Smoot was her girl, tall, willowy and in on the “Pocahontas” secret. Joan had detailed this FBI cutie—who was somehow inexplicably Christian at the irritating fundamental level—to get the lay of the land. The anomalous magnetic pulse Wong had traced to this location could be a clue from outside of the box. When they pulled up, Smoot was chatting good-naturedly with an overweight, middle-class, black girl with wide engaging chipmunk cheek smile and beautiful brown eyes. When they left the black Escalade—provided by Dentin courtesy of the DEA bone yard—Smoot indicated Joan, and the big girl bounced up and down in her white dress like the littlest girl in the world, clapping her hands together in excitement as if Joan were a movie star delivering gifts.
Dentin stood goonishly aside as Joan took the girl’s hand, who bounced joyfully as Smoot did the introduction.
“Supervisory Agent Henderson, this is Emily, who befriended Jay Bracken on one snowy Christmas Eve, right here, next to this old oak, where he mysteriously appeared, naked except for a jockstrap.”
Joan considered the girl’s worshipful regard for her with a pained conscience and covered up, “Why hello, Emily, you look so nice in your dress. Did you pick that out yourself?”
“I made it, to tell the truth, from unused drapes donated by Miss Savanah Lee, who is quite a lady, and who entertained your Mister Conflicted Naked Army Man until the mean bald man who smacked and cussed him and the other creeps took him away. I’ve told Agent Smoot all about it, and am emailing my videos as soon as I get inside. I have an awesome array—I like to make sure Miss Savannah Lee is safe, and…”
“What Emily, what’s the matter?” she asked of the girl who went suddenly dreamy as she looked up into Joan’s eyes.
“It’s just that you are so beautiful, Miss Joan, and to think that a lady can be running an investigation that is obviously so important—involving runaway naked army men—it gives a girl hope for her future.”
The Wong tone tolled like a Transylvanian organ out from her phone and she had to give this adorable girl back to Smoot for debriefing with a short statement, “A four-point-o GPA, Emily, and a lot of common sense, laced with the ability to understand men—because they still run the show—will get you where you want to go.”
Smoot and Morse were gathering Emily and making her the center of her own little investigative fantasy as she answered Wong with a tap of the vibrating Doctor Frankenstein icon, and had to hear his irritating voice, “Joan, between U.S. Route Forty and Rolling Mill Road, at an abandoned mechanical supply facility next to the CSX railway, two-twenty a.m. this morning. It is a pin pulse, like the one that accompanied our recent guest’s egress from The Facility.”
“Anything else, Wong?”
She had to emphasize that last, not preceded by his beloved medical title, for he had begun calling her Joan, dispensing with Henderson, ever since she was impregnated by that beast Bracken during his attack on her. The little Korean twerp needed to know that she did not appreciate the subtle slight.
“Oh,” came the sly, smirking whisper, “I just thought to do you the professional courtesy of informing you that Baby’s Daddy is most likely back in town. A police officer has just been pulled from the Patapsco River—he’s was not, apparently, his type.”
You needle-dicked bastard!
“Emily, nice meeting you, dear—thank you! Smoot, stay and wrap up.”
Joan then turned to Dentin, waving Morse over, and when they were close, ground out, “Wong thinks he’s back. We’ve got a body, and it’s one of ours. We are needed in Elicott City.”
I love you, you goddamned animal and don’t you know how difficult killing my own makes that for me?
Do you even care?
You have to. I felt it. No man ever touched me like that. Somewhere in there, you care.
Joan felt her baby move within her, her baby boy, and she just knew, as she petted her baby belly through her suit jacket, that her baby’s daddy cared, that when it really came down to it, he would not only care, but step up and do the right thing, have himself committed to confinement and study, where Joan could visit him under the cover…
“Boss Lady—Boss,” came Dentin’s voice as Morse took her hand and guided her into the back seat and shut her in.
As she took her seat, Dentin’s voice was easy and cool, “Take a nap, Boss Lady. Morse will wake you before we arrive,” to which Morse, sitting next to her in the back, concurred, “You are under a lot of stress, Miss Henderson, and we didn’t see a thing. We’ve got this.”
And the world rolled away as she curled up under a bearskin rug with her newborn baby and the warrior that kept her safe heaped wood on the fire that separated the mouth of their cave from the phantom-haunted world in the cruel, nighted beyond.
