"So which one of you is Flynn?" He grinned at the angriest man in the room, the detective who sat with Johanna. "You? Well, this is my case now. Check with your lieutenant if you like. I won't be offended. But this interview is definitely over. And all the evidence your guys collected? That's mine."
No one paid any attention to Johanna as she rose from her chair and walked toward the pet carrier. This was where she had hidden the packet or dangerous letters in a sleight of hand while locking the cat inside. With no sane regard for the possible discovery of this evidence, she opened the carrier's door, and Mugs flew out. No, he shot out of that small opening, all but flying across the room, as if she had deliberately aimed him at Special Agent Marvin Argus.
Only a few more minutes passed before she had her life back again, her possessions and her peace. She closed the door on the departing invaders, then turned to the cat, who delicately sniffed the abandoned bags of papers and clothing. Mugs had won the hearts of all the police. And the bleeding FBI agent had not been offered any first aid for his wounds.
Oddly enough, it had been a profitable afternoon – reassuring and informative. The New York detective might have been a formidable opponent, but now Flynn was officially off the case. And the Chicago police had been miserly in sharing information with him. He had tied her to only two murders, a very modest body count.
Chapter 5
RIKER WAS ONE UNHAPPY MAN AS HE ENTERED THE Greenwich Village restaurant. He was responding to a summons from a revered icon of NYPD, a retired captain who continued to police his children, keeping track of all their transgressions. Brother Ned was the good son, who so seldom required this personal attention. All the blackest marks belonged to Riker.
Dad still harbored grudges from a teenage-runaway episode also known as the Mexican Rebellion. After a summer-long flight from the old man's tyranny, Riker had returned home to Brooklyn. Covered in road dirt and ragged, he had sported long hair and a boy's first beard, a defiant combination that had guaranteed him some fireworks. But the old man had met him at the door in cold silence and never said a word to him all that day. Years later, Riker had chanced upon an open drawer in his father's desk. It was usually locked, for this was where the old man had kept his only valuables, the badge and the gun. And there Riker had also found a third object, the single postcard mailed home from Mexico, the only shred of proof that his father had missed him, worried over him and possibly loved him.
The retired captain was seated in a corner booth. The bartender hovered over the table and personally poured out the single-malt whiskey, not trusting this special customer to a waitress. Into his late seventies, Dad had retained his ramrod posture and all his hair, thick and white. The old man did look sharp in his dark suit and tie so like the silk threads he had worn as a police detective. Drawing closer, Riker saw his father's lips move, probably rehearsing a lecture that would amount to only a few spoken words; the central point would be driven home by the famous glare of disappointment.
Riker knew he would not be forgiven for the clumsy error of getting shot, nor for the greater mistake of not fighting a medical discharge. And there was one more possibility for this meeting. Had Dad discovered that one of his sons had been busy committing criminal acts today? The old man's information network was uncanny. Already planning lies of protection to cover Mallory's part in foiling a search warrant, Riker rounded a pillar, and now he could see that the old man was not alone. His drinking companion was also dressed in a suit, and one of the stranger's pant legs was torn.
Mugs? Oh, yeah.
Riker owned a pair of jeans with those same distinctive claw marks. A bandaged hand was more evidence that this man, probably a detective, had paid a recent visit to the Chelsea Hotel. Damn Johanna. He had warned her to play nicely with the police. The man's face was shielded by a potted fern, but Riker could assume he was a cop from Flynn's Greenwich Village precinct.
"Sir?" This was all Riker said by way of a greeting to his father, a man with no use for long sentences. A grunt of acknowledgment would have been more to Dad's liking.
He was introduced to his father's guest by name, rank and no wasted words, "Special Agent Marvin Argus, FBI." This was the same man who had come looking for Jo yesterday afternoon. At the time, Riker had not taken Argus for a federal agent. He had never met a fed with a girly fringe of bangs plastered to his forehead.
The FBI man shifted his seat in the booth, making room for Riker to sit beside him. "So you're the hero cop. I heard you left the force."
"That's not final," said Riker's father, hoping to put an end to this interminable babble. Dad leaned forward, glaring at the agent with a silent suggestion to just get on with it. The old man's tense body language put his son on notice that he was here under duress, that everything about this meeting stank. And just as clear was Dad's dislike for this agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Riker wondered how many old favors had been called in to get his own father to act as a lure for this meeting.
"I'd like to talk about your employee, Johanna Apollo," said Agent Argus. "Oh, sorry – you know her as Josephine Richards. Hey, I never got your first name."
Ignoring this question and declining the space the agent had made for him, Riker elected to sit with his father on the other side of the table. And now that the lines were clearly drawn, he could see the agent backing up in his mind and rethinking his tactics.
Dad almost smiled. Almost.
Argus's grin was forced. "You probably think I'm here about that homicide at the playground. Well, you'd be wrong." He toyed with his cufflinks while waiting in vain for some show of interest. Riker's father rapped one knuckle on the table, and the agent all but snapped to attention, saying, "I'm investigating the murder of an FBI agent, Timothy Kidd. Johanna's also connected to that one. But you already knew that." You're guessing.
Riker shook his head in denial. "I don't know squat. The lady's a very private person." In a lighter tone, he said, "So, she killed a fed, huh?" He turned to his father to see if this also warranted a near smile.
Sit up straight, said Dad's cold gray eyes, and not one more smart-ass remark.
And Riker did sit up a bit straighter, force of habit from correction sessions at the dinner table every damn night of his childhood. Over the years, he had learned to decipher the words behind the old man's every glance in his direction. With a more sober attitude, he turned back to the FBI man, asking, "What do you want?"
"A little of your time." Argus leaned back against the booth's red leather cushion. "Let me tell you about this dead agent, a real sweet guy. And just between us?" He paused to flash a quick smile, still trying to curry intimacy. "Timmy was always a little spooky. Toward the end, he definitely had a few screws loose. But I think you would've liked him. One damn fine investigator – as good as it gets."
And now Riker learned that the deceased Timothy Kidd had possessed a heightened ability to ferret out nuances of guilt, to translate volumes of words from nothing said, finding patterns in chaos and in other people's unspoken thoughts. In the weeks before his death, the exquisite brain of this acute paranoid was electrified and wired up to everything that moved and everything that did not.
"Ah, Timmy," said Agent Argus. "Crazy bastard. He could read warning signs written on thin air. And he was one smart son of a bitch, smart enough to mask his symptoms for a long time. He got past the Bureau's psych test with no sweat. But down the road a bit, his reports started leaning toward fantasyland. The chief of his field office didn't report it – didn't want to lose a good man to the shrinks. Well, we fired his chief for incompetence, and then we tried to help Timmy with his – problem. If we'd only gotten to him sooner, he'd probably be alive today."
Riker understood that this confession of Bureau screwups was supposed to bring them closer together, cop to cop, but he was very fussy about his male bonding, and Marvin Argus did not make the cut.
Dad seemed at the verge of spitting on the FBI man, finding Argus's diatribe distasteful. Co
ps did not behave this way. Their messes were kept in the family.
"Well," said the agent, "we found Tim a psychiatrist with an IQ higher than his. That was so he couldn't put anything past her. Dr. Johanna Apollo was the highest-paid shrink in Chicago, and now she's a crime-scene janitor." The man staged a smug pause. "Yeah, I thought you'd find that interesting. She called Tim a gifted paranoid. Of course, that was after he was murdered. We think she's withholding information."
"So you want me to spy on her," said Riker. And now he waited for the pitch. A job offer was predictable, a carrot for the Judas goat.
Argus waved off this suggestion. "I need your help. Tim was brilliant, but you weren't such a bad cop yourself. I know your record in Special Crimes Unit. You did good work. Damn shame to retire that kind of talent.
The Bureau needs a guy like you on this case." He flashed a smarmy grin, man to man. "It's not like I'm asking you to get in bed with a hunchback."
Riker's hands balled into fists.
Marvin Argus dropped the smile and shut his mouth, probably noting a sudden change in the atmosphere, a three-second warning that he had crossed a line that could get him decked. The agent's tone was more serious when he said, "I want to be very clear about this. A maniac played a game that scared the hell out of Timmy, and this freak might want to play with you, too. You could wind up dead."
Riker nodded his complete understanding. The agent was setting him up to look like a coward in his father's eyes if he dared to turn down the job. Argus clearly had no talent for sizing up other men. Dad's hands were tensing, fingers curling and uncurling. Riker and his father were in accord this time; they both wanted to slap this man senseless.
"Now, about that dead vagrant," said Argus. "The one the cops found this morning. I understand Johanna had confrontations with him all the time. She only had to walk a block out of her way to avoid him, but she never did. Yeah, that made you curious, didn't it? That's why you dug up her history – and found an identical murder, Timothy Kidd's."
Was this more guesswork or would that background check track back to Kathy Mallory?
Agent Argus, the mind reader, said, "We had two standout hits on our data bank this morning – from two different precincts. One search was done by Flynn, the catching detective on the bum's homicide, and he got zilch. But Johanna's alias raised a red flag at the Bureau. Now the second search didn't use her alias. And there was no password either. The hacker bypassed the lockout and raided the store. Nice work, Riker. I'm impressed. I guess you were visiting your old station house in SoHo. It was easy enough to sit down at an empty desk with a computer."
And now it was certain that Marvin Argus could trace nothing back to Mallory, who rarely left tracks. She had not used a police computer for her early morning hacking. And apparently Argus had no idea how many times she raided federal databases in an average week.
Riker, a renowned computer illiterate, shrugged. "Yeah, I was the hacker.
Good catch, Argus." He turned to his father, checking for signs of trouble in the old man's face, and discovered that Dad actually sanctioned this illegal act, this promising sign that his son was still thinking like a cop.
Drumming the wood surface with two fingers, Argus called his attention back across the table. "Figure it out yet, Riker? Three days a week, Johanna Apollo goes round and round with this crazy bum. She's dodging blows, getting used to the idea of being attacked. And why? Because she'll never know the moment when our agent's killer comes for her. Tim didn't. And Johanna screwed up last night. That vagrant tripped her, and she took a bad fall."
If Jo's fall had been mentioned in any of the witness statements, Detective Flynn would have pressed that point during the brief playground interview. Riker knew the man's style: rattle the suspect up front and never let up on the pressure. So how would Argus have this detail? Had he been shadowing Jo, using a living woman for bait to catch a serial killer? And Argus had yet to mention the Reaper. That was curious, too.
"So your suspect is one of the doctor's patients," said Riker. "And you figure he wants to kill her before she can give up his name?" That was one obvious scenario for the FBI surveillance.
Marvin Argus's smile said, Now you're catching on. And by that smile, Riker knew that he was being misled.
The FBI man lightly slapped the table with his palm. "So this is the deal. We need a guy on the inside, someone who has Johanna's confidence. If you're really tight with her, she might let something slip – something useful."
A snitch is the lowest form of life on earth, said the mere lift of Dad's head. And now the old man's eyes were asking if his son could sink that low; could he travel from the rank of detective first grade to a bottom feeder in the space of a day.
"It's for Dr. Apollo's own good," said Argus. "She left the witness protection program."
"Here's where you're messing up," said Riker. "This killer watches you watching her. He's probably laughing his tail off every day. All those hours of FBI manpower, all for nothing. You'll never catch him that way."
"There was no surveillance on Johanna. We didn't know where she was before that raid on our computer."
"Oh, can it, Argus. You as good as told me the feds were watching her the night before Bunny's body was found." Riker hoped it would drive the agent crazy trying to figure out where the stumble had been made. Rising from the table, he nodded farewell to his father rather than say good-bye, for that would have been more familial affection than Dad could stand. Next, he turned to the FBI man, saying, "Keep the job. I'm not your boy."
On his way out of the bar, Riker glanced back to see the trace of a smile on the old man's lips – finally.
When the door had swung shut behind him, and he stood on the sidewalk again, an old sedan rolled by with the loud fart of a backfire. Though Riker knew the difference between the bang of a car and the bang of a gun, anxiety paralyzed him. His feet would not carry him away, and all his muscles constricted at once. He felt a great pressure on his chest – no air – and he could not fight down the panic of suffocation. People passed him by on the sidewalk, and he could not call out to them, nor even wave at them; his arms were leaden and fallen to his sides. The pedestrians saw nothing amiss – just a man frozen in place, sweating on a cool day. Only his eyes were in motion, silently begging each passerby, Help me! No one paused to see that his chest was not moving, lungs not breathing in and out – that he was dying.
The paralysis passed off. His lungs filled with oxygen. His feet obeyed him. And he walked down the sidewalk with a surefootedness that belied his idea of himself as a cripple.
When he greeted Riker at the door to the reception area, Charles Butler wore the vest, but not the jacket to his tailored suit, and this was his idea of casual attire. Strands of light brown hair curled past his collar, for though he possessed eidetic memory, he never seemed to remember a barber's appointment. But that was not his most outstanding characteristic. The man had once described himself as the bastard child of Cyrano and a pop-eyed frog. Though his eyes were heavy-lidded, the whites overwhelmed the small blue irises, giving him an air of constant astonishment, as though every word said in his company was absolutely fascinating. Oh, and that nose – what a magnificent beak. He sat behind an eighteenth-century desk. Most of the furnishings at Butler and Company were antiques, except for the couch that was custom-made to accommodate very long legs. Charles stood six foot four in his socks, but just now he slouched low in his chair, for he thought it rude to hover over visitors of normal height, even while sitting down. Among his other quirks was a monster IQ and an equally staggering generosity.
Riker had never believed the reason for the low rent on his own apartment one flight below. His old friend and new landlord still maintained the fiction that he felt more secure with a police presence in his building, even though Charles had the size and strength to pound the average human right into the ground. But that was not his nature. He was the most pacific of giants. Also, there was already one cop in residence; t
he building superintendent was a retired patrolman. And then there was his silent partner, Mallory, and her expertise in electronic burglar alarms and state-of-the-art locks. This might be the most secure building in New York City. So the cheap rent was a gift of charity disguised in a lie told by a man so hobbled by honesty that he could not run a bluff without blushing.
However, Riker had had nowhere else to go.
Returning to his old apartment in Brooklyn had never been an option. The prospect of entering that place one more time had been the stuff of nightmares, waking and sleeping. And so, upon his hospital bed, he had handed his keys to the moving men with instructions to steal what they liked – but to leave the rainy-day stash of good bourbon intact. That rainy day had come.
"Has Mallory been by?"
"Not today," said Charles. "She's been rather busy lately."
"You mean with her crazy job?"
"Well, yes. When she does come by, it's usually late in the evenings. Hence the term moonlighting."
Kathy Mallory's second source of income was unauthorized, for cops were forbidden to use investigative skills in the private sector, but Riker well understood her interest in this place. Down the hall, she kept a private office where she housed her favorite toys. Most of them required a judge's warrant to operate or even to possess them. Fortunately, Charles Butler was a committed Luddite, who would not recognize the electronic equivalents of lock picks, and who no doubt believed that she used all her equipment to run the background checks on their odd clientele.
Mallory's boss at Special Crimes Unit was equally deluded. Lieutenant Coffey was still pretending that she had followed his direct order to sever all ties with Butler and Company. Instead, she had submerged her financial interest in the small firm of elite headhunters, becoming an invisible partner. And now this office was a warrant-proof squirrel hole, the perfect place to leave the suitcase of files and notes removed from Jo's hotel suite. If Detective Flynn had discovered Riker's interference, he would have papered the city with warrants to find his missing evidence, and he would have started with Riker's apartment. But this was no longer a problem. As Mallory had predicted, the FBI had hijacked Bunny's homicide, and feds were less diligent than Flynn.
Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die Page 7