“Keep your eyes closed and mentally reconstruct the scene.” She waited until he complied. “Were the two of you sitting or standing? Were you having a pleasant conversation or quarreling? What were you feeling, Mitch? Resentment and anger toward him or—”
“Futility.”
“Futility?”
“That’s what I was feeling. I remember now,” he said, opening his eyes. “It was during that meeting.”
“Meeting. So there were other people in the room. Who?”
“John, me, and the officers on the task force.”
“Task force for what? The Bayou Coeur case?”
“No. John put me in charge of a task force that’s training school guards on how to handle active shooter incidents.”
“Your feelings of futility stemmed from the fear of that happening in Auclair?”
“Yes, but that’s not… not quite it.”
“Take a moment.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I remember thinking that these are nice, genial, well-meaning people who are committed to protecting schoolchildren. And… and… fearing that no matter how well we trained them, and despite their earnestness, they still wouldn’t be prepared, because they wouldn’t see past…”
He got up from his chair, rounded it, and braced himself on its ladderback. He lowered his head and looked down at the floor, but what he was envisioning was himself in John’s office. John and the other officers appearing to be confident that they were making strides with the program, while he was feeling doubt and futility.
Remembering how he’d been reluctant to speak his mind, he said to Dylan, “I didn’t express my pessimism because I didn’t want to end the meeting on a downer. John, especially, wanted to give the superintendent a positive progress report.
“The others left, but John knew something was bothering me. He made me stay and told me to spit out whatever was onmy mind. So I did. I told him I didn’t believe that our instinct could beinstilled. That he and I had been born with it, that you either had it or you didn’t.”
“Your instinct for what, Mitch?”
“For… for…” He was now rocking the chair back and forth on its back legs.
Dylan said, “Visualize John’s expression. How did he react to what you were saying? Did he disagree?”
“No, no he understood exactly what I was talking about.”
“He knew exactly what you were talking about when you said…”
“When I said… when I said that he and I had an instinct for looking past the obvious and spotting whatisn’t.”
As he spoke the words aloud, he got chill bumps. He raised his head and looked straight into Dylan’s calm, clear, incredibly beautiful and intelligent eyes. “That’s it,” he said gruffly. “That’sit. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember.”
She scooted forward in her seat. “Why was it significant in that moment and worth remembering now?”
“Because the school guards were picking the stereotypical hardened criminals from the pictures I’d showed them and missing the ones who looked least likely to shoot up a school, but who actually had. Dylan, this is theit. Who’s the least likely person you would expect to be the head of a drug cartel?”
He began snapping his fingers in rhythm with his rapidly tumbling thoughts. “Yesterday in the hospital, Mary said, ‘Turn that off. He’s obnoxious.’ And I said, ‘You can’t escape that jerk.’ And in EATS, the diner across from your office, Dodi—the waitress. Been there a million years. She commented on him, said he was a loudmouth.”
His thoughts were coming so fast, he was panting as thoughrunning full-tilt. “I’ve been looking at the people Malone whispers to conspiratorially when they leave the restaurant. The ones whose handshakes are hand-clasps.
“But this guy, no. He always breezes past Malone, never giving him a second glance before ducking into his chauffeur-driven car. He flaunts his wealth, he boasts about it, so nobody even thinks to question how he comes by it. And what better place to hide your identity than behind the face that every-fucking-body recognizes?” He laughed. “That clever son of a bitch.”
He stopped, suddenly realizing that he’d been speaking his thoughts out loud and Dylan was listening. “You’re a genius.” He made it around the table in two strides, pulled her up out of the chair, and kissed her hard.
Then the loose porch step knocked against its bearings.
In a mercurial motion that was virtually second nature, he pushed Dylan to the floor, while, with the other hand, he reached for his pistol where he’d placed it on top of the sideboard out of Andrew’s reach, and, dropping into a crouch, swung it toward the front door.
