Cold As Death (The Mira Morales Series Book 5)

by T. J. MacGregor

  He backed away from her. She kept right on talking. “You auditioned for a part in that movie. You didn’t get it. There was a woman. Her name starts with a T. No, with a P. Patricia? Portia? No, no, that’s not quite right. Priscilla. You blamed Priscilla. You stalked her, cut her tires, and…” Mira suddenly stopped, the coin dropped from her hand, clinking loudly against the floor. “Revenge. It’s all about revenge.”

  “I don’t care about the past. Tell me about the future, Mira. Let’s see if you can read the future as well as you can the past.” He grabbed her wrist.

  She wrenched free and moved away from him, rubbing her wrist, shaking her head. “I can’t. I need to eat first. To rest. To…”

  He moved the gun through the air, toward Adam. “You have…”

  His cell rang. Eden, again. If he didn’t take the call, she would keep right on calling.

  “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” he said briskly, and slammed the door as he left. He locked it, pressed the answer button on his cell, hurried up the hail.

  “Hey, I was just going to call you, hon. What’s going on?”

  “Spense.” Breathless. “Paul’s been taken in for questioning. It’s on CNN right now. How could they think he would kidnap his own son?” Her breathlessness rose to near-hysteria. “I’ve got to go in there, explain that he was with me that night, that he… I’m his alibi and…”

  He tuned her out, squeezed the bridge of his nose, backed up to the wall. The solid coolness of the wood against his spine, the faint residue of cooking scents in the air, and her goddamn whining, hysterical voice. Paul, Paul, Paul, always about Paul. Finally, he said, “You need to do it in person. I’ll drive you over there. I’ll be at your place in about twenty minutes.”

  “Really? You’ll drive me? Oh, my God, thank you, Spense. I… I just don’t think I could live with myself otherwise. I’ll be ready when you get here.”

  She disconnected and he remained against the wall, clutching the cell, struggling against a terrible weight in the center of his chest. Twenty minutes.

  And then?

  He would talk her out of it.

  Clean clothes, car keys, hurry.

  Mira and Adam would have to wait.

  Chapter 21

  Sex, Lies, and Videotape

  It was just like the movies, Sheppard thought, with the suspect pacing through a small, windowless room equipped with an old wooden table and a couple of chairs. In the days before smoking was banned inside state and federal buildings, there would have been an ashtray, matches, and a pack of smokes on the table, probably Marlboros, the cigarettes of choice for restless loners, con men, cowboys, and famous directors in their waning years. Now, there was just a bottle of water on the table.

  In the old days, the suspect was watched through a one-way mirror; now, hidden security cameras and mikes recorded the suspect’s every move, mutter, breath. The cameras could zoom in or out and noise could be filtered, enhanced, wiped out. Now, it was all about the magic of technology. The bottom line, though, was the same. Getting information.

  “So what’s our agenda, amigo?” Goot asked, jamming his hands into the pockets of his chinos. “We don’t have anything solid on this guy. He has a girlfriend and was apparently with her the night his son disappeared. That’s not a crime.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Cordoba said.

  We’re not asking for your thoughts, Charlie. “Mira saw both Nichols and our perp with a redhead.”

  Cordoba rolled his eyes. “Last time I checked, psychic information doesn’t stand up in court.”

  “We’re not going to court. We just want information,” Sheppard snapped.

  Kartauk leaned heavily on his cane. “Fuck court. Our job is to find out who the woman is—name, address, employer, the works. And I doubt if the good-cop/bad-cop routine is the way to go. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover kind of exhausted that one.”

  “I thought Bruce Willis did it in,” Goot said.

  “Hey, Crockett and Tubbs squeezed it dry during Miami Vice, and that was a long time before any of the Lethal Weapon movies,” Sheppard said.

  “This isn’t a goddamn movie,” Cordoba muttered.

  “Ha,” Kartauk said. “It’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape.”

  “We have videotape?” Cordoba exclaimed. His hungry eyes said it all: The voyeur in him was hoping, perhaps, for a glimpse of famous Paul Nichols screwing his even more famous wife or, if not that, his lover. “How come I haven’t been told about that?”

  Sheppard rolled his eyes. “For Chrissakes, Charlie. Sex, Lies, and Videotape is a movie.” And these days, asshole, there’s no tape, you idiot. It’s all digital.

  “So how do we play it?” Kartauk asked.

  Sheppard wagged the folder that held the e-mails Nichols and his lady friend had exchanged. “We go for the jugular and play the rest like Stanislavsky.”

  Kartauk chuckled. “Great idea, Shep.”

  “Who’s Stanislovsky?” Cordoba asked.

  Kartauk answered that one. “A Russian acting coach who believed that an actor has to take his own personality into the portrayal of a character. If you’re playing a role that involves fear, then you have to remember something frightening and try to act in the emotional space of fear that you once felt. Emotional memory, Charlie. Immersion.” He apparently felt compelled to explain how he knew this bit of information. “Acting in college,” he said.

  “And which emotional memory are you playing here, Shep?” Goot asked.

  An image of Mira’s earring, just sitting on that bookshelf, came to mind. “Rage, Goot.”

  “And Glen and I will be your calming influence?”

  “I’ll calm him,” Kartauk said. “You restrain him. And we enter at just the right moment.”

  “Our own little passion play,” Sheppard remarked.

  “What part do I play?” Cordoba asked.

  “Spectator,” Sheppard replied, and left before Cordoba could protest.

  Moments later, Sheppard threw open the door of the interrogation room. It banged against the wall, startling Nichols, who paused in his restless pacing. “I have the right to call my attorney and I’m demanding a phone right now.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Nichols.”

  “I said, I--”

  “I heard what you said and I’m telling you to sit the fuck down.”

  Color burned in his cheeks, but Nichols jerked the chair out and sat down, his large hands flat against the table. Then his fingers started drumming the surface. “Okay, I’m sitting. Now what the hell am I doing here? Am I being charged with something? Am I under arrest?”

  Sheppard pulled out the other chair, whipped it around so the back faced the table, and straddled it. “You’re not under arrest. You’re here to answer some questions.”

  “So I’m under suspicion for something?”

  Sheppard didn’t bother answering that question. “It’s come to our attention that you have information regarding someone who is involved with the man who took your son, Mr. Nichols.” He slapped the folder down against the table, opened it, picked up the top e-mail, and started reading aloud. Before he gotten out more than two sentences, Nichols snatched the paper out of Sheppard’s hand.

  “You have no right to…”

  Sheppard shot to his feet and leaned so close to Nichols’s face that he wrenched back. “While you were fucking your brains out on Big Pine Key, the woman you were with was acting as a decoy so that her partner could get into your house and take your son.” Theories, nothing more. But Nichols didn’t know that. “I want her name and address, Mr. Nichols, and if you don’t give it to me, I’m charging you with accessory to kidnapping.”

  Nichols looked stunned. His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, he didn’t exhale. Silence gripped the room. Then Nichols breathed out and scooted his chair back, putting distance between himself and Sheppard. “That’s… that’s impossible.” No shouting. No threats. Just denial.

  “Her name.”

  “I …”r />
  Sheppard grabbed another e-mail from the folder and read it aloud. “I miss you so much and dream of the moments when you’ll be inside of me again. Paradise.’ Or how about this one?” Sheppard reached for another e-mail.

  “I know what they say!” he yelled, and lunged across the table at Sheppard.

  Sheppard jerked back, his chair tipped and crashed to the floor, the file flew out of his hand. Then he and Nichols were locked together and rolling across the floor, the scattered e-mails. The stink of testosterone filled the air. Nichols grunted and snorted like a wild hog and tried to get a tight grip on Sheppard’s throat. But Sheppard saw red; his knees snapped up and sank into Nichols’s balls. Sheppard threw Nichols off as he bellowed and howled and struggled to his feet. Sheppard leaped up and went after him.

  The door flew open and Cordoba and Goot rushed in, both of them shouting. Cordoba waved his arms like a referee and Goot thrust himself between Sheppard and Nichols. “Back off, Shep, back the hell off.”

  “So much for immersion and Stanislavsky,” Kartauk drolled, limping into the room on his crutch.

  Sheppard’s arms swung to his sides and he shook his head to clear it. “He refuses to divulge the woman’s name. That makes him…” Sheppard stabbed the air with his index finger. “An accessory to kidnapping.”

  Nichols’s shiny red cheeks puffed out like a squirrel’s and he huffed, “I didn’t… have anything to… do with Adam’s disappearance.” He had backed, up to the wall. Blood dribbled out of the right corner of his mouth, his right nostril. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m suing your ass for assault.”

  “If I were you, Mr. Nichols,” Kartauk said in a quiet, even voice, pointing the end of his crutch at Nichols, “I would stop threatening federal agents. There are three witnesses here who saw you make the first move on Agent Sheppard.” He walked with an uneven gait over to Nichols and aimed his crutch at the nearest chair. “Have a seat.”

  “I’m fine right here,” Nichols spat.

  “Suit yourself. As I was saying, there are three witnesses who will testify that Agent Sheppard was defending himself.

  So at the moment, we have several charges against you: accessory to kidnapping, assault on a federal officer, interfering in a federal investigation….”

  “I want to call my attorney.”

  Nichols, a broken record, Sheppard thought, and suddenly knew that Eden wasn’t a street or a place. It was his lover’s name. “Eden who? What’s her full name?”

  Shock seized Nichols’s face. He rolled his lips together, made his way to the chair, and sat down heavily, as though the weight of his own body were suddenly too much to bear. “I…I…” Nichols stammered. “How… I mean… Jesus.” He ran his hands over his face. “Her name’s Eden Thompkins.” He took a deep breath, as though it were a relief to finally have said it, to confess. Then he spoke fast. “I don’t know where she lives, I swear. I never went to her house. We just met at motels.”

  “Where does she work?” Goot asked.

  “In Key West. At a restaurant.”

  Kartauk snapped his fingers in Nichols’s face. “For Chrissakes. Get with it, man. The name of the restaurant, we need the name.”

  “Pepe’s. Pepe’s Bar and Grill.”

  “Lock him up, Charlie,” Sheppard said, and was already on his cell as he hurried from the room.

  It didn’t take long to find out that Pepe’s had no phone service or power. It would take him and Goot forty minutes to get to Key West on the ferry and five minutes on either end to get to the dock and then to the restaurant. Call it an hour. Ross Blake could get them there faster by seaplane. But if Eden wasn’t at work, he would have to get a home address and no telling where she lived. They would need a car.

  “What’s the plan?” Goot asked, catching up with him as he headed toward the conference room.

  “Even though word’s gotten out that Paul was brought in, call the Telemundo guy. We owe him a favor. Confirm that Nichols was brought in and tell him we have two persons of interest. No names. Then tell Charlie to hold a press conference, same information, no names. We need time to get to Key West and track down Eden Thompkins.”

  “The press conference will put Charlie right where he wants to be, in the spotlight. It’ll keep him occupied. How about if we ask Ross to fly us to Key West, to pull in close to Pepe’s, and we’ll have someone from the Bureau there meet us with a car?”

  Sheppard grinned at Goot. “Great minds and all that. You talk to Ross, get the others in the conference room up to speed, have them keep fielding calls and e-mails just in case we’re on the wrong track here. I’ll meet you and Ross in the parking lot in five minutes. I need to speak to Glen.”

  He found Kartauk in the hallway outside the restrooms, eyeing the vending machines. “Is this coffee any good?” Kartauk asked as Sheppard approached.

  “No.”

  He laughed. “Now that is a refreshingly direct answer, Shep.”

  “Have Suki drive you over to the Cappuccino House on Pirate’s Cove. They’ve got electricity, their coffee’s to die for, and they have terrific Greek food. Tell Joe, the owner, that Shep sent you. He’ll give you a discount.”

  Kartauk looked puzzled. “Suki?”

  “She needs a haven for a few days, Glen. Can she stay with you?”

  “Are you kidding? What man in his right mind could say no to a request like that? I’d better call my housekeeper. There’re dust balls under the couch, the guest room needs clean sheets, the…”

  Sheppard touched his arm. “Hey, relax. She doesn’t give a shit about dust balls right now, okay? You’re her refuge from the press. And she needs to bring her cat.”

  Kartauk blinked, then laughed, his fleshy jowls trembling. “Her cat, her furniture, whatever. Christ, I’ve lived alone too long.”

  “Naw, it’s that Pisces thing and guilt.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said with a quick grin. “Where is she now?”

  “Probably on her way home.” Sheppard ticked off Suki’s cell number. “Call her. Offer her a refuge, a sanctuary, great coffee, company, and peace, Glen.”

  “Jesus, should I ask her to marry me too?”

  “She’s not divorced yet, Glen.” Besides, Sheppard was pretty sure that Blake had designs of his own. “I’ll be in touch.

  Mira sensed that Spenser had left the house and would be gone longer than fifteen minutes. But just in case she was wrong, she and Adam spoke in hushed voices as they went through the freshly stocked cooler. Now that her jaw no longer ached and the swelling had gone down, her appetite had come roaring back. From the looks of it, Adam was hungrier than she was.

  They split up the sandwiches, helped themselves to fruit, containers of juice, bottles of cold water. Once they had fortified themselves with food, she thought, they could try to figure out a way to escape. Adam’s break for freedom sure hadn’t worked.

  “Is he really gone or is it a trick?” Adam whispered.

  “I think he left to tend to the redhead.”

  “Eden. Her name’s Eden.”

  “He told you that?”

  Adam nodded, unwrapped a sandwich, examined it, and bit into it. “He tried to hurt me by telling me that Eden and my dad are having an affair. I found some photos of them together.”

  Mira sat beside him at the edge of the bed and bit into a tuna fish sandwich peppered with radishes and bits of celery. “I’m sorry you had to find out this stuff about your dad, Adam.”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t the first time. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t even my real dad.”

  Interesting. Suki had told her that no one else knew this fact. “How do you know that?”

  “I found my birth certificate in Mom’s things. Only Mom’s name was listed under parents. If Paul Nichols were really my father, his name would be on that birth certificate.”

  Mira wondered what to say. Adam took care of that for her.

  “You already knew, right?” he asked.

 
“I picked it up when your mom hired me to find you.”

  “I just wish she’d told me.”

  “Parents try to do what’s best for their kids, Adam, but sometimes we screw up.”

  He shrugged, accepting. “How’re we going to get outta here, Mira?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Already, she was on her feet, moving restlessly around the room, touching this and that, seeking more information on Spenser. Given the size of the room and the number of objects and surfaces she touched, she uncovered surprisingly little that was new. Either he hadn’t spent much time in here, or his emotions had been as dormant as a bear in winter when he’d been in here.

  Many homes seemed to have rooms like this, spaces the residents entered rarely if at all, places where books, boxes, and dust devils accumulated and nothing much of interest happened. This room felt like the guest room at her parents’ home or like a model home, as though people tiptoed around inside it, never raising their voices, making love, laughing, crying, or expressing much of anything at all.

  “The room’s a problem, isn’t it,” Adam remarked, shadowing her as though he were afraid that if she got too far away, she would vanish. “I mean, for the way you work.”

  “I can’t find much of him in here.”

  “I think that’s why Friend has only appeared once since I’ve been here.”

  “Do you know who she is, Adam?”

  Mira thought he might avoid answering the question, as he’d done earlier. But this time he nodded. “Spenser’s mother. He looks like her. Has her mouth and chin, but not her eyes. Her eyes are, like, kind and warm. But his are the dark side of the moon. Since she couldn’t protect him, she was trying to protect me. Except her efforts to protect me suck big-time.”

  “Tell me about his migraines.”

  “They come on without much warning. When Friend - Joy—made the room cold, a migraine drove him outta here. The night he took me, he was in a lot of pain and it got worse the closer we got to… wherever we are. Then he had another one today. Maybe he has a brain tumor or something.”