Page 60 of Never Flinch

“She did when she brought the card with the anthrax in it,” Kate says. “And in Reno she was wearing a wig.”

Detective Speck says, “She’ll be in the wind by now.”

If so, it will be blowing her on her way to Davenport, Holly thinks.If not, she’ll be at the Macbride tonight. Maybe with a gun.

“Are you going to talk about this tonight, Kate?” Holly asks. “Or at your press conference?”

“Damned right I am.”

Keeping her voice mild and (she hopes) nonconfrontational, Holly says, “This woman will love that.”

Kate gives her a startled look that turns thoughtful. “How can I not? I can’t look like I’m covering it up. That would make me seem ashamed.”

Holly sighs. “I see that, but can I make a suggestion?”

“Go on.”

“Keep it brief. Make it seem almost like a joke. And maybe… call her a coward?”

“Wouldn’t that be egging her on?” But Kate is smiling. She likes it.

“Yes,” Holly says. Sometimes the best thing you can do is force the issue. And from now on she’ll be carrying her gun. “Because the sooner this person is caught, the sooner my job will be easier.”

Speck says, “The writing on the door, now.”

“Exodus, chapter 22,” Holly says. She opens her iPad and reads. “?‘If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart fromher, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.’?”

Kate gives a short laugh with no humor in it. “Heard it before, just without the attribution. The God-botherers love it. That verse is actually about assault—guys brawling and knocking over a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry. Do you know what the Bible actually says about abortion? Nothing. Zilch. So they twist this.”

“That’s the first verse,” Holly says. “The next one goes, ‘And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life.’?” She closes her pad. “To this woman, Kate,you’rethe mischief-maker.”

“Have you thought about canceling tonight?” Speck asks.

Kate gives him a frostbite smile. “Not a chance.”

6

Maisie buzzes Trig at quarter past one and reminds him it’s D-Day, as in dentist. “You better get going now if you want to be on time, because the crosstown traffic builds up early on Friday.”

Trig thanks her and wishes her a pleasant weekend. His Toyota is parked next to Maisie’s Nissan Rogue on the side of the building. He seatbelts up and starts to back out, looking to his right because he doesn’t want to scrape Maisie’s car. He sees something alarming and jams on the brakes. Lying in the passenger footwell of his car is the hitchhiker’s sign, the side reading OR WHEREVER facing up.

There are a few droplets of dried blood on it.

How could you be so stupid?he asks himself. No, it’s not an ask, it’s a yell, and it isn’t him. It’s his father. Trig can almost see Daddy in the passenger seat, Daddy in his brown workpants with the chain holding his wallet.Do you want to be caught? Is that what this is?

“No, Daddy,” he mutters. That “wanting to be caught” stuff is so much psychobabble. He was just upset, anxious to get out of the state park.

But Maisie parked right next to him. What if she glanced in his car window and saw the sign? Saw the droplets of blood?

She didn’t. She would have said something.

Would she?

Really?

Trig gets out, goes around to the passenger side, and after a quick look to make sure he’s alone, grabs the sign and tosses it in the trunk. There’s an incinerator barrel behind the office at Elm Grove, where he now lives, and he can dispose of the cardboard sign in it this evening. The residents aren’t supposed to use it—air pollution—but most of them do, anyway, and the management winks at it.

He gets back into the car and arms sweat from his forehead.She didn’t see it. I’m sure of it.

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