The FBI Thrillers Collection

by Catherine Coulter

  Sherlock said, “And Mr. Monk, the curator of the Eureka museum. He had to be in on it. No wonder he was near tears when you told him you were taking the paintings. He knew the jig would be up sooner or later. He had to know that in Washington, D.C., experts would be viewing the paintings and one of them would spot the fakes.”

  “So did Tennyson,” Savich said.

  Lily said, “Probably my father-in-law as well. Maybe the whole family was in on this. But they couldn’t have known we would find out the very day after we got here.” She turned to Simon Russo. “I’m madder than Sherlock. Thank you, Mr. Russo, for being on top of this and getting to us so quickly.”

  Simon turned to Savich. “There is one positive thing here. At least Tennyson Frasier didn’t have time to have all eight of them forged. Now that I know for certain that we’ve got four forgeries, I can find out the name of the forger. It won’t be difficult. You see, it’s likely to be one of three or four people in the world—the only ones with enough technique to capture the essence of Sarah Elliott and fool everyone except an expert who’s been prepared for the possibility.”

  Lily said, “Would you have known they were fakes if you hadn’t heard about them being sold to a collector?”

  “Maybe not, but after the second or third viewing, I probably would have realized something was off. They really are very well done. When I find out who forged them, I’ll pay a visit to the artist.”

  “Don’t forget, Simon, we need proof,” Savich said, “to nail Tennyson. And his family, and Mr. Monk at the Eureka museum.”

  Sherlock said, “No wonder that guy tried to murder you on the bus, Lily. They knew they had to move quickly and they did. It’s just that you’re no wuss and you creamed the guy. I wanna lock them all up, Dillon. Maybe stomp on them first.”

  Simon, who had been studying The Maiden Voyage, looked up. “What do you mean she creamed the guy? Someone attacked you? But you were just out of surgery.”

  “Sorry, I forgot to mention that,” Savich said.

  Lily said, “There was no reason to tell him. But yes, I’d been five or six days out of surgery. I was okay, thanks to a psychiatrist who…well, never mind about that. But I was feeling just fine. A young guy got on an empty bus, sat beside me, and pulled out this really scary switchblade. He was lucky to get away.” And Lily gave him a big smile, the first one he’d gotten from her. He smiled back.

  “Very good. Your brother taught you?”

  “Yes, after Jack…No, never mind that.”

  “You have a lot of never minds, Ms. Savich.”

  “You may have to get used to it.” But she saw him file Jack’s name away in that brain of his.

  Simon said, “As for the fourth painting, Effigy, I thought it was just fine at first, but then I realized that the same forger who did the other three did that one as well. No leads yet on Effigy, but we’ll track it down. It probably went to the same collector.”

  Mr. Beezler, shaken, wiped a beautiful linen handkerchief over his brow and said, “This would be a catastrophe to a museum, Mr. Savich, like a stick of dynamite stuck in the tailpipe of my Mercedes. You, Mr. Russo, you are, I gather, in a position to perhaps get the original paintings back?”

  “Yes,” said Simon, “I am. Keep the black velvet warm, Mr. Beezler.”

  Savich said, “I’ll speak to the guys in the art fraud section, see what recommendations they have. The FBI doesn’t do full-blown stolen art investigations at this time, so our best bet is Simon finding out who acquired the paintings.”

  Simon said, “First thing, I’ll do some digging around, hit up my informants to get verification on who our collector is, find the artist, and squeeze him. The instant our collector hears that I’m digging—and he’d hear about it real quick—he’ll react, either go to ground, hide the paintings, or maybe something else, but it won’t matter.”

  “What do you mean ‘something else’?” Lily asked.

  Savich gave him a frown, and Simon said quickly, shrugging, “Nothing, really. But since I plan to stir things up, I’ll be really careful who’s at my back. Oh yeah, Savich, I’m relieved you didn’t use the shippers that Mr. Monk wanted you to use.”

  Savich said, “No, I used Bryerson. I know them and trust them. There’s no way Mr. Monk or Tennyson or any of the rest of them could know, at least for a while, where the paintings ended up. However, I will call Teddy Bryerson and have him let me know if he gets any calls about the paintings. Simon, do you think anyone will realize that these four paintings are fakes if they’re out in the open for all to see?”

  “Sooner or later someone would notice and ask questions.”

  Lily said to Mr. Beezler, “I can’t very well let a museum hang the four fakes. What do you think about hanging all of them here for a while, Mr. Beezler, and we can see what happens?”

  “Yes, I will hang them,” said Raleigh, “with great pleasure.”

  Lily said to Simon, “Do you really think you can get the paintings back?”

  Simon Russo rubbed his hands together. His eyes were fierce, and he looked as eager as a boy with his first train set. “Oh, yes.”

  She imagined him dressed all in black, even black camouflage paint on his face, swinging down a rope to hover above an alarmed floor.

  Savich said, “Just one thing, Simon. When you find out who bought the paintings, I go with you.”

  Sherlock blinked at her husband. “You mean that you, an FBI special agent, unit chief, want to go steal four paintings?”

  “Steal back,” Savich said, giving her a kiss on her open mouth. “Bring home. Return to their rightful owner.”

  Lily said, “I’ll be working with Mr. Russo to find the person who forged them and the name of the collector who bought them. And then we’ll have proof to nail Tennyson.”

  “Oh no,” Savich said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Lily.”

  “No way,” Sherlock said. “No way am I letting you out of my sight either. Sean wants his auntie to hang out with him for a while.”

  Simon Russo looked at Lily Savich and slowly nodded. He knew to his bones that when this woman made up her mind, it would take more than an offering of a dozen chocolate cakes to change it. “Okay, you can work with me. But first you need to get yourself back to one-hundred-percent healthy.”

  “I’ll be ready by Monday,” Lily said. She raised her hand, palm out, to her brother before he could get out his objection. “You guys have lots to worry about—this Tammy Tuttle person. She’s scary, Dillon. You’ve got to focus on catching her. This is nothing, in comparison, just some work to track these paintings, maybe talking to these artists. I know artists. I know what to say to them. It won’t be any big deal. I can tell Mr. Russo exactly how to do it.”

  “Right,” said Simon.

  Sherlock was pulling on a hank of curly hair, something, Savich knew, she did when she was stressed or worried. She said, “She’s right, Dillon, but that doesn’t mean I like it.” She sighed. “And it’s not just Tammy Tuttle. Oh well, I’ll just spit it out. Ollie phoned just before we left the house this morning.”

  “He did?” Savich turned the full force of his personality on his wife, a dark brow raised. “And you didn’t see fit to mention it to me?”

  “It’s Friday morning, Gabriella was at the dentist and running late; she’s our nanny,” Sherlock added to Simon. “Besides, you’d already told Ollie and Jimmy Maitland that you wouldn’t be in until late morning. I was going to tell you on the way in.”

  “I know I don’t want to hear this, but out with it, Sherlock. I can take it.”

  “Besides worrying about Tammy Tuttle, there’s been a triple murder in a small town called Flowers, Texas. The governor called the FBI and demanded that we come in, and so we will. Both the ATF and the FBI are involved. There’s this cult down there that they suspect is responsible for the murder of the local sheriff and his two deputies, who’d gone out to their compound to check things out. Their bodies were found in a ditch outside o
f town.”

  “That’s nuts,” Simon said.

  “Yes,” Sherlock said, “it is. Ah, Raleigh, would you mind visiting with Dyrlana for a moment? All this stuff is sort of under wraps.”

  Raleigh looked profoundly disappointed, but he left them in the vault. At the doorway, he said, “What about your sister and Mr. Russo? They’re civilians, too.”

  “I know, but I can control what they say,” Savich said. “I really couldn’t get away with busting your chops.”

  They heard him chuckling as he called out, “Dyrlana! Where is my gumpoc tea?”

  “One problem is,” Sherlock said, “that the cult has cleared out, split up into a dozen or more splinter groups and left town in every direction. Nobody knows where the leader is. They’ve pulled in a few of the cult members, but these folks just shake their heads and claim they don’t know anything about it. The only good thing is that we have a witness, of sorts. It seems that one of the women is pregnant by the guru. Lureen was rather angry when she found him seducing another cult member, actually at least three or four other cult members. She slipped away and told the town mayor about it.”

  Savich said, “A witness, then. Did she identify the guru as the guy who ordered the murders?”

  “Not yet. She’s still thinking about it. She’s afraid she’d screw up her child’s karma if she identified the father as a murderer.”

  “Great,” Savich said and sighed. “Like Ollie said, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this life that’s easy. Do we have some sort of name on this guy?”

  “Oh, sure, that’s no secret,” Sherlock said. “Wilbur Wright. Lureen just wouldn’t say his name out loud, but everybody knows it, since he was around town for a couple of months.”

  “Isn’t that clever?” Savich rubbed the back of his neck, nodded to Simon, grabbed his wife’s hand, and walked out of the vault. He said over his shoulder, “It’s settled then. Lily, you rest and recuperate. Simon, you can stay at the house. I’d feel better if you did. Sherlock and I will call you guys later. Oh yes, don’t spoil Sean. Gabriella is besotted with him already; she doesn’t need any more help. Holler if you want MAX to check anything out for you, Simon.”

  “Will do.”

  “Oh, yes, there’s one other thing,” Sherlock said to Savich once they were out of the vault and in the gallery itself, alone and beyond the hearing of Lily or Simon. She glanced at Raleigh and Dyrlana, who were drinking gumpoc tea over by the front glass doors.

  Savich knew he didn’t want to hear this. He merely looked at her, nodding slowly.

  “The guru. He had the hearts cut out of the sheriff and his two deputies.”

  “So this is why the Texas governor wants us involved. This guy has probably done something this sick before in other states. Ah, Sherlock, I just knew it couldn’t be as straightforward as you presented it. So, is Behavioral Sciences also involved?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want Lily to have to hear that.”

  “You’re right. All right, love, let’s go track down Tammy Tuttle and Wilbur Wright.”

  Lily Savich and Simon Russo stood in the silent vault, neither of them saying a word. She walked to one of the paintings that was real, not forged—Midnight Shadows. She said, “I wonder why he tried to kill me when he did? What was the hurry? He had four more paintings to have forged. Why now?”

  Savich had told Simon most of what had happened to his sister the previous evening, after she’d gone to bed, looking pale and, truth be told, wrung out. All except for the murder attempt on the city bus in Eureka. What had happened to her—what was still happening—was tragic and evil, and it all came on top of the death of her daughter.

  But just perhaps they could recover the paintings. He sure wanted to. He said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know why they cut the brake lines. My guess is that something must have happened to worry them, something to make them move up the timetable.”

  “But why not just kill me off right away? Surely it would have been easier for Tennyson to simply inherit the paintings, to own them himself. Then he wouldn’t have had to go to all the trouble and risk of finding a first-class forger and then collectors who would want to buy the paintings.”

  “Count on Mr. Monk to help with all that. I bet you Mr. Monk doesn’t have all that sterling a reputation. I’ll check into that right away.”

  “Yes,” Lily continued, her head cocked to one side, still thinking. “He could have killed me immediately, and then he would have owned the paintings. He could then have sold them legally, right up front, with no risk that someone would turn on him, betray him. Probably he would have made more money that way, you know, in auctions.”

  “First of all, Lily, killing you off would have brought Savich down on their heads, with all the power of the FBI at his back. Never underestimate your brother’s determination or the depths of his rage if something had happened to you. As for legal auctions for the paintings, you’re wrong there. Collectors involved in illegal art deals pay top dollar, many times outrageous amounts because they want something utterly unique, something no one else on the face of the earth owns. The stronger the obsession, the more they’ll pay. Going this route was certainly more risky, but the payoff was probably greater, even figuring in the cost of the forgery. It was trying to kill you that was the real risk. As I said, something very threatening must have happened. I don’t know what, but we’ll probably find out. Now, you ready to go have some lunch before you go home to bed?”

  Lily thought about how tired she was, how she could simply sit down and sleep, then she smiled. “Can I have Mexican?”

  13

  Quantico

  Savich was seated in his small office in the Jefferson dorm at the FBI academy when two agents ushered in Marilyn Warluski, who’d borne a child by her cousin Tommy Tuttle, now deceased, the child’s whereabouts unknown. They’d nabbed her getting on a Greyhound bus in Bar Harbor, Maine, headed for Nova Scotia. Since she’d been designated a material witness, and Savich wanted to keep her stashed away, they’d brought her in a FBI Black Bell Jet to Quantico.

  He’d never met her, but he’d seen her photo, knew she was poorly educated, and guessed that she was not very bright. He saw that she looked, oddly, even younger than in her photo, that she’d gained at least twenty pounds, and that her hair, cropped short in the photo, was longer and hung in oily hanks to her shoulders. She looked more tired than scared. No, he was wrong. What she looked was defeated, all hope quashed.

  “Ms. Warluski,” he said in his deep, easy voice, waving her to a chair as he said her name. The two agents left the office, closing the door behind them. Savich gently pressed a button on the inside of the middle desk drawer, and in the next room, two profilers sitting quietly could also hear them speak.

  “My name is Dillon Savich. I’m with the FBI.”

  “I don’t know nothin’,” Marilyn Warluski said.

  Savich smiled at her and seated himself again behind the desk.

  He was silent for several moments, watched her fidget in that long silence. She said finally, her voice jumpy, high with nerves, “Just because you’re good-lookin’ doesn’t mean I’m gonna tell you anythin’, mister.”

  This was a kick. “Hey, my wife thinks I’m good-looking, but I’m wondering, since you said it, if you’re just trying to butter me up.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, “you’re good-lookin’ all right, and I heard one of the lady cops on the airplane say you’re a hunk. They were thinkin’ that a sexy guy will make me talk, so they got you.”

  “Well,” Savich said, “just maybe that’s so.” He paused a fraction of a second, then said, his voice unexpectedly hard, “Have you ever seen the Ghouls, Marilyn?”

  He thought she’d keel over in her chair. So she knew about the Ghouls. She paled to a sickly white, looked ready to bolt.

  “They’re not here, Marilyn.”

  She shook her head back and forth, back and forth, whispering, “There’s no way you could know a
bout the Ghouls. No way at all. Ghouls are bad, real bad.”

  “Didn’t Tammy tell you that I was there in the barn, that I saw them, even shot at them?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me…ah, shit. I don’t know nothin’, you hear me?”

  “Okay, she didn’t tell you that I saw them and she didn’t tell you my name, which is interesting since she knows it. But she did tell you that she wanted to have at me, didn’t she?”

  Marilyn’s lips were seamed tight. She shook her head and said “Oh, yeah, and she will. She called you that creepy FBI fucker. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me that you saw the Ghouls.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”

  “Oh, yeah, Tammy trusts me. She doesn’t have anybody else now. She’ll get you, mister, she will.”

  “Just so you know, Marilyn, I’m the one who shot her, the one who killed Tommy. I didn’t want to, but they left me no choice. They had two kids there, and they were going to kill them. Young boys, Marilyn, and they were terrified. Tommy and Tammy had kidnapped them, beaten them, and they were going to murder them, like they’ve murdered many young boys all across the country. Did you know that? Did you know your cousins were murderers?”

  Marilyn shrugged. Savich saw a rip beneath the right arm of her brown, cracked leather jacket. “They’re my kin. I could miss Tommy—seein’ as how he’s dead now—but he killed our baby, cracked its poor little head right open, so I was really mad at him for a long time. Tommy was hard, real hard. He was always doin’ things you didn’t expect, mean things, things to make you scream. You killed him. He was one of a kind, Tommy was. Tammy’s right, you’re a creepy fucker.”

  Savich didn’t respond, just nodded, waiting.

  “You shouldn’t have shot Tammy like you did, tearing her arm all up so they had to saw it off. You shouldn’t have been there in my barn in the first place. It wasn’t none of your damned business.”

  He smiled at her, sat forward, his palms flat on his desk. “Of course it’s my business. I’m a cop, Marilyn. You know, I could have killed Tammy, not just shot her arm off. If I had killed her in the barn then she wouldn’t have killed that little boy outside Chevy Chase. Either she did it or the Ghouls did it. Maybe the Ghouls did kill the boy, since there was a circle. Do the Ghouls have to have a circle, Marilyn? You don’t know? Were you with her when she took that boy? Did you help her murder him?”