The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [102]
“You screwed up the Sanchez case—”
“I made a mistake.”
“Quincy saved the day.”
“I never said he was a bad profiler.”
“Oh come on, everyone knows you blame him. It’s bad enough to choke, let alone have another agent come along, get it right, and grab all the credit. How many times do you replay that in your head at night, Albert? How many times do you revisit every little nuance of that case, and feel your hatred for Quincy grow a little bit more?” She stared hard at Montgomery. The agent bowed his head.
“You wanted this, didn’t you?” she challenged. “The perfect opportunity to come in and torpedo Quincy’s career.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“No! Dammit!” Montgomery glowered. He looked trapped and cornered, shifting around his heavy bulk until he finally seemed to realize there was no place left to run. Then he planted his feet. “You want to know the truth?” he spat back. “Fine, I’ll tell you the truth. Not that you’ll believe me, not that anyone will believe me, but I took this goddamn case to save Quincy’s butt. I took it ’cause I thought, hey, if you can’t be the hero, you might as well save the hero. That’s gotta count for something.”
“What?”
“Do I have to put this on a Hallmark card? I figured I could help Quincy. And yeah, I kind of thought that might jumpstart my career. Altruistic, I ain’t. But I’m not a total jackass either. My career is in the toilet. Do a good deed, however, and I might escape the eternal flush. I’m fifty-two years old, Glenda. My ex-wife hates me and so do my kids. I got nine hundred dollars in the bank. What the fuck am I going to do if I’m no longer an agent?”
Glenda frowned, wanting to refute Montgomery’s argument, but coming up empty. She didn’t know what to think anymore. She didn’t like Montgomery. His ill-kept appearance did bother her. So did his disappearing act. But he had a point. In the patriotic world of the Bureau, there was no greater currency than saving a fellow agent’s hide. If he did find Quincy’s stalker, Montgomery’s career would get a second chance. Probably, its only chance.
“But now you think Quincy murdered his ex-wife,” she said.
“You bet I do.”
“Because the scene is staged?”
Montgomery shrugged. “Because of a lot of things. Frankly, the phone calls bother me. If you were out to get someone and you had his private telephone number, would you fool around with prank calls, or would you just go out and kill the man? I mean, we’re saying this guy has some connection with Quincy’s career. So we’re talking about a psychopath. Now, what kind of psychopath wants to talk about killing an agent, when he can attack the agent?”
“We discussed this. It’s a ruse, a way of disguising the UNSUB’s true identity by creating hundreds of other suspects with opportunity and motive.”
“But it also alerts the victim,” Montgomery countered. “Seems like a massive downside to me. Especially when you consider that in this day and age, the UNSUB can simply read articles on-line about how to conceal evidence. He has the element of surprise, then has all night to cover his tracks.”
“Maybe the UNSUB didn’t want an easy murder. Assuming vengeance is the motive, maybe he wanted to make sure Quincy suffered first.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we’re making this all too complicated. Look, from where I sit, there is another plausible theory to everything that’s happened: Quincy made this whole thing up. Ran the ad in the prison newsletters himself. Then showed up in Everett’s office with his, ‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling!’ routine, knowing that Everett will follow protocol and assemble a case team. Now Quincy has four federal agents swearing to the Philadelphia police that someone is stalking him, and that mysterious person probably murdered his ex-wife and kidnapped his old man. But is someone stalking him? Or was this all a cover-up, so that he could kill his ex?”
“Listen to yourself, Albert. You’re saying Pierce was willing to dupe the Bureau