Part 59 (1/2)
At Hafidha's eyeroll and hand gestures, Daphne laughed. And then she looked Hafidha in the eye, all serious, and said, ”Hafs? Do you have the hots for Chaz?
Hafidha rocked back on her heels. ”Oh, G.o.d, no. I have the hots for creme brulee.”
Act II The first notable thing Todd saw on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha was the obligatory phallic obelisk. The second one was a smiling blonde way too young for the Iggy & The Stooges babydoll t-s.h.i.+rt she was falling out of. ”The more things change,” he muttered, and leaned forward over the back of the driver's seat of the inevitable dark purple 2003 Intrepid to tap Reyes on the shoulder. Briefly, he wondered who in procurement was getting the kickbacks from Dodge.
Then he wondered when purple got to be a government car color.
”We can't stop here. This is bat country.”
At least Hafidha laughed. ”That's Nevada, Duke.”
”Nevada, Nebraska-”
”Don't let Chaz hear you say that.” Lau, from the front seat, without looking up from the dossier in her lap. Sol, to everyone's amus.e.m.e.nt, puked if he tried to read in a moving car. ”Let me guess. You still have nightmares about riding route 80 in the driving rain on a Harley, strung out on reds and megadoses of vitamin C.”
”Don't be ridiculous,” he said, and sat back, satisfied. ”I'd never use nutritional supplements off-label. My G.o.d, would you look at all these white people?”
He got Hafidha again, this time just as she was stuffing a doughnut hole into her mouth. It was worth a shower of crumbs, especially since Lau got the worst of it. And despite Hafidha's obvious culpability in the unscheduled flurry, Lau glared at Todd as she dusted cake out of her hair. Oh, the injustice.
”I hate to interrupt the camaraderie,” Reyes said, ”but once we get Hafidha installed, Lau, you take the victims' known a.s.sociates. Todd, you and I are going to interview the victims.”
”Just like the sixties,” Todd said.
The car pulled up-on Dodge Street, synchronistically-in front of the administration building. Just like in the movies. Except here, the s.p.a.ces were available because the curb was yellow. There was metered parking off to one side, but Reyes just slid an FBI don't- tow-me plaque onto the dash and the occupants exited on an internal count of three. Reyes didn't even have to cue them anymore; they started manipulating the instant they got off the plane.
The funny thing was, no matter how transparent Sol thought the psychological games were, they worked. It's for their own good, he told himself sardonically.
I'm sorry. Could you phrase the answer in the form of a question?
The steeply pitched convex dark roofs over each entryway made the building look as if one of its grandparents had been a merrywidow Queen Anne Victorian, and another a nice block of flats. Campus Security met them halfway up the walk, in the company of a balding and colorless blue-eyed administrator. Todd was in the second rank, behind Reyes, but the man's gaze found him automatically. ”Doctor Reyes?”
”Doctor Reyes,” Todd said, pointing to Reyes. ”I'm Special Agent Todd.”
Reyes stuck out his hand, impa.s.sive, and watched unsmiling as the administrator wrong-footed, stumbled, balked coming up to the jump, and somehow managed to get over it with only a hard rub and a wobble. ”Doctor Reyes. Pleased to meet you.”
”Winston Woodward?”
Todd could almost hear the I presume?
”Sorry,” Woodward said. ”I a.s.sumed from your name that you would be Latino, and- well, there's no excuse.”
As they turned to follow Woodward out of the sun, Hafidha tilted her head to bring her lips to Todd's ear and murmured, ”6De cual parte de Mexico vienes, Doctor Reyes?” Todd bit his lip to keep from cracking up. Thank G.o.d they had Lau and Reyes along; he really hadn't ever mastered this professional demeanor thing. At least Woodward was still too fl.u.s.tered to notice, and talking fast: ”Please, come inside, Doctor Reyes. And your team?”
”You've met Supervisory Special Agent Todd,” Reyes said dryly. ”This is Special Agent Lau, and this is Special Agent Gates, our technical expert. She'll need access to your network, and mainframe, if you still use one.”
”Of course.” Woodward rubbed his eyes. ”I really hope you can help me, sir.”
”So do I.” Reyes straightened his tie, then smoothed his palm over tight-clipped curls as they advanced three abreast down a tiled corridor. Fidgeting. Uncomfortable, and Todd didn't think it was Woodward's unconscious, apologetic racism that had done it. Not for the first time, Todd wondered what had happened to get between Dr. Stephen Reyes and a brilliant academic career. He pretended to study a bulletin board which they pa.s.sed, plastered with pastel flyers for campus clubs and events-the local SCA barony, a student band, a self-defense club, BiGALA. They were exactly like the flyers Todd remembered from his own tenure as an undergrad, except in that computer typesetting and modern printing and copying had vastly improved their apparent professionalism.
They turned into an outer office and walked past a vacant secretary's desk. ”We'll know more once we've had a chance to talk to the victims.”
Woodward, hand on his office door, hesitated. ”Well,” he said. ”Then I also hope you can get something out of them.”
Falkner crossed the bullpen, only two pizzas balanced on her left hand, because half the team was elsewhere. She set them down on the desk in the uninhabited office where the photocopier lived. Todd probably could have planted a flag in it based on seniority, but he claimed he didn't work well without constant supervision. There were pay grade rules about windows and cubicles and who got an actual office with an actual door, but the WTF wasn't exactly the fast track to promotion. And Falkner was proud of her people, who all seemed to think they had important things to worry about.
She didn't need to ding the service bell Brady had mounted on the wall beside the door. Chaz was already standing just outside. ”Lunchtime?”
Behind him, she could see Brady stuffing a file into his locking drawer and setting the screen saver to blank his computer. Good man. He stood up, Worth a half-step behind- her hands already full of beverages-and followed Chaz into the room. ”Time for the victimology?”
”Red rum and red sauce,” Worth answered, while Chaz, with arms like derricks, reached down the napkins and the paper plates. ”Thank you, Falkner.”
”It's Friday,” she said, and opened the first box: half pepperoni and half sausage, with green peppers and mushrooms on the lot. The second one was cheese and veg, and even though Lau wasn't here to help, Falkner thought Chaz would get through at least three quarters of it. Brady wouldn't eat anything that wasn't swimming in animal fat, and since none of the others would let Falkner hold the cheese, one pizza with artichoke hearts, black olives, sundried tomatoes, and garlic was her compromise.
Besides, Chaz liked vegetables. It always surprised her. He could no more live on them than a cat could, but as he'd said to her once when she'd raised eyebrows over his lunch of a Greek salad you could swim in and an entire loaf of garlic bread, ”Just because I'm going to die of major organ failure by fifty, doesn't mean I need to hurry the process.”
She could have done without the reminder that he and Hafidha were on borrowed time, but nothing ever got won by telling yourself pretty lies. The savage metabolisms that fed their slamming neurons would also eventually poison their livers and kidneys, if heart disease didn't get them first. Chances were, she and Reyes and Todd would outlive them both.
For every gift there is an answering burden.
She slid two slices of artichoke pizza onto the paper plate Brady handed her and took a diet c.o.ke from Worth. Then she pulled out the chair in the corner between the table and the copier and sat, draping two napkins across her lap. ”Right,” she said. ”Victimology. What have we got?”
Brady flipped open a reporter's notebook while he chewed. He swallowed, wiped his mouth, and ran a finger down the page, leaving a grease spot. ”Okay, first known victim is Danielle Potter, age eighteen. Her suitemates had her committed in September, after she began acting erratically and they feared for her safety. No family history of mental illness; she was a good kid there on scholars.h.i.+p, first of her family to attend college. Second victim, Peter Gooding. Age seventeen, a week shy of his eighteenth birthday-”
”Young for a college freshman,” Worth said.
Chaz hmphed around a mouthful of pizza. Identifying. Falkner made a face she hoped could be blamed on the diet c.o.ke. She could hover over Chaz, but he was here now, and doing all right, and she couldn't change how he'd gotten there.
”Plenty of seventeen-year-olds graduate high school,” Brady continued, so smoothly you could pretend you hadn't noticed him taking Chaz's side. He ate another bite of sausage pizza without moving his eyes from the notepad. ”Gooding was always a bit of a smart, disaffected underachiever, according to his family. Parents divorced; mom worked full time; father remarried. Sounds like he didn't get a lot of guidance at home. Family became concerned when he didn't return home for Christmas break as planned.
He was found wandering, incoherent, and brought into an emergency room on New Year's Eve. Suffering hypothermia and frostbite.” A brief silence followed while Brady chewed.
”Did he lose any fingers?” Worth said.
”You mean like Todd?” Chaz said.
Brady snorted. ”Villette, if you believe that frostbite story of Duke's, you're not much of a profiler. He wasn't pus.h.i.+ng papers in the Quartermaster's Corps in 1973, either.”
”There wasn't much of anything involving American troops going on in southeast Asia in 1973, was there?” Chaz asked.
Brady shrugged. ”Officially. But it's not like Duke was ever anywhere interesting, to hear him tell it-”
Falkner cleared her throat. ”Can we save the rumormongering until after the victimology, or preferably until Todd is here to defend himself?”
Chaz winced-sorry-and helped himself to the final two slices of veggie pizza by way of apology. ”So. Gooding. Family history of mental illness?” He flipped the box closed left-handed and slid it out of the way with his elbow.
”Mother is on an SSRI,” Brady said. He shrugged.
Falkner shrugged too. So was her husband Ben, and half their friends. The modern world stressed people out, and the medical system was adapted to jack them up, prop them up, and shoot them back out into play. She thought of race horses, doped to run when what they really needed was rest, and nailed that chain of thought before it could get away from her.