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“A real résumé launcher.” I told him how, a month after, I’d been offered the job as lieutenant.
My father leaned forward and placed a hand on my knee. “I wanted to see you, Lindsay. A hundred times… I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m proud of you. Homicide’s top of the line. When I look at you… you’re so… strong, in control. So beautiful. I only wish I could take a little of the credit.”
“You can. You taught me I had no one to rely on but myself.”
I got up, refilled his cup, and sat down again facing him. “Look, I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for you. I really am. But it’s been twenty-two years. Why are you here?”
“I called Cat, to see if you’d want to hear from me. She told me you’d been sick.”
I didn’t need to relive that. It was hard enough, just looking at him. “I was sick.” I nodded. “I’m better now. Hopefully, I’ll stay that way.”
My heart was tight against my chest. This was starting to get uncomfortable. “So, how long have you been following me?”
“Since yesterday. I sat across from the Hall in my car for three hours, trying to figure out the way to approach you. I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.”
“I don’t know if I do, Daddy.” I tried to find the right words, and I felt the edge of tears welling in my eyes. “You were never there. You ran out on us. I can’t just change the way I’ve felt for all these years.”
“I don’t expect you to, Lindsay,” he said. “I’m becoming an old man. An old man who knows he’s made a million mistakes. All I can do now is try and reverse some of them.”
I looked at him, half shaking my head in disbelief, half smiling, and dabbing at my eyes. “Things are crazy here now. You heard about Mercer?”
“Of course.” My father exhaled. I waited for him to say something, but he simply shrugged. “I saw you on the news. You are stunning. Do you know that, Lindsay?”
“Dad, please. Don’t.” This case needed everything I had right now. It was madness. Here I was facing my father again. “I don’t know if I can handle this now.”
“I don’t know either,” he said, tentatively reaching out for my hand. “What about we try?”
Chapter 54
NINE THE NEXT MORNING, Morris Ruddy, the FBI senior agent, scribbled a point on a yellow legal pad. “Okay, Lieutenant, when did you first determine the chimera symbol pointed toward the white supremacist movement?”
My head was still whirring from the events of the night before. The last place I wanted to be was cooped up in a task force meeting, talking to the Feebies.
“Your office clued us in,” I replied, “in Quantico.”
It was a bit of a lie, of course. Stu Kirkwood had only confirmed what I had already learned from Cindy.
“Subsequently, since you had that knowledge,” the FBI man bored in, “how many of these groups have you checked out?”
I gave him a frustrated look that read, We might actually start making some progress if we could get out of this goddamn room.
“You read the files I gave you. We looked into two or three.”
“You looked into one.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Look,” I explained, “we don’t have a history of these groups operating in this area. The method used in these killings seemed consistent with other cases I had worked. I made a determination that we were dealing with a serial killer. I’ll admit, it’s a gut call.”
“From these four distinct acts,” Ruddy said, “you narrowed it down that this was the act of a single UNSUB, right?”
“Yeah. From that and seven years working Homicide.” I didn’t like his tone.
“Look, Agent Ruddy, this isn’t a hearing,” Sam Ryan, my chief of detectives, finally said.
“I’m merely trying to determine how much of an effort we still have to coordinate in this area,” the FBI man replied.
“Look,” I insisted, “these chimera clues weren’t exactly popping out at us in press releases. The white van was sighted by a six-year-old kid. The second was on a wall of graffiti at the crime scene. Our M.E. suggested that the Catchings shooting might not have been a random bullet.”
“But even now,” Ruddy said, “after your own chief of police has been murdered, you still believe these killings aren’t politically motivated?”
