He let the sentence trail, recognizing the uselessness of trying to bind it in logic and reality. Nimec heard his agitated snatches of breath, the paper rattling again between his fingers in the silence of the room.
“Who’s on it?” Gordian said.
“Ricci and Thibodeau. If there are any leads, any paths they need to follow, every man, every resource, everything we’ve got is available in a heartbeat. You know that.”
Gordian nodded.
“I need to tie things up, get back home right away—”
“Boss,” Nimec interrupted. “You can’t leave Africa.”
Gordian looked at him. “No,” he said.
“Gord—”
“I know what you’re thinking. It doesn’t matter. Somebody has to be with Ashley.”
“Meg plans to stay with her, look after her for as long as she has to—”
“No, Pete. Forget it. I won’t let you decide this for me. That demand in the message… the announcement I’m supposed to make… we can’t jump to the conclusion it has anything remotely to do with the actual motive or motives for what’s happened. It could be a red herring. Meant to throw us off.”
“Or not,” Nimec said. “You really feel we’re in a position to take chances right now?”
Silence clapped down over them again. But now Gordian became very still, staring at the wall opposite him, the printout no longer rattling in his hand. The thick doors and walls of the room blocked out any sounds from elsewhere in the old French mansion.
After a long length of time, he turned to Nimec.
“The path you need to follow starts here,” he said, and put a hand to his chest. “Whatever the reason for what’s happened to Julia… those other innocents… they’ve fallen into the middle.”
Nimec said nothing for a while, and then nodded pensively.
“Find who’s at the other end,” Gordian said.
UpLink SanJo. Mid-afternoon. Their secure conference room’s sound-baffled, audio-secure walls once again enclosing them in an electronically fortified cocoon of silence. On one of those walls, a flat plasma screen jacked into a digital viewer showed an enlarged image of the e-mail Megan had received hours earlier. It struck the eye like the Mark of the Beast, a reminder that nothing in this technological age can make us impervious to its stain.
“We need to find out what evidence they’re pulling from that greyhound,” Ricci said. “We can’t wait.”
Megan looked at him. “You’re positive it’s that important.”
“I’m positive the cops think it is,” he said. “We cruised past that veterinary clinic a bunch of times. Saw a team of uniforms cooping outside in a patrol car. And I guarantee they weren’t going anywhere.”
“What makes it a sure thing is that they ain’t letting Howell in to see the dog,” Thibodeau said. “He tells us the vet be a good friend of his. Know him for years, care for every one of his hounds. Most’re more dead than alive when he bring them from the track. Some of ’em need surgery. Howell say you have to treat runners different from other breeds. They ain’t able to tolerate certain kinds of medicine or anaesthesia, need lower doses, you know.”
“One reason the cops brought the dog there is that Howell insisted on it when he found her alive,” Ricci said. “The clinic is only a few miles from his rescue center out in the boonies. Good break for him, trying to save that dog. Not too convenient for the badges.”
Megan was looking at him. “Why not?”
Ricci’s expression seemed to say the answer should have been obvious. “If they’re under orders to keep watch over it, they’d prefer bringing it someplace near an all-night diner, where they can tank up on free coffee and muffins the whole time. If it bleeds out on the way, so much the better. The dog becomes meat. They don’t have to worry about its carcass disappearing from a locked refrigerator drawer in a police lab, but a live animal in a country vet’s infirmary makes them insecure.” He paused a second. “Howell had some strong persuasion, though. The vet’s no bumpkin. Used to be with the San Francisco Zoo. Has a diploma in veterinary forensic pathology. The cops would have to call on somebody like him for the necropsy anyway… probably couldn’t find a better qualified man for the job.”
Megan was thoughtful. “And yet Howell doesn’t know why the police are so interested in the dog, am I right?”
“Right.”
“No idea despite his long-standing relationship with the veterinarian.”
“Right.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand that.”
There was a crackle of impatience in Ricci’s stillness.
“Once the vet becomes a fact finder in a criminal investigation it obliges him to clam up,” he said after a moment. “He leaks anything and it’s a violation of professional ethics.”
“I still think he’d be entitled to a general explanation,” Megan said. “Terrible as it sounds, we’re so focused on Julia, we risk losing sight of what Rob Howell’s suffered. He’s lost his entire family.”
Ricci turned toward her.
“You know how tight the cops can be with eyewitnesses in protective custody,” he said. “Maybe the dog had a clear look at the perps and they want her status kept secret till she’s well enough to make them in a lineup.”
Megan was silent. The sarcasm had caught her off guard.
“Wasn’t any call for that remark,” Thibodeau said from his opposite side. His large body shifted in his chair. “This ain’t no joke—”
“Stay out of this.” Ricci cut a hand in his direction, held his gaze on Megan. “You’re the one who might as well be joking. You don’t have the right to speak for me. You don’t know where I’m focused. You don’t know, or act like you don’t know, that the cops are putting an extra-heavy lid on things to keep us out. You sit here throwing words around a table when that e-mail on the wall says everything. We need to get busy.”
Megan remained quiet, staring back into his eyes. “What’s your recommendation?”
“We have to get Erickson to share that evidence from the dog. Whether he likes it or not.”
“I’m convinced,” she said. “But I also prefer we don’t alienate him. He has legal authority over the investigation and — as you’ve implied — can withhold anything he wants from us. We, on the other hand, have no license to meddle. If we plan to get somewhere we need his voluntary permission. Or maybe cooperation’s a better word. And I think the best way to obtain it would be to exert pressure on Erickson through behind-the-scenes channels.”
“Those channels have names attached to them?”
Megan nodded. She drew in a breath.
“Until now I’ve kept any knowledge about the e-mail within our organization to give us elbow room, but that changes tomorrow,” she said. “Since it’s safe to assume Erickson’s department would have put the FBI on alert for possible involvement, I can’t see a reason not to contact our old friend Bob Lang at Quantico in the meantime and ask him off the record to make a request of the local field office. That would be the San Francisco division. It won’t be long before the case winds up under its bailiwick anyway. And at that point they can share evidence with whomever they wish.”
Thibodeau was nodding as he mulled her words over.
“Sounds reasonable enough to me,” he said. “Beats going to war with Erickson.”
Ricci ignored him, continuing to look at Megan as if it were just the two of them in the room.
“Lang’s your old friend, not mine,” he said. “You want to visit wonderland with him, it’s your choice.”
A taut silence between them again. Megan’s eyes became narrow.
“What are you suggesting?” she said.
Ricci sat a moment, then slowly shrugged and rose from his chair.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re the boss, you make the calls. I just want to get back to work.”
When the phone rang in Derek Glenn’s office, he was at his window admiring the new 120-foot-tall naval ship-yard cranes that soared prominently in his view of the waterfront. They had appeared there about a month
