“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Bona fides established, he asked, “Do you know where our target is now?”
“We’re searching. The Geneva police have been cooperative, but there is nothing yet. When will you arrive?”
“Two hours.”
“I will meet you at the airport. Good-bye.”
Nicholas said, “He should be a help, which is good news. If he and Bouton are friends, he’ll know how to bend the rules. You know, I think he likes me better than you.”
She went silent for a moment, then said, “Who’s this Bouton character?”
“He’s a friend, one of my old contacts. We worked together on a nasty case about five years ago, in Algiers. And if Menard knows him, we’re in luck.” He paused a moment. “To catch the Fox, we might have to jump over the line.”
Mike kicked off her boots and drew her feet up on the leather seat. “We aren’t flying to Europe to bend the rules, Nicholas.”
“The only rules that matter right now are the Fox’s.”
Mike was already shaking her head. “Come on, you know the FBI doesn’t play fast and loose with the law.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, of course you know. But you also think the Fox was involved in Elaine York’s murder, and you want revenge. I can see it on your face, Nicholas. But our job is to solve this case without breaking laws and compromising ourselves.”
His voice went cold. “If you think I’m going to allow my grief for Elaine to influence me in this investigation, you’re dead wrong. Apparently I know a lot more about you than you know about me.”
“You absolutely don’t know anything about me.”
He shifted in his chair, eyebrow raised. “You told me about your dad, the chief of police in Omaha, quite the achievement for the son of a farmer. I also know he did two tours in Vietnam and received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. Your parents are still married—happily, by the looks of it. You have a younger brother, Timothy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to check him out. He called you in the middle of the night last night. I guess there’s a problem with your brother, since you said he was your Afghanistan, sort of—”
She cut him off. “Stop right now. This is all Google stuff any moron could find out about my family. It has nothing to do with how I choose to do my job. I don’t wave my wand and decide what’s appropriate for the given situation. My rules, as you call them, separate me from the people I hunt. It should be the same for you.”
His face remained expressionless, and his voice was light, but she wasn’t fooled, not for an instant. “Believe it or not, the Elaine I knew was a lot like you. And you know what? I could always count on her to have my back, no matter what I asked. I do hope I can count on you.”
She fingered the Glock on her hip and said, her voice as light as his, “You’re a lamebrain, you know that? Don’t worry about me. I’ve never backed down from a fight in my life. But we won’t break laws, Nicholas. We won’t become criminals to catch criminals.”
54
Nicholas didn’t reply. He picked up the phone and called Savich again.
“Sorry, I don’t have anything for you yet.”
“I have one more thing to add into the search. Our suspect walked into a Deutsche Bank in Geneva half an hour ago.”
“Ah, that will help. Good work. I’ll add it in, see if anything changes.” They hung up, and Mike’s email dinged.
“Finally,” she said. “Video feed from Elaine’s building is here. Why would they keep the tapes off-site? Took us forever to get it.”
Nicholas sat beside her as she opened the feed on her laptop. It had been taken from the camera in the building’s lobby, and the time stamp read 10:14 a.m.
They saw a tall, thin man wearing a black jacket and slacks with a hank of white hair under a black watch cap. He walked with confidence, looking neither right nor left, but away from the camera, so they couldn’t see his face. He had a key to the building’s door. He let himself in, and as the heavy glass swung closed and he passed the camera, they saw the small backpack on his left shoulder.
“That’s the man who attacked us in the garage, Mike, I’m sure of it.”
The video fast-forwarded to 12:10 p.m. They watched the man exit. He was wearing a Yankees baseball cap now, and his jacket was apparently reversible; it was now a light gray. As he walked out the door he again tilted his face down so the camera couldn’t catch any details. All they could see was a thin knife-blade nose and a small smile playing on his lips. He turned and they had a full-on shot of the lower portion of his jaw, but only for a fraction of a second, and then he strolled out of the frame. The video stopped.
Mike said, “He looks awfully happy for someone who just committed a double murder.”
“He looked happy last night, too, when he was trying to kill us. Play it again.”
She rewound the tape. “He’s a professional. He’s aware of the cameras, knows exactly what to do to avoid them. I don’t know if there’s enough to run him through the facial-recognition database.”
“Zachery’s email says they’re trying.” She played it again. “Who is he working for? He doesn’t look Russian, does he?”
“Not really, no. Are the cameras on the street able to capture where he goes? Does he have a car, or does he walk away?”
She scanned the email. “This is all we have. I’m sure they’ll send us more if they find something else.”
“Play it once more. Watch the backpack he’s carrying.”
She looked closely.
Nicholas said, “See, as he exits? Look how much farther down his torso the bottom of the bag is. He’s carrying something heavy, something he didn’t have when he went in.”
“Elaine’s laptop?”
“Most likely. Can you ask Gray to see if he can identify what sort of backpack it is? It may give us something.”
“Nicholas, you’re grasping at straws.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
He was angry now. It was bad enough imagining what happened, but to see Elaine’s murderer, a smile on his face, almost as if he were whistling, casually strut out of the building without a care in the world? It burned him. And poor Elaine had followed him out several minutes later, stumbled to the river, and fell to her death.
Mike laid her hand on his arm. “We’ll get him. You know we will.”
He realized his hands were fisted, and he relaxed them. “I hate being in the dark, and I don’t like being played for a fool. We’re still ten steps behind these buggers, and it’s starting to tick me off.”
55
Brighton Beach, New York
Friday, noon
It was nearly noon, gray and overcast, windy, no sun at all. After three hours of sitting here watching Anatoly’s fancy Mediterranean-style mansion, Agent Ben Houston still hadn’t seen any movement—no one turning on lights against the gloom, no one coming out to get the paper, walk a dog, drive somewhere, nothing, which meant Anatoly still had to be at home.
He looked down at his watch. Savich and Sherlock should be here soon, and together they’d go knock on Anatoly’s door, and they would question him about the stolen Sarah Elliott painting from the Prado. Ben still thought it amazing that Savich was Sarah Elliott’s grandson.
Ben continued to stare at the silent house, as if willing something to happen, anything. He’d like to go in there before Savich and Sherlock got here and beat the living crap out of Anatoly, force him to tell the truth about Kochen and Elaine.
He banged his fist on the steering wheel. It didn’t help thinking about Elaine. Rules were rules; the law was the law.
He wondered what Mike and that dude from Scotland Yard were doing. Ben had thought Nicholas Drummond smart enough, but he took chances, and Ben bet he’d cut corners when one got in his way. At least he’d defused the bomb in the exhibit room—talk about a big chance. He sighed. They did have one thing in common: Elaine York. Ben felt the familiar pain settle in his belly.
&n
bsp; He was bored with this view. He started up the Crown Vic and moved a block north, which gave him a clear shot of three sides of the house, and settled back in to watch and wait for Savich and Sherlock. His cell rang. It was Sherlock. They’d been held up another thirty minutes.
Ben tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He knew two of the seven sons lived with Anatoly. No mother, no wives, no children. Only the three grown-ups, all bad to the bone. He wouldn’t want to play poker with them. He couldn’t imagine them being good losers. Actually, he wouldn’t want to eat breakfast with them, either.
And that made Ben realize he was hungry. The bagel he’d inhaled for breakfast was long gone. He’d seen a pizza place as he’d come in, Papa Leone’s. A pepperoni sounded good. After their meeting with Anatoly, maybe he could talk Savich and Sherlock into a slice.
One more drive by, Ben decided, and started up his Crown Vic. He drove slowly by the Anatoly mansion, and lo and behold—he saw the front door wasn’t closed.
Why hadn’t he noticed before? Because something had happened, something he hadn’t seen. Adrenaline poured through him. He wasn’t about to wait now. But no way was he going to approach the house by himself, not after Anatoly had looked at him last night like Wouldn’t you look good without a face? And Anatoly would be glad to oblige.
No time to wait for Savich and Sherlock, no time to call in other FBI agents. Instead he called the Brighton precinct. Three minutes later, a blue-and-white NYPD cruiser sharked around the corner, two more cruisers in its wake. These boys knew whose house this was.
Ben waved at them as they slowly pulled to the curb. A sergeant approached him, an older guy, going bald and sporting a growing paunch. His nameplate read F. Horace.
“What’s the problem, sir?”
Ben stuck his creds in his face. “Special Agent Ben Houston, FBI. I had a chat with Mr. Anatoly last night down at Federal Plaza. I’m expecting two other agents, but not for maybe twenty more minutes, and I didn’t want to wait.” He pointed to Anatoly’s front door. “It’s open, but I haven’t seen anybody go in or out for the past three hours.”
“And you’re wondering why Mr. Anatoly would leave his front door open. Gotta say, I’m wondering, too. Let’s go check this out,” and Horace opened the snap over his Glock. He waved to the other officers, telling them to stay outside, wait for the two FBI agents that were expected, and keep their eyes open. Then they set off.
Ben pushed, and the front door swung in easily.
He stopped cold. Not good, not good. “Smell that?”
“Blood,” Sergeant Horace said, all humor gone. “I don’t like this, I really don’t.” He laid a beefy hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Listen to me now, Agent Houston, in case no one taught you, be sure to walk carefully. We don’t want to disturb any evidence, okay?”
Ben didn’t know where the manic grin came from. “Thanks for the wise words, Sarge. I’ll be extra-careful.”
Horace’s gruff laugh was his only reply.
The two men walked, guns drawn, at the ready, through a vast entrance hall decorated to the hilt with what looked to Ben to be Italian antiques. They followed their noses and stopped cold when they reached the huge vaulted kitchen, modern, shiny, pristine except for the three bodies pressed together in the middle of the kitchen floor, hands tied behind their backs. Two had fallen forward, one canted over as if he were sharing a secret with the man next to him. They’d all been shot in the back of the head, execution-style.
Sergeant Horace keyed the mike on his shoulder. “We need the crime scene unit and an ME out to Anatoly’s place. Triple homicide.” He turned back to Ben. “We gotta clear the house. Step careful.”
As Horace cleared the bottom floor, Ben went up the stairs, Glock steady in his hand.
In the second bedroom on the right, he found another body slumped on the floor, a male Caucasian, his back against the door frame, sitting in a pool of dried blood. His eyes were open, slightly gummed over, and he was facing the bed. He was dressed in black from head to toe. His hands were cupped around a wound in his stomach. He’d taken a while to die, Ben thought, looking at all the dried blood on his clothes, black now, stiff.
This man wasn’t big like the Anatolys. He had to be one of the shooters, had to be. So there were a minimum of two shooters, but his partner hadn’t shown him any love. He’d left him to die, and that was cold, real cold. Ben searched the man’s pockets but found no ID, no nothing.
The room itself was a mess, the bed unmade, smelled of dirty laundry, and, oddly, old toast. One of the sons’ rooms, then. He pictured the shooter coming into the room, and the son was fast enough to grab up a gun and gut-shoot him.
Had the son gone downstairs then, only to end up dead on the kitchen floor? He’d had a gun, he knew something bad was going on, but it hadn’t mattered. Whoever was waiting downstairs had overpowered him.
Ben methodically went through the rest of the rooms upstairs, then called down to Horace, “Upstairs is clear. Got a body, gut shot. Looks like he was part of the crew who broke in.”
“A quadruple homicide? Now, ain’t that something on a beautiful Friday.”
Ben rejoined him in the kitchen. Horace pointed at the bodies. “That’s Anatoly in the middle, and the younger ones are two of his sons. Someone was really pissed off. Nice of the killer to off them in the kitchen, no ruined carpet.
“But how the hell did he manage to get the drop on all three of these badasses? I just can’t see that.” They both stared down at the bodies.
Ben said, “Had to be more than one person responsible for this, had to be. Like you said, they were three very big strong men, even Anatoly.”
Horace nodded. “Plus, those Anatoly sons are meaner than hungry crocodiles. Their old man used to be, but he’s mellowed out, doesn’t kill those who piss him off himself any longer, just gives the orders. You need to see this.”
Ben followed Horace into what looked to be Anatoly’s office. The room hadn’t been ransacked. What looked to be an original Picasso had been gently lifted from its spot behind the huge mahogany desk and carefully placed against the wall. And there was a wall safe, the thick metal door hanging ajar.
Horace said, “There’s still packs of cash, legal papers, and lookee here—half a key of coke.”
Ben said, “That’s weird. If they found what they came for, why leave the cash and the drugs?”
“If I was the badass who broke in here,” Horace said, “I sure wouldn’t have left the C and C. I wonder what they did take out of that safe?”
Ben holstered his Glock.
“No clue.” He looked up to see Savich and Sherlock appear in the living room doorway.
56
Savich and Sherlock looked down at the three dead men on the kitchen floor while Ben filled them in.
“There was another body upstairs, most likely one of the killers. Whoever did this had to be big and strong and fast. These three couldn’t have been easy to take down, much less forcing them to kneel and accept being shot. They were really bad news.”
Sherlock dropped to her knees, studied the three faces, flesh slack and gray, eyes all open, staring at the floor. “This is really bad,” she said. “Really ugly, but no anger, no rage, all business as usual, I’ve got to say. Very controlled. In, do the job, and out. Didn’t take long.”
Horace said, “Yeah, that seems right, but how? Just holding a gun on them doesn’t seem like enough. And I can’t see these three cooperating. No muss, no fuss, just kill us?”
Sherlock lightly touched her palm to the side of Anatoly’s face. “He hasn’t been dead all that long, maybe two hours, more or less, the ME will tell us.” She frowned, then she sniffed. She looked up at Savich. “Dillon, guess what?”
“Busy guy,” Savich said.
“What busy guy?” Horace asked. “What did you smell?”
Sherlock said, “Nothing, Sergeant. We had a cyanide case yesterday, but I don’t smell it here. Ben, you know Kochen was shot with a tranquilizer
gun, disabled, then murdered. He was a big guy; the killer didn’t want to take any chances. I think that’s what happened here, too.”
Ben said, “You think this is the same guy who murdered Kochen and Elaine?”
She nodded. “Like you said, the dead men were all big, strong, and vicious, all in prime physical condition but Anatoly. I’d bet my next paycheck all three were unconscious before he dragged them in here, lined them up next to each other, and shot each in the back of the head.” She paused for a moment. “Then he reholstered his gun, job done, and went back to take whatever it was he wanted out of the safe.”
Horace said, “The killer wasn’t alone. Agent Houston found another bad guy is still upstairs, dead, obviously shot in the gut by one of the sons.”
“Then when the son came down yelling and blasting,” Savich said, “the man shot him with the tranquilizer gun, dragged him into the kitchen and killed him, and arranged him with his father and brother. I wager we’ll find some casings and maybe some holes in the banister or in the walls, maybe even his gun.”
Sherlock said, “He didn’t torture them because he knew where to find what he was looking for. He didn’t need them. But why kill them? Maybe because he was told to kill them, or maybe it was simply a reward to himself for a job well done.”
Ben said, “The dead guy upstairs, he bled out, and I don’t think it was fast. His partner just left him.”
Savich said, “No, he wouldn’t care at all, would he?” and he nodded to the three bodies. “Let’s look at the safe again, see if we can’t find a clue to what the killer wanted. And I’d like to look around to see if I can find The Night Tower.”
Horace frowned. “What would a night tower be doing here? What is a night tower?”
Savich smiled. “My grandmother is an artist. The Night Tower is one of her paintings. It was stolen from the Prado in Spain. We’re following a rumor that Mr. Anatoly here had it taken and replaced with a fake, but it was spotted.”
The Final Cut Page 20