knew was that, if given the chance, I wanted to send the Poet back to the moon. I wanted to do it myself.
“C’mon,” she said. “Try to forget about that for now. Let’s go get you some new things. We can’t have those reporters thinking you’re one of us anymore.”
She smiled and I returned it weakly and let her push me toward the mall.
27
We met back in the conference room of the field office at six-thirty. Backus was there, trying to work out the logistics with the phone, along with Thompson, Matuzak, Mize and three agents I hadn’t been introduced to. I put my shopping bag under the conference table. It contained two new shirts, a pair of pants and a package of underwear and socks. I immediately wished I had changed into one of the new shirts because the introduced agents studied me and my FBI shirt with grim looks that suggested I had committed some kind of sacrilege by trying to impersonate an agent. Backus told whoever he was talking with to call him back when it was set up and then hung up.
“Okay,” he said. “We start the full meeting as soon as they have the phones set up. Meantime, let’s talk about Phoenix. Beginning tomorrow I want to start a ground-zero investigation of both the detective and the boy. Both cases, from the top. What I’d like—Oh, I’m sorry. Rachel, Jack, this is Vince Pool, SAC Phoenix. He’s going to give us whatever we need.”
Pool, who looked like he had twenty-five years on the job, the most of anyone in the room, nodded at us and said nothing. Backus didn’t bother to introduce the other men.
“We have the meeting with the locals tomorrow at oh nine hundred,” Backus said.
“I think we’ll be able to brush them aside gently,” Pool said.
“Well, we don’t want any animosity. These are the fellows who knew Orsulak the best. They’ll be good sources. I think we have to bring them into this but remain firmly in control.”
“No problem.”
“This one may be our best chance. It’s fresh. We’ve got to hope the offender made a mistake and between these two deaths, the boy and the detective, we can find it. I’d like to see—”
The phone on the table buzzed and Backus picked up the receiver and said hello.
“Hold on.”
He pushed a button on the phone and hung up the receiver.
“Brass, you there?”
“Here, boss.”
“Okay, let’s run down the list, see who’ve we got.”
Agents from six cities announced their presence on the speaker.
“Okay, good. I want this to be as informal as possible. Why don’t we go round-robin to see what people have. Brass, I’d like to finish up with you. So Florida. Is that you, Ted?”
“Uh, yes sir, with Steve, here. We are just getting our feet wet on this and hope to have more by tomorrow. But there are some anomalies here that we think are already worth noting.”
“Go ahead.”
“Uh, this is the first, or believed to be the first, of the Poet’s stops. Clifford Beltran. The second incident—in Baltimore—did not take place until nearly ten months later. That is the longest interval we have as well. This leads us to possibly question the randomness of this first kill.”
“You think the Poet knew Beltran?” Rachel asked.
“It’s possible. At the moment, though, it’s just a hunch we are working. There are a few other things that when thrown into the stew are worth taking a look at in support, however. First, this is the only one with a shotgun. We checked the autopsy file today and they aren’t pretty pictures. Total obliteration with both barrels. We all know the symbolic pathology of that.”
“Overkill,” Backus said. “Suggesting knowledge or acquaintance of the victim.”
“Right. Next we have the weapon itself. According to reports, it was an old Smith and Wesson that Beltran kept in a closet, on a top shelf out of sight. This information is attributed in the reports to his sister. Beltran had never married and lived in the house he grew up in. We haven’t talked to the sister ourselves. The point is, if this was a suicide, yeah, fine, he went to the closet and got out the shotgun. But now we come along and say this was no suicide.”
“How did the Poet know the shotgun was up there on the shelf?” Rachel said.
“Riiiiiight . . . How did he know?”
“Good one, Ted, Steve,” Backus said. “I like it. What else?”
“The last thing is kind of sticky. Is the reporter there?”
Everyone