1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,21

reports that are disseminated to the various key players in any given case. I knew that.

But it was still paperwork. Basically, being asked to compile a report is the FBI’s version of “Go clean your room.”

“Welcome to the suck,” Ciomek said. “Shouldn’t take you more than a couple days to finish.”

I wasn’t off the case, but so many new people were involved now that my role had gotten watered down. Way down.

The good news was, my hands are like lightning on the keyboard, and if I’m being honest, my brain fires faster than most. By lunch the next day, I’d posted my report and was sitting there in the CART without nearly enough to do. Nobody was around, or if they were, nobody was pulling me into any meetings.

So I turned my attention to something else.

One thing I hadn’t been able to get out of my head was this photographer I’d heard about from Gwen’s friends. I had no idea if anyone had taken that tip and run with it. I just knew that I had to do something, for my own peace of mind. Anything to rule this guy in or out. It felt like keeping a promise to those girls, even if it wasn’t one I’d made out loud.

I started with a basic online search, and it was quickly apparent that this scum bucket, Pietro Angeletti, had a whole lot more stink on him than I ever expected to find so quickly.

With the resources we had in the CART, it took only a few minutes to find his Precious Moments franchise in Hingham and, more importantly, to see that he had a small but distinct criminal record.

Angeletti had been convicted twice on domestic violence charges. The first was four years earlier, against his own sister, in Michigan. More recently, there was an arrest and an overnight in jail after a fight with his girlfriend in Dedham. None of it was a slam dunk, but it sure didn’t make the guy look less suspicious.

From there, it seemed like the next logical step was to go get a firsthand take on this dude and see what else it might tell me. So I called Angeletti’s studio and made an appointment for the next evening after work. I didn’t even consider identifying myself as FBI. Just the opposite, actually. I used a fake name, Amy Smith, and said this was for my high school senior portrait. I was just slightly alarmed at how easily the lie slid out of me.

Maybe I was getting a little obsessed. It wouldn’t have been the first time, or the second. Hell, at MIT, obsessive thinking is the kind of thing they give you As for. And I was too curious to stop now.

But of course, we all know what they say about curiosity, right?

Just call me Angela the cat.

CHAPTER 22

PIETRO ANGELETTI’S STUDIO was a storefront in a crappy strip mall in Hingham. The window was etched with PRECIOUS MOMENTS and he had a row of faded school portraits hung in frames across the bottom of the glass. The whole place felt just about as sketchy from the outside as I might have imagined.

An electric bell chimed when I went in.

“Be right there,” a male voice called from the back.

“Take your time,” I answered while I scanned around, looking for a phone, laptop, or anything with an internet connection. I didn’t have a plan, exactly. Just to do what I’d been doing in the field all along: watching and listening.

As I was glancing through one of the brochures by the door, I heard the click of a shutter. I looked up and saw someone, presumably Angeletti, standing by the partition wall that divided the front from the studio in the back.

“Amy, right?” he asked, lowering the SLR camera he’d been pointing my way.

“That’s me,” I said.

“I always like to start off with a few candids,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

The surprise was how hot he was—nothing like the pornstache-wearing letch I’d been expecting. He was at least six one, with a cultivated shadow of a beard and the kind of shoulders you can’t help noticing.

It made sense, I realized, if he was seducing pretty girls. Which was still just a big if, of course. I was out on a limb here and I knew it.

“You said this was a senior portrait?” he asked, coming over to shake my hand. “I would have guessed you were older than that. You don’t look like a high