Grace was staring mindlessly at her computer screen, mesmerized into near stupor by the white blur of tracking information that was scrolling down her monitor.
The Wisconsin deputy Magozzi had sent over had just called from downstairs. Grace had talked to her for a few minutes, then used the remote to key her in and send the elevator down.
Mitch came out of his office, lugging his briefcase and laptop. His suitcoat was rolled up in a ball under his arm. He stopped at Grace’s desk and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m going to take off. Are you okay?’
She covered his hand with hers and smiled at him. ‘I’m going to be fine. You go home and take care of Diane.’
Mitch looked at her for a long moment, giving her everything with his eyes, like he always did. ‘You know, Grace,’ he said softly so he couldn’t be overheard, ‘if you change your mind about leaving, I’ll be right beside you. Nothing could keep me from that. Nothing.’
It was always there between them, this remnant of a first love that men seemed to cling to for all of their lives. But usually Mitch wasn’t this overt and it made Grace a little uncomfortable. ‘I know that. Go home, Mitch.’
He looked at her for a moment longer, then turned for the elevator.
‘I sent it down for that deputy Magozzi sent over,’ Grace remembered. ‘She should be up in a few minutes.’
Mitch shook his head. ‘I’ll take the stairs. See you guys.’ He waved to Roadrunner and Harley, who were so focused on their monitors they just lifted their hands in farewell without looking up.
Down in the garage Sharon was hurrying now, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the concrete as she walked past the open freight elevator.
She figured she’d eaten up three minutes checking the cars and the padlocked door with the high-voltage sign on it, and she was starting to worry about Halloran calling out the National Guard before she could check the stairway and get upstairs, where she hoped the radio would work again.
She still had her gun drawn, but by now her uneasiness was fading and her hands had stopped sweating. Any enclosed space would tell you if it was empty, if you just listened to your senses, and once she’d checked out the cars and banished the mental bugaboo of the only viable hiding places, all of her senses came through loud and clear, telling her she was absolutely alone down there.
She was ten feet from the stairwell door when it opened suddenly and one of the Monkeewrench geeks bopped out, then froze comically at the sight of her gun. ‘Oh my God. Don’t shoot!’
Sharon relaxed. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled a little sheepishly and looked down to holster her gun. ‘I’m Deputy Sharon Mueller. . .’ she started to say, and then she looked up and saw only eyes, and in that instant she knew she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Both her hands jerked automatically, one toward the useless radio on her shoulder, the other to her holster, and all the time she was thinking crazily,
. . . and her hands were still moving, too fast to see, too slow to do any good, and then she heard a soft popping sound and felt a bite on her throat above the vest,
Magozzi hurried down the hall toward Tommy’s office, took a step inside the door, and skidded on an empty Chee-tos bag. ‘Jesus Christ, Tommy, this place is like a minefield. What have you got?’
Tommy stabbed a finger at the monitor in front of him. ‘I got a name. D. Emanuel. That’s your boy.’
‘That’s Bradford?’
Tommy grinned and rubbed his Buddha belly. ‘You bet your ass. First I checked the county Saint Peter’s School is in, and then I was going alphabetically until I figured a high-school kid wouldn’t travel too far, so I did the adjacent counties and got a hit on the second one. Livingston County. Brian Bradford changed his name to D. Emanuel the day after his eighteenth birthday.’
Magozzi grabbed the phone and punched the extension for Homicide. ‘No first name?’
‘Nope. Just D.’ He gestured at another monitor. ‘I’m running a New York and Georgia search on D. Emanuel now, see if anything pops.’
‘Gino!’ Magozzi barked into the phone. ‘The kid changed his name to D. Emanuel. Check it on the lists.’ He was just hanging up the phone when Tommy frowned at one of the monitors.
‘Well, that’s weird.’
‘What?’
‘I got a marriage certificate for D. Emanuel in Georgia. But this can’t be right.’ He leaned closer to the monitor as if that would make the information more clear. ‘This D. Emanuel married James Mitchell . . . It’s got to be a different one.’
Magozzi was tense, almost rigid. ‘No it doesn’t.’
‘Same-sex marriages in Georgia? I don’t think so.’
‘Brian Bradford is a hermaphrodite.’
Tommy’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re shitting me. Why didn’t you tell me that before?’
‘We didn’t tell anyone.’
Tommy was looking at the screen, shaking his head. ‘James Mitchell. I’ve seen that name.’
‘It’s about as common as dirt.’
‘No, I mean recently. Give me a minute. Christ, it had to be in the FBI file. That’s the only thing I’ve been working on.’ He slid over to another keyboard and started typing frantically.
The phone rang and Magozzi snatched it off the hook.
‘That’s it, Leo. D. Emanuel was on the registration list, but not the admissions list. He’s the guy. Is Tommy running it?’
‘Yeah, we’re working on it. I’ll let you know.’
45
‘Roadrunner, Harley?’ Grace said quietly. ‘I just got another message.’
Harley and Roadrunner tore over to her desk and hovered over either shoulder to look at her monitor.
‘Open it, Grace,’ Harley said.
Grace clicked the mouse and a single message line appeared on the screen:
I DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE TO DO THIS
‘Jesus,’ Roadrunner whispered. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Suddenly the lights in the office snapped out and the monitor flickered. The e-mail disappeared and was replaced by a blue screen. A few seconds later, the monitor started drawing a power grid schematic.
‘Power failure warning.’ Roadrunner stated the obvious.
‘Lot of good that does,’ Harley said. ‘We already know the power failed.’
‘Says the main isn’t receiving power,’ Grace said. ‘What exactly does that mean?’
‘Means there’s probably a big trunk line outage somewhere,’ Harley said. ‘Shit. It could be a while.’
He walked over to the windows and opened the louvered blinds, for all the good it did. The sun was behind a black wall of clouds that looked like they weren’t going anywhere soon. ‘Darkest goddamned day of the year and we lose power.’
‘Why isn’t the generator kicking in?’ Grace asked. ‘I thought we had it set up to take over automatically.’
Harley shrugged. ‘Who knows? We’ve probably never had the thing running or serviced since we got it. It’s like a car battery – use it or lose it. I’ll go down and take a look. Roadrunner, how much battery time do we have on the computers?’
‘Around two hours.’
‘I’ll report it to the power company and start making backups of our drives,’ Grace said. ‘You guys go see if you can’t get the generator running.’
‘Where the hell is the generator, anyhow?’ Roadrunner asked.
