The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  Sherlock asked him, "Have you investigated it in any other way?"

  "Do you mean have I climbed in the oak tree beside my window to see if there are any remnants of rope or footprints or broken branches? Yes, the private investigator did that. He found nothing. Neither did Corlie or my sons." He began turning the elegant gold Mont Blanc pen over and over between his fingers, frowning at it. "I did tell another person, my best friend outside of politics, actually. We're both avid golfers. We play golf every Saturday we can get together."

  "His name, Senator?"

  Hoffman's dark eyes slid over Sherlock's bright hair a moment, then he said, "Gabe Hilliard. He owns half a dozen security firms around the country, one of them here in D.C. I've known him forever. He's an excellent friend, rock-solid. He'll never tell anyone about this. Like me, he has no clue what's going on, but he's concerned."

  Sherlock wrote down his name and particulars.

  "I told you about Gabe just because you want all names of those I've confided in. You're thinking it makes sense that one possible explanation behind all this is someone gaslighting me. Maybe, but I can't think of anyone with a motive."

  Savich asked, "Are both your sons financially secure?"

  The senator said, "They assure me their finances are in order for the moment, even though their wives wiped the floor with them. I haven't personally checked their portfolios. I can't imagine their lying to me about money since if either of them had financial problems, they'd come running, you can bet your Porsche on that, Agent Savich. Beautiful machine, by the way."

  Savich smiled.

  Sherlock said, "Unfortunately, Senator, both of your sons are hurting financially. Yet you say neither has come asking for help?"

  "No, neither of them. I should have assumed you'd know everything about me and my family before you set foot in my house. So the little blighters have run through the interest on their trust funds, have they? And their quite generous salaries? Thank God for their families that my lawyer convinced me to protect the principal until they're both fifty." He tapped the pen on the beautiful mahogany desktop. "Three years ago, I told them they were adults, and it was time they acted like adults. There would be no more handouts, they were to be responsible for themselves and their families, it was past time for them to be men.

  "You're thinking they may have rigged up a ghost to scare me out of my wits? So they could declare me incompetent, get their hands on my money? I'm enough of a cynic to be effective in the world, Agent Sherlock, but I can't believe that of my sons. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they haven't told others about their crazy old man over an expensive glass of white wine. Neither of them could keep a confidence if their marriages depended on it. Let me say they're both divorced, twice, so I rest my case."

  The sons, Savich knew, Aiden and Benson, had grown up with too much money and not enough boundaries, and, as Sherlock had noted on her background check before they'd come to the senator's home, they both appeared to be dogs when it came to marital constancy.

  "And my sons certainly have a solid motive, I can see that. I guess there's no one else besides Aiden and Benson with any kind of motive." He sat back in his big chair, steepled his fingers.

  "Agents, my sons are both prosaic thinkers. They see something they want and they think, 'I want that,' and they head for it like a guided missile. This situation-it is inventive, creative, wouldn't you say? Shows resourcefulness and ingenuity?"

  Savich nodded.

  "To be brutally honest here, my sons couldn't hatch up a creative idea between them no matter how much money was at stake."

  Savich said, "You're saying then that if your sons were broke and had to have money, they'd simply come over here and shoot you in the head?"

  The senator laughed. "Quite an image, Agent Savich. But that isn't what they'd do either. They would probably come over and beg. If they're behind this manifestation, believe me, someone else came up with the idea, someone else is driving them, telling them what to do." He shook his head decisively. "Neither of them is fashioned in the right mold to pull this off."

  "The right mold?"

  Hoffman nodded to Savich. "All they like to think about is sailing, eating clams on the beach with as many scantily clad women as they can attract, and jetting off to Milan to buy their next Armani suit or sports car. They have jobs because the presidents of both companies are longtime friends of mine. As far as I can tell, their lives are pretty much a waste. I say that with great sadness. As their father, I must bear the responsibility, and I do. My wife and I did try, we did. What went wrong? What could we have done differently? I've asked myself that question many times, but I just don't know."

  No boundaries, too much money, Savich thought again, and wondered why the obvious answer didn't hit the senator between the eyes.

  "Their saving grace is that between them, they've produced three smart kids, all by their first wives, two boys and one girl. All three are hard workers who'll amount to something." The senator sat back and sighed. "However, I have to stand by what I said. This simply isn't like my sons, and their well-developed survival instincts wouldn't allow them to hire anyone to do it."

  Savich asked, "Has this manifestation appeared anywhere else, sir? Like outside your office window in the Hart Office Building?"

  The senator laid down the pen and raised his eyes to Savich's face. "No. Only here. Only around midnight, only outside my bedroom window. I will be honest here, Agents, I have no more thoughts or suspicions, no more obvious avenues to try."

  Hoffman sat back in his big chair. "Like all my legislative colleagues, I have made a great many enemies, as well as a great many friends. I imagine that a couple dozen of my political opponents would gladly see me retired, but to try to drive me crazy? Hmm." He grinned as he shook his head. "Nah, not at all likely.

  "That's why I called you, Agent Savich. You were recommended to me by Director Mueller because you've studied things, even experienced things, that can't be easily explained, and dealt with people and events that are frankly-bizarre.

  "If there's the possibility that this-thing-is, well, otherworldly, I thought you might be the best person to help me."

  Savich knew Hoffman sat rock solid in the center of the political spectrum, always trying to draw the extremes toward him. I represent the great intelligent American majority, he'd say. He knew Hoffman was smart, something of a hardnose. He was rarely mealy-mouthed or equivocal when asked a question, like the vast majority of politicians. He wasn't known to spin an answer or evade or immediately blame someone else. Not the kind of person you would expect to start hallucinating or have a mental breakdown.

  He was a tall man, slender and fit, and had celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday two months earlier. His eyes, a bit slanted at the corners, were a foggy gray, intense eyes that bespoke power, the doling out of favors as well as punishments. He imagined Hoffman looked quite natural and in complete control of his world in that big executive chair before this happened. But today, this morning, he looked bone weary, a man on the edge. He couldn't keep his hands still.

  Savich rose. "I'd like to see your bedroom."

  5

  As the three of them walked up the wide oak staircase, Savich said, "Have you told anyone about our coming to see you this morning, Senator?"

  Hoffman shook his head. "I told Corlie I had a meeting with some friends at the house. I said nothing to anyone else. I suppose Director Mueller knows, since I spoke to him about you, but that's it."

  Savich nodded. "I'm relieved you haven't been intimidated, Senator, that you refuse to be frightened out of your own bedroom, because I very much want you to sleep in your own bed tonight."

  "I was thinking you and Agent Sherlock would want to sleep in my bedroom."

  "No, we'll be in the backyard. We're going to try to come in unseen. Do you have any staff living in?"

/>   "No. The housekeeper, Mrs. Romano, and the cook, Mrs. Hatfield, both leave at five unless I'm entertaining, then they stay."

  "Be sure they don't know anyone will be coming tonight, all right?"

  Senator Hoffman nodded.

  The master bedroom looked like a monk's cell, big, white, stark, and sparsely furnished. Too much empty space, Sherlock thought as she ran her fingers over the black leather easy chair in the sitting area, which was dominated by a television large enough to service a small theater. The king-size bed had a simple dark blue coverlet over it, no pillows or accessories of any kind. There was a large plain dresser, and one additional chair, perhaps used by the senator when he put on his shoes in the morning. There wasn't a single painting on the stark white walls, not a single knickknack in view except for a beautiful, very feminine jewelry box on top of the dresser. She watched Dillon walk over to the windows, and brought the senator's attention back to her. "The jewelry box, sir, was it your wife's?"

  He started to say yes, then swallowed and simply nodded. Dreadful pain there still, it hadn't faded, even after three years. When she'd first met Dillon and someone would mention his deceased father, Buck Savich, she remembered the same flash of pain in his eyes. She wanted to tell him it would fade into soft memories, as hers had with her sister Belinda. She asked, "How long were you married, Senator?"

  "Thirty-nine years. Her name was Nikki. She was only sixty-one when she died. She promised me she'd make her birthday, and she did, barely. But you know this already, Agent Sherlock. The director told me the two of you never went into anything blind if you had a choice. And, yes, I've heard of MAX, Savich's laptop that he's programmed to do pretty much everything but call the Redskins' games. I'll bet if I wore toenail polish, you'd know the color and the brand."

  "I'm very glad that you don't," she said, and smiled up at him. Again he looked at her hair and his breathing hitched. She lightly laid her fingertips on his forearm, offering, she hoped, some hope and comfort.

  He wasn't big and muscular like Dillon, but she'd bet he was stronger than he looked, this aristocratic man who was older than her father, a federal judge who still terrorized defense attorneys. He seemed both very human and infinitely sane. She liked him.

  When Dillon came away from the window, he smiled at her and nodded toward the door. "We're done here, Senator."

  "Did you see anything, Agent Savich?"

  "A very nice backyard, Senator. The woods, how far back do they go?"

  "They're not that deep. The brick wall continues all the way around the property. There are two gates, one in the front and a smaller one in the back for the garbage people and repair people who come in on a narrow access road running alongside it."

  A perfect place, Sherlock thought, drive right in, and pull out your gate key-oh, yes, whoever was behind this had a gate key-and set up this elaborate gaslight charade. She gave the senator's bedroom one last look. She realized now what he'd done. All the bareness, all the absence of any mementoes of their life, except for his wife's jewelry box, he'd simply moved everything out, and not replaced it with anything of himself. After three years, it was still too soon.

  Sherlock and Savich stopped a moment on the wide front veranda of the colonial mansion and enjoyed the morning sun shining down on the colorful flowerbeds lining the front of the house. It was early September and the trees were still full and lush.

  Sherlock asked him, "Sir, are you seeing anyone socially?"

  He looked startled, and then she saw a tightening around his mouth. "Not really," he said, again looking at her hair. "Well, yes, occasionally, I see Janine Koffer, she's Lane Koffer's widow, you know, the former secretary of state? He died two years ago. Prostate cancer."

  He slept with her, Savich thought, and it made sense. Washington, he'd learned over the years, was a very lonely place, despite the scores of young people bursting its seams with their undisciplined boundless energy, their still unfocused ambitions. If you were smart, you took your comfort where it wouldn't come back to bite you in the butt.

  Savich and Sherlock shook Hoffman's hand. "Please do what you normally do, Senator," Savich said, "and remember, don't breathe a word of our coming tonight to anyone, Corliss Rydle, your cook, Mrs. Koffer, anyone."

  "All right. When will you come tonight?"

  Savich shook his hand. "I'd just as soon you didn't know any more than you do now, sir. But we'll be here."

  6

  "I saw it come from behind those oak trees," Sherlock said, pointing, "moving slowly, hesitantly, like it didn't know where it wanted to go. But look now, it's moving fast, in a straight line to the senator's bedroom window."

  Savich said, "I'd hoped it would come down from the roof."

  "Easier to yank up, you mean? For the instant vanishing act?"

  "It seems the easiest way for human hands to control it." Savich raised his cell phone, zoomed in, and snapped several pictures of the apparition fast approaching the second-floor bedroom window. They watched it close in, then simply hang there a moment before it began moving about, billowing, then dancing up and down.

  "You know it's got to be human hands, Dillon, given that enthusiastic performance," Sherlock whispered. "I'd say a standard-size pillowcase, like the senator said, a whole lot of thread count, very fine material, probably Italian."

  "Let's go find how they're doing this," Savich said, took her hand, and turned into the woods. They stopped cold at odd huffing sounds from behind them, like someone trying to breathe, Savich thought, like the senator's dying wife trying to breathe. It seemed to be coming from the house. The senator had nailed the sound.

  "There must be some wires, something." Sherlock adjusted her night-vision goggles. She always kept her feet planted on terra firma. "I'll bet you're thinking it's someone in the family, too, admit it. Family-it's depressing. Cursed money, it's behind too much bad in this world.

  "I'm glad whoever's behind this believed it was just fine to perform tonight. I don't see a wire or anything, do you, Dillon?"

  They stood quietly at the spot where the apparition had floated out of the woods, staring up, looking for a wire, anything. "Not yet," he whispered.

  As she scanned the trees, she whispered back, "I wonder how the person responsible for this ghost performance plans to get the senator's money? Surely he or she doesn't expect the senator to die of fright or run screaming to an asylum, so they can pronounce him incompetent? And why would he flip out now if he hasn't already? Why keep it up? Sounds like a real long shot to me."

  They combed through the oak and maple trees. No wire in sight.

  "So it's a very fine wire, or could the whole thing be radio controlled? But it has to originate from somewhere, somewhere in sight," she said.

  Savich opened the back gate that gave onto the small access road at the back of the property. When they'd left the senator's house that morning, they'd checked the area behind the property. They saw only the same two crushed empty beer cans, the same half-dozen cigarette butts.

  There was no sign of anyone or any sort of vehicle, no sign of any mechanism they could see orchestrating the flight of the dancing pillowcase.

  "I don't get it," Sherlock said. "Where is it?"

  Savich paused, became perfectly still and focused. He heard the sounds of the night-a single owl hooting, crickets and cicadas clicking, rustling bushes as small animals moved through. He became aware of the air, warm and soft against his skin, an early fall feel to it, promising change, but not here just yet. Then suddenly the air seemed curiously charged, like a live wire sparking against his cheek. The air seemed to have tangible weight now, physically pushing against him. Now what was this all about? Then the air stilled and became warm once again, and he would swear the sounds of the small varmints scurrying around in the woods became louder.

  They walked back toward the house, but saw nothin
g. It was gone. He whispered against Sherlock's ear, her curly hair tickling his mouth, "I'm thinking this whole thing has nothing at all to do with the senator's wastrel sons. I think it's about something else entirely."

  "You think it's maybe some sort of hologram? But who's projecting it, and from where?"

  He shook his head against her hair. "No, our manifestation isn't a hologram."

  "Please, Dillon, don't tell me you think it's really woo woo."

  "Well, there's something different happening here," Savich said, and kissed her ear. "We'll just have to see."

  Sherlock rubbed her arms even though the night was warm. "You think it's the dead wife, don't you? You think it's Nikki?"

  He nodded. "I felt as if something or someone is trying to communicate. It would seem the senator isn't able to understand. But it keeps trying. His wife, Nikki? Maybe."

  Sherlock said, "But we're here and it was here as well. If it is Nikki, you think she came because she thought you could help? You'd recognize who and what she was?"

  "All good questions. It's been over fifteen minutes, and there's nothing here now. Let's go home."

  "Dillon, there's something I don't understand." She was frowning toward the senator's bedroom window.

  He waited, his fingers rubbing the back of her hand.

  "I would expect you to see it. But what about me? I've never seen anything. But I saw it too, clear as day."

  "So did the senator."

  7

  GEORGETOWN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Monday morning

  Savich was wide awake at two a.m., listening to Sherlock's even breathing, wondering if a ghost was going to come tell him a story.