“Be a little strange if we hadn’t,” Jamie responded dryly, “seeing as how it’s the biggest employer in town.”
Sam said, “There’s no connection to cardinals, though. They publish tax and accounting books, not bird books.”
“You don’t see the connection because you haven’t lived in Mansfield long enough,” she said.
“Twenty years isn’t long enough?” Sam said.
“Lorillard Press was founded twenty-five years ago,” said Dr. Cook. “Alden Lorillard quit his law practice, bought two vacant buildings in the center of town, and turned them into a publishing company. His warehouse used to be the old high school. And the building next to it that houses his editorial offices was—”
Sam snapped his fingers. “The Cardinal... something.”
“Typewriting Machine Company,” India supplied. “The Cardinal Typewriting Machine Company, I was seven years old when Alden founded Lorillard Press.”
“Alden?” Jamie said. “You’re on a first-name basis?”
“He’d been my father’s law partner. They remained very good friends.”
“Uh-huh.” Jamie rested his hands on his hips and looked her in the eye. “So let me get this straight. You think the wrought iron railings that you allegedly saw in a vision from a cat are in the editorial offices of Lorillard Press because that building was once owned by a company with Cardinal in its name. And that this place with these wrought iron railings might have something to do with this mystery man you also saw—correction, allegedly saw—in this vision, and that said mystery man might have something to do with the arson attack on Little Eddie’s.”
Dr. Cook regarded him in stony silence, then turned to Sam. “Maybe the man whose face I saw works at Lorillard Press. Do you want me to ask Alden if he’s got photos of his employees?”
“I already know he doesn’t,” Sam said. “Alden’s always been, shall we say, a little behind the times in the way he runs his business.”
“More than a little,” she agreed, smiling. Jamie saw a fondness in her expression that sent an absurd little corkscrew of jealousy twisting into his stomach. “I saw him last week, and he told me he doesn’t have a computer on his desk because ‘my secretary does all the typing.’ Alden’s a gentleman publisher of the old school.”
“Sounds more like a dinosaur,” Jamie muttered.
“Either way,” Sam said, stabbing Jamie with a look of warning, “there are no photos to work from. That leaves only one option, if we want to ID this guy before he strikes again. You two are gonna have to stake out Lorillard Press in an unmarked car this afternoon from three-thirty to five-thirty, when the employees leave. Dr. Cook is to look for that face. Any questions?”
Jamie let out a long sigh. He said, “I’ll pick you up at a quarter after three, Dr. Cook,” then turned to leave.
“Lieutenant, wait,” she said.
He swung around. What now?
“Isn’t this yours?” Reaching toward Sam’s desk, she lifted Jamie’s blue notebook with one hand and her gloves with the other. She held the notebook out to him, then pulled it back, frowning.
“What is it, India?” Sam asked.
Tucking her gloves into her shoulder bag, she held the notebook sandwiched between her bare hands. For a moment she stared at nothing, her mouth pressed into a thin, angry line. Then her gaze snapped back into focus and she looked directly at Jamie. Her eyes flared gold as those telltale pupils of hers shrank down to nothing.
“Slick move, Lieutenant, not turning the tape recorder off.” She thrust the notebook toward him, and he took it. “I didn’t realize you were quite that sneaky.”
She knows about the recorder? With all the cool Jamie could muster, he slid the notebook into his inside pocket and smiled. “‘Sneaky’ is part of my job description.”
“Thank you for warning me,” she said stonily, pulling on the gloves. “From now on, whenever I’m with you—” she met his gaze for one brief, breathtaking moment, then slipped the shades back on “—I’ll remember to keep my guard up.”
She left.
Sam turned to Jamie. “Nice goin’, hotshot. Next time I want a display of Irish charm, remind me to ask Sergeant Albonetti.”
* * *
INDIA WATCHED FROM her front porch as the nondescript gray sedan made its slow approach up the gravel drive connecting her heavily wooded property to Crescent Lake Road. When it got close enough for her to see James Keegan at the wheel, she put on her sunglasses—aviators this time.
He pulled up in front of the big stone and brick house, gave it a quick, curious appraisal, then leaned over to open the passenger door. “Dr. Cook.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Different sunglasses.”
“Yes.”
Those were the only words spoken during the entire drive into downtown Mansfield.
In a community of old buildings—the police station, the new high school, and a couple of fast-food places were the only modern structures in Mansfield—Lorillard Press occupied the oldest two. They stood side by side, both three-story redbrick buildings, recently connected by a second-floor walkway.
The two buildings shared a parking lot in back, surrounded by silver maples gilded in brilliant autumn foliage. The entrance to the lot, on Jefferson Street, was marked by a large sign announcing Lorillard Press, Quality Business Publications, with an arrow pointing in. Jefferson being a one-way street, Keegan was able to park along the curb directly to the right of the sign. He turned the ignition off and plucked the radio mouthpiece off the dash. While he reported his location to the station, India inspected him out of the corner of her eye. He’d traded in his suit for jeans and a denim jacket over a gray, hooded sweatshirt—an outfit perfectly suited to his disobedient hair and smart-aleck eyes.
It made her nervous sitting so close to him and having nowhere else to go. She tried to ignore the fact that he could reach out and touch her any time he wanted, tried to will herself to relax. She wouldn’t think about his proximity. She wouldn’t think about the fact that she could feel the heat from his body and smell the Ivory soap with which he must have recently bathed. The thought generated an image of him naked and dripping, which she promptly swept from her mind.
“This is a good spot,” he said, clicking off the radio. “The trees and the sign provide cover. We’ll be virtually invisible to people leaving the building.”
India looked around. “What if someone arrives and wants to park in the lot? They’ll see us then. We’re right next to the entrance.”
“No one’s going to be arriving this late in the day.” He checked his watch. “It’s almost three-thirty. From now till five-thirty, everyone will be going home, in fifteen-minute intervals, as their shifts end. They’ll drive away through the exit to the lot, which is around the corner on Main. No one will see us.”
“What about the warehouse staff? They’ve got a shift that starts at four, don’t they?”
He shook his head. “Not anymore. The second shift got laid off about six months ago. That’s what happens when you’ve got a dinosaur running things.”
He turned toward India. She shrank back as he got closer, but he was only reaching for something in the back seat, a brown bag. Any kind of casual physical contact, the type of thing other people took for granted—shaking hands, getting a pat on the back, even accidentally brushing up against someone—caused her mind to explode with bright, staccato images and riotous sensations.
Opening the bag, the detective withdrew two bottles of mineral water and offered one to India, shrugging. “It’s all I had in the fridge at home. That and a six-pack of Harp’s, but I’m on duty—such as it is.”
She accepted the bottle and let him open it for her. It was pleasantly sparkly, and still cold. “Lieutenant, why exactly is it so critical that we not be seen?”
He swallowed about half of his bottle in a three or four gulps. “Say you do finger some hapless Lorillard employee this afternoon. I could just take him in for questio
ning, but it wouldn’t be smart. There’s a legal concept called the fruit of the poisonous tree.’ Information and evidence obtained from questionable sources—”
“Like psychics.”
“Like psychics, is generally inadmissible in court. Therefore, I’ve promised Sam that if you make an ID, I’ll tail the suspect home so we know where he lives. Then the boys will stake out his house every night this week, follow him if he leaves, and apprehend him if he tries to start a fire. But if he sees us hanging out here this afternoon, he’ll know we’re on to him. He’ll lay low the rest of the week, and we’ll have lost our chance to catch him.”
“But even if he does see us, he won’t know who we are. We’re in an unmarked car.”
He drained the bottle, recapped it, and tossed it back in the bag. “Everyone in this town knows who I am.”
She imagined that was true. He was the kind of guy who got noticed. His size, his personality and his profession would all tend to draw attention to him. Having spent four years trying to fade into the background, to make people leave her alone, India felt vulnerable just sitting in the same car with such a man.
He cocked his head toward a handful of people in the parking lot. “It’s show time.”
“What do I do?”
“Just check out the people who walk out of those two buildings. The employees who park in the lot, and that’s most of them, will exit by the back doors within the next two hours, every fifteen minutes. If you see your mystery man, give a holler.”
Most of the people in the lot headed directly for their cars, but a small group chatted together, laughing over something. All of the men looked too old to be the one she saw when she touched Phoenix.
India had to look across Lieutenant Keegan to see out the window, and she got the impression it made him nervous. He glanced at her a couple of times, stared out the window, then reached into a pocket of his denim jacket and withdrew his notebook and a pen.
“Can I assume I’m being surreptitiously recorded again, Lieutenant?” she asked, without diverting her gaze from the parking lot.
He looked at her, his eyes searching for hers through her sunglasses. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “You tell me. You’re the mind reader.”
“I have to touch people to read their minds.”
“People—” he held the notebook up “—or things, isn’t that right? Better keep your story straight if you expect this to work, Dr. Cook.”
“If I expect what to work, Lieutenant Keegan?”
“This campaign of yours to enhance your credibility as a psychic by assisting the Mansfield police department in apprehending the Firefly.”
“Is that what you think I—”
“That’s what I know you’re doing, Dr. Cook.”
She sighed impatiently, keeping her gaze glued on the departing employees. “How do you explain my knowing about the tape recorder back there at the station?”
He chuckled. “You should work on your parlor tricks, Dr. Cook. They’re amateurish. You’d seen me turn the recorder on and noticed when I didn’t turn it off. But instead of calling me on it right then and there, you saved it up and used it to concoct a little demonstration of your powers.”
“Sounds pretty calculating.”
“It is pretty calculating.”
She looked directly at him. “You don’t know me, Lieutenant.”
“I know you better than you think, Dr. Cook. And I suggest you keep your eyes on the parking lot so I can tell Sam we actually gave this thing a shot.” He wrote something in his notebook. “And no, I’m not taping you right now. Happy?”
Before she could stop herself, she muttered, “Lieutenant, I don’t know the meaning of that word.”
From the edge of her field of vision, she saw Keegan turn and look at her, the curiosity in his gaze gradually softening. Returning his attention to the book, he wrote for another few minutes, during which the flow of departing employees petered out to nothing.
“That’s it for that shift, I guess.” He tapped his pen against the notebook for a few seconds, and then asked, “Do you want to trade places?”
Sit on the seat he’d been occupying and have to deal with his vibes? “No.”
“All right.” He returned the notebook and pen to his pocket and leaned toward her. Again she automatically shrank back. “Easy,” he said, groping in back for a thermos. “Care for some coffee? It’s black.”
Indicating the bottle of mineral water in her hand, she said, “I’m fine, thanks.”
He unscrewed the cup on top of the thermos and poured himself some coffee, then became very still and stared out his side window, seemingly transfixed. She turned to look, and gasped in wonder, then took off her sunglasses for a better view. A gust of wind had loosened thousands of bright yellow leaves from the maples that surrounded them. They fluttered and spun against the azure sky like so many flecks of gold leaves winking in the sun. The dazzling spectacle held her captivated.
She realized he was staring at her.
“Beautiful,” she said to cover her awkwardness.
He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then seemed to think better of it.
Nonplussed, she started to put the shades back on, but he closed a hand over hers to stop her. In the split second before she wrested out of his grip, she felt a powerful charge of desire shoot up her arm and rip the breath from her lungs. The TV in her mind flicked on and off, but not before she saw the eyes—her eyes—filling up the screen. They were... extraordinary. The most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, her heart thundering in her chest.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I just don’t want you to put those things back on. They, uh...” He glanced at her eyes and then at the parking lot. “You’ll be able to see better without them.”
India swallowed hard and nodded. “All right.” Yikes, she thought as she folded up the sunglasses with trembling hands and put them away in her bag. This guy’s supercharged. Or maybe I’m just super-receptive to him. That possibility did nothing to relax her.
Keegan sat in silence for a while, then nodded toward the parking lot. “Here comes the 3:45 crowd.”
India turned her attention on the new wave of people leaving Lorillard Press, grateful to have a task that would take her mind off the all-too-potent energy emanating from Lieutenant James Keegan.
“Anyone look like your Firefly?” he asked, sipping his coffee.
She took a sip of water. “I don’t even know for sure that the guy I saw is the Firefly,” she said. “Nothing about the face screams pyromaniac.’“
“That’s the problem with pyros. They don’t tend to advertise what they are right on the surface. All we’ve got to go on is a psychological profile.”
One by one, she inspected the departing employees. “What’s the psychological profile, then? Why do these guys start fires?”
“For the thrill. That’s part of what makes arson just about the most difficult kind of crime there is to investigate. Pyros tend to be wackos. Their motives just don’t make sense to your basic well-adjusted police detective. Usually—” he glanced at her briefly “—it’s a kind of a sexual thing.”
“Ah.” Wouldn’t you know?
He took a long swallow of coffee. “They start the fire and then wait around and watch the crowds gather and the fire trucks come. The flames and the commotion are highly arousing to them. They get off on it.”
“I see.” Ridiculously, she felt her face grow warm.
“Sexual stimulation is the motivation for a surprising variety of crimes. You’d be amazed what turns people on.”
She stared fixedly at the parking lot, wishing he’d stop talking about sex. It made her unruly mind speculate along paths she’d rather steer clear of. Unwillingly, she began to wonder what turned him on. What did Detective Lieutenant James Keegan find “highly arousing?”
Her eyes... the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.
“I never thought about that particular aspect of crime,” she said, conscious of his amused gaze as he watched her scrutinize the lot. “It’s very interesting.”
The 3:45 crowd let up; people drove away. She sighed.
“No Firefly?” Keegan asked, screwing his empty cup back on top of the thermos.
“No Firefly.”
From behind them came the rackety chugging of a car badly in need of a new muffler. India turned to see a battered, rust-speckled green Trans Am draw up next to them, slowing to turn into the Lorillard Press parking lot. So. Brilliant Lieutenant Keegan had been wrong when he said no one would show up this late. She craned her head to get a good look at the driver....
And gasped at the jolt of recognition. That black hair, those intense eyes...
“Oh my God!” It was the face she’d been looking for all day, first in mug shots, then here. It was the face she’d been fixated on, the face she couldn’t get out of her mind, the face she’d seen when she’d touched Phoenix. “Lieutenant! It’s him!”
She pointed to the Trans Am as it slowly negotiated a left turn in front of them. Keegan’s eyes grew wide. “I know that kid! That’s Tommy Finn!” Hurling his thermos into the back seat, he yanked up the hood of his sweatshirt. “If he’s seen me, I’ve blown it big-time.”
Tommy Finn lowered his window as he pulled up to the entrance gate, then pushed a button on a control box and spoke into it. As the gate slowly opened, he reached up and adjusted his rearview mirror, looking this way and that into it.
“He’s trying to get a look at us,” the Lieutenant whispered. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t—” Finn turned to look back over his shoulder. “Damn!”
As Finn turned, so did Keegan, shifting in his seat so that his back was to the windshield. India couldn’t figure out what he was up to until he reached for her.
She flattened herself into the corner between the door and the seat. “Wha—No!”
Suddenly his eyes were an inch from hers. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he cupped her face with his big hands and lowered his mouth over hers.
Bodyguards Boxed Set Page 113
