Funny.
“So let’s get back to Jasmine Marcks. You think she’s going to be able to handle herself on book tour when you’re not there to run interference?”
Vail thought about that a moment. “She made it through a childhood with a father who was a serial killer, and she dealt with the emotional stress of the trial and the intense media scrutiny. She’ll be fine. She’s tough.”
Vail’s Samsung vibrated. She glanced at the screen and saw Jasmine Marcks’s number. “Guess who.”
“Go on,” Gifford said with a wave of his right hand. “Take it.”
She swiped to answer and brought the handset to her ear. “Jasmine. Everything okay? I’m in a—”
“I got a message from him. When I got home, it was in the mail.”
“Message from who?”
“My father.”
Vail glanced at Gifford. “What’d he say?”
“It’s not what he said, it’s what he didn’t say.”
Vail got up from her chair and began pacing. “Let’s start with what he wrote. Then we’ll worry about interpreting what he didn’t write.”
“That’s just it. He didn’t write anything.”
Vail stopped and looked up. “Your father sent you a blank letter?”
“Right.”
“Jasmine. Are you overreacting? I mean, if there’s nothing in—”
“He’s playing with my head. Trying to get even because of what I wrote.”
“You got all that from a blank piece of paper?”
“Do you think I’m wrong?”
“Other than mentally screwing with you, is there anything else behind this? Are you in danger?”
After a second’s hesitation, she said, “He’s in a max-security prison a hundred miles away. No. I don’t think I’m in danger. It just—it unnerved me.”
“I get it.” Vail pinched the bridge of her nose. “How ’bout I stop by, you can show me the letter. And we can talk.”
“I’d like that.”
“Give me a few minutes to get some things squared away. I’ll see you soon.”
Vail hung up and turned to face Gifford, whose face was scrunched into a squint. “I assume you figured out what we were talking about.”
“I did. You’re going over there because her father sent her a blank letter.”
Vail sighed. “It spooked her.”
“So much for being tough.”
“We all have things that get under our skin. She’s been through a lot. Hard to know what’s gonna be a trigger.”
Gifford muttered something unintelligible, then rose from his seat and turned to face his window. He rotated a thin rod and the green miniblinds opened wider, revealing the fresh snow that had fallen that morning. “You’re not her therapist, you know.”
“Don’t say it, sir.”
“Say what?”
“That I’ve been reduced to hand-holding.”
Gifford let that hang in the air a moment—he was not verbalizing it because he did not need to. “Go. I’ll tell DiCarlo I asked you to take something to headquarters for me. But this is a onetime thing. Your involvement with Jasmine Marcks is in the eleventh hour. We have pending cases that need your attention.”
“I know.”
Gifford turned to her. “Besides, we don’t want to give your unit chief any reason to gloat.”
3
Vail arrived at the Bethesda, Maryland, home of Jasmine Marcks an hour after she called. The house was a modest two-story colonial among larger and more robust residences, some a hundred years old and others recently constructed or remodeled.
Jasmine came to the door wearing the same stylish black below-the-knee dress she had selected for the morning’s television interview.
“Karen. I feel so silly to make you come down here. For a blank piece of paper, no less.”
“You didn’t force me. You didn’t even ask me. I came because I thought it was important.”
“Come in,” Jasmine said, standing aside and allowing Vail to pass.
Vail had been here a couple of times seven years ago when Jasmine’s father was about to stand trial. Jasmine testified and Vail accompanied the prosecutor when she questioned Jasmine about what she observed as a teenager.
“You’ve still not met with my father,” she said.
“I’ve asked. Every couple of years I make another request. Each time I get the same answer: ‘We’ll see.’ He’s purposely leading me along, yanking my chain. He leaves it open-ended so I have to keep coming back and asking. It’s about the only power he’s got left in a situation where he’s told when he can wake up, when he can go to sleep, when and what he can eat.”
“That sounds like something he’d do.”