Flight

Yes, I thought so. You should have just spoken up, you know. There’s really no reason to deny yourself the treat, is there?

The reflected face showed its complete agreement.

It’s settled, then. You’ve worked hard all these years. That was the trouble, wasn’t it? You can’t walk away — or fly away — now. Not when all you’ve dedicated yourself to is about to reach its conclusion. Well, you shall have your treat! A few minutes of watching the dust settle over Judge Kerr’s tomb won’t bring you to harm.

He looked away from the mirror and began to wash his hands. He didn’t use antibacterial soaps, because he believed that overexposure to antibiotics was bad policy. Warm water and soap would do the job. No use overdoing it.

When he was finished, he would don gloves and put everything away, carefully bagging the trash in the large plastic bag without touching the filthy bag itself. For now, he enjoyed the almost scalding water on his hands.

He heard a sound, an unfamiliar sound, that stopped almost as soon as he became aware of it. He smiled a little nervously as recognition came to him. He had been humming.

He never hummed.

Maybe he was happy.

He looked in the mirror and thought perhaps he was.

But still, he couldn’t be sure.

44

Friday, July 14, 7:00 A.M.

Las Piernas Police Department

Although the bomb squad had assured him that the car was free of explosives now, it had been hard for him to get in the driver’s seat and turn the key. He started to park in the department garage, decided he didn’t want to make it easy for the bomber to take another shot at it, and left the car a couple of blocks away.

There were three calls on his voice mail, two that had come in after he had left the office on Thursday. The first was from the FAA. Vince Adams, Michael Pickens, Paul Haycroft, and Dr. Al Larson had pilot’s licenses. No one else on Lefebvre’s list of suspects was on the FAA’s list.

The second was from Blake Halloran, the arson investigator, asking Frank to give him a call back. Frank called, but got Halloran’s voice mail. Phone tag.

The third was from Chief Hale’s secretary. The chief wanted Frank to meet with him at a quarter to nine.

He took the paper airplane from his pocket and studied it, then looked over at Vince’s desk.

The surface was dusty. Papers were piled up loosely in the in box. The phone sat in the middle of the blotter, where Vince had left it after his last call. Vince was only slightly less sloppy than Pete. Not the man he was after. Had he ever believed in the possibility? Vince? He felt a wave of shame. Yes, he had.

Then he told himself that he should have felt shame only if he hadn’t considered Vince as a suspect. He had to consider everyone, no matter how close they were to him. That was the problem with these cases all along — no one had looked at any member of the department other than Lefebvre.

Commissioner Pickens would not have had access to the property room. Which left Haycroft and Larson. Something Dane had said came back to him: “Who learns more about tricks of the criminal trade than police officers?”

A crime lab worker — especially one with years of experience. He wouldn’t just see it all, he would study it in detail. There was incredible range in these cases, the sort of range a criminalist would see, especially in a lab the size of the LPPD’s. Arson, explosives, booby traps, forgery. Murder.

He felt his stomach tighten. The implications of having a murderer working in the crime lab went far beyond the Randolph cases or Lefebvre’s death — what else had been tampered with? And how could such an expert be caught?

The lab wasn’t just a place to learn how crimes were committed, he realized. A criminalist would also know how to avoid getting caught — how to avoid leaving evidence — or how to leave just enough false evidence to point an investigation in a particular direction. He’d have easy access to the property room. Frank, working in an elite detective group like Homicide, didn’t have as much access to evidence.

While a detective handling evidence from a case to which he wasn’t assigned would risk discovery, lab workers handled evidence from many cases. A criminalist knew which investigators were working which cases — so that he would have known how to devise an anonymous tip that might interest Lefebvre or anyone else.

And somewhere along the way a forensic scientist might easily have learned how a man like Wendell Leroy Wallace devised a signature bomb to be placed under a car seat.

He felt his mouth go dry.

The bomb squad expert had said the maker of the bomb was neat and tidy — anal.

Al Larson’s pristine office came to mind. Even other workers in the lab thought he went too far in his demands for neatness. He would have the most access to the highest number of cases. He could walk into any crime scene and never be suspected of doing anything other than being a hands-on supervisor. He was probably the department liaison to the county investigation of the Wendell Leroy Wallace car-bombing cases. He had not only worn the type of watch the Amanda’s attacker wore, he had had a supply of them so that he could replace the DNA-laden watchband when new testing capabilities made that necessary.

He had means. He had opportunity. And he had motives in every case.

Randolph had been a man of science, someone who could have noticed irregularities in the lab. He had supported improvement of the lab, but he had also been critical of it. He was murdered the night before he was due to meet with the chief and other commissioners about problems in the lab. Larson had known about the meeting.

What if Larson suspected that Randolph’s report would lead to his being fired or worse?