Bombshell (AN FBI THRILLER)

by Catherine Coulter

  “Savich.”

  He listened to a hysterical Melissa Ivy screaming at him: “He’s dead! Oh, dear God, Peter’s dead!”

  “Where are you, Melissa?”

  “I’m in Peter’s apartment. I just walked in and he’s dead, do you hear me? He’s dead!”

  “Listen to me now, Melissa, I want you to call 911 and do as they say. Wait for the police. Tell them you called me. We’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

  “What?” Sherlock said.

  Savich punched in Detective Moffett’s cell number as he said to Sherlock, “Peter Biaggini’s dead. That was Melissa Ivy. She found him; she’s at his apartment.”

  “Stony and now Peter? What’s going on here? Oh, Delsey, this is about the Tommy Cronin murder. We’ve got another”—she gave a quick glance at Sean, who was all ears—“incident.”

  Delsey felt bile rise in her throat, gulped. “I’ll take care of Sean.” She looked down at the little boy, who was still staring at his parents. “Do you mind staying with me, Sean, while your parents go out and take care of some business?”

  Sean thought about this as he watched his father punch in a number on his cell.

  “Do I have to go to bed?”

  “Not yet. Let’s play some Hot Dogger. I’m good, really good at skateboarding, Sean. I can skateboard with the best of them.” Hot Dogger, Sean had told her, was like the real thing.

  “We only got Hot Dogger a week ago, but Daddy said I’m already a champion at it.”

  “We’ll see. You ready to put your thumbs where your mouth is, Sean?”

  “I want to play until Mommy and Daddy get home.”

  Delsey smiled back at Savich and Sherlock, nodding.

  On the third ring, Savich heard a low pissed-off voice. “Yeah? Moffett here. I’m not on call.”

  “Sorry, Detective, but I need you.”

  • • •

  IT TOOK THE PORSCHE only seven minutes to reach Peter Biaggini’s upscale apartment building at 322 Willard Avenue. Sherlock had put Mr. Maitland on speakerphone on the way, and he’d nearly flatlined at the news, and finally said he would notify Mr. August Biaggini. “Keep him away from his son’s apartment, sir, please,” Sherlock said.

  “Yes, I will. I’ll call Director Mueller, too. Guys, this can’t be happening. Three kids are dead, three promising young men. Three! And here I thought Peter Biaggini was behind Tommy Cronin’s death, that you were looking hard at him. Who’s responsible for this? We’ve got to put a stop to it, Savich.”

  There were four cop cars with their running lights on in front of the apartment building, and two plain Crown Vics. A dozen people were already milling around in the street, wondering what was going on. Savich pulled in behind Detective Moffett’s big black SUV. He must live close to be here so quickly.

  Savich’s first thought upon entering Peter Biaggini’s apartment was that Daddy must have laid out a bundle for this place—it was spacious, lots of windows. There was a single posh brass number spelled out on the door—Three. When you walked through it, you entered a large entryway that seemed to boast of space by wasting it. Large windows that had to mean lots of light and gorgeous wooden floors led your eyes to a kitchen out of the next century.

  They heard sobbing from the living room, but didn’t stop there. They walked to the master bedroom at the end of a wide hallway. The three cops near the doorway stepped aside. Detective Moffett said, “Not a pretty sight.”

  Peter Biaggini, twenty-two years old, lay sprawled on the floor at the foot of his king-size bed, on his back, his head and face a mess of gore. Blood splattered the pale gray bedspread, the gray leather easy chair, had even spewed in an arc high on the bedroom wall. His green cashmere sweater was soaked in his own blood, his blue jeans streaked with it, even down to his black sneakers. His bloodied cell phone lay on the rug next to his arm. And beside his cell lay a highly polished old Bren Ten.

  She looked up at Moffett. “The murder weapon and the killer left it beside him. Just walked over and dropped it. Leaving it here smacks of a professional, but the chances of that are highly unlikely.”

  Moffett said, “You’d better believe the killer wiped off the prints, and you can bet there’ll be no registration. It looks old, maybe 1970s. We’ll check it out.”

  Savich said, “I wonder why the killer didn’t take the pistol and dump it in the Potomac.”

  Sherlock went down on her knees beside Peter Biaggini’s body, fighting sadness and regret, trying to focus. She felt a moment of nausea, swallowed several times. She would have laid her hand against his cheek or his forehead to see how warm he was, but he didn’t have a cheek. There was so much blood in a human body. She touched her hand to his throat instead, feeling the sticky wet of his blood. She said, trying her best to keep her voice flat, “He’s still quite warm. I’d say he’d been dead only minutes before Melissa got here. When the doorbell buzzed I’ll bet Peter thought it was Melissa, so he opened the door without checking, or else he knew the person who killed him. When he saw the gun, I’m thinking he turned and ran, but his killer was right behind him. He would have slammed the bedroom door, locked it? Dillon, could you see if the door’s been damaged?”

  Savich said, “There’s no lock on the bedroom door, no need to shoot it open or slam into it. The killer opened it, and Peter turned to face him, his cell phone in his hand, only he didn’t have time to call 911.” Savich leaned down, carefully picked up the black cell phone beside Peter Biaggini’s right hand to check his calls.

  Sherlock sat back on her heels, careful not to touch anything else. She looked around her. “When the door flew open, Peter looked at his killer, maybe he was begging for his life, but it didn’t matter, his killer shot him twice in the head from no more than six feet away.”

  Sherlock got to her feet, stared down at Peter Biaggini. “What a waste, what a horrible waste.” And she thought, Peter, you poked at the wrong lion this time. This lion wasn’t twenty years old. He didn’t run away; no, this lion ate you.

  Savich said, “His last call was to Melissa Ivy forty-five minutes ago. I’ll get Ollie started on the rest of this call history.”

  Sherlock stared around the room. “Peter’s death—it makes no sense. We have to start fresh, Dillon, look at all our assumptions. Tommy, Stony, and Peter—they were friends most of their short lives. They had to be involved in something more dangerous than they knew, with people they shouldn’t have been.” She looked down once more at the ruin of Peter Biaggini. “They were in over their heads.”

  “Let’s see what Melissa knows,” Savich said.

  Melissa Ivy was rocking back and forth on the expensive burgundy leather sofa, her beautiful face slack, her eyes vague, unfocused. A female officer held a cup of no doubt very sweet tea in her hand, encouraging her to drink, then holding the cup to her mouth as she sipped, all the while speaking quietly to her, telling her to breathe.

  Melissa was wrapped up in two afghans that looked to be hand-knitted, Sherlock thought, probably by Peter’s mother. It was odd that she was sitting in a living room as modern as Wakefield Hart’s house in Tunney Wells.

  The female officer moved aside, and Savich sat beside Melissa, took her limp hand. “Melissa? Do you remember you called me? I’m Agent Savich. I need to speak with you, all right? I need your help.”

  There was no sign of life from Melissa, not a sound, not a blink, only her relentless rocking back and forth. It always surprised him at how quickly shock could leach the life out of a person. Even Melissa’s hair looked dull under the cold light of the fluorescent lamps scattered around the living room.

  Sherlock sat down on the sofa on Melissa’s other side, slipped her hand beneath the brilliant blue afghan, and lightly stroked her forearm. “Someone killed Peter, Melissa. Do you know who it was?”

  Melissa slowly turned her head to look at Sherlock, looked through her, really, Sherlock thought. “Did you see someone, Melissa? We want to catch the person who killed Peter. Can you help us?”


  Melissa licked her lips, leaned toward Sherlock, and whispered, “I didn’t know who you were until yesterday. Isn’t that strange? And now you’re stroking my arm because Peter’s dead. Three days—Tommy and Peter are both dead. Stony, too. How can that be?”

  “Talk to me, Melissa. Did you see anyone? Hear Peter speak to anyone?”

  Her voice was so thin Sherlock imagined she could see through it. “I talked to Janelle, Stony’s girlfriend. It was horrible she found Stony’s body. Just like I found Peter.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I wanted her to know how sorry I was. She . . . she couldn’t stop crying. She was waiting for her parents to drive in from Delaware to take her home.” She turned deadened eyes to Sherlock. “There isn’t anyone for me to go home to.”

  “Do you want me to call your folks?”

  “No, they’re in Kentucky, and they really wouldn’t want to come here. Do you know, I was thinking that Peter probably did drug me, even if he wasn’t using me for an alibi. I didn’t tell you, but I was real sore Saturday morning, like he’d done things to me he shouldn’t have. Peter was like that; he was cruel, he used people. Peter didn’t love me, not like Tommy did.”

  Her voice fell into a pit. She lowered her face in her hands, but she didn’t cry.

  Sherlock met Dillon’s eyes over Melissa’s head. His eyes were cold and flat, but he didn’t know what to say to this girl who’d gotten together with the wrong boy, a boy craven enough to give his girlfriend a roofie in her wine. In their first meeting with her, she’d lied through her perfect white teeth, but not now, she was too shocked, too strung out. She was only twenty years old, young enough to have believed even a week ago the world’s doors would be flung open for her. She was beautiful enough, surely, to attract boys with money to help her with her bills and tuition. But she’d never counted on a Peter Biaggini, and now her world was in tatters. She would have nightmares for a very long time, maybe for the rest of her life.

  Sherlock pulled Melissa into her arms and rocked her. Still, Melissa didn’t weep, didn’t move. Sherlock stroked her long, straight hair, then said against her cheek, “Why did you come over to Peter’s apartment, Melissa?”

  Silence, then a whisper: “He begged me to come over, said he needed me. I thought he wanted to apologize after our fight yesterday, wanted to make up. Now I’ll never know what he wanted to say to me.”

  Sherlock said, “Let’s go back a minute. You spent much of Saturday with Peter because both you and he were upset about Tommy?”

  “I think I was more upset than Peter was. He was quiet for a long time on Saturday, like he had a lot on his mind, like he was really worried rather than sad, or maybe he was scared of something.”

  Sherlock said, “Did you ask him what was wrong? If he was scared and why?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything. I started crying, not about how cold he was being, but about Tommy. I told Peter Tommy had really been a nice guy, and Peter gave this ugly laugh and said I was wrong about that. He said Tommy was no saint.

  “That was so weird, and I asked him why he’d say that, now that Tommy was dead, but he wouldn’t tell me. Then he got this look on his face like he’d come to some decision, nodding and talking to himself. He acted nervous, jumpy, you know what I mean?”

  “You don’t know what he was nervous about?”

  Melissa shook her head. “Since he was being such a jerk, I left. The snow had lightened up, so I hooked a ride on a motorcycle.”

  “Did you see Peter yesterday?”

  She nodded. “He called me after you interviewed him and his dad. He sounded really pleased with himself, said how he rubbed your noses in it since we were together in Georgetown Friday night, at that gallery.”

  Savich said, “Do you know if he spoke to Stony yesterday?”

  “I don’t know.” She raised her eyes to Savich’s face. “Stony killed himself. Why did he kill himself? I don’t understand it. All three of them are dead, just dead. Why?”

  “We have to find out,” Sherlock said. “Melissa, what exactly did you and Peter fight about last night before you went to the rave with Janelle?”

  “I finally accused him of drugging my wine. He denied it, of course, grinned at me. Do you know he said I should have some more of that wine, since it made me so wild? He thought he had the right, you know? Because he was helping me pay some bills. He didn’t have the right.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Sherlock said. “No one has that right.”

  Savich said, “You got here at what time, Melissa?”

  She blinked at him, as if she couldn’t quite understand what he’d said. She looked at Sherlock, who said, “Was it about nine o’clock when you knocked on his door?”

  “Closer to nine-fifteen, maybe.”

  Sherlock said. “Now, Melissa, I want you to think about when you arrived here at the apartment building tonight. Did you see anyone you didn’t recognize? Maybe someone running or walking very quickly here in the building or outside when you drove up?”

  She paused to think, and that was good, Savich thought; she was focusing her brain. Finally, she shook her head. “No, I didn’t see anybody.”

  Savich brought up hypnosis. Melissa said, “Do you think I could really remember more?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

  “Then I’ll think about it, I promise, Agent Savich,” she said, and turned back to stare down at her pink UGGs.

  Maestro, Virginia

  Monday evening

  Rolling clouds scuttled over the black sky again, threatening snow before morning. It was only nine o’clock, but already the temperature had dived so low it was too cold to breathe comfortably without a wool scarf covering your mouth.

  Griffin looked at Anna’s taillights, a couple dozen feet ahead. It seemed they were the only two people on the winding roads in Maestro. He knew she didn’t want to go back to her cottage, since she’d packed and locked her duffel in the trunk, but she hadn’t found Monk and she’d looked in all his hiding places. They’d find Monk together. When she’d said it was her fault because she’d spooked the cat, acted like a madwoman, he got in her face and told her not to be an idiot. He took her seriously when she’d told him if anyone at the B&B said anything about pets, she’d draw her gun and shoot them.

  She hadn’t wanted to have dinner at the Nobles’ house, but Griffin had known she needed the distraction, needed contact with the real world again. He’d talked about Dix’s barbecued ribs and potato salad and Ruth’s green salad she always made for show until he’d swear Anna was salivating.

  Anna wasn’t salivating now. She felt jumpy and worried, not only about Monk but about everything that was happening so fast she couldn’t get her mind around it.

  When she’d backed out of her driveway to follow Griffin to the Nobles’ house, she was wondering if she’d ever see her cottage again after today. No, it was all over for her here in Maestro, and it was all on her record—she’d failed here, miserably. Arnie Racker had been murdered under her nose, and she’d learned nothing of value except that being in Salazar’s house had gotten him killed—that, and her vastly improved violin technique. Six months wasted, along with the taxpayers’ money and her time. All of it made her want to scream and cry at the same time.

  Still, she thought now, Dix and Ruth had made her glad she’d come. It felt safe and warm in the Nobles’ house, and she’d felt herself relax with each passing minute. She’d packed away nearly as many ribs as the Nobles’ two sons, Rafe and Rob, good-looking teenagers who’d wanted to know everything about the shootings in Maestro. They groused and complained at the dinner table when their father cut short their questions, but they’d left happily enough to study, since that meant they wouldn’t have to help clean up.

  Dix sat back in his chair when he was sure they were out of hearing and folded his arms over his chest, now dead serious. “Claus couldn’t locate Chigger Chivers, even went out to that fleabag shack he lives in. He’s prob
ably okay; he can be hard to track down sometimes. But I agree with you, Anna, Chigger heard every word you guys said. Don’t know if he understood it all, since his brain’s been pickled for decades from all the moonshine he’s cooked over the years.”

  They were distracted when they heard Brewster yipping madly, and heard the boys talking and laughing as the front door closed behind them. Ruth said, “Brewster likes to dance in the snow, catch snowflakes in his mouth. Unfortunately, he never remembers he always sinks like a stone.” She paused and looked at Anna. “We’ll plan something out first thing tomorrow morning, Anna. Are you sure you don’t want to stay here tonight?”

  Anna carefully set down her coffee mug with MAESTRO COUGARS written in bold red across it. “Thank you, Ruth, but I’ll be fine with Griffin.” She looked at each of them. “I can’t stand that I’m afraid of those monsters. They can’t do this, guys. Not here, not to us.”

  Griffin lightly laid his hand over hers. “We’ll get it done.”

  She stood up. “I need to get back to my house and find Monk. Then I’ll follow Griffin to the B&B.”

  Griffin rose to stand beside her as she said her good-byes and walked beside her out to her Kia, his hand cupped around her neck.

  Yes, Griffin thought, they would get it done. His brain clicked back to the here and now and the casket-black darkness as he watched Anna pull her car into the driveway. He pulled in behind her. It boggled his brain when he realized he’d met her for the first time less than three days ago. He was thinking that over, starting to open his car door, when he realized something wasn’t right.

  The streetlight was out.

  He sat on his horn, shoved open the car door, and rolled out onto the driveway just as an automatic weapon opened up into his Camry, shredding the metal, shattering the windows, so many so fast the car seemed to lift and sway on the asphalt. He rolled behind the rear tire and was relieved to see Anna on her belly not ten feet from him, one arm covering her head, the other holding her Glock.