people who remember me yet, but I’ve only been here two days. Here’s the thing, though: someone already knows I’m an FBI agent and came after me. That’s what’s surprising. I don’t know how anyone found out I’m FBI so quickly.”
Wilde said, “Not much of a stretch with the Internet and social media. Someone could have looked you up, saw you’re FBI.”
“When I was accepted to the FBI, I was told to keep who I was and what I did under the radar. I laid down the law with my friends and relatives. As far as I know, no one has posted anything about my being an agent. I certainly haven’t. I’m also a lawyer, and that’s what anyone would find if they looked. Sure, they could have looked deeper, but why would they?”
He said nothing and began pulling her hair away from where the gun had struck her. She felt warm water run over the bumps, felt him pressing against them lightly with a wet towel. Her breath caught, and her eyes watered. He said, “Sorry, I’ll be more careful. Keep talking, it’ll be a distraction.”
Pippa gritted her teeth and told him about what she’d found in Maude’s Creepy Puzzles. “If the third installment of puzzle pieces arrived today, I’ll bet Major Trumbo is hanging out that window, looking just as nasty and mean, but changed somehow. I still have no idea how all this fits together. But obviously there’s someone playing with the FBI, with Savich in particular, and this someone is very serious. Look how they found out about me”—she snapped her fingers—“that fast.” She sighed. “We’d hoped to have a leg up when I identified St. Lumis early.” She looked up at him. “It didn’t work out that way.” She flinched.
“Sorry. Hang in there. I’m going to daub some antibiotic ointment on your scalp. There’s only a little blood left in your hair. If Dr. Salovitz thinks it’s all right, you can soap it out. Keep talking, Cinelli.”
She told him about the old abandoned grocery store with its rows of rusted shelves, and how she was attacked by Black Hoodie when she went to investigate.
“You said you only saw some of his profile, that he was youngish, slender, wearing loose jeans and a black hoodie.”
She paused, frowned. “Yes, that’s right, and I saw him talking on a cell phone. Too bad I couldn’t hear what he said.”
Wilde said, “He doesn’t sound like a local, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure. Whoever he is, he’s got to know I’m armed. And my deputy can be here in under a minute for backup. So I don’t think he’ll be hanging around.”
He inspected his handiwork and nodded. “I’ve gotta say, I haven’t been this surprised since I left Philadelphia. Do you or Agent Savich have any guesses as to what this is all about?”
Pippa flexed her fingers again. She said slowly, “No, except that someone seems to have a hate on for Agent Savich.”
He smiled. “I’m just now realizing how much I’ve missed real police work. Okay, now we wait for Agent Savich.”
29
WASHINGTON, D.C.
KALORAMA HEIGHTS
MANVERS HOUSE
MONDAY NIGHT
Rebekah Manvers sat on the white wall-to-wall carpeting in her bedroom, a large, well-appointed room furnished with nineteenth-century English antiques and an enormous sleigh bed. She pulled the last envelope from the rubber-banded pile of letters in her girlhood keepsake box, a gift from her grandfather for his letters to her.
She wasn’t finding anything useful. The letters were loving, but mostly chitchat about his work in Congress and whatever new bills he was hoping to pass to help his district. She eyed the last envelope, a birthday card, which birthday she couldn’t remember. She did remember the crisp one-hundred-dollar bill she’d found tucked inside, a fortune for a little kid, and felt her long-ago excitement. She remembered her mother telling her it was going into her college fund. She’d sulked, but she never could budge her mother when she was set on something. She pulled out the card—a dog jumping off the end of a pier, about to splash into the water, a Frisbee in its mouth.
She read:
Happy Birthday, my beautiful girl.
Here you are, already quite the reader. On your birthday I find myself wondering where life will take you. Things happen in life, things you don’t expect, things you are forced to face and deal with. Even though you were small, I know you felt very sad for me when my best friend, Nate Elderby, died. It still hurts me.