Touching Evil

She met his gaze squarely. "I don't much care who gets the credit either, Andy. Or who helps. Just as long as we get this animal in a cage where he belongs."

"Drummond's going to shit a brick." Andy sighed. "He's already blasted me once today, John, thanks to you. Do me a favor and keep that famous profile of yours off the front page from now on, will you?"

"I'll do my best. And none of us wants Drummond to find out too soon, believe me. If and when he does find out, it'll be me who called them in-not you or anyone under Drummond."

Andy eyed him wryly. "You got a death wish?"

"I can handle Drummond." John smiled. "I've been handling men like him for fifteen years."

"He's got a lot of juice in this town, John."

"So have 1.1 just haven't used much of it yet."

"Okay, okay. As long as you understand he will not be happy. And as long as none of my people gets the blame."

"They won't."

"In that case-when do I get to meet these agents of yours? I like to know who I'm working with."

"We can meet up at the hotel whenever you like, but Quentin and Kendra are out now trying to find out all they can about this supposed kidnapping. They didn't think it was any more likely than your people did, but like Maggie said-whoever sent that note might know something about Samantha Mitchell, and we need to find out what that might be."

"Think they can find out something before my people can?" It wasn't-quite-a challenge.

John smiled. "Well, let's just say I've learned never to bet against Quentin. One way or another, he usually finds what he goes looking for."

CHAPTE R ELEVEN

Andy decided to strictly limit who in his department would know of the FBI agents' involvement, choosing to tell Scott and Je

"All my people have busted their asses on this case," he told Maggie and John, "but these two kids took some initiative and thought outside the box. Besides, I know for a fact they'll be happy about it-and not everybody would."

Scott and Je

"Maybe they'll be able to track down why the 1894 date is important. If it is," Je

Andy looked at the stacks of files on the conference table and sighed. "Yeah, go ahead. Nothing in this mess is helping us."

Scott asked, "Je

She gri

With a grimace, Scott said, "It is not fun being the low man on the totem pole." But he seemed cheerful enough as he picked up a file box and followed Je

"They need to be busy," Andy told Maggie and John with a sigh. "Neither one of them has been a detective long enough to be comfortable with the realization that seventy-five percent of police work is sitting around-either going through papers, trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of facts, or just trying to talk through the problem until it starts to make sense."

"Sometimes I think most of life is like that," John offered wryly.

"I don't blame them for being restless," Maggie said, her brooding gaze fixed on the bulletin board. "It's hell just sitting here waiting. Wondering when the phone is going to ring."

When it did at that moment, Andy lifted a brow at her and scooped it up. He said, "Bre

As soon as he hung up, John guessed, "Samantha Mitchell?"

"No," Andy said heavily. "The bastard's having a busy week. We've got another missing woman."

In the storage room of the Central precinct station, Je

Worse, there was absolutely no sign of any more files for 1934. For that entire decade, as a matter of fact.

After more than an hour of fruitless search, she was dusty, irritable, and had three paper cuts and a headache. She was also inclined to appreciate computers a lot more than she had before all this had started. Those machines had their bad points, but at least they didn't get dust up her nose or slice up her fingers.

She made her way to the station's lounge and sat down with a soft drink, glumly considering her options. They weren't promising. Maybe Scott could track down those files lost in a move to a new building, but it didn't seem likely. Unless she wanted to physically visit every storage room and basement of every station in the city-and she did not-then she had to accept that this particular trail might well have dead-ended.

Je

She had been so sure that something useful would be found in the old files. Oh, she'd been offhand about it with Scott, but from the moment she had seen that first sketch from 1934, the adrenaline rush had been intense. All her instincts had been screaming at her. Finally, after all these months, a break in the investigation.

Except that it wasn't, of course. Dammit.

"Hey, Seaton, what're you doing in our neck of the woods?"

She looked up and managed a faint smile for Terry Lynch as he joined her at the table. "Slumming, of course."

He eyed her consideringly, his deceptively open face as friendly and guileless as always but his gaze sharp. "There's a smear of gray dust on your nose."

"Because you have a filthy storage room," she told him, using a paper napkin to dab at her face.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Looking for anything interesting?"

Je

But he nodded gravely, only his wry blue eyes telling her he knew she was bullshitting him. In a chatty tone, he said, "You guys any closer to getting that rapist?"

"Not so you'd notice."

"Just heard there's another woman missing."

"Oh, shit. Do we know it's him?"

Terry shrugged. "I think your boss is checking it out; any woman goes missing in the city, you guys get the call, you know that."

Je

"Looks like."

She barely hesitated. "Are you hearing anything on the streets, Terry?" He was a patrolman, having failed the detective exam Je

He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup and hunched his shoulders in the thinking posture she recognized with a pang. "Not really."

"Not really? So you did hear something-but aren't sure it means anything?"

His smile twisted. "Still reading me like a book. Yeah, there was one thing. I was going to call you, but… hell, Je

"In this case," she told him dryly, "screwy is begi