Without Warning by David Rosenfelt Page B

there any agents who are not special?” I asked.
    I would have expected them to be annoyed by the question; most agents I’ve dealt with have had a real low annoyance threshold. But while Barone stayed stone-faced, Bennett, who seemed to be the leader of the duo, smiled. “None that I’ve run into,” he said.
    “So you guys watch the Today Show ?” I asked.
    Bennett shook his head. “Not me … Good Morning America all the way. But somebody above me must be a Savannah Guthrie fan. I got the call at eight this morning.”
    “So you were told to move in?”
    “Not yet. Right now we just want to assess the situation and determine if there’s a role for us.”
    “There isn’t,” I said.
    He smiled again. “We might have to look a little deeper than that.”
    There was no chance that I was going to dissuade him; he wouldn’t have been given the authority to be dissuaded. I wasn’t even sure that it was in our best interest to keep them out; they could bring resources to the situation that we couldn’t come close to matching.
    I nodded. “I figured you would. How do you want to handle it?”
    “Part of the reason we’re such special agents is that we’re good listeners. So tell us what’s going on.”
    So that’s what I did. I told them an abbreviated version of everything that had happened to date, leaving out only the personal history between Katie and I, since it wasn’t really relevant.
    Both Bennett and Barone interrupted occasionally to ask questions. It’s easy to tell whether people are smart by the type of questions they ask; these guys were smart.
    I have to admit that I was pleased I was able to answer their questions to their apparent satisfaction; it made me feel that I was pursuing the case correctly.
    “Sounds like you’ve got it pretty buttoned down,” Bennett said, when I finished.
    “So you’ll head back to Special Agent Land and live happily ever after?”
    He laughed. “This may not surprise you, but that’s not our call. My recommendation will be that we be available to you if you need us to come in.”
    “Works for me,” I said. I called Hank in, introduced him and asked him to show the agents the forensic reports. They went off with him, leaving me alone to try to figure out what the hell I was going to do next. The smart thing would probably have been to toss the ball to Agent Bennett and tell him to run with it.
    Instead I called Katie and asked her if she had time to talk.
    “I’m just going into a meeting,” she said. “Should be over about seven.”
    “Dinner?”
    She hesitated and thought for a moment, just like I should have hesitated and thought before I asked her. “Okay,” was her delayed response. “Where?”
    “I’ll pick you up at seven at the office.”
    She finally came downstairs at ten after seven, and we again drove down to Damariscotta to King Eider’s. “You always conduct your interrogations over dinner?” she asked, once she got in the car.
    “No. It’s pretty much limited to you.”
    Katie was as direct as ever. “Why me?”
    “I’m not sure,” I said, because I wasn’t. What we had to talk about could certainly have waited for the next day, in one of our offices.
    “So let’s talk.”
    “Now?”
    “Since my feeling is that I’m not going to like the subject, let’s get it out of the way so we can have a nice dinner.”

 
     
    Bill Norris loved his Mondays. His job caused him to work weekends, so Monday was the one day he took off. He had the routine down pat. His wife, Gale, let him sleep until eight, and had coffee waiting for him when he came downstairs. Then he sat on the TV chair and read the paper. Then he watched television all day and into the night, mostly ESPN and repeats of sitcoms. Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld were his two favorites.
    Gale woke him at eight, as he wanted, but it took him until at least eight ten to finally get up. Part of this was just that he was tired, and the other part was that his