The Devil's Teardrop

  The boy didn't respond.

  Parker left the book on his lap and remained in the scabby rocking chair, easing back and forth. Watching his son.

  Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, had died not long after their third daughter was born (the girl herself died at age two). Jefferson, who never remarried, had struggled to raise his two other girls by himself. As a politician and statesman he was often forced to be an absent father, a situation he truly hated. It was letters that kept him in touch with his children. He wrote thousands of pages to the girls, offering support, advice, complaints, love. Parker knew Jefferson as well as he knew his own father and could recall some letters from memory. He thought of one of these now, written when Jefferson was vice president and in the midst of fierce political battles between the rival parties of the day.

  Your letter, my dear Maria, of Jan. 21 was received two days ago. It was like the bright beams of the moon on the desolate heath. Environed here in scenes of constant torment, malice and obloquy, worn down in a state where no effort to render service can aver any thing, I feel not that existence is a blessing but when something recalls my mind to my family.

  Looking at his son, hearing his daughter bang pans downstairs, he worried, as he often did, if he was raising his own children right.

  How often he'd lain asleep at night worrying about this.

  After all, he'd separated two children from their mother. That the courts and all of his (and most of Joan's) friends agreed that it was the only sane thing to do made little difference to him. He hadn't become a single father by the quirk of death as Jefferson had; no, Parker had made that decision himself.

  But was it truly for the children that he'd done this? Or was it to escape from his own unhappiness? This is what tormented him so often. Joan had seemed so sweet, so charming, before they were married. But much of it, he'd realized, was an act. She was in fact cagey and calculating. Her moods whipped back and forth--cheerful for a while, she'd plunge into days of rage and suspicion and paranoia.

  When he'd met Joan he was learning how very different life becomes when you're still young and your parents die. The demilitarized zone between you and mortality is gone. You seek as a mate either someone to take care of you or, as Parker had done, someone to take care of.

  Don't you think it works out best that way? Nobody taking care of anybody else? That's a rule. Write it down.

  So it wasn't surprising that he sought out a woman who, though beautiful and charming, had a moody, helpless side to her.

  Naturally, not long after the Whos were born, when their married life demanded responsibility and sometimes just plain hard work and sacrifice, Joan gave rein to her dissatisfactions and moods.

  Parker tried everything he could think of. He went with her to therapy, took over more than his share of work with the children, tried joking her out of her funks, planned parties, took her on trips, cooked breakfasts and dinners for the family.

  But among the secrets Joan had kept from him was a family history of alcoholism and he was surprised to find that she'd been drinking much more than he'd believed. She'd do twelve-steps from time to time and try other counseling approaches. But she always lapsed.

  She withdrew further and further from him and the children, occupying her time with hobbies and whims. Taking gourmet cooking classes, buying a sports car, shopping compulsively, working out like an Olympian at a fancy health club (where she met husband-to-be Richard). But she always pulled back; she gave him and the children just enough.

  And then there was the Incident.

  June, four years ago.

  Parker returned home from work at the Bureau's document lab and found Joan gone, a baby-sitter looking after the Whos. This wasn't unusual or troublesome in itself. But when he went upstairs to play with the children he saw immediately that something was wrong. Stephie and Robby, then four and five, were sitting in their shared bedroom, assembling Tinkertoys. But Stephanie was groggy. Her eyes were unfocused and her face slick with sweat. Parker noticed that she'd thrown up on the way to the bathroom. He put the girl into bed and took her temperature, which was normal. Parker wasn't surprised that the baby-sitter hadn't noticed Stephanie's illness; children are embarrassed when they vomit or mess their pants and often try to keep accidents secret. But Stephie--and her brother--seemed much more evasive than Parker would have expected.

  The boy's eyes kept going to their toy chest. ("Watch the eyes first," his Handbook commands. "Listen to the words second.") Parker walked toward the chest and Robby started to cry, begging him not to open the lid. But of course he did. And stood, frozen, looking down at the bottles of vodka Joan had hidden there.

  Stephanie was drunk. She'd tried imitating Mommy, drinking Absolut--from her Winnie the Pooh mug.

  "Mommy said not to say anything about her secret," the boy told him, crying. "She said you'd be mad at us if you found out. She said you'd yell at us."

  Two days later he started divorce proceedings. He hired a savvy lawyer and got Child Protective Services involved before Joan made the false abuse claim the attorney thought she'd try.

  The woman fought and she fought hard--but it was the way someone fights to keep a stamp collection or a sports car, not something you love more than life itself.

  And in the end, after several agonizing months and tens of thousands of dollars, the children were his.

  He'd thought that he could concentrate on putting his life back together and giving the children a normal life.

  And he had--for the past four years. But now she was at it again, trying to modify the custody order.

  Oh, Joan, why are you doing this? Don't you ever think about them? Don't you understand that our egos--parents' egos--have to dissolve into benevolent vapor when it comes to our children? If he truly thought it would be better for Robby and Stephie to split their time between Parker and Joan he'd agree in a heartbeat; it would destroy part of him. But he'd do it.

  Yet he believed this would be disastrous for them. And so he'd duke it out with his ex-wife in court relentlessly and at the same time shield the children from the animosity of the proceedings. At times like this you fought on two fronts: You battled the enemy and you battled your own overwhelming desire to be a child yourself and share your pain with your children. But this you could never do.

  "Daddy," Robby said suddenly, "you stopped reading."

  "I thought you were asleep." He laughed.

  "My eyelids were just resting. They got tired. But I'm not."

  Parker glanced at the clock. Quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes until--

  No, don't think about that now.

  He asked his son, "You have your shield?"

  "Right here."

  "Me too."

  He picked up the book and began to read once more.

  22

  Margaret Lukas looked over the families at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

  She and Cage stood in the main entrance, where hundreds of people were gathering for parties and dinner. Lukas was wearing a navy-blue suit she'd designed and made herself. It was cut close to her body, made from expensive worsted wool, and it had a long, pleated skirt. She'd cut a special dart in the jacket to make certain that the Glock 10 on her hip did not ruin the stylish lines of the outfit. It would be perfect for the opera or a fancy restaurant but, as it happened, she had worn it only to weddings and funerals. She called it her married-buried suit.

  Fifteen minutes until eight.

  "Nothing, Margaret," came the gruff voice in her headset. C. P. Ardell's. He was downstairs at one entrance to the Ritz, the parking garage, pretending to be a slightly drunk holiday reveler. The big agent wore a considerably more mundane costume than Lukas's--stained jeans and a black leather biker's jacket. On his head was a Redskins hat, which he wore not because of the cold but because he had no hair to obscure the earphone wire of his radio. There were an additional sixty-five plainclothes agents in and around the hotel, armed with more weaponry than you'd find at an El Paso gun show.

/>   All looking for a man for whom they had virtually no description.

  Probably white, probably average build.

  Probably wearing a gold crucifix.

  In the lobby Lukas and Cage scanned the guests, the bellhops, the clerks. Nobody came close to matching their fragile description of the Digger. She realized they were standing with their arms crossed, looking just like well-dressed federal agents on stakeout.

  "Say something amusing," she whispered.

  "What?" Cage asked.

  "We're sticking out. Pretend we're talking."

  "Okay," Cage said, smiling broadly. "So whatta you think of Kincaid?"

  The question threw her. "Kincaid? What do you mean?"

  "I'm making conversation." A shrug. "Whatta you think of him?"

  "I don't know."

  "Sure you do," Cage persisted.

  "He's perp smart, not street smart."

  This time Cage's shrug was one of concession. "That's good. I like that." He said nothing more for a moment.

  "What're you getting at?" she asked.

  "Nothing. I'm not getting at anything. We're pretending to talk is all."

  Good, she thought.

  Focus . . .

  They studied a dozen other possible suspects. She dismissed them for reasons she knew instinctively but couldn't explain.

  Street smart . . .

  A moment later Cage said, "He's a good man. Kincaid."

  "I know. He's been very helpful."

  Cage laughed in the surprised way of his--the way that meant: I'm on to you. He repeated, "Helpful."

  More silence.

  Cage said, "He lost his parents just after college. Then there was that custody battle a few years ago. Wife was psycho."

  "That's hard," she said and made a foray into the crowd. She brushed up against a guest with a suspicious bulge under his arm. She recognized a cell phone immediately and returned to Cage. Found herself asking impulsively, "What happened? With his folks?"

  "Car accident. One of those crazy things. His mother'd just been diagnosed with cancer and it looked like they caught it in time. But they got nailed by a truck on Ninety-five on the way to Johns Hopkins for chemo. Dad was a professor. Met him a couple times. Nice guy."

  "Was he?" she muttered, distracted again.

  "History."

  "What?"

  "That's what Kincaid's dad taught. History."

  More silence.

  Lukas finally said, "I just need some phony conversation, Cage, not matchmaking."

  He responded, "Am I doing that? Would I do that? I'm only saying you don't meet a lot of people like Kincaid."

  "Uh-huh. We've got to stay focused here, Cage."

  "I'm focused. You're focused. He doesn't know why you're pissed at him."

  "Very simple. He wasn't being part of the team. I told him that. We settled it. End of story."

  "He's decent," Cage offered. "A stand-up guy. And he's smart--his mind's a weird thing. You should see him with those puzzles of his."

  "Yeah. I'm sure he's great."

  Focus.

  But she wasn't focusing. She was thinking about Kincaid.

  So he had his own capital I Incidents--deaths and divorce. A hard wife and a struggle to raise the children by himself. That explained some of what she'd seen before.

  Kincaid . . .

  And thinking about him, the document examiner, she thought again about the postcard.

  Joey's postcard.

  On the trip from which they'd never returned, Tom and Joey had been visiting her in-laws in Ohio. It was just before Thanksgiving. Her six-year-old son had mailed her a postcard from the airport before they boarded the doomed plane. Probably not a half hour before the 737 had crashed into the icy field.

  But the boy hadn't known you needed a stamp to mail postcards. He must have slipped it into the mailbox before his father knew what he was doing.

  It arrived a week after the funeral. Postage due. She'd paid for it and for the next three hours carefully peeled off the Postal Service sticker that had covered up part of her son's writing.

  Were having fun mommy. Granma and

  I made cookys

  I miss you. I love you mommy . . .

  A card from the ghost of her son.

  It was in her purse right now, the gaudy picture of a sunset in the Midwest. Her wedding ring was stored in her jewelry box but this card she kept with her all the time and would until she died.

  Six months after the crash Lukas had taken a copy of the card to a graphoanalyst and had her son's handwriting analyzed.

  The woman had said, "Whoever wrote this is creative and charming. He'll grow up to be a handsome man. And brilliant, with no patience for deception. He also has a great capacity for love. You're a very lucky woman to have a son like this."

  For ten dollars more the graphoanalyst had tape-recorded her comments. Lukas listened to the tape every few weeks. She'd sit by herself in her dark living room, put a candle on, have a drink--or two--and listen to what her son would have been like.

  Then Parker Kincaid shows up at FBI headquarters and announces with that know-all voice of his that graphoanalysis is nonsense.

  People read tarot cards too and talk to their dear departed. It's bogus.

  It's not! she now raged to herself. She believed what the graphoanalyst had told her.

  She had to. Otherwise she'd go insane.

  It's as if you lose a part of your mind when you have children. They steal it and you never get it back . . . Sometimes I'm amazed that parents can function at all.

  Dr. Evans's observation. She hadn't let on at the time but she knew it was completely true.

  And here was Cage trying to set her up. So, she and Kincaid were similar. They were smart (and, yes, arrogant). They were both missing parts of their lives. They both had their protective walls--his to keep the danger out, hers to keep herself from retreating inside, where the worst danger lay. Yet the same instincts that made her a good cop told her--for no reason that she could articulate--that there was no future between them. She had returned to a "normal" life as much as she ever could. She had her dog, Jean Luc. She had some friends. She had her CDs. Her runners' club. Her sewing. But Margaret Lukas was emotionally "plateaued," to use the Bureau term for an agent no longer destined for advancement.

  No, she knew she'd never see Parker Kincaid after tonight. And that was perfectly all right--

  The earphone crackled. "Margaret . . . Jesus Christ." It was C. P. Ardell, stationed downstairs.

  Instantly she drew her weapon.

  "You have the subject?" she whispered fiercely into her lapel mike.

  "No," the agent said. "But we've got a problem. It's a mess down here."

  Cage too was listening. His hand strayed to his own weapon as he looked at Lukas, frowning.

  C. P. continued. "It's the mayor. He's here with a dozen cops and, fuck, a camera crew too."

  "No!" Lukas snapped, drawing the attention of a cluster of partyers nearby.

  "They got lights and everything. The shooter sees this, he'll take off. It's like a circus."

  "I'll be right there."

  *

  "Your honor, this is a federal operation and I'll have to ask you to leave right now."

  They were in the parking garage. Lukas noted immediately that there was a controlled entrance and exit--to get in you needed to take a ticket. That meant that license plates were recorded and that in turn meant that the Digger would probably not come in this way--the unsub would have told him not to leave a record of his visit. But Mayor Kennedy and his damn entourage were headed for the main entrance to the hotel, where he and his uniformed bodyguards could be spotted in a minute by the killer.

  And for God's sake, a camera crew?

  Kennedy looked down at Lukas. He was a head taller. He said, "You have to get the guests out of here. Evacuate them. When the killer shows up let me talk to him."

  Lukas ignored him and said to C. P., "Any of them get into
the hotel itself?"

  "No, we stopped 'em here."

  Kennedy continued. "Evacuate! Get them out!"

  "We can't do that," she said. "The Digger'll know something's wrong."

  "Well, tell them to go their rooms at least."

  "Think about it, Mayor," she snapped. "Most of them aren't guests. They're just locals--here for dinner and parties. They don't have rooms."

  Lukas looked around the entrance to the hotel and the street outside. It wasn't crowded--the stores were all closed for the holiday. She whispered fiercely, "He could be here at any minute. I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Thought about adding "sir." She didn't.

  "Then I'm going to have to go over your head. Who's your supervisor?"

  "I am," Cage said. No shrugs now. Just a cold glare. "You have no jurisdiction here."

  The mayor snapped, "So, who's your supervisor?"

  "Somebody you don't want to call, believe me."

  "Let me be the judge of that."

  "No," Lukas said firmly, glancing at her watch. "The Digger could be in the building right now. I don't have time to argue with you. I want you and your people out of here now!"

  Kennedy looked at his aide--what was his name? Jefferies, she believed. A reporter was nearby, filming the entire exchange.

  "I'm not going to let the FBI risk those people's lives. I'm going to--"

  "Agent Ardell," she said, "put the mayor in custody."

  "You can't arrest him," Jefferies snapped.

  "Yes, she can," Cage said angrily now, with the most minute of shrugs. "And she can arrest you too."

  "Get him out of here," Lukas said.

  "Lockup?"

  Lukas considered. "No. Just stay with him and keep him out of our hair until the operation's over."

  "I'm call my lawyer and--"

  A flash of anger burst inside her, as bright as the one that made her explode at Kincaid. She looked up at him, pointed a finger at his chest. "Mayor, this is my operation and you're interfering with it. I'll let you go on your way with Agent Ardell or, so help me, I'll have you detained downtown. It's entirely up to you."

  There was a pause. Lukas wasn't even looking at the mayor; her eyes were scanning the parking lot, the sidewalks, the shadows. No sign of anyone who might be the Digger.

  Kennedy said, "All right." He nodded toward the hotel. "But if there's any bloodshed tonight, it'll be on your hands."

  "Goes with the territory," she muttered, recalling she'd threatened Kincaid with the same words. "Go on, C. P."