James Grippando - Last Call

David asked, "You know what year you're looking for?"

The composites were arranged in chronological order in columns of three. "Right around here," she said, searching. "Early to mid-1970s."

Andie's adrenalin was pumping. Each head shot had the young man's name underneath it, so if her computer-generated photographs matched, she was home-free. Theo's mother would have been fifteen years old in 1968, so she started there, just to be overinclusive. She compared the cameraman's image first, breezing through the late sixties, and slowing down for more careful examination in 1970, 1971, and so on. She went all the way to 1980.

He wasn't there. She went through it again, just in case she'd missed something.

He definitely wasn't there.

She did the same thing with the image of the heckler and the drunk who had started the war of words with Portia in the movie. She checked each composite, photograph by photograph.

They weren't there, either.

At this point, she was well beyond her allotted five minutes. David said, "Something wrong?"

"I was just so sure that-" She stopped herself and did a double take. "There's a year missing."

"What?"

"Nineteen seventy-two. It's not here."

David took a closer look. "You're right."

Andie walked the entire room, checking to see if it had been mounted someplace else, out of chronological order. "It's not here," she said. "Is there another room where it could be?"

"No. I been living here three years. All the old composites are in this room."

"I need to see 1972," she said.

"Well, I don't know how to help you. The one you want is the one we don't have. Which is sort of an interesting coincidence."

Andie noticed something about the wall. The composites weren't all the same size, and they'd hung so long in the same place that a faint shadow on the painted wall matched the outline of their frame. The composites after 1972 didn't match their shadow – which meant they'd been moved. Rearranged. Recently. To make it not so apparent that 1972 was missing.

"It's definitely interesting that it's not here," she said, the wheels turning in her head. "But I'd say it's no coincidence."

"Hey wait a sec," said David. "Pi Alpha Delta does have a historian"

"A historian?"

"Yeah. He's with the national office in Columbus, Ohio. Some old fart who doesn't want to let go of his college days."

"You think he has copies of old composites?"

"He has everything from every chapter in the country. But they'd be little copies. Like yearbook-sized. Would that help?"

Andie smiled. "Immensely. Think maybe I'll visit his pad."

Jack got a phone call from Andie at midmorning. She had "important information" for him. Before he could ask why she didn't just tell him over the telephone, she beat him to the punch.

"You were nice enough to invite me to dinner at a gas station. How about lunch at a Laundromat?"

Jack laughed, but apparently she was serious. He jotted down the address and agreed to meet her there at noon.

The FBI field office was in North Miami, an area that Jack didn't know well, except to pass by it on his way to Broward County and all-important places like Dolphin Stadium or Fort Lauderdale beach. He was sure they had plenty of good lunch spots up that way. Knowing Miami, however, he wasn't so sure Andie had been kidding about the Laundromat-restaurant. He pulled into a strip mall off North East 163rd Street to see Andie standing in front of the U-Wash-It.

"What do you think?" she said.

Jack checked it out from the sidewalk, peering through the wide-open double doors. The place had no air conditioning; instead, a noisy commercial fan circulated hot air inside. Two sweaty old women shared a bench and yesterday's newspaper as their clothes tumbled in the dryer. A washing machine on spin cycle rattled and shook violently, as if it was about to walk out the door on its own power. That universal and distinctly unappetizing smell of a Laundromat filled the air.

"They really serve food here?" said Jack.

"Yes, but only Chinese."

Jack glanced inside again, then back at Andie. "Chinese, huh?"

She smiled. "Gotcha."

"Funny. But not very politically correct/

"It's okay. I've got my anti-PC license. I'm half Native American. Come on. We're eating at the deli right over here."

They got sandwiches and sodas at the counter and found an open booth by the window. Another patron had left a Canadian dollar on the table for the busboy and Jack weighted it down with the saltshaker. Andie squeezed a packet of deli mustard onto her sliced turkey breast, and she was about to start talking business when Jack jumped in and steered the conversation in a more personal direction.

"I'm glad we're doing this," he said.

She looked up from her sandwich. "Doing what?"

It wasn't what she said as much as the way she'd said it, but Jack didn't like the vibe. He could have said what he was feeling – something like, "Getting out together, picking up where we left off last January, giving ourselves a chance to see if we can put aside the fact that I was a total idiot when I called it quits." But something about her body language didn't seem open to it.

"Eating at the deli," he said, "instead of the Laundromat."

"Me too." She took a small bite out of her sandwich and looked out the window.

She was tensing up on him. On the car ride over, Jack had come to the firm conclusion that Andie was interested in him again. The playful little ruse at the Laundromat had only confirmed that belief. He had yet to hear word one from Rene since her return to Africa, and perhaps it was high time to stop fooling himself into thinking that happiness lay across the ocean. Both Theo and Abuela had told him that Andie was for real, but there was more to it than that.

Jack couldn't seem to stop thinking about her.

"Andie, can I ask you something?"

"Huh? I'm sorry. What'd you say?"

"I wanted to ask you something"

"Uh, sure. Go ahead."

She was beyond preoccupied. Either she'd invited him to lunch for personal reasons and completely changed her mind, or she really did have "something important" that needed to be said face-to-face.

"Never mind," said Jack. "What is it that you needed totell me?

She put her sandwich aside. "Good news and bad news."

"Okay. I'll bite. Let's go with the good news first."

"I've uncovered some information that might help us find who raped Theo's mother."

Jack listened without interrupting as she laid out the events of the last sixteen hours. The Internet made a trip to see the Pi Alpha Delta historian in Ohio unnecessary. He'd e-mailed her the 1972 composite, and Andie's tech agent compared the facial images from the movie to the mug shots in the composite. There was no match on the drunk and the heckler.

Jack said, "Probably guests at the strip party but not brothers at the house."

"That was my guess," said Andie. "But we did get a match on the cameraman. His name is Lance Gilford."

"So, when are you going to talk to the esteemed Mr. Gilford?"

"That leads me to the bad news," she said. "I won't be talking to him."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't help you anymore."

"You can't?" said Jack. "Or you won't."

"Can't. It's not my decision."

"Somebody is telling you not to?"

She struggled to put on her business face, the one she always wore when spewing the bureau line. "You have to see this from the FBI's point of view. I was appointed to head up a task force that is looking into the reasons why Isaac Reems was able to escape from jail. From there, I started looking at who killed Isaac. Then it became a question of who tried to kill Theo. The focus then was who killed Theo's mother. Now I'm trying to find out who raped Theo's mother over thirty years ago. I'm out of my jurisdiction here, not to mention way beyond the scope of my original assignment."