pensively, as if she were having second thoughts.
"… okay, that's conventional wisdom. But sometimes anger can generate creativity. Maybe I was wrong." She looked at him. "I've known you a long time. You've never been one for the empty gesture. When you tell me you're willing to resign-well, I know you're serious. I can't put you over Boyce. Not now, not after what you've done. But I can probably assign you as liaison to Sullivan."
Janek frowned. "I run investigations. I don't do liaison."
"It's their investigation, Frank. You can only do what they'll allow." "You know that's shit!"
"It doesn't have to be. And please don't give me the old line about how you hate the feds. Right now the case belongs to the FBI. If you want to work it, and I mean Happy Families, not just Jess, the only way is to work it with them." "On what basis?"
"Why don't you go down to Quantico tomorrow, have a talk with Sullivan?
If the two of you get along, I'm sure he'll find you a niche."
"And if we don't get along?"
Kit shrugged. "Boyce spins his wheels and Sullivan digs in. That's okay. We've had double investigations before. But a triple!
Forget it, Frank. A triple's too arcane even for me."
"So it's take it or leave it-that's what you're saying?"
"Something like that." She paused. "I know you don't like it, but it's the best I can do."
He thought it over. "All right," he said. "I'll see Sullivan.
But I want Aaron with me."
Kit gave that some thought, then agreed to it.
"So," she asked, "have we got a deal?" they stood, shook hands; then she hugged him tight. "I'm sorry, Frank.
It was a close call. I did what I thought was best."
The morning he and Aaron flew down to D.C. the blue of the sky was so intense it made Janek's heart ache for Venice. they rented a sporty Pontiac out of National Airport, then drove south for an hour until they reached the military base at Quantico; then they crossed through the reservation and entered the grounds of the FBI Academy. Here an oversize, rigorously designed glass and stone building was neatly set on a campus of perfectly manicured grass. they were expected. The guard at the reception desk had their passes. While they waited for their escort, Aaron peered around the atrium.
"Sure all this is for law enforcement, Frank? Looks more like IBM."
Janek nodded. No crummy typewriters on rotten desks in roach- and rat-infested offices here. No drunks wandering in here off the street. This, he recognized, was law enforcement U.S. government style, practiced by men and women wearing dark suits and necklace badges working efficiently at computer stations. In this orderly temple of police science the windows were always washed and the floors were always shined and, when you needed something, you didn't have to beg; all you did was put through a requisition. Here, too, was the finest forensic crime lab in the world.
The Behavioral Science Unit, where Sullivan was headquartered, was a rabbit warren of windowless offices. When Janek and Aaron arrived, they were told Sullivan was in a meeting, but one of his staff assistants, a Nordic muscleman named Hansen whose shirt collar bit into his neck, had been delegated to take them on a tour.
Hansen led them down endless corridors, stopping from time to time to open a door and show them something dazzling: the director's paneled dining room; an Olympic-size swimming pool where agents were trained to swim while holding weapons; the world's largest, most efficient underground firing range. After an hour of this Janek grew impatient.
"Look," he said to Hansen, "I don't mean to be rude, but I think we've seen enough."
"There's a lot more, Lieutenant," Hansen said. "Inspector Sullivan especially wanted you to see Hogan's Alley." "What's that?"
"It's where we train police officers from all over the country in criminal apprehension."
"I think we can skip that," Janek said. "Please tell the inspector we've come a long way and now we're ready to work."
Hansen's face fell. He stared at Janek with unconcealed hurt, then dodged into a nearby office to use the phone. Janek watched from the corridor as, once connected, Hansen cupped his hand over the receiver.
"Probably telling Sullivan what uncouth louts we are," Aaron said.
Janek shook his head. He didn't like the setup. The tour had been laid on to intimidate. Sullivan wanted to soften them up, make them feel outclassed.
"All righty, Lieutenant," Hansen said, rejoining them in the corridor.
"We're to go straight up to room two-oh-one."
Another march along endless windowed corridors, then up a stairs, around a corner, past hundreds of doors leading into hundreds of little offices until, finally, they reached the briefing room.
Sullivan was waiting for them. He was a stocky man about Janek's age, with an affable smile, beautifully coiffed iron gray hair, pink, well-shaven cheeks, and tiny, twinkling ice blue eyes. Though he spoke slowly with a slight drawl, this was no Ray Boyce. His gestures were sharp, his little eyes were quick, and he came off as shrewd and sawy.
But there was a cockiness about him that inspired in Janek a nearly instant dislike. He hadn't wanted to detest Sullivan. He'd come with the expectation that they would treat each other with respect.
But the way the man stood, his back just a little too straight, his head angled upward, his chin stuck out just a little more than necessary, reminded Janek of a ' prison warden trying unsuccessfully to conceal his swagger.
He only hoped this first impression would be belied.
The briefing room was state-of-the-art with the latest in audiovisual aids. There was a polished white marble conference table with glasses, water pitcher, yellow legal pads, and sharpened pencils arranged like place settings for a banquet. Two tabbed briefing books, with Janek's and Aaron's names embossed on the covers, were centered perfectly before two deep upholstered swivel chairs with electronic gear built into the armrests. When Janek sat in his, he felt like a millionaire ready to deep-sea fish off the back of a yacht.
"Gentlemen," Sullivan announced, in a sonorous airline pilot's voice, "I thought the best approach would be to have members of my staff brief you on particular aspects of HF. Then, when you've got a handle on the cases, I'll rejoin you for the overview."
"HF-can you believe they call it that?" Aaron whispered.
Janek believed. The FBI was notorious for its abbreviations and acronyms. But he preferred HF to Happy Families, which smacked of a headline in one of the national tabloids: HAPPY FAMILIES
KILLER STRIKES AGAIN.
The briefing that commenced, part lecture, part slide show, consisted of a procession of crisp, well-rehearsed young forensic analysts, each with his own area of expertise, doing his stint with pointer and easel, then yielding to the next. they were shown detailed color slides of the five Happy Families crime scenes. People with stiffened limbs and ice picks protruding from their ears, eyes, and throats lay at odd angles in domestic settings.
All were naked from the waist down, having been stripped in order to be glued. Janek found himself turning his head, then looking at the pictures obliquely with only one eye. He wasn't certain why he did this; it was a habit he'd acquired over the years. Perhaps, he thought, if only one eye were,exposed, the gruesome images would be less deeply engraved upon his memory.
The agents used staccato tones to describe each set of victims along with details of the abuses each had suffered:
Miss Bertha Parce, an elderly retired school teacher, found murdered in her bed in a single room-occupancy hotel in Miami Beach, Florida Cynthia Morse, a wealthy divorc6e, killed over Memorial Day weekend, with her two visiting grown daughters, in her luxury condominium in Seattle, Washington James and Stuart MacDonald, two aging playboy-type brothers, slain in their shared weekend house in Kent, Connecticut The Robert Wexler family (husband, wife, three children) killed in their suburban ranch-style home in Fort Worth, Texas The Anthony Scotto family (husband, wife, and two teenage sons) slaughtered in their Cape Cod style home just outside Providence, Rhode Island There was also a homeless man who didn't seem to fit the pattern, though he, too, had been stabbed and glued, then left in an alley in the Alphabet City section of Manhattan.