“Best guess is this is a legitimate threat.”
Vail’s Samsung vibrated and she glanced at the display. It was someone calling from Potter Correctional Facility.
“I’ve gotta take this.” She held up the handset as she rose from her seat, hoping neither of her bosses would object. They did not and she made it into the hallway. “Vail.”
“I’ve got assistant warden Thibeaux on the line. Please hold.” A couple of seconds later, Thibeaux picked up. “I had a message to call you.”
“Actually, I think it’d be better if we do this in person.”
Thibeaux paused. “Works for me. Don’t you have a bit of a drive?”
“I’ll need a couple hours.”
“Call when you’re fifteen out.”
Vail started walking toward her car, dialing Curtis as she went. He answered almost immediately.
“Second thoughts about your engagement? Thinking that maybe you’d give me a shot?”
“Yeah. No. I got us a meeting with the assistant warden at Potter. Wanna take a ride?”
“YOU KNOW WE’RE PROBABLY GONNA HIT horrendous traffic on the way back.”
“Worry about that later,” Vail said as she glanced around at the rolling hills, forestland, and scattered farms. “I just figured, we want him to take this seriously, we need to sit across from him and look him in the eye.”
They pulled into the Potter parking lot, the remaining daylight draining from the sky and the dense chiaroscuro clouds thick with the threat of precipitation.
They secured their guns in the trunk of the car and headed into the main entrance of the administration building. They signed in and were handed red laminated placards to clip to their clothing, a bold black V on the front. They were escorted from the visitors center to the main maximum-security cell block down a decrepit hallway, up two flights of stairs, and through another corridor that needed a paint job and some modern technology—on the order of fluorescent bulbs.
“You know they’re doing away with incandescent lights,” Vail said.
Their chaperone turned and glanced at her over his shoulder. “And this interests me, why?”
They arrived at Sean Thibeaux’s office a moment later. The paunchy middle-aged man appeared through an adjacent doorway and waved them in. “I didn’t know someone was joining us,” he said to Vail’s companion. “You are?”
“Erik Curtis, Fairfax County Police Department. Homicide.”
“Curtis handled the Roscoe Lee Marcks case,” Vail said. “I brought him up to speed on—well, what I’m here to discuss with you. Called him en route, thought he should come along.”
“Uh-huh. Great,” he said with the enthusiasm of a banana slug. He gestured to two guest chairs opposite his metal desk: standard 1940s-era seats that had never been reupholstered.
The hard, worn-out foam surface hurt Vail’s bottom.
“So Marcks actually talked with you,” Thibeaux said, settling his thick body into an office chair that looked considerably more comfortable. “You had a conversation that lasted more than three sentences. And he didn’t bash your face in. I was surprised.”
“We had a very nice chat,” Vail said.
“Really?”
“No. He’s a narcissist who tried to control the conversation. I let him run things because I was trying to establish a rapport. But it took a lot of effort to play along.”
“And? Learn anything?”
“Just that he’s a scary dude. Scratch that. Already knew that. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it creeped me out. Not to leave this room.”
“He won’t hear it from me,” Thibeaux said.
“I’ve got another meeting with him next week. Assuming he doesn’t cancel.”
“So we’re here because of the threat,” Curtis said, clearly not wanting anyone to forget he was in the room.
“Heard about that.” Thibeaux brushed a lock of hair off his forehead and looked to Vail for an explanation.
“He sent a letter to his daughter.”
“Okay. What’d it say?”
“It was a veiled threat.”
The creases on Thibeaux’s face deepened as he leaned forward in his chair. “And my guys let that through? What’d it say? I wanna see it.”
“It was a blank piece of paper. Along with a magazine clipping—”
“Of what?”
Damn, I knew he’d ask. Hell, I’d ask. “Of a stuffed animal.”
Thibeaux looked at her, a blank sarcastic look that said, “You gotta be kidding me.” She knew it well because she had used it herself, many times. “A blank piece of paper and a photo of a stuffed animal. And you’re calling that a threat?”
“There was indented writing. It asked if she remembered her stuffed animal from her childhood—her favorite stuffed animal, which had been dismembered and left in her bed.”