The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [124]
“Goddammit!” Quincy cried. Beckett had hung up, and in a rare display of rage Quincy hurled the phone across the room. It hit the far wall hard and shattered.
“Son of a bitch, son of a bitch,” Quincy was murmuring. His head was down between his knees. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run a long race. Sweat beaded his face.
He straightened slowly and looked at the faces staring back at him. Then he turned toward the ventilation grate.
“Would somebody get me a screwdriver, please.”
Nobody moved. They just stared up at the grate in the high wall. Tess felt the hysteria bubble up in her throat. No place was safe. No place could remain untouched. Jim went anywhere. He contaminated everything, like a pestilence. She felt the contamination in herself, way down deep. She understood that like Quincy, she’d traveled too far outside the bounds of the civilized world and she’d never find her way back.
“Look at me.” J.T. was before her. He’d stood, and now his hands gripped her shoulders. She managed to bring her gaze up and meet his hard, dark stare. “Come on. I want you out of the room.”
Someone had handed Quincy a Swiss Army knife with a screwdriver. He stood on a chair before the grate.
“No,” Tess told J.T.
“Dammit, don’t subject yourself to this. It’s what he wants.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Tess, dammit—”
“What if it’s . . . Sam?” Her voice was so hoarse, she barely recognized it. She hadn’t realized her true fear until she spoke the words out loud. Now the rushing filled her ears and she thought she might faint.
The grate came off. She remained sitting there, transfixed.
“Focus on me, Tess. Focus on me.”
The smell hit her first. She gagged. Spots appeared before her eyes. There were tears on her cheeks.
Dimly she heard Quincy say, “Well . . . we’ve found Lieutenant Difford’s head.”
ONE OF THE officers led them to the main room. J.T. went off to fetch them both cups of coffee. Tess remained standing in the middle of the room, letting the reassuring noise of talking people and jangling phones sink into her.
The room had high ceilings and not many windows. Once there must have been cubicles, but they’d all been taken down and replaced with long tables. Operators sat elbow to elbow at computer terminals, logging calls on the hotline and jotting down notes. The phones never stopped ringing.
Someone had posted black-and-white copies of Samantha’s picture along the wall. Her smiling, innocent face ringed the room and reminded them why they were there, why they were keeping the hours they were keeping.
Tess wanted to touch the photographs, stroke her fingers down the pale cheek, as if that would bring her daughter back to her.
It was odd to stand in the middle of such activity and yet have nothing to do with it. Once Tess had thought all this was focused on her. Now she knew better. If she ceased existing tomorrow, Jim would still kill and the law enforcement bureaucracy would still churn, trying to catch him.
J.T. returned and shoved a lukewarm cup of coffee into her hands. Quincy was on his heels with Marion.
“Why don’t we go into one of the interview rooms,” Quincy suggested. “Lieutenant Houlihan will join us shortly.”
He ushered them back to a small room with a two-way mirror. It held a single card table and two metal folding chairs. With a murmured apology he went off to find three more chairs.
“How are you holding up?” J.T. asked.
She took a sip of coffee before replying. “As well as can be expected.”
“He does it just to rattle your cage.”
“Then he’s good at rattling cages.”
He stood close. She knew he was waiting to see what she wanted. Did she need to wrap her arms around him? Maybe press her cheek against his shoulder. She thought