words stopped her. "I know that."
Tracy turned and looked at him, wary, every sense alert.
"No one stole it. You were framed, Miss Whitney."
Slowly, Tracy sank into a chair.
Daniel Cooper's involvement with the case had begun three weeks earlier when he had been summoned to the office of his superior, J. J. Reynolds, at IIPA headquarters in Manhattan.
"I've got an assignment for you, Dan," Reynolds said.
Daniel Cooper loathed being called Dan.
"I'll make this brief." Reynolds intended to make it brief because Cooper made him nervous. In truth, Cooper made everyone in the organization nervous. He was a strange man - weird, was how many described him. Daniel Cooper kept entirely to himself. No one knew where he lived, whether he was married or had children. He socialized with no one, and never attended office parties or office meetings. He was a loner, and the only reason Reynolds tolerated him was because the man was a goddamned genius. He was a bulldog, with a computer for a brain. Daniel Cooper was single-handedly responsible for recovering more stolen merchandise, and exposing more insurance frauds, than all the other investigators in the organization put together. Reynolds just wished he knew what the hell Cooper was all about. Merely sitting across from the man with those fanatical brown eyes staring at him made him uneasy.
Reynolds said, "One of our client companies insured a painting for half a million dollars and - "
"The Renoir. New Orleans. Joe Romano. A woman named Tracy Whitney was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years. The painting hasn't been recovered."
The son of a bitch! Reynolds thought. If it were anyone else, I'd think he was showing off. "That's right," Reynolds acknowledged grudgingly. "The Whitney woman has stashed that painting away somewhere, and we want it back. Go to it."
Cooper turned and left the office without a word. Watching him leave, J. J. Reynolds thought, not for the first time, Someday I'm going to find out what makes that bastard tick.
Cooper walked through the office, where fifty employees were working side by side, programming computers, typing reports, answering telephones. It was bedlam.
As Cooper passed a desk, a colleague said, "I hear you got the Romano assignment. Lucky you. New Orleans is - "
Cooper walked by without replying. Why couldn't they leave him alone? That was all he asked of anybody, but they were always pestering him with their nosy overtures.
It had become a game in the office. They were determined to break through his mysterious reserve and find out who he really was.
"What are you doing for dinner Friday night, Dan...?"
"If you're not married, Sarah and I know a wonderful girl, Dan...?"
Couldn't they see he did not need any of them - didn't want any of them?
"Come on, it's only for a drink...."
But Daniel Cooper knew what that could lead to. An innocent drink could lead to dinner, and a dinner could start friendships, and friendships could lead to confidences. Too dangerous.
Daniel Cooper lived in mortal terror that one day someone would learn about his past. Let the dead past bury its dead was a lie. The dead never stayed buried. Every two or three years one of the scandal sheets would dig up the old scandal, and Daniel Cooper would disappear for several days. Those were the only times he ever got drunk.
Daniel Cooper could have kept a psychiatrist busy full-time had he been able to expose his emotions, but he could never bring himself to speak of the past to anyone. The one piece of physical evidence that he retained from that terrible day long ago was a faded, yellowed newspaper clipping, safety locked away in his room, where no one could ever find it. He looked at it from time to time as a punishment, but every word in the article was emblazoned on his mind.
He showered or bathed at least three times a day, but never felt clean. He firmly believed in hell and hell's fire, and he knew his only salvation on earth was expiation, atonement. He had tried to join the New York police force, but when he had failed the physical because he was four inches too short, he had become a private investigator. He thought of himself as a hunter, tracking down those who broke the law. He was the vengeance of God, the instrument that brought down God's wrath on the heads of wrongdoers. It was the only way he could atone for the past, and prepare