“Not a thing. Just thought you’d like to know.”
“What did he get this time?”
“Oh, roughly a hundred thousand in jewelry, silver, and art from the Monroe house in Cranston.”
“Are they sure it was the Cat?”
“Who else helps himself and leaves without a trace?”
“Have they questioned Stavanovich?”
“Can’t find him.”
“Swell. This is getting embarrassing, Savvy.”
“Mmmm.” She inhaled an exaggerated breath. “Anyway, I’ve sent Hank out to cruise around. He’s got one or two informants who will let him know if they’ve seen or heard anything about Megan. I even have someone in Corrections looking to see who of our dear friends has been released from prison lately. Beyond that, I don’t know what to do.”
Paul was totally composed, more so than any other person she had seen that day. But then, Paul was always composed. Part of it was the image he upheld, part was his experience, and part was the fact that, as attorney general, he was detached from the nitty-gritty details of things. He rarely bloodied his hands in the arena. He had assistants to do that, assistants like Savannah.
“There’s nothing to do but wait,” he said.
“It’s hard.”
“That’s because you’re a doer and doers don’t usually wait. But we have no choice, Savannah. If we move too far, too fast, or too freely, we’re apt to blow this case. Neither of us wants to do that.”
She knew he was right, though she was uneasy with his pointed warning. Paul was, she knew, a political creature, while she was a humanitarian one. One of the reasons their relationship worked so well was that they tempered each other.
In this situation, however, Savannah didn’t want to be tempered. Megan was her friend. The political ramifications of the case didn’t concern her at all.
“I feel like I’m blowing it by sitting here doing nothing,” she complained. “I wish Will would let us go to the FBI.”
“I doubt they’d do more than you’ve already done.”
“Maybe not,” she mused. Still, the weight of responsibility was on her shoulders, and it was awesome.
Paul left. Savannah took several phone calls and made several others concerning her upcoming trial. She met with one of the lawyers to discuss preparation of a rebuttal to pretrial motions for an extortion case that was on the docket for a month later. She phoned the Vandermeer house, but nothing had happened.
Frustrated, she called information for the number of WCIC. She jotted it on her pad, stared at it for several minutes, picked up the phone to call, then put the receiver down.
Coincidence. There couldn’t be a connection. Or if there was, she had already taken care of it. That was why she had phoned the Department of Corrections earlier. The idea that one or more of Megan’s abductors had spent time in Rhode Island correctional facilities, where they might have listened to and been inspired by WCIC, was a shot in the dark, but those shots seemed the only ones she could take.
Temporarily satisfied, she stashed several extra pads of paper into her briefcase and went to the law library. She could be reached there if anything happened, and in the meanwhile, she would be doing research.
By one in the afternoon, though, she was back in her office. Again she lifted the phone to call WCIC. Again she replaced the receiver without pushing a button. Then she took several incoming calls and an hour later she drove to the Vandermeer house. She already knew that nothing had happened, but she wanted to stop in, if only for a short time.
While she was there, Hank returned, but his informants had had nothing to say. “Either they really know nothing, or whoever is involved is so big that they’re terrified.”
Savannah chose to believe the first, since the second was truly frightening. “Who’s big?” she asked. “Why would someone big get involved in a kidnapping?”
Neither Hank nor Sam had answers for her, and Sam had worse news to report. “We won’t get any help from his managers. They haven’t seen a thing.”
“We’re really striking out,” Savannah murmured and turned toward Will. Exhausted, he had taken to sitting rigidly on the living room sofa with the phone by his side. “How’re you doing?” she asked gently as she slipped down beside him.
He eyed her hollowly. “It’s my fault. If I’d had the alarm system fixed, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. It’s my fault.”
