The kid had been snatched while his mother was having her hair done on Melrose Avenue. He had been playing jacks on the sidewalk outside the beauty parlor. Kelly had interviewed the parents and found them to be two of the most despicable people she had ever met. Grief had not softened their hearts. They gave orders; they expected to be obeyed. They did not listen either. While delivering the ransom, the father had insisted on carrying a revolver. Like he was going to shoot whoever came along for the money. However, from his pictures, Buddy looked like a sweetheart. Kelly desperately wanted him back.

“The amount is odd,” Kelly agreed.

“They might view it as a down payment.”

“You think they’d risk that stupid game?”

“They might.” Charlie searched the doughnut box. He liked the chocolate ones. She preferred glazed. Charlie said that was because he was black and she was white. He added, “I don’t think they’re very bright.”

Kelly raised her binoculars again. “I hate waiting.”

“Then why did you become an FBI agent?”

“I wanted to be a hero.”

A casual comment that said a lot.

How did a woman with a doctorate in mythology become an FBI agent?

Nine years ago she had been a twenty-five-year-old student at Princeton in dire need of a theme for her Ph.D. dissertation. She did not want to go the usual route and write about how one character in a book related to another character, or how when one author said this he was subconsciously contradicting another author who believed he was saying that. It was all so much academic bullshit.

She did not want to write a thesis at all. She considered them a waste of time. No one ever read them. How did they contribute to society? But she desperately wanted her doctorate because at that time she believed she wanted to teach. She remembered the night she was sitting alone in her apartment—not married at the time, not even looking—and came across a program on David Koresh and Waco.

The documentary was of mediocre quality; she saw it as a piece of poorly edited anti-FBI propaganda. Ironically, she did not focus on the parts on the FBI. It was David Koresh himself that fascinated her and the messiah quality he endeavored to project. She found his blend of sexual manipulation and strict religious persuasion curious. Most of all, she was struck by how he saw himself as a hero. A hero fighting a villainous society that had no regard for a higher truth.