“Bad idea, Mitchie. You saw your mom’s face just now. Don’t want to make her cry all over again, do you?”

“I guess not,” Mitch said.

“Of course you don’t. Now just sit tight in the car, and don’t come inside. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Chapter 75

I WAS SPENDING as many hours at the house as I could, including all of my desk time. Between Kyle Craig, the Patriot snipers, and these new homicides with the numbers, my attic office was as stuffed with case materials as it had ever been. That meant a lot of crime-scene photos, so I told the kids that Dad’s office was off-limits for the time being, which explained the phone call I got from Jannie that afternoon.

“Hello, Alex, this is Janelle the Banished, calling from the faraway land of the second floor.”

My daughter’s always been one to put the “smart” in smart aleck. I just try to keep up. “Hail thee well, Janelle. How goes it in the nether regions?”

“You have a visitor, Daddy,” she said, back to business. “There’s a man named Mr. Siegel at the front door. He’s an FBI agent.”

At first I thought I’d heard wrong. What could Max Siegel be doing at my house? The last time we’d tangled had been the worst so far.

“Daddy?”

“I’m coming right down,” I said.

When I got to the second floor, Jannie was still waiting there. She trailed after me down the stairs, but I told her to stay inside.

Then I closed the front door behind me on the way out.

Siegel was on the front steps, looking very Brooklyn in jeans and a black motorcycle jacket. He also had a black helmet in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.

One of our security guys, David Brandabur, had positioned himself on the stoop, between Max and the door.

“It’s fine, David,” I said. “I know him.”

We both waited for David to go back to his car before either of us spoke.

“What are you doing here, Max?” I asked.

Siegel came up another step, just far enough to hand me the bag. Right away, I could see on his face that something had changed.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he said.

I pulled out a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. Some kind of a peace offering, I supposed, but with Siegel, I really didn’t know what to think.

He shrugged. “I know, I know. Agent Schizo, right?”

“Something like that,” I told him.

“Listen, Alex, I realize what I’m like to work with. I take all this shit very personally. I shouldn’t, but I do. I’m passionate as hell. Maybe it’s part of what makes me good at my job, but I can also be a real asshole sometimes.”