“Thank you. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Not at all. I’m sorry you’re having to wait so long.”

Mia found the kitchen and the promised cold can of soda. She popped the lid and took a long drink. Better than coffee for an upset stomach, she told herself as she returned to one of the uncomfortable chairs in the conference room. Yesterday’s local newspaper was there on the table; she scanned the headlines.

ALL WRAPPED UP! shouted the front page of the tabloid paper. Body wrapped in plastic left for anguished parents! Ballard woman suffocated!

No wonder everyone’s panicking, reading crap like this. What moron gave out all that information to the press?

She folded the paper and tossed it to the opposite end of the table in disgust.

“…waiting for you in the conference room,” Mia heard the dispatcher say.

“Great. Give him some coffee and tell him I’ll be in in just a second.”

“Ahhh, Chief-”

“Be right there, Garland. Gotta take this call, I’ll make it fast…”

Why did they always expect a guy? She shook her head. Women had been in the FBI for years, and yet people were still surprised when the agent they were expecting wore a skirt. Or in her case, well-cut black linen pants and a crisp white shirt.

His entrance into the room caught her off guard.

If he was surprised to find that Agent Shields was a woman, he hid it well.

“Agent Shields, I’m Gabriel Beck.” He approached her with an open hand and a weary smile. “I apologize for making you wait. I see someone’s brought you a drink. Can I get you a refill?”

“No thank you.” She took his hand and gave it the firm shake she reserved for those times when she felt she needed to assert herself. She fished her credentials from her bag and handed them over. “I’m sure you’ll want to look these over.”

He did. When he was finished, he handed them back and took the chair directly opposite hers.

“You’ve been brought up to date?” He asked.

“Only by the local paper.” She pointed to the end of the table.

“That was a pretty bad piece.” He shook his head. “You wonder what people are thinking when they write crap like that.”

“They’re thinking about how many papers they’re going to sell.” She folded her arms on the table.

“I’m sure they had a banner day, then.” He leaned back in his chair. “I had a long talk with your Agent Mancini yesterday afternoon, I assumed he passed on everything we talked about.”

“He told me about the two bodies that were found, how they were found, and where. Both victims were from towns nearby, is that correct?”

He nodded. “Right. The first was found on the front porch of her family home, the second was found here, in the backseat of my car.” He added wryly, “My personal car.”

“Nice touch on his part. How’d he get the car open?”

“Apparently I’d left it unlocked.”

“So he just walked onto your property in the middle of the night and dumped the body in your car and no one heard or saw anything?” she asked.

“Not a thing. It had to have been between the hours of one and five in the morning. I was downstairs reading until a little before one, and I was up again at five. I try to run four mornings each week. I left the house at ten after five and got back around five forty-five.”

“And you didn’t notice anything at all?”

“The car was parked behind the house, in front of the garage. I left and returned through the front door. It wasn’t until I was leaving for a meeting around seven thirty that I found the body.”

“The car’s been impounded?”

“The lab people are still working on the bare amount of trace our people were able to recover. The killer had apparently hosed down the plastic to remove anything that might have clung to the wrappings before he put her into the car.”

“Fingerprints?” she asked.

“Not a one.”

“Careful, wasn’t he?” She tapped her fingers on the table. “And thorough. Not taking any chances at all. But that’s a brassy move, leaving her for you to find. She was from St. Dennis?”

He shook his head. “No. She was from a nearby town, Cameron. At least, we’re thinking she was. A young woman named Mindy Kenneher went missing there a few weeks before the woman who’d been found on Sunday night. I’m expecting to hear back from the ME any time now. I was meeting with the chief of police from Cameron when you arrived. He was on his way to the morgue to take a look at the body.”

“He hadn’t seen her yet?”

“The ME spent hours with the remains yesterday and last night. The condition of the body apparently made it very slow going. As hot as it’s been this past week, decomposition accelerated inside the plastic. She-the ME, Dr. Reilly-is very thorough. She’s taking her time with this.”

“It’s my understanding there was a tape found with the first body,” she said. “Was there one with the second as well?”

“Yes, but because of the breakdown of bodily fluids inside the plastic, the tape was saturated and has been compromised. Agent Mancini said the FBI labs could work on that, see if they could improve the quality. Unfortunately, right now it’s inaudible.”

“I’m sure we can help with that. Any chance I can listen to the tape that was found with the first victim?”

“The chief in Ballard has that; I’ll have him make a copy. And I’ve already requested a copy of his file, and the file from Cameron. We’ll get you whatever you need.”

“Chief, why do you suppose he left the body for you to find?”

“Beck,” he told her. “Everyone calls me Beck. And I don’t know why he picked me, except for the fact that I attended the press conference Chief Daley held over in Ballard the other day. There were four of us, police chiefs from four communities. Five all together, including Daley.”

“Why were you all there?”

“Mostly to let our communities know we were going to work together to solve the case.” He made a face. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, not so much.”

“Because he-the killer-may have felt threatened? Maybe thought you were ganging up on him? Or then again, judging by his response, maybe he’s playing with you. Maybe he saw the whole thing as a challenge? ‘You guys think you’re so smart, well, I’ll show you. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’”

“You got that part right.” Beck nodded. “We don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

“Why you?” she asked. “There were other local chiefs there. Why did he pick your car and not one of the others?”

“I have no idea. I’m trying not to read too much into it.”

He pushed the chair back from the table and stood.

“You feel like taking a walk?”

“Sure.”

“ Garland, I have my phone if it’s important,” Beck said as he passed the desk. “We’ll be back in a while.”

Garland was on the phone, but raised a hand to signal he’d heard.

Mia followed Beck through the lobby and out the front door. She dug in her bag for her sunglasses, then swung the bag over her shoulder.

“Pretty town,” she said as they walked toward the water.

“One of the prettiest towns around. I want to keep it that way.” He stopped at the end of the macadam drive. “St. Dennis sits right at the convergence of the New River, which you can see straight ahead there, and the Chesapeake Bay, out there to your left, where that big cruiser is headed. During the War of 1812, the town was shelled by the British. Several of the houses in town still have cannonballs embedded in their walls, but none fell. St. Dennis is very proud of that.”

“Ahhh, spoken like a proud native,” she said. “Born and bred here, I assume?”

“No.” He turned and started toward the brown, shingled building that stood at the end of the parking lot.

“Really? Could have fooled me.” She hustled to keep up. “Where are you from?”

“Here and there.”

O-kay…

“So where are we headed?” she asked.