Fear itself: a novel by Jonathan Lewis Nasaw Page A

rate.”
    “Office all right? Need any special accommodations?”
    “No, sir, I’m fine.”
    “Good attitude,” said McDougal. “Behind you all the way.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    Linda was relieved when he turned away—she’d found herself feeling the way she’d felt back in high school, encountering the principal in the grocery store. When do I get to be the grown-up? she wondered. And now Pender had disappeared. She glanced around, saw him out on the back porch, engaged in earnest conversation with a dapper old guy wearing what looked like one of Sinatra’s old toupees. She caught Pender’s eye; he waved to her to join them.
    “Linda Abruzzi, this is Sid Dolitz. Best forensic shrink who ever wore a badge. Never treated a patient a day in his life, though.”
    “Didn’t care much for crazy people,” Dolitz explained. “Bit of a handicap for a psychiatrist, but a plus as far as the Bureau was concerned.”
    “Nice to meet you.”
    “Nice to meet you, too.” Dolitz had a neat little hand, not much bigger than Linda’s, and much better manicured. “I understand you have MS.”
    “Yes?” As in what of it? In the few short months since her diagnosis, Linda had already met too many people who saw her disability before they saw her.
    “So did my late wife. Would you mind terribly if I offered a suggestion?”
    “I guess,” said Linda dubiously.
    “Get yourself a cane before you throw your back out.”
    “I’ll take it under consideration.”
    “I’m sorry, I’ve offended you.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “Friends?”
    “Friends.”
    “In that case, can I offer you a glass of wine? I was just on my way into the kitchen to pop the top on a lovely looking Bordeaux—if you want good vino at Pender’s, you have to bring it yourself.”
    “I’m on the wagon. But thanks anyway.”
    Dolitz left. Linda leaned out over the wooden railing; below her, the dark hillside and the shiny black ribbon of the canal.
    “Listen, Ed, I’m sorry to crash your party, but I needed to ask you a few questions, and Miss Pool said you were leaving town early tomorrow and that it would be okay to drop by.”
    “Well, if Pool said it, it must be so. What can I do you for?”
    “It’s about Dorie Bell’s letter.” Linda told him about Wayne Summers’s disappearance and ostensible suicide.
    “Oh, man,” was Pender’s only response—but it was an eloquent oh, man.
    “The thing is,” Linda continued, “I’m just not buying the suicide. Everybody else is—everybody but Dorie Bell. SFPD says drop it, Bobby says drop it, and the ASAC in San Francisco won’t even talk to me—he hung up when he found out I was with Liaison Support.”
    “That ASAC—his name wouldn’t be Pastor by any chance?”
    “Thomas Pastor—why, do you know him?”
    “Ran into him a couple times during the Maxwell case. Empty suit—couldn’t track down an elephant with diarrhea, but he’ll look terrific at the press conference afterwards.”
    “So where do I go from here?” There weren’t any courses at the Academy on liaising an investigation nobody seemed to want to conduct in the first place—but if there had been, Pender would have been the instructor.
    “You have any more contacts in the field office?”
    “Bobby was the last of my old gang.”
    “How about SFPD?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then you’re screwed,” said Pender. “Unless…” And he leaned back casually against the precarious-looking railing, arms behind him, weight on his elbows—for some reason he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
    “What? Unless what?”
    “Unless you just happen to know two old farts named Pender and Dolitz, who just happen to be flying out to Pebble Beach tomorrow. We’ll be five minutes from Carmel—no reason I couldn’t drop by, have a little chat with Ms. Bell, at least find out whether she’s with the MDF.”
    Linda gave him a never-heard-of-it shrug.
    “When I first got to Washington, there was a huge flap about a plot to