Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

he didn’t answer.
    “Well?” Doug shoved back his chair and gestured to a slender file that lay on his desk like an accusation.
    Sam had long since perfected the art of reading upside down. The file’s jacket said it all: Lee Andrew Mandel. Well, Sam had been prepared for that. He just hadn’t expected it to hit the fan so fast.
    “If you discovered anything about the Cutter woman, you were supposed to tell Sizemore,” Doug said. “Direct order from Kennedy. Simple to follow. And you fucked it up.”
    “I’m sorry, sir.” Sam worked very hard at sounding contrite. “I was following a CI’s leads. There could be some intersection with the woman Natalie Cutter. Even so, Bureau policy has always been that an agent’s confidential informants aren’t given to anyone in the Bureau without overwhelming reason, much less to a civilian like Sizemore, who is no longer with the Bureau. A civilian, I might add, who knows more than we do about some aspects of the crime strike force’s objectives and keeps that information to himself. His privilege. He’s a private citizen. A CI is an agent’s privilege.”
    Doug blew out one long breath, then another, before he said neutrally, “You have a CI.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “So instead of working with Sizemore as directed by SSA Kennedy, you’re following leads from a CI you’ve turned up somewhere, somehow, all on your own.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Leads that made you curious about a five-month-old case that has career suicide written all over it?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Leads that were so red fucking hot that you just had to put highest priority on your requests?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Do you have any idea how many man hours it could take to trace a rental car after five months?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Confidential informant,” Doug said with a bitter twist to his mouth, as though the words tasted bad.
    Sam didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question.
    Doug picked up the file. “I’ll cover you with Kennedy as long as I can. Again.” He threw the file at Sam, who caught it without flinching. “You better come out smelling like a rose garden or you’ll finish your twenty in Fargo and I’ll laugh out loud when I sign the orders.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Get your smart ass out of my sight.”
    Sam was shutting the door behind himself before Doug finished his sentence.

Chapter 20
    Quartzite, AZ
    Wednesday afternoon
    Tex White acquired his target just where he’d been told she would park: the McDonald’s in Quartzite. He watched her make a short call on her cell phone—probably checking in with her boss. Then she got out, locked the car with a remote-control key, and stretched like she hadn’t been out of the vehicle since L.A.
    Probably she hadn’t. Couriers didn’t take many breaks, because they knew that was when they were the most vulnerable.
    He moved his white van into the parking space next to hers, near her left front door, but he allowed her plenty of room to open her door. He didn’t want her to feel so crowded that she got smart and went around to the passenger side to get in.
    The van’s windows were very dark, even on the driver and passenger doors. The windshield was just light enough to get past the law in California. Quickly, White unfolded a wide sunscreen on the inside of the windshield. Not only would it keep heat out, it would give him complete privacy.
    He got in the back of the van, cracked the side door so that the courier wouldn’t hear it open, and pulled on a ski mask. He reachedfor the exam gloves he’d stashed in a grocery bag. He pulled on the gloves, flexed his hands, and examined the gloves for flaws. The damn things came apart quicker than a rubber. Satisfied, he pulled a spring-loaded sap from his rear pocket.
    Ready to rock and roll.
    With the patience of a trained hunter, he crouched in back and waited for the courier to use the john, pick up her order, and come back to her car.
    Sweat seeped into his ski mask.
    He ignored it.
    There weren’t many people around the parking lot. The snow-birds had mostly pulled up stakes and headed north again, following the melting ice. Nothing was going on in Quartzite this week, so there weren’t thousands of people crammed onto the dry, dusty grounds of the annual gem and mineral show. It was too late for lunch and too soon for dinner. Only people traveling between L.A. and Phoenix stopped here for a break.
    Not that the nearly deserted parking lot mattered to White one way or the