fanned her face with an envelope. “Only Willis Reed, the English-Lit prof. I asked you about him the other day. He’s on the list below Bobby and above Orry.”
Geri drew a circle on the top journal. “So give me the scoop. Is he sexy?”
Vanessa smiled. “Should I play dumb, or are you in a hurry?”
“No and yes. Okay, I know the question’s shallow and irrelevant, but I sense you’re tired of shoptalk, especially from me, so let’s go off on a tangent. I think your Fed bodyguard has a fantastic butt.”
“Noticed it.”
“Did you notice the flip side, as well?”
“You have a one track mind that lives below the waistband, Counselor Kruger.” A moment’s hesitation, then she admitted, “Of course I noticed.”
“Uh-oh.” Geri’s smile froze, and Vanessa winced. “Standing behind me, right?”
It wasn’t Geri who answered, but Rick who bent over her chair and placed his mouth next to her ear. “The flip side of what, Vanessa?”
She tapped his head with the envelope. “I don’t talk to eavesdroppers.” But her cheeks were hot, and it had nothing to do with the malfunctioning AC. “Geri brought us some reading material.”
“I like to write,” her friend explained. “Long nights at college, a girl and her pen…” With a helpless look at Vanessa, she asked, “Do you, uh, work out, Agent Maguire?”
“Rick. I prefer to run.” He took the envelope from Vanessa, turned it over.
“Vanessa runs.” Geri settled a hip on the desk. “I bounce. Trampoline. It’s easier. I started when my husband and I split up six months ago. Thankfully, I’m almost divorced.”
Rick’s smile was distracted. “Like two-thirds of the North American population.”
“What stat sheets do you read?” However, when his arms came around her neck, the next words died in Vanessa’s throat. Even Geri looked somewhat disconcerted. “Uh, Rick…?”
“Where did this come from?”
“What come from?” All Vanessa could see was a white blur. She clamped her hands onto his wrists. “Stop shaking the paper, and I might be able to answer you.”
Geri leaned in. “What is it?”
Rick held the sheet steady. When Vanessa’s eyes focused, the bold, black words leaped out at her.
NO DEATH CAN BE UNDONE.
NOT THE ONE THAT MATTERS,
AND NOT YOURS.
Chapter Four
“No death can be undone. Not the one that matters. And not yours—mine.”
Vanessa spun the words through her head. Obviously someone who’d mattered to the murderer was dead. Had she killed that person? Had he?
She spent the next two hours being grilled by Captain Palmer. Fortunately, once the initial furor had died down, he allowed her to leave.
“I did shoot a guy once,” Vanessa told Rick when they reached the police parking lot. “He burst out of a house where he’d been barricaded for three hours carrying two handheld weapons. He winged a cop. I managed to get him in the leg. He dropped one weapon but kept shooting with the other. A patrolman put a bullet in his hip.”
Rick rested a forearm on the roof of his car. “And then?”
“The guy turned the remaining gun on himself. Held it up to his temple and squeezed the trigger. He survived the shot, but died two days later. The only relative we found called him an explosive freak and refused to arrange a funeral. Still, it’s possible we missed someone who cared about him, and that person blames me for his death.”
“What about the other officer who fired?”
“He had a coronary ten months later and left the force. Thirty days after that, he had a fatal attack.”
“You’ve never shot anyone else?”
“Well, yes, but never anyone who died either directly or indirectly from my bullet.” She pressed on her temples. “I loved riddles as a kid. I’m starting to hate them now. Maybe the message was intended to tell me there’s only one relevant murder here.”
“Kill many to cover one?”
“It does happen, Rick. The point is, I’ve been threatened before. You work in homicide, people tend to dislike you.”
They were driving now. To where, Vanessa didn’t know and didn’t care, just so there was motion involved.
Angling his car away from the hills, Rick asked, “Who has access to your desk?”
“Lots of people, cop and civilian. Messengers, the guy who delivers sandwiches, the cleaning staff last night, a visitor this morning.”
“We’ll test the seal for DNA and prints.”
“Well, gee, I’d never have thought of that.” She pushed a little harder on her temples. “You didn’t have to bring Captain Palmer in on this. He was having a bad enough day as it was.”
“He worries about you.”
“He worries about everyone. One of our best detectives had a death threat painted on the side of his car in February. Palmer put him on desk duty for two weeks afterward.”
“Palmer knew where that threat came from. The guy who wrote it liked to blow things up. The guy who sent yours…”
“Probably packs a .32 and looks like Steve McQueen. I don’t want to sit behind a desk, Rick. Not for two weeks, not even for two days. A man I arrested for murder last year was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. His shrink says the guy blames my testimony for the verdict and I should watch my back, because he has a number of scary but loyal relatives.”
Rick glanced in the mirror. “Give me names. I’ll have the scum checked out.”
“Palmer’s way ahead of you.” She slanted him an accusing stare. “You’ll worry him into high blood pressure, you know, and stress-related HBP can lead directly to a stroke.”
“Palmer’s a big boy, Vanessa.”
The pain in her head was seeping down her neck. “Your high-handed attitude is really irritating. I didn’t get to be a cop because Captain Palmer and my father were best buddies.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew they were friends. I didn’t know about the best buddies thing.”
She rocked her head from side to side. “They met in grade school, grew up together,
