Edge

a securities violation, why’s Metropolitan Police handling it?”
    Ryan gave a tight smile. “Because it’s small potatoes: the crime, the victims. So a small-potato cop gets the case.”
    An awkward silence.
    Another excavation of the big briefcase. Documents appeared and I took down relevant details on this investigation too. “No other cases it could be?”
    Another shrug. “Like I said, it’s a quiet time. The other cases’re small. Credit-card scams, identity theft. Low-dollar amounts. Mostly misdemeanors.” He pulled out a pad and wrote the details. “Pennyante stuff.” A shrug. “That’s it.”
    I gave him a nod of thanks. “This is helpful. I’ll get somebody on it right now.”
    I took my notes to a table in the corner, clicked on the light—it was dim inside with the shades and curtains drawn—and made a call.
    “DuBois.”
    “Claire. Got some info on Kessler’s cases. I want to find out if anybody connected to them—suspects, witnesses, victims, anybody —could be the primary who hired Loving. I want you to start backgrounding all the players.”
    “Okay, I’m ready.”
    DuBois never calls me anything. She’s about twelve years younger than me, which puts her squarely between “sir” and “Corte.”
    I gave her the details of the cases Ryan Kessler was running.
    She said, “The forgery case? The guy works for Defense. That can be tricky. Sometimes you’re dealing with military, sometimes civilian government, sometimes private contractors. If there’s one thing they don’t like to do, it’s talk to outsiders.Even inside outsiders like us. Do you have any contacts there?”
    “No,” I told her.
    She was silent a moment. One of her habits was tucking and retucking her brunette hair behind her ears. I pictured her doing this now. It never stayed in place but then neither did she. “I know somebody who dated a friend of mine. He was wacky. Played games a lot. Not your kind of games. And not boyfriend or husband games. I mean he’d run scenarios for the Pentagon and CIA. Like World War Three scenarios. And World War Four scenarios. There really is such a thing. Now, that’s pretty scary, don’t you think? I always wondered if there was a Five. Anyway, I’ll call him. And I’ll get on the Ponzi scheme too. I myself don’t invest. I like the mattress theory.”
    As we disconnected I heard a jangle I was sure came from her bracelet.
    I knew that if there was any connection, however slim, between Ryan’s cases and Henry Loving’s primary, duBois would find it. Despite her youth, she was better than I at the investigation side of our job—tracking down leads. She didn’t have a game player’s mind, which I seem to have been born with, so the deadly chess match between me and lifters and hitters didn’t come naturally to her. But she was persistent as a terrier, sharp and wily when the script called for it. Because of her frenetic nature and dancing mind, she chatted up a storm with the subjects she interviewed, who ended up overwhelmed or intimidated. Or captivated. (She’d actually gotten a marriage proposal from a principal we’d protected about a year ago,after she’d spent some hours interviewing him. Since he was a former organized crime enforcer, duBois had declared him “not prime dating material.”)
    About a year ago Barbara, the personal assistant I share with another shepherd at the office, caught me gazing at duBois with what was apparently a smile, an uncharacteristic expression for me. It was only a look of admiration after the woman had poured out a flood of helpful details she’d unearthed about a potential primary. That smile, though, was enough for Barbara, a single mother of fifty and a regular in the online dating world. She assumed my gaze was romantic and had later asked why I’d never asked duBois out. (She mentioned something about “May–September,” which seemed to me a little harsh for a mere twelve-year difference.)
    In any case, of course, I deflected the suggestion. But my professional enthusiasm for my protégée was unrelenting and I didn’t pull back from expressing it, though admittedly in my typically subdued way.
    I now typed my own notes into my laptop, encrypted the file and saved it.
    Maree joined us; for some reason she’d changed clothes and renewed her makeup. A flowery scent of perfume surrounded her. She seemed even more attractive than earlier. Interestingly, though she and her sister resembled each other in many