True Evil

legal custody of his son, the only way Alex could see to save Jamie was to prove that his father had murdered his mother.

Alex walked to the oversize card table she'd bought at Wal-Mart to arrange her case materials. This table was the nerve center of her investigation. It was fairly primitive stuff-jotted notes, surveillance records, digital snapshots, minicassettes-but her father had told her countless times that there was no substitute for putting your heels on the pavement or your ass behind the wheel of your car. All the computers in the world couldn't nail a killer if you never left your office. Alex kept a framed picture of her dad propped on the card table-her patron saint of cold cases. It wasn't actually a photograph, but a newspaper story that included two snapshots of Jim Morse: one as a fresh-faced patrolman in 1968, the other as a weary but determined-looking homicide detective who'd solved a high-profile race murder in Jackson in 1980.

Her father had gone into police work straight out of the army, returning to Mississippi after two tours in Vietnam. He'd seen action, but he'd never talked about it, and he never had any lasting problems that Alex knew about. But working as an MP in Saigon, Jim Morse had somehow wound up involved in a couple of murder cases. The work had left an impression on him, so when he'd found himself at loose ends on his twenty-first birthday, he'd registered at the police academy in Jackson. He did well as a patrolman, making sergeant before anyone else in his academy class. He passed the detective's exam when he was twenty-seven and quickly made a name for two things: brilliant detective work; and speaking his mind, no matter whom he happened to be talking to. The first trait would have assured rapid promotion, had he not possessed the second in equal measure. Alex had fought all her life to control the same tendency, and she'd mostly succeeded. But her father had watched men with much less talent and dedication climb past him on the promotional ladder for most of his career.

After retirement, Jim Morse had opened a detective agency with a former partner who'd served as his rabbi early in his career-a wise old redneck named Will Kilmer. The freedom of a private agency had suited both men, and they got all the referral business they could handle. Alex was certain that it was her teenage exposure to their livelier cases that had caused her to spurn all offers after law school and enroll in the FBI academy instead. Her father had applauded her career choice, but her mother…well, Margaret had reacted as she always did when Alex departed from the path of conventional Southern womanhood. Silent reproach.

A stab of guilt hit Alex high in the chest, followed by a wave of grief. To avoid the guilt, she looked down at a jumble of snapshots of Chris and Thora Shepard. In some shots they were together, but in most not. Alex had been following them long enough to form an impression of a classic upper-middle-class couple, harried by the demands of daily life and never quite catching up. Chris spent a remarkable amount of time working, while Thora alternated vigorous exercise with personal pampering. Alex wasn't yet sure how far that pampering extended, but she had suspicions. She also had some notes and photographs that Dr. Shepard might like to see, once he got over the initial shock of today's meeting. But not just yet.

Alex felt a vague resentment as she looked down at Thora; the woman looked better after a six-mile run than most women did after two hours of prepping themselves for a party. You had to hate her a little for that. Chris, on the other hand, was much more down-to-earth, a dark-haired Henry Fonda type rather than a pretty boy. A little more muscular than Fonda, maybe, but with that same gravitas. In that way Dr. Shepard reminded her of her father, another quiet man who had lived for his work.

Mixed in with the images of Thora and Chris were a few of Chris and Ben, all shot at the vacant lot where Chris coached Ben's Little League team. Ben Shepard was only a year younger than Jamie, and his eyes held some of the same tentativeness that Jamie's did. Maybe it's just their age, she thought. Or maybe children sense when there's something wrong at the heart of their families.

Dwelling on Jamie's plight usually made Alex too upset to function, so she switched on the TV to make the room seem less empty. She turned on the water as hot as she could stand it, then soaked a washcloth, lay on the bed, and began to scrub her face. The heat spread through her scalp and neck, sending blessed relief down the length of her body. As some of the day's stress faded, her mind returned to Chris Shepard. The meeting had gone a lot better than it might have. Of course, for all she knew, Dr. Shepard had already called the Jackson field office and reported her visit.

How many people could react with equanimity to the kind of accusation she had made today? Reduced to its essentials, her message was I think your wife is planning to kill you. If Shepard had reported her, she would soon be getting a call from Washington. Like any successful field agent, Alex had made enemies as well as friends in the Bureau. But unlike most of those agents, she had both in high places. One of those enemies had almost gotten her fired after James Broadbent's death, but he'd been forced to settle for her banishment to Charlotte. If he suspected dereliction of duty there, the mildest response she could expect would be immediate recall to headquarters for an 'interview' with the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Bureau's equivalent of Internal Affairs. Even a cursory investigation in Charlotte would prove their case, and then…a squalid end to her once-stellar career.

But Alex had a good feeling about Chris Shepard. He was quick on the uptake, and she liked that. He was a good listener-which was rare in men and seemed even rarer in male physicians, at least in Alex's experience. Shepard had married a witch-and a blond one at that-but then a lot of decent guys did that. He'd waited until he was thirty-five to get remarried, which made Alex wonder about his first wife. Shepard had married his college sweetheart during his first year of medical school, but two years after graduation-just as he was finishing up a commitment to practice in the dirt-poor Mississippi Delta to pay off his school loans-there had been a quick divorce. No kids, no muss, no fuss: nothing but 'irreconcilable differences' in the court records. But there had to be more to it than that. Otherwise, how had a single doctor who wasn't hard to look at evaded marriage for almost five years after his divorce?

That first wife did a number on him, Alex thought. He was damaged goods for a while. That's why he went for Thora, the ice queen. There's a lot of damage in that girl, too, and I don't think Dr. Chris knows much about it….

Alex reluctantly turned her mind to more mundane matters, like finances. A kindly accountant might tell her that the outlook was discouraging, but her own view was more succinct: she was broke. It cost real money to run a murder investigation, even when you were doing a lot of the legwork yourself. She was paying two private detective agencies regularly, and various others for small contract jobs. Most of the work was being done by her father's old agency, but even with Will Kilmer giving her all the breaks he could, the fees were eating her alive. Surveillance was the main drain. 'Uncle' Will couldn't send out operatives on goodwill alone. Time spent working Alex's case was time stolen from others-man-hours piling upon man-hours, each day's accumulation taking a hefty bite out of her hemorrhaging retirement fund. On top of that, she was paying for gasoline, airfare between Jackson and Charlotte, private nurses for her mother…there was no end to it.

The Charlotte apartment was her most urgent problem. For the last three years, she'd leased a condo in Washington, D.C. If she had bought it instead, she could have sold it tomorrow for double her money. But that was a pipe dream. A prudent agent would have dumped the condo after getting transfer orders, but Alex had kept it, knowing that her superiors would learn that she had and would see this as a tangible symbol of her belief in her eventual redemption. But now on top of the condo she had a six-month lease on a place in Charlotte, an apartment she'd slept in fewer than a dozen nights. She'd paid her second month's rent to maintain the fiction that she was diligently working at her punishment duty, but she simply couldn't afford to continue. Yet if she broke the lease, her superiors would eventually find out. She thought of possible explanations, but none that would mollify the Office of Professional Responsibility.

'Shit,' she muttered, tossing the cold washcloth onto the other bed.

Meggie leaped into the air, startled by the wet rag. Alex hadn't seen her curl up on the bed, and now she had an indignant cat on her hands. 'I'd be pissed, too,' she said, getting up and going to her computer.

She logged on to MSN and checked her Contacts list to see whether Jamie was online, but the icon beside his screen name-Ironman QB-was red, not green. This didn't worry her. Their nightly webcam ritual normally occurred later, after Bill had gone to bed. Though only ten years old, Jamie was quite talented with computers. And since one of the few things Bill was generous with was allowance-guilt money, she knew-Jamie had been able to purchase a webcam that allowed him to open a video link with Alex anytime that both of them were logged on to MSN. Secret communication with a ten-year-old boy might fall on the questionable side of the ethical spectrum, but Alex figured