didn’t find anything to suggest anything so outrageous or I guess I’ll just start looking for another job right this minute and tell Ethan we’re not about to buy that bungalow we’ve been looking at. I’m sure you’ve figured out what happened by now, knowing you. You probably figured it out in five minutes.”
He pulls off the other boot, moving both of them to the side, and I notice he’s spiked his hair and has shaved off the mustache and beard he had when I saw him last. Compactly built, Bryce is slight but strong with a blond choirboy prettiness, to use a cliche, because it happens to be true. He doesn’t look like himself with facial hair, which is probably the point, to look like someone else, to be transformed into a formidable and virile character like James Brolin, or to be taken seriously like Wolf Blitzer, heroes of his. My top administrator and trusted right hand has many, a host of famous imagined friends he speaks of easily as if the act of tuning them into one of his big- screen TVs or saving them with TiVo makes them as real as next-door neighbors.
Seriously good at what he does for me, with degrees in criminal justice and public administration, Bryce Clark at a glance seems misplaced, as if he wandered off the set of E!, and I have used this to my advantage over the few years he’s worked for me. Outsiders and even people who work here don’t always realize that my recovering Mormon compulsive-talking clotheshorse of a chief of staff is not to be trifled with. If nothing else, he’s voyeuristic and adores “filling me in,” as he puts it. He likes nothing better than to gather information like a magpie and carry it back to his nest. He is dangerous if he detests you. It’s unlikely you’ll know it. His banter and deliberate affect are a bunker that his more dangerous self hides behind, and in that way he reminds me of my former secretary, Rose. Those who made the mistake of treating her like a silly old woman one day found themselves missing a limb.
“The FBI? Homeland Security? No one I’ve seen before.” Bryce is bent over in his chair as he unzips a nylon gym bag, his stocking feet planted on the floor.
“Probably the FBI—” But he isn’t going to let me finish.
“Well, the one who was so rude totally looked the part, all buff in a gray suit and camel-hair coat. I think the FBI fires people if they get fat. Well, good luck hiring in America. Drop-dead good-looking, I’ll give him that. Did you see him back there? Do we know his name and what field office he’s with? Not anyone I’ve met from Boston. Maybe he’s new.”
“Who?” My thoughts run into a wall.
“Lord, you are tired. The agent in that big, bad black Ford Expedition, the spitting image of the football player on
“Bryce…”
“Anyway, I saw all the blood, how much the body from Norton’s Woods bled inside his pouch, and it was god-awful, and I thought to myself,
“I need to talk to you about—” But there’s no point when he gets like this.
“I’m glad you’re here, but sorry you had to come home for something so god-awful. I stayed awake all night wondering what I’m going to tell reporters. When I saw those SUVs behind the building, I thought it was the media, was fully expecting television trucks—”
“Bryce, you need to calm down and maybe take your sunglasses off—”
“But nothing in the news that I know of, and not one reporter has called me or left a message here or anything—”
“I need to go over a few things, and you really need to shut up, please,” I interrupt him.
“I know.” He takes off his sunglasses as he works his foot into a black high-top sneaker. “I’m just a little overwrought, Dr. Scarpetta. And you know how I get when I’m overwrought.”
“Have you heard from Jack?”
“Where’s the Mouth of Truth when you need it?” As he ties his sneakers. “Don’t ask me to pretend, and I would respectfully request that you inform him I don’t answer directly to him anymore. Now that you’re home, thank God.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because all he does is order me around as if I work in the drive-through window at Wendy’s. He barks and snaps as his hair falls out, and then I wonder if he’s going to kick someone, maybe me, or strangle me with his umpteen-degree black belt or whatever the fuck he has, excuse my French. And it’s gotten worse, and we weren’t supposed to bother you at Dover. I told everybody to leave you alone. Everybody’s told everybody to leave you alone or they’ll answer to me. I’m just realizing you’ve been up all night. You look awful.” His blue eyes look me up and down, studying the way I’m dressed, which is in the same khaki cargo pants and black polo shirt with the AFME crest that I put on at Dover.
“I came straight here and don’t have anything to change into.” I finally get a word in edgewise. “I don’t know why you bothered replacing your L.L.Beans with an old pair of Converse left over from basketball camp.”
“I know you have a better eye than that, and I know you know I never went to basketball camp, because I always went to music camp every summer. Hugo Boss, half-price at Endless-dot-com, plus free shipping,” he adds, getting up from his chair. “I’m making coffee, and you want some. And no, I’ve not heard from Jack, and you don’t need to tell me there’s a problem and it might have to do with those agents in our parking lot, who obviously have a personality disorder. I don’t know why they can’t make an effort to be friendly. If I wore a big gun and could arrest people, I’d be Little Miss Sunshine to everyone, smile and be so nice. Why not?” Bryce brushes past me, walking into my office, disappearing into the bathroom. “I can run by your house and pick up a few things if you want. Just tell me. A business suit or something casual?”
“If I get stuck here…” I start to say I might take him up on it.
“We really do need to arrange some sort of closet for you, a little haute couture at HQ. Ohhhh, wardrobe?” his voice sings out as he makes coffee. “Now if we had our own show, we’d have wardrobe, hair, makeup, and you’d never find yourself in the same dirty clothes and odiferous of death, not that I’m saying you’re… Well, anyway. Best of all would be if you went home and straight to bed.” As hot water shoots loudly through a K-Cup. “Or I could run out and get you something to eat. I find when I’m tired and sleep-deprived…” He emerges from my bathroom with two coffees and says, “Fat. There’s a time and a place for everything. Dunkin’ Donuts, their croissant with sausage and egg, how ‘bout it? You might need two. You actually look a little thin. Life in the military really doesn’t suit you, dear boss.”
“Are you aware of a woman named Erica Donahue calling here?” I ask him as I return to my desk with a coffee I’m not sure I should drink. Opening a drawer, I search for Advil in hopes there really might be a bottle hiding somewhere.
“She did. Several times.” Bryce carefully sips the hot coffee, leaning against the frame of the open doorway that connects us.
When he offers nothing else, I ask, “When did she call?”
“Starting after it was in the news about her son. That was a week ago, I think, when he confessed to killing Mark Bishop.”
“You talked to her?”
“Most recently, all I really did was direct her call to Jack again when she was looking for you.”
“‘Again’?”
“You should get his part from him. I don’t know his details,” Bryce says, and it’s not like him to be careful with me. He’s cautious suddenly.
“But he talked to her.”
“This was, let me see….” He has a habit of gazing up at the dome as if the answers to all things are there. It’s also a favorite delaying tactic of his. “Last Thursday.”
“And you talked to her. Before you transferred her call to Jack.”
