Page 81 of Chameleon Killer

“No. It was a warning.”

She stared at me. Then the anger receded, but far too quickly. Her seeming loss of control had been a gambit and a change in tactics.

“You’re right,” she said.

The agreement put me on alert faster than resistance would have. “About what?” I enunciated each word carefully.

“He had a purpose.”

She moved around the desk, not toward me but toward the glass wall. The newsroom beyond it had begun to wake. More lights. More movement. Witnesses without sound.

“He wanted me asking why Guy survived.”

“We’ve established that.”

“No.” She turned back to me. “We established that he asked the question. We haven’t established why he wanted it answered.”

“He wants to redirect the investigation.”

“Maybe.” But she shook her head.

So I asked the obvious question, “What other purpose would there be?”

“That’s one of the things Flint and I were discussing.” A reminder that the conversation had begun before I arrived and would continue after I left.

“What did the two of you conclude?”

“That Guy’s hospital stay matters.”

“We have his hospital records.”

“No,” she said. “You have some records.”

The distinction was immediate enough to sharpen my attention. “What does that mean?”

“It means the file is incomplete.”

Every thought in my mind stopped at once. But it was for less than an instant. With Mallory watching, I couldn’t afford to hesitate.

“What’s missing?” I asked.

“We were hoping you could tell us.” There it was. The reason she’d agreed to speak to me in private. She wanted to take advantage of my presence to get answers to her questions.

“Show me what you have,” I said. “I’ll see which gaps I can fill.” To learn what she knew, I had to let her believe she was the one asking the questions.

For now.

Chapter

Twelve

MALLORY

By the time Brewster was ready to leave Flint’s office, the newsroom had gone from hitting the snooze alarm to fully caffeinated.

Phones rang. Producers shouted questions. Assistants and interns moved at speed to get everything done. Three televisions carried three variations of the same breaking-news banner while an anchor at the assignment desk practiced pronouncing the name of a town in eastern Europe.

Normal had returned around us.