“The good old boy network,” she said softly. “I know all about it.”
“Give him time.”
“I told you. We haven’t got time.”
She pulled her briefcase onto her lap and started rooting through it.
Louis stared at the cars inching along in the baking sun. He felt the need to say something conciliatory.
“So, how’d you come to work for the bureau?” he asked.
“I joined after getting my master’s degree at Stanford.”
“And before that?”
She leveled her eyes at him. “If you’re trying to find out if I was ever on the street, the answer is, no, I wasn’t.” She turned her attention back to the briefcase. “Except for the week they made us ride with the NYPD.”
Louis glanced at her. “I wasn’t-”
“Yes, you were,” she said quickly.
They crept along in silence. Emily rummaged furiously through the briefcase. She finally pulled out a file and tossed the briefcase to the floor with an impatient grunt. She started reading the file.
Louis kept silent. Great. Emily Farentino didn’t have any real experience. Wainwright was going to go nuts when he found out. He wasn’t exactly happy about it himself. Shit, he wasn’t happy about Wainwright retiring from some obscure division of the FBI, for God’s sake. He found himself wondering how long it would be before they were forced by public pressure to lateral the case over to the sheriff’s department. Wainwright would be back to busting shoplifters at the Sereno Key drugstore. And he himself would be on a plane back to Michigan.
He let out a sigh.
“What?” Emily asked.
“Nothing,” he said. They finally made it to the bridge. This was nuts. If he was going to have to work with this woman, he had to find a way to get through her armor.
“So, what division you work?” he asked.
“BSU.”
Louis glanced at her again.
“Behavioral Science Unit.”
“I don’t know-”
“Nobody does,” she said abruptly. She let out a sigh. “It’s new, the unit, and what we do. It’s. . new.”
Louis tried to recall what little he had read about serial killers. He had read something about how police departments were starting to use psychologists as consultants. They were calling them “profilers,” the idea being they could figure out the twisted minds of criminals by poking around in the messes they left.
“So you’re what’s called a profiler?” Louis asked.
She looked surprised he knew the term. “I prefer ‘forensic psychologist.’ ”
“Ah. A shrink,” Louis said.
She shook her head. “I’m not a doctor.”
You’re not a cop, either, Louis thought.
They were up on the bridge now, heading back toward Fort Myers.
“Wainwright doesn’t know any of this,” Emily said finally. “Unless he’s checked.”
“He hasn’t checked,” Louis said. “You going to tell him?”
She took off her glasses and began to clean them on the tail of her shirt. “I heard things about Dan Wainwright before I came. I think he is-” She stopped herself. “There are some people who aren’t open to new ideas.”
Louis let a few moments pass in silence. For a moment, he considered asking her what the hell OPR was. But he didn’t want Wainwright to think he was checking up on him. He also didn’t want to do anything to make this case harder than it already was. Men were dying and he didn’t want to waste time playing referee between Farentino and Wainwright. They needed to get going in the same direction.
“Listen, Farentino,” he said finally, “if I’ve learned one thing it’s that you don’t get much by muscling your way into things. We’re outsiders here, both of us. Wainwright is in charge, at least for now. You ought to respect that.”
She lasered her eyes back to Louis. “And how many more bodies do we bury while showing this respect?”
Louis tensed, a quick knot forming in his belly. How many more men are you going to bury, Chief Gibralter?
Did she know? Had she checked him out? Did she know what had happened back in Michigan? She knew about Wainwright. She had all the resources in the world at her fingertips. She could easily have checked out his background. He would have done the same thing.
He inhaled thinly, determined not to let her rattle him. He stared hard at the road, slowly allowing himself to digest her remark differently. He had to appreciate her sense of urgency; he felt the same thing. He was seeing faceless black men in his dreams. He didn’t want to see any more real ones.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “So let me hear your theory.”
“About what?” she asked.
“About how this guy picks his victims.”
“I need to study the pattern first.”
“There is no pattern,” Louis said. “We thought there was, but he keeps changing. Except for the day he kills.”
“Tuesday,” Emily said.
She was quiet for a moment. “He has two needs,” she said finally. “He needs a place to live where he won’t stand out. But he needs a place to do his work that’s secluded.”
Louis thought her choice of the word “work” was odd.
“I’d say he lives near Fort Myers Beach,” Emily went on. “It’s crowded there, with lots of tourists and transients, and he would blend in. He wouldn’t live on Captiva or Sereno. The locals would know him. Also, serial killers tend to dispose of bodies away from where they themselves live.”
“So you think he stalked them?”
“It fits the usual pattern. He seems very impatient. I don’t think he stalks them for days on end. I think he zeroes in on them and then follows them until he feels the moment is good.”
“Well, what about Tatum then?”
“What about him?”
“We think his murder was pure impulse.”
Emily closed the file on her lap. “Why would you think that?”
“Tatum was different than the other two. Tatum’s car broke down. When Wainwright’s men found it, the hood was still up, so we’re guessing Tatum was stranded there for a while before the killer came along.”
“Came along,” she said. “Just came along, conveniently armed with his shotgun and can of spray paint.”
Louis glanced at her, glad the sunglasses hid his eyes. “So you think Tatum was followed, like the others?”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Louis turned on his blinker as he slowed at a corner. She was making sense. Shit. Wainwright was going to love this.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was Emily’s idea to go see Roberta Tatum. When Louis told her that Roberta had already been questioned, Emily said simply, “Wives know things their husbands don’t know that they know.”
The Tatum home was a yellow stucco cottage, buried behind a riot of banana trees and purple bougainvillea vines. A storm was gathering over the bay by the time they arrived, and deep shadows moved in the junglelike yard where the windswept palm fronds played treble to the bass of approaching thunder.
They had called ahead and Roberta was waiting for them. She stood behind the wooden screen door, a stocky silhouette in a caftan of orange and green that billowed around her in the breeze. Her hair was concealed beneath a matching turban, giving her round, fresh-scrubbed face a stretched and youthful look.
Emily spoke first. “Mrs. Tatum, we’re sorry to bother you-”
“Have you found him?” Roberta said, her eyes going to Louis.
“Levon, or your husband’s killer?” Louis asked.
“Either.”
“No.”
Roberta sneered. “That’s what I thought.”
“May we come in, Mrs. Tatum?” Emily asked.
Roberta’s eyes slipped to Emily, then back to Louis. “Who’s she?”
“This is Agent Farentino. FBI.”
Roberta made no move to open the screen door. She was staring hard at Emily.
“Mrs. Tatum, please,” Louis said.
Roberta shoved open the door. “This is what they give Walter,” she said as she moved away. “A cookie and a meatball.”