14. J.T. Ellison

dressed as Marie Antoinette, but this wasn’t her mother. Taylor felt the concussion of the woman’s sudden not-quite fall, smelled the alcohol waft up the stairs mixed with another scent, a powdery musky smell.

      Three people rushed over to make sure she was okay, but she giggled and shooed them, assuring them she’d purposely taken a seat to rest her weary feet. After three waiters had helped her up, she waddled away, dress swinging precariously.

      Then there was quiet for a few moments before her father and mother came into view, several people at their heels.

      The women were simpering back and forth to one another, but the men talked loudly, expansive with drink.

      “Win Jackson, you’ve obviously made a deal with the devil,” a dark-haired man brayed.

      “Yeah, Win, your own little Manderley, is it? What did you do in a past life to get so goddamned lucky in this one? The judge should have thrown you in jail, not dismissed the charges.” A sandy-haired man with thick black glasses smacked her father on the shoulder. Win laughed.

      “Manderley? Shit, let’s just hope the place doesn’t burn to the ground. Kitty would have my head.”

      And so they went, on and on, poking and gibing at one another, until Taylor’s governess found her and snatched her from under the curved balustrade, shuttled her back to the nursery.

      Taylor squeezed her eyes shut, trying hard to place the moment, the spot where one of the men turned….

      “Jesus, Taylor watch out!” Fitz shouted.

      She opened her eyes, disoriented to see the road in front of her, her hands on the steering wheel of the truck, and a small car swerving through a slide on the ice right into her path. The ballroom was gone. She swung the wheel lightly to the right, steered into the slide and scooted around the Camry, which righted itself and slowed, creeping away in her rearview mirror.

      Something there, she thought to herself. Something there. But the memory was lost in the glare of the snow.

       Seven

       Quantico, Virginia Tuesday, December 16 10:00 a.m.

      Charlotte Douglas knew how to enter a room.

      She preferred to do it late in the evening, wearing Valentino or Cavalli, delicate feet strapped in some fanciful creation by Louboutin or Blahnik, on the arm of whatever delicious flavor of eye candy she’d chosen for the evening. To stop just inside the doorway for a priceless moment, giving every head the chance to turn and take in her glory. Once all eyes were upon her, she’d glide in, smiling, touching an arm here or a buttock there, depending on the level of intimacy she had with the player involved. The sea of men would proverbially part to allow her access, champagne would magically appear and the evening was instantly considered a success.

      She generally reserved those shenanigans for the high rollers: senators, congressmen, people who had funding levels under their watchful command. She had an image to project—glamour, posh and publicly unattainable. It drove the power-hungry men in Washington wild, assured her of a place at most every event of significance.

      But she couldn’t be on the A-plus list all of the time; she needed to finesse the peons, as well. She’d never waste her couture on them, designer fare from Nordstrom was entirely appropriate. So for the dates with the underlings, the chiefs of staff and deputy secretaries, she made sure she was dressed as elegantly as possible, was perfectly coiffed and made up, and reached or exceeded their height. Charlotte had been handmade for stilettos.

      The previous evening, she’d spent half the time talking to a minor Saudi prince, a full half hour with the head of the Ways and Means Committee, and shared a snippet of conversation with an NBC affiliate reporter being groomed for the network before calling it a night. Working D.C. could be awfully tiresome.

      She’d pulled into the gates of Quantico at 7:00 a.m. sharp, clear-eyed and ready for the day.

      She smiled to her coworkers, flirted with the maintenance man fixing the service elevator, and happily went about her morning routine. She grabbed a coffee from the break room, stepped into the bathroom to fluff her hair, then made her way down the hall, unlocked her office and turned on a gentle lamp. The glow from the environmentally friendly bulb cast a shadow on her nameplate; she moved it an inch to the right so it wasn’t obscured. There was no sense of pride when she looked at the engraving—Dr. Charlotte Douglas, Deputy Chief, Behavioral Science Unit. The “deputy” part wasn’t to her liking.

      Logging on to her computer, she leaned back in her chair and picked a piece of imaginary fluff off her shoulder. The machine would only take a second to boot up; it was password-protected so she generally left it in sleep mode when she left the office for any appreciable length of time. The display flashed at her a few moments later, the FBI seal centered on the screen. She typed in her password, a carefully chosen combination of letters and numbers. L96in69gu0S. A personal joke between her and the webmaster. Who was quite talented, she’d come to find out.

      Setting down her coffee mug, she’d gone trolling. Looking for unusual murders, repeat offenses, unsolved cases was time-consuming, but it had to be done. She could have reports compiled and left on her desk like the rest of the D.C. automatons—the junior staff of every department was responsible for the morning reports, pages of media items of interest to their bosses. The other profilers in her unit did just that, allowed the FBI interns to aggregate the news reports, police filings and anything else that might be relevant to keep the unit up to speed on the goings-on of their law enforcement brethren. But Charlotte preferred to look for her own information. Regardless, no one else could really gather the tidbits she was looking for correctly.

      There was nothing unusual to be seen—the usual amalgamation of crazies, unsolved cases she was already familiar with, and Web sites catering to serial killers. She made a note of a new site that advertised for killers. “Contact us, tell us your most gruesome kills, here’s how to do it anonymously. WE’RE NOT COPS!” Just what they needed. The gilded information age, perfect for computer-literate sociopaths.

      She continued through her prescribed protocols.

      The new ViCAP updates were in. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program’s purpose was straightforward—detect patterns within criminal activities. Charlotte used it to compile missing-person cases, unidentified bodies and sexual assaults, coordinate multijurisdictional reviews, and help to share information between often competitive law enforcement agencies. ViCAP was one of her darlings.

      She opened the icon, logged in to the database and looked around. She didn’t see anything new that needed her immediate attention. Nothing out of the ordinary.

      She went on to check CODIS. The Combined DNA Index System was a beauty of a tool; once they got the DNA uploaded for all the bad guys in the system it would be a lifesaver. She plugged in her pass code.

      The Snow White case was her number-one priority right now, for a variety of reasons. The DNA profiles from the Nashville serial murders had been uploaded the previous evening. She’d configured the DNA submissions from the latest cases personally.

      Once she was logged in, a small icon in the lower-left corner of her desktop started blinking. She opened the link and smiled. The DNA test results from the Nashville murders were back. Wonderful. It wouldn’t do to leave any stone unturned, or turned in the wrong direction.

      She read through the results, combing the reports. She could turn this in to the Nashville field office immediately. Or at her leisure. Whichever fit the mood she was in ten minutes from now.

      She closed the elaborate analyses and moved to a separate part of the CODIS database, where DNA profiles from unsolved cases across the country were inputted to be compared against one another. The theory was excellent, but the practical applications hadn’t caught up with the backlog of DNA analysis. Slowly but surely, the files were being uploaded into the system, but it would take years to get reality matched to the theoretical.

      Two backlit icons were flashing. On the left icon, a code number