“So what do we do?” she asked.
“And what do we tell Pearl,” said Potash. It was a question, but he wasn’t asking it—it sounded like he was correcting Diana for not having asked it. Had he always talked that way or was I just seeing problems now where I hadn’t before?
“We need to learn what we can,” I said. “They won’t live, so cut them open and figure out as much of their biology as possible. We might never get another chance at an incapacitated Withered.”
“As soon as we start an autopsy they’ll die,” said Potash. “They’ll turn to ash before we learn anything.”
“That’s why we keep them alive,” I said. “Treat it like a surgery, hook them up to every form of life support we have, and work fast.”
“I’m calling Ostler,” said Diana, pulling out her phone.
“They don’t have the facilities for that here,” said Potash.
“We don’t have doctors we trust here, either,” I said. “They’re going to have to fly the bodies to Langley and hope they survive.” I pulled out my new phone and scrolled through the list of Pancho’s Pizza e-mails, looking for a likely candidate.
Oh. How about the one that says: “Hello, FBI.”
“Agent Ostler,” said Diana, “we have a situation at the—no, I hadn’t heard. Let me ask.” She lowered her phone and looked up at us. “Have either of you heard about the pizza thing?”
So Ostler knew about the flyers. “I could go for a pizza,” I said. I tried to keep my voice even and forced myself to breathe calmly. If my face went red, they’d know I knew something.
Potash looked at me. “What pizza thing?”
Stay calm.
“Looks like the victims’ link to that pizza place got leaked,” said Diana. “Someone spread a bunch of flyers all over the neighborhood.” She looked at us, so I shrugged. She put the phone back to her ear. “We haven’t heard anything. Probably one of the cops—that station’s the most gossipy group of grown men I’ve ever met.” Pause. “I’m not being flippant about it, I’m saying this is exactly why we didn’t want to bring them in in the first place.”
Potash was still staring at me.
I raised my eyebrow. “You’re not in the mood for pizza? We could go to a different place.”
He looked away, and I went back to my phone. Was this message from The Hunter, or from Ostler?
“Hello, FBI. I must say I’m impressed with your cleverness; it’s not every day one finds a secret message plastered across an entire neighborhood. I’m disappointed there’s not a corpse, though. Maybe next time.”
That was the entire thing—no identifiers, no new information, not even a signature at the end. Whoever it was had mentioned a corpse, which was a direct reference to The Hunter’s second letter, so I knew it wasn’t just a person on the street; it was someone with inside knowledge. But who? I was still worried it might be Ostler, trying to pretend she was The Hunter in order to trap me—or to trap whoever she thought had written the flyer. She might have a suspicion it was me but she didn’t have proof. Lies within lies, in so many layers I could barely keep track.
The Hunter had always addressed his letters to me, and this one had not. That made it look like this wasn’t from him … but I wasn’t so sure. If Ostler was trying to emulate The Hunter’s style, she’d use every trick she had: she’d address it to me, she’d get verbose in her language, she’d probably throw in a mention of lions or antelopes. She’d even sign it with his name. She’d do all the things she’d know I’d notice. But if the real Hunter was trying to contact me—not just the FBI, but me personally, like I suspected—he’d recognize that this might be an attempt at a private conversation and keep my name out of it to help maintain that privacy. It might be him.
Of course, if he’d really wanted to prove that it was him, he could have told me to look for a certain keyword and then carved it into the next victim’s chest. It wouldn’t be hard to prove himself. Instead he was forcing me to trust him.
I just didn’t know if I could.
“Ostler’s calling headquarters,” said Diana. “We’ll see if they care enough to come pick these bodies up. We’re supposed to tell Pearl to keep them alive as long as he can.”
No more mention of the flyers then. Ostler was either playing it cool, or the bodies were a bigger concern. Or she hadn’t sent an e-mail at all.
How cool could Ostler even play it, even if she wanted to? The e-mail hadn’t asked for a response—if Ostler was fishing for a suspect, wouldn’t she have prompted me to write back? I wanted so hard to believe that this was really from The Hunter.
Diana walked to the door and knocked to get out. While we waited for a response, she looked at me. “Does that phone do web?”
I tried not to look guilty. “Not well, why?”