A pen rolled off Colenso’s desk and dropped onto the floor, but this time the elusive feeling that she was about to get something didn’t vaporize.
Taylor stared at the sentence she’d just read. That was it.
So far they had gleaned zilch from Lopez’s computer files. In a nutshell, he didn’t store his information on any electronic system they’d found. They had assumed that he had the information stored on a computer somewhere. It was possible he had an encoded system and they simply hadn’t found it, but what if he stored information in another way?
Feverishly, she turned pages. Mendoza had had a book, and there had been a mention of a book in Earl Slater’s testimony.
She found the page and ran her finger down the margin until she located the piece she was looking for. According to Slater, Lopez had recently retrieved a book from a bank vault in Bogotá. Slater didn’t know what the book contained, just that it had been important enough for Lopez to make a trip to collect it. It was possible it had been a rare antique, an easy asset to liquidate when he’d needed—
Colenso’s chair creaked as he rocked back and propped his expensively shod feet on the desktop. He jerked his head toward the file she was reading. “Thought Bayard pulled you off the case.”
“He did.” She indicated a pile of paperwork occupying one corner of her desk. “In theory I’m working on operation Update the Filing System.”
His gaze sharpened. “You’ve found something.”
Several heads turned. Taylor closed the file. “Maybe. Nothing that isn’t already on file.”
And nothing that she was prepared to talk about yet.
The fact that there had been a serious leak connected with the Lopez case—in effect, a mole in the Bureau—made her wary. According to her own private snooping, the information leaks were exclusively related to the Lopez case. That meant Lopez had either corrupted someone in the FBI, or else he had managed to hack into the Bureau’s information systems. She trusted everyone in the office…to a degree.
Colenso looked disgruntled. “You’re giving me that schoolmarm look again.”
“Get used to it. I’ve applied for Bayard’s old job. You could be looking at your new boss.”
“After what happened on the West Coast?”
Colenso’s amused expression set her teeth on edge. Taylor picked up a file detailing Slater’s successful prosecution and tossed it onto his desk. After “what happened” in both Eureka and Winton, she had zero tolerance for assholes. Someone had hemorrhaged information, compromising the operation on more than one occasion, with the result that Lopez had slipped the net. She had been caught off guard and taken hostage on the heels of the last spoiled operation. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but my mistake was the only investigative break we had.”
His hands shot up in surrender. “I hear you, Yoda.”
A reluctant smile twitched at her mouth. Lately, she’d gotten a lot of wisecracking about “the force,” courtesy of her crusade against the “evil empire”—Lopez.
Gail, one of the clerks from administration, sorted through the bundle of mail she was carrying and dropped a letter onto Taylor’s desk.
Frowning, Taylor retrieved a paper knife from her drawer and slit the envelope. A business card slid out, and for a moment her mind went utterly blank. There were no words, just a crude symbol in the shape of a jaguar’s head stamped onto the card. The stamp lacked detail, it was the kind kids bought from bargain outlets and toy stores, but the fact that it was a jaguar’s head made her skin crawl.
Lopez had had a jaguar tattooed on the back of one of his hands. The tattoo was no longer visible. He’d had it lasered off years ago, but Taylor had seen a grainy photo of it.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Someone just sent me a calling card. A jaguar’s head.”
Feeling light-headed and a little strange, she turned the card so Colenso could see it, then slipped it back into the envelope so as not to further compromise any prints.
Colenso frowned. “It’s got to be a prank.”
“I’m not laughing.” The thought that it could have been Lopez made her freeze inside. If it was a bona fide calling card, the precursor to a hit—
He shrugged. “Sorry, wrong word. I’m not trying to trivialize it, but I’ve never heard of Lopez or the Chavez cartel using mafia tricks.”
Taylor dropped the envelope into a plastic bag, her mind automatically going over the list of people, aside from Lopez, who could hold some kind of grudge against her. Slater’s ex-wife and his hooker girlfriend. A number of Lopez’s security staff who had been arrested in Eureka following the bust on Senator Radcliff’s place, and who were presently standing trial. It had to be someone who knew about Lopez’s tattoo and who knew that she would recognize the significance of the jaguar’s head.
It could have been sent by Lopez.
The probability sent a shaft of raw panic through her. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how much she never wanted to see Lopez again. As badly as she needed him caught, as totally as she had immersed herself in his case, she realized Bayard was right: the personal cost was too great. She didn’t want back into a hell she’d spent months crawling out of.
Colenso touched her shoulder. She stared blankly into his concerned gaze, unaware until then that he had gotten up from his desk. “Stay there. I’ll get you something to drink.”
Minutes later he handed her a polystyrene cup of coffee. The hot liquid burned her mouth and was so sweet she could barely drink it.
Colenso propped himself on the edge of her desk as she sipped, his presence obscurely comforting because he blocked her off from the rest of the office, giving her time to recover. The last thing she needed was a cataloged report of an anxiety attack in the office. Bayard would have her out the door so fast she would be spinning.
Colenso studied the typed address label on the envelope, which was visible through the plastic. “If the card is from Lopez then it’s manna from heaven. It could be the lead we’ve been waiting for.”
But Colenso didn’t think so.
The thought slid into her mind, as sharp and acid as the sugar-laced coffee, and suddenly Colenso’s uncharacteristically PC behavior made sense. He was soothing her because he didn’t believe the card was a serious threat.
* * *
Three days later, Bayard handed Taylor the forensics report on the envelope and the card. The envelope, the card, the ink and the stamp were all locally available items, most likely purchased in D.C. Whoever had sent the card had been professional enough to wear gloves, because the only identifiable prints besides Gail’s and Taylor’s had belonged to post office personnel. The postmark was local and the address was a computer-generated label that had been affixed to the envelope. The stamp showed no traces of saliva and because the envelope was of the self-sealing variety it hadn’t yielded any, either, so there was no DNA.
Given that the envelope had been posted in D.C. on the same day Slater and the minor felons involved in the hostage situation had been sentenced, Bayard suspected that it was a hoax, most likely perpetrated by a family member or an associate of one of the felons. Without conclusive evidence of a death threat, he could no longer justify the around-the-clock security on her apartment or the escort to and from work, but she had options. She could scale down her hours until she felt better. If she wanted time off, she could have it on full pay. A holiday—a change of scene—could be just what she needed.
Taylor