'Sorry. My phone went with the garage.'
Ranger flipped my top drawer open. I'd left my gun and stun gun and pepper spray in the drawer overnight.
'I forgot to take them,' I said.
'Forget them again, and you don't have a job.'
'That's harsh.'
'Yeah, but you can keep the key to my apartment.'
TWELVE
Ranger took my pad and read through my notes. He looked over at the thick printouts on my desk. 'Files on Barroni, Gorman, and Lazar?'
'Yes. I'm running Runion now. I think he fits the profile. If you haven't got anything better to do, you might go over the files for me. Maybe you'll see something I missed.'
Ranger slouched in the chair next to me and started with Barroni.
I finished Runion a little after noon. I printed him out and pushed back from my station. Ranger looked over at me. He was on the third file.
'How long are you staying?' Ranger asked.
'As long as it takes. I'm going to the kitchen for a sandwich.'
'Bring something back for me. I want to keep reading.'
'Something?'
'Anything.'
'You don't mean that. You have all these rules about eating. No fat. No sugar. No white bread.'
'Babe, I don't keep things in my kitchen that I don't eat.'
'You want tuna?'
'No. I don't want tuna.'
'You see!'
Ranger put the file aside and stood. He crooked an arm around my neck, kissed the top of my head, and dragged me off to the kitchen. We got chicken salad on wheat, bottles of water, and a couple apples and oranges.
'No chips,' I said. 'Where are the chips?'
'I have chips upstairs in my apartment,' Ranger said.
'Are you trying to lure me to your apartment with chips?'
Ranger smiled.
'Okay, tell me the truth. Do you really have chips?'
'There are some things a woman should find out for herself,' Ranger said.
I thought that was as far as I wanted to go under the present circumstances. Going upstairs with Ranger, chips or no chips, was a complication I didn't think I could manage right now. So I returned his smile and carted my food back to the cubicle.
I was almost done rereading Runion when it hit me. The one possible thing that would tie the four men to each other. I looked over at Ranger and saw that he was watching me. Ranger had seen it, too. He was a step ahead of me.
'I haven't read Runion yet,' Ranger said. 'Tell me he was in the army.'
'He was in the army.'
'Thirty-six years ago he was stationed at Fort Dix.' Bingo.
'A lot of people pass through Fort Dix,' Ranger said. 'But it feels good.'
I agreed. It felt good. 'I'm tired of sitting,' I told him. 'I think we need a field trip.'
'Babe, you're not going to make me go to the mall, are you?' 'I was thinking more along the lines of doing some B and E on Anthony's house.'
'I thought you were out of the B and E business.'
'Here's the thing, someone keeps blowing up my cars, and it's getting old.'
Ranger's cell rang. He answered it and passed it over to me. 'It's Morelli,' he said.
'I see you're working very closely with the boss,' Morelli said.
'Don't start.'
'I heard from the crime lab. The bomb was inside the garage, next to a wall, halfway to the rear. It was manually detonated.'
'Like the Mama Macaroni bomb.'
