Werewolves in London (Peyton Brooks, FBI Book 3)

by M. L. Hamilton

  “No.”

  “I’m with you, but he’s gonna be sympathetic to a judge.”

  “He held a gun to one of my people’s heads.”

  “I get that, D’Angelo. That’s why I need Ryder to testify. Ryder can also be sympathetic. He’ll balance Morris’ testimony.”

  Marco looked into his coffee cup. “Do you know how hard this is gonna be?”

  “I understand, but what choice do I have? Either we roll over on the psych facility or we fight this, but we can’t win without Ryder.”

  Marco chewed his inner lip. The things they’d put Ryder through. He’d beaten a murder conviction, buried his wife, took pictures of dead bodies, faced down a serial killer, and most recently, had a gun pointed at his temple. And through it all, he maintained his annoyingly upbeat personality.

  “All right.”

  “I might need you too.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You talked him down. You can speak to whether he was thinking clearly or not. We need something to counterbalance the psych eval they’re going to have that said he was insane at the time.”

  “Fine. When is it?”

  “Friday at 10:00AM.”

  “Can you move it up?”

  “Why? Do you have plans?”

  Marco gave a snort of laughter. “No, I have an appointment with Dr. Ferguson at 9:00. I’d love a reason to miss it.”

  “I can say you need to be in court early.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Devan finished off the rest of his coffee and settled the mug on the table. “Well, I should check in at the office. I might be able to steal a half-hour nap before I have to be in court. You want me to tell Ryder?”

  “No, I’ll tell him.”

  “Excellent.”

  He watched Devan walk to the door. “Hey, Adams?”

  Devan looked over his shoulder at him.

  “Congratulations on your little girl.”

  Devan gave him a weary smile. “Thanks, D’Angelo. You know it’s pretty amazing holding your child for the first time. She looked me right in the eye.”

  Marco gave him a smile and he disappeared out the door. Sitting in the break room, he twirled the coffee around, thinking about everything in his life. People always talked about what they wanted and didn’t want. For so long, he hadn’t known what he wanted, then he’d gotten exactly what he wanted, but he’d screwed it up. Now he didn’t know what he wanted any more, except Peyton. Except a life with the woman he loved.

  * * *

  Peyton liked going to the Berkeley campus. There was something exciting about standing in one of the locations that sparked the Civil Rights movement. Besides that, the campus was ridiculously beautiful, covered in redwood trees and eclectic architecture.

  Tank showed his badge at the kiosk and they were motioned through. He parked and they climbed out of the Suburban.

  Peyton reached inside and grabbed her briefcase. “Are you sure we can park here?”

  “I have an on-campus parking permit, I come here so often.”

  Peyton moved to his side and they started walking through campus toward the anthropology building, Kroeber Hall. It was a three story cement building with a fountain in front of it.

  Students moved past them on either side. For some reason, she and Tank drew attention as they went, which amused Peyton since the students themselves were a diverse mix of fashion sensibilities. She guessed the tell-tale black suits and Tank’s mirrored sunglasses spoke Feds.

  Professor Campbell’s office was on the second floor. Tank bounded up the stairs, forcing Peyton to nearly run to keep up. Turning down the hallway, he came to the third door and stepped inside. Peyton paused on the threshold, uncertain whether she should enter or not.

  A tall, brown haired woman with a short bob rose from her desk and lifted her cheek for Tank to kiss. Then she turned and held out her hand to Peyton. “Nice to finally meet you, Peyton. Thomas has told me so much about you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Professor.”

  The woman’s grip was firm. She had a pleasant, if rather plain face, black rimmed glasses, and a trim figure. She wore slacks and a blue polo shirt with brown leather loafers. “Call me Sarah, please.” She motioned to a chair beside her desk, while Tank went to fetch another one. “Please sit down.”

  Three walls of the office were floor to ceiling bookshelves and one was double layer, the entire unit moving aside on a metal track to reveal another bookcase behind it. The books, the low light, the tightness of the room were a bit claustrophobic. Then Tank added another chair and took a seat next to his wife, his massive size dwarfing the already tight space.

  Peyton sank into the chair Sarah indicated and pulled the briefcase on her lap. Sarah studied her behind a friendly smile. Peyton wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now. She glanced around the office, spying a narrow window that looked out over the fountain. A carrel sat over the desk, choked with more books, binders, and a skull. Peyton frowned at the skull. Was it real?

  Sarah followed her gaze. “That is an exact replica of a Neanderthal skull.” She pronounced it Neandertal. “I keep it to remind me of how fleeting our lives are, how transient our time on this planet is, and how we can all become extinct at any moment.”

  Okay then.

  Peyton forced a smile. “Interesting.”

  “So, the coin is fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I asked Professor Bishara to meet us here. I showed him the picture of the coin. He’s a professor of Middle Eastern History.”

  “Wow, that’s great. What did he think about it?”

  “He wanted to share his impressions in person. He should be here anytime. So while we wait, tell me about yourself, Peyton.”

  “Uh?” Peyton glanced at Tank, but he was smiling benignly. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How long have you been in law enforcement?”

  “Almost nine years. Eight with the San Francisco police department.”

  “Usually going into law enforcement runs in the family. Do you have siblings on the force?”

  “No, I’m an only child, but my father was a cop.”

  “Retired?”

  “No, dead. He was shot in the line of duty.” Peyton looked down at her briefcase. “When I was a rookie.”

  “I’m very sorry. I lost my father when I was nine. He was killed on an archeological dig in North Dakota. They were uncovering a triceratops, but the rigging suddenly gave way, crushing him. Some people say it was an old Hidatsa curse, but of course, that’s ridiculous.”

  Peyton realized she was staring at her. “Right.”

  “It’s funny. Insurance companies don’t pay out life insurance for acts of God, but my father was an atheist.”

  Peyton didn’t know what to do with that. She opened the briefcase and removed Isaac Daws’ file, flipping to the back and removing the photo. “You told Tank...I mean, Thomas, that the coin was Iraqi.”

  “Yes, specifically the Sassanid Era between 225 BC to 640 AD.”

  Peyton blinked. “That would make them…”

  “1,400 years old,” said Tank. “Give or take a few decades.” He smiled affably.

  “Wait. How would an American soldier come into contact with such coins?” asked Peyton.

  “That, as they say, is the million dollar question,” answered Sarah. Then her eyes lifted and a smile burst across her face.

  Peyton looked over her shoulder to see a tall, stately man of Middle Eastern descent standing in the doorway. He came in and took Sarah’s hand, kissing her cheek, then he shook hands with Tank.

  “Agent Brooks, I’d like to introduce you to Professor Bishara.”

  Peyton shook hands with the man. “Nice to meet you, Professor.”

  “Same to you.” He pressed her hand between both of his own. “I understand you have a bit of a mystery for us.”

  Peyton held out the photo for him. “This coin was found on the body of a U.S. marine
in a Las Vegas hotel room.”

  “Very interesting,” he said, taking the photo. “I saw the scanned copy, but I’d really like to see the actual item.”

  “Well, that’s where the mystery thickens. I ordered the evidence from the case, but when it arrived, the coin was missing. Tank...I mean Thomas and I searched the entire box, but it just wasn’t there.”

  He studied the photo.

  “Professor, how would an American soldier come by a coin like this? Sarah said it dates to the Sand...um, something era.”

  “Sassanid, yes.” He looked up. He had very dark eyes, heavily ringed with lashes. Peyton found them mesmerizing. “Many archeological sites in Iraq were looted during the American invasion of 2003. More significant is the sacking of the National Museum in Baghdad. Over 15,000 pieces were looted at the time of the invasion, in addition to the thousands of artifacts that were stolen during illegal excavations.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Such is the enormous costs of war. The world is just now beginning to recover some of what was taken, but much of it, I fear, is lost forever.”

  “Could this be one of those coins?”

  “Most likely. In 2013, Iraqi archaeologists found 66 coins that were at least 1,400 years old. This may be from that same cache.”

  “How can we know that without the coin itself?” asked Sarah.

  “If we could compare it to the ones that were found, we might be able to link it, but of course, we’d have to do testing to confirm a positive match and we don’t have the coin.”

  “I have a couple of resources that talk about the discovering in 2013. We could go through those,” said Sarah. “At least we might be able to get a preliminary confirmation.”

  “That sounds like an excellent idea. Let’s get to work.” Professor Bishara moved further into the room, forcing Peyton back into her seat.

  Since she felt out of place here, she opened the file and stared at the report Special Agent Turner had written, but her thoughts were churning. The other three went about gathering the various publications, stacking them on a table under Sarah’s narrow window. During one pass, Professor Bishara glanced down at Peyton.

  “You’re deep in thought, Agent Brooks. Is something bothering you?”

  She glanced up at him. He had such a calm, patient demeanor, she liked him. “Just that if this is really one of those coins, there’s no way Lance Corporal Daws came by it legally.” She shrugged. “I just hate to tarnish the memory of a soldier.”

  “I understand.”

  Not to mention, it cast more doubt on his cause of death. Where was the coin? How had it disappeared? And why was Daws in Vegas when he died?

  While Tank and the two professors poured over their resources, Peyton read through the whole file again, looking for anything she might have missed. Unfortunately, nothing jumped out at her. There were too many holes, too many unanswered questions. And too much missing evidence.

  This case had been botched from the get-go, but it seemed almost too well done, as if the breaks in protocol hadn’t been incompetence, but rather deliberate. For the single most important piece of evidence to go missing, it had to be more than coincidence. That had to be orchestrated.

  She rose to her feet and wandered over to the bookcases, studying the spines on the books. The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays, The Early Mesoamerican Village, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. Wandering back to the desk, she tilted her head, looking at the Neanderthal skull.

  She’d gotten her B.S. in criminology, but her studies had been piecemeal at best. When she was younger, the only thing she’d wanted to do was become a cop like her father. Now, she wondered what she might have been if she’d actually gone to college out of high school, if she’d studied something else.

  She liked trying to figure out how the human mind worked. Maybe she could have become an anthropologist like Sarah, or studied culture like Professor Bishara. Maybe she could have studied psychology like Dr. Ferguson. She smiled, thinking of herself sitting on the other side of the table like Dr. Ferguson, asking questions with no answers and giving frustrating grunts of noncommittal judgment at regular intervals.

  Reaching out, she ran her fingers along the Neanderthal’s brow ridge, down the side of his skull to his jaw. It looked no different than any other skulls she’d seen. The domed forehead, the hinged jaw.

  Just as she drew her hand away, the skull fell over on its side and the jaw dropped onto the desk. Peyton jumped back in horror, curling her fingers into her fist. At the window, Tank and the professors spun around to look at her.

  Peyton didn’t know what to say. She’d just broken a man’s head. So much for becoming an archeologist. That sort of thing was probably frowned upon during a dig.

  * * *

  Marco wandered into the break room and found Jake stuffing his face with cupcakes. Glancing over his shoulder, Jake gave him a sheepish shrug.

  “You gotz ta admit, Carly’s one hella a baker,” he said with his mouth full, then motioned to the platter, “Wan’ one?”

  “No thanks.”

  Jake swallowed hard, then grabbed the glass of milk and downed a gulp. “She sucks at being a receptionist, but damn, she’s aces with an oven.”

  Marco gave a short nod. “Which is why I’m going to fire her.”

  Jake stuffed the last of the cupcake into his mouth and carried his milk to the table, taking a seat. “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am. She’s incompetent, always late, and she still doesn’t know how to work the damn phone. I’m firing her.”

  Jake gave a laugh, using his tongue to dislodge chocolate from his molars. “No, you’re not.”

  “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  “Look, Adonis, you aren’t going to fire her because you can’t do it. That’s why Bartlet’s still working here.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “It just is.”

  “Right. He almost got you and Peyton killed.”

  Marco came to the table and sat across from Jake. “Devan was here this morning.”

  “His wife have the baby yet?”

  “Yeah, anyway, there’s an evidentiary hearing for Ryan Morris on Friday.”

  Jake went still, lowering his glass. “What?”

  Marco studied him. Jake didn’t often let anyone know something was bothering him, but his expression was definitely alarmed now.

  “An evidentiary hearing? They doubt what he did? We have it on surveillance tape. We have two other officers beside you who saw what happened.”

  “Calm down, Ryder.”

  “Calm down? He pointed a gun at my head, Adonis.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what’s the hearing for?”

  “Morris’ lawyer doesn’t want it to go to trial. He wants Morris to get treatment in a psych facility.”

  Jake slumped back in the chair. “You’re shitting me.”

  “No.”

  “A psych facility? He held a gun to my head!”

  “I know, Jake. I was there!” Marco drew a breath to calm himself. “It’s worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  “Devan wants you to testify.”

  Jake lifted his hand and let it fall against his thigh. “And what am I supposed to say?”

  “The truth. Just tell the truth. Devan will debrief you.”

  “When’s the hearing?”

  “Friday.”

  Jake looked away, shaking his head. “This is bull shit.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch ever again.”

  “I know.”

  “Why me? I hardly remember it. Why not Tag or Holmes?”

  “Because Devan’s afraid Ryan Morris will appear sympathetic, but he thinks you might be even more sympathetic.”

  Jake crossed his arms on the table and placed his for
ehead on them.

  Marco didn’t know what to do or say. This was so not in his wheelhouse. He’d never been good with other people’s emotions. “Ryder?”

  Jake rolled his head to the side and looked at him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jake sat up straight. “I know, Adonis. But thank you for saying it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  He glanced up from the coloring book the doctor had given him, watching his mother and father without trying to be obvious about it. His mother shot him a half-smile, then leaned forward and whispered to the doctor, but he could still hear her. He had good ears.

  “He talks to no one. All the time.” She clasped her hands together. “He doesn’t have any friends at school because the kids say he talks to himself.”

  The psychiatrist gave his mother a patient smile. She was thin and pretty with brown hair wound into a bun and cat’s eye glasses. “A lot of children have imaginary friends. There’s nothing abnormal about it. He’ll grow out of it in time.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” said his father, giving him a sideways look.

  “Why wouldn’t he? What is it that worries you most? The talking to himself or the lack of friends? How are his marks?”

  “Good enough. He does better in reading than arithmetic, but he’s gotten in trouble because he speaks to himself during tests. It’s mostly whispering, but the teacher says it’s distracting for the other children.”

  “It’s perfectly normal for parents to have concerns about their children’s development, but I can assure you, having imaginary friends is very common for children his age.”

  “Can other children name their imaginary friend?”

  He looked up at that. He’d never heard his mother admit this to anyone else.

  “I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

  “The friend’s name is Niles. He talks to my son. Is that normal?”

  The doctor shot a look at Charlie. “Well, that’s a bit specific, isn’t it now? But I still believe it’s within the realm of normal, yes.” She hesitated, then gave a tense smile. “When you say he talks to your son, what do you mean?”

  “I mean Charlie says Niles talks to him. They carry on conversations.”