Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

Yeah, Jefferies had paid Slade Phillips his twenty-five thousand. And, no, they'd never get it back.

"Whatever happens," Kennedy said to Jefferies and Claire solemnly, "I don't want to hire Slade Phillips as my press secretary."

His delivery was, as always, deadpan and it took them a minute before they realized it was a joke. Claire laughed. Jefferies still seemed shell-shocked.

The irony was that Kennedy would never have a press secretary again. Former politicians don't need one. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry.

"What do we do now?" Claire asked.

"Well have a drink and then go to the African-American Teachers' Association party. Who knows? The Digger might still come forward and want the money. I still may have a chance to meet him face-to-face."

Claire shook her head. "After what happened on the boat? You couldn't trust him. He'd kill you."

Couldn't kill me any deader than the press has done tonight, Kennedy thought.

Claire tacked down her wispy hair with a burst from a small container of perfumed spray. Kennedy loved the smell. It comforted him. The vibrant fifty-nine-year-old woman with keen eyes had been his main advisor since his first days of public office, years ago. To hell with nepotism; it was only that she was white that kept her from being his primary assistant as mayor: a characteristic that she too insisted would put him at a disadvantage in the 60-percent-black District of Columbia.

"How bad is all this?" she asked.

"As bad as it gets."

Claire Kennedy nodded and put her hand on her husband's substantial leg.

Neither spoke for a moment.

"Is there any champagne in there?" he asked suddenly, nodding toward the minibar.

"Champagne?"

"Sure. Let's start celebrating my ignominious defeat early."

"You wanted to teach," she pointed out. Then with a wink she added, "Professor Kennedy."

"And you did too, Professor Kennedy. We'll tell William and Mary we want adjoining lecture halls."

She smiled at him and opened the minibar of the limo.

But Jerry Kennedy wasn't smiling. Teaching would be a failure. A successful job at a Dupont Circle law firm would be a failure. Kennedy knew in his heart that his life's purpose was to make this struggling, oddly shaped chunk of swampy land a better place for the youngsters who happened to be born here and that his Project 2000 was the only thing faintly within his grasp that would allow that to happen. And now those hopes had been destroyed.

He glanced at his wife. She was laughing.

She pointed to the bar. "Gallo and Budweiser."

What else in the District of Columbia?

Kennedy lifted up on the door handle and stepped out into the cooling night.

The guns are finally loaded.

The silencer he's been using has been repacked and the new one is mounted on the second gun.

The Digger, in his comfy room, checks his pocket. Let's see… He has one pistol with him and two more in the glove compartment of his car. And lots and lots of ammunition.

The Digger takes his suitcase out to the car. The man who tells him things told him that the room was paid for. When it was time to go all he had to do was leave.

He packs his cans of soup and dishes and glasses and takes them in a box to the Everyday People Toyota.

The Digger returns to the room and looks at thin Tye for a few minutes, wonders again where… click… where Out West is then wraps the blanket around him. And carries the boy, light as a puppy, down to the car and puts him in the back seat.

The Digger sits behind the wheel but doesn't start the car right away. He turns around and looks at the boy some more. Tucks the blanket around his feet. He's wearing tattered running shoes.

A memory of someone speaking. Who? Pamela? William? The man who tells him things?

"Sleep…"

Click, click.

Wait, wait, wait.

"I want you to…" Click, click.

Suddenly there is no Pamela, no Ruth with the glass in her neck, no man who tells him things. There is only Tye.

"I want you to sleep well," the Digger says to the boys still form. These are the words he wanted to say to him. He isn't exactly sure what they mean. But he says them anyway.

When I go to sleep at night,

I love you all the more…

He starts the car. He signals and checks his blind spot, then pulls out into traffic.

The last location.

… place I showed you-the black…

Parker Kincaid stood in front of the blackboard in the Document Division lab. Hands on his hips. Staring at the puzzle in front of him… place I showed you-the black…

"The black what?" Dr. Evans mused.

Cage shrugged. Lukas was on the phone with the PERT crime scene experts on board the Ritzy Lady. She hung up and told the team that, as they'd expected, there were few solid leads. They'd found bullet casings with a few prints on them. They were being run through AFIS, and Identification was going to e-mail Lukas the results. There was no other physical evidence. Witnesses had reported a white man of indeterminate age in a dark coat. He carried a brown bag, which presumably held the machine gun. A bit of fiber had been recovered. It was from the bag, techs from PERT had decided, but was generic and provided no clues as to the source.

Parker looked around, "Where's Hardy?"

Cage told him about the incident at the Ritz.

"She fire him?" Parker asked, nodding toward Lukas.

"No. Thought she should have but she gave him hell-and then a second chance. He's in the research library downstairs. Trying to make amends."

Parker looked back at Geller. The young agent stared at the screen in front of him as the computers improvised anagram program vainly tried to assemble letters following the word "black." The ash behind this word, however, was much more badly damaged than that in the Ritzy Lady notation.

Parker paced for a moment then stopped. He stared up at the blackboard. He felt the queasy sense of nearly but not quite figuring out a clue. He sighed.

He found himself standing next to Lukas. She asked him, "Your boy? Robby? Is he all right?"

"He's fine. Just a little scared."

She nodded. A computer nearby announced, "You've got mail." She walked to it and read the message. Shook her head. "The prints on the shell casings're from one of the passengers on the boat picking up souvenirs. He checks out." She clicked the SAVE button.

Parker gazed at the screen. "That's making me obsolete."

"What?"

"E-mail," he said. He looked at Lukas and added, "As a document examiner, I mean. Oh, people're writing more than ever because of it, but-"

"But there's less handwriting nowadays," she said, continuing his thought.

"Right."

"That'll be tough," she said. "Lose a lot of good evidence that way."

"True. But for me that's not what's sad."

"Sad?" She looked at him. Her eyes were no longer stony but she seemed wary once again of an inartful term echoing in such an esteemed forensic lab.

"For me," he told her, "handwriting's a part of a human being. Like our sense of humor or imagination. Think about it-it's one of the only things about people that survives their death. Writing can last for hundreds of years. Thousands. It's about as close to immortality as we can get."

"Part of the person?" she asked. "But you said graphoanalysis was bogus."

"No, I mean that whatever somebody wrote is still a reflection of who they are. It doesn't matter how the words are made or what they say, even if they're mistaken or nonsensical. Just the fact that someone thought of the words and their hands committed them to paper is what counts. It's almost a miracle to me."

She was staring at the floor, her head down.