The Devils Teardrop

suffering from PTSD.
    Parker explained this and added, “But the incident happened just before Christmas. So this time of year he has more memories than otherwise. I mean, he’s come through it fine. But . . .”
    Evans said, “But you’d’ve given anything for it not to have happened.”
    “Exactly,” Parker said softly, looking at Lukas’s troubled face and wondering why she was familiar with the disorder.
    The therapist asked, “He’s all right, though. Tonight?”
    “He’s fine. Just got a little spooked earlier.”
    “I’ve got kids of my own,” Evans said. He looked at Lukas, “You have children?”
    “No,” she said. “I’m not married.”
    Evans said to her, “It’s as if you lose a part of your mind when you have children. They steal it and you never get it back. You’re always worried that they’re upset, they’re lost, they’re sad. Sometimes I’m amazed that parents can function at all.”
    “Is that right?” she asked, distracted once more.
    Evans returned to the note and there was a long moment of silence. Geller typed on his keyboard. Cage bent over a map. Lukas toyed with a strand of her blond hair. The gesture would have been coy and appealingexcept for her stony eyes. She was someplace else.
    Geller sat up slightly as his screen flashed. “Report back from Scottsdale . . .” He read the screen. “Okay, okay . . . P. D. knew about the gang, the Gravediggers, but they have no contact with anybody who was in it. Most of ’em are retired. Family men now.”
    Yet another dead end, Parker thought.
    Evans noticed another sheet of paper and pulled it toward him. The Major Crimes Bulletin—about Gary Moss and the firebombing of his house.
    “He’s the witness, right?” Evans asked. “In that school construction scandal.”
    Lukas nodded.
    Evans shook his head as he read. “The killers didn’t care if they murdered his children too . . . Terrible.” He glanced at Lukas. “Hope they’re being well looked after,” the doctor said.
    “Moss is in protective custody at headquarters and his family’s out of state,” Cage told him.
    “Killing children,” the psychologist muttered and pushed the memo away.
    Then the case began to move. Parker remembered this from his law enforcement days. Hours and hours—sometimes days—of waiting; then all at once the leads begin to pay off. A sheet of paper flowed out of the fax machine. Hardy read it. “It’s from Building Permits. Demolition and construction sites in Gravesend.”
    Geller called up a map of the area on his large monitor and highlighted the sites in red as Hardy called them out. There were a dozen of them.
    Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the locations. He reported back that he was disbursing the teams there.
    A few minutes later a voice crackled through thespeaker in the command post. It was Baker’s. “New Year’s Leader Two to New Year’s Leader One.”
    “Go ahead,” Lukas said.
    “One of my S&S teams found a convenience store. Mockingbird and Seventeenth.”
    Tobe Geller immediately highlighted the intersection on the map.
    Please, Parker was thinking. Please . . .
    “They’re selling paper and pens like the kind you were describing. And the display faced the window. Some of the packs of paper’re sun-bleached.”
    “Yes!” Parker whispered.
    The team leaned forward, gazing at the map on Geller’s screen.
    “Jerry,” Parker said, not bothering with the code names that the tactical agents were so fond of, “one of the demolition sites we told you about—it’s two blocks east of the store. On Mockingbird. Get the canvassers going in that direction.”
    “Roger. New Year’s Leader Two. Out.”
    Then another call came in. Lukas took it. Listened. “Tell him. ” She handed the phone to Tobe Geller.
    Geller listened, nodding. “Great. Send it here—on MCP Four’s priority fax line. You have the number? Good.” He hung up and said, “That was Com-Tech again. They’ve got the ISP list for Gravesend.”
    “The what?” Cage asked.
    “Subscribers to Internet service providers,” Geller answered.
    The fax phone rang and another sheet fed out. Parker glanced at it, discouraged. There were more on-line subscribers in Gravesend than he’d anticipated—about fifty of them.
    “Call out the addresses,” Geller said. “I’ll type them in.” Hardy did. Geller was lightning fast on the keyboard and as quickly as the detective could recite the addresses a red dot