determine whether Maggie had reviewed each file or not. He was wondering how much she was checking up on him and whether Gonzales had ordered her to do so.
What a fool, I thought. Did he not realize that he was leaving his own trail of having been in those files? That Maggie could just as easily track him in return?
Oh, Danny. That was my partner in a nutshell. Always so busy thinking of his own grandiose plans that he never stopped to consider what someone else might be doing.
I left him and drifted upstairs to Maggie’s desk to wait for her arrival. She showed up in late afternoon, freshly showered, smelling of oranges, crackling with energy. Oh, my Maggie. She did not need me to tell her that something was wrong with Alan Hayes. The encounter the night before had been enough for her. Within ten minutes, she was deep into the computer, bringing up all the data she could find on Alissa’s father, downloading his curriculum vitae from the college site, tracking his lecture appearances at conferences around the world, chronicling all the places where he had studied or taught—in short, compiling a list of everywhere he had been and everywhere he had lived over the past twenty-five years. It was astonishing how much information she pulled from the Internet, her attention so absolute that hours passed before she even noticed that almost everyone else in the detective division had left for home or dinner.
Once again, I wondered what drove her so hard, what triggered her obsessiveness.
Her desk phone rang. It was an old-fashioned model and she stared at it as if surprised that it even worked. “Hello?” she said tentatively. “Hello?” She stared into the receiver, then placed it firmly back on the cradle, thought a moment, and picked it back up and dialed.
“Dad?” she asked. “Did you just try to call me at work?” She was silent. “No, it’s nothing. Not a lot of people have this number is all.” She smiled at his reply. “No, I have not been giving my number out to men. Who in the world told you that?” A shadow crossed over her face. “She’s getting senile. Trust me. You’ll be the first to know.”
She smiled again at her father’s answer before bidding him good-bye. She’d barely hung up the phone when Danny appeared, shattering the quiet of the squad room with his blustery, panting approach.
“So, Princess,” he said, perching on the edge of her desk. “How goes it?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, without anger. “I’ve worked harder than you ever have to get where I am. And get off my desk.”
Danny looked surprised, but recovered and shambled to his feet. “I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink.”
Maggie looked up from the computer and stared at him without comment.
“I’m not hitting on you,” Danny said quickly.
She ignored him and returned to her computer screen.
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was an asshole. And Fahey and I were fuckups, I admit it.”
Speak for yourself, partner. I wasn’t the one who’d been responsible for looking into Alan Hayes and the rest of the family.
“Maybe I could make up for last night,” he suggested. “I owe you one.” He sounded sincere. “Really. Thanks for not telling Gonzales about . . . you know, what happened.”
“You mean you showing up drunk out of your mind in the middle of an investigation you’d been expressly taken off and inciting the witness to cause the department trouble?”
Danny blinked. “I don’t know that I’d put it that way exactly.”
“Well, I would,” Maggie said. “And Tommy and Fritz agree. I had a hell of a time convincing them not to say anything.”
Danny’s voice rose an octave. “I know that. And I’m grateful. I just want to make up for it. You can ask me anything about the Hayes case you want. I might remember something that could be of use to you.”
“I’m not telling you anything about the case,” she told him flatly. “Not after last night. You’re lucky you still have your badge.”
“I won’t ask you a thing. It’ll be a one-way street. You need me. You know how it goes. You can pore through the files from now until Christmas, but there are still things we never wrote down. Things that might help you now.”
She stared at him, weighing her desire to avoid him versus her desire to solve the case. The case won. “Okay,” she said. “But we’re going someplace decent with real