Grave Apparel (65 page)

Lacey
elbowed
her
way
through the
crowd
to listen. Push ing to the front of
any
room
was
a skill
she’d
honed as a jour nalist. The
detective
glanced her
way,
but
he made no
move
to stop
her.
Mac said nothing. He
kept
his
eyes
on the man in the middle.

The subject of
everyone’s
attention
was
a tall wiry man, his
mousebrown
hair shot through with
gray.
Lacey
placed his age
somewhere
in his
fifties.
His
eyes
were
large
and pale behind wireframed glasses, and he seemed an
unlikely
object of police attention. His
voice,
however,
was
strong and betrayed a
large
measure of outrage.
Lacey
inched
forward
to stand at
Mac’s
elbow.

“False
arrest,
that’s
what this is!” the man
was
shouting.
“We’re
not arresting you yet,
Mr.
Graybill,”
the detective
broke
in.
“We
just
want
to
ask
you
a few
questions.”
He
smacked
a
puffy
businesssized
envelope
in his hands.

“I
have
every
right!” the man he called Graybill spluttered. “My First Amendment right to
express
my
opinions.”

“You
don’t
have a
right
to
make
threats
of
violence.”
Charleston
didn’t
seem particularly upset by the man or the en
velope,
and he barely seemed interested in the
exchange.
Just
going
through
the
motions,
Lacey
thought.

“The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States
of
America
guarantees
me
the
right
to—”
Graybill
began.

“Let’s move
this
along,”
the
detective
said.
“We
want
to ask you a
few
questions about these threats
you’ve
been
sending.”

“I
don’t
have
to say a
word.
That’s
my Fifth Amendment right under the
Constitution.”
The
man’s
voice
rose
higher.
“Or
don’t
you dumbass bozos
know
that?”

“Bad
move,”
Lacey
muttered.

“Never
pays to insult the
police,”
Mac said under his breath.
“You
ain’t
getting squat from
me,”
Graybill declared.
“Mister,
that’s
all
I’ve
been getting from
you.”
Charleston was moving from bored to
weary.
“Let’s
go.”
The
uniforms
took
Graybill’s
arms.

“What’s
the
charge?”
Graybill shouted. “I demand to
know
the damned
charge.”

“Disturbing the
peace.”

“Bull!” The man struggled to
remove
the strong arms of the
lawmen.

“How
about stalking. Resisting
arrest.”

“You
just said I
wasn’t
under arrest.
False
arrest! I
have
wit nesses, all of you here
saw
this.”
Graybill
swiveled
his head at the bystanders.

“Keep
going,”
Charleston said. “I got a whole book to
throw
at
you,
including
assault
with
a
deadly
weapon.
Attempted
murder.”

“You’re
out
of
your
mind,”
Graybill
said.
“I
don’t know what
you’re
talking
about.”

“Sure you do. A Miss Cassandra
Wentworth,
object of your attentions,
was attacked
on
Friday.
She’s
still in the
hospital.”

“I
didn’t
do that!
You
think
I’d
do that?
You’re
crazy!” “Get him out of
here,”
Detective
Charleston told the uni
formed
officers.
Two
policemen
escorted
the
man
from
the
lobby.
The
detective
nodded to
Lacey
and Mac.

“Detective,”
she
said.
“Does
this
mean
your
Hispanic
teenager is no longer a suspect?”

“Ms. Smithsonian, to me everybody is a suspect, all
day,

every
day.”
He
favored
her with a weary smile.
“We’ll
be in
touch.”
He ambled out the
door.

Lacey
looked
to Mac for an
explanation
of the scene in the
lobby.
Peter Johnson answered
her.
“Cassandra has a
stalker,
a letter
writer.
Mac and I set up this entire
trap.”
Mac
looked
at him, his
eyebrows
clenching their
fists.

“That guy?
He’s
the nasty letter writer Mac told me about?”
“And
we
collared
him
entirely
without
your
assistance.

You’ve
been no use on this story at all,
have
you?”

She took a step
toward
him. He
backed
up. “Oh,
wasn’t
this
your
pet
story,
Johnson? And this guy
doesn’t
look much
like
Pickles and
Wiedemeyer,
does he? What became of your prime suspects, the deadly duo?”

“You’ve
just been
lucky,
Smithsonian, skating on that easy beat of
yours.”

“The
fashion
beat
is
murder,
Johnson,
or
haven’t
you
heard?” It really
was
too early in the morning for this nonsense,
Lacey
thought. “I suppose
you’re
saving
the
world
on the red tape and hot air
beat.”

“I am an
experienced
Capitol Hill reporter! I
know
how
this
town
works—”

“How’s
your car
working,
Peter? Still parking at
bus
stops?” “Upstairs, both of
you,”
Mac ordered.
“You
just
saw
what
happens
when
you
disturb
the
peace
at
The
Eye
Street
Ob
server
.”
He marched them to the
elevators.

“Hold
that
elevator!”
LaToya
leaped
in
just
as
the
door
closed, holding a
large
sack in her hands. It smelled
like
hot cinnamon rolls and
filled
the
elevator
with a
heavenly
aroma. “What did
they
get that guy for?”

“Writing threatening
letters,”
Johnson said. “Stalking. As sault. Attempted
murder.”

“What? No way!”
LaToya’s
eyes were wide. “This is
all
about Cassandra
Wentworth,
isn’t
it?”

“Perception is one of your skills,
LaToya,”
Johnson replied. “Ooh, attempted sarcasm, Johnson!
You
got a
learner’s
per mit for that?”

“Silence!” It
was
an order from Mac.

LaToya
threw
a
meaningful
look
at
Lacey
as
the
doors
opened. “I
expect
the whole story from you
later,
girl, with all the
dirt.”
She shook her bag of hot rolls under
Mac’s
nose and flounced
away
to her desk.

Lacey
followed
Johnson to
Mac’s
office.
But she slipped in
faster
and
grabbed
the
only
open
chair.
Johnson
leaned
against
the wall, arms folded
over
his soft belly like a Buddha.
His
glasses slid
down
his nose.

“Okay,
the
stalker,”
Lacey
said.
“Who,
what,
where,
and
when? I already got the
how,
but
I
would
be curious about the
why.”
She
crossed
her
legs
and
leaned
forward.

“Cassandra
makes
a
difference,”
Peter snapped. “She has an impact. That earns her enemies.
Saving
the planet is more im portant than
saving
a
buck
on a pair of
shoes.”

“Focus
here,
people,”
Mac ordered. “Those letters I told you
about,
Smithsonian,
the
ones
from
the
same
very
nasty
source?”

“Big,
fat,
hateful
letters,”
Johnson put in.

“They’ve
progressed from
‘You
can’t
write your
way
out of a
paper
bag’
to
‘Why
aren’t
you
dead
yet?’
”
Mac
said.
“They
were hand
delivered,
in response to her editorials. The letters
were
getting
increasingly
unhinged.
Cassandra’s
editorials
were
also
getting
a
little
unhinged,
you
may
recall,”
Mac
sighed.
“There has been some discussion about reining her in. But no one
expected
this
attack.”

“How
do
you
know
this
guy
in
the
lobby
is
the
letter
writer?”
Lacey
asked.

“It’s
him, all
right,”
Johnson said.
“Didn’t
you hear him?”

Mac
sighed.
“The
letters
have
common
elements,
style
markers,
physical
characteristics.
Very
few
crank
letter
writers
cross the line to assault, of course. But we were making a case.
Quietly.
Johnson here
helped.”

“I returned to the hospital
yesterday,”
Johnson obviously meant this as a slap at
Lacey,
who had not returned to visit
her.
“Cassandra told me she
was
being
stalked.
I only wish she had
confided
in me
earlier.”
Johnson rubbed his
eyes.
“The letters frightened
her,
but
Cassandra put a
brave
face
on it. She just said it
was
her
job.
She got lots of letters,
but
these were the
worst.”