death penalty. He would be committed. Would he ever be let out? The last thing she heard as they were leaving the Jefferson Park precinct station was his sobs and the soft, soothing voice of his sister, telling him over and over that it would be all right, that they were in this together. She would take care of him. She had been two years older and she hadn't protected him from their mother. She wondered if the sister was really lucky that her brother hadn't gassed her.
They took a late-morning flight back to Washington, D.C. It didn't occur to Savich until they were already in the air that Sherlock might not have a place to stay.
'I'm staying at the Watergate,' she said. 'I'm comfortable. I'll stay there until I find an apartment.' She smiled at him. 'You did very well. You got him. You didn't even need the police. Why didn't you just call Captain Brady and tell him about Bent? Why did you want to go to Chicago?'
'I lied to Brady. I'm a glory hound-even if it's just a crumb, I'm happy. I love praise. Who doesn't?'
'But that's not even part of why you went.'
'All right, Sherlock. I wanted to be in at the kill. I wanted to see this guy. If I hadn't seen him, then it would never be finished in my mind. Too, this was your first day. It was important for you to see how I work, how I deal with local cops. Okay, it was a bit of a show. I think I deserved it. You're new. You haven't seen any disappointments yet, you haven't lived through the endless frustration, the wrong turns our unit has suffered since the first murders in Des Moines. You didn't hear all the crap we got about the profile being wrong. All you saw was the victory dance. This has been only the third real score I've gotten since the FBI started the unit up.
'But I can't ever forget that there was Des Moines and St. Louis and twelve people died because we didn't figure things out quickly enough. Of course Chicago was the key, since that was his focus. As soon as I realized that the neighbors knew one another and watched out for one another, and there hadn't been any strangers at the Lansky house, then I knew our guy lived there. He had to. There wasn't any other answer.'
Savich added in a tired voice, 'You did just fine, Sherlock.'
For the first time in years, she felt something positive, something that made her feel really good wash through her. 'Thanks,' she said, and stretched out in her seat. 'What if I hadn't known the answer when you asked me to explain it?'
'Oh, it was easy to see that you did know. You were about to burst out of your skin. You looked about ready to fly. Yeah, you really did fine.'
'Will you tell me about your first big score sometime? Maybe even the second one?'
She thought he must be asleep. Then he said in a slow, slurred voice, 'Her name was Joyce Hendricks. She was seventeen and I was fifteen. I'd never seen real live breasts before. She was something. All the guys thought I was the stud of the high school, for at least three days.'
She laughed. 'Where is Joyce now? 'She's a big-time tax accountant in New York We exchange Christmas cards,' he mumbled, just before he drifted off to sleep.
7
LACEY MOVED A WEEK LATER into a quite lovely two-bedroom town house in Georgetown on the corner of Cranford Street and Madison. She had four glasses, two cups, a bed, one set of white sheets, three towels, all different, a microwave, and half a dozen hangers. It was all she'd brought with her from California. She'd given the rest of her stuff to a homeless shelter in San Francisco. When she'd told Savich she didn't have much in storage, she hadn't been exaggerating.
No matter.
The first thing she did was change the locks and install dead bolts and chains. Then she hung up her two dresses, two pairs of jeans, and two pairs of slacks on her hangers. She was whistling, thinking about MacDougal and how she'd miss him. He was on the fifth floor, working in the National Security Division. He was big-time into counterterrorism. It had been his goal, he'd told her, since a close friend of his had been blown out of the sky on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie in the late eighties. He'd just gotten his first big assignment. He would go to Saudi Arabia because of a terrorist bombing that had killed at least fifteen American soldiers the previous week.
'I'm outta here, Sherlock,' he'd said, grabbed her, and given her a big hug. 'They're giving me a chance. Just like Savich gave you. Hey, you really did well with that guy in Chicago.'
'The Toaster.'
'Yeah. What a moniker. Trust the media to trivialize murder by making it funny. Anything big since then?'
'No, but it's been less than a week. Savich made me take three days off to find an apartment. Listen, no impulsive stuff out of you, okay? You take care of yourself, Mac. Don't go off on a tear just because you're FBI now and think you're invincible.'
'This is just training for me, Sherlock. Nothing more. Hey, you're good little-sister material.'
'We're the same age.'
'Nah, with those skinny little arms of yours, you're a little sister.'
He was anxious to be gone. He was bouncing his foot and shifting from one leg to the other. She gave him one more hug. 'Send me a postcard with lots of sand on it.'
He gave her a salute and was off, whistling, just as she was now, his footsteps fast and solid down the short drive in front of her town house. He turned suddenly and called back, 'I hear that Savich is big into country-and- western music. I hear he loves to sing the stuff, that he knows all the words to every song ever written. It can't hurt to brownnose.'
Goodness, she thought, country-and-western music? She knew what it was but that was about it. It was twangy stuff that was on radio stations she always turned off immediately. It hadn't ever been in her repertoire-not that she'd had much of a repertoire the past seven years. The last time she'd played the piano was in the bar at the Watergate a week and a half before. The drunks had loved her. She'd played some Gershwin, then quit when she forgot the next line.
She was standing in the middle of her empty living room, hands on hips, wondering where she was going to buy furniture when the doorbell rang.
No one knew she was here.
She froze, hating herself even as she felt her heart begin to pound. She had been safe at Quantico, but here, in Washington, D.C., where she was utterly alone? Her Lady Colt was in the bedroom. No, she wasn't about to dash in there and get it. She drew in a deep breath. It was the paperboy. It was someone selling subscriptions.
The only people she knew were the eight people in the Criminal Apprehension Unit and Savich, and she hadn't given them her address yet. Just Personnel. Would they tell anyone?
The doorbell rang again. She walked to her front door, immediately moving to stand beside it. No one would shoot through the front door and hit her. 'Who is it?''
There was a pause, then, 'It's me, Lacey. Douglas.'
She closed her eyes a moment. Douglas Madigan. She hadn't seen him for four months, nearly five months. The last time had been at her father's house in Pacific Heights the night before she'd left for Quantico. He'd been cold and distant with her. Her mother had wept, then ranted at her for being an ungrateful girl. Douglas had said very little, just sat there on the plush leather couch in her father's library and sipped at very expensive brandy from a very old Waterford snifter. It wasn't an evening she liked to remember.
'Lacey? Are you there, honey?'
She'd called her father the day before. Douglas must have found out where she was from him. She watched her hand unfasten the two chains. She slowly clicked off the dead bolt and opened the door.
'I've got a bottle of champagne, just for us.' He waved it in her face.
'I don't have any silverware.'
'Who cares? I don't usually drink champagne from a spoon anyway. You nervous to see me, Lacey? Come, honey, all you need is a glass or two.'
'Sorry, my brain's a bit scattered. I wasn't expecting you, Douglas. Yes, I've got some cheap glasses. Come in.'
He followed her to the empty kitchen. She pulled two glasses from the cupboard. He said as he gently twisted the champagne cork, 'I read about you in the Chronicle. You just graduated from the Academy and you already nailed a serial killer.'
She thought about that pathetic scrap, Russell Bent, who'd murdered twelve people. She hoped the inmates
