The FBI Thrillers Collection: Vol 11-15

by Catherine Coulter

  He arched a brow at her, then called after them, “Lucy, if you want to talk to me about what happened, give me a call.”

  Lucy didn’t slow, said over her shoulder, “I don’t think I’ll ever have anything else to say, Dillon, but thank you.”

  Coop stopped humming. “You’ll tell me all about the ring, won’t you, Lucy?”

  She didn’t look at him—the horror of what had happened was too fresh, the utter waste of it all. Miranda’s ruined face was clear in her mind; she could still see blind death in her eyes. She cut it off and looked up at Coop, hugged him to her side. “I want to tell you everything that’s important to me, Coop. Always.”

  CHAPTER 78

  Georgetown

  Sunday night

  Sherlock was giving a dishcloth a final pass over the kitchen counters when Jerry Lee Lewis sang out “Great Balls of Fire.” “Oh, dear, I hate it when the phone rings this late.”

  “Savich.”

  “Ben here, Savich.” He paused for a moment, breathed in deeply. “Mrs. Patil is dead.”

  “What? Jasmine Patil? Not Mr. Patil?”

  “That’s right. She was picking up some papers that needed Mr. Patil’s signature in the office of the Georgetown Shop ’n Go. The clerk, Rishi Ram, a Patil cousin many times removed, heard a gunshot and ran back to the office, saw Mrs. Patil’s head on the desk, her blood everywhere, covering all the papers. He said he called nine-one-one right away, then ran to the back door, which is usually locked, saw it was wide open. He said he ran outside, saw a car driving away.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “He thought it was a Kia, black, didn’t see the license plate or the driver. Then he burst into tears and said it could have been a Cadillac, for all he knew. His mom owned a Kia, and so he’d just said that. Go figure.”

  “Is Mr. Patil still in the hospital?”

  “No, he went home yesterday. I was told he’s recovering nicely. And now this. First him and now his wife.” Ben drew in a deep breath. “He doesn’t know yet. The cousin many times removed is still with the police. Will you come with me to tell him?”

  “Yes, I’ll come.”

  “Meet me there, okay?”

  “Twenty minutes,” Savich said, and punched off his cell.

  Sherlock was squeezing his hand. “Dillon, Mrs. Patil was shot? She’s dead?”

  Savich nodded, but he was silent, staring toward the two pumpkins he and Sherlock had carved for Halloween. He saw a couple of pumpkin seeds on the floor, bent over and picked them up. “I’d hoped, even prayed, we were wrong, but I knew in my gut what had happened. But we didn’t follow through fast enough; there was too much going on. That’s why I asked Ben to assign a cop to Mr. Patil. I didn’t see what was coming. I’m an idiot.”

  She lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek. “No, you’re not an idiot. Just think about everything that’s been happening—talk about a lot on your plate.”

  “Well, yes, but I should have given it more thought.”

  “Now you will, and now you’ll act.”

  He nodded, smacked his fist against the kitchen table. The salt shaker did a small dance before settling again. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

  She hugged him fiercely. “You can’t control what other people choose to do, Dillon. All you can do is set it right. Come home to us soon.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Savich pulled his Porsche in behind Ben’s pickup at the curb in front of the Patil home.

  Ben stepped out of his truck, stuck his head in the open Porsche window, and said without preamble, “This sucks.”

  Savich leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I didn’t think this through logically. I’m really sorry about this, Ben.”

  “You’re figuring this the same way I am, aren’t you?”

  Savich nodded.

  Ben smacked his fist on the car window’s ledge. “I’m sorry, too. The thing is, I can’t think of a more likely scenario. I hate this; I hate this to my bones.”

  Savich was tired, so weary of death and how it tore apart the fabric of life of all those left behind to pick up the shreds. “Let’s get it done.”

  Mr. Nandi Patil was sitting in a lovely red leather La-Z-Boy in the Patil living room, at least a half dozen sons, daughters, cousins, and friends surrounding him. His color was good; he was nodding at something his friend Mr. Amal Urbi was saying. Mr. Urbi, Savich thought, looked more fragile than Mr. Patil, ready to topple over. His pants tonight were belted up near his armpits, his white hair even wispier than the last time he’d seen him. No, not quite two weeks, Savich thought, and simply looked at each of them in turn. He saw Mr. Krishna Shama was sitting beside his desiccated uncle, dressed casually in slacks and shirt, Italian loafers on his narrow feet, looking, to Savich’s eyes, bored.

  Mr. Patil looked up, beamed a smile. “Agent Savich, my very good friend, and Detective Raven, come in, come in. Jasmine will be home soon. I asked her to bring me a contract from my office.”

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Patil?” Savich asked him as he moved to stand in front of the fireplace.

  “I am alive, still, something of a surprise, I must admit. I feel ever so much better than I did last week, Agent Savich. To what do I owe this honor?”

  Ben asked, “Where is Officer Warrans?”

  “Ah, the dear man is in the kitchen, eating some of Cook’s delicious naan, fresh out of the oven. She is famous for her naan.”

  Ben said, “I am very sorry to tell you this, sir, but your wife was shot to death an hour ago at your store in Georgetown.”

  His shock was tangible, Savich thought, thick and hard and sour. Then came disbelief, heartbreak, questions, fury—the whole gamut of emotions.

  Savich looked at no one except Nandi Patil. He would have sworn, as would Ben, that Mrs. Patil was the one who’d tried to murder her husband, and that he had retaliated.

  But it wasn’t so, Savich thought. No, not Mr. Patil, not this man who was suffering, his eyes blurred over with tears.

  Suddenly, Mr. Patil clutched his heart and began wheezing for breath. They should have brought a doctor, he thought. Damn his arrogance for believing that since Mr. Patil had killed his wife in retribution, no physician would be necessary.

  He was at Mr. Patil’s side in a moment. Then a voice from the doorway said, “Move aside. I am a paramedic. I will see to him.” A young woman, heavyset, her thick black hair in a long ponytail, ran to Mr. Patil and pressed a metal canister of medication to his mouth.

  Mr. Patil finally sucked in a deep breath.

  “He’s having a bronchospasm. For heaven’s sake, what did you say to him? What brought this on?”

  “His wife was murdered tonight,” Ben said matter-of-factly to the young woman.

  “Aunt Jasmine? Murdered? What is going on in this freaking family!”

  It began again, outrage, disbelief, fury at Mr. Patil’s near-death right here in his own living room at the devastating news brought without warning by the FBI and the WPD.

  Savich let it go on for a minute or two, until he was convinced Mr. Patil would be all right. He raised a hand until everyone fell silent.

  “Mr. Patil, we are all very sorry about this. Now, I need all of you to listen to us.” Savich nodded to Ben.

  Ben said, “I regret to tell you, sir, that we believe your wife was involved in hiring those two people who tried to kill you, posing as robbers. Agent Savich killed one of them and the other is in jail, refusing to say a word. When the first attempt failed, we believe she herself came to the store at closing time and shot you in the back.”

  Nandi Patil stared blankly at them, shaking his head back and forth. “No, this cannot be true, it cannot. Jasmine has loved me forever, even more than I loved her, truth be told. She was a vivid light, no, she could not have tried to murder me.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” Savich said. “When she was murdered tonight, both Detective Raven and I believed you were responsible, that you had found out she’d
tried to kill you, and it was your vengeance.”

  Nandi Patil gaped at him. “No, no.”

  Savich turned to face Krishna Shama. “You and Mrs. Patil were having an affair, Mr. Shama. We are aware of that. Did you want to end it? Why? Because of the closeness of your uncle and Mr. Patil? Because Jasmine was so much older than you were? Why, Mr. Shama?”

  Shama looked from Ben Raven back to Savich. “Yes, Jasmine and I were lovers, for nearly a year. I never wanted to end our affair; I never wanted to leave her. I loved her, but now she is dead. I think Mr. Patil killed her.”

  Tears rolled down Mr. Patil’s face. He’d been rocked to his soul in the past ten minutes. His eyes looked blank with shock.

  Krishna Shama said, “Listen to me. I did not kill Jasmine. I did not know she had tried to murder Mr. Patil. I did not know.”

  Savich turned to Mr. Urbi. “You and Nandi have been friends since you were children. You are older, though, aren’t you, sir?”

  “By twelve years. A lifetime of difference in our ages,” the old man said. He was sitting perfectly still, not even blinking.

  “You love Nandi like a younger brother, don’t you, sir?”

  “Yes, of course. He is very important to me. His near death filled me with grief.”

  “And then you discovered your nephew and Jasmine Patil were lovers. They had betrayed both you and Nandi. You were furious, weren’t you, sir?”

  “That is right. When Detective Raven questioned us after the robbery, he left me with doubts, merely suspicions—glances, phrases that had passed between Jasmine and Krishna that I realized I had chosen to ignore. And when Nandi was shot a second time, it all became clear to me. To be absolutely sure, I paid a large sum of money to that criminal, Mr. Wenkel, through his lawyer, to confirm to me privately that it was Jasmine who had hired him.

  “Nandi isn’t of my flesh and blood, but he is my brother in all ways that are important on this benighted earth. He did not realize, could not see what she had become. Had I told him she had betrayed him, that she continued to betray him with my own flesh and blood, this worthless jackal sitting here all proud beside me, Nandi would not have believed me. As you see, he will never believe she tried to have him killed for his money. She and the jackal would have won.” He waved a veiny hand toward his nephew.

  The room was utterly silent now. No one seemed to breathe.

  Ben said, “You waited until Mr. Patil came home from the hospital, waited until you were certain he could survive the blow, and then you hired someone to kill her, to end it all, to avenge your friend’s betrayal by his wife.”

  Mr. Urbi only nodded. He looked up and gave them both a very sweet smile. “I know what your district attorney will want to do with me, but I am too near to death now to worry about that. I am not worth spending the taxpayers’ money on a trial.”

  “Uncle, no!”

  “Be quiet, Krishna. You have dishonored me; you have dishonored my closest friend in the world. I will never speak to you again. Do you understand that you are nothing now to me? That you are as worthless as dung?”

  Krishna Shama bowed his head.

  Again, the room was perfectly quiet.

  Mr. Patil said, “You, Krishna, how could you do this? I don’t understand. But, then, I am an old man. It is true that I have only the memory of lust and what it leads men and women to do that dishonors them and is so very hurtful to those they supposedly care about. Jasmine, I knew I’d lost her desire, but I did not mind all that much. Your uncle took vengeance, and I am sorry about that.” Mr. Patil turned to his friend. “Amal, I would not have killed Jasmine for betraying me, even for trying to kill me. What I would have done is divorce her, made certain she did not have a single penny, and I would have kicked her out into the street. Honor, Amal? Killing her has brought me back my honor? Hardly. You have brought only death into my house.

  “I would like to be alone now, if it is all right with you, Agent Savich and Detective Raven. I would like not to have to look upon either of these men’s faces again. As it is, I will still see them in my dreams, and that is a great pity.”

  Savich took Mr. Patil’s hands in his. “I am so sorry about all of this, Mr. Patil.”

  Mr. Patil raised pain-deadened eyes to Savich’s face. “I know that you are. You are that kind of man.”

  CHAPTER 80

  Nob Hill, San Francisco

  Wednesday evening

  Inspector Vincent Delion was curious but was content to sit back in an elegant wing chair worth more than his son’s used Honda and stare out the huge glass window of Clifford Childs’s living room at the view of San Francisco Bay. And watch Agents Cooper McKnight and Lucy Carlyle both turn their laser intelligence loose on Sentra Bolger.

  Sentra Bolger sat on a lovely blue-patterned brocade sofa, her very nice legs crossed, a cup of green tea in her hand. She was wearing very high heels with open toes, showing off her lovely French pedicure. She looked expensive all over, Delion thought, in a long black gown that left one white shoulder bare, her dark hair pulled back in a polished chignon. She also looked like the queen of her kingdom, her consort guarding her back.

  Clifford Childs stood behind her, his hand resting possessively on her bare shoulder. Childs said, impatience making his voice sharp as glass, “We agreed to see you on short notice, but we are expected shortly at Davies Hall. The symphony performs Mendelssohn this evening, and Sentra is very fond of Mendelssohn. I would like to know what this is all about, why you wish to speak to her.”

  Coop pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. The movement brought only a slight pull in his side, better every day now, thank the Lord.

  Both Sentra Bolger and Clifford Childs looked at the purple cell phone, then at Coop’s face.

  Lucy said, “Ms. Bolger, Kirsten called you over a dozen times over the past two months. The last time she called you, Agent McKnight was in the car, as Kirsten’s hostage. I understand you gave her some advice?”

  Sentra’s elegant white hands were still, her fingers relaxed. Her expression didn’t change. She sighed. “I didn’t say anything to Clifford, because I didn’t wish to worry him, but the truth is, Agents, I wondered when you would arrive. I had thought about calling you to ask about Kirsten’s real condition, since the media is spouting so much nonsense about her.”

  Childs picked it up, disgust thick in his voice. “Including interviews with each celebrity attorney who wants to represent her, probono, the jackals. Is that the truth?”

  Coop said, “I will tell you exactly what I know, Ms. Bolger, Mr. Childs, and then we will speak about your conversations with your niece. As a matter of fact, Kirsten’s injuries are responding well to treatment. She may be suffering psychologically, though. She hasn’t said a word for several days. Our psychologists have tried, and can’t get her to speak. Her being depressed would be understandable, what with getting shot and captured, her boyfriend, Bruce Comafield, dead. The last thing she said was to me in Florida when we captured her: ‘I wonder what Daddy would say.’”

  Sentra shook her head, and her voice was filled with sorrow. “Poor child. She idolized the man and started thinking she could talk to him at times. Perhaps it was her reaction to Elizabeth—her mother. How she never said a word about Bundy to Kirsten, indeed, not even telling her who her father was until, well, Kirsten already knew and confronted her.”

  Lucy sat forward in her chair. “You told her, didn’t you, Ms. Bolger? You’re the one who told her about Ted Bundy.”

  Sentra nodded. “She was twenty-five. When she was a child, she asked Elizabeth who her father was, and Elizabeth made up some malarkey about his being a Navy SEAL who was killed in a training accident. In any case, yes, I told her the truth, she deserved to know. All the books talk about how handsome he was, how charming, but that doesn’t begin to capture what Ted really was—a shining star, and so fascinating he could charm the tattoo right off a cell mate.” She shook herself, smiled. “I told her how gaga her mother was over him, how much s
he wanted to marry him. Now, there’s a dollop of irony.” She paused for a moment, as if considering it, then, “I offered to date him, too, once they broke up, but Ted turned me down, said one woman with my sister’s face was more than enough. I remember telling him he was missing out, big-time, that I was much smarter and more beautiful than Elizabeth, and he laughed, said, ‘No, thanks,’ and then he turned that wicked smile of his on me and said maybe he’d look me up someday.

  “Of course, neither Elizabeth nor I ever heard from him again. He didn’t know he left Elizabeth pregnant with Kirsten. I rather think it was a good thing he didn’t come back. He was killing by then, you know, in 1977, for three years at that point, probably longer, but who knew? If he had come back, would he have killed her? Me?

  “Neither of us knew what he was, what he’d done, until he was caught. We couldn’t believe it, really—that Ted would kidnap young women, rape and torture them, then murder them. What he did to them after that, well, that’s best not visited, is it?”

  Clifford Childs said, “I tell Sentra she and her sister were very lucky. What if Bundy had turned on them, tried to murder them, as he had so many women?” He actually shuddered, tightened his hand on Sentra’s shoulder. “I’ll never forget when we got the news he’d escaped, somewhere in Colorado. It took them forever to catch him, but they did, thank God. When he was finally executed in Florida, I bought up the most expensive champagne in my wine cellar—Krug, Clos du Mesnil, 1980. Sentra, my darling, I remember you didn’t wish to drink much of that precious ambrosia. It was hard for you, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I realized the finality of it, Clifford, that he was truly gone forever. It’s difficult, still, to come to grips with the fact of what Ted actually did to those women, and to realize that the man we knew felt nothing for those women he brutalized, he never saw them as people who just wanted to live, to enjoy life as best they could, to see a future. He lost his conscience, his very soul, I guess you could say, if he ever had either of those commodities in the first place. I would say the evil chemicals twisting his brain finally made him more monster than human. Toward the end, I suspect his wife must have realized that as well, and grew afraid for herself and her daughter. I was relieved when I read she left Florida all those years ago.” She clasped, unclasped her hands, looked at them with finality. “There is nothing more to say. Poor Kirsten has his blood, the same insanity flows through her.”