When Gino and Magozzi were finally released from the testing van, Gino rolled down both sleeves and stomped away in search of his manhood. 'Well, that was about the most humiliating experience of my life, and that includes the time when my pants split in the middle of the medal ceremony for the Monkeewrench murders. I feel like aliens just harvested my eggs or something.'
Magozzi smiled, but Knudsen looked almost as distressed as Gino. His face fell when he saw a Missaqua County cruiser coming up the farm road. 'That's Sheriff Pitala,' he said miserably. 'His sister ran the cafe in Four Corners.'
'Did she get out?'
'Who knows? We're pulling a lot of bodies out of that place. No females yet, as far as they can tell.'
Magozzi nodded. 'So there's some hope.'
'I don't know. We need to talk to the women. They're the only ones who were in there.'
'So what the hell did you do with them?' Gino demanded. 'I haven't seen them since you dragged me into that mobile test tube and slammed the door.'
Knudsen looked a little nonplussed. 'Actually, they're in your RV. The big one with the bedroom eyes?'
Magozzi smiled in spite of himself. Every single man in the world reacted the same way the first time they saw Annie. And every time after that, in fact. 'Annie Belinsky.'
'Yeah, her. She said she'd whip the next man that tried to talk to her before she had a shower, and I swear to God she could do it. Especially with that big undercover tattooed guy from Kingsford County backing her up. Are those two married or something?'
'Not even close.'
'Whatever. Anyway, when they're finished in there, we're going to have to start debriefing. At this point, they know more than any of us.
We've got three live ones in lockup we caught running from the fire in Four Corners. Camo, Ml6s, just like that woman said on the phone ...'
Magozzi stiffened a little. 'The woman's name is Grace MacBride, Agent Knudsen.'
Knudsen looked at him for a second, recording the connection, finding his boundaries. 'Sorry, Detective. Anyhow, we need to hear what all the women have to say before we start interrogation.' He turned his head when a cruiser pulled up close beside them and Sheriff Pitala climbed out.
The man's uniform was covered with soot, his face was drawn, and he walked with a stoop that Magozzi hadn't noticed before, as if a grief he wasn't sure he should be carrying was weighing him down. He nodded to the group, then turned to Knudsen. 'I can't find anybody that can tell me about Hazel,' he said. 'I thought maybe you could help me out with that.'
'Who's Hazel?'
The voice came from the steps of the RV. Everyone turned and saw Grace MacBride, black hair dripping on her shoulders, Charlie pressed against her side, smiling inappropriately. Stupid dog had no clue what was going on here, Magozzi thought; and then he realized that he felt almost the same way. As long as Grace was in it, the world was just as it should be.
Sheriff Pitala looked up at her and swept his hat from his head in manners so ingrained they transcended everything else. 'Sheriff Ed Pitala. Pleased to meet you, ma'am, and Hazel's my sister. Ran the cafe in Four Corners.'
Grace looked at him for a moment, then nodded ever so slightly. 'Why don't you come on in for a minute, Sheriff.'
HALLORAN and Bonar were wandering through the jumble of cars closest to the building, the ones that had already been there when they'd arrived. It was a motley collection of old and new, cars and trucks and vans.
'Who do you suppose these belong to?' Bonar asked.
'Sharon figured they were the cars in Four Corners when whatever went down went down. There wasn't a single drivable vehicle in the town by the time she and Grace and Annie got there.'
Bonar shuddered. 'You know, it's the little details that really get to you. Like walking into a town with no people, no cars, no sounds. That had to be weird.'
Halloran barely heard him. He was staring at a big faded blue sedan parked almost out of sight behind a pickup truck peppered with holes. He and Bonar walked over and looked at the side. There was a hand-painted logo on the driver's door, letters just slightly off, white paint bleeding into the faded blue.
'The Cake Lady,' Bonar read it aloud like a sigh, and they were both silent for a time.
'Probably stopped at the cafe for a bite on her way to the wedding,' Halloran said. 'That Gretchen, she loved her donuts.'
Bonar was looking across the field at nothing in particular. 'Ernie's going to take this hard.'
'Yes, he is.'
'So what kind of a world are we living in, Mike, where people put nerve gas in milk trucks and set out to kill a lot of other people they never even met?'
Halloran thought about that for a minute. 'Same old world, Bonar. Same old hate. Different weapons.'
IT TOOK A FULL seven hours for Agent Knudsen and the ominous black-suited men that came from the ominous black helicopter to debrief Grace, Sharon, and Annie. TheMatrix look-alikes were well-mannered, soft- spoken, and absolutely unused to interviewing anyone with a mangy mutt at her side. Not one of them thought to ask the dog to leave. There wasn't a precedent for such a thing.
'You want to debrief them, fine,' Magozzi had said. 'But it'll be right here in this field, this RV, or that building. We go from here to home, and that's the only choice you have.'
One fool had tried to exert a little nonexistent authority, citing all sorts of statutes and policies that mandated an FBI debriefing at an FBI office with all the prerequisite equipment and witnesses. Agent Knudsen had silenced him with a single gesture. The kid, Halloran thought, had a lot more influence than any of them had realized.
When it was all over, Agent Knudsen personally escorted the three women back to the RV. By that time, the sun was setting on the chaotic day, and most of the choppers and vehicles had already left. Magozzi met them at the door. He was wearing a dishtowel apron and a stern expression that didn't go with it. He looked at Knudsen, then at Grace. 'Do we feed him or eat him?'
Charlie had made some decisions about Agent Knudsen in the past few hours. He walked over to the agent, sat down next to his leg, and lifted his head to be patted. Knudsen hated dogs. Always had, always would. Except for this one. He laid a hand on Charlie's head, and Charlie's stump of a tail wiggled.
'Feed him,' Grace said.
They should have fed him sooner, Magozzi thought a few hours later, because all the fat and carbs and protein that Harley and Bonar had managed to whip up in a cooking frenzy had done little to mitigate the three glasses of Bordeaux Agent Knudsen had slammed before the meal, and they sure as hell weren't affecting the glass he was drinking now.
Grace, Sharon, and Annie had all been frighteningly quiet during the meal, and everyone else had been quiet, too, mentally tiptoeing around them as if they were recently returned combat vets, which, in a way, they were. The women were pressed close together on one side of the table, the men crowded on the other. Magozzi felt a chasm running right down the middle, and wondered how hard it was going to be to cross it. The only thing that gave him hope was when the women excused themselves and went to the back of the RV to crash on the hidden beds that pulled down from the office walls. Grace hadn't actually smiled at him, but she'd trailed her fingers lightly across his hand as she passed.
Just before Annie disappeared down the broad aisle, she paused at the doorway with a pink flounce of the chiffon-and-marabou dressing gown she'd donned after her shower. It showed a lot of cleavage and a lot of plump, delicious leg when she moved, and Gino had been wondering ever since he dropped his jaw at the first sight of it how the hell the FBI had managed to debrief a woman who looked like that.
'Not so long ago,' she said, 'this body was neck-deep in a scummy lake, butting up against a dead cow.'
Every man in the front of the RV smiled at her. Of the three women, Annie was truly the ultimate survivor, the only one who could live through hell, then immediately let it go. Magozzi wondered what it was in her past that
