Perfect Victim by Jay Bonansinga Page A

to audio labs, latent print rooms, and fiber analysis suites. “They’re waiting for us,” Corboy said, motioning toward the last door on the right.
    â€œBoss, what did Van Teigham do?”
    Corboy paused outside the teleconference room. “Stenowski was first on the scene, claims he saw the connection first, the similarities to your book. Now he claims Van Teigham is stealing his thunder.”
    â€œWho cares?”
    Corboy gave him a hard look. “ I care. That’s who. Understand something, Grove. I spend fifty percent of my time dealing with congressional oversight committees—time better spent running the circus. Now somebody leaked this latest freak show to the media, probably this Stenowski character, and I gotta go into PR mode again. Which means I need this thing closed down. Now. Which means I need you to pay attention.”
    Grove met the man’s angry glare. “You have my undivided attention.”
    Corboy shoved the door open, and the two men entered the noisy teleconference room.

THIRTEEN
    Three young middle-management types with laminate badges and sport coats bustled around the oblong teleconference room, which was lined with acoustic tile and blazing with fluorescent light. A large plasma screen hung on the far wall, flickering with an image of color bars. A shrill tone rang out from speakers embedded in the ceiling, and the air smelled of burnt coffee.
    Corboy took a seat at the head of the conference table, motioning for Grove to sit across from him.
    Grove did so, opening his briefcase, pulling out his notebook. “What are we looking at here?” he wanted to know.
    The Director gave a terse nod to one of the underlings, and the sport coat fiddled with a keyboard. The screen flickered with shaky handheld video footage of a deserted beach—presumably Galveston Island—framed in a window on one side of the screen, an unidentified talking head on the other.
    Corboy spoke up: “Are we on yet? Agent Phipps? Can you hear us?”
    The talking head, a square-jawed man with a buzz cut and cheap sport coat, was wrestling an earpiece into his ear. “Keith Phipps here, Houston field office.” The man’s southwestern drawl crackled out of the speakers, slightly out of sync with his mouth. “Who am I speaking with?”
    â€œYou’ve got Louis Corboy here, along with Ulysses Grove, Quantico.”
    â€œFellas, I gotta be honest with y’all…I’m not sure what we got here.”
    â€œGo ahead and run it down for us.”
    Onscreen the man read off a small spiral-bound notebook in his hands: “We got a white, female victim, looks like multiple stab wounds. Latent has nothing. Looks like smooth gloves.” He looked up into the camera. “Y’all gettin’ this?”
    Grove watched the shaky footage on the opposite side of the screen. The camera panned to the left, then tilted down, revealing drag marks in the sand, a dark smudge—most likely blood—and footprints. Like a Xerox copy of North Carolina. The camera panned to the right and a dark bundle came into view. The camera moved in closer, finally revealing the pale, sodden remains of Madeline Gilchrist.
    â€œWe’re seeing it,” Corboy commented flatly. “This footage was taken this morning?”
    â€œNo, actually, it was early this afternoon, at low tide,” Phipps explained. “Wanted to get as much physical evidence on record before it washed away. What happened was, just as soon as I got the MO up on the wires, I get a call from the Mid-Atlantic folks with Minneapolis on the other line—the modus here I guess matches both those deals.”
    â€œYou got a positive on the vic yet?”
    The man on the screen looked at his notebook. “Gilchrist, Madeline Louise, resident of the South Houston area. Age forty-one, single, no criminal record. Understand she was a student at South Dayton Junior College. ME reports just