C Box - Trophy hunt

He looked at her.

"We may just never know, Joe. We've discussed it to death."

"I didn't think it was possible to discuss anything to death," he said, taking a jibe at her.

"Very funny."

He washed, she dried.

Lucy and Jessica laughed in the next room at something on television. Joe looked over his shoulder at them. They had changed out of their school clothes. They liked to dress alike, much to Sheridan's consternation. Tonight, they both wore oversized green surgeon's scrubs.

"Why are they wearing those?" Marybeth asked, suddenly alarmed, knowing whom the shirts once came from.

She raised her voice. "Both of you girls go change clothes right now. I thought I told you to get rid of those."

Both girls looked back at Marybeth, obvious guilt on their faces. They had forgotten.

"Sorry, Mom," Lucy said as she skulked to her room.

"Sorry, Mrs. Pickett," Jessica said.

Then it was as if Marybeth's legs went numb, Joe saw, the way she suddenly reached for the door jamb to keep herself steady.

"What?" Joe asked, puzzled.

Marybeth looked at Joe. Her expression was horrifying. "What?" "Oh, no," she said, looking pale. "Marybeth…" She turned to him and whispered, "Joe, Marie didn't throw out those scrubs. She let Jessica keep them and wear them." "So?" "Think about it, Joe. A woman wouldn't keep something like those scrubs around her house unless she had a reason. Marie had to know they were there. She washed them for Jessica, and folded them up for her, probably dozens of times." Joe said, "Go on." "Why would Marie keep those in her house? Clothes that would remind her husband of the brother he hated? Why would she keep a picture of Eric on her mantel? And now that I think about it, you were more surprised that Eric had come to their house after Cam that day than Marie was." Joe felt a hammer blow square in the middle of his chest. "Marybeth, do you know what you're saying?" Instead of answering, Marybeth stepped forward to intercept Jessica as she walked toward the bedroom to change. Marybeth dropped to her knees so she could look at Jessica eye-to-eye. She placed her hands gently on the little girl's shoulders. "Jessica, how long have you had those shirts?" Jessica stopped and thought. "A while." "How long?" Jessica was surprised at Marybeth's tone. "A couple of years, I guess. I don't remember exactly." "Who gave them to you?" "Uncle Eric." Joe watched Jessica carefully. There was fear growing in her eyes. Marybeth asked, "Jessica, was your uncle Eric at your house a couple of years ago? Before you moved here?" Her eyes were huge and she was on the verge of tears. But she nodded. "Your dad and your uncle Eric didn't get along very well, did they?" "No." "Your dad even asked you to get rid of those hospital scrubs when he saw you wearing them, didn't he?" "Yes." "But your mom said you could keep them, as long as you never wore them around your dad, right?" Jessica nodded. "I think they're cool to wear." "I understand." Jessica looked over Marybeth's shoulder at Joe. Joe knew that Jessica couldn't determine if she was in trouble or not. "No one's angry with you, Jessica," he told her. "Just answer Mary- beth's questions." Jessica nodded. "My mom said I could keep them as long as I didn't wear them around my dad, and I never did." Marybeth asked, "Your mom and uncle Eric were good friends, weren't they? They talked a lot on the telephone when your dad wasn't there, right?" Joe took a deep breath, feeling a shroud of dark horror engulf him. When Jessica nodded, Joe didn't even want to see Marybeth's reaction. But Marybeth remained calm, at least outwardly. "Okay, honey," Marybeth said, standing. "You can go change now." Jessica didn't move. Joe and Marybeth stared at each other, neither wanting to say anything in front of Jessica. Jessica watched them both, and her eyes filled with tears. She looked at Marybeth. "My mom's not coming back, is she?"

Three days later, Marie Logue was at the New Orleans International Airport, checking in for a flight to Milan, when she was surrounded by a dozen special agents from the local office of the FBI. The name she was using was Barbara Grossman, and she had a Louisiana driver's license and a four-year-old passport to prove it. Unfortunately for Marie Logue, the FBI had, on videotape, the footage of the transaction taking place between Marie and the same man who had sold Eric Logue his Cleve Garrett identity papers.

Portenson was exuberant and cocky when he called Joe and told him what had happened. He said he had thought it through once Joe tipped him off about the relationship between Marie and Eric Logue, and he figured out that Eric had probably told Marie about the location of the identity thief in New Orleans. Portenson figured that Marie would eventually go there herself, for her new documents. Portenson said his colleagues in New Orleans had arrested the identity thief earlier in the week and had made a deal for leniency with him if he would help them set her up, including the placement of video cameras in his office over a bar on Bourbon Street.

"We want to interview her tomorrow, and we'd like you to be here, since you know her," Portenson said.

"I thought I knew her," Joe corrected.

"Whatever. We want you there."

"New Orleans?"

"I'll fax you the address for our field office, and we'll make you a reservation at a hotel nearby. If you take the commuter flight that leaves your little podunk airport in two hours, you can connect in Denver. You can be here tonight."

"I don't think I have the budget to…"

"We're covering your expenses, Joe. I already got approval for it."

Joe Pickett landed in New Orleans at midnight, in a rainstorm of biblical dimensions. His Stetson got soaked through in just the time it took him to climb into a taxi at the airport.

Despite the rain, there were throngs of people moving on the sidewalks downtown. Some carried umbrellas, but most just got wet. He checked in at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter.

As he stood at the front desk, dripping, the flinty blond clerk found his reservation and said, "Are you really from Wyoming?"

"Yup."

"I don't believe I've ever actually met anyone from there before."

"Now you have," he said.

T here was a message on the voice mail in his room from Portenson saying to be at the FBI field office on Leon C. Simon Boulevard by 9 A.M.

"We'll brief you on what we've got so far, and then we'll go in and see her," he said. "So don't party too hard on the Quarter tonight."

Joe called Marybeth to tell her that he had arrived safely, then tried to sleep. He couldn't. The unfamiliarity of it all-Marie Logue, mutilations, New Orleans-kept him awake.

At two in the morning he put on his wet hat and went outside into the rain. The streets were still crowded with people. He walked down Dauphine Street and then Bourbon, and a reveler from a balcony above him called him "Tex" and threw him a beaded necklace.

It was still raining in the morning when he arrived at the FBI field office.

The security guard found his name on the computer, gave him a guest badge, and sent him into the back offices.

Portenson was waiting with a bookish woman he introduced as Special Agent Nan Scoon. Scoon had been the leader of the team that arrested Marie at the airport.

Portenson said, "When we brought her in, she had $8,000 in cash on her and records that indicate that she transferred $1.3 million-the rest of the insurance money-to accounts in the Caymans. That's what she had spent her time doing after she left your place.

"The calls she made to your wife supposedly to check on her daughter were from all over the country. Not one actually came from Denver, where her parents do live. We interviewed them and she never even showed up there."