being awfully busy. But as far as tonight, I want to stay with you. I'll look over the crime scene with you.”
She moved around the booth to be near him. She kissed him, and he returned the kiss. “No kissing at the crime scene,” she said in a tone clearly playful and warning.
“ I promise.”
“ It's been such a wonderful interlude-this time we've had, free of everyone and everything. I despise its ending.”
He pulled her to him and nestled into her. He followed with a kiss to her throat that then traveled to her mouth.
“ Yes, it has been rather amazing,” he whispered.
“ Rather,” came her breathless reply.
Jessica's success rate over the past several years with high-profile cases had proven nothing short of phenomenal. Still, she had twice had ill-fated run-ins with Judge Maureen DeCampe over Jessica's so-called bending of the rules- seen as a misstep in the chain of evidence protocol or simply some blunder with regard to the rights of the accused. While the problem remained behind closed doors, not for public record, everyone in the FBI family seemed to know. As J. T. had put it, there was no love lost between the now-missing judge and the M.E. Jessica had repeatedly butted heads with the liberal judge, whom she thought a closet libertarian.
Any hard feelings had to be put aside, however, and their roots, while well established, needed plucking for the time being.
Riding in the back of the Washington PD squad car sent to pick her up, she asked Richard, with a cocked- eared Patrolman Stanley Hanrahan listening in, “J. T. says they don't know exactly how long the woman has gone missing. But why all the suspicion that she has been abducted if it's only been a few hours or not even that?”
“ She logged out at just after midnight,” said Hanrahan from the driver's seat. “I hear she had a routine on Thursday nights to work late.”
“ So she never made it to her car; so it was sometime just after midnight. And why still no ransom note, no phone call to the family, nothing?”
“ The vic's simply disappeared.”
“ How awful,” Jessica whispered into Richard's ear, “to have your sum total self reduced to the abbreviated form of victim.”
He squeezed her, and Hanrahan watched via the rearview mirror. Richard said, “What do we know so far? A D.C. appellate court judge has vanished from a downtown parking lot, and whoever has the judge apparently cares nothing for money and-”
“ And even less for the suffering of loved ones.”
“ And there's a major push on to find her.”
Jessica nodded at this. “Authorities have wasted no time in pursuing this as a suspicious disappearance. Any number of other disappearances, police-and most certainly FBI involvement-would take twenty-four hours before beginning a manhunt.”
“ This DeCampe must be well connected,” he volunteered.
She laughed hollowly. “Firmly entrenched in the top levels of society here in D.C., even though she's not been in the city for long.”
“ Oh, really? And just how does one pull that off? By spending money?”
“ Yes and no. She was born and raised under wealthy family circumstances. She climbed to the top of the legal profession as a lawyer and was a judge in Houston, Texas. After nearly twenty years on the bench there, she moved to D.C. and took a position as an appellate court judge here.”
“ So, Officer, you saw the crime scene, right?”
“ Yeah… sure did.”
“ Any theories as to who has her?” she asked Hanrahan, who'd been chewing on a Snickers candy bar.
He took a moment to swallow. “Not a clue, Dr. Coran, but you know how many loony tunes go through the system and are carrying a hard-on for… I mean a grudge against the judges? And DeCampe in a short time has managed to piss off everybody, the good guys as well as the bad guys, so…” He let his words hang in the air.
She imagined how worrisome the entire matter would be to the other judges once word got around. “So perhaps my first instinct is right.”
“ And what would that be, Doctor?” asked Richard as the car came within sight of the courthouse. A roaming wispy but spirited ground fog played about the windshield like a ghost from a wishing well, while the black emptiness of the abandoned street gave Jessica a fleeting chill.
“ My intuition tells me that some sort of sociopath has her. Someone who isn't in it for any sort of ransom, some one out for some sort of vengeance, some kind of hate motive.”
Richard replied, “Sounds like, a normal thing, the way you put it, Doctor.”
“ Sociopathic reasoning may resemble our so-called normal reasoning and motivations, but it never rises to the level of daring to think about itself… or to think of its consequences.” She realized instantly that she had lost Hanrahan in the serpentine, labyrinthian thought when he replied, “Say what?”
Richard said, “Then don't look for a rational motive.”
“ So, you're going to consult on this case, are you?”
“ If I can get assigned to it, I will.”
“ Assuming you are assigned to it, what kind of motive would you suggest, Richard?”
“ Some sort of revenge motive, likely a quite twisted one.”
Somehow Officer Hanrahan had gotten his feelings hurt, and now he took a turn too fast, tossing his occupants to one side, but they only luxuriated in one another and were back to kissing as the car came to a careening stop inside the garage below the Washington, D.C., appellate courthouse. “Strange place for this,” she told him.
“ Never too strange surroundings for love,” he replied.
“ God but I love you.”
“ I love you,” he countered.
“ We're here,” Hanrahan announced, switched off the motor, and climbed from the car. Then Chief Eriq Santiva, Jessica's immediate supervisor with Unit Four, Behavioral Division the PHI. snatch ' '.' ' ' or “ and pried them loose with the obligatory greetings, 101 lowed by J. T. with more of the same.
“ Jess, she's vanished without a trace,” Santiva assured her, taking her by the hand to help her from the car. “Not so much as a hair so far.”
“ We're thinking it may've been someone with a grudge against her,” said J.T.
“ Someone pissed over one of her rulings.” The two men were talking over one another.
“ Wow… that narrows the field,” she joked. “And who would possibly be upset by one of the woman's rutting rules?”
“ Still, they're right,” said Richard. “It's quite likely that if no demands are made, the culprit has other punishment in mind.”
“ Richard and I discussed it and have as much as agreed on the same point. Richard ought to be brought in as consultant, Eriq. What's the alternative? That he go back to the restaurant and demand a container to box up my lobster?”
Chief Eriq Santiva grimaced. “Sorry to cut into your honeymoon.”
“ Honeymoon? Eriq, we haven't even set a date.”
“ Preamble then to your honeymoon… whatever you two are calling it. Sorry to cut it short.”
“ Honeymoon sounds good to me,” Richard replied. She looked at Richard, and he smiled back. “I only meant that it… well, it's just that the word doesn't quite apply, like Missing Persons being applied to this case will likely prove inaccurate.”
'Trust me, the heat put on to solve this thing immediately and now… it necessitated we call it a Missing Persons case.”
“ I see.” Her eyes widened with realization. She explained to Richard, “Makes it far easier to rationalize FBI involvement in an otherwise police matter. So we've already taken full charge of the case, right? WPD is cooperating with us, rather than the other way around?”
“ You've grasped the political nature of the case with your normal brilliance, Agent Coran,” replied Santiva, a
