Caged
Excerpt
The sirens went dead as a fire truck, an ambulance, and three black-and-whites pulled up to the secluded Menlo Park property. Leaping out of their vehicles, the rescuers poured onto the manicured lawn in a blur of movement. In a battle with death, they had not a moment to spare.
With a radio pressed to his ear and one hand on his weapon, Sergeant Blum absorbed the scene. An older woman knelt by the victim, holding her face as she wept. A golden retriever stood at the woman's side, front paws pressed into the ground and barking a high-pitched distressed sounding yelp. Blum caught sight of the object of the dog's preoccupation-a tennis ball.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, the middle aged sergeant leaned over, hands on his knees. The dog's master was dead, but the dog wanted to play-so much for loyalty.
The victim lay on the neatly cropped lawn, a dark shape in the morning light. Four towering coral trees, just leafing now, formed a square, in the middle of which the body lay like some grotesque centerpiece. One officer called out to the woman to step back, as three others dropped to the man's side. Within seconds they determined that they were too late. There came the briefest of pauses before they began collapsing the equipment.
"Call the meat wagon," Blum whispered to his partner, who nodded and quickly turned back to the squad car. The victim wore worn jeans and a white shirt-odd apparel for such an old man. White shoulder length hair played against the sharp features of his face-high cheekbones, long forehead, large hooked nose and dramatically sunken eye sockets. A cigarette, perched between long bony yellowed fingers, burnt down to the filter. The bullet had found his heart, and the dark pool of his blood made a grisly contrast against the white of his shirt, though the grass had absorbed much of this.
An envelope lay on the victim's stomach, just below the spread of blood.
"So the killer left us a note," Blum's voice rang with sarcasm. "If only all perps could be so kind. Fetch me a pair of gloves, will you?"
He turned back to the old woman, now standing a good twelve feet from the victim. She wore a pink silk robe that perfectly matched her flowered pajamas. Trembling hands held her face as she wept piteously, softly.
Tail wagging, haunches slightly lowered, the nervous dog continued to ignore her dead master and weeping mistress and instead nosed the ball towards the Sergeant's feet, an invitation to play. He recognized the darkened substance on the ball. "Jesus," Blum muttered as he realized what it was. The damn dog must have kept pushing the ball to the pool of blood.
"Ma'am, can we put the dog inside?"
The question seemed to confuse her at first as she looked up and around, drawing a deep unsteady breath. "Just open the front door-"
Sergeant Blum motioned to another officer, who quickly stepped forward and seized the dog's collar. "Find a hose and rinse the dog's mouth off," he whispered. "And get that ball-"
"For forensics?"
"Just in case," Blum nodded.
Her gaze still fixed on the ball, the dog jerked from the officer's hold and seized the bloodied ball first. The sergeant expelled a colorful curse as he stepped into action, leaning forward to grab the dog's collar again. Again, she leapt back, escaping his grasp. A wagging tail announced the game was on.
It took three cops and five minutes before the ball was bagged and the dog brought into the house.
Blum finally returned to the woman. "And your name is?"
"Levine," she said, her voice slowed, weighted by the emotion. "Doris. This is my husband, Ken. Dr. Kenneth Levine."
The name rang a bell in the sergeant's mind, though he couldn't remember where he had heard it before. "Can you tell us what happened?"
The old woman shook her head, clutching at her chest as if searching for something to hang on to. "Molly woke me up. She seemed to be barking at something outside. I was thinking..." She shook her head. "And then I saw him..."
"Did you see any cars or-"
"No, no, nothing."
The Sergeant motioned to another officer to see the lady inside.
The emergency over, an ambulance attendant talked about his police application with one of the cops as the men packed up the equipment. A couple of neighbors began to appear-an early morning jogger, a young man holding a newspaper, another older woman with a cup of coffee. A uniformed police officer held the audience back as he spoke into his radio.
"What'd you think?" Blum asked Walker, one of the firemen. "Up close or what?" Walker nodded grimly, "Point blank to the heart."
The sergeant knelt down again as someone finally handed him a pair of gloves. He carefully lifted the envelope. Removing the sheet of paper, he shook it open, and read it. Now he remembered where he had heard Dr. Levine's name before.
"Geezus," he said. "I'm gonna need the FBI..."
---------
A nudist camp and a serial killer-an unlikely pairing, to say the least.
Joyce Jones stood with agents Lawson and Daly, shielded from view by large granite boulders. The springtime sun shone hot and bright through the early morning air. Piles of boulders blocked the river's flow to create a natural swimming hole. A forest of giant Sequoias spread out on the far side, while a narrow strip of beach lined the other. Two dozen nude sunbathers crowded the sandy bank. Clearly these weren't the same folks who worried about dieting or worked out at the gym, Joyce noticed. There were a surprising number of old folks, too, like an early bird special at Denny's.
Seven other agents were hidden around the beach, including the other side of the river, in the unlikely event that the suspect thought to escape that way. Backup numbered fourteen uniformed officers, waiting just beyond the dirt parking lot. The suspect was not going to get away.
Joyce got her first good look at the man through binoculars.
Gary Davon. Age: 36. Height: Six foot two. Caucasian-like most of her fellow FBI agents, and the serials killers they sometimes caught. Well built, muscular, brown eyes and hair. Handsome in a Marlboro man kind of way-if you didn't take into consideration his proclivity to rape, slit throats, and set a whole crime scene ablaze to destroy the evidence. Right now he was lying on his side, laughing with an unidentified female who was naked, unnaturally blonde and tan.
The agents had to wait for the lady to get up. No hostage situations today.
Joyce lowered the binoculars and reached for her cup of lukewarm coffee. She looked nothing like an FBI agent, let alone a veteran of twelve years. Carefully controlled selection guaranteed that FBI agents were almost uniformly indistinct in appearance, the kind of people who disappeared in a crowd. Due to the push to hire minority candidates, the powers that be made an exception for Joyce Jones. There was nothing ordinary about her appearance.
All the best features of her parents met in Joyce: dark skin the color of café au lait, almond eyes set above high cheekbones, a finely shaped mouth, all framed by a short, no-nonsense haircut. Her height was startling, too-a hundred and forty pounds of well placed muscle carved into a feminine form that stood at least five foot ten. She had placed third on the physical test-the first woman to place in the top ten in FBI history. Today, she wore gray silk shorts and a sleeveless white blouse with matching blazer-though she'd discarded the latter a while ago in the usual warm morning air. The whole ensemble was accessorized by her handy Glock-knock-your's-socks off gun cradled in a shiny black shoulder holster.
The suspect appeared to be unarmed. He had removed a pair of trunks, a t-shirt and sandals, which remained in plain view on a large light blue towel, alongside a can of Diet Coke.
The scents of pine and suntan lotion combined in an intoxicating elixir that brought back carefree afternoons from her childhood, memories utterly incongruent with the current situation. She heard the faint rustle of a light breeze through the trees, the rush of running water, and the distant sounds of people frolicking on the beach. There was a lot of burnt skin out there, too, she noticed distractedly. A lot of first timers, it seemed.
Joyce imagined chasing, subduing, and shooting the suspect. The oh-so pleasant fantasy disappeared with a sigh. She just didn't get out in the field enough these days.
This would be her second collar this month. She had a murder one, special circumstances, collar three weeks ago. The Randolph case, a man who had shot a janitor and nurse at an abortion clinic in San Jose two years ago. Her arrest went national. The FBI rewarded the good collar with a nice bonus, which she fantasized spending on a long and lavish Hawaiian vacation. In reality it would remain in her bank account gathering interest like dust.
Work had always been an obsession, and over the years it had washed away her sensibilities, she knew. She had become the kind of person who wouldn't notice the weather unless it got in her way. She kept a small, select group of people in her life-her mother, of course; Kimberly; and Toni, but that was all. She loved movies, but rarely saw any. She adored multi-coursed ethnic restaurants, but never had time. She craved books, but usually fell asleep within minutes of parting the covers. Every time she began contemplating the steps she'd need to take to get herself a life, some darn fool would create a murder scene.
"How'd you make this guy, Jones?" Agent Daly asked, though with a hint of hesitancy. Yesterday's crime scene had been gruesome. They all knew she blamed them for it, and were justifiably hesitant to provoke her.
Joyce locked eyes with him, letting him see her contempt before looking away. Resting against the boulder casually as if they might be waiting all day, Daly had that pale, pasty complexion common to those her friend Kimberly called the "pink people." "My mother would have made him," she said sharply.
She had just begun another case when the newspaper informed her about the arrest of two suspects in the Santa Cruz Mountain murders' case. She saw at once how badly Richard Hull, supervising agent in charge, was bungling the investigation. It had started with the homicides of two tourists, a mother and daughter. They were reported missing, foul play suspected. A day later the rental car and the two bodies found. The victims' had probably been raped, their throats slit and their bodies stuffed in the trunk; the car had been set aflame and burnt to a crisp. They found the car off a fire road after the killer had sent the local sheriff a note directing them to it.
The FBI arrested five suspects on outstanding warrants. All five had prior sexual assaults; all five were known drug users. They narrowed this list down to two men, Peters and Gavin, on the far-flung, totally unsubstantiated theory that they had been working together. The priors consisted of consensual sex with an underage minor and a rape and battery claim made by an ex-wife wanting child support. They found a fiber-a yellow blanket in Peter's trailer that matched a fiber found in the rental car. Both men failed the lie detector tests.
Richard Hull went on TV and announced that they had the killers.
"No. Really. How'd you know it wasn't Peters and Gavin?"
Joyce tried to breathe in calmly, but she could hardly think about it without seething. Suddenly everyone wanted to know how she'd put the make on this guy. Last week no one would listen to her. She probably couldn't have gotten Daly on the phone.
"The crime scene was the mayhem left by one man."
"Yeah?" he asked, skeptically. "How do you figure?"
"Rape and slash? Loner's game."
A hearty laugh from farther down the beach drew their attention. The suspect smoothed lotion over the woman's back, his voice lowered with intimacy. Joyce stifled a wave of nausea. She wanted to get this over with, to get that man away from any more potential victims.
Daly loosened his starched white collar and cheap copper-colored tie. Perspiration lined his brow; the day's heat intensified by the minute. They were all on edge, tense with the anticipation of action.
"But they failed the lie detector tests," Paul Lawson offered defensively.
"They're two lowlife meth addicts, for heaven's sake, guilty and crazy as all get-out. Lie detector tests are worthless with drug addicts. Any two-bit defense lawyer could tell you that."
"The fiber evidence? That was clean; that was good."
"That was dumb," Joyce said bluntly. "Those blankets go for $9.99 at Walmart and $11.99 at Penny's. I have two of them. Ask your wife. She's got 'em in a closet for when your kids have a sleepover or someone is sick."
Daly and Lawson's expressions showed they were both impressed and contrite.
"So I knew the killer was still out and about. I tried to tell you guys, but no one would listen. You needed another body to figure it out."
Harsh words, but true. She didn't care. God knows, they deserved worse.
Joyce took up the binoculars again, missing the exchange of looks.
Daly cleared his throat. "Jorgensen said you went through dozens local police files. Found five matching MOs."
"Haven't slept for weeks," she replied.
Work was always been an obsession, an obsession that grew over the years. She had become the kind of person who wouldn't notice the weather unless it irritated her. She kept a small, select group of people in her life-her mother of course, Kimberly, and Toni who shared her love of ballets, but that was all. She loved movies, but rarely saw any. She adored multi-coursed ethnic restaurants, but never had time. She craved books, especially challenging ones, but she usually fell asleep within minutes of parting the covers.
This hadn't even been her case. Once she saw the pattern-five other unsolved homicides in the last four years, each female victim having been raped with her throat slit, and three of them set on fire-she alerted Hull again. Disbelieving still, he tried to fit these murders with Gavin and Peters, wasting more time that the culprit used to kill again.
She started through every person interviewed in relation to the case, and there was Gary Devon staring at her from a DMV photo. She remembered his name from her days at SFPD-the brother of Stephen Devon, a little boy who had been kidnapped by a sexual predator and held as a sexual slave for ten years. Gary Devon's mother and father had become rather unbalanced after the kidnapping; it was not something parents recovered from. Seeing the familiar face in the DMV photo, everything became instantly clear-especially the "kind" note indicating the location of his latest victims. In the loopy way disturbed minds worked, Gary Devon happily raped victims and slit their throats, but somehow couldn't bare the idea of a family wondering whether their loved one was dead or alive. Such was the insane self-centeredness of murderers.
Sure enough Gary Devon's employment history corresponded with the past homicides. He had worked as a handyman at the motel where the first two victims stayed the night they were murdered. Finally Richard Hull had to listen, but it was too late. The fourth body had turned up yesterday. Devon was flying high now; the killing spree had begun in earnest.
The woman rose and moved toward the water now, as the suspect remained on his towel, staring after her. Joyce saw the hand signal from Richard Hull across the way-the go sign.
She quickly removed her shoulder harness and Glock, handing these to Daly. The gun would be a giveaway, and she would not need it anyway; she would be the distraction. A well dressed black woman walking through a nudist camp would get attention all right, but no one would immediately think 'cop,' not until it was too late, and he was already surrounded.
Joyce slipped off her shoes. Barefoot, she moved out, the hot sand barely registering beneath the thick calluses-she earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. She stopped directly in front of Devon and stared off at the water as if trying to decide whether or not to take a plunge. Mentally she cautioned herself to use restraint. She wanted to clean up all the unsolved cases after all, and she'd need him alive to do it.
"Hey lady, you're blocking my view."
Joyce offered a cold smile. "Well, shoot. That's too bad."
Devon's gaze assessed her from behind dark glasses. His next line would be crude.
"I'd be looking at something else if she stripped down and joined the crowd."
"I bet. Tell me, which gives you the bigger bang: the raping or the throat slitting? Like right now. Are you imagining raping me or cutting my throat?"
Comprehension registered on the suspect's face, and he moved unhurriedly for something concealed in the folds of his towel. Time began to slow as Joyce watched him unsheathe a clean seven-inch blade and start to rise. Boy, had she missed that call.
Jumping in front of Devon, she kicked hard against first his hand. The knife went flying. Her foot connected to his chin, his head snapped back. With a force shocking in its speed and intensity, her heel smacked into his chest, collapsing his esophagus and causing him to black out for a good five seconds. He fell backside to the ground. He came to, only to feel a sickening crack of bone as darkness washed over him again.
When he came around the second time, five guns aimed at his head. Screams ricocheted through the forest. Beachgoers dressed frantically, grabbing towels and bags as they fled. Joyce had to catch her breath. Someone was reading Gary Devon his rights. And Richard Hull was saying something about how they might have shot if she hadn't disarmed him so quickly.
All the pressure, the anger, the sleepless nights of worry exploded in that moment. "Right," she snapped. "You wanted to shoot the suspect. What century is this? And tell me, would that have been before he cut into me, or after? 'Cause you see, Hull, I have damn good reasons not to trust the speed of your operations."
Hull's face flared with color. "Wait one minute, Jones! I would remind you that I am the-"
"Save it," Joyce interrupted curtly, ignoring the half dozen agents who had turned to stare. "The only thing you can possibly remind me of is a young woman, raped, and cut up and left like rubbish in the creek bed."
A stunned silence ensued; no one else had the nerve to speak like that to a supervising agent, particularly Hull. It was broken only by Devon's howl of pain as uniformed officers grasped his broken arm, cuffing and pushing him to the waiting squad car.
Joyce walked away, ostensibly to answer her beeper-it was headquarters, she saw-but more to avoid really letting Hull have it. She ducked back behind the boulders and braced herself as anger washed over her.
The young woman, Win Howard, had been a new ranger. She loved her job leading children on wildlife field trips. She loved the new home she had just bought. It was everything she'd dreamed about-except for the isolation. She would be all alone in the wilderness.
They found her body in the creek bed behind her house. Raped. Her throat slashed. Joyce had interviewed Win's best friend as she wept, full of a sickened horror that would last a lifetime. It had been Win's very first week alone in her new house. She worried about staying there alone at night, but was determined to overcome that fear.
Win Howard had put up a ferocious fight.
Nightmarish images flew at Joyce: the overturned lamp and table, the open silverware drawer, the hair still clutched in stiffened fingers, the dark pool of the young woman's blood.
She was one day too late. One day.
The anger was like an avalanche. She struggled to find a measure of control, but a vibrating phone interrupted the attempt.
"Jones, here."
"Rosco. We've had a homicide in Menlo Park. You've been assigned. They're holding the murder scene for you."
"I'm in the field! I just collared Gary Devon, the serial-"
"We know where you are, Jones," Rosco interrupted. "This has priority. Director Nelson should be there inside of ten minutes."
Staring unkindly at her dead phone, Joyce tried to catch up with all this. Jack Nelson was escorting her to a crime scene? This was definitely a first. The victim would be neither poor nor colored. He'd be white, wealthy and important enough to command an agent's immediate arrival at his death scene, accompanied by none other than the regional director himself.
She hadn't met Jack Nelson yet. All she knew was that he was a white, middle-aged male. Two strikes going in (she had nothing against his age). Added to those limitations was the fact that he's come over from Justice, rather than through FBI ranks.
The new black electric SUV, a product of the administrations' green culture, pulled into the parking lot just as Joyce finished filling in a surprisingly contrite Hull on her investigation. The door opened, a man emerged. Jack Nelson. Tall, maybe six four, and hunched over as if burdened by the weight of the world. He talked into a cell phone. Gray edged over his short brown hair, and his free hand nervously smoothed his moustache as he continued to talk into the phone, his gaze hidden behind dark glasses. He wore baggy corduroy pants and a light blue shirt-definitely not standard FBI. An unused tie spilled out of his back pocket, ready in the event of an emergency, but otherwise unneeded. He looked like an unkempt college professor.
She had heard he was an FOD-Friend of the Director-one of his best friends in fact. He had been pulled into the FBI from the Justice Department, where he had been a federal prosecutor specializing in banking fraud and embezzlement before being anointed the FBI's general counsel. Then his wife had died.
Rumor had it he had returned from a leave of absence to take on the San Francisco directorship from the outgoing Clives. He probably thought that he needed a new setting, that San Francisco's sunshine and fog might make his tragedy go away. She knew from experience it would not.
"It's not my problem anymore," he said into the phone wearily, shutting it as he approached their small group. Hull made the introductions before turning back to direct the local police and remaining agents.
"Mr. Nelson," she greeted him, taking his measure. She knew by the way he stared at her that her appearance was a surprise.
"I've been looking forward to meeting you," he said, smiling. The smile seemed forced, as if it required a determined effort. "I've heard so much about you." he added.A shrill beep returned him to his phone as he led her to the SUV. Swinging into the seat, she noticed the floor littered with fast food wrappers, old Starbucks cups, gym clothes and old tennis shoes-a mess. The car started with a thrilling silence. (She loved modern technology; no gas, pollution of noise; the future was here.)
Jack pulled onto the main road, barking brief orders concerning a legal matter into the phone, while somehow managing to reach into his shirt pocket and withdraw a small bottle of Advil. Deftly popping the lid, he tossed three tablets into his mouth, swallowing them dry. He ended the one phone call only to take another.
Must have calls backed up to Wednesday. Joyce tried not to listen, but the compelling absence of emotion in his tone caught her attention. He sounded as if he had just given up, and his participation in the world now reached no deeper than the surface. He lifted his sunglasses and rubbed his forehead as he drove. Dark circles underlined his tired eyes. Big problems here, she supposed, though thankfully none of her business.
He finally managed to silence his phone, offering, "Congratulations on this case--a fine bit of police work."
She nodded. "It's some kind of relief, putting him away."
"Fourteen murder one convictions," he whistled. "And you're only thirty-eight."
The number surprised Joyce every time she thought about it. She never thought about her age in relation to her accomplishments, but she often thought of it in relation to children. She felt she still had plenty of time for children, but of course she knew she was deluding herself. The reality was that she wasn't at all sure she wanted children. She might consider it if she found a man who was kind, intelligent, career-oriented, a feminist, politically astute, tall, black as night, sexy as all get-out, free of drug problems, and who was happy to split all responsibilities fifty-fifty. Since Barack Obama was already happily married, the odds of finding this man were astronomical. In other words, she wasn't holding her breath.
"So what's this case about?"
"A murder. They can only hold the crime scene so long, and I wanted our best agent on the case. I thought I'd drive you down myself and run through the preliminary interviews with the family. Even before this shooting, I was getting a lot of heat on this issue. So now of course it has my attention. It has all of our attention."
Joyce's mind had stuck on the words "the best." The compliment went through her in a rush of feeling. She knew she was good, but the best? The idea terrified her.
"I need an agent of your caliber to take over this task force, you see. Since taking this job, I've had calls from three congressmen, eight senators, the director of the National Institute of Health, and two CEOs from surgical instrument companies, to name just a few of the interested parties."
"The victim?"
"Ken Levine. A research scientist at Stanford, one of the main targets of the animal rights community. Shot dead point blank range. A note from the Animal Rights "Liberation Army" was left on his body."
"Animal rights. community?"
"What do you know about them?"
"Nothing," she lied. She knew all about animal rights. Animal rights was a white person's luxury, a thing they cared about after the mortgage was paid, the college fund started, and the lady of the house discovered extra time on her hands. Animal rights had meant nothing to her until recently when the FBI started throwing resources at this, ah, monkey business. The way she saw it was some scientist kept hundreds of rats, bunnies or even monkeys in cages, doing God knows what to them, and the animal crazies find out. They protest, sometimes they even arrange a hose in a car, or spray paint on a building. The FBI ridiculously sets them alongside Bin Laden and Timothy McVey as terrorists and suddenly a rag-tag bunch of hippies command some serious police resources. When laid against the injustice of the thousands of poor black and brown people being shot in the cross fire of gang warfare, murders no one was investigating, animal rights became infuriating.
"The powers that be decided to seriously go after animal rights/eco terrorists. The so called shac 7-"
"A fiasco," Joyce interrupted unkindly. "Smashing up a couple of hummers does not rate with the Oklahoma City bombing." She shook her head, sighed, remembering a recent task force presentation on this subject: "These people have training a Mossad operative would envy," the agent began. "There are two camps in England that we know about, but even the CIA hasn't been able to get close. These people are good, absolute pros, the kind of criminals that know how to operate the system. And they're just getting better." "I guess I'm the only one who feels that way."
"Trust me," Jack assured her, "You weren't the only one, but now that they've started murdering scientists, well, doesn't that change things for you?"
After a brief moment's reflection, Joyce conceded with a nod. "So this Ken Levine was a target of-"
His cell rang again, interrupting her mid-sentence. "Jack Nelson here." His face changed with confusion. "The principal of-oh, Sister Benedict. What's wrong?"
She never meant to listen, but the alarm in Jack's voice warned that something terrible had happened. She removed her phone from her oversized purse and made a show of checking her messages.
"The sisters found Sara in the tower again? Oh God.." He seemed to collapse suddenly. "I'll get her help," he whispered slowly. "No, I want her to remain in school. I'll pick her up myself." He remained silent for several moments as he drove, attempting, it seemed, to regain his composure.
"How about some coffee?" He motioned to the ubiquitous Starbucks rushing at them.
"You never have to even ask me that," she said. "The answer is always the same."
Minutes later she was happily armed with a drip, laced with three espresso shots. Oddly, he had ordered the same, as if he could not generate the effort required to make such a simple decision. No doubt a significant portion of his life was characterized by the word whatever.
Lights on the dashboard were the only indication he had started the car.
"Here, look at the file." He pushed a button on the console. The glove compartment opened, presenting a computer. Like something out of a James Bond movie. "It should be right there. Hit any key."
The car pulled out into traffic as she began perusing the file.
"You have to admit these animal rights people have always done serious damage."
"I can see that," she said after a moment. Major arson, breaking into laboratories and destroying the premises and ruining federally funded research. Just last month they apparently burned down a brand-new four million dollar laboratory at UC Davis.
"In speaking with various agents, a number of them felt certain it was only a matter of time before these guys started killing people. I'm told the NIH receives hundreds of letters threatening death, destruction, bombs. They even have this website where they list all the scientists they mean to kill. Guess who was on it."
"Our victim Levine?" When he nodded, she commented, "It's like that sinister list of federal judge maintained by the patriots."
"Exactly. Look at the next file."
Joyce found herself looking at seven photos of laboratory destruction.
"That was cancer research laboratory. The animal liberation army broke in and stole fifty-three dogs and cats before destroying the premises. Estimated cost: three and a half million."
Joyce examined the next set of photos. "Here's a lab at UC Berkeley. Destroyed. Twenty-three primates stolen. Three million dollars damage in addition to the lost of a five-year four million dollar grant. There's a UC Riverside break-in, too. Four monkeys stolen from a study on the effects of blindness, but also hundreds of pigeons, cats and rats taken from other studies and six laboratories destroyed." After reading through the files, she noticed, "They seem to be operating locally, out of the Bay area-"
"But they hit nationally. You never know where they'll show up."
"Shaq seven were small time compared to this," Joyce said.
"I've been told the Shaq seven arrests were really just an attempt to reach them."
Joyce found a woman staring at her from a photograph buried in the file: attractive, white, brown hair, blue eyes. "Who's this?"
Jack glanced over. "Dr. Lexy Marie Bates. Runs a primate center somewhere in the North Bay area. Well respected in the scientific community, but her organization opposes the use of primates in research settings. Passionate, they say."
"But not enough to shoot," Joyce knew. Passion rarely, if ever, drove women to pick up a gun, and thank God for that-otherwise half the men on the planet would be history.
"The next bunch are break in suspects."
She flipped through these photos of two men and two women, stopping on the utterly benign appearance of Emma Merton: twenty-six years old, a halo of blonde hair surrounding pretty eyes, a gentle smile. Looks could be deceptive, of course; Nazi camp guards, serial killers, Emma Merton-they might look like your next-door neighbor. She read the two ridiculous police reports attached to the woman's file--implications in the theft of a puppy and a bird-that was all they had on her.
Suddenly she was suddenly anxious to get to the crime scene.
Coffee always worked wonders.