Vic coughs into his hand. “Be very careful how you phrase that offer with Deshani.”
“Already offered,” chuckles Finney. “Archer worked as Geek Squad all through college; he can get things installed and set up before most people can finish reading the instructions. You told me yourself the Sravastis have been through hell and are still standing. I’m not going to assume they’re anything less than capable.” Over the line, the Quantico agents can hear the click of tapping on a keyboard, the ding of a computer registering new emails. “Next time she’s at chess, Priya’s going to try to get a picture of the guy who’s been creeping on her. We’ll run it as soon as she gets it to us. Hopefully we can get a last name and some background on him.”
“See if he’s been anywhere near San Diego?” Vic asks dryly, and Finney wheezes a laugh.
“Exactly. Your ladies have cool heads; I’m impressed.”
Vic smiles and shakes his head. “They won’t start the fire, but they’ll dance around it if it will keep them warm.”
“Deshani would start the fire,” Eddison and Ramirez correct in unison.
Their partner’s indignation is drowned out by another wheezy laugh from the speaker. “You know, I got that impression. Terrifying woman, and she knows it.”
Scrubbing his hands over his face, Eddison finally sinks down into a chair. His skin itches, sweat from his run long dried into salty, irritating streaks.
“There is something else you need to be aware of,” Finney says more seriously.
Vic groans. “Nothing good has ever followed that sentence.”
“Of course not; that’s why I use it as a warning.” The speaker crackles with the sound of shuffling papers.
“Out with it, Finney.”
“I was able to get the ball rolling today because it’s a Sunday and I didn’t ask for permission, but I’m going to catch hell for it, and we’re going to hit some blocks moving forward.”
“Why?”
“Did I happen to mention we got a new section chief a few months back?”
“What does—”
“It’s Martha Ward.”
“Shit.”
Eddison and Ramirez both stare at their senior partner. It’s very rare to hear Vic swear, even at work; he mostly stopped when his daughters got old enough to innocently repeat interesting words.
“All right,” Vic sighs. “I’ll talk to our chief, see if there’s any push we can give on this.”
“You think it’ll accomplish anything?”
Vic hesitates.
“I’ll keep you updated,” Finney says. “Good luck.”
The call ends, and all three sit for a time in the strange silence that follows. Finally, Ramirez picks up her pen and does something complicated that somehow ends with her hair twirled and pinned mostly neatly on the back of her head, the pen cap sticking out like an ornament. “Martha Ward?” she asks delicately.
Vic nods.
“So . . . why is she an obstacle? I mean, her reputation says she’s pretty much a badass.”
“Hard-ass,” Vic corrects. “Martha Ward is a hard-ass, who regards profiling as a religion and refuses to accept any deviations. The pattern is paramount.”
Eddison’s the one to connect the dots, muttering curses under his breath until Ramirez launches a dry-erase marker at him. “Our killer has never sent flowers to a girl before he kills her; Priya getting a delivery is a deviation from the pattern. Ward’s not going to be easily convinced that it’s our killer.”
Vic nods again, his expression grim. “Fourteen years ago, Finney and I were pursuing some missing kids in Minnesota. Different ages, boys and girls, but they all had brown hair and brown eyes and light-colored skin. Only three had been found.”
“Dead?”
“Wrapped in heavy-duty plastic, then in blankets, and partially buried. They were curled on their sides, like they were sleeping, and small stuffed animals were tucked in with them.”
“Remorse?” asks Ramirez.
“That’s what we figured. Our initial theory, because all the kids looked alike and were apparently being kept for some time, was that our kidnapper was trying to create a family. That kind of profile leans slightly more female, but not enough to make assumptions.”
“Ward insisted on gendering the profile?”
“Not exactly; she was on a completely different case in roughly the same area. Light-skinned brunettes in their thirties were going missing, one at a time, and showing up dead, dumped in or near construction sites.”
“They were connected, right? They have to be connected.”
Ramirez, for all she’s been through in her life, is still an optimist. Eddison is not. “Ward wouldn’t investigate the possibility,” he guesses, fairly confident he’s right. “You had to go over her head?”
“We didn’t have a choice.” Settling back into the padded chair, Vic frowns at the memory. “She insisted the cases had nothing to do with each other. Our subject was obviously female where hers was male; kids versus adult women; entirely different causes of death and postmortem rituals.”
“The kids who died were accidents, but he was auditioning the women, wasn’t he? Trying to find the perfect mother for his perfect family.” Ramirez sighs at Vic’s nod. “So the best way to find him is to investigate the overlap.”
“While we argued with Ward, another woman turned up dead, and another went missing. Two kids were taken, and a different one was found. Finney and I went up the chain of command, got approval to take her case, and solved it. What we didn’t take into account was that our boss’s boss was good friends with Ward. When she got put on desk duty pending a case audit, he promoted her. Finney was transferred to Denver, and three days later, Eddison came out of the academy with a chip on his shoulder and my name on his papers.”
Eddison refuses to give Vic the satisfaction of seeing him blush. “So you’re saying I was punishment?”
“Not at all; you were already assigned to us. Finney getting transferred was the punishment. Ward’s politically savvy with great connections, so she keeps advancing, but if she can make our lives hell, she will. Finney getting her as section chief is very bad luck.”
“So she’ll punish Priya just to make things difficult for you.”
“Truth be told, she won’t give a shit about Priya; Ward has all the empathy of a dead fish.”
Ramirez tilts her head to one side. “Ward versus Deshani: who wins?”
Vic blinks, thinks about it, then shudders.
Anything that can make Victor Hanoverian cringe is something Eddison never wants to see.
The stack of multicolored folders is on the table near Ramirez’s laptop, ready for fresh notations. Next to it, an empty folder sits and waits. Pretty soon there’ll be a name on the label, probably Vic’s writing because Ramirez’s is a little too pretty for labels and Eddison’s requires a minute to decipher.
PRIYA SRAVASTI.
He wonders if it’s an accident that the folder is blue.
None of them are red, but Chavi’s is a bright yellow, and that makes him think of the Taser and whether or not Priya’s screwing with him on the color and the heels of his hands dig into his eyes as if the pressure could just drag all his thoughts to a stop. Just for a breath, even, because he stopped running hours ago but still feels like he’s panting.
When he pulls his hands away and looks up, Vic’s watching him. “We’ll make sure your schedule is flexible.”
“How do I tell her that the people responsible for protecting her are getting blocked by politics?”
“Just like that, at a guess.”
“She’s going to be pissed.”