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Gabriel pulled out the photo envelope Mosely had left for him and withdrew the
photocopies of the six crime scene areas and the drawing he'd
done from Lake Pontchartrain. Max looked at each carefully. His brow creased.
"What is it?"
Good question. "It's ... uh ... from ... uh ...
Haiti. I'm doing some research for a book I'm working on? And a friend of mine
sent me these marks? Apparently, they find these all the time there. Uh, my
friend thinks it's a pattern of some sort. You see here, where it's not been
smeared, here and here?" He pointed out the clear areas on a couple of the
photocopies with his fingers. "And this sketch was the latest one. He ... uh
... didn't have his camera."
"Yeah?" Max said curiously. "Haiti, huh?
Interesting."
"Yeah. It is interestin'. He thinks that these were all the same pattern, but
it's kinda tough to recon-
struct, you know?" Gabriel shrugged. "Seems to me there's enough of those
clear areas, someone should be able to reproduce the whole pattern."
Max studied the photographs carefully. He fished among his tools and picked up
a handle-
less lens. He moved it over the photocopies and
Gabriel could see it was a magnifier. Hell of a lot more modern than his Sam
Spade edition, too.
"You might be right/' Max said finally. "It looks symmetrical. It might be
just a matter of assem-
bling a complete wedge, then multiplying that around the whole circle." He
looked some more.
"There might be a few changes, at the edges it looks like." He looked up
finally.
"I'd have to spend some time with this before I
could tell you for sure. Whether you could recon-
struct it accurately, I mean."
"Is there any way you could .. . ? I don't want to take up a lot of your time,
but..."
"You want me to reconstruct it?" Max said, surprised.
Gabriel gave Max his most sheepish smile. "I'd be happy to give you credit in
the bibliography. If you can reconstruct it, that is."
Max looked doubtful. "Well ... I'll tell you what," he said. "I have tonight
free since you got my drawing back. I'll spend the evening on it, and we can
see how it goes. I'm busy tomorrow then, and next week..."
"That's fine. Tonight would be great. Really.
Thanks so much."
Max slipped the pages into his pad and started to pack up.
"No big deal. What's the pattern about, anyway?" he asked.
Gabriel's grin froze. "Honestly? I'm not sure. I
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guess we'll find out, won't we?"
Max seemed willing to let it stand at that.
Gabriel headed out of the park quite pleased with himself. He'd not only
managed to eat some-
thing, but for the first time since this case began, he thought he just might
have made some progress. True, the police artists had not come up with
anything on the pattern using the same material, but Gabriel had a feeling
they weren't trying all that hard. Mosely didn't care about the pattern,
didn't even think it was a pattern, why would anybody else on the force put
their ass on the line about it?
Thinking about Mosely reminded him of Malia
Gedde, the way her eyes had looked at him from that limo. Thinking about Malia
reminded Gabriel that he had her address, had even been to her house, and he
hadn't managed to crack that stately facade.
Mosely had a point. Malia Gedde probably didn't matter to the investigation.
That part had simply been an excuse. Then why couldn't he stop thinking about
her? She wasn't really his type.
Oh, she was any man's type, to be sure, but it had been a long, long time
since Gabriel had gone out of his way for a woman. Why now? Why her? He didn't
know why. He only knew that she was part of that clenched fist in his mind and
he simply wanted her. Wanted her. Bone deep, down where it counts, he wanted
to see her, to know her, in an urgent, running-out-of-time kind of way. The
brake lights that normally went on in his head when he ran across a woman that
he knew could matter, well, they just weren't functioning on this round. All
gates were open and his hormones were plowing full steam ahead.
The cloud-filled sky had taken on the cast of late afternoon and the
temperature had dropped slightly, but the day was not over yet. Unless you
have an appointment or some official business, I cannot announce you. The guy
didn't think Gabriel could have official business, that was the problem. He
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