The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [101]
When Glenda slept, she did not have pleasant dreams.
Now, she glared at Montgomery, who had managed to shower and change since she’d last seen him. Her resentment felt an awful lot like a wronged wife’s.
“I’ve been in Philly, of course.” Montgomery scowled at her, coming through the door and kicking it shut behind him. He shrugged off his stained overcoat.
“Your assignment was to help me stake out Quincy’s house.”
“Yeah, but that was before he turned his ex-wife into a shish kabob. You think the local yokels know how to handle a scene like that? Christ, I had to teach ‘em how to analyze the glass shards myself. They really thought the window was broken from the outside. Dipshits.”
“Agent, your assignment—”
“Hey, fuck assignment. The action isn’t here anymore, Rodman. It’s in Philadelphia. If we want to know what’s going on, we gotta focus our attention there.”
“There are still things happening here!”
“What, a bunch of harassing phone calls? Dead pets? Oh you’re right, we’ve learned so much by being here the last three days.” Montgomery gave her a dubious look. Glenda shifted uncomfortably.
Nothing much had happened here. Poor Bethie had been attacked and brutalized in Philadelphia. Yesterday, Glenda had received word from Everett that Quincy’s ailing father had been kidnapped from a Rhode Island nursing home. Three agents had immediately been assigned to look for Abraham Quincy; after seeing what had happened to Pierce’s ex-wife, however, no one was hopeful.
So yes, there was action. But none of it was here. Glenda simply sat. She listened to horrible, horrible phone threats. And she felt her nerves fray inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour. Still, this was her task. She believed in her assignment. And it bothered her that Montgomery hadn’t had the decency to even consult with her, though he apparently knew as much about what was going on in Quincy’s house as she did.
“It’s important to learn the source of the information leak,” she told Montgomery. “And the person might still show up. We can’t rule that out.”
“What person? Quincy’s phantom stalker? Come on, don’t tell me you’re still buying his little fairy tale.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I’ll do you a favor. As the agent who’s spent the last forty-eight hours in Philadelphia, I’ll give it to you straight. That was no break-in. That was no stranger-to-stranger crime. The whole fucking thing is so staged it could open as a Broadway show. Take the bathroom window, the supposed mode of entry. It was broken from the inside out and the glass shards moved to disguise the fact. Then we have the state-of-the-art home security system—deactivated with proper code a little after ten P.M., same time the neighbor swears she saw Elizabeth Quincy enter the home with a man matching Quincy’s description. Even the crime scene—it was a fast, brutal attack, no rape, no torture. Posing of the body, postmortem mutilation, all done for show. All done to make it look like a sexual sadist predator.”
“You think Quincy did it.”
“I know Quincy did it. But hey, I have no career track left in the Bureau, so I can afford to look honestly at the reigning golden boy. On the other hand, I’m sure the very notion makes you real uncomfortable. I mean, taking on the best-of-the-best and all—”
“Shut up.” Glenda stalked away from him into the kitchen. Montgomery, however, followed.
“I know you don’t like me,” he persisted. “I know I dress wrong. I know I don’t do politics well or play all the little reindeer games. I’m a fat, wrinkled slob. That doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”
“True, your state of dress does not mean you’re incompetent—your conduct on the Sanchez case does.”
“Oh.” He drew up short, his hands clasping self-consciously in front of him. “Figured it was only a matter of time before you heard about that.”
Glenda felt better now, as if she were gaining the upper hand. She had known there were problems with the Society Hill crime scene. Quincy had all but told