Brazen Virtue

She would cut the goddamn thing out and stick it on her bedroom wall. When she was done, she’d know that face as well as her own.
    “I can tell you one thing, I didn’t talk to any teenagers last night. I listened to every voice over that phone, every nuance, every tone. I’d have recognized someone this young.”
    “Voices change by the time a kid hits twelve or thirteen.” When she reached for a cigarette, he nearly winced. She couldn’t keep living off tobacco and coffee.
    “It’s not just the depth of the voice, it’s the rap, it’s the phrasing. Dialogue’s one of my specialties.” Struggling to calm herself, she ran her hands over her face. “I’d have recognized a kid.”
    “Maybe. Maybe you would have. You pick up details and log them in. I’ve noticed.”

    “Tools of the trade,” she muttered. She forgot the cigarette as she studied the picture. There were details missing there. If she looked hard enough, long enough, she might be able to flesh them out, just as she did a character conceived in her own mind. “His hair’s short. Military, conservative. Doesn’t look like a street kid.”
    He’d thought the same thing, but a haircut wasn’t going to narrow the field. “Back off a little, Grace.”
    “I’m involved.”
    “That doesn’t mean you can be objective about all of this.” He turned the paper facedown. “Or that I can be. Dammit, this is my job and you’re playing hell with it.”
    “How?”
    “How?” He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and nearly laughed. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m crazy about you. While I’m still working my feet out of my mouth, I might as well say it all. I don’t like thinking about you talking to those men.”
    She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I see.”
    “The fact is, I hate it. I can understand why you’re doing it, and from a cop’s standpoint, I can see the advantage. But—”
    “You’re jealous.”
    “Like hell.”
    “Yes, you are.” She patted his hand. “Thanks. Tell you what, if any of them gets me excited, I’ll come looking for you.”
    “It’s not a joke.”

    “Christ, Ed, it has to be. Because I’ll drive myself crazy otherwise. I don’t know if I can make you understand, but it was weird listening to them, knowing someone else was listening too. I sat there concentrating on every voice that came over the phone and wondering what the others, the ones who were listening in, taping the evidence, were thinking.” She let out a breath, and her honesty. “I guess I wondered what you’d have thought if you’d been listening too. Because of that I concentrated harder.” Deliberately she turned the paper over again and looked down at the composite. “I have to look at the ridiculous side of it, and at the same time remember why. You see, I’ll know if I hear him. I can promise you that.”
    But Ed was just looking at her. Something she’d said had started a new train of thought. It made sense. Maybe the best sense. He was itching to go when he heard the knock on the front door. “That should be my relief. You going to be okay?”
    “Sure. I’m going to try to work. I figure I’ll do better if I get back to my routine.”
    “You can call me if you need to. If I’m not in, the desk knows how to reach me.”
    “I’ll be fine, really.”
    He tilted her chin up. “Call me anyway.”
    “Okay. Get out of here before the bad guys get away.”

Chapter 14
    B EN WAS ALREADY HIP-DEEP in phone calls and paperwork when Ed came into the station. Spotting his partner, Ben swallowed the better part of a powdered doughnut. “I know,” he began as he put a hand over the receiver. “Your alarm didn’t go off. You had a flat tire. The dog ate your shield.”
    “I stopped by Tess’s office,” Ed said.
    The tone, even more than the statement, had Ben straightening at his desk. “I’ll get back to you,” he said into the receiver, then hung up. “Why?”
    “Something Grace said this morning.” After a quick scan of the messages and files on his desk, Ed decided they could wait. “I wanted to run the idea by Tess, see if she thought it fit into the psychiatric profile.”
    “And?”
    “Bingo. Remember Billings? Used to work Robbery?”
    “Sure, pain in the ass. He went private a couple years ago. Surveillance specialist.”
    “Let’s pay him a visit.”

    ♦  ♦  ♦
    L OOKS LIKE BUGS PAY,” Ben observed as he glanced around Billings’s office. The