The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  Courtney twisted his head up to look at Savich. “What the hell is this, Agent?”

  “A photo of Thomas’s new wife, like I told you.”

  “No, no, come on now, I’m not that old. I remember so well Maggie’s swingy dark hair, those bright blue-green eyes of hers. And her white skin, so soft—” Courtney James fell silent, and simply stared and stared at that photo. Finally, he said, his voice bewildered, “My God, that’s Maggie May, but a lot younger. And the clothes and the hair can’t be right. You’re telling me this is Thomas’s wife, Agent Savich?”

  “It is indeed, Mr. James,” Savich said.

  “I don’t get this at all.”

  “We’ll let you know when we figure it all out,” Savich said. “I promise you that. You’ve been of immense help to us. Thank you.”

  “You gonna nail that pissant Thomas for something?”

  Savich only smiled, shook the old man’s hand. Sherlock squeezed his thin forearm, let him touch her hair once more, took Savich’s arm and turned to leave the hospital room. They heard Courtney James say to Warden Rafferty, “I never believed in reincarnation before. What do you think?”

  The warden said, “I don’t know, Courtney. I haven’t really thought about it. What do you think?”

  “I just don’t know anymore. I’ll tell you, Warden, that photo— it was Maggie May, and how can that be?

  “And all that psychic crap about Thomas speaking to his dead parents. That fair to creeps me out.”

  “It does me too, Courtney.”

  The old man closed his eyes a moment. “I’d sure like a glazed Krispy Kreme about now.”

  CHAPTER 57

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Thursday night

  he Pallacks’ building was tucked behind beautifully manicured trees and bushes on a small cul de sac just off Leavenworth Street on Russian Hill. The penthouse was dark, as were the two condos on the floor below it. A total of eleven dwellings shared the address in the hundred-year-old-plus building. Dix saw only two lights, one on the third floor, one on the fourth. The rest of the windows were dark. The occupants were either out or asleep. As for the Pallacks, they were at a political fundraiser at the Hyatt Embarcadero, which was expected to run very late.

  He’d finally found a parking place on Chestnut Street, two blocks away, and too close to a fire hydrant. But he hoped the police wouldn’t be handing out tickets so late on a Thursday night.

  Dix looked down at his watch—it was nearly eleven o’clock. He should have plenty of time. It had taken him only about seven minutes to drive here after he’d walked quietly out of the Sherlocks’ house.

  He locked Judge Sherlock’s Chevy Blazer and started back to the Pallacks’ building, careful to keep to the shadows. He was tense, his nerves stretched tight. He was a cop, he believed in the law, yet here he was preparing to break into the Pallacks’ penthouse. And he was carrying a gun while doing it. Even though he was a sheriff, he knew that could put him away for the next ten years. But he’d already had these arguments with himself a dozen times before he’d found that meager parking place. He paused a moment to calm himself. He’d made his decision, and now it was time to get the job done. He prayed Ruth wouldn’t figure out what he was doing and come after him, bringing Cheney and Julia or even Savich and Sherlock after him. He’d be out of here by midnight, and if something did happen, well, he’d left an e-mail for Ruth’s cell phone set to alert her at midnight—just in case he needed her to bail him out of jail.

  It was past time to bring all this to an end. If he’d acted sooner, perhaps Soldan Meissen wouldn’t be dead. He’d been floored by what Savich had reported Courtney James told them—that Christie and Charlotte Pallack were both the image of Margaret Pallack. The madness of it twisted in him, the plain insanity of fate that had brought Christie to Pallack’s notice.

  Despite Savich and Sherlock’s discovery, Dix still knew it wasn’t enough to get a search warrant, knew Pallack could destroy everything incriminating at any time. He’d get away with murdering Christie, and Dix would never find out what had happened to her. His plan was the best way. The only way.

  If only Ruth didn’t get suspicious. He’d told her he wanted to walk, clear his head, think about what he was going to tell Rafe and Rob. When she’d offered to come with him, he’d told her he wanted to be alone, and she’d given him one long look and nodded, joining in a discussion with Julia and Cheney about August Ransom’s journals. Had they been destroyed in the fire at Julia’s house? Maybe he’d find the damned journals in Pallack’s apartment. But what he wanted most to find was Christie’s bracelet. Then he’d know. Of course Pallack could have gotten rid of it. Dix couldn’t bear to think what he would do if he couldn’t find something solid to nail the bastard.

  Dix moved around to the back of the building. He had taken care to wear dark clothes, black boots, and a dark watch cap, had even blackened his face to blend into the shadows. His arm didn’t hurt much. He moved it, clenched his fist. He would manage.

  He found the alarm system quickly, recognized it as top of the line, just as he’d expected, and disabled it.

  He had little trouble with the lock on the back service door of the building. He slid silently out of the storage and receiving room into the small elegant foyer, with mailboxes and palm trees. He took the stairs, not the elevator, to the top floor. Six seconds only on that lock, and he gently eased open the Pallack front door. He stepped into the foyer, and the enormity of what he was doing hit him again. No, no more doubts, no more questions. It was time to act. He’d broken and now he’d entered. Dix immediately went to the windows and pulled down the shades, closed the curtains. Only then did he switch on his flashlight.

  The penthouse occupied the entire sixth floor, and covered at least four thousand square feet, on two levels. Dix started on the second level. He found the master bedroom and immediately went to Charlotte Pallack’s jewelry box, an antique French affair large enough to hold Liechtenstein’s crown jewels. He carefully searched through the various pouches and boxes. Lots of expensive stuff, but not what he was looking for.

  Either Charlotte was wearing the bracelet tonight, or, since Dix had nailed her with it, maybe Thomas Pallack hadn’t let her out of the house again with the bracelet on her wrist. Maybe Pallack had destroyed it. Or maybe it was in a safe.

  Dix methodically searched the large bedroom with its extravagant furnishings, the space completely dark except for his flashlight, the incredible views hidden behind the heavy closed drapes. He didn’t find a safe even after lifting each of the six modern paintings off the walls, carefully searching the large walk-in closet, even tapping the walls behind Pallack’s shirts. He opened the drapes before he left the bedroom and looked back. It looked the same as it had before he’d come in.

  He didn’t bother searching the remaining rooms on the second level, but went immediately downstairs to Pallack’s office. It probably looked somber and dark even in daylight with its burgundy leather furniture and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three walls. It was his last hope, his best hope, really. Dix moved behind the big mahogany desk that smelled faintly of expensive cigars, and tried the top drawer. It was locked. It took him only a few seconds to pick it.

  Dix was pleased to see it was a master lock and all the other desk drawers opened with it. He searched all the drawers thoroughly. He was hoping to find bank statements, a checkbook, records of any kind that might link Pallack to Makepeace, or to David Caldicott, or Christie, but there were only invoices in ordered piles, newspaper clippings on Pallack and his fundraising, some correspondence with various bigwigs, and the usual odds and ends in desk drawers. He said a silent prayer and powered up Pallack’s computer.

  It was passworded, something he’d expected, and so he’d made up a list of likely words and numbers. He typed each one in, tried variations and additions, but none of them worked. He simply wasn’t good enough to hack in. He could have used Savich for that.

  He found the safe behind
an original Picasso line drawing featuring weird forms that resembled no human he’d ever seen. It was a tumbler safe and there was no way he could get into it without the combination, or a blowtorch. He went back to Pallack’s desk, got down on his knees, and pulled out each drawer, looking at the undersides. There was no combination underneath any of them. Then he lifted the keyboard and there, taped under the g and h, was a set of three double numbers. For the first time since he’d left the Sherlock house, Dix smiled.

  A moment later, he pulled the safe handle open. It was about half full—mostly papers, separated with rubber bands, a big accordion-pleated folder, a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills, probably totaling five thousand, and underneath them, several velvet pouches. His heartbeat picked up as he pulled open the drawstrings of a dark burgundy velvet pouch and upended it. A magnificent diamond necklace and earrings filled his palm. He opened a dark blue velvet pouch—more diamonds, an emerald the size of his thumbnail, and a half dozen loose blood-red rubies, maybe ten carats each. Nothing else. No bracelet. He put the jewels back in their pouches and carefully replaced them by the pile of hundred-dollar bills. He pulled out a stack of papers, remembering how they were arranged, and methodically went through them. Pallack’s will, Charlotte’s will, half a dozen sets of partnership agreements, deeds to homes spread throughout the world, documents in French and Greek, insurance policies, business contracts he didn’t have time to read thoroughly but that had no immediate import to him.

  He lifted out the single fat accordion folder, pulled away the rubber band. Inside were notebooks, maybe a dozen of them.

  What was this?

  There was a photo on top of them. Dix lifted out a five-by-seven color photo of David Caldicott standing next to—he became very still. Was it Christie? Charlotte? He couldn’t begin to explain it, but he knew to his soul he was looking at Christie, not Charlotte Pallack. David Caldicott had said he’d known Christie, said she’d admired his playing, that she’d come up and spoken to him. But they’d obviously known each other better than that. He could make out the familiar architecture of the Stanislaus buildings in the background. It was fall, with red, gold, and brown leaves mixed thick on the ground, tree branches nearly naked. Both David and Christie were smiling into the camera. Who’d taken the photo? He turned the photo over. There was a date scrawled but nothing else. Three years and four months ago.

  He slipped it into his jacket pocket. He looked at the stack of thin notebooks and realized he had indeed found August Ransom’s journals. But how did they get here? Three folded sheets of stationery stuck out from under the cover of the very first notebook. He opened the first one, and stared down at a note pasted together out of words cut from a newspaper.

  He read:

  Mr. Pallack, I have August’s journals. He told me all about you, and now I have proof. I want five hundred thousand dollars. Tomorrow noon leave the money in a carry-on bag on the foot of the statue in Washington Square.

  Dix quickly read the other two notes, none dated so he didn’t know how far apart they’d been sent. The demands totaled two million dollars. He stared thoughtfully at the second note, read the final line several times:

  We’ve had such a lovely thing going here, haven’t we? But August never believed I was greedy even when others said I was. You won’t hear from me again.

  But of course Pallack had heard from the blackmailer again. The third note was short, simply instructed Pallack to leave a million dollars in a briefcase by the first jewelry counter just inside the entrance of Neiman Marcus, again at noon. It wasn’t signed, but the blackmailer had written Hasta Luega, whatever that was supposed to mean. More blackmail notes to come? Or had it indeed been the last demand?

  Dix read them all once more, and realized that the tone, the implied intimacy of the words, bothered him. It hit him between the eyes—of course, it sounded like Julia Ransom had written them.

  It all fell into place. Pallack had hired Makepeace to kill Julia because he believed she was the blackmailer.

  But Dix believed her when she’d said she’d never even seen any journals, that she really didn’t think they’d even existed. So Pallack had been wrong.

  Who then? It took Dix only a moment to realize it must have been another of Pallack’s psychics, probably none other than Soldan Meissen.

  Meissen and August Ransom had known each other for a long time. Meissen must have known about the journals, even seen them. After August Ransom was murdered, he could have gotten into Julia’s house, stolen the journals, and discovered he had a gold mine. He’s started off with the blackmail, then lured Pallack in as a client.

  Dix wondered what Pallack had thought when he finally tumbled to the fact that Meissen was not only his blackmailer but had made Pallack believe he could communicate with his parents, convincing him by using conversation notes lifted from August Ransom’s journals. Dix remembered clearly on the tape recording Sherlock had made of their interview with Pallack, how he’d sensed he’d had similar conversations with his parents before, a sort of déjà vu.

  Did it all become clear to you the moment you voiced that understanding, Pallack? Did you realize then that Meissen had a lovely scam going on you? All that money you paid him and it wasn’t enough. He sucked you into being his client twice a week, made a fool of you.

  Dix wondered if Pallack had paid the last million before he’d killed Meissen or if he’d paid the money to Makepeace instead.

  The rage Pallack must have felt. He’d moved quickly, Dix thought, and Makepeace had moved quickly as well. How convenient that Pallack had his own private assassin close at hand.

  Dix thumbed through the first journal, sessions with Thomas Pallack, but he didn’t see anything incriminating, only reminiscences. He picked up the last journal, opened it to the last page, and read:

  Thomas is frightened of me. I’ve tried to speak to him about it, but he refuses. I sense he deeply regrets talking about that other woman. He spoke of her only because his mother kept asking him where she was, what he’d done to her, and then his mother laughed, such a laugh that my flesh crawled. And he told her he’d met a woman who was her twin and he loved her the first instant he saw her. But she wouldn’t have him. He’d had to—Thomas shook his head, shot a look at me, and didn’t say any more, but of course, he’d already said too much, and he knew he had.

  Here he is still taking orders from a woman thirty years dead. Though I’m not his psychiatrist, I’ve told him this link with his mother is unhealthy, counseled him it’s time to leave the dead alone, and look to his own future. He was abusive.

  It was the last entry.

  Dix could barely breathe. Christie, he thought, you were that woman, and he wanted to weep with the knowledge of it. He’d known she was dead, but the proof of it was finally staring him in the face.

  Dix pulled out his cell phone, turned on the camera, and took pictures of the last pages in Ransom’s last journal. It wouldn’t serve as legal proof, but it was the hard truth nonetheless. He wished he had time to photograph everything, but when he looked at his watch, he realized he had to leave. He closed the journal, placed it at the bottom of the dozen or so others. He placed them back in the accordion file, pulled the rubber band around it, and slid it in the safe, exactly where he’d found it, closed the safe, and put the Picasso over it, and began to set everything back in place.

  Then he heard the front door open.

  CHAPTER 58

  Dix looked over Pallack’s desk, prayed he’d gotten everything back in the right order, and locked the drawer again. Pallack would never know—but what if Pallack or Charlotte went into the living room and wondered why their gorgeous view was gone?

  He heard the front door close, heard their voices and their footsteps. Dix looked at the long draperies on the far end of the study, a cliché, but there wasn’t any other good hiding place he could see. He quickly moved across the study and slipped in behind the thick dark green brocade curtains that dragged to the floor. There was a cha
ir in front of the drapes. Hopefully that would be enough. He made a small opening in the seam of the drapes and looked out onto the study. The Pallacks walked nearly to the study doorway and stopped.

  Pallack said, his voice irritated, “Damned alarm system went off again, third time this month.”

  Charlotte’s voice sounded tired, on edge. “The neighbors have probably already called.”

  Pallack grunted. “It just pisses me off. Could you believe the talk about Barbara being too far to the left?”

  Charlotte’s voice sounded indifferent. “They might be right. I’m surprised you can actually remember anything anyone said tonight. Thank God you got us out of there. I thought I was going to scream if I had to listen to any more of that claptrap. Thomas, what are we going to do?”

  Dix heard annoyance in Pallack’s voice. “No need to get hysterical. It’s done, there are no more loose ends. Meissen is dead and we have the journals. It’s over. Once Makepeace leaves town, we can forget about everything. Give me a minute to call Berenger Security, find out why the hell the security’s out.”

  “But they know!”

  “Those ridiculous FBI agents? Julia Ransom? Who cares? Their beliefs will get them exactly nowhere.”

  Dix heard Pallack’s heavy footsteps, watched him step into the room and walk across the carpet to his desk phone.

  Charlotte followed him in, but not all the way to Pallack’s desk. She said in a weary voice, “I certainly hope you’re right about the FBI. But we can’t stop worrying about Makepeace— he’s out of control, you know that. When he brought you the journals earlier, all he could talk about was killing Julia.”

  Dix saw Pallack shrug. “It doesn’t matter. Julia’s not important. If Makepeace kills her, it’s on his own dime, not ours. That’s what I told him. Go to bed, Charlotte. I’ll be up soon.”