Now he bent down and kissed Lanny’s forehead. “Put in a good word for me.”

When he entered the kitchen, Janice, who had prepared a meal for him, served the plate at the single place setting on the table, saying apologetically, “I didn’t know when you’d be home, or if you would be, so I didn’t cook.”

“This is fine.” He sat down at the table and spread the napkin over his lap. Although the shrimp salad, buttered French bread, and sliced melon had been artfully arranged on the plate, he had no appetite.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got to go back to the office for a while. I should be there if something breaks.”

Janice sat down in the chair across from him. “You look done in.”

“I feel done in.”

“Nothing new on the kidnapping?”

“Nothing, and everyone including the dogcatcher is out looking for them. Or their bodies.”

Janice crossed her arms over her middle and hugged herself. “Don’t even say it.”

He placed his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his hand, rubbing his eye sockets with his fingers. Janice reached across the table and covered the hand resting beside his water glass.

“I don’t think he’ll kill them, Tom.”

“Then why did he take them?”

“Ransom?”

“No call. We’re monitoring the father-in-law’s home phone. He’s had a lot of concern calls from acquaintances, but nothing else. Same on his cell phone.” He picked up his fork and thoughtfully tapped it against the rim of his plate, but he didn’t take a bite of food. “I don’t think this is about ransom.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Coburn doesn’t fit the profile of a guy who shoots up his place of employment, or an office, or a school.”

“How so?”

Realizing he wouldn’t be eating, he set down his fork and tried to organize the thoughts that had been bouncing around inside his head. “Typically those guys are making a final and defiant stand against the dirty, rotten world and everybody in it who’s wronged them. By golly, they’re going to make a statement that will have a memorable impact, then go out in a blaze of glory.

“When they don’t commit suicide at the scene, they usually go home, kill their wife and kids, their parents, their in-laws, whoever, then kill themselves.” He lowered his hands and looked at Janice. “They may hold some hostages for a while before either killing them or releasing them. But they typically don’t disappear with them.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but…” She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t know how to respond because I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is that Lee Coburn isn’t your textbook mass murderer.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Of course there are exceptions, but he doesn’t fit the accepted profile.” He hesitated, then added, “Even Hamilton picked up on it.”

“Clint Hamilton? I thought he was in Washington now.”

“He is. But he called me today, wanted to know what the hell is going on down here and what I’m doing about it.”

Janice made a small sound of dismay. “He was checking up on you?”

“Essentially.”

“He’s got his nerve.” She pushed back her chair and indicated his untouched plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Sorry, no. It looks good, but…” He ended on a helpless shrug.

She carried his plate to the counter, cursing his predecessor under her breath. “If he didn’t think you were up to handling the job, why did he appoint you to the position?”

What Tom believed to be the answer to that was too humiliating to speak aloud, especially to Janice. She abhorred defeatism. She particularly abhorred it in her husband.

He said, “I don’t know where Hamilton got his information, probably from other agents in the office, but he must have noticed the same discrepancies in Coburn’s M.O. that I did. He even asked me if Coburn was an agent from my office working undercover at the trucking company.”

She sputtered a laugh, then sobered so quickly it was comical. “Was he?”

Tom gave her a crooked smile. “No. At least I didn’t place him there.” His smile slipped. “Someone in New Orleans who outranked me could have, I suppose. Or someone from another agency.”

“Without informing you?”

He merely shrugged, again not wanting to admit that he was inconsequential. Or at least was regarded so by coworkers.

She rejoined him at the table. “Hamilton has no right to interfere. Of course the man has an outrageous ego.”

“You’ve never even met him.”

“Based on everything you’ve told me about him, I doubt he could get his head through that door. It makes me mad as hell that he’s monitoring you.”

He decided against telling her that he wasn’t the only one in his office who had heard from Hamilton today. Many agents had disapproved of his appointment and had made no secret of it. But there were some who, either by word or general attitude, had demonstrated their support.

One of those agents, a data analyst, had confided in him today that others in the office had received calls from Hamilton. “For some reason,” she’d told Tom behind closed doors, “this case has showed up on Hamilton’s radar. He’s following it closely and asking questions about you.”

“What kind of questions?”

She had held up her hands, palms out. “I won’t get involved in office politics, Tom. I need this job. But I thought you should know that you’re being scrutinized.”

Tom had thanked her. For the rest of the day, he sensed whispering behind his back. Which may only have been his paranoia, but he didn’t think so. He resented Hamilton’s intrusion. Whatever the reason for it, it was insulting and worrisome.

He pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’d better get back.”

He left the kitchen before the troubling conversation could continue. He washed up in the powder room and retrieved his briefcase from the den. Janice met him at the back door with a sack lunch. “Emergency relief in case you need it. Peanut butter crackers and an apple.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t kiss him this time, and he didn’t kiss her. But before he could turn away, she placed her hand on his arm. “You’re doing a good job, Tom. Don’t let Hamilton or anyone else browbeat you into thinking otherwise.”

He gave her a weak smile. “I won’t. The hell of it is, Hamilton’s right.”

“In what way?”

“Any fool following this case would realize that it’s no ordinary kidnapping. In all likelihood, Mrs. Gillette witnessed Coburn shooting Fred Hawkins. Murderers don’t leave eyewitnesses. Coburn has a reason for keeping her alive.”

Chapter 24

Doral paid a dutiful visit to his mama.

As expected, she was prostrate with grief. Female relatives hovered around her, pressing her hands and applying damp cloths to her forehead. Rosary beads clacked as they prayed for Fred’s soul and petitioned for comfort for the loved ones he’d left behind.

There was no more room in the kitchen for all the food that had been brought by friends, family, and neighbors. The air-conditioning fought a losing battle against an approaching storm, which had lowered the barometric pressure and raised the humidity.

The male faction, to escape the drama inside the house, carried their overloaded plates out into the yard. They sat in lawn chairs, stroking the rifles and shotguns that lay across their laps, which was as second nature to them as scratching the ears of their hunting dogs. They passed around bottles of cheap whiskey and, in low voices, plotted revenge against Fred’s killer.