The Angel

by Carla Neggers

  “Take it.” His eyes sparked, and he winked at her. “I remember this Simon Cahill from the auction, and I have a feeling you’d be wise to stay in touch with him.”

  Keira felt a rush of heat. “Probably so. Thank you for the phone.”

  Colm gave her a quick grin. “I’ll be taking up a collec­

  tion for you for a phone of your own.”

  “I don’t blame you. You’re a good friend, Colm.”

  She ran down the stairs and out to the street, jumping in her car and heading out to Storrow Drive and onto Route 2. In less than two hours, she’d be at her mother’s cabin.

 
  Boston Police Department Headquarters Roxbury, Massachusetts

  11:25 a.m., EDT

  June 24

  Simon stood in a small, hot room in the sprawling head­

  quarters of the Boston Police Department with the file of Deirdre McCarthy’s murder in front of him and Norman Estabrook, soon to be in federal custody, on the phone.

  “You’re a dead man, Cahill,” Estabrook said. Simon didn’t have time to listen to threats. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I trusted you.”

  That was a lie. Estabrook didn’t trust anyone. Simon didn’t care.

  Abigail Browning materialized in the doorway of the room where the BPD had led him, her arms crossed, her remarkable self-control firmly in place. He doubted now was the time to tell her how much she reminded him of her father.

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  Estabrook wasn’t finished. “I have feds swarming over me right now because of you.”

  “Trust me now, Norm.” Estabrook hated being called Norm. “Give yourself up peacefully, or they’ll kill you.”

  “I didn’t get to be a billionaire by giving up. You’re dead, Cahill.”

  “How’d you find out about me?”

  “Process of elimination. You trust me now. You’re dead. Dead, dead, dead.”

  Estabrook could be remarkably petulant, but he typi­

  cally wasn’t one for empty threats. He was a portly, blandlooking, dangerous forty-year-old who thrived on risk and beating the odds. But Simon wasn’t worried. After months of helping Estabrook plan, execute and survive his adven­

  tures—of insinuating himself into Estabrook’s life—

  Simon was glad to be rid of him. Estabrook had decided to cross the line from ultrarich thrill seeker to international criminal. No one had done it to him.

  “First I kill John March,” Estabrook said. “Then I kill you.”

  “Send me a postcard from prison. It’ll be your biggest adventure ever.”

  Estabrook sputtered, and Simon disconnected. He’d had enough.

  John March’s daughter walked into the room. “Well, Special Agent Cahill, should I ask what that was all about?”

  But she just nodded to the file. “I see you and I are here for the same reason. What do we have?”

  “An ugly murder, Detective.”

  She picked up Deirdre McCarthy’s high school gradua­

  tion picture. “Sweet-looking kid, wasn’t she? No wonder she ended up collecting angels.”

  Simon nodded. Deirdre was pretty, but it was her

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  259 kindness that people who knew her had told police most defined her. If there were demon-fighting angels, Deirdre McCarthy wouldn’t have been one.

  Her mother, on the other hand…Patsy McCarthy had calmly predicted to more than one investigator that she would die fighting the devil with her bare hands. Simon thought of the tiny, crumpled body on the hooked rug and wondered if her premonition had come to fruition. Abigail set the picture back down. “I see you’re armed,” she said.

  “I had to look like a proper FBI agent before I came in here.” But Simon couldn’t pull off irreverence. He’d read the summary of the exhaustive investigation into Deirdre’s kidnapping, torture, rape and murder. Now her mother was dead, slain in her own home. He looked again at Deirdre’s picture, taken on a day when kids thought about their lives ahead of them. And a year later, she was dead. “Her killer stalked her for at least two weeks before he grabbed her. He took pictures of her—police found them in his apartment afterward.”

  “Deirdre didn’t know she was being stalked?”

  “She never filed a police report or said anything to her mother.”

  “Would she have?”

  Simon didn’t hesitate. “She’d have told her mother. It was just the two of them. She was a sweet kid who told her mother everything.”

  “Nobody tells anyone everything.” Abigail swallowed visibly as she continued to flip through the file. “She was kidnapped on the summer solstice. No wonder Bob hates this time of year. I had no idea about this poor girl—not a damn inkling. He never said a word.”

  “He wouldn’t. It’s not how he’s wired.”

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  She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t argue. “How long did this monster have her?”

  “Three weeks. You don’t need to read the file to know what he did to her.”

  “No, I imagine I don’t.”

  “Killing her was an afterthought. Either he just got tired of her, or he knew she couldn’t live much longer. He slit her throat and dumped her body in Boston Harbor.”

  “Bob never even hinted…” Abigail’s expression tight­

  ened as she came to the photographs taken after Deirdre’s body had washed ashore. “Eight years I’ve worked here, and I’ve never heard of this case.” She shut the file. “The killer—Stuart Fuller. Who was he?”

  “A twenty-four-year-old road worker. He wasn’t on the radar—no record. He grew up in a rough family. The father was in and out of prison and beat the hell out of his wife, and she beat the hell out of their kids. They lived all over the place. Stuart moved to South Boston to get away from his family two months before he kidnapped Deirdre.”

  Abigail had no visible reaction. “How did the police find him?”

  “They didn’t. He set himself on fire and jumped in Boston Harbor a week after Deirdre’s body turned up.”

  “It was the right guy?”

  “Police found overwhelming evidence—”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Simon had known it wasn’t, but he didn’t give her an answer.

  She folded her arms on her chest again, pacing in the small room. “For seven years, I didn’t know who killed my husband. Why, what happened. Any of it. I met Bob when I was still a recruit. He wasn’t easy to win over.”

  “I can imagine,” Simon said.

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  261 She didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s taught me so much.”

  “Abigail, that hasn’t changed—”

  “I believed I was teaching Bob what it’s like to lose someone close to you to violence, when all the time, he knew and just never said anything.”

  “Some people bury something like that down deep and learn just not to go there.”

  “You had it right. Bob doesn’t need a reason to be emo­

  tionally repressed. It’s natural for him.” She stalked to the door, but turned to Simon, her expression softening slightly. “Where’s Owen?”

  “I dropped him off on Beacon Hill. Fiona O’Reilly’s at the Garrison house practicing with her friends.” Simon tried to smile. “We could hear the Irish music all the way out on the street.”

  “I hope it’s therapeutic for her.”

  “Yeah. Hope so. Today’s been a tough one.”

  She gave a curt nod. “Bob?”

  “He took off two seconds after Owen and I got there.”

  “Did he say where—”

  “No. He didn’t say a word to either of us.”

  “He’s got the bit in his teeth, then.”

  Simon nodded. “I expect so.”

  “We don’t need Bob O’Reilly going off half-cocked. One more question for you, Simon, before I leave.” Her dark eyes leveled on hi
m. “Just how well do you know my father?”

  “As I said, some people learn to bury the bad and just don’t go there.”

  John March had lost a friend and undoubtedly blamed himself for Brendan Cahill’s execution, and to tell his daughter required confronting those feelings—that reality—

  in a way that keeping silent didn’t.

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  Abigail took in Simon’s nonanswer. “I have to be some­

  where right now, but we’re not finished.”

  “Hope not.” He grinned at her. “I like weddings.”

  She scowled at him. “You’re even less invited than you were last night.”

  But he saw some of the tension go out of her, if only for a moment, and she left, shutting the door behind her. Simon opened Deirdre McCarthy’s file again and turned to the last page Abigail had looked at.

  It was a report on the Fuller family submitted by a BPD detective sergeant named John March.

  Speaking of people who buried their emotions. Abigail had to have seen her father’s name. She didn’t miss anything. According to everyone who knew him back in his BPD days, March had been hardworking, hard-driving and am­

  bitious, putting himself through law school at night, figuring out how he could advance his career and still be a decent husband and father.

  And friend, Simon thought, visualizing his own father’s execution. What did John March owe the memory of the friend whose son he believed he’d helped orphan? Simon knew the answer, because John March had lived it. He set the file on the table and left. He wanted to be with Keira—now, not later. Deirdre McCarthy’s murder had hung over Keira’s life since the summer she was conceived, but no one—not her mother, her uncle, her grandparents or Patsy herself—had told her or her younger cousins about the girl next door, the friend who’d lost her life to violence. And yet Simon understood why they hadn’t. Once he was on the road, navigating the busy urban streets, he called March’s private number, barely letting the FBI director get out a greeting. “Do you care that Norman Estabrook just threatened to kill you?”

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  263 “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. How long before you take him down?”

  “Hours. He’s still in Montana. We have him under sur­

  veillance. He’s not going anywhere.” March paused, then added, “We’re monitoring his calls.”

  Simon had assumed as much.

  “You’re not calling to tell me Norman Estabrook hates me,” March said. “You’re in the middle of a mess that could explode in both our faces.”

  “You heard about Patsy McCarthy.”

  “Yes, I did,” March said, a crack of emotion in his voice.

  “You remember her, then.”

  “Her daughter’s murder was one of the toughest cases I ever worked on, Simon. If I could forget it—well, I’m not sure I would. It’s a reminder of what some people in this world are capable of doing.”

  “How’d you find out about the mother’s murder? Who’re you keeping tabs on, me or Abigail? Or have you been keeping tabs on Patsy McCarthy all these years?”

  March didn’t give an answer, and Simon gritted his teeth.

  “All of the above, probably.”

  “Is Abigail—”

  “She’s in the thick of things, which is what you’d expect, isn’t it?”

  “Then she knows I worked on Deirdre McCarthy’s murder investigation,” March said. “That’s not what’s im­

  portant now. Finding her mother’s killer is. Simon, you need to walk away from this. It’s not your fight. Go back to London, go fishing in Scotland with your friend Sir Will.”

  “Will’s in Ireland.”

  “Of course. I should have known. The two of you are too independent for your own good. Dare I ask about Keira Sullivan?”

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  It was Simon’s turn to avoid answering.

  He heard March’s soft sigh. “You do know how to com­

  plicate your life. There’s no going back once we move forward with Estabrook, Simon. You have no illusions about that, I hope.”

  “My cover’s pretty much blown as it is, and there’s never any going back in life, anyway.”

  “I guess there isn’t,” March said with a note of melan­

  choly that took Simon by surprise. “You’ve been clear-eyed and full-throttle since you were fourteen years old.”

  “Maybe so. Director March—John.” Simon kept his eyes on the busy Boston street. “Did the right guy set himself on fire and jump into Boston Harbor thirty years ago?”

  “Yes.” There wasn’t a hint of doubt. “Stay in touch,” the FBI director said and hung up.

  Simon tossed his phone onto the passenger seat. John March was as professional, honest and decent a man as there was, but he’d also kept his friendship with his dead friend’s son secret from his daughter for twenty years. But Simon knew all about keeping secrets.

  He hit the gas pedal, picking up speed.

  “I was having the adventure of my life in Ireland while my best friend, the best person I’ve ever known, was in the hands of that monster.”

  Nineteen-year-old Eileen O’Reilly’s words from Deirdre’s case history had jumped off the page at Simon. Who could blame her for not telling her daughter about Deirdre’s murder? And who could blame Keira, now, for wanting to understand her mother?

  Simon gripped the wheel, half wishing Norman Esta­

  brook would call and threaten to kill him again. It would be a long drive out to the woods of southern New Hampshire.

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  265

  He peeked at the speedometer.

  Never mind, he thought—he’d get there in less than two hours.

  Way less.

 
  Back Bay

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Noon, EDT

  June 24

  The lunch crowd was descending on the busy, upscale health club under the Augustines’ showroom on Clarendon Street. Abigail watched men and women with lives very different from her own burst into the locker rooms, jump onto treadmills, each with its own built-in little television, and climb onto weight machines. Several stretched on mats. One older guy crunched abs on an exercise ball. He looked as if he’d crunched about two million abs in his day. All in all, Abigail would have preferred to strap on her iPod and go for a run along the Charles River, pump up her endorphins and just not think about an old woman killed in her home among the angel figurines her murdered daughter had collected—not think about the brilliant, hon­

  orable, frustratingly secretive man who was her father. She’d tried calling him on her way out to Clarendon Street,

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  267 but she only got his voice mail. She didn’t leave a message. She figured he was avoiding her or talking to Simon—

  maybe both.

  She didn’t call Owen. He knew about Simon, she realized. Owen was thorough in everything he did, but es­

  pecially in his work with Fast Rescue.

  She expected lies and secrets in her work. They came with the territory—part of her job was to peel them back to get to the truth.

  Secrets and lies weren’t supposed to be part of her personal life.

  But she was determined not to think about that for a while. Instead, she was standing next to a stack of freshly folded white towels on the health club’s front desk. A lean, tanned man in a black tracksuit emerged from a back room. He was about Bob’s age but in a lot better shape. “Thank you for waiting, Detective Browning,” he said. “We spoke on the phone earlier. I’ve been expecting you. I’m Ron Zytka—I manage the health club. It’s okay to talk here?”

  “No problem.”

  “Charlotte and Jay Augustine stopped by just before you called. They’re still very shaken up about Charlotte’s brother.” Zytka grabbed a perfectly folded towel from the top of the pile, shook it out and spread it out on
the desktop, preparing to refold it. “Understandably.”

  “Did you know Victor?”

  “Not really.” He carefully folded the towel lengthwise into thirds. “I ran into him with Charlotte a few times, and she introduced us. I could pick him out of a crowd, but that’s it. He wasn’t a member here—not the type.”

  Zytka finished folding the towel and set it back on top of the pile. As far as Abigail could see, the towel looked 268

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  exactly the same. She’d called him that morning before news of Patsy McCarthy’s murder had reached her. Now she didn’t know what difference the Augustines’ exercise habits made. But she persisted. “I notice you check people in. You must keep a record—”

  “We do, and I already checked to see if Charlotte and Jay were in the day Victor drowned, because I figured you’d ask. They weren’t, but the kid who works for them was. I think he’s actually the brother’s employee. The poor man who drowned.”

  “Liam Butler was here?”

  “That’s right. He could use the club as a guest of the Au­

  gustines. We offer a limited number of day passes to people in the building. But he was here on his own—he has a sixmonth membership.” Zytka pointed to a line of treadmills in front of a floor-to-ceiling window. “He always uses one of the treadmills over there.”

  Given the placement of those particular treadmills, Abigail noticed, Liam could watch people come and go into the building with little concern they would see him.

  “You’re sure it was the same day—”

  “Yes, Detective,” Zytka said. “It was the day of the drowning. I can show you the log if you want.”

  “What time was he here?”

  “Liam signed in just before six that evening.” Zytka’s hands shook as he lifted the refolded towel and took the one underneath it.

  “Did Liam’s behavior strike you as unusual?” Abigail asked.

  Zytka licked his lips and averted his eyes, not because he was hiding something, she thought, but because he was uncomfortable, even afraid—but of what? He was an offi­