"There's a lot more, but I have to think a little. Oh, yeah, McCord headed up the Hostage Negotiation Team when four psychos took over a boys' summer camp and threatened to kill one kid every hour."

"And he rescued them all without using his weapon or raising his voice?"

Sam teased.

"No. The first kid was shot in the head while McCord's team was still arriving on the scene and getting into position."

Sam sobered. "Then what happened?"

"As I said, his people were still arriving, so no one saw everything exactly as it happened. There were a lot of conflicting reports from the eyewitnesses.

Basically, McCord lost his cool. He walked right into the clearing where the kids were being held, stretched out his arms, and said something like, 'Why waste your time on twelve-year-olds when you can kill yourself a cop?' Then he told the captors that he'd instructed his men to open fire in sixty seconds. He told them that, since they were already killing the kids, there wasn't any room for negotiation."

In spite of her earlier skepticism, Sam was riveted. "Then what happened?"

"McCord told the kids to 'hit the ground so the shooting can begin.' That's one version. Another version is that McCord yelled to the kids, 'Hit the ground!' "

"And?"

"The psychos yelled at the kids to stay standing."

"And? And?"

"The kids obviously figured McCord was crazier and more dangerous than their captors, because they all landed in a heap on the ground, and the sharpshooters opened fire. When the smoke cleared, there were four dead captors. That's when he got promoted to sergeant. No-no, he got that promotion after he cracked a bribery-and-extortion case that involved some high-level city officials. A couple years ago, he moved over to the Organized Crime Control Bureau, and made a record for himself there, too; then he transferred back to Borough Command and made detective lieutenant.

"He's in his mid-forties, and everybody figured he'd make division captain in a couple more years, then maybe chief of detectives, but that's not what happened."

"What did happen?" Sam asked, glancing at her watch. They still had fifteen minutes to waste before they were supposed to report to McCord.

"Nothing. A year ago, he told people he'd decided to retire when his twenty years were up, which is anytime now. I heard last month that he'd already left, but maybe he had a lot of vacation time piled up and decided to use it." Shrader nodded toward the empty metal tables scattered around the canteen. "We might as well sit in here instead of hanging around outside McCord's door like a couple of peons waiting for an audience with the pope."

Normally the canteen was crowded at this time of day, but everyone on duty this Sat.u.r.day had evidently eaten earlier, because the remnants of their meals were all over the tops of the round metal tables. Sam looked for the table with the fewest used paper plates, crumpled napkins, and sticky substances on it, but Shrader had no such compunctions. He sat down at the closest table and shook a few more M&M's into his palm. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for something to wipe off this chair with," she replied before she thought about it. Shrader guffawed.

"Littleton, how are you going to be able to stomach digging through garbage Dumpsters, looking for evidence?"

"I'm planning to wear gloves, like everyone else does," she informed him as she sat down on the chair.

Shrader generously held out his hand with a colorful supply of M&M's in his palm. "Here, have some."

They looked good. "Have you touched anything besides the back of your chair with that hand?"

"You do not want me to answer that."

Sam looked at him in disapproving silence while a slight smile touched the corner of her mouth. The silence was to discourage similar remarks in the future; the smile was a good-natured acknowledgment that, this time, she'd inadvertently given him an irresistible opening for a line exactly like that.

Shrader understood the subtlety behind both gestures and settled for regaling her with more glowing tales of McCord's feats in the area of law enforcement.

By the time they stood up, Sam was looking forward to meeting the man who evidently possessed the instincts of a clairvoyant, the intellect of a rocket scientist, and the persistence of a pit bull.

"Wait one second," Shrader said as they pa.s.sed the rest rooms on the way to McCord's office. "I want to stop in here."

While she waited for Shrader, several men and women walked past her down the hall, cops and clerks and detectives she'd seen around the precinct before, but instead of snubbing her as they'd done before, most of them nodded or mumbled a greeting. A shift was taking place in the general att.i.tude toward her, and she realized it was because Shrader had gone out of his way to make certain that Holland-and several of the cops in the Catskills-knew she'd made some sort of an inroad on the Manning case herself.

Despite the stocky build and ferocious appearance that had reminded her of a rottweiler and caused her to think of him as "Shredder," she had a feeling there was a streak of kindness in Shrader that he carefully disguised with scowling brusqueness. When he finally emerged, Sam forgot about all that and bit back a wayward grin. He had carefully wet down his short black hair with a little water, tucked in his shirt, and straightened his tie. "You look very spiffy," she joked.

"McCord is going to be dazzled when he sees you."

Sam had little expectation of actually liking Mitch.e.l.l McCord herself, but she was now doubly eager to meet the man who could actually make Shrader self-conscious about his appearance. In the Catskills, Shrader had worn the same three shirts and trousers for a week. Although he'd spoken only of McCord's heroics and accomplishments, she wondered if Shrader had stopped to "primp"

just now because he also knew McCord had a reputation for being appearance-conscious. Given McCord's rapid ascension up the ladder at division headquarters, Sam surmised he was not only talented, but also politically astute, probably arrogant, and possibly a good dresser.

CHAPTER 21.

The main area of the third floor was the squad room, a vast bull pen of metal desks and filing cabinets used round the clock by three different shifts of detectives, including Shrader and Sam. The place was always busy, and this Sat.u.r.day afternoon was no exception. Several detectives were filling out reports and making phone calls, two robbery detectives were interviewing a group of indignant tourists who'd witnessed a mugging, and a woman with a wailing child in her lap was filling out a complaint against her husband.

Lieutenant Unger's former office was on the far side of the floor, facing the bull pen.

McCord wasn't in the office when Sam and Shrader arrived, but the lights were on and the transformation that had taken place in there made it clear that the office was definitely under new management. Like any unoccupied s.p.a.ce in an overcrowded building, Unger's old office had quickly been appropriated for a variety of unauthorized uses, including an auxiliary canteen, a meeting area, a storage closet, and a depository for broken furniture. All that had abruptly changed.

Gone were the pictures of the mayor, the governor, and the police commissioner that Sam had seen hanging on the wall behind the desk; gone were the plaques, citations, certificates, and commendations that had covered the rest of the wall. The old bulletin board on the left-hand side of the room had disappeared along with the notices, clippings, and ads pinned to it. The dusty chalkboard on the right-hand side of the room was the only surviving adornment on any of the walls, but now it was scrubbed perfectly clean. The wooden tray attached to the bottom of it was devoid of dusty erasers and bits of used chalk; instead, there was a single, fresh box of chalk and one new eraser positioned in the center of the spotless tray.

The only furniture in the room was a metal desk that faced the doorway, a credenza behind it, and two guest chairs in front of it, plus one narrow table with two chairs against the left-hand wall. "It looks like McCord likes to keep things a little more orderly than Unger," Shrader whispered as they settled onto the pair of chairs in front of McCord's desk.

Sam thought that was a wild understatement. The metal furniture had not only been scrubbed and repositioned, it was actually centered and aligned with the walls. The credenza behind McCord's desk was empty, except for two computer screens, one of them on a laptop unit that obviously belonged to him, the other a bulky monitor-type that belonged to the department. The laptop was positioned directly behind McCord's chair, its dark blue screen lit up by two flashing white words: "Enter pa.s.sword." The larger computer monitor had been shifted to the left and was turned off. Four neatly labeled stacks of files were arranged on his desk, one stack per corner, one color label per stack. In the center of the desk, directly in front of his vacant swivel chair, was one fresh yellow tablet and one newly sharpened yellow pencil. Beneath the yellow tablet were two file folders, covered up either by accident or design, the labels on them partially visible.

Sam wouldn't have been quite so fascinated with all this housekeeping if McCord had been trying to set up a more personalized environment for himself, one that might make it more pleasant for him during an investigation that could last for weeks or even months. But that didn't appear to be the case. There was not a single picture of a wife, a girlfriend, or a child in evidence; no personal coffee mug, nor paperweight, nor memento of any kind was in evidence anywhere. Not even the nameplate that every cop took with him and put on whatever desk was his at the moment.

Despite the tales she'd just heard of McCord's manly courage and exploits, Sam decided Shrader's hero had either a prissy, fastidious streak or an outright neurosis. She was leaning over to tell Shrader that when she caught the name on one of the file folders peeking out from beneath the tablet and realized that McCord had commandeered their personnel jackets. "Shrader, is your first name... Malcolm?"

"Do I look like a Malcolm?" he shot back indignantly, but Sam knew embarra.s.sed denial when she saw it.

"That's a perfectly good name. Why deny it?-You're Malcolm Shrader."

"In that case," Mitch.e.l.l McCord interrupted as he strode swiftly into the office, "you must be Samantha Littleton."

Shock, not protocol, drove Sam to her feet next to Shrader for an exchange of handshakes. "And if I'm right so far," McCord added dryly, "then my name must be McCord." In one swift motion, he nodded for them to sit down, sat down himself, and reached for his phone. "I have one quick call to make, and then we'll get down to business."

Glad to have a few moments to gather her wits, Sam looked at Mitch.e.l.l McCord's scarred cheek and rough-hewn features, and instantly discarded the notion of prissiness, but she could not come up with words to cla.s.sify him.

Nothing about him seemed to fit exactly with the overall impression he gave. He was tall and he moved with the quickness of a man who was physically fit, but he was thinner than he should have been. He was in his middle forties, but his hair was gray and was cut in a style that reminded her a bit of George Clooney.

He was dressed well, particularly for a detective; his brown trousers were freshly pressed, his leather belt was just the right shade of brown, and his beige polo shirt was immaculate-but the brown tweed jacket he was wearing was too large for him, particularly in the shoulders.

None of that mattered, of course; Sam knew you couldn't tell much about a man from the way he dressed; but that face of his was another matter entirely, and in some ways, just as puzzling. He was sporting a deep winter tan, an indication that he possessed not only the money, but also the temperament, to spend weeks in the tropics, lying on a beach in the sun. Obviously he possessed both those things, but there was absolutely nothing idle or self-indulgent about that harsh-featured face with its two-inch-long scar curving down his right cheek, or the thicker scar slashing across the eyebrow above it. In addition to his scars, he also had deep grooves at the sides of his mouth, creases in his forehead, and twin furrows between his eyebrows.

Mitch.e.l.l McCord's face was not youthful or handsome. In fact, it was a long way from being handsome. But it was stamped with so much character and etched with so much hard-bitten experience that it was-beyond any doubt-the most charismatic, riveting face she had ever seen on a man.

When her next thought was one of pa.s.sing regret that she hadn't washed her hair and worn something nicer than a sweatshirt and jeans, Sam frowned in surprised disgust and brought herself up short.

McCord hung up the phone a moment later and addressed his comments to Shrader, not Sam, which was appropriate given Shrader's superior rank and experience. "Okay, bring me up to speed. Give me a minute-to-minute, blow-by-blow of everything that's transpired so far." He glanced at Sam. "If he leaves anything out, speak up immediately, don't wait, and don't hold back any details, no matter how small."

Without another word, he picked up the yellow tablet and pencil from his desk, swiveled his chair to the side, propped his ankle on one knee, and propped the tablet on his lap. He began making notes as soon as Shrader began speaking.

Sam made several mental notes herself, but they concerned his face, his body language, and the fact that his brown loafers were polished and shiny. After that, she devoted her attention totally to the subject at hand and, in the process, she managed to forget how strangely attractive she thought McCord was. She did that so well that when he glanced sideways at her and fired his first question at her, she answered him calmly and concisely.

"In the hospital," he asked her, "did you believe Leigh Manning when she said she didn't know Valente, that she'd met him for the first time at a party the night before?"

"Yes."

"At that time, were you also convinced that her concern for her husband was genuine?"

"Yes," Sam said again, and nodded for emphasis.

"In retrospect, now that you know she was lying, can you think of any small thing she said or did that would have given her away-if you'd been watching for it?"

"No-"

He caught her hesitation and homed in on it. "'No,' what?"

"No," Sam said, and reluctantly added, "and I'm not certain she's been lying about her fear for her husband. The first night we saw her in the hospital, she was drugged and she was confused and disoriented, but she wanted to see her husband and she seemed to truly believe he could be somewhere in the hospital.

The next morning, she was no longer disoriented, but she seemed frantic, and she also seemed to be struggling to keep her panic under control. She did not seem to be trying to put on a frenzied show for us, she seemed to be doing exactly the opposite."

"Really?" he said, but he was patronizing her, and she knew it.

After asking a great many more questions of Shrader, and not a single additional one of her, he finally came to the end and laid down his pad. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and extracted the tan evidence envelope that Harwell had signed for in the mountains and delivered to Captain Holland at Shrader's instructions. McCord removed the clear plastic bag inside it containing Valente's handwritten note. Smiling, he turned it in his fingers, and then he read what it said aloud: " ' It was harder than I ever imagined it would be to pretend we didn't know each other Sat.u.r.day night.' "

Still smiling, he looked at Sam. "You thought her alleged stalker sent the basket of pears, and that's why you hunted this note down, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Why did the pears bother you?"

"Because Mrs. Manning mentioned that she always eats them for breakfast and that her husband teased her about it. The basket of pears was an elaborate, expensive gift, and I a.s.sumed whoever sent them had to have knowledge of her personal habits."

"Did it occur to you that her husband might have sent them himself? He'd vanished mysteriously, and suddenly the pears turned up without a card. It could have been a private communication between the two of them. Did you consider that?"

"Not then, no. If I hadn't found the note from Valente, I'd have started wondering about that if, and when, Logan Manning didn't turn up alive."

"He isn't going to turn up alive. Valente will make certain of that.

Unfortunately, this note to Leigh Manning isn't incontrovertible proof of a murder conspiracy. He'll deny he wrote it; we'll get handwriting experts to testify he did; then his lawyers will find handwriting experts to refute our experts. Handwriting a.n.a.lysis isn't perceived by juries as a legitimate science, and handwriting experts generally make unconvincing witnesses. As far as this stationery goes, Valente's lawyers will argue that anyone with a two-hundred-dollar printer could have made it-including some enemy of Valente's who wanted to implicate him."

Glad for a chance to contribute something of value to the discussion, Sam said, "Valente's name isn't printed on that stationery, it's engraved. That means a professional printer somewhere did the work."

"How can you tell?"

"Turn it over and run your finger lightly over the back of it; there's a slight indentation behind each letter of his name."

"You're right, there is." She couldn't tell if McCord was impressed at all by this information, which was fairly common knowledge to women who'd priced invitations or stationery in a good department or stationery store, but she didn't feel a need to mention that fact to him. She had the distinct feeling he was more than a little ambivalent about letting her remain on his team.

"All right, we know with a little effort we should be able to prove she's been having an affair with Valente, and we also know her accident occurred when she was driving back to the city, not into the mountains." He looked at her steadily, and Sam began to wish he weren't, particularly when he asked the next question.

"What's your opinion of the way the case is shaping up at this point?"

Sam wondered if he was testing her by throwing her a trick question, because, at that point, there was no case. "What case?" she replied cautiously.

"Based on what you've seen and heard so far," he clarified impatiently, "what is your theory?"

"I don't have a theory. There are no facts to support any theory. We know that Mrs. Manning and Valente knew each before last week and that they wanted to keep it a secret. Beyond that, all we know is that Mrs. Manning wanted to get to the cabin as quickly as possible last week, and she was willing to be seen with Valente in order to do it. Are we trying to prosecute them for adultery? Because if we are, we couldn't do that with what we-"

The look McCord gave her made Sam feel as if she were flunking his test-a test he had hoped she'd pa.s.s-and she stopped in mid-sentence, completely confused. He picked up his tablet, turned in his chair again, and propped the tablet in his lap. "Are you telling me you haven't seen or heard anything in the last week that makes you suspicious?"

" Of course I'm suspicious."

"Then let's hear your opinion."

"I haven't formed an opinion worth giving," Sam said stubbornly.

"Americans have opinions about everything, Detective," he said impatiently.

"No matter how ill-informed, one-sided, or self-serving that opinion may be, they have a compulsion to not only share it, but to try to inflict it on each other.

It's a national pastime. It's a national obsession. Now," he said sharply, "you're supposed to be a detective. By definition, that means you're observant and intuitive. Prove it to me. Give me some observations, if you can't come up with opinions."

"About what?"

"About anything! About me."

Sam's six older brothers had spent most of their lives trying to goad her; she'd become supremely impervious to male goading a long time ago. But not completely-not right at this moment. At this moment her defense system was under unexpected siege and the only thing she could do was deny him the one satisfaction males wanted most at a time like this: the satisfaction of knowing she was riled. For that reason, she widened her eyes and smiled warmly at him when he snapped, "If you're at all aware that I'm here, Detective, let's hear your observations about me."

"Yes, sir, of course. You're approximately six feet one inches tall; weight about one hundred seventy pounds, age mid-forties."

She paused, hoping he would back off, knowing he wouldn't.

"That's the best you can do?" he mocked.

"No, sir. It isn't. You had every piece of furniture in this office scrubbed, not merely dusted, which means you're either unusually fastidious or you're just plain neurotic."