Bombshell

by Catherine Coulter

  “It’s here, on the floor beside the bed.”

  “And the pen?”

  Moffett said, “It’s on top of the pad of paper. It’s really a journal sort of notebook, but funny thing is, there’s nothing written in it.”

  Sherlock took the journal, thumbed through the pages. “It still smells new,” she said, and gave it back to Detective Moffett.

  “Devil’s advocate here. It’s suicide; look at him, he didn’t struggle, he’s all peaceful, like he came to a decision and followed through, even left a note. Hard to fake all that.”

  Sherlock lightly touched her fingers to Stony’s gray cheek. “Poor boy, you should have told us the truth, but maybe in the end it didn’t matter.”

  Savich was studying the pill bottles. “Since he ripped off the prescription labels, it will take a few hours to know what they were. From the size of the bottles, I’d say maybe narcotic pain relievers, like oxycodone, and some kind of sleeping pills or tranquilizers. Either Stony stole them or someone else did.”

  Sherlock said to Moffett, “If it turns out it’s not suicide, we’ll have a suspect. Peter Biaggini, and that would mean Peter killed one of his best friends and danced out all pleased with himself for stage-setting a perfect suicide scene.”

  “Talk to me,” Detective Moffett said. “Tell me who this Peter is.”

  Savich saw no reason not to tell him. By the time he finished speaking, Moffett was shaking his head. “But you don’t know yet.”

  “No,” Sherlock said. “We don’t. Something I do know, though, is that Peter Biaggini will be alibied up to his tonsils if he had anything to do with this. We’d appreciate it if you’d keep this all close to the vest, Detective Moffett. We don’t want it to get out to the media.”

  Detective Moffett said, “Not a problem.”

  Savich lightly touched his hand to Stony Hart’s flaccid hand. Another life gone, simply snuffed out. The waste of it all made him want to weep. He said, “Murder or suicide, the ME can tell us for certain.”

  Ten minutes later FBI crime scene techs swarmed into the bedroom. Savich and Sherlock walked with Detective Moffett to the small kitchen that smelled faintly of day-old garbage and unwashed dishes, with an occasional whiff of lemon.

  An untouched pizza with congealed cheese, still in its box, looked ready to topple off the kitchen counter. Janelle Eckles sat in one of the two cane-backed chairs at a small laminated green table with salt and pepper shakers shaped like kittens sitting on top of a pile of napkins. A gift from her to Stony, Sherlock thought, and felt her throat close. A WPD officer sat silently with her.

  Janelle wasn’t crying. She was sitting tall, her face and her eyes blank, and Sherlock realized the only thing tethering her here was her body. She nodded to Dillon, and he and Moffett and the officer left the kitchen.

  Sherlock sat beside the young woman. “Janelle Eckles? Did I pronounce your name correctly?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t look at Sherlock, but continued to stare blankly toward the sink filled with dirty dishes. “Some people say it Eck-less, not Eckels, like I do.” She waved a hand. “I was going to clean up this mess before I left because Stony was so upset all weekend after Tommy died. But then Stony acted like a jerk this afternoon. He hardly talked to me, so I told him he could be a pig on his own time. I called some friends and we went to a rave at the DC Star on Queens Chapel Road, you know, in the warehouse district. I guess I got really drunk.” She raised blank eyes to Sherlock’s face. “I’m not drunk now.”

  A rave at the DC Star, Sherlock thought, down and dirty, so not the shy conservative girl she’d expect to be with Stony. Either that or she was so angry she was out experimenting.

  Sherlock took Janelle’s hand in hers, held it firmly when Janelle resisted, then felt her slowly ease. “What time did you leave, Janelle?”

  “About nine o’clock. Stony was pacing around, groaning, pulling on his hair. He was obviously upset about something. I kept asking him what was wrong, asking him where he was this afternoon, who’d upset him like this. I’m not blind, I saw all his computers were gone. And I asked him what happened to them, but he shook his head and wouldn’t tell me, muttered something about getting them replaced. It was like he didn’t think it was any of my business to ask him. And that was after I spent most of the weekend with him to show him how sorry I was about Tommy. Finally I told him it was time he talked to me or I was going to leave. You know what he did? He punched a wall with his fist and walked out of the room. I called my two girlfriends to come pick me up right after that.

  “You know he was always on one of his computers—have you seen the living room, imagine what it looked like? He wouldn’t put any of that crap out of sight. I swear all that junk would breed from one week to the next; there was always more. He spent all day at work in front of a screen, and then he came home and didn’t want to do anything else.” Her voice broke, but still she didn’t cry, merely swallowed, and was still again.

  She doesn’t know anything about Stony coming to the Hoover Building, doesn’t know anything about the anonymizer or Stony’s involvement with Tommy’s death.

  Sherlock asked her, “Did you know Tommy Cronin?”

  “Sure. Tommy was over here whenever he could get away from Magdalene, maybe once a week. I liked him a lot. For a while he was thick with one of my girlfriends, Melissa Ivy, and it was Melissa who introduced me to Stony. She said we might as well go out with guys who had a future rather than those jocks and losers at school who were only out to score. I remember she was so pleased when Tommy invited her to Thanksgiving dinner at his grandparents’ house—well, mansion, really, she told me. But that didn’t work out. I’m sorry, Agent, I got off track.”

  “That’s fine,” Sherlock said. “Tell me whatever you wish.”

  “Well, Melissa was with us last night at the rave, went home as drunk as I did. I think she was mad at Peter—Peter Biaggini; he’s another of Stony’s friends—but she wouldn’t say anything about it, said she wanted to forget about it and him. I wondered if he was as upset as Stony and shutting her out.

  “They’re both gone now, both Tommy and Stony. And they were so young. Isn’t that strange?”

  Sherlock lightly touched her fingertips to Janelle’s sweater sleeve to bring her back. “Were you surprised when Melissa left Tommy and went with Peter?”

  “Melissa said Tommy was too uptight, said he wanted to study all the time instead of be with her. She took up with Peter then; I don’t remember exactly when.”

  “That’s all right. Now, I know this is hard, Janelle, but we really need your help. When you left Stony tonight, did he tell you he expected anybody?”

  “I don’t know, because we weren’t speaking. He didn’t even say good-bye to me. I didn’t say good-bye to him, either. I slammed out.” Tears were falling down her face. She didn’t make a noise, just let the tears fall. “When I got back I was too drunk to fight with him. I went in the bedroom to say something snarky to him and I saw him lying there. I thought he’d fallen asleep with his clothes on, and I touched him, but then I saw his eyes and they were staring at me.” She gulped, sat stone still.

  “I picked up his note and read it. I know now I shouldn’t have touched it, but I did. I don’t understand what he meant—I can’t live like this. I’m sorry. Did it have anything to do with Tommy dying? Do you know what he meant?”

  Sherlock shook her head.

  Janelle looked down at her clasped hands. “I looked at the bottles. He must have stolen some of his mom’s pills. Can you imagine how she’ll feel when she finds out he used her pills to kill himself?”

  “Did you see the pills here before tonight?”

  She shook her head. “Stony hated to ever take pills. I’d have to beg him to take an aspirin when he had a headache. He was weird that way. I can’t imagine when he stole them. Did he visit his parents this weekend? But to steal h
is own mother’s pills? Why would he do that? Do you think she knows yet?”

  She raised her white face to Sherlock. “Do you think Stony had anything to do with Tommy’s death? Is that what he couldn’t live with? Was he feeling guilty about something he did? When we heard that Tommy was dead, I saw him crying in the bathroom, and that’s why I stayed with him almost all day Saturday. Then he was gone most of today and I left, too, but I came back. But when I got here, and ordered his favorite pizza, he wouldn’t even talk to me, wouldn’t say a thing, just cried and got angry at me. Why would he kill himself?”

  She fell silent again. She was a pretty girl, Sherlock thought, gold-streaked hair, nice figure, but too much makeup that was all smeared now. All the eye shadow made her look older than she was. Sherlock supposed she wanted to look like a grown-up at the rave.

  Sherlock said, “I promise you, Janelle, we will find out why.”

  Judge Hardesty’s Airfield

  Near Maestro, Virginia

  Monday, dawn

  The early morning was freezing cold, the snow shiny with an ice crust. The trio of pine trees next to the small hangar stood tall like white sentinels, straight and still in the cold air. Griffin, Delsey, and Anna stood huddled against a clapboard wall of the still-locked hangar, their breaths making white puffs of vapor as they waited for the plane. Griffin and Delsey were running on fumes after a night of recorded interviews about the crime scene and discussions with Sheriff Noble, who’d had no luck finding the man they’d seen running away in the alley last night. Worse for Griffin than the cold was that his sister had been arguing with him since he woke her up in her new bed in their adjoining rooms at the B&B to tell her she was leaving Maestro. Not even Anna’s being there with him had helped convince her, and now she opened her mouth and started up again. “Look, Griffin, I know last night was scary, I mean, it was terrifying, but—”

  Her brother put his fingers over her mouth. “There’s no reason to go through all this again, Delsey. The Mara came after you at the B&B while I was close, in the next bedroom, and that’s too close to home.

  “You know Maestro hasn’t been your friend since Friday night. Anna and Ruth and Dix, all of us, want you out of here and safe in Washington with Savich. I told him what happened—namely, our gun runners are desperate enough to lean a ladder on the side of the B&B, climb in through your window, and attempt to stick a knife in your heart. The MS-13 gang member wanted you dead, Delsey, because you were a witness.” Saying the words made his throat clog. He swallowed. “Look, if I hadn’t—”

  Hadn’t what? Delsey wondered.

  “—if I hadn’t heard you and come in time—” He couldn’t get out the words. “Let me say Anna and Ruth and Dix all want you out of here as well.”

  Delsey didn’t bother pointing out yet again that the man had had his hand pressed over her mouth and she hadn’t made a sound, yet Griffin had somehow known. She looked off toward the hills at the low rumble of an incoming airplane. “Look, I’ll be really careful, and I can help. I can be bait; maybe I can—”

  Griffin pulled out his killer argument. “Listen, if you stayed, we’d have to protect you, and that could scatter our focus, maybe endanger all of us. You don’t want that, do you? We don’t have the resources to protect you, and there’s no reason to risk your life here. It’s best for all of us if you leave.”

  Delsey sighed. “I guess I don’t want to get a knife in my heart.” She shuddered.

  “I don’t want you to, either,” Griffin said.

  “This wasn’t what I expected to have happen when I decided to study music composition at Stanislaus.” She gave Griffin a crooked grin. “How can I have such sucky luck? But you know, what about my classes? And I’ve got to compose. What if I lie really low, so no one—”

  Anna interrupted her, placed her hands on Delsey’s shoulders. “You can compose anywhere on the planet. Your professors can email your assignments. Your brother’s right, you don’t want to be here. I’d be so worried about you all the time that I’d get all my customers’ orders wrong and lose all my tips and maybe even my job. Then how could I afford to practice my violin?

  “Listen, Delsey, bottom line, if something happened to you, I’d never forgive myself, and no one else would, either. I’d end up in Nepal, where I’d become a monk and shave my head. A Louisiana girl shouldn’t have to do that. Don’t make me show off my bone-white bald head, Delsey.”

  “How do you know it’s bone-white? Oh, never mind. All right, you guys win. Now, there’s something that’s been bothering me, so I’m going to spit it out. I understand my BFF would want to be here to see me off and maybe help my brother talk me into going, but I’m not blind. There’s something more going on here that neither of you have told me. It’s like you’re both guarding defenseless little Delsey for her own good, little brain-dead Delsey, who wouldn’t understand something only you grown-ups would know. And no, this isn’t about the thing you guys have between you—that’s okay, I think it’s great. Maybe you don’t even see it yet yourselves, but you will. Nope, it’s something else, way something else.”

  She studied their closed faces a moment. “Anna, you and Ruth behave differently, too, when you’re together. I’m asking you, Anna, because Griffin can stare me right in the eye and lie clean. So talk.”

  Delsey saw Anna shoot a look to her brother, saw Griffin start to shake his head, then pause, shrug. “It’s up to you. She’ll be out of Maestro, out of harm’s way, and safe in Washington, and so will whatever you tell her.”

  Anna thought for a few seconds, drew a deep breath and prayed. “Okay, here it is. I’m a DEA agent, Delsey, undercover here in Maestro since last September, because we believe some people at Stanislaus, including Professor Salazar, are involved in large-scale drug smuggling. I enrolled at Stanislaus to find out more about it.”

  Delsey stared at her like she’d grown a third ear. “What? You, Anna, a DEA agent? My best friend here at Stanislaus, my girl from Louisiana who’s working her way through music school and shot an alligator when she was nine years old, you’re really a federal cop like my brother? A DEA agent?” She was shaking her head back and forth, trying to come to grips with a new reality. “But you and I are friends, we’ve been friends since last fall—but wait—” Delsey smacked the side of her head. “I’m an idiot. That’s not true at all, is it? All I’ve ever been to you is a source of information.” Delsey’s voice had raised a good octave and had begun to shake, with anger, with hurt.

  “I don’t believe this, no, it can’t be true. Tell me, Anna, tell me.”

  “Listen to me, Delsey, I simply couldn’t tell you earlier. That’s what undercover means. You can’t tell a soul what you’re really doing. It’s my job, my assignment. Telling anyone, even you, would only have put you and all of us at risk.”

  Delsey gave her a full-blown sneer. “Turns out I was at risk anyway, doesn’t it?”

  Anna hated Delsey’s anger, but there was nothing she could do about it. She slowly nodded. “That’s true enough.”

  “Like that dead agent or partner of yours I found in my apartment, the night I was almost killed? Did that have anything to do with you, Anna?”

  “I would never have put you at risk, Delsey, not knowingly. I didn’t know about it until after it happened. That’s why I’m here to see you safely out of Maestro now.”

  Delsey wheeled on Griffin. “And you, brother, how long have you known? And Ruth, Dix, everyone else that Anna simply couldn’t tell, since she was here undercover?”

  Griffin took her hands, since he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t belt him, or Anna. “Stop being so pissed off. Like Anna said, she’s only been doing her job.”

  “Yeah, and part of it was to play me.”

  Anna said, “Yes, it started out that way, but Delsey, I’m not lying to you, I came to like you a whole lot. You’re my BFF. Please. I don’t want to ruin our fri
endship.”

  Griffin said, “Listen, Dels, she’s so closemouthed I only got it out of her yesterday afternoon. She didn’t want to tell me, but I forced her hand. I’d figured it out, you see.”

  “Here you figured it out in two days and I didn’t because I’m a blind idiot, and here I’ve known her for months and months.”

  “I’ve seen you be an idiot, Delsey, but not about this. As for Griffin figuring it out, so much has happened since he got here. We’ve been in a pressure cooker, and it’s ready to pop.

  “Please understand, Delsey, I was sent here because I needed to get something concrete on Salazar, get some idea of the operation, where they’re stashing the drug shipments locally. He’s been very careful. But things are moving really fast now; plus, we have the MS-13 gang members to deal with.”

  To Griffin’s relief, he saw Delsey had calmed down. She was chewing this over. She said slowly, “Two people are dead. Won’t Salazar realize it’s all a sham, that you’re onto him, and run? Take the drugs with him?”

  She’d nailed it. Anna said, “He might run. We’re waiting for him to pull the trigger now and try to move the drugs to D.C., to Baltimore, Richmond, wherever he has clients. We think he’s got a fortune in drugs stashed out here somewhere, ready to go to his buyers.”

  “Salazar, a drug runner. It blows my mind. I mean, here he is a world-famous classical guitarist. And a drug kingpin?”

  “It would seem so,” Anna said.

  Griffin shaded his eyes at the blur of cloud-covered sun climbing above the mountain line in the distance. The small search-and-rescue plane he’d heard was clearing the foothills to the east and lining up with the runway. “That should be Agent Davis Sullivan,” he said, pointing. “He’s flying you back to Washington, Delsey, in Marauder Two.”

  “Griffin, what in heaven’s name will I do in Washington?”

  You’ll stay alive.

  “Hey, where will I stay? What happened to Marauder One?”