The Devils Teardrop

answer to Margaret Lukas?”
    But Cage only skidded around another canyon of a pothole and said nothing.
    Evans closed his phone, poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos. It must have held a half gallon of coffee. This time Parker accepted the offered cup and drank several sips of the strong brew.
    “How’s the family?” Parker asked him.
    “I owe the kids big time.” The shrink smiled ruefully.
    “How many do you have?”
    “Two.”
    “Me too,” Parker said. “How old?”
    “In their teens. They’re a handful.” He didn’t give any details and didn’t seem to want to say anything more. He asked, “Yours?”
    “Eight and nine.”
    “Ah, you’ve got a few years of peace and quiet.”
    Cage said, “Grandkids are the best. Take it from me. You play with ’em, get ’em all dirty, let ’em spill ice cream on themselves, spoil ’em crazy and then you send ’em home to their parents. You go have a beer and watch the game. How can you beat that?”
    They drove for a few moments in silence and finally Evans asked, “That incident you mentioned. With your son? What happened?”
    “You ever hear about the Boatman?” Parker asked.
    Cage glanced at Parker warily. Then back to the road.
    Evans said, “Remember something from the papers. But I’m not sure.”
    Parker was surprised; the killer had been featured inthe news for months. Maybe the doctor was new to the area. “He was a serial killer in Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland. Four years ago. He’d kidnap a woman, rape and murder her and leave the body in a dinghy or rowboat. The Potomac a couple times. The Shenandoah. Burke Lake in Fairfax. We had leads to this guy who lived in Arlington but we couldn’t make a case. Finally I was able to connect him to one of the murders through a handwriting sample. SWAT arrested him. He was convicted but he escaped on the way to federal detention. Well, around that time I was in the middle of the custody battle with my ex. The court had awarded me temporary custody. The kids, the housekeeper and I were living in a house in Falls Church. Then one night, around midnight, Robby starts screaming. I run into his room. There’s the Boatman, trying to break in.”
    Evans nodded, frowning in concentration. His eyes were pale and they studied Parker closely.
    Even now, years later, Parker’s heart trembled at the memory: not only at the image of the square, glazed face looking through the bedroom window but at his son’s distilled terror. The tears streaming from his huge eyes, his shaking hands. He didn’t tell Evans and Cage about the five minutes—they seemed like hours—of absolute horror: shepherding his children into the housekeeper’s room, guarding the door while listening to the Boatman stalk through the house. Finally, with the Fairfax County cops still not there, he stepped into the hallway, his service revolver in hand.
    He realized that Evans was looking at him even more closely. He felt like a patient. The doctor noted Parker’s expression and looked away. He asked, “And you shot him?”
    “Yes. I did.”
    The gun is too loud! Parker had thought manically, as he fired, knowing how the explosions were adding to Robby’s and Stephanie’s terror.
    The gun is too loud!
    As Cage pulled up to headquarters Evans shoved the thermos back into his backpack and put a hand on Parker’s arm. He gave the document examiner another close look. “Know what we’re gonna do?”
    Parker lifted an eyebrow.
    “We’re gonna catch this son of a bitch and both of us get back home to our families. Where we ought to be.”
    Parker Kincaid thought: Amen.
    * * *
    Inside the document lab at headquarters the team was reassembled.
    Margaret Lukas was on the phone.
    Parker glanced at her. Her cryptic look toward him in return brought to mind Cage’s comments in the car.
    Maybe she envies you . . .
    She looked back down at the notes she was scribbling. He noticed her handwriting. The Palmer Method. Enviable precision and economy. No nonsense.
    Hardy and C. P. Ardell stood nearby, also speaking on cell phones.
    Parker set the glass sheets on the examination table.
    Lukas shut off her phone. She looked at Cage and the others. “The safe house’s completely gone. PERT’s going through it but there’s nothing left. The computer and the disks were totaled.”
    Cage asked, “How ’bout the building the Digger shot from?”
    “As clean as the Texas Book Depository,” she said bitterly. “They