going to believe I was stupid enough to invite a search if I had stolen property in here?”
She looked at me and smiled sweetly.
“Mr. McEvoy, I am five feet five and weigh one hundred and fifteen pounds. That’s with my gun on. Do you think a judge will believe your version of what happened? Would you even want to reveal what I just did to you in open court?”
I looked away from her and out the windows. The maid had opened the curtains. The sky was beginning to lose the light.
“I didn’t think so,” she said. “Now, you want to save me some time? Where are the protocols you copied?”
“In the computer bag. I committed no crime in getting them and just having them is not a crime.”
I had to be careful of what I said. I didn’t know if Michael Warren had already been found out or not. She was going through the satchel. She pulled out the Poe book, looked at it quizzically and threw it on the bed. She then pulled out my notebook and the sheaf of copies of the protocols. Warren had been right. She was a beautiful woman. A hard shell but beautiful just the same. About my age, maybe a year or two older, her hair was brown and falling to just above her shoulders. Sharp green eyes and the strong aura of confidence. That was what was most attractive about her.
“Breaking and entering is a crime,” she said. “It came under my jurisdiction when it was determined that the documents stolen belonged to the bureau.”
“I didn’t break into anything and I didn’t steal anything. What this is is harassment. I’ve always heard that you bureau people get upset when somebody else does your job for you.”
She was leaning over the bed looking through the papers. She straightened up, reached into her pocket and pulled out a clear plastic evidence bag with a single sheet of paper in it. She held it up for me to look at. I recognized it as having been torn from a reporter’s notebook. There were six lines written on it in black ink.
Pena: his hands?
after—how long?
Wexler/Scalari: the car?
heater?
lock?
Riley: gloves?
I recognized my own handwriting and then it all tumbled together. Warren had torn sheets from my notebook to mark the spots of the file we had pulled. He had torn a page with old notes on it and somehow had left it behind when he returned the files. Walling must have seen the recognition in my face.
“Sloppy work. After we get the handwriting analyzed and compared, I think it’ll be a slam dunk. What do you think?”
I couldn’t even manage a fuck you this time.
“I’m seizing your computer, this book and your notebooks as possible evidence. If we don’t need any of it, you’ll get it back. Okay, we’re going to go now. My car’s right out front. The one thing I’m willing to do for you to show I’m not such a mean girl is take you down without the cuffs. We’ve got a long ride down to Virginia, though we might beat some of the traffic if we get going now. Are you going to behave? One false move, as they say, and I’ll put you in the back with the cuffs on as tight as a wedding ring.”
I just nodded and stood up. I was in a daze. I couldn’t meet her eyes. I walked toward the door with my head down.
“Hey, what do you say?” she said to me.
I mumbled my thanks and I heard her soft laughter behind me.
She was wrong. We didn’t beat the traffic. It was Friday evening. More people were trying to get out of the city than most nights and we crawled along with them as we crossed the city to get to a freeway. For a half hour neither of us spoke, except when she cursed at a traffic snarl or a red light. I was in the front seat, thinking the whole time. I had to make a call to Glenn as soon as possible. They had to get me a lawyer. A good one. I saw that the only way out was to reveal a source I had promised I would never reveal. I considered the possibility that if I called Warren he would come forward and confirm that I hadn’t broken into the foundation. But I discarded it. I had made a covenant with him. I had to honor it.
When we finally made it south