PROCESSING WENT a great deal faster than Nick had anticipated. Within the hour he found himself on the seventh floor, standing before the A.D.’s office, looking at a woman who gave every appearance of having been lifted out of some 1940s farce and mercilessly transplanted into the twenty-first century.
It was hard to pin an age to Alice Sullivan, but she looked young. Possibly under thirty, although he couldn’t be sure. Definitely not in her forties, even though she dressed like a schoolmarm. She wore wire-rimmed glasses perched on her sharp nose. She was thin, with light blond hair pulled back from her face into a tight knot at the nape of her neck. Her conservative clothes seemed designed to hide her. She definitely had body-image issues, Nick mused. With a shy smile, she stood up to bring him into the A.D.’s office. Nick found himself feeling sorry for her. Despite her position, she made him think of a lost waif.
“He’s looking forward to meeting you, Special Agent Brannigan.” Her voice, high-pitched and reedy, was only a little higher than it had been over the telephone this morning.
She managed to knock on the A.D.’s door while standing behind him. When a deep voice from within ordered, “Come in,” Alice turned the doorknob, then stepped back in order to allow Nick access to the inner office. She gave the impression of fading into the background.
In contrast to his secretary, Assistant Director George Kelly was larger than life. His face was florid and when he rose from behind his desk, he was on eye level with Nick’s six-foot-three-inch frame. But while Nick was athletic, Kelly’s days in that department were long over. Broad shouldered and heavyset, Kelly carried his mass strictly thanks to his wife’s extraordinary cooking.
The man’s handshake was firm, hardy. He looked at Nick from head to foot, his eyes passing over him evenly like a giant scanner.
“Get yourself squared away downstairs, Special Agent Brannigan?” were his first words of greeting.
“Just finished.”
The nod of approval was short, as if the assistant director were stifling a sneeze that hadn’t dared to come out. “Good. Then we can get right to it.”
Nick hadn’t been briefed by anyone from his old office as to the reason for his transfer other than someone had taken early retirement in the field office.
“‘It,’ sir?”
“You’re part of the task force,” Kelly announced without preamble, then realized that he’d gotten ahead of himself. “You’ve probably heard that we have ourselves a serial killer on the loose.”
Nick inclined his head. He thought of the newspaper he’d read on the flight over. The story had been buried on page twenty-three of the first section, but it had caught his attention.
“I heard something about it,” he said vaguely. Seven years with the Bureau had taught him never to give away anything unless pinned down and asked.
Kelly merely nodded his head. His thinning red hair was fading, evolving into the color of unripened strawberries. The florescent lighting managed to find all the sparser areas and reflect off them. Nick tried not to notice and kept his eyes on the A.D.’s flushed round face.
His new superior made no effort at more of an explanation. Instead, he rounded his desk and headed for the door.
“Come with me. You need to meet the others.”
BILL CHAN WIPED AWAY traces of the raspberry jelly that had oozed out of his doughnut. His latest conquest worked at a bakery three blocks away from the building and he made a point of stopping there each morning for a double sugar hit. Abby’s lips were almost as sweet as the jelly was. He tossed the napkin into his basket just as Charley hurried in.
Turning, he gave her an appreciative look. Her navy skirt hugged curves he was the first to appreciate. “Hey Charley, you got legs this morning.”
Charley dropped her purse into her bottom desk drawer, then shoved it closed with her foot. “I’ve got legs every morning.”
Bill leaned back in his chair, deliberately eyeing her. “Yeah, but they’re not usually out in plain view.”
Not to be left out, Sam Daniels, Bill’s partner and the other man in the room, added his two cents. “And a very nice view it is, too.”
The relationship Charley had with the two partners was one deeply rooted in friendship and mutual respect. Which was why the hazing was generally good-natured, and at times relentless.
She grinned, leaning her face in close to the older man’s. “Behave. Especially you, Daniels, or I’ll call your wife and tell her you’re trying to kick up your heels where you shouldn’t.”
In reply, Sam drained the last of his coffee and set down his less-than-sanitary mug.
“Seriously Charley, how come you’ve never gotten married, or at least heavily involved?” Sam asked.
She shrugged, deadpanning. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Placing himself in her path as she went to get her own mug of coffee, Bill raised and lowered his dark eyebrows. “I’m just the man you’ve been waiting for.”
She laughed shortly, moving around him. “In your dreams, Billy-boy.”
Bill sighed, covering his heart.
Charley poured inky-black coffee into a mug whose interior was only slightly lighter. “Anyone got any details yet?”
Sam shook his head. “We’re all sitting tight, waiting on the A.D.”
She sighed. The nature of the game. Hurry up and wait. “Might as well get some paperwork done,” she murmured half to herself.
At the coffeemaker for her second hit of caffeine in less than ten minutes, Charley felt her attention divert to the noise in the doorway. She turned around as the A.D. entered with someone she didn’t recognize. A very tall, good-looking someone.
A witness, she wondered hopefully.
THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR brought Nick into a room that was not much larger than Kelly’s had been. The main difference was that four desks had been crammed into the room. Lining the walls were bulletin boards perched above aging file cabinets. Photographs of the Sunday Killer’s victims ran across the boards. Each bright, young face had a column of facts directly beneath it.
Nick felt the energy in the room mingled with a sense of futility.
There were three people in front of him, two men and a woman. One less than the number of desks. Nick wondered who the fourth desk belonged to.
And had a feeling he knew.
“That’s Special Agent Bill Chan,” Kelly said as he nodded toward the young Asian in a designer suit. In response, Bill smiled broadly at him. Not standing on ceremony, he crossed the room and extended his hand in welcome.
“Over there’s Special Agent Sam Daniels,” Kelly continued.
Prematurely middle-aged, Sam looked as comfortable as Bill was dapper. His clothes gave the appearance of being chosen for ease rather than for style. They might have even been slept in.
The man nodded in his direction, choosing to look him over from a distance. Sam’s body language was deceptively lax. Nick had a feeling that was how the man operated and that not much got by the older veteran. Sam’s thick mustache effectively covered his lips, hiding his expression.
Nick moved over toward him and shook his hand.
“And this,” Kelly said, nodding at the remaining person in the room, “is Special Agent Charlotte Dow.”
The woman moved toward him like fog encroaching the moors, telegraphing an inherent sexuality with every step. Her eyes washed over him. Nick felt something stir in his gut. He would have had to be dead not to have felt it.
“I’d say it was nice to meet you,” she said in a voice that made him think of whiskey being poured into a glass, neat, “but the assistant director hasn’t given us your name yet.”
Her eyes were an intense Florida ocean blue. “I can give my own name,” he said.
She cocked her head. “And that is?”
“Nick Brannigan.”
Kelly stepped into the arena. “Your new partner, Charley.”
It took everything Charley had not to let her mouth drop open.
CHAPTER F
OUR
THE NEXT MOMENT, Charley regained the use of her brain. “New partner?” she echoed, staring at the assistant director. “What do you mean, new partner?”
A.D. Kelly kept a tolerant expression on his face. “Temple’s gone, Dow,” he reminded her evenly. “He’s not coming back. Get used to it. Only I don’t have to be partnered with anyone. You do. Brannigan’s your new partner. Get used to that, too.”
That settled, Kelly turned to the four main people who headed up the task force formed expressly to apprehend the Sunday Killer. The nickname had come about in-house, because the killer seemed only to strike on the seventh day of the week.
“Our boy’s newest victim was Stacy Pembroke. Like the others, she’s young, single. This one was a food server at La Boheme.”
“That new trendy place on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach?” Bill asked. “Dinner for two over there’s at least a hundred dollars, without drinks.”
“Out of my league,” Sam commented.
“One and the same,” Kelly confirmed. “Her boss found the body after she didn’t come in to work last night.”
Charley was still chewing on the bombshell that Kelly had thrown her. She’d been secretly nurturing the hope that Ben Temple would change his mind and return to work, despite what he’d told her. To know that he wasn’t going to be part of her everyday life was going to take some getting used to.
But her current state of unrest didn’t prevent her from listening to what the assistant director had to say.
She raised her hand now, stopping him before he continued. “Wait a minute, the owner of the restaurant came to her place when she didn’t show up for work?”
“That’s what the report said,” Kelly confirmed.
Charley shook her head. “That doesn’t sound very kosher to me.” She looked at Kelly, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “You wouldn’t come looking for one of us if we didn’t show up.”
“Not unless Pembroke and her boss had some kind of personal relationship going,” Nick interjected.
Standing beside Charley, Bill leaned toward her and whispered, “And the new guy scores a point.”
Not with me, Charley thought. It would take more than a no-brainer guess before she gave the new man any points.
“That’s what the detectives on the scene thought,” Kelly told them.
“Detectives?” Charley echoed. “What have they got to do with it?”
“The latest victim lived in Tustin. The police who were called in thought it was just another homicide. One of the detectives noticed that the M.O. was the same as the other serial cases we’ve been working on so he called us. The investigation didn’t go any further. Nobody questioned the owner.”
“What’s the owner’s name?” Charley asked.
Kelly checked the report he’d been handed. “Robert Pullman.”
Charley made a notation in her worn notepad, taking care not to rip off the tattered cover. “Is the crime scene still intact?”
Kelly shrugged his wide shoulders in suppressed frustration. “It’s been walked over by the patrolmen who responded to the call and then the detectives they called in. I’m told that Pullman lost it when he saw the body. He threw up.”
“Terrific. Hope they didn’t preserve that,” Sam muttered.
“The body’s in the morgue,” Kelly volunteered. “Here’s the address to the apartment.” He handed it to Charley.
Charley glanced at the location. Tustin was a nice little city. Murders weren’t par for the course. I hope you slipped up, you bastard. I hope, this one time, you slipped up.
Ignoring the man that Kelly had brought in to be her new partner, Charley turned toward Sam and Bill. She held out the report that Kelly had given her. “You guys want to take the body or the crime scene?”
Except for Nick, everyone in the room knew how Charley felt about viewing dead bodies. Given a choice, she would just as soon work the case without seeing the victim. It wasn’t that she had a queasy stomach, but viewing the Sunday Killer’s victims vividly reminded her of the moment she’d walked into the apartment to find her sister lying on the sofa. Strangled.
But despite the fact that she had managed to get herself placed in charge of the task force before the details of her sister’s murder caused the case to be connected to the Sunday Killer, Charley went the extra mile when it came to fair. She didn’t believe in playing favorites, even if that “favorite” was her.
Especially if it was her.
Sam held up his hand. “We’ll take the body, Charley,” he said, speaking for himself and Bill. “You can deal with whatever the boys in blue stomped over.” And then he stopped abruptly, an uneasy expression descending over his craggy face as his glance shifted to the newest member of their team. Some people were touchy about family and he’d just been less than tactful. “Your old man didn’t walk the beat, did he?”
Nick smiled and shook his head. “Retired army colonel.”
Sam pretended to breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay then. Cops tend to tread with a heavy foot. Half the time, they don’t know what they’re dealing with.”
“Not like us,” Charley commented drily.
Nick glanced at her to see if she was being sarcastic, but her expression told him nothing. Except that she avoided looking his way. He wondered if he had a prima donna on his hands. He’d never worked with a woman before, but he knew a couple of agents who had. One was currently involved in divorce proceedings.
Charley turned her attention toward Kelly. “Is there anything else, A.D. Kelly?”
“Yeah.” Kelly paused for a beat. “Catch this son of a bitch for me, Dow,” he said with feeling. “I want him so bad I can taste it.”
Charley looked over at the posted photographs of the serial killer’s victims. Eleven women who had not been allowed to live up to the promise of their lives. Stacy Pembroke would be the twelfth victim.
“Get in line,” Charley replied solemnly. The next moment, she shook off her mood. Looking at Bill and Sam, she said, “We’ll meet back here.”
“You got it,” Sam agreed.
As she began to walk toward the door, she glanced over her shoulder at her new partner, trying to contain her resentment that he was now in the position that Ben had once held.
“I’ll drive.” It wasn’t an offer, it was a statement.
“Whatever rings your chimes, Special Agent Dow,” Nick answered.
Charley stopped. “Was that supposed to be amusing, Special Agent Brannigan?”
“That was supposed to be an answer, Special Agent Dow.”
This was turning out to be one of his more memorable First Mondays, Nick thought, not altogether certain he was happy about it. He figured there were two ways he could play this. He could either take offense or laugh it off. The latter seemed to be the better way to go.
His new partner said nothing as she led the way to the bank of elevator cars.
THEY RODE DOWN in the elevator and made their way through the basement of the parking structure without any further exchange of words. The silence accompanied them as they got into her vehicle. It continued as Charley started up her Honda.
Nick kept his peace until after she’d pulled out of the structure and was on the road. The rain was still coming down in a fine, annoying mist. It coated the windshield just enough to demand intermittent swipes from the windshield wipers.
“Want to fill me in?” he finally said.
She’d retreated into the same thoughts she always had when dealing with one of the Sunday Killer’s victims. Had the death been quick? Had the woman suffered? Had Cris suffered those last few moments of her life? What had gone on in her mind during that time? Had she known she was facing death, or was it just too improbable a situation to comprehend?
Charley realized the new man had asked her a question and waited for an answer. Belatedly, she replayed his words in her head.
“About?” she asked, taking a right turn.
Nick banked down a
wave of impatience. Would it get any better or did he need to pass some magical test to prove himself to this woman?
“The serial killer,” he said evenly, then added with a smile, “although feel free to fill me in about anything else you might want to throw in.”
You’re not being fair to him.
It was Ben’s voice, not her own, that she heard in her head. Ben, her teacher, her mentor, her surrogate father. No, more than a father, she thought. Her own father had never treated her with the kindness and understanding that Ben Temple did. And she was going to miss Ben. Miss having him by her side, teaching her things even at this stage of her career. She knew it was better for Ben to finally take the retirement that the Bureau had been waving before him. As for her, she’d always hoped the day would never come.
She spared Nick a glance. Man has a profile like Mount Rushmore. “It’s going to take me some time to adjust.”
He looked at her. “To…?”
She could have easily made it through the yellow light, but for once she eased back on the gas pedal, slowing down enough so that the light slipped into red before she was at the crosswalk. She looked at the man beside her.
“You.”
Nick wasn’t sure if he was supposed to take offense at that or not. “Most people don’t find me that difficult to get along with.”
The man was young, good-looking and in excellent shape. His jacket hugged his muscles. Probably had to have his jackets altered to fit, she mused.
“I liked my old partner,” she informed him flatly.
He slipped in through the opening she’d offered. “What happened to him?”
The light turned green, and she pushed down on the accelerator.
“He took a bullet. One meant for me.” Her heart had stopped in that one minute. Curbing fury and fear, she’d fired at the gunman, mortally wounding him. The time between when she’d placed the call and the ambulance’s arrival seemed interminable. She’d stopped the flow of Ben’s blood with her shirt and her hands. Charley glanced at the new man’s face. It annoyed her that she couldn’t read his expression. “Don’t worry, that’s not part of the requirement. I don’t expect you to do the same.”
Sundays Are for Murder Page 3