Persuader

drained right out of her. And nobody can do that on command, any more than they can blush.
    "What other one?" she said again. "There was only Teresa. What? Are you telling me she's dead?"
    "Not Teresa," I said again. "There was another one. Another woman. She got hired on as a kitchen maid."
    "No," she said. "There's only Teresa." I shook my head again. "I saw the body. It wasn't Teresa."
    "A kitchen maid?"
    "She had an e-mail thing in her shoe," I said. "Exactly the same as mine. The heel was scooped out by the same guy. I recognized the handiwork."
    "That's not possible," she said.
    I looked straight at her.
    "I would have told you," she said. "Of course I would have told you. And I wouldn't have needed you if I had another agent in there. Don't you see that?" I looked away. Looked back. Now I was embarrassed.
    "So who the hell was she?" I asked.
    She didn't answer. Just started nudging her cup around and around on her saucer, prodding at the handle with her forefinger, turning it ten degrees at a time. The heavy foam and the chocolate dust stayed still while the cup rotated. She was thinking like crazy.
    "Eight weeks ago?" she said.
    I nodded.
    "What alerted them?" she asked.
    "They got into your computer," I said. "This morning, or maybe last night." She looked up from her cup. "That's what you were asking me about?" I nodded. Said nothing.
    "Teresa isn't in the computer," she said. "She's off the books."
    "Did you check with Eliot?"
    "I did better than check," she said. "I searched the whole of his hard drive. And all of his files on the main server back in D.C. I've got total access everywhere. I looked for Teresa, Daniel, Justice, Beck, Maine, and undercover. And he didn't write any of those words anywhere." I said nothing.
    "How did it go down?" she asked.
    "I'm not really sure," I said. "I guess at first the computer told them you had somebody in there, and then it told them it was a woman. No name, no details. So they looked for her.
    And I think it was partly my fault they found her."
    "How?"
    "I had a stash," I said. "Your Glock, and the ammo, and a few other things. She found them. She hid them in the car she was using." Duffy was quiet for a second.
    "OK," she said. "And you're thinking they searched the car and your stuff made her look bad, right?"
    "I guess so."
    "But maybe they searched her first and found the shoe." I looked away. "I sincerely hope so."
    "Don't beat up on yourself. It's not your fault. As soon as they got into the computer it was only a matter of time for the first one they looked at. They both fit the bill. I mean, how many women were there to choose from? Presumably just her and Teresa. They couldn't miss." I nodded. There was Elizabeth, too. And there was the cook. But neither one of them would figure very high on a list of suspicious persons. Elizabeth was the guy's wife. And the cook had probably been there twenty years.
    "But who was she?" I said.
    She played with her cup until it was back in its starting position. The unglazed rim on the bottom made a tiny grinding sound.
    "It's obvious, I'm afraid," she said. "Think of the time line here. Count backward from today. Eleven weeks ago I screwed up with the surveillance photographs. Ten weeks ago they pulled me off the case. But because Beck is a big fish I couldn't give it up and so nine weeks ago I put Teresa in without their knowledge. But also because Beck is a big fish, and without my knowledge, they must have reassigned the case to someone else and eight weeks ago that someone else put this maid person in, right on top of Teresa. Teresa didn't know the maid was coming and the maid didn't know Teresa was already there."
    "Why would she have nosed into my stuff?"
    "I guess she wanted to control the situation. Standard procedure. As far as she was concerned, you weren't anybody kosher. You were just a loose cannon. Some kind of troublemaker. You were a cop-killer, and you were hiding weapons. Maybe she thought you were from a rival operation. She was probably thinking of selling you out to Beck. It would have enhanced her credibility with him. And she needed you out of the way, because she didn't need extra complications. If she didn't sell you out to Beck, she would have turned you in to us, as a cop-killer. I'm surprised she didn't already."
    "Her battery was dead." She nodded. "Eight weeks. I guess kitchen maids don't have good access to cell phone chargers."
    "Beck said she was out of Boston."
    "Makes sense," she said.