LITMIR.BIZ

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Fia thought. She’d been afraid of that. Uncle Bill’s office was probably able to request her without riling any suspicions, but she guessed the senator wasn’t willing to put up a fight when the Baltimore office screamed “No fair!” He had his own causes to protect. She continued to take photos, not looking at Duncan.

      “The accelerant was probably gasoline. Easy to obtain without suspicion. Easy to carry. Mail was used to build the fire.” He walked over to stand beside her, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. He sounded as if he was narrating one of her uncle’s favorite police-procedural TV shows. “An amateur. The fire wasn’t hot enough to burn much more than the skin and some fat. You want to completely burn up a body, the fire’s got to be a hell of a lot hotter than this one was.” He glanced overhead, then at Sean. “Fire alarm go off, Chief?”

      Sean shook his head. “Battery’s probably dead, it is. Bobby didn’t get up on ladders, lest he absolutely had to, bein’ the big man that he was.”

      Duncan frowned. “We’ll check for fingerprints on the smoke detector, see if the batteries were taken out.”

      “Uh, have to get some more print powder before we lift any more prints. We’re out.”

      “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Duncan looked at Fia, but she didn’t respond.

      “We don’t lift many fingerprints around here, Agent Duncan.”

      He exhaled. “And I don’t suppose there was a burglar-alarm system?”

      “Never needed one,” Sean answered.

      Fia pressed her lips together. Everything Duncan had said, a rookie just out of the academy would have been able to deduce. So far, she wasn’t impressed. “No gas can found?” she asked her uncle. “Not in here, not in the alley?”

      He shook his head, reaching for his handkerchief in his back pocket. No, but I once saw this case on that Cold Case Files where this guy—

      She snapped another photo. Please, Uncle Sean…

      “Perp brought it with him; he meant to start a fire,” she intoned, silencing the camera. She tried to take in the entire scene, attempting to concentrate on the crime and not her uncle’s rambling and not the man standing beside her, who was as close to a ghost as she had ever seen.

      “Maybe there was something here the killer wanted, or didn’t want to leave in the post office,” she continued, nodding in the direction of the canvas mail cart lying on its side. “Perp wasn’t expecting the postmaster to be working late. Came in, surprised him. Maybe Bobby was sitting on that stool, back to the rear door. Perp figured he had to kill Bobby so there’d be no witness.”

      “Maybe. Of course, the cash is missing, too, bank bag and all,” Duncan one-upped her.

      Fia glanced up at her uncle. They hadn’t gotten that far in her questioning, but she didn’t like surprises. Not this guy springing them on her. “Could be motive,” she agreed. “But decapitation? Setting the body on fire? Talk about overkill to steal a bank bag that couldn’t have had more than a couple hundred dollars in it. And why take the head and the feet? And how the hell did he cut them off?” Her last words were as much for her own benefit as his.

      “Perp was probably strung out on PCP. I’ve worked some pretty gruesome murders where—”

      “I have, too, Special Agent Duncan.” She looked him in the eye. “But this is my first with stolen body parts. Yours?”

      He seemed unable to tear his gaze from hers for a second, then looked away. “Yeah.”

      She’d gotten him on that one.

      He freed his hands from his pockets, walking around to the other side of the black, bloody soot ring that marked where Bobby’s body had lain. “There’s no point in speculating why the body parts were taken. Not until we have all the evidence.”

      It was easy for him to say. He didn’t understand what the decapitation meant to one of them.

      “You say you have photographs at the station, Chief?” Fia looked up at her uncle, who was beginning to pace now. “I imagine Special Agent Duncan would like to see them.”

      “Actually, I was able to get here in time to see the body before it was removed.”

      Fia glared at Sean who was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. It was her turn to grit her teeth. You’ve got to tell me these things, Uncle Sean. I feel like I’m coming in way behind.

      “I see.” It sounded so lame. She cleared her throat. “Then why don’t we go to the station, so I can have a look at the photos.” She looked to Duncan. “It’s going to take us a full day to process this scene the way we’re going to want it processed, and we are going to need that print powder. The chief can put in an order as soon as we get to the station.” She looked to Sean. “The back door is locked now, correct?”

      “Course, Fee, what kind of fool do ye think—” Sean cut off the last of his sentence, tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket.

      She shifted her gaze to Duncan, slipping her camera into her pocket. What a mess. How was she going to do this? Investigate Bobby’s murder and keep Special Agent Duncan out of the town’s business? She couldn’t believe Uncle Bill had let the Baltimore office send an agent. But maybe Gair was right. Maybe because this was a federal building, they wouldn’t be able to keep the murder under wraps.

      Fia looked to her new so-called partner. “Care to go back to the station with me, Special Agent Duncan?”

      “We drove over in my car.” Sean gestured in the direction of the front door.

      He drove two and half blocks? Fia almost laughed aloud, though it really wasn’t that funny. Sean didn’t like to expend any more energy than absolutely necessary, except when it came to lifting a pint of ale.

      “He left his in the station parking lot,” Sean continued to ramble. Drives an unmarked Crown Vic. Nice car. V8 engine. How come you don’t get a Bureau car, Fee? Came in your own, didn’t you? I could hear the Beemer engine. Runnin’ a little rough, she is?”

      Fia turned away from her uncle, blinking to block his thoughts. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself wrapped up in a mental conversation involving maintenance schedules of BMWs built before 1998. Something he’d learned on the Speed Channel.

      “I think I’ll walk,” Duncan said. “Care to join me, Special Agent Kahill?” He waited.

      Apparently, he wasn’t going to give her a chance to speak with her uncle alone. Not yet, at least. She exhaled and started for the front lobby. “Meet you there, Chief.”

      Sean followed them outside, locking the front doors behind them. At the bottom of the steps, Fia ducked under the yellow tape and turned right on the sidewalk. A car passed. A cousin waved. She didn’t wave back.

      “Pretty weird. So many of you related in this town.” Duncan glanced in the direction of the passing car as he caught up with her. “Lot of Kahills to keep track of.”

      She stepped off the curb and started across the street without looking either way. She didn’t have to look. She could easily hear the cars two blocks over. “My family’s been here for a long time, Special Agent Duncan. We have a big family.” She shrugged. “So a lot of us have the same name.”

      The redhead made it somehow seem simpler than Glen sensed it was. Not that he was fortunate enough to be one of those agents with a sixth sense. But something was a little odd here; he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

      Maybe it was merely his imagination. His irritation. When he called his SAC back in Baltimore, Krackhow had made no bones about the fact that Special Agent Kahill would not be removed from the case. It was out of his hands, he had brusquely told Glen. The order came as a result of a request out of Senator Malley’s office. Case closed. If Glen wanted out, Krackhow would send over another agent.

      Of

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