The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,60
a sandbag atop the half dozen already piled against the door. “Good morning, Assistant Inspector.”
“Good morning, Detective.” She glanced toward the street entrance. “Why are you here?” Dupree was alone with Detective Bull. She wondered if Charbou knew it.
He gave her a charming smile. “I was hoping you’d have breakfast with me.”
She nodded to the Dauphine proprietor and stepped around the pile of sandbags, ignoring the woman’s knowing smile.
She served herself scrambled eggs and coffee. She took her time at the toaster, hoping Johnson or Dupree would turn up, but at last she couldn’t put it off any longer. She went to the table. “Your partner’s not here this morning?”
“Sure, he’s in the car, on the phone with his family. He really loves his kids.”
“Of course.” She saw Charbou believed what he was saying.
“And his wife,” the detective added with a smile.
She made no comment.
“Sometimes I really envy him,” the detective added pensively.
Amaia took a big bite of toast, determined not to make it easy for him.
“Having a wife, I mean. You know, someone to share things with.”
She acknowledged that with an ambiguous nod. So that was going to be his approach. She’d heard of men who brought up the subject of marriage during their first encounter with a woman, but she’d never had to deal with one. They—and Charbou—were about as interested in getting married as in having a root canal.
She chewed slowly, watching him. Today Charbou wasn’t wearing the bulletproof vest he claimed never to be without. He must have left it in the vehicle. Instead, he was wearing a snug-fitting T-shirt that showed off his muscular chest and arms. His big brown eyes radiated sincerity. He was handsome and he knew it.
He leaned over the table as if to confess. It was so obvious that she couldn’t help smiling, and that put him momentarily off his stride. “I know from experience it’s hard to find someone who’ll put up with our schedules, the way we live . . .” He looked down and then up again to project heartfelt sincerity. “The way it winds up affecting everything we do.”
Amaia grinned. She was entertained, despite herself. Bill Charbou took her reaction as an invitation to continue.
“Assistant Inspector—can I call you Amaia? I noticed you’re not wearing a wedding ring. Are you married?”
Her colleagues appeared in the doorway. She waved and beckoned to them.
“Salazar,” she said.
Charbou looked a bit confused.
“You may address me as Assistant Inspector Salazar.”
One of the proprietors of the Dauphine came running through the café toward the back, holding the TV remote control high above her head. When she got close enough, she pressed the volume button so hard that her fingertip went pale. It was just before nine in the morning, and Mayor Ray Nagin was about to hold a press conference to declare the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.
The plan Dupree and the police commander Forneret had worked out, Operation Cage, was to go into effect as soon as Katrina passed. They would establish tight control of the main traffic arteries, the train stations, buses, and airports, and keep a close eye on all persons arriving or departing by air, including by military aircraft. They’d also monitor emergency personnel. They aimed to identify the Composer, whether he arrived alone or as part of a team.
They were placing their faith in the witness’s conviction that he’d been wearing a badge of some sort. Keeping that in mind, as soon as they received any report of a crime that fit the parameters, they would keep it out of radio crosstalk, maybe even impose strict radio silence to avoid signaling their own movements. They’d do their best to keep him bottled up in the city.
Dupree was certain the man they were looking for was already holed up somewhere close by, waiting for the weather to wreak havoc. The FBI was holed up too. They’d chosen the emergency operations center on the third floor of a building close to the lake as their shelter from the storm. The firefighters occupied the lower two floors. The administrator had given the team a disused conference room. He’d provided everything the FBI required, including whiteboards, computers, landline connections, and half a dozen camp cots, since they’d be spending the night. The building was a massive edifice of reinforced concrete that had withstood previous storms. The third-floor operations center next door had thirty workstations, only a third of which were currently occupied. Each had a computer screen and a multiline phone console.