Jude said, “My father died. I went back to Georgia to bury him.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Our first date, you told me both your parents were dead.”
“They are now. My mother passed away last week.”
Jude sat down on the couch. She angled her body slightly away from him, a textbook example of someone who had somesthing to hide. Samuel had devoted his career to profiling. If Jude was going to get any information out of him, she had to make him feel like he was getting something out of her.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Samuel leaned his hands on the back of the chair. “Anything else you didn’t tell me?”
“I have an older brother, Tommy. He’s a retired schoolteacher. Emmy is younger. She’s the sheriff of Clifton County now that my father is gone.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”
“Almost forty years. Emmy was a baby when I left. She barely knew me.”
“Middle child. That explains a lot.” He walked around the chair and sat down. “You and I were together how long? And you never mentioned a brother and sister?”
She’d never mentioned a lot. “I also had a younger brother named Henry. We were Irish twins. Fourteen months between us. He drowned in the Flint River when he was sixteen. After that, it was hard to stay. And then the more I stayed away, the harder it was to go back.”
“Ah,” he said, as if he’d figured her out. “What changed?”
“Retirement.” She turned her body toward him to indicate she was finally opening up. “You know what this job can take from you. I spent my career helping families heal from losing a child. I thought it was time to do that with my own family.”
“Henry’s not the only child they lost, right?”
Jude wondered if this was what Emmy had meant bypsycholo-gist babble bullshit. She could see how it was irritating. “What did Seth say when you asked him why I was coming to see you?”
He laughed. “A little small talk to bridge the awkwardness. A few personal revelations to pull me onside. Now we get to the point.”
Jude smiled. Then she waited.
Samuel studied her for a moment. “What do you think Seth told me?”
Jude took her phone out of her purse. Scrolled to one of the photos she’d taken in Allison Vickery’s dining room. It showed an image of a man standing by a lamp-post in downtown North Falls. Sherry Robertson had said he looked like an insurance salesman.
Jude had thought he looked like a newly minted special agent with the FBI.
She asked Samuel, “Recognize him?”
He barely glanced at the photo before his eyes went back to Jude. “What do you see?”
“The suit jacket is so new he didn’t have time to remove the tack threads holding down the flaps on the pockets. The waist-band’s stiff. His shirt is still creased from being folded in the package. His suntan stops a quarter inch below his hairline, which is what happens when you train outdoors for twenty weeks, then get a haircut before your big first assignment. His sunglasses are available in the gift shop downstairs. And not to go too Hannibal Lecter on you, Clarice, but the shoes are a deadgiveaway. Most men who buy a new suit will go with a classic oxford, but your guy’s wearing a black leather derby with open lacing and the eyelet facings stitched on top of the vamp instead of under so they’re more comfortable. Just like the shoes you’re wearing now. Just like the shoes all your guys wear.”
He looked down at his derbies, which were favored by the young agents caught up in Samuel’s cult of personality. “My guys?”
“You always like to send them into the field before you let them play in your sandbox.”
“Do I?”
Jude went back to her phone, pinched her fingers on the screen to zoom in on the hastily scribbled X on the base of the lamp-post. Classic spy trade. Both Allison and her FBI contact had used the same color chalk to signal when one of them wanted to meet up. Jude had noted that the yellow was missing from the pack of Crayolas on the floor of Allison’s dining room. It likely matched the residue that was caked into the crevices of the console in her Toyota RAV4.
She asked, “Well?”
Sam looked more closely at her screen. “This is a photograph of a photograph.”
“Accurate.”
He took the phone like he needed to see the photo again, but Jude knew he was buying himself some time. He was trying to guess how much she knew, and how much he wanted to share. Finally, he looked up. “Special Agent Reid Foley. Graduated last month. Assigned to Atlanta. Farm kid from Appleton, Wisconsin. Still a bit green, but he’s got potential. Now it’s your turn.”
