Perfect Victim by Jay Bonansinga

one of the only staffers who was proudly out, he had always harbored a schoolboy crush on the dapper Grove, and Grove had always found it amusing, if not flattering. Today, however, Grove was too preoccupied to notice any subtle flirtation as he crossed the outer office, buttoning his coat with one hand, carrying his attaché with the other.
    â€œVery sorry about Tom,” Bloom said as Grove passed. “I know you two were very tight.”
    â€œThanks, Jake.”
    â€œWord to the wise.” Bloom lowered his voice as Grove stepped up to the doorway of Corboy’s command center. “The big guy’s in a mood today, so step lightly.”
    â€œThanks.”
    Grove went in and found Corboy talking on a headset behind his massive teak desk on the far side of the room.
    â€œThey got a time of death yet? Who’s the primary down there?” The Director was pacing across a shuttered window with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, his belly straining the buttons of his shirt.
    Louis Corboy had a jock-gone-to-seed look about him, as well as the flat pallor of a born bureaucrat. Whenever Grove was around, the man seemed to radiate contempt. In his early years at the FBI, Grove had pegged Corboy as a racist, but now the hostility seemed more specific. Louis Corboy didn’t like things he couldn’t understand—things he didn’t get —and Grove was at the top of that list.
    The big man motioned for Grove to wait a second. “Spell that, would ya?” Corboy wrote a name on a pad. “Okay, let’s teleconference the scene when you’re ready. You can work it out with Bloom. Okay…thanks.”
    He thumbed a switch on his earpiece and turned to Grove. “What is it with you and these redline cases?”
    â€œFunny you should mention that.” Grove let out a nervous sigh. At the Geisel shiva, he had confided the broad strokes of the Archetype killings to the Director. Now Grove needed more time and money and personnel for the case—things with which Corboy hated to part. “I just talked to Ben Sehgal about the—”
    â€œI know all about it.”
    Grove looked at Corboy. “Pardon?”
    â€œWalk with me, Ulysses.” Corboy scooped his suit coat off a chair back, and came around the side of his desk. “The shit is hitting the fan, and I for one don’t want to get it all over me. C’mon.”
    The portly director lumbered out of his office, taking big robust strides, like an angry parent leading a recalcitrant child. Grove followed, a little dazed, a little nonplussed. Crossing the vestibule office, Grove heard Jake Bloom jabbering on his own headset, talking with somebody about patching through forensics from a hot crime scene somewhere.
    â€œGot a new scene I want you to explain to me,” Corboy was saying as he led Grove through the outer door and down the corridor.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘ explain ’? What new scene? You’re talking about Emerald Isle?”
    â€œGalveston, Texas.”
    â€œTexas?” Grove felt a faint vibration in the base of his neck.
    â€œGot it fresh this time,” the Director went on. “Same-day service. Gonna telecon it on the big screen in the conference room.” He turned a corner and nearly ran over a secretary. “Sorry, Carol. Excuse us. Grove…don’t get me started on North Carolina. You definitely have a talent for trouble.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œSome cop down there, Stenowski I think his name is, he got a burr up his ass about this field agent—Van Teigham. This nosy uniform proceeds to call the Mid-Atlantic section chief and chew his ear off. Gets the whole goddamn region bent outta shape over this copycat thing.”
    â€œWhat exactly did Dave Van Teigham do?”
    Corboy turned another corner and led Grove down a narrow carpeted hallway lined with red warning lights. Windowless steel doors stood entry