Collateral Damage Read Online Free Page A

running itself just fine. And I think all your friends would understand.” He continued to glare at her. “I’ll clean up and make sure everything gets put away proper.”
    He walked around the desk to lean against it just to the side of Bea’s chair. His office seemed stifling just then, but maybe it was just the mix of four different women’s perfumes.
    â€œTruth is, with missing persons, the sooner you start the more likely success is. Do you have a recent photo of the missing man, Miss Collins?”
    â€œWell, not a still picture,” she said, fumbling her purse open. “Never really had time to take any. But I’ve something even better!” She gave him her first genuine smile and handed up a tape cassette.

    Hannibal managed to leave Mother Washington and Anna behind when he shifted to his own apartment across the hall. His front door entered the fourth room back, just before the kitchen. Cindy dropped onto his sofa but Bea stood while he pushed the tape into his VCR. The image soon resolved itself into a news broadcast, and a second later the sound kicked in. An anchor was setting up the next story, a fluff piece, but Bea narrated right over her.
    â€œThis is from Monday’s news. It’s about last Sunday’s event at the Mall. You remember, the international food thing? Dean and I were there.”
    The story was the kind of light fare beginning reporters are often assigned and composed mostly of man on the scene interviews. The reporter, a trim redhead, was too perky by half. She interviewed couple after couple, child after child, about what a fun time they were having getting a “Taste ofDC” as the event was called. The annual event took place on The National Mall. Not a collection of stores but rather a flat park sitting in the middle of the city, anchored at one end by the Washington Monument.
    The National Mall is as perfect a gathering place today as it was a hundred years ago, big enough to give the revelers the illusion of being separated from the traffic and the grime of government at work, surrounded as they are by this nation’s repositories of knowledge and culture, the various buildings of the Smithsonian Institute.
    The screen presented a collage of revelers biting into sausages and baklava and meat pies with unpronounceable names. Less than a minute into the story, the camera zoomed in on the happy couple. Hannibal was focused on the twenty-six inch screen, but he heard Bea drag in a ragged breath as the cameraman zoomed in with that jerky movement now popular, and framed up Dean’s face.
    Hannibal didn’t react, but he was surprised. He was briefly displeased with himself for making assumptions. He expected a slick looking, dapper brother of the Taye Diggs school. Instead, he was staring into a rounded, clean-shaven Caucasian face, with straw-colored hair falling into eyes that crinkled almost shut when he smiled. He was a little on the heavy side, clearly not athletic, in stonewashed jeans and a flannel shirt. He had rolled the sleeves halfway up his arms. And when he slipped his arm around Bea’s waist, her face lit with new love.
    He babbled something about “having a stone blast out here, like Epcot Center in Disney World,” and the whole time he was speaking into the camera, Bea’s eyes were on him, watching his precious words being formed by thin lips and pushed out between white, even teeth. Yep, he had her.
    Hannibal rewound to the closest shot of Dean and froze the picture. Perfect con artist looks, he thought. Average height, weight, hair and eye color, common haircut, no facial hair, nothing to make him stand out in a crowd, or a lineup.
    â€œThis is all you’ve got?” Hannibal asked.
    Bea was startled. “Surely you’d recognize him from this. I’ve just never taken any pictures or anything.”
    Hannibal stopped and ejected the tape. “I don’t need pictures for myself,