Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

This was a very different image of Kincaid, Lukas thought. He'd seemed frumpy at his house. It hadn't helped that he'd been wearing some god-awful sweater and baggy slacks. The gray crew-neck sweater he wore now, over a black shirt, seemed much more him.

"Mr. Kincaid," Lukas said, nodding a greeting. "Don't bother with what?"

"Graphoanalysis. You can't analyze personality from handwriting."

She was put off by his peremptory tone. "I thought a lot of people do it."

"People read tarot cards too and talk to their dear departed. It's bogus."

"I've heard it can be helpful," she persisted.

"Waste of time," he said matter-of-factly. "We'll concentrate on other things."

"Well. All right." Lukas pledged that she'd try not to dislike him too much.

Cage said, "Hey, Parker, you know Tobe Geller? Doubling as our computer and communications man tonight. We tracked him down on his way to a ski trip in Vermont."

"It was New Hampshire," the trim agent corrected, offering Kincaid one of his ready grins. "For holiday pay I'll do anything. Even break a date. Hi, Parker. I heard about you."

They shook hands.

Cage nodded to another desk. "This's C. P. Ardell. He's from the D.C. field office. Nobody knows what C. P. stands for but that's what he goes by. I don't think even he knows."

"Did a while ago," C. P. said laconically.

"And this is Len Hardy. He's our District P.D. liaison."

"Nice to meet you, sir," the detective said.

Kincaid shook his hand. "Don't really need the 'sir.'"

"Sure."

"You Forensic? Investigative?" Kincaid asked him.

Hardy seemed embarrassed as he said, "Actually I'm Research and Statistical. Everybody else was out in the field so I got elected to liaise."

"Where's the note?" he asked Lukas. "I mean, the original?"

"In Identification. I wanted to see if we could raise a few more prints."

Kincaid frowned but before he could say anything Lukas added, "I told them to use the laser only. No ninhydrin."

His eyebrows lifted. "Good… you've worked in forensics?"

She had a sense that, even though she was right about not using the chemical, he was challenging her. "I remember from the Academy," she told him coolly and picked up the phone.

"What's that?" Hardy asked. "Nin…"

As she punched in a number Lukas said, "Ninhydrin's what you usually use to image fingerprints on paper."

"But," Kincaid finished her thought, "it ruins indented writing. Never use it on suspect documents."

Lukas continued to make her phone call-to ID. The tech told her that there were no other prints on the document and that a runner would bring the note up to the Crisis Center stat. She relayed this to the team.

Kincaid nodded.

"Why'd you change your mind?" Cage asked him. "About coming here?"

He was silent for a moment. "You know those children you mentioned? The ones injured in the subway? One of them died."

With a solemnity that matched his, Lukas said, "LaVelle Williams. I heard."

He turned to Cage. "I'm here on one condition. Nobody except the immediate task force knows I'm involved. If there's a leak and my name gets out, whatever stage the investigation's in, I walk. And I deny I even know you people."

Lukas said, "If that's what you want, Mr. Kincaid, but-"

"Parker."

Cage said, "You got it. Can we ask why?"

"My children."

"If you're worried about security we can have a car put on your house. As many agents as you-"

"I'm worried about my ex-wife."

Lukas gave him a quizzical glance.

Kincaid said, "I've had custody of my children since my wife and I got divorced four years ago. And one of the reasons that it's me who has custody is that I work at home and I don't do anything that'd endanger them or me. That's why I only do commercial document work. Now it looks like my wife's reopening the custody case. She can't find out about this."

"Not a single problem in the world, Parker," Cage reassured him. "You'll be somebody else. Who d'you want to be?"

"I don't care if you make me John Doe or Thomas Jefferson as long as I'm not me. Joan's coming by the house tomorrow morning at ten with some presents for the kids. If she finds out I went off on New Year's Eve to work on a case… it'll be bad."

"What'd you tell them?" Lukas asked.

"That a friend of mine was sick and I had to go visit him in the hospital." He pointed a finger at Cage's chest. "I hated lying to them. Hated it."

Recalling his beautiful boy, Lukas said, "We'll do our best."

"It's not a question of best," Kincaid said to her, easily holding her eye. Which is something very few men could do. "It's either keep me out of the picture or I'm gone."

"Then well do it," she said simply, looking around the room. C. P., Geller and Hardy all nodded.

"All right." Kincaid took his jacket off, pitched it onto a chair. "Now, what's the plan?"

Lukas ran through the status of the investigation. Kincaid nodded, not saying anything. She tried to read his face, see if he approved of what she was doing. Wondered if she cared whether he did or not. Then she said, "The mayors going on the air soon to make a plea to the shooter. He's going to suggest that we'll pay the money to him. Not come right out and say it but hint at it. We're hoping he'll contact us. We've got the money downstairs in a couple of trace bags. We'll drop them wherever he wants."

Cage took over. "Then Tobe here'll track him back to his hidey-hole. Jerry Baker's tactical team's on call. We'll nail him when he gets back home. Or take him down on the road."

"How likely is it he'll go for the cash?"

"We don't know," Lukas said. "When you take a look at the note you'll see the unsub-the guy who got killed-was pretty slow. If his partner, this Digger, is just as dumb he might not go for it." She was thinking of the criminal psychology she'd learned at the Academy. Slower perps were far more suspicious than intelligent ones. They tended not to improvise even when circumstances changed. Lukas added, "Which means he might just keep on shooting the way he's been instructed to."

Cage added, "And we don't even know if the shooter'll hear Kennedy's broadcast. But we just don't have a single damn lead."

Lukas noticed Kincaid glance down at the Major Crimes Bulletin. It was about the firebombing of Gary Moss's house. Bulletins like these described the crime in detail and were used to brief subsequent officers on the specifics of a case. This one mentioned how Moss's two children had just escaped being burned to death.

Parker Kincaid stared at the bulletin for longer than he seemed to want to, apparently troubled by the stark report of the attempt to murder the family.

The two children of the Subject were able to effectuate an escape from the structure with only minor injuries.

Finally he pushed it away. Looked around the Center, taking in the banks of phones, computers, desks. His eyes ended up on the video monitor displaying the extortion note.

"Can we set up the ready-room someplace else?"

"This is the Crisis Center," Lukas said, watching him scan the note. "What's wrong with here?"

"We're not using most of the space," Kincaid pointed out. "And hardly any of the equipment."

Lukas considered this. "Where did you have in mind?"

"Upstairs," he said absently, still staring at the glowing note. "Let's go upstairs."

Parker walked through the Sci-Crime document lab, looking over the array of equipment he knew so well.

Two Leitz binocular stereo microscopes with a Volpi Intralux fiber optic light source, an old Foster + Freeman VSC4 video spectral comparator and the latest of their video spectral comparators-the VSC 2000, equipped with a Rofin PoliLight and running QDOS software through Windows NT. Also, sitting well-used in the corner were a Foster + Freeman ESDA-an electrostatic detection apparatus-and a thin-layer gas Chromatograph for ink and trace analysis.