Internal Affair. Marie Ferrarella

With a careful movement orchestrated to avoid chipping a nail, Leticia hit the Print key. The printer to the left of the highly polished teak desk came to life and began printing the list.

      “That doesn’t stop some men,” Patrick indicated.

      Leticia laughed. The sound carried no mirth. “Didn’t stop my third husband, that was for sure. But I hear the congressman’s a straight arrow.” She sighed again and shook her head, as if lamenting the missed opportunity. She held out the pages to them. “Believe me, I left him enough of an opening.”

      Patrick glanced at down at the list the woman had provided for them. The names went on for several pages. And everyone was going to have to be checked out. He debated giving that assignment to McKenna, let her run solo with it.

      “Five hundred guests,” Maggi told him. “Don’t bother counting them.”

      She was quick with numbers, he thought. Handy trait to have around. He looked at Leticia as he tapped the list. “He said his staff was there.”

      A small, slightly superior smile twisted her lips. “Yes, they were.”

      He watched the woman’s eyes, looking for some tell-tale flicker. “Is that normal, to invite your reelection staff?”

      “Not really, but like I said, the congressman’s a very generous man.” She ran down the benefits of attending. “There was a great deal of good food to eat. Some of those staff members probably ate better than they ever have in their lives. Not to mention networking.”

      “Networking?” Maggi asked before Patrick had a chance to.

      “Yes, there are a lot of important, influential people attending these things. Everyone likes to be seen ‘caring’ about a popular cause. Doesn’t hurt to be around them. You never know where your next big break is coming from.” She looked from Maggi to Patrick, her manner terminating the session. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, let me know.”

      He wasn’t ready to leave just yet. Patrick took out the photograph of the dead woman and held it up to the organizer’s face. “Did you see this woman at the party last night?”

      Leticia shivered, making no move to take the photograph in her own hand.

      “Not that I remember.”

      The very air had climbed up inside their lungs as they waited for her to go on.

      “Is she…dead?”

      “Very,” he replied grimly, tucking the photograph away again.

      “Thanks for your help,” Maggi told the woman as they walked out. Patrick made an inaudible sound that could have passed for “Goodbye.”

      Outside the window, Maggi could see that the mist was getting heavier. She hoped it would hold off until she got home for the night.

      She glanced at the papers he was holding. “Looks a little daunting.”

      “Looks can be deceiving.”

      Part of her wanted to ask if Patrick was on to something, but she knew he was just pulling her chain or maybe giving her some kind of encoded message. She wanted no part of either. As he pressed for the elevator, she looked at the list over his shoulder. “So, where do you want to start?”

      He folded the list in half twice before lodging it beside the photograph. He never even looked at her. “At her apartment.”

      When she wasn’t busy working or partying, Joanne Styles had spent her time in a tiny, cluttered studio apartment about two-thirds the size of the one Maggi had lived in when she was in San Francisco.

      Standing in it now made Maggi entertain a very odd sense of déjà vu coupled with the thought “there but for the grace of God…”

      Except that she would have never let her guard down enough to have someone do to her what had been done to Joanne.

      Maggi supposed that was her inbred leeriness. It came from being raised in an atmosphere of law enforcement agents. Looking back, she knew that it was her leeriness that had gotten in her way with Tyler, urging her on to keep a part of herself in reserve, not allowing him to see all of her.

      Lucky thing, too, considering the way that had turned out, she mused.

      Patrick noticed the expression on his partner’s face as she stood looking around. She seemed a million miles away. He ignored her for a moment, then heard himself asking, “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing.” Maggi took a moment to rouse herself before turning to squarely face him. “Just trying to put myself in her shoes, that’s all.”

      He supposed there was nothing wrong in getting a female’s perspective on all this. “Can’t hurt.”

      She raised her eyes to his, humor playing along her lips. “Mellowing?”

      She wore some kind of gloss, he realized, something that caught the overhead light and made her lips shimmer.

      He was noticing the wrong things, Patrick told himself.

      Not bothering to answer her, he nodded toward the laptop that stood open on the small, pressboard desk. There was every indication within the room that Joanne would have been returning to her apartment.

      “She had a computer. Maybe there’s some interesting e-mail that might tell us something. We can take it up to the lab,” he said.

      Maggi closed the lid and unplugged the computer. She spotted a carrying case haphazardly thrown under the desk and tucked the laptop into it. “Why the lab?”

      “To read it.” When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “There’s probably a password they’ll need to get by.”

      “I can get you through that,” she said.

      Patrick stopped rifling through the victim’s closet. “You’re a hacker?”

      She shrugged carelessly. “I’ve been known to get into some systems.”

      He hadn’t thought to catch McKenna in a contradiction so soon. “I thought you believed in the straight and narrow.”

      “I do.” With the laptop safely put away, she began to go through the shallow center drawer. “I was also younger once.”

      Squatting, he looked from the victim’s collection of shoes. Twelve pair. Shoes were obviously a weakness. Nothing unusual about that. “Guess not everyone starts out as a plaster saint.”

      “Guess not.”

      Maggi closed the center drawer. The desk wobbled dangerously and continued to do so with every move she made as she went through the other two drawers. It was the kind of desk that started out as pieces packed into a cardboard box along with simplistic photographs that were meant to be directions. It couldn’t have been any cheaper if it had been constructed out of orange crates. “Looks like being a congressman’s staff assistant doesn’t pay all that much,” she commented.

      “Maybe she was in it for the fringe benefits.”

      Having found an album tucked into the rear corner of the closet, Patrick flipped through the plastic-covered pages until he found something worth looking at. He held up a page with a photograph mounted in the center. It displayed several young people, all smiling broadly and obviously celebrating. In the midst was the congressman. He had his arm draped around two staff members, one a male, the other was Joanne. A banner in the background proclaimed Wiley Is Your Congressman.

      Maggi moved forward to look at it. Joanne seemed so happy. If this was the last election, that meant it was taken only a few weeks ago. “And maybe he’s just a nice boss.”

      “Maybe.”

      From his tone, she knew he didn’t believe it.

      By the time they returned to the station, they had one more piece of information beyond the address book that Maggi had found