“Hello?” she said, after the door had closed. “Gary?”
“Thank God,” said the tech’s excited voice. “I think I hit pay dirt.”
“What do you mean?”
“I followed one of the people you asked me to watch. She just went into a place that my gut tells me is what you’re looking for.”
Melba must have gone to Tom again. . . . “Where is she?”
“I probably shouldn’t say on the phone, right?”
Damn, Caitlin thought, realizing she must not be fully awake. “I think this line is safe, but can you give me a clue nobody else could decipher?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. She’s at a private residence. It’s a house that belongs to somebody I’m pretty sure you know. Here’s the clue: the owner’s initials are the same as those of the first two words of the TV show that Gabriel Vance used to rave about.”
Gabriel Vance was a gay reporter who’d worked at the Examiner until he moved to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He’d done heroic coverage of Hurricane Katrina, but what popped into Caitlin’s mind almost without thought was Gabe’s favorite cable show: Queer as Folk.
“Have you got it?’” Gary asked.
Caitlin almost said “Q-A” aloud, but checked herself. Despite her exhaustion, it had taken her less than five seconds to arrive at Quentin Avery. “I think I have it,” she said. “I’ve never been there, though. Are you looking at it now?”
“You can’t see it from the road. I figured out the owner using Google. You ought to check Google Earth.”
Caitlin glanced at her watch, calculating how long it would take her to reach Quentin’s wooded compound in Jefferson County. Twenty minutes, minimum, and at least twice that to be sure she had no tail.
“I’ll be there in an hour. Forty minutes if I’m clean when I leave here.”
“I’ll be cruising up and down the nearest main road.”
“Thanks, Gary. And don’t tell a soul. Not Jamie, not anybody.”
“I know, boss.”
“Thanks.”
Caitlin hung up and opened the purse on her desk. The .38 Tom had given her years ago was inside it. For a few seconds she considered calling Penn, but in truth her decision was a foregone conclusion. Like Drew and Melba, she would not betray Tom’s location without his permission—not even to his son. Not until she’d heard what he had to say, anyway. Pulling on her jacket, she slung her purse over her shoulder and opened her door.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she found Jordan Glass standing less than a foot away from her.
“Hey, hey!” Jordan said, catching hold of her arm. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, no,” Caitlin said, flustered. “I just wasn’t expecting anybody.”
“Obviously. Looks like you’re headed out, huh?”
Caitlin forced a smile and tried to think of a credible lie. Glass was wearing a black down jacket over a white Synchronicity tour T-shirt splashed with red, blue, and yellow—a relic of the mid-1980s. “I’m just headed home to get a shower,” Caitlin said lamely. “This is the first time things have slowed down at all.”
Jordan’s understanding smile both noted and forgave the lie. “I came by to talk to you,” she said. “Have you got a minute?”
Caitlin didn’t, but she backed up and motioned for Glass to enter her office.
Jordan shook her head, then pulled her close. “Not in there,” she whispered. “Let’s go to the ladies’ room.”
It took Caitlin only seconds to realize what was worrying Jordan. Nodding once, she followed the photographer down the hall and into the female employees’ restroom. It held two stalls, two sinks, a tampon machine, and nothing else.
“Is my office bugged?” Caitlin asked.
“I don’t know. It could be.”
“FBI?”
“I really don’t know.”
“But you’re obviously worried.”
Jordan anxiously ran her hands through her hair. She was clearly conflicted about something, and Caitlin guessed it had to do with her husband.
“Last night I asked if you ever hold things back from John. You said you did.”
Glass nodded. “Of course. And he does the same. More than I suspected, I’m afraid.”
Caitlin saw pain in the older woman’s face. “Can you be more specific?”
“Not without damaging things I still care about.” Jordan turned on the cold water tap and let it run. “But I’ll say this . . . one of the downers in life is finding out that people you thought you knew well can always surprise you, and not in a positive way.”
A worm of anxiety was turning in Caitlin’s stomach. Jordan Glass wasn’t the type to worry about trivialities. “You’re positive you can’t talk about it?”
“There are things I can’t say. I don’t want you to think John isn’t on your side, because he is. But he takes this case—or cases, plural—very seriously, and he’s not about to give up any advantage he might be able to get over the Knoxes.”
“I wouldn’t either. Is that what you came to tell me?”
Jordan swallowed and looked at the floor. “No. Do you know where Penn is now?”
Caitlin looked at her watch. “Probably meeting your husband and Dwight Stone.”
Jordan looked up sharply. “So he told you about that?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“What did he say they were meeting about?”
“He said Dwight has some conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination. Penn didn’t know if John is humoring Dwight because he’s ill, or if John believes the same theory.”
Jordan nodded slowly. “That’s not exactly the truth.”
Caitlin thought about Henry Sexton’s letter to her, and Kaiser’s theory about Carlos Marcello and JFK. “What is?”
“Dwight Stone is part of a group of retired agents who work cold cases. Major cases. Jimmy Hoffa, JFK, like that. Something they learned in the last two days has convinced them that the Double Eagles here were involved in the Kennedy assassination. I don’t know many specifics, but they seem to think the whole plot was run out of New Orleans.”
“By Carlos Marcello.”