The Devils Teardrop

right hand, the nails perfectly trimmed and scrubbed. He was a man, she had concluded, who found comfort in details.
    “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
    “Agent Cage is right. They’ll need everybody they can get.”
    Lukas glanced at Parker Kincaid but he was lost in the document once more, easing it carefully from its clear acetate shroud.
    “Come on over here, Len,” Lukas said, gesturing him into the corner of the document lab. Cage was the only one who noticed and he said nothing. In his long tenureat the Bureau the senior agent would have had plenty of talks with underlings and knew that the process was as delicate as interrogating suspects. More delicate—because these were people you had to live with day after day. And whom you might have to depend on to watch your back. Lukas was grateful Cage was giving her rein to handle Hardy the way she felt best.
    “Talk to me,” she said. “What’s eating you?”
    “I want to do something,” the detective replied. “I know I’m second-string here. I’m from the District. I’m Research and Stats. . . . But I want to help.”
    “You’re only here as liaison. That’s all you’re authorized for. This is a federal operation. It’s not task-forced.”
    He gave a sour laugh. “Liaison? I’m here as a stenographer. You and I both know that.”
    Of course she knew it. But that wouldn’t have stopped Lukas from giving him a more active role if she thought he’d be valuable elsewhere. Lukas was not one who lived her life solely by regs and procedures and if Hardy had been the world’s best sniper she’d kick him out the door and onto one of Jerry Baker’s shooting teams in an instant, whatever the rules dictated. After a moment she said, “All right, answer me a question.”
    “Sure.”
    “Why are you here?” she asked.
    “Why?” He frowned.
    “You volunteered, didn’t you?” Lukas asked.
    “Yeah, I did.”
    “Because of your wife, right?”
    “Emma?” He tried to look confounded but Lukas could see right through it. His eyes fell to the floor.
    “I understand, Len. But do yourself a favor. Take yournotes, kick around ideas with us and stay out of the line of fire. Then when this prick’s tagged go on home.”
    “But it’s . . . hard,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
    “Being home?”
    He nodded.
    “I know it is,” Lukas answered sincerely.
    He clung to the trenchcoat like a child’s security blanket.
    In fact if it had been anybody but Len Hardy who’d shown up as the District police liaison she would have kicked them right back to police headquarters. She had no patience with ass covering or interagency turf wars and no time to coddle employees of a corrupt, nearly bankrupt city. But she knew a secret of Hardy’s life—that his wife was in a coma, the result of an accident when her Jeep Cherokee had skidded off the road in a rainstorm near Middleburg, Virginia, and hit a tree.
    Hardy had been to the District field office several times to compile statistical data on crime in the metro area and had gotten to know Betty, Lukas’s assistant. She’d thought at first that the man was trying to pick up the attractive woman but had then overheard him talking emotionally about his wife and her injury.
    He didn’t have many friends, it seemed, just like Lukas herself. She’d gotten to know him slightly and had learned more about Emma. Several times they’d had coffee in the Policemen’s Memorial Park, next to the field office. He’d opened up slightly but, also like Lukas, he kept his emotions tightly packed away.
    Knowing his tragedy, knowing how hard it would be for him to sit home alone on a holiday, she had welcomed him onto the team and resolved to cut him some slack tonight. But Margaret Lukas would neverjeopardize an operation for the emotional health of anyone.
    Right as rain . . .
    He now told her, “I can’t sit still. I want a piece of this guy.”
    No, she thought. What he wants is a piece of God or Fate or whatever force of nature broke Emma Hardy’s life, and her husband’s, into a thousand pieces.
    “Len, I can’t have somebody in the field who’s . . .” She looked for a benign word. “Distracted.” “Reckless” would have been closer and “suicidal” was what she meant.
    Hardy nodded. He was angry. His lip trembled. But he dropped his coat on a chair and returned to a desk.
    Poor man, she thought. But seeing how his intelligence, his sense of propriety and perfection shone through his personal