“The subject boarded a flight for Los Angeles,” Charles said. “Then…” Whiting paused.

“Go ahead, Chuck,” Candy Landis said.

“Well… that’s when we lost her, ma’am.”

“Lost her? Lost her!” Jack Landis yelled. “What did she do, parachute or something!”

“She was a… uh… different woman when she got off the plane, sir.”

“I’ve felt that way after a long flight myself,” Candy said.

Jack gave her a look that was meant to be withering. It wasn’t.

To his disappointment, Candy looked as composed as she always did. Her heart-shaped face was freshly made up, her lipstick was perfectly painted on her thin, tight lips, and every single one of her blond hairs was in place and then sprayed into a perfect halo of shining marble. She was wearing her usual business suit: tailored jacket, mid calf skirt, a white blouse with a rounded collar and a little red bow.

She’s a goddamn pretty woman, Jack thought, but she looks like a painted statue, and about as soft.

Charles Whiting jumped into the awkward silence. “When she exited the aircraft, she was not Polly Paget.”

“Was she in the company of the aforementioned male Caucasian?” Landis asked acidly.

“Yes, sir.”

“So they pulled a switch in this opaque limo, huh?”

“That’s what we think, sir.”

“Too bad we didn’t think that before she disappeared, huh, Chuck?”

Chuck assumed that Landis meant this to be a rhetorical question and didn’t answer. He’d become familiar with rhetorical questions at the bureau. The director liked them.

The next question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Who’s behind all this?” Candy asked.

Jack Landis turned around slowly, his hands spread out and his jaw open in mock disbelief.

“Oh, come on, boys and girls,” Jack said. “We know who’s behind all this, don’t we? I mean, shit, it don’t take Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., to figure out that Peter Hathaway tried to use this lying bimbo to get my television stations from me. She couldn’t go through with it and now he’s whisked her away before people find out he’s behind it. Believe you me, Pollygate is over with.”