'Yes.' Nina kept her eyes on Monroe, bleakly realizing that her boss might be more subtle than she'd thought. He'd just fed her to this guy. He didn't appear discomfited by her gaze.
'The former Los Angeles homicide detective now connected to a murder in Portland. Whose daughter was abducted in May 2000, and never found. Who left the police force and disappeared, before re-emerging three months ago as, I understand, your lover.'
'A situation which is no longer the case. And in what sense would this be any of your business?'
The pause she left before this question had been supposed to make her sound strong. Even she heard it as evasive. It didn't matter much because she had evidently become inaudible. Neither of the men said anything.
She looked at Monroe, fighting to keep her voice calm. 'Is that what this is about? A slap on the wrist three years overdue? I kept John informed on the Delivery Boy case, which I shouldn't have done. You know this already. You know that I felt he deserved to know what we knew because his daughter was missing — and because he'd previously helped us nail a man who was killing black kids when we were getting nowhere at all and the media were kicking us all over town. You explained how my actions breached Bureau protocol and your own ideas of compartmentalization and you've never treated me quite the same since. I screwed up. I got the message. I thought we were done with it. Let's move on.'
Monroe glanced out of the window.
'We're not here to move on, Ms Baynam,' the Corner Man said. 'We're here to go back.'
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'Nina
'Screw you, Charles. I'm tired of this. I don't know who the hell this guy is or why he thinks he's got the right to talk to me this way.'
Monroe pulled a briefcase onto the table, from which he slipped a standard-issue laptop. He opened it and angled the screen towards Nina. Neither he nor Corner Man made any attempt to move to a position where they could see, and Nina understood that they had already viewed whatever she was about to see.
The screen came on automatically, showing a black window in the centre. Monroe hit a key combination and the window changed from black to show rapidly moving colours. It took a moment to make out that it was a view from a video camera, shot across a road.
The street was empty for a second, revealing the backs of a row of houses on the other side. The view then pulled sharply forward to focus on one in particular. A two-storey house, wooden, painted a sandy colour with white trim, none of it very recently. It was caught in three-quarter view, revealing windows on the back and one side, all with drapes drawn, and a door in the back.
Nothing happened for a few moments. Cars passed, one from right to left, two in the other direction. There was no sound, but Nina couldn't tell whether this was because the file lacked it or if the laptop's volume was turned down.
The camera zoomed forward. It took a second to see what the cameraman had noticed. It was the house's back door. It had opened a few inches, revealing darkness inside. It closed again, for a second, and then opened enough for a man to come out. He was a little over medium height, with broad shoulders. He closed the door and walked along the back of the house. He was moving in such a way that a casual observer would have seen nothing of his face, and probably not even noticed his presence at all.
The person operating the camera had evidently not been such an observer, however, and pulled in hard. Nina bit her lip.
The man was John Zandt.
He walked out onto the road and the camera followed him to a car Nina recognized, a car he no longer owned but which had spent a few afternoons parked outside her house. He opened the driver's side door and just before he climbed in the camera caught a full-on view of his face over the top of the car. It was pale, his eyes hooded. He looked like many men she had seen photographed, walking with their hands cuffed together in front. He didn't look much like the man she had briefly thought she loved.
The video slowly pulled out to its widest view yet, one that showed half the street, and then stopped abruptly.
Her face carefully neutral, Nina sat back in her chair. 'Where did this come from?'
'It was emailed to us,' Monroe said. 'It arrived in the early hours of this morning.'
'What a weird coincidence,' she said. 'Coming right after the body in Portland, too.'
The two men were watching her carefully. Screw you, she thought. You want this, you're going to have to do it yourselves. 'So what's your point?'
'Our point,' said the man in the corner, 'is that this video shows your boyfriend visiting the house of a man who was questioned in regard to the Delivery Boy abductions — an investigation you were intimately involved with. Stephen DeLong was interviewed, presented a tight alibi, and was eliminated from the investigation.'
'Circumstantial evidence from this scene enables it to be dated to around the time of the case,' Monroe said.
'I'll just bet it does,' Nina said. 'Just like that big pullback at the end means any idiot could work out exactly where it was shot.'
Monroe blinked. Corner Man ignored her. 'About a week later, neighbours reported an offensive odour coming from the house we've just seen. DeLong was found in his bedroom, dead from a single gunshot wound. There was evidence of sustained physical violence to his person. The house featured the paraphernalia of small-scale narcotic distribution, which led the scene officers to assume the death was the result of a deal gone bad. DeLong was written up and forgotten. Nobody cared, and nobody put his death together with the ongoing investigation.'
'Why should they?'
'No reason, then. But as you've seen, there's a compelling reason to do so now. We really only need your input on one matter, Ms Baynam,' the man said. 'We'd like to talk to John Zandt.'
He leaned forward. 'Where is he?'
— «» — «» — «»—
Fifteen minutes later Nina walked out of the building. Her back was straight and her strides were of equal length. She didn't turn to look up towards Room 623's window, though she strongly suspected Monroe would be standing watching her go. If she saw him there was a danger she would march back into the building, run straight up the stairs and attempt to do him harm. She was strong. She might even manage it. It would feel good, but she might as well take her career and throw that out the window while she was there. This might effectively have happened already, but it wasn't going to be her who wrote it in stone.
Instead she got in her car and drove out of the lot. She took her time making the right turn and drove slowly for a while, not heading anywhere in particular. Within ten minutes she was both furious and a little frightened to see she was being tailed.
She pulled over at the next public phone box she saw. She walked over to it, feeling like an actress, and made two calls. When the first was answered she asked a favour, waited while someone explained why he couldn't do it, and then provided a brief but compelling reason why he could.
As she waited for the second call to be connected she watched the road and saw the nondescript sedan pull over twenty yards further along. The guy was either a beginner or he'd been told to make it obvious. Either pissed her off.
After about ten rings, the call was picked up.
'Things are badly fucked up,' she said to an answering service. 'Stay away and watch your back.'
She put the phone down and walked back to her car. As she passed the grey sedan she leaned across and flipped the driver the bird. He stared back impassively, but didn't follow. As she drove home she was dismayed to find that her eyes kept filling, until she realized it was fury that was causing it, as much as hurt. Fury was good. Anger led somewhere.
'You're going to rue the day, Charles,' she muttered, and felt a little better, but not for long. As an agent now suspended from duty, with an ex-boyfriend under investigation for two murders, and a boss who no longer trusted anything she said, it wasn't clear how she could make anyone rue anything at all.