Page 39 of A Friend in the Glass

“Yeah, I think normally these things are mostly an excuse for a bunch of middle-aged men to talk over each other and carry their Viagra prescriptions around. Somebody takes a dive in the middle of that? And somebody else gets shot in a hotel room? Talk about boner killers.” He scanned the crowd once more, but he still didn’t see Lew or Del. “Any luck?”

“With my boner? It works just—oh, you mean Del. No, I didn’t see him.”

“Same here. No sign of Lew or Del yet. Should we try the panel?”

Rufus gave the tabletop a quick drum with his fingers. “At this rate, I’d say it’d be pretty ballsy if Del was in attendance. But even if he’s not, the excuse for his absence might tell us something.” He took a step back while asking, “That’s supposed to start in a few minutes, right?”

“Yep,” Sam said. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

When they got to the room where the panel was going to be held, Sam was unsurprised—if annoyed—to see that it was already full. People packed the spaces along the walls. One enterprising man was sitting on his briefcase. More bodies jammed the doorway, and the crowd spilled out into the hall. Sam returned the angry looks and mutters with hard looks of hisown as he forced a path through the audience. It was actually easier that way, as a matter of fact—it gave him something else to think about.

They ended up near the front of the seats, pressed up against the wall, less than two yards from the tables where the panelists would be. A woman was already seated—Indian, Sam thought, with her dark hair cut short and in a suit that managed to look both understated and expensive. Then the crowd began to buzz. Men and women moved aside to clear a path, and a moment later, Del entered the room. He was followed a moment later by a second man—white, fortyish, with the kind of glasses that would have gotten him punched in elementary school—who was trying to read as he walked, his nose buried in a thick packet.

Another woman appeared to be the moderator, and she got the panel started. Each of the panelists presented something involving slides that showed pictures of military equipment, charts, and big numbers. None of it, as far as Sam could tell, had anything to do with Stonefish—Del’s presentation had to do with some sort of data analysis software. All three presenters, in turn, seemed to veer between the highly technical and the grossly commercial—the subtext, when itwassubtext—seemed to be simply:buy from me.

After about fifteen minutes of it, Sam found his mind wandering. He scanned the crowd. By this point, he was beginning to recognize faces that he’d seen at the convention, but no one he’d flagged as memorable or important. They all seemed to have varying degrees of interest in the presentations—the man on his briefcase was about to fall asleep, his head nodding as he inched closer to slipping off his impromptu seat.

Where was Lew?

There were lots of reasonable explanations for why Lew might not be at the panel—chief among them, the possibilitythat Lew had killed Colonel Bridges and framed Del for it. But if Rufus was right, and if Sam was looking for patterns that weren’t there, then why wasn’t Lew here? Maybe it was as simple as Lew no longer had a reason to attend the convention with the colonel dead. But that didn’t seem to track; if anything, Lew’s attendance should have been more important. And no matter what Rufus said, Sam hadn’t imagined Lew’s presence at the Conasauga panel on Wednesday—and if it had been so important then, where was he now?

He was so caught up in theories that, before he knew it, the panel was over. Most of the crowd dispersed, some of them clearly disappointed that Del hadn’t confessed to murder, otherwise implicated himself, or had the decency to show up covered in blood. A few men and women lingered, though, clearly hoping to talk one-on-one. When it became clear that they wouldn’t be able to catch Del alone, Sam nudged Rufus toward the hall.

“He’s got to come out of there sometime,” Sam said. “Let’s see if we can get him alone somewhere.”

Rufus pointed discreetly in one direction, saying, “There’s a bathroom back that way. And over there is a corner that used to have a phone bank. If all else fails, we can bring him upstairs where the Halibut guys are.”

Seconds turned into minutes. Convention-goers hurried past them. Voices echoed from the high ceiling, so many people talking at once that it all became an ebbing, swelling roar.

And then Del appeared, glancing blankly from side to side like a man crossing the street on autopilot, one hand checking that his shirt was tucked in. His gaze swept over them without seeming to take them in, and he turned and set off toward the front of the convention center.

Sam went after him, Rufus at his side. The bathrooms Rufus had indicated were ahead of them. Sam thought the easiest thing to do might be to take Del’s arm—gently—and guide him toward the door. Most people, if you tried that, were so taken aback that they went along with you simply because they hadn’t figured out what else they were supposed to do.

As Sam picked up his pace, closing on Del’s flank, someone stepped into his path. Sam tried to jink past him, but the man moved with him, holding up a hand. At first, Sam registered it as a warning—STOP—but then the man said, “Hey!” and he realized it was a greeting.

Sam sidestepped again, and the man moved with him. He brought his attention to bear on the man, which meant losing track of Del for precious seconds.

The hair. The suit. The way this guy couldn’t help but try to stare down the blouse of a woman passing him. Then his eyes came back to Sam, and he said, “God, I’m so glad I ran into you.”

“Move, Anson,” Sam said.

“I’ve been freaking out—”

“Move!” Sam didn’t wait for an answer; he shoved Anson out of his way and started forward at a jog. Del was less than a hundred yards ahead, but that was significantly farther than he’d been a few moments before, and, worse, he’d already passed the bathrooms Sam had intended to use.

“It’s just—” Anson sounded out of breath as he came after Sam. “—ever since, you know, Evangeline, I’ve been thinking.”

“Rufus,” Sam growled as he hurried after Del.

“Hey, buddy,” Rufus said, already in the process of cutting Anson off from Sam’s path. He flicked the other man’s nose, held up a cell phone, and asked, “This yours?” And when Anson automatically reached for his pocket, Rufus drew his arm backand chucked it down the hall like he was trying out for the Yankees. “Go fetch.”

Anson’s outraged shout followed Sam as he broke into a run.

Ahead of him, Del was almost to the exit. The older man was still doing those nervous, side-to-side looks, but Sam got the impression they were instinct more than anything else—Del moved like a man who was nearly blind with his own panic. Sam’s stride ate up the distance between them steadily. A hundred yards dropped to eighty. Then to sixty.

He was thirty yards back when Del shoved open the door and stepped outside.

It took five seconds, maybe six, for Sam to follow.

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