'Maybe he's doing it on the Internet,' suggested another agent. 'Seems like that's all that's obsessing people these days.'
'I want us to get scientific here,' said Bowen. 'Quantico. National Crime Information Center. The Smithsonian. Back issues of the Law Enforcement Bulletin if you have to. With all the resources at our command we ought to be able to come up with some ideas.'
Bowen stood up and tried to look inspiring to his people. It seemed easy enough until he met Kate's doubtful stare.
'Problem, Kate?'
'It might be that there really was nothing last time. That he used that first trip as a way of embarrassing us. After that little debacle maybe he thinks now we'll leave him alone. But either way we ought to try and find the boat before we do anything, don't you think?'
'Well sure, that goes without saying, doesn't it?' He placed a carefully avuncular hand on Kate's shoulder. 'Take charge of the landing party, Mister Spock. I want some answers.'
Kate drove home in her white Sebring, fixed herself a rum punch, drank it while running her bath, and then fixed herself another before soaking in the hot water. The bathroom gave onto the wrap-around terrace and she left the blinds up so she could see across the intercoastal waterway to the winking lights of the Miami Riviera beyond. It was a big sunken tub with a Jacuzzi and just about her favorite spot in the whole apartment. A couple of times after she and Howard had taken the place they had shared a tub together. But mostly he preferred a shower and if he did take a bath he liked to have it to himself. After a while she got used to the idea that he generally took advantage of her extended sessions in the tub to lie in bed and watch the Playboy Channel on cable. He pretended he didn't of course and would switch onto Letterman or Leno the minute she came back into the bedroom. Not that she had minded him watching it very much. But what really did surprise and irritate her was that he must have believed he could take out a subscription to any new channel, let alone Playboy, and that somehow she wouldn't notice. She worked for the FBI, for Christ's sake. Noticing things was her job. Naturally she had known that he was having affairs almost as soon as it started happening. She had hoped that he might get whatever it was out of his system. Just as long as none of it got into hers. But what finally prompted her to take action was not jealousy, nor even her love for Howard but, like the Playboy Channel subscription, the irritation she experienced at being considered too stupid to see through his lies and evasions. She was the bright one, not him. Second in her class in law at the University of Florida in Gainsville, graduating with honors, this was the same class in which her future husband had struggled to make the top fifty, and still the bastard figured he could outsmart her, like she was the dumbest short-order waitress in Oklahoma.
Kate had borrowed some surveillance equipment from the Bureau to obtain aural and pictorial evidence of Howard's infidelity and caught him banging the ladies' golf pro from the nearby Turnberry Isle Country Club. That was bad enough. Golf was such a stupid game. But it's the small things that really bother you and she had been even more appalled to discover that Howard's golfing partner was using the contraceptive gel from Kate's own bathroom cupboard for their stroke play. So with the help of a girlfriend in the Bureau's laboratory, and following extensive trial and experimentation, she had substituted the gel inside a tube of Gynogel for an identically clear and similarly scented brand of exercise balm -- an alcohol and menthol-based deep heat muscle rub that was definitely not recommended for use on sensitive areas. Especially the two sensitive areas that Kate had in mind. Even now, months after the event, just the thought of the tape she had made of her husband and his lover screaming through their hottest ever session of lovemaking could still make her laugh out loud. Whoever said that revenge was a dish best served cold had obviously never listened to two generous servings of overheated genitals.
Somehow Kate had never thought of herself as the vengeful wife. With her beautiful face, her keen appreciation of art, literature and music, not to mention a strong imagination, she had always seen herself as a more romantic type. It seemed odd to think about it now, but that was the reason she had joined the Bureau in the first place, and not some sawgrass-dull firm of Downtown attorneys. She had wanted action and excitement, even the occasional danger. But of late the most hazardous thing she had done had been forgetting the safety catch on her Lady Smith & Wesson; and for all that she needed a weapon she might as well have been packing a hatpin. In the hope of getting a foreign posting, like Bogota, Caracas, Lima or Mexico City, Kate had started to learn Spanish. Meanwhile she stared out to sea and dreamed of adventure.
Chapter SEVEN
