this morning. Does that tell you anything?”
“It tells me that you’re still ruthlessly trying to pawn him off on me.”
“Maybe.” She tilted her head, still gazing at him. “I think he’s falling asleep. Neither of us got much last night.”
“Well, he’ll have to wake up. I have to go back to my condo and work.” Olivia nudged him with her foot. “Come on, lion-dog. I have to get you some dog food and then I suppose I’ll have to take you for a walk.”
Harley instantly jumped to his feet and ran out of the kitchen in the direction of the front door.
“You speak, he obeys,” Kendra said. “Dog food is beside the table in the foyer. I brought it from Maddie’s along with a couple of Elaine’s notebooks about Harley that she’d found with the dog kennel. Training manuals and personal history.” She was heading for her bedroom. “Please be merciful and keep him awake as much as you can today…”
* * *
Kendra leaned back in the triangular-backed chair at the FBI regional office’s fifth-floor conference room. She’d just viewed Metcalf’s PowerPoint presentation on the wall-mounted monitor at the room’s far end, and as promised, it provided a concise overview of the case, the victims, and the crime scenes. She turned toward Metcalf, who was alone with her at the long conference table.
“Well done, Metcalf.”
“Thanks.”
“But the musical number was a little much, don’t you think?”
“Very funny. You know, there is a guy here who’s fond of lens flares. You’re lucky I didn’t do that to you.”
“I guess I owe you one.” She thought about what she’d just seen. She was glad she’d visited the crime scenes first, since it helped frame everything more correctly in her mind. She was still exhausted from the long plane flight and the restless night worrying about Harley, but seeing those corpses in the presentation had jolted her wide-awake. “Anything on that fence post yet?”
“They’re working on it now. That is human blood at the bottom and the top, and it should be more than enough to extract DNA. So far, your theory of the victim using it as a weapon is holding up.”
“Good. Now we just need to get a DNA match.” She looked at the last PowerPoint slide, still displayed on the screen. It showed the Woodward Academy at night, much as she’d seen it the evening before. “I only wish we knew why Ronald Kim was spying on the access road.”
“Me too. We’ve talked to some friends of his, and no one had any idea that anything unusual was going on in his life.”
“Where did he live?”
“The Convoy District, in Kearny Mesa.”
“Near the medical examiner’s office?”
Metcalf nodded. “You could practically walk to his house from there. It’s become a trendy neighborhood for the Asian community. Some good bars and restaurants have popped up there in the past couple of years.”
“Mr. Kim never struck me as a trendy guy.”
“He wasn’t. After his wife died, he pretty much kept to himself. He ate most of his meals at a small diner connected to a Korean grocer. He was friendly with some of the other customers there, but that’s about it.”
A wave of sadness suddenly hit Kendra. In all the years she’d known Mr. Kim, she’d rarely given any thought to his life away from the school, to his hopes and dreams. As with anyone she met, she’d made observations about him. But overall, she’d always looked at him through the eyes of the little girl she’d been when they first met. Most of the time he’d treated her with an almost-old-world formality and called her Ms. Kendra. In return, he had always been Mr. Kim to her, even when she had grown older. His whole life seemed to be at the school, tending to the flowers and bushes. She remembered his voice, sometimes kind as when he’d put one of the blooming irises in her hand so that she could feel the textures, sometimes stern if she’d accidentally stomped on his precious white pampas grass. But wasn’t that how most children viewed adults? A series of small impressions and memories mainly concerned with how their presence impacted their own lives? Still, memories of the velvet touch of flowers, fresh, fragrant scents, and a voice teaching her bad from good was surely a way most people would like to be remembered.
“Kendra?” Metcalf said gently.
She snapped out of it. “Yeah. Did Mr. Kim have a cell phone on him?”
“No. And we still haven’t found it. He