'Did you hear me?' Miriam prodded.
Laura's crying stopped. She wiped her tears on the teddy bear, and she turned to face her mother. 'This is… my house,' she said. 'My house. You're a guest here. In my house, I'll do what I please when I please.'
'This isn't the time to act fool -'
'LISTEN TO ME!' she screamed, and Miriam was knocked backward by the power of her daughter's voice as surely as if she'd been punched. 'Give me some room to breathe! I can't breathe with you on my neck!'
The older woman, a scrapper, regained her cool composure. 'You're out of control,' she said. 'I understand that.' Doug and Franklin were coming along the corridor. 'I think you need a sedative.'
'I NEED MY BABY! THAT'S WHAT I NEED!'
'She's losing her mind,' Miriam said matter-of-factly to her husband.
'Get out! Get out!' Laura shoved her mother, who gasped with horror at the touch, and then Laura slammed the nursery door in their three stunned faces and turned the latch.
'Want me to call the doctor?' she heard Doug ask as she leaned against the door.
'I think you'd better.' Franklin speaking.
'No, let her alone. She wants to be alone, we'll let her be alone. Good God, I always knew she had an unstable temper! Yes, we'll let her be alone!' Her voice was raised for her daughter's benefit. 'Franklin, call the Hyatt and get us a room! We won't stay here and breathe down her neck!'
She almost unlocked the door. Almost. But no, it was quiet in here. It was calm. Let them go to the Hyatt, and let them sulk. She needed space, even if it had to be within these four haunted walls.
Laura sat on the floor with the teddy bear, dim light drifting through the window blinds. She had given David to a murderess. She had put her child into bloodstained hands. She closed her eyes and shrieked inside, where no one but herself could hear.
An hour or so later, there was a tentative knock at the door.
'Laura?' It was Doug. 'The FBI's here with the pictures.'
She got up, her legs in need of blood, and unlocked the nursery. The teddy bear remained clamped under her arm as she went out. In the den, she found a middle-aged man in a pin-striped suit, his hair sandy brown and cut to a stubble on the sides. He had warm brown eyes and a good smile, and Laura saw him glance quickly at the teddy bear and then pretend he hadn't seen it. Her father had remained at the house, but her mother had retreated to the Hyatt; the battle of wills had begun.
The FBI agent's name was Neil Kastle, 'with a K,' he told her as she sat down in a chair. He had some photographs, both color and black and white, he wanted her to look at. He opened a manila envelope with large fingers not used to small tasks, and he spread a half-dozen pictures out on the coffee table next to a book on Matisse. They were all pictures of women, some of them face-on – mug shots – and others at an angle. There was one picture of a big, heavyset woman aiming a rifle at a bank clerk. Another showed a husky woman glancing back over her shoulder as she was getting into a black Camaro; light glinted off a pistol in her hand.
'These are women from our Most Wanted list,' Kastle told her. 'Six of them who match Ginger Coles in size, age, and build. We put the police sketch in our computer and assigned the variables, and that's what we came up with.'
One of the women, tall and blond-haired, wore bell bottoms, an American-flag belt, and a green paisley blouse. She was grinning broadly, and she held a hand grenade. 'Some of them are old,' Laura said.
'Right. They go back… oh… twenty years or so.'
'You've been looking for some of these women for twenty years?' Franklin asked, peering over Laura's shoulder.
'One of them, yes. One's from the late seventies, one's from 1983, and the other three are from 1985 to the present.'
'What crimes did they do?' Franklin persisted.
'An assortment,' Kastle said. 'Look at those good and hard, Mrs. Clayborne.'
'They look alike to me. All of them: same size, same everything.'
'Their names and statistics are on the back.'
Laura turned over the picture of the bank robber. Margie Cummings, AKA Margie Grimes AKA Linda Kay Souther AKA Gwen Becker. Height 5 feet l0’’ A, hair brown, eyes blue-green, birthplace Orren, Kentucky. She looked at the back of the black Camaro picture: Sandra June McHenry, AKA Susan Foster, AKA June Foster. Height 5 feet 9’’, hair brown, eyes gray, birthplace Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
'Why do you think it might be one of these women?' Franklin asked. 'Couldn't it just be… like… a crazy woman or somebody you don't even know about?'
'The city police are putting their own list of mug shots together. That'll include local fugitives. The reason we decided to go back into our Most Wanted file was because of the shotgun.'
'What about it?'
'Ginger Coles knew we'd find her apartment. She set the trap to take out the first man through the door. That means she has a certain… shall we say… mindset. An aptitude for such things. She scrubbed her apartment down pretty well, too. All the doorknobs and drawer grips were wiped clean. Even her records were wiped. We did get some partial prints off a rifle we found in a closet, and a good thumbprint off the shower head.'
'So does that print match any of these women?' Doug asked.
'I can't say,' Kastle answered. 'They haven't let me know yet.'
Laura turned over another photo. Debra Guesser, AKA Debbie Smith, AKA Debra Stark. Height 6 feet, hair reddish-brown, eyes blue. Birthplace New Orleans, Louisiana. She looked closely at that face: it was similar to the face of Ginger Coles, but there was a small scar on her upper lip that put a sneer in her smile. 'This one… maybe,' she said. 'I don't remember the scar.'
'That's okay. Look hard and take your time.' He didn't tell her that he was testing her. Three of the women, including Debra Guesser, had been convicted and were now in federal prisons. A fourth, Margie Cummings, had died in 1987.
Laura turned over the picture of the bell-bottomed girl. Mary Terrell, AKA Mary Terror. Height 6 feet, hair brown, eyes gray-blue, birthplace Richmond, Virginia. 'This says she has brown hair, but her hair's blond in the picture.'
'Dyed blond,' Kastle said. 'The statistics are based on family records, so they might appear a little different in the photos.'
Laura stared at Mary Terrell's face. The woman – fresh-faced and innocent, in a way – wore a relaxed, toothy grin, and the grenade dangled from a finger. 'This is the oldest one?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Ginger Coles is… harder looking. This woman's close, too, but… I don't know.'
'Put about twenty years of rough living on that woman's face,' Kastle suggested.
'I don't know. I can't see it.'
'How can a woman hide from the FBI for twenty years?' Franklin took the photo and Laura went on to the next. 'It seems impossible!'
'It's a mighty big country. Plus there's Canada and Mexico to consider. People change their hair and clothes, they create new identities, and they learn how to walk and talk differently. And you'd be amazed at what some of the fugitives get away with: we found one who'd been a park ranger at Yellowstone for about seven years. Another was the VP of a bank in Missouri. I know of a third who became a fishing boat captain in the Keys, and we got hold of him when he ran for mayor of Key West. See, people don't really look at other people.' He sat down in a chair opposite Laura. 'Folks are trusting. If somebody tells you something, you're likely to believe it. In every city there's somebody who'll take money, no questions asked, to forge you a new driver's license, birth certificate, anything you want. So you get yourself a job where they don't care to ask too many questions, and you burrow underground like a smart little mole.' He folded his hands together as Laura started through the photos again. 'These Most Wanted fugitives grow eyes in the backs of their heads. They learn to smell the wind and listen to the railroad tracks. They probably don't sleep too well at night, but they keep their smarts sharp. See, most people – law officers included – have a big failing: they forget. The FBI never forgets. We've got computers to keep our memories up-to-date.'
'Who's this in the background?' Doug asked, looking at the photo of Mary Terrell.
Kastle took it, and Laura looked, too. Mary Terrell was standing on dewy green grass, her feet in clunky sandals. A blue sky, somewhat faded, was overhead and the camera operator's slim shadow lay on the grass. But in
