“Did she ever shop at an oversize store?”
“We went in every place to look, you know how you do. We’d go in Personality Plus and she’d look for ideas, you know, flattering patterns for big sizes.”
“Did anybody ever come up and bug you around an oversize store, or did Fredrica ever feel somebody had his eye on her?”
Stacy looked at the ceiling for a second and shook her head.
“Stacy, did transvestites ever come into Richards’, or men buying large dresses, did you ever run into that?”
“No. Me and Skip saw some at a bar in Columbus one time.”
“Was Fredrica with you?”
“Not hardly. We’d gone, like, for the weekend.”
“Would you write down the oversize places you went with Fredrica, do you think you could remember all of them?”
“Just here, or here and Columbus?”
“Here and Columbus. And Richards’ too, I want to talk to Mrs. Burdine.”
“Okay. Is it a pretty good job, being a FBI agent?”
“I think it is.”
“You get to travel around and stuff? I mean places better than this.”
“Sometimes you do.”
“Got to look good every day, right?”
“Well, yeah. You have to try to look businesslike.”
“How do you get into that, being a FBI agent?”
“You have to go to college first, Stacy.”
“That’s tough to pay for.”
“Yeah, it is. Sometimes there are grants and fellowships that help out, though. Would you like me to send you some stuff?”
“Yeah. I was just thinking, Fredrica was so happy for me when I got this job. She really got her rocks off—she never had a real office job—she thought this was getting somewhere. This—cardboard files and Barry Manilow on the speakers all day—she thought it was hot shit. What did she know, big dummy.” Tears stood in Stacy Hubka’s eyes. She opened them wide and held her head back to keep from having to do her eyes over.
“How about my list now?”
“I better do it at my desk, I got my word processor and I need my phone book and stuff.” She went out with her head back, navigating by the ceiling.
It was the telephone that was tantalizing Starling. The moment Stacy Hubka was out of the cubicle, Starling called Washington collect to get the news.
CHAPTER 55
At that moment, over the southern tip of Lake Michigan, a twenty-four-passenger business jet with civilian markings came off maximum cruise and began the long curve down to Calumet City, Illinois.
The twelve men of the Hostage Rescue Team felt the lift in their stomachs. There were a few elaborately casual tension yawns up and down the aisle.
Team commander Joel Randall, at the front of the passenger compartment, took off the headset and glanced over his notes before he got up to talk. He believed he had the best-trained SWAT team in the world, and he may have been right. Several of them had never been shot at, but as far as simulations and tests could tell, these were the best of the best.
Randall had spent a lot of time in airplane aisles, and kept his balance easily in the bumpy descent.