Page 19 of Chameleon Killer

It was a bad, albeit useful design. Mallory McBryan’s desk sat near the column. Not hidden. Never hidden. But when she sat there, she was protected from casual observation. Was that her call? Or the news director?

Or perhaps a coincidence?

The answer interested me.

I stopped beside the copier and opened the leather portfolio in my hands. The machine whirred. Paper slid into the top slot and more exited on the side.

People ignored me while I waited for the copier to finish and I studied her desk without touching it.

Mallory’s workspace looked chaotic at first glance.

Three legal pads. Two coffee cups. A stack of printed filings secured with binder clips. Colored tabs protruding from folders in a system that would look random to anyone who expected order.

It wasn’t, though. She marked names with red tabs, dates with blue ones, and money in yellow. The green indicated institutional connections. A small notebook sat open facedown beneath a pen. It was like she paused to go elsewhere in the middle of a thought.

She had three pens within reach.

Black.

Blue.

Red.

No highlighters.

She didn’t need them. Mallory annotated.

There was a difference.

A cracked ceramic mug held paperclips, two thumb drives, and a small lapel pin from a press freedom organization. Beside it rested a battered AP Stylebook with a broken spine and notes tucked between pages.

Her chair had been pushed in. I doubted she’d done that. She usually left it angled slightly, one wheel turned outward as though prepared for her to return because she was already onto that next thing when she left her desk.

Someone had straightened it in her absence. The trash can next to her desk was empty. The outbox was empty. There were fresh white lilies in a narrow glass vase. Those seemed a bit too funereal for her. There was no card visible, but the florist’s sleeve remained folded beneath the vase.

I looked toward the offices lining the far wall. Flint Carter’s door stood half open. His desk was visible through the glass, buried in notes, marked-up scripts, coffee cups, and two monitors showing surveillance stills from the network lobby.

Interesting.

Mallory had someone paying attention.

Good.

A woman carrying a stack of folders paused beside me.

“You need something?”

I looked up mildly.

“Copier jammed?” She glanced at the machine. It produced another page with a soft scrape. “Nope.”

“Then I’m in good shape for a change.”

She gave a tired little laugh and continued past me.

Humor, when deployed sparingly, made people complicit in ignoring you. I removed the copies the machine had produced and slid them into my portfolio.

The appearance of work was often sufficient.