Jeffery Deaver: The Devil's Teardrop

He looked at her once again and she at him. He found his hand reaching out tentatively and touching her knee. Her hand closed on his, nothing tentative about it.

Then they were at the address he sought. He removed his hand. He parked the car. Not a word said. Not a look between them.

Lukas climbed out. Parker too. He walked around to her side of the car and they stood facing each other. How badly he wanted to hold her. Put his arms around her, slip his hands into the small of her back, pull her close. She glanced at him and slowly unbuttoned her blazer. He caught a glimpse of the white silk blouse. He stepped forward to kiss her.

She glanced down, unholstered her weapon and buttoned her blazer once more. Squinted as she looked past him, checking out the neighborhood.

Oh. Parker stepped back.

"Where to?" she asked matter-of-factly.

Parker hesitated, looked at her cool eyes. Then nodded at a winding path that led into an alley. "This way."

The man was about five feet tall.

He had a wiry beard and bushy hair. He wore a ratty bathrobe and Parker had obviously wakened him when he banged fiercely on the rickety door.

He stared at Parker and Lukas for a moment then, without a word, retreated quickly back into the apartment, as if he'd been tugged back by a bungee cord.

Lukas preceded Parker inside. She looked around then holstered her weapon. The rooms were cluttered, filled to overflowing with books and furniture and papers. On the walls hung a hundred signed letters and scraps of historical documents. A dozen bookshelves were chockablock with more books and portfolios. An artists drawing table was covered with bottles of ink and dozens of pens. It dominated the tiny living room.

"How you doing, Jeremy?"

The man rubbed his eyes. Glanced at an old-fashioned windup alarm clock. He said, "My, Parker. It's late. Say, look at what I've got here. Do you like it?"

Parker took the acetate folder Jeremy was holding up.

The man's fingertips were yellow from the cigarettes he loved. Parker recalled that he smoked only outside, however. He didn't want to risk contaminating his work. As with all true geniuses Jeremy's vices bent to his gift.

Parker took the folder and held it up to a light. Picked up a hand glass and examined the document inside. After a moment he said, "The width of the strokes… it's very good."

"Better than good, Parker."

"Okay, I'll grant you that. The starts and lifts are excellent. Also looks like the margins are right and the folio size matches. The papers from the era?"

"Of course."

"But you'd have to fake the aging of the ink with hydrogen peroxide. That's detectable."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Jeremy smiled. "Maybe I've got something new up my sleeve. Are you here to arrest me, Parker?"

"I'm not a cop anymore, Jeremy."

"No, but she is, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is."

Jeremy took the sheet back. "I haven't sold it. I haven't even offered it for sale." To Lukas he said, "It's just a hobby. A man can have a hobby, can't he?"

"What is it?" Lukas asked.

Parker said, "It's a letter from Robert E. Lee to one of his generals." He added, "I should say, purporting to be from Robert E. Lee."

"He forged it?" Lukas asked, glancing at Jeremy.

"That's right."

"I never admitted anything. I'm taking the Fifth."

Parker continued. "It's worth maybe fifteen thousand."

"Seventeen… If somebody were going to sell it. Which I never would. Parker arrested me once," Jeremy said to Lukas, tweaking his beard with his middle finger and thumb. "He was the only one in the world who caught me. You know how he did it?"

"How?" she asked. Parker's attention was not on the excellent forgery but on Margaret Lukas, who seemed both amused and fascinated by the man. Her anger had gone away for the moment and Parker was very pleased to see that.

"The watermark on the letterhead," Jeremy said, scoffing. "I got done in by a watermark."

"A few years ago," Parker said, "Jeremy… let's say, came into possession of a packet of letters from John Kennedy."

"To Marilyn Monroe?" Lukas asked.

Jeremy's face twisted up. "Those? Oh, those were ridiculous. Amateurish. And who cares about them? No, these were between Kennedy and Khrushchev. According to the letters, Kennedy was willing to compromise on Cuba. What an interesting historical twist that would have been. He and Khrushchev were going to divvy up the island. The Russians would have one half, the U.S. the other."

"Was that true?" Lukas asked.

Jeremy was silent and stared at the Robert E. Lee letter with a faint smile on his face.

Parker said, "Jeremy makes up things." Which happened to be the delicate way he described lying when he was speaking with the Whos. "He forged the letters. Was going to sell them for five thousand dollars."

"Four thousand eight hundred," Jeremy corrected.

"That's all?" Lukas was surprised.

"Jeremy isn't in this business for the money," Parker said.

"And you caught him?"

"My technique was flawless, Parker, you have to admit that."

"Oh, it was," Parker confirmed. "The craftsmanship was perfect. Ink, handwriting attack, starts and lifts, phraseology, margins… Unfortunately, the Government Printing Office changed the presidential letterhead in August of 1963. Jeremy got his hands on several of those new sheets and used them for his forgeries. Too bad the letters were dated May of '63."

"I had bad intelligence," Jeremy muttered. "So, Parker, is it cuffs and chains? What've I done now?"

"Oh, I think you know what you've done, Jeremy. I think you know."

Parker pulled up a chair for Lukas and one for himself. They both sat.

"Oh, dear," Jeremy said.

"Oh, dear," echoed Parker.

Finally, it was snowing.

Large squares of flakes parachuting to the ground. Two inches already, muting the night.

Edward Fielding, lugging the burdensome silk bag of money on his back and carrying a silenced pistol in his right hand, waded through a belt of trees and brush in Bethesda, Maryland. From FBI headquarters he'd driven here via two "switch wheels"-getaway cars that professional thieves hide along escape routes to trick pursuers. He'd stayed on major highways the whole way, keeping exactly to the speed limit. He parked on the other side of this grove of trees and walked the rest of the way. The money slowed him down but he certainly wasn't going to leave the cash in the car, despite the relative safety in this placid, upscale Washington suburb.

He eased through the side yard and paused by a fence separating his rented house from the one next door.

On the street, every car was familiar.

Inside his house, no movement or shadows he didn't recognize.

Across the street, the lights in all the houses facing his were dark except for the Harkins' place. This was normal. Fielding had observed that the Harkins rarely went to bed before 2 or 3 A.M.

He set the knapsack holding the money beside a tree on the property next door to his house. And stood upright, letting his muscles enjoy the freedom from the heavy load. He moved along the fence, checking out the ground in the front, back and side yards around his house. No footprints in the snow there or on the sidewalk in front of the houses.

Fielding picked up the money once again and continued along the walk to his house. There were several security devices he'd rigged to let him know if there'd been any unwanted visitors-homemade tricks, rudimentary but effective: thread across the gate, the front door latch lined up with a tiny fleck of dried paint on the storm door, the corner of the rattan mat curled and resting against the door.