“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let’s just drop it.”
“If I say something contrary, will you think I am covering for her? Will I become a suspect then?”
“Don’t be extreme,” McCaskey said, looking back at his wife. “I was just thinking out loud. I don’t want to hit a speed bump every time I open my mouth. Look, just forget I said anything.”
“You are the one being extreme. I was simply pointing out that coming from Texas may be a false blip. Each of Senator Orr’s senior staff members comes from a state of the union. Would they all be flags as well?”
McCaskey turned back to the computer monitor. He intended to let the subject drop. He hoped that she would, too. He did not want to explain to the Spanish-born lady that Texans shared a special bond, that they helped Texans, that he would not be surprised to learn that Senator Orr had promised her the surgeon general job if she helped him. Yes, it was a leap. But that was what detective work was about.
McCaskey heard Maria breathing heavily through her nose. He tried to ignore her as he continued to read. Following her internship at the Cambridge Medical Center in Minnesota, Dr. Hennepin went to work at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center Department of Clinical Investigation. She was eventually promoted to assistant chief and placed in charge of the team performing oversight of research involving human, animal, and laboratory-related studies. When Hennepin was passed over for directorship of the division, she filed a discrimination complaint with the medical center and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Three weeks later, she went to work as the assistant medical examiner. Within the year, Dr. Hennepin had the top spot. There was no indication that anyone, Senator Orr included, had helped her. Of course, that was the kind of information that might be deleted if Dr. Hennepin were planning on becoming an assassin.
“Well? Did you find any other red banners?” Maria asked.
“Flags. And I’m not sure.”
“I learned to give injections, too,” Maria said testily. “My little sister Penelope is a diabetic.”
“You were with me last night,” McCaskey said. “Listen, hon. I said I’m sorry. Can we please just let it drop?”
“With pleasure,” she said.
McCaskey could hear the angry pout in her voice. This was not going to be buried until he put a stake in its heart. And maybe that was his responsibility. Some of the useful speculation in this case had come from her. He closed the Op-Center site, turned back to his wife, and took her hands.
“Maria, I do need help, your help,” he said. “We have a different idea what that entails, but I was wrong. I should have deferred to you.”
“Are you just saying that?”
“No. I got defensive. This whole situation, this whole goddamn week has been a nightmare. Forgive me?”
Maria hesitated, but not as long as she would have if she were really angry. “All right,” she said. “Then let me ask you something that I have been wondering.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you sure the killer was even a woman?” Maria asked.
“You mean, could it be a man dressed as a woman?”
“Yes.”
“That was one of the first things I considered. I asked Detective Superintendent Daily whether Wilson’s interests went in that direction. The Yard keeps track of such things about prominent citizens because potential blackmail could adversely impact the national economy. They also do not want the crown to be embarrassed by announcing a knighthood for someone who is trafficking pornography. They insist that Wilson is heterosexual.”
“Wilson may not have known his date was a man,” Maria replied. “Some of the ‘women’ who party at Los Pantalones Para Vestir a Club, in Madrid, are extremely convincing.”
“That is a possibility,” her husband agreed as he glanced into the hall. Detective Howell was hovering there like a buoy in rough seas. “Come on,” he said, still holding his wife’s hands. “Let’s get coffee and think about a next step.”
“I already have one, if you’ll consider it,” she said.
“I’m listening,” he said as they left the office. He thanked Detective Howell and said he would be in touch.
Maria stopped before Howell returned to his office. “Detective, would we have access to your laboratory if we need it?”
“Of course.” He went back to his office, wrote the number on a pad, and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said. She put the paper in her back pocket. “I am not sure it will be necessary, but this is good to have.”
The McCaskeys walked toward the stairwell.
“What was that about?” her husband asked.
“The dress is the key,” Maria said as they started down the concrete stairs to the first floor.
“I agree. That’s why I sent the security camera images to designers in the area, asked if they recognized it—”
“We will not learn the identity of whoever bought it,” she said, shaking her head. “You said that yourself about the nail polish. What I am saying is that we need to find the dress itself.”
“I have one man on that full-time. He had trash bins searched, fountains, and even a duck pond near the Hay-Adams dragged,” McCaskey told her.
“It would not have been discarded,” Maria said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Those were the first places you searched,” Maria said. “Our assassin—”
“Is experienced,” McCaskey said. “Fair assumption. Still, it might have been burned in a fireplace or stuffed in an incinerator.”
“An incinerator is not a guarantee of total destruction,” she said. “But I agree that it might have been consigned to a fireplace. Who among your potential suspects has one?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Even if we find out, we would need a reason to get a warrant. ‘They have a fireplace’ is just not good enough.”
“A warrant may not be necessary,” she said. “We may not even have to go inside. Not yet.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I know,” she smiled. “You should learn.”
“Ouch,” he said.
“Let’s go home,” Maria said. “We will need to do a little research before going out again.”
McCaskey agreed to the plan, but not just because debate would have been pointless and not because his wife was a sharp field op — something exhaustion and frustration had caused him to forget. It was simple math. A woman had sent the men of Scotland Yard, Op-Center, and the Metro Police into a dark alley with no discernable exit.
Maybe a woman was what they needed to get out.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Short, stocky Eric Stone had always been ambivalent about history. He could not affect it, and whatever impact it was going to have had already occurred. Moreover, he did not believe people could learn from it or, failing that, were doomed to repeat it. There were always nuances that made events different. Caesar was not Napoleon who was not Hitler who was not Stalin. Anyway, what was important in one era did not matter now. How many people, old and young, could name one thing Calvin Coolidge had done? Or who he was, for that matter.
While tourists and visitors to the convention center gathered around the time line of San Diego, Stone went about his business. He checked booths where attendees received their badges, made sure the media was present and able to set up their gear, determined that there would be a sufficient number of buses to run delegates to and from the nearby hotels. He did not care that hunting peoples of northeast Asia had crossed the Bering Ice Bridge and migrated to the south to hunt caribou, bison, and mammoth some twenty thousand years ago. It did not matter to him that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit the region, sailing from Mexico into San Diego Bay in 1542 and claiming the region for Spain. It was unimportant that sixty years later, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed from Mexico and named the region after the Spanish saint San Diego de Alcalá. The natives could have been hunting dodos, the Spanish men could have been French women, none of it mattered. The thirty-year-old was unapologetic about his interest in the present. That grew from spending time with his father, Phil, back in Indianapolis, when the fifty-year-old was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig’s disease. Not just dying from it but being disintegrated by it. His limbs folding in on themselves as his muscles atrophied, his organs failing. In a lucid moment before he succumbed entirely to living decomposition, the elder Stone told his only son that he regretted so much in his life. Becoming a mechanical engineer instead of a painter. Not spending more time with Eric instead of bowling and drinking with the guys.