“Dead sure. I’ve got something to tell you. I’ll be waiting out front.”
BARELY TEN MINUTES HAD PASSED when Robby stopped at the curb in front of her house. She got in and he pulled away in a hurry, barely waiting for her to close the door.
“So what’s so important that it’s worth committing professional suicide?” he asked.
“Eleanor Linwood is my mother. Was my mother.”
“What?” Robby’s eyes locked with hers.
“Watch the road, please,” she said evenly.
“When’d you find this out?”
“I confirmed it two or three hours ago. That photo we took from Mom’s—from Emma’s? I had it age- enhanced at the lab. It was her, it was Linwood.”
“That software isn’t always accurate—”
“I went to Linwood’s. I met with her, showed her the photo, told her what I’d found out from digging through records.”
“She ’fessed up?”
“Pretty much. Filled in some of the blanks, how she had the muscle to change identity. Refused to tell me who my father was, though. Afraid it’d ruin her career.”
“And now she’s dead.”
Vail glanced out the side window, watching the dark residences fly by beneath the occasional streetlight. “Now she’s dead.”
“Coincidence?” Robby asked.
She turned to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. Just seems funny. You find out she’s your mother and three hours later she’s a Dead Eyes vic.”
Vail sighed. “Don’t know. What would the connection be?” She flashed on the chase through Sandra Franks’s backyard, the feeling the offender was there . . . that he had been waiting there for them. For her?
“We’ve got to tell the task force,” Robby said.
“Hancock probably knows. I think he was eavesdropping.”
“Prick.” Robby drove on for a moment, then asked, “Any news on Jonathan?”
She shrugged. “Some improvement. Small steps, you know?”
“Some improvement is better than no improvement.”
Vail frowned. It was the same thing Gifford had said . . . but somehow, it sounded more genuine coming from Robby.
He accelerated and entered the interstate.
POLICE CRUISERS, their light bars swirling in a rhythmic pulse, were blocking the entrance to the senator’s street. Robby badged the patrol officer and drove around the barricade. They pulled off to the side and approached Bledsoe, who was talking to a uniform near the rim of the circular driveway.
In the harsh halogen security lighting bearing down on them, Bledsoe’s face looked weary and defeated. He nodded at Vail and Robby, then turned to Sinclair and Manette, who were approaching from his left. “Anything?”
“We got some shoe prints in the dirt over by the south end of the house,” Sinclair said, motioning with his Mag-Lite. “Looks like they come from the woods. I sent a tech out to track them, get a plaster casting.”
Manette said, “Means this guy came in on foot. Tells me he knew what he was doing, who lived here. That she’d have some kind of security.”
Sinclair shook his head. “Not
“Either way,” Bledsoe said, “he didn’t know about the security lights. Or he took a big chance no one would see him as he got close. Our guy’s a planner, he’d know about the lights.”
Vail looked toward the side of the house. “I was him, I’d approach along that line of bushes. Motion sensors would be blocked. Lights would never come on.”
“That’s exactly where the footprints are,” Sinclair said, “right along the bushes.”
“They have cameras?” Bledsoe asked.
Manette shook her head. “Hancock said the senator didn’t want to live like Big Brother was watching her. Didn’t think anything like this’d ever happen. Especially in this neighborhood.”
“Get anything back on that email?” Sinclair asked.
Vail’s gaze was still off in the general area of the house. “Nothing yet.”
“We really could use some help on that—”
“I know, Sin,” Vail said. “I know. I can’t make them work faster. I tried.”
Bledsoe held up a hand. “Keep it down. Let’s at least look like we all get along, okay?” He nodded toward the house. “Sin, why don’t you go check on Hancock.”
Sinclair frowned, then mumbled something under his breath as he headed off down the gravel path.
“Hancock’s pretty shaken up,” Manette said, “so I wouldn’t expect too much from him.”
Vail chuckled. “I never expect anything from him, so it’s not like this’ll be any different.”
“I meant in terms of helping us construct a time line for the senator’s movements tonight.”
“I can help with that,” Vail said. She glanced at Robby, then continued. “I came by earlier—”
“Detective!” Approaching on the run were Gifford, Del Monaco, and Police Chief Lee Thurston.
Bledsoe turned and opened a space in the huddle to accommodate the three men, who were dressed in nearly identical black wool overcoats.
“Agent Vail, what are you doing here?” Gifford asked. His eyes narrowed as his arms folded across his chest.
“I called her,” Bledsoe said. “Given the identity of our victim, I wanted my best people on it.”
Gifford looked at Vail. “Agent Vail is under orders not to partake in any Bureau business.”
“This isn’t Bureau business,” Bledsoe said. “It’s a multijurisdictional task force, which I’m heading—”
“But I gave you a direct order to remove her,” Thurston said to Bledsoe.
“With all due respect, sir, the idea is to catch this fucker. Karen Vail is a vital member of my team. The faster we catch him, the less people he’ll kill. And with the senator’s murder, the heat just got turned up. Media’s gonna be all over us.”
As if on cue, the downdraft of thumping helicopter rotor blades began whipping nearby treetops. The task force members craned their necks to the patch of illuminated sky . . . where a chopper emblazoned with the WSAW-TV logo—a bird with a magnifying glass—swung into view.
“Speak of the devil,” Robby said.
Bledsoe held out a hand, palm up, as if pleading his case. “Look, Vail’s the best. I need her help with this. Right now, I gotta catch a killer. I don’t care about politics.”
Thurston reached up and caught his fedora that had been lifted off his bald head by a gust of chilled wind. “Apparently, you don’t care about following orders, either.”
Gifford leaned in close and said something in Thurston’s ear. Thurston, a hand pressing down on his hat, bent his head forward, listening.
Bledsoe grabbed the radio from his pocket and yelled to the uniform on the other end to do whatever was necessary to get the chopper out of the area. As Bledsoe shoved the handset into his pocket, Thurston turned to him.
“Vail’s in, but we both have real problems with this. Next time you think you know better than me, you come to me first so I can knock some sense up your ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gifford pointed an index finger in Vail’s face. “I don’t want you showing up at any more Dead Eyes scenes.”
“Let’s hope this’ll be his last,” Vail said. Gifford threw an angry look at Bledsoe, then turned away. Vail had thoughts about telling them Linwood was her mother, but that would open a door to a room she didn’t want to enter, at least not yet. With the tightrope she had been walking lately, she knew it was best to be completely forthcoming, because in a very short time Hancock would come out of his funk and tell everyone who had ears that
