The Devils Teardrop

down on the road.”
    “How likely is it he’ll go for the cash?”
    “We don’t know,” Lukas said. “When you take a look at the note you’ll see the unsub—the guy who got killed—was pretty slow. If his partner, this Digger, is just as dumb he might not go for it.” She was thinking of the criminal psychology she’d learned at the Academy. Slower perps were far more suspicious than intelligent ones. They tended not to improvise even when circumstances changed. Lukas added, “Which means he might just keep on shooting the way he’s been instructed to.”
    Cage added, “And we don’t even know if the shooter’ll hear Kennedy’s broadcast. But we just don’t have a single damn lead.”
    Lukas noticed Kincaid glance down at the Major Crimes Bulletin. It was about the firebombing of GaryMoss’s house. Bulletins like these described the crime in detail and were used to brief subsequent officers on the specifics of a case. This one mentioned how Moss’s two children had just escaped being burned to death.
    Parker Kincaid stared at the bulletin for longer than he seemed to want to, apparently troubled by the stark report of the attempt to murder the family.
    The two children of the Subject were able to effectuate an escape from the structure with only minor injuries.
    Finally he pushed it away. Looked around the Center, taking in the banks of phones, computers, desks. His eyes ended up on the video monitor displaying the extortion note.
    “Can we set up the ready-room someplace else?”
    “This is the Crisis Center,” Lukas said, watching him scan the note. “What’s wrong with here?”
    “We’re not using most of the space,” Kincaid pointed out. “And hardly any of the equipment.”
    Lukas considered this. “Where did you have in mind?”
    “Upstairs,” he said absently, still staring at the glowing note. “Let’s go upstairs.”
    * * *
    Parker walked through the Sci-Crime document lab, looking over the array of equipment he knew so well.
    Two Leitz binocular stereo microscopes with a Volpi Intralux fiber optic light source, an old Foster + Freeman VSC4 video spectral comparator and the latest of their video spectral comparators—the VSC 2000,equipped with a Rofin PoliLight and running QDOS software through Windows NT. Also, sitting well-used in the corner were a Foster + Freeman ESDA—an electrostatic detection apparatus—and a thin-layer gas chromatograph for ink and trace analysis.
    He noticed the glass windows the tourists paraded past every day, nine to four, as part of the FBI headquarters tour. The corridor was now dark and ominous.
    Parker watched the other members of the team find seats at desks and lab tables. The room was cluttered, smelly and uncomfortable, the way real working laboratories were. But he preferred to be here—rather than in the glitzy Crisis Center—because he firmly believed in something he’d learned from his father, a historian who specialized in the Revolutionary War. “Always fight your battles on familiar ground,” the professor had told his boy. He’d chosen not to give this answer to Lukas; another thing William Kincaid had told his son was “You don’t have to share everything with your allies.”
    He glanced into Stan Lewis’s office again. Saw the books that he himself had used when this had been his department: Harrison’s Suspect Documents, Housely and Farmer’s An Introduction to Handwriting Identification and Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents by Hilton. And the Bible of the profession: Questioned Documents by Albert S. Osborn. He looked at the credenza behind the office chair and recognized the four bonsai trees he’d cultivated then left for Lewis.
    “Where’s the note?” he asked Cage impatiently.
    “On its way. On its way.”
    Parker turned on several of the instruments. Some hummed, some clicked. And some were silent, their dim indicator lights glowing like cautious eyes.
    Waiting, waiting . . .
    And trying not to think about his talk with the children an hour before—when he’d told them that their holiday plans were changing.
    Both of the Whos had been in Robby’s room, the floor still awash with Legos and Micro Machines.
    “Hey, Whos.”
    “I got to the third level,” Stephie’d said, nodding at the Nintendo. “Then I got bomped.”
    Robby’d had a full-scale invasion of his bed underway—with helicopters and landing craft.
    Parker had sat on the bed. “You know those people who were here