The Final Cut

by Catherine Coulter

“Come look at this, Mike.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Initially I thought his face was just congested, but look at how red his skin is. And look at the corners of his mouth, that black stuff.” Paulie bent close to the body and sniffed. “Hmm. You try.”

  Smelling a dead guy’s breath didn’t rank high on her list of fun things to do, but she leaned down and breathed in. Patchouli. Garlic, maybe onions. And death, the smell of death.

  “Am I supposed to smell something special?”

  “Almonds.”

  Her head jerked up. “You’re thinking cyanide?”

  “Yeah. Whatever, I’d still steer clear if I were you. I’ve seen a cyanide poisoning before; it looked like this.”

  Mike said, “Rigor has passed. I’d say he’s been dead awhile, maybe a day.” She slipped on nitrile gloves and pulled the dead man’s wallet out of his back pocket. “According to the driver’s license, this is Vladimir Kochen, and he lives in Brighton Beach.”

  Paulie scratched his neck. “Not to make assumptions, but you know a lot of the Russians out there are mobbed up.”

  “Tell me, then, what would a Scotland Yard inspector be doing with a Russian mobster in her apartment? Maybe he’s a friend who showed up at the wrong time?” Yeah, like she believed that for a second. Mike rubbed her hand over her forehead where a headache was beginning to brew. “Zachery’s going to love this. No choice, time to wake him up.” She dialed his cell phone. He answered on the first ring, sounding wide awake.

  “Hey, boss. We’ve got another body in York’s apartment. Russian from Brighton. There’s no sign of a break-in, no sign someone tossed the place, but there was a struggle. The dead Russian has a syringe sticking out of his leg. Paulie thinks it’s cyanide. We’ll process the scene and let you know if we find anything else.”

  Zachery groaned. “What did this woman get herself into? Don’t mind me, rhetorical question. Do what you need to. Thanks for the heads-up. Call Captain Slaughter from NYPD, let him know what’s going on, see if he wants to send some people, or not, since the FBI’s dealing with it.”

  She called Captain Slaughter, woke him from a dead sleep, told him what they’d found. Slaughter told her to keep him in the loop and volunteered to send over a couple of officers to interview neighbors, check out the neighborhood. He sounded relieved it was her problem.

  They heard sirens. Their crew was here. And weren’t the neighbors going to love this disturbance in the middle of the night.

  Five minutes later, the new medical examiner lumbered into the apartment. Janovich was heavyset and tired, with hangdog eyes and a graying beard. Another dragged from the warmth of his bed.

  “Special Agent Mike Caine,” she said, and held out her hand. “We met—”

  “At the Kirkland crime scene. I remember. Those crazies ever get caught?”

  “We got them, yes.”

  “So why are we here?”

  “Inspector Elaine York from Scotland Yard was murdered; this is her place. I got here and found a dead Russian.”

  “She’s the one pulled from the river earlier?”

  Mike nodded. “That’s her. I think you’re going to find this guy interesting, too.” She pointed to the body. “There’s a needle sticking out of his right thigh.”

  Janovich stroked long fingers through his graying beard. “Gotta admit, don’t see that every day.”

  “I’ll let you get to it. Please let me know if you find anything of interest.”

  Mike walked through the apartment again, going over different scenarios this time, trying to figure out how it had all gone down. She said aloud, “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  She jumped. Ben had snuck up on her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Couldn’t sleep, so when Zachery texted me and asked me to come over and help you, I already had one foot out the door.”

  “Okay, I’m glad you’re here. Would you check nine-one-one, see if York made any distress calls? I’m going to scope out the rest of the building, go across the street to fetch the feed from a video camera I saw. York might be on it. Maybe our Russian, too. And the killer.”

  She’d pressed the elevator button for the lobby when her cell rang. She hadn’t received a middle-of-the-night call from her former SAC Bo Horsley in several weeks, not since he’d retired. She knew immediately something was very wrong.

  “Sir? What’s happened?”

  “Mike, good to hear your voice, even though it’s the middle of the night. Zachery called me to let me know there’s more to Elaine’s case than we first thought, wanted me to know right away. Talk to me, Mike.”

  And so she told him what she saw, some of her theories, ending with, “There was clearly a third person here. Though how he pulled it off, I don’t know.”

  He paused for a moment, and she heard him talking to someone in the background. Then he said, “Have I got a nice surprise for you, Mike. You’ve heard of Savich and Sherlock, right?”

  “Of course. I worked with Dillon Savich on breaking a Chinese cyber-crime syndicate. He’s incredible.”

  “He’s not the only incredible one. Sherlock has this gift. She walks into a crime scene and can tell you exactly what happened. Both Savich and Sherlock are here with me. And we’re all still wide awake. You want me to send them to you? Sherlock’s up for it, if you are.”

  I must really be stupid tired to need help on a crime scene like this, Mike thought, but she agreed instantly. Why should other agents sleep when she couldn’t? “Send them over.”

  “Okay,” Bo said, “they’re on their way. Now, Mike, I need a favor. Milo said that since you were the lead on this case, you were the one to do it. My nephew, who is also Elaine’s boss, is on a plane from London as we speak. He lands at eleven ten a.m., British Airways coming into JFK. Can you pick him up and fill him in on what’s happening?”

  Bo’s nephew? Great, just wonderful. She knew all about Bo’s nephew, the only offspring of Bo’s sister and a Brit father who was some damned aristocrat. She knew more about him than she wanted to know, since Bo spoke of him as often as he did his own four girls. He was supposed to be this frigging super-spy who’d given it all up for a reason Bo had never mentioned and joined Scotland Yard. And now he was coming to stick his nose under the tent, probably stick in his whole big foot. No, that was wrong. He’d want to barge right into the tent and take charge. She could see this guy throwing his weight around. She didn’t need this, she really didn’t.

  “What’s his name again, sir?”

  “I thought you’d remember, Mike. Well, no matter, his name is Nicholas Drummond. Detective Chief Inspector Drummond of New Scotland Yard.”

  Detective chief inspector—it figured. She glanced at her watch. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. So much for getting some sleep.

  “Okay, I’ll fetch him.”

  “Thanks, Mike.” Bo’s voice was jazzed, full of manic energy, and she frowned into her cell.

  “All right, sir. I know you. You haven’t told me everything. Why’d you really call?”

  “Always so sharp. Mike, I need your absolute discretion.”

  “Certainly, sir. What’s wrong?”

  He lowered his voice and dropped a bombshell.

  “The Koh-i-Noor’s been stolen.”

  11

  Savich and Sherlock arrived at Elaine York’s apartment building twenty minutes later. In the elevator, Savich pulled Sherlock close. “You sure you’re up for this, sweetheart? It’s late, we’re both pretty wiped.”

  She leaned up and laid her hand on his cheek. “I’ve got a call in for my second wind. It should be here momentarily. Believe me, Dillon, we’ll sleep late tomorrow. And this is important.”

  The doors opened, and there was a beehive of activity at the end of the hall. They walked through the door to Elaine York’s apartment and were met by a young woman who looked pissed, impatient, and bone tired.

  Savich said, “Agent Caine? It
’s good to see you again.”

  “Agent Savich.” A smile bloomed and she grabbed his hand, pumped it up and down. “We’ve got ourselves a real puzzle here. I can’t believe you guys came out in the middle of the night. Thanks for coming by to take a look.”

  “It’s a strange night, all the way around,” he said, and introduced her to Sherlock.

  Sherlock found herself at Mike Caine’s eye level. “Let’s get to it, then maybe we can all get some sleep.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Mike said, after she’d released Sherlock’s hand. “It’s so bizarre, the whole deal. I mean, there’s a dead guy on the sofa with a needle in his thigh and Elaine York was in the East River—”

  Savich cut her off. “Bo told us about everything, Agent Caine—”

  “Please call me Mike.”

  He nodded. “Mike. Call me Dillon.”

  “And you can call me Sherlock.”

  “I always wanted to meet Sherlock,” Mike said. “I do hope you don’t smoke a pipe. Oh, dear, sorry for that. I’m punchy.”

  They all paused in the small entryway to see four people watching them. More introductions, then Mike said, “Everyone, take a break, okay? Five minutes.”

  Savich said, “Let’s let Sherlock walk through the scene, see what she thinks. Have you identified the dead guy?”

  “Yeah, his name’s Vladimir Kochen, a Russian from Brighton Beach. That’s Mob territory.”

  Savich helped Sherlock out of her coat. “Go to it, and I’ll see what MAX can find out about Kochen.”

  When the apartment was quiet, Sherlock walked into the living room. She said nothing at all, simply looked at the dead man, at the needle sticking out of his leg. She studied the living room, studied him again, then walked down the hall to the bathroom.

  Sherlock came back in a few minutes, smiled at Mike. “Please understand, Mike, what I think isn’t necessarily what happened, okay?”

  “Yes, of course I understand.”

  Sherlock sighed. “It’s all so sad and so very brutal.”

  Mike said, “I agree, Sherlock, and I appreciate your coming out in the middle of the night to give it a try, but it’s okay. I’m sorry you’ve gone to so much trouble—”

  “No, you misunderstand me.” Sherlock walked to stand over the dead Russian. “He’s a soldier, a big man, muscular, hard. He wasn’t taken by force, but by cunning.”

  Mike said, “A soldier? He’s not military that we know of, but we’re still running his records.”

  Savich looked up from where he sat with MAX open on his legs. “That isn’t what Sherlock meant. Vladimir Kochen is a foot soldier for a Russian Mob boss. Do you know the Anatoly crime family?”

  Sherlock whirled around so fast she nearly fell over. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Dillon. Anatoly, really?”

  Savich laughed. “Yep, and that makes it one very small world.”

  Mike said, “I do know Anatoly, and his less-than-savory connections. Anatoly’s an art lover and collector, a big supporter of the Met. He’s got to be in this somehow. I have no idea how all this ties together, but it must, somehow. Is that what you mean by it being a small world?” Mike cocked her head to the side.

  “Sherlock and I are up here not only to see the Jewel of the Lion exhibit, but also to speak to Andrei Anatoly about one of my grandmother’s paintings. An expert on her work was visiting the Prado Museum and spotted the fake, told the director and called me. We don’t think it had been switched that long ago, because one of our art-crimes agents told me he’d heard buzz about Anatoly bragging about a new acquisition, The Night Tower.”

  Mike was astounded. “The Night Tower? The world just got microscopic. The Night Tower, it’s one of my favorite paintings. I’ve never been to Europe, but I always wanted my first trip to be to Madrid, to see that painting at the Prado. Your grandmother is really Sarah Elliott?”

  He nodded. “So back to our small world. What the devil is one of Anatoly’s men doing here with the minder of the Koh-i-Noor diamond?”

  No answer to that question. Savich said to Sherlock, “Tell us what happened here.”

  Sherlock looked like her second wind had finally arrived. She walked over to the dead man and spoke quickly, moving around the room to illustrate her thoughts. “The killer, and I’ll bet it is a man, knocked on the door; Kochen answered it and got shot immediately with a tranquilizer.” She picked up his arm. “Look at the stain on his jacket, right here. I’ll bet that’s where the killer shot him—in the arm. You wouldn’t want to go one-on-one with this guy, he’s too big, too strong, probably well trained and vicious. Too many variables, particularly with another trained cop in the apartment. The killer probably expected her to be in the living room as well, and planned to shoot them both with the tranquilizers, but she was in the bathroom, getting ready to take a shower.

  “Once Kochen was stunned, the murderer dragged him to the sofa, then shot him full of cyanide before he had a chance to recover. And it is cyanide. I can smell it.”

  She gestured toward the hall. “York heard the scuffle and grabbed her gun. The killer attacked her, wrestled the gun from her, and shot her with it. The autopsy will probably show she had cyanide in her system, too; the killer would have had another plunger full to use on her. Whether he got a full load into her or not, we’ll have to see. She fought him, though, hard. And he left her for dead, a bullet in the chest. That’s my best guess.”

  Mike was staring at her. “Yes,” she said, “yes, I can see that now. It’s very clear. Thank you.”

  Sherlock said, “Are her things still here, Mike?”

  “Her computer is missing; the power cord is on the desk. Her bag was rifled through, though her money and cards are still there. It’s impossible to know if anything else was taken. We’ve even got her cell phone. So why did the murderer take her computer? Something was on it that either worried him or—or what? We’ll find out. You know, Sherlock, the tranquilizer—that hadn’t occurred to me—”

  Savich said, “Your ME would have found traces in their systems, seen the injection sites. Sherlock just found it a bit faster.”

  Mike didn’t say another word. It was odd, but she felt both punchy with fatigue and buzzed. She hugged Sherlock right there with the dead Russian on the sofa and Dr. Janovich now back in the living room, pulling off the man’s coat to see if he could visually identify an injection site for the tranquilizer. He found it and gave Sherlock a puzzled look.

  Sherlock yawned. “Oh, sorry about that. It’s been a long day. If that’s all, Mike, we’ll see you—well, tonight I guess, at the gala. I know this is tough, but we’ll figure it all out. Try to catch some sleep, okay?”

  “And keep us posted,” Savich said, and shook her hand, nodded to Dr. Janovich, and they left. The taxi they’d asked to wait downstairs thankfully hadn’t taken off, and they were back to Chelsea in twenty minutes.

  Savich never thought a bed could feel like heaven, but this one did.

  12

  New York, New York

  JFK Airport

  Thursday, 11:10 a.m.

  Nicholas hadn’t been to New York in a couple of years, since a visit with his mother to see Uncle Bo, Aunt Emily, and his four female cousins, all of whom worshipped his mother. Regardless of the circumstances, the energy of the place gave him an instant buzz. If only he could share this with Elaine, instead of bringing her home in a box.

  When they landed, he turned on his phone, saw a text from Uncle Bo.

  Agent Mike Caine will meet you at the gate. See you soon.

  He gathered his bag and left the plane. His eyes scanned the crowd—Mike Caine—that was the agent’s real name? Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the actor strolled up and said hullo?

  He entered the main terminal and immediately noticed a tall, lean blonde with her hair in a ponytail and dark glasses tucked into her shirt alter course to intercept him, no hesitation, a guided missile. He took note of the bulge under the left corner of her black leather jacket;
she had a gun strapped to her hip. She stopped two feet short, ignored all the travelers parting to flow around them, and said, “I’m Special Agent Michaela Caine with the New York Field Office. Glad to meet you,” and she opened a black leather case to show him a blue-and-white card stamped “FBI.” She stuck out her hand. “You must be Bo’s nephew.”

  He shook her hand. “Yes. I was expecting someone older. And more male.”

  “Ah, yes. People do. And trust me, I’ve heard all the jokes.”

  “I daresay. I’m Drummond. Nicholas Drummond. Thank you for coming to gather me.”

  Her idiot mind said, Bond, James Bond. So this was Bo’s super-spy nephew. And didn’t Drummond look the part, dark hair and eyes and, Lord above, was that a cleft in his chin? He’d probably shaved long before he boarded the plane to come to New York, and he had a five-o’clock shadow, or whatever o’clock it was in England. It made him look dangerous. She bet he was stubborn as a mule, and a player. The way he eyed her, sizing her up, yes, definitely a player.

  “It’s no problem. Do you have luggage?”

  He looked down at a soft-as-butter dark brown leather carry-on bag that looked like it cost one of her paychecks.

  “Only this overnight bag. I took the first flight from London practically the minute I heard.”

  She nodded, saying only, “My car’s this way,” since she couldn’t very well lead off with Hey, Mr. Aren’t I Great, I hear you are a super-spy. He stepped ahead of her to open the door, and she saw Mr. Super-Spy had a very nice butt. So did James Bond. Well, since he was going to horn in, it balanced the scales a bit that he wasn’t hard to look at.

  As they walked to the car, Nicholas noticed Agent Caine had a long stride that matched his own quite well. Her blond ponytail swung back and forth like a metronome as she walked. She wore black leather motorcycle boots, low-heeled, dark jeans, and a scoop-neck black sweater over a white button-down. The black leather jacket completed the biker-chic look.

  She didn’t look like any FBI agent he’d met before, not that he’d met all that many. Actually, he thought she looked like a motorbike-riding librarian. She looked like she’d shush him if he made any noise, then maybe smack him with her riding gloves.