The Devils Teardrop

happy he was here; he had some pretty good reasons to keep himself busy on holidays and this was one of the reasons that she had welcomed him to the METSHOOT team.
    Lukas herself had a comfortable home in Georgetown, a place filled with antique furniture, needlepoints and embroideries and quilts of her own design, an erratic wine collection, nearly five hundred books, more than athousand CDs and her mixed-breed Labrador, Jean Luc. It was a very nice place to spend a holiday evening though in the three years she’d lived there Lukas had never once done so. Until her pager had signaled her ascension to the METSHOOT command she had planned to spend the night baby-sitting that Board of Education whistle-blower, Gary Moss, the one who’d broken the school construction kickback scandal. Moss had worn a wire and had picked up all sorts of good incriminating conversations. But his cover had been blown and the other day his house had been firebombed, his daughters nearly killed. Moss had sent his family to stay with relatives in North Carolina and he was spending the weekend in federal protection. Lukas had been in charge of his protection as well as handling the investigation into the firebombing. But then the Digger arrived and Moss was, at the moment, nothing more than a bored tenant in the very expensive apartment complex referred to among law enforcers as “Ninth Street”—FBI headquarters.
    She now scanned the field again. No sign of the extortionist.
    “He might be staking us out,” a tactical agent crouched behind a tree said. “You want a perimeter sweep?”
    “No.”
    “It’s standard procedure,” he persisted. “We could use five, six handoff cars. He’d never spot us.”
    “Too risky,” she said.
    “Uhm, you sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    Abrupt responses like this had earned Lukas a reputation in the Bureau for being arrogant. But she believed that arrogance is not necessarily a bad thing. It instillsconfidence in those who work for you. It also gets you noticed by your bosses.
    Her eyes flickered as a voice crackled in her earphone, speaking her name.
    “Go ahead,” she said into the stalk mike, recognizing the voice of the deputy director of the Bureau.
    “We’ve got a problem,” he said.
    She hated dramatics. “What?” she asked, not caring a bit about the abrasion in her voice.
    The dep director said, “There was a hit-and-run near City Hall a little while ago. White male. He was killed. No ID on him. Nothing at all, just an apartment key—no address—and some money. The cop who responded’d heard about the extortion thing and, since it was near City Hall, thought there might be a connection.”
    She understood immediately. “They compared prints?” she asked. “His and the ones on the extortion note?”
    “That’s right. The dead guy’s the one who wrote the note, the shooter’s partner.”
    Lukas remembered part of the note. It went something like:
    If you kill me, he will keep killing.
    Nothing can stop the Digger . . .
    “You’ve got to find the shooter, Margaret,” the deputy director said. There was a pause as, apparently, he looked at his watch. “You’ve got to find him in three hours.”
    * * *
    Is it real? Parker Kincaid wondered.
    Bending over the rectangle of paper, peering through his heavy, ten-power hand glass. Joan had been gone forseveral hours but the effect of her visit—the dismay—still lingered, trying though he was to lose himself in his work.
    The letter he examined—on yellowing paper—was encased in a thin, strong poly sleeve but when he eased it closer to him he did so very carefully. The way you’d touch a baby’s red, fat face. He adjusted the light and swooped in on the loop of the lowercase letter y .
    Is it real?
    It appeared to be real. But in his profession Parker Kincaid never put great stock in appearances.
    He wanted badly to touch the document, to feel the rag paper, made with so little acid that it could last as long as steel. He wanted to feel the faint ridge of the iron-gallide ink, which, to his sensitive fingers, would seem as raised as braille. But he didn’t dare take the paper from the sleeve; even the slightest oil from his hands would start to erode the thin letter. Which would be a disaster since it was worth perhaps $50,000.
    If it was real.
    Upstairs, Stephie was navigating Mario through his surreal universe. Robby was at Parker’s feet, accompanied by Han Solo and Chewbacca. The basement study was a cozy