Wade, uneasy at the prospect of what might happen, agreed to keep the force working around the clock.
“The proaction was dangerous,” he said bluntly. “We got a mother killed.”
“We didn’t kill her,” I answered bluntly back.
“But if we’d left things well enough alone, Terry?”
“With The Horridus out there, sir, things will never be well enough.”
He sighed. “All right.”
Then he got up and closed the door to his office. You could see the heads turning again. He didn’t even bother to sit down.
“I’m hearing the rumors. You think somebody here had those photos made up?”
I told him I was sure of it: I. R. Shroud had been the supplier — perhaps the creator — and someone using my Web name, Mal, had made the purchase.
“Who?” he asked.
“Ishmael talked to Shroud thirty-two times in the last seventy-four days. I’ve got that from two different sources, sir, and it’s easy enough to check out.”
“How would he know your Web name?”
“It’s not a secret around here. I’ve written it down a dozen times at least, in my reports. Hell, Frances and Louis have both used Mal to lurk in the chat rooms. Ish could pick it up without working too hard.”
Jim Wade colored deeply. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his door. “You two bastards,” he said quietly.
“I kept mine within the rules, Jim. He didn’t.”
“This is all an angle to move up the ladder?”
“It’s all ambition, jealousy, pride and suspicion. It’s human nature.”
“Well, I know a lot of human beings, Sheriff deputies among them, who don’t resort to this kind of shit on the playground.”
I shrugged. “It’s about Mel and Penny, too, and Ishmael helping me get on here twenty years ago. I don’t know, sir — ask Ishmael. He made the overtures to Shroud. Ask him what the hell they were talking about, if it wasn’t pictures.”
“I will.”
“And I’ll be curious to know what he says.”
“Maybe it’s about Donna Mason, too.”
It didn’t surprise me that Ishmael had ratted out my living arrangements to Wade.
“She’s one thing I’d like to keep out of this,” I said. “We’re sharing an apartment. On the salary I’ve been entitled to for the last two weeks, it’s about the best I could come up with.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “She’s turned down Ishmael three or four times, on story ideas. She’s covered you like you were the risen Christ. Did you tell her your Web name?”
To tell the truth, it had felt far more natural and innocent to tell Donna my lurker’s name than it did to admit to Wade that I had done so. My stomach shifted a little. “Yes.”
“Who’s the girl in the pictures?”
“I’d rather not say just yet, sir. I’ll get to her when I can.”
Jim Wade looked at me with his cop’s face, not his politician’s face or his public servant’s face. It’s a wise old face when he wants it to be, filled with a remarkable combination of doubt and hope.
“All right. You know, that special Mason did — the Texas connection — there were some things in there that shouldn’t have gotten out. That was our stuff, Terry. And I know she got it from you.”
“Guilty. Sir, I’m in love with her and I trust her. She’s the only one who didn’t drop me when those pictures hit.”
Wade smiled without happiness. “Her and Johnny.”
I said nothing.
“What I’m saying, Naughton, is that you aren’t a CNB employee who happens to have an office here.”
“I understand. I’ve been trying to help us.”
“You’ve been trying to help yourself. Just in case you didn’t know, the woman you lived with until a week ago gave me her notice today. She’s had enough of all this.”
The Gayley crime scene was bloodless, but grim in its own matter-of-fact way. John Escobedo and I let ourselves in at 6:05 P.M. that Friday night, some fourteen hours after the death of Margo and the attempted abduction of seven-year-old Chloe. It was like the other scenes in the telltale ways: suburban, middle-class, ground-floor residence, no man in the house, single working mother and young daughter. And when we walked into Chloe’s bedroom, there it was, the silent scream.
Johnny walked me through, though there wasn’t much question about the sequence.
“He came in through the window, used a glass cutter and a bathroom plunger to hold the glass. Reilly couldn’t get anything off the plunger, so far. Anyway, he moved the latch up to unlock it, then slid the window back and climbed in.”
I could see the carbon powder on the windowpane and the rectangular shapes where the acetate lifting tape had been applied, then removed.
“The window was crawling,” said Johnny. “Frances is running them through CAL–ID and WIN with all our parameters on The Horridus.”
I looked glumly at the dust and glass, knowing The Horridus was wearing gloves when he came through.
“Gotta try, boss,” he said.
I turned and looked at the closet. It was easy to know where Margo had been standing when she surprised him because the room was small — not much space between the door and the closet. There was a chalk outline on the carpet in the shape of human legs, continuing into the closet, then the outline of a head against the far wall inside. Some of Chloe’s little-girl clothes were piled to either side of the silhouette. Beneath and beside the clothes were Chloe’s shoes. Mixed in with the shoes were those things you might expect in a seven-year-old’s closet that hadn’t been organized lately: dolls and drawing tablets, books and markers, stuffed animals, plastic horses, balls. Obviously, the sliding closet door had been open and Margo had reeled backward with The Horridus on top of her, probably with both hands locked on her throat. I knelt down and looked in.
“What did you take?”
“The pepper spray container, two books for prints — even though it’s a long shot — and a couple of shiny leather shoes that he might have touched. It was hit and miss, boss. There wasn’t anything that looked too good. The CSI’s really combed through for hair and fiber, though. There’s a lot for the lab.”
“No dust. Did you ALS the wall here inside?”
“We did. Nothing.”
“Coins, keys, pens, nail clipper, Chapstick — anything he might have lost from his pockets?”
“Not unless he carries Little Miss Makeup.”
“Loose button, thread?”
“Come on, boss. We’d be all over something like that.”
“Yeah, I know that...”
My voice trailed off, like it was consumed by the closet in which Margo had fought and died.
“The blood and skin’s our payoff,” said Escobedo. “If we get a suspect we can make him all the way.”
I turned and wondered what Chloe was doing while her mother fought for her life in the closet. Escobedo read my thoughts.