A Dangerous Game

by Heather Graham

  “This is something you need to see,” Dr. Andrews said.

  He was inspecting the corpse’s mouth.

  They all moved over, one by one, and the ME pointed out the woman’s dental work.

  Craig had no idea of what he was looking at—only silver fillings here and there.

  He knew that Andrews would explain.

  “I believe that this woman is approximately forty—though she does look fifty. She has not, however, recently borne a child, so the baby is not hers. What I was showing you, that isn’t American dental work, and it isn’t new. It was probably done more than ten years ago, and I’d say that it was done somewhere in Eastern Europe—a country that was once part of the Soviet Union or under the Communist bloc, most likely. Russia maybe, the Ukraine...but, then again, maybe Albania or somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. In other words, I do believe she’s of Eastern European descent, but she’s not malnourished. She’s healthy—just worn. I don’t believe she’s taken care of herself well—she’s probably faced tremendous stress to look ten years older than I believe her age to be. She’s worked hard—manually, I believe. Take a look at her hands. Possibly, she worked as a maid. We’re trying for an ID, naturally, through fingerprints. We’ll search through dental records, but I doubt we’ll find local records for her.”

  “We are testing to see if she was related to the baby,” Craig said. It wasn’t really a question; it was an obvious action to be taken.

  “Of course,” Andrews said. He looked at Lance Kendall. “As your FBI team members noted, the one stab wound in the back that killed her most probably occurred swiftly—she didn’t know what hit her. She staggered toward Miss Finnegan in the street because you instinctively turn when you’re attacked from behind. The attack was planned and fluid—that type of knife isn’t just in everyone’s daily purse or briefcase.”

  “So our Jane Doe was followed to the offices of Fuller and Miro. And she went to those offices to hand the baby to Kieran Finnegan. Why?” Kendall asked.

  “We don’t know,” Craig said. Andrews cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, I’ve given you what I can. I’ll make sure you all receive a hard copy of the report. If we discover anything else on our end, of course, you’ll be notified.”

  “What about ethnicity through DNA?” Craig asked.

  “Well, we might be able to pinpoint an area of most likely ancestry,” Andrews said.

  “That will be helpful,” Craig said.

  “Of course,” Andrews said. “I’ll keep everyone informed on any information that I get. As soon as I have it, naturally.” He stared at them all.

  It was their cue to leave. The three of them thanked him and headed toward the building entrance. As they did so, a man was hurrying in. He was very tall and lean, with tawny eyes and sandy hair. He was in a polo shirt and jeans and a jacket. Beneath the jacket, Craig was aware, the man was carrying a weapon.

  “LeBlanc?” he asked. “Hank LeBlanc?”

  The US Marshal nodded and intros went around. “So we have the whole gang. I imagine we’ll get a counterpart from Homeland Security before this is all over,” LeBlanc said.

  “Good,” Kendall responded, his voice vehement. They all looked at him, and he shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get somewhere, working together. As long as we all keep it real—keep the contact going.”

  “Sure, yeah. Of course,” LeBlanc said. “I, uh, I’m trying to see if I recognize our dead woman right now, if she might have been one of ours. Informant or witness. We lose them now and then. Except...”

  “Except what?” Craig asked.

  “She’s not one of ours, I’m pretty sure. I’m here because they want every t crossed on this thing. If she had been ours, we would have known something. Everyone in every local agency knows about this—we all know enough to know we don’t know a damned thing but that someone thinks they’re getting away with murder.”

  “Not this time,” Kendall said flatly.

  “Nope, not this time,” Mike agreed. “Hell, the best of the best, right? We’re all on it.”

  Nods went around.

  “We’ll keep it tight,” Mike said. “I’ll be the liaison between agencies—make sure we’re always all up to speed on what’s going on.”

  LeBlanc thanked him and headed on in as they continued out to the street.

  “So the woman—our dead woman—knew your girlfriend by name,” Kendall said to Craig as they reached the street.

  “We established that the other night,” Craig said.

  “There has to be a reason,” Kendall said.

  “Yes, we actually figured that, too,” Mike said quickly, his tone easy, as if he was afraid that Kendall and Craig might get heated over the facts. “But, as you know, Kieran had never seen the woman before. Of course, we all realize that the woman knew about Kieran somehow—or, perhaps, she knew about Fuller and Miro and knew that Kieran handled a great deal of their therapy and exploratory work. She might have a reputation for having tremendous empathy—as someone who would take care of a baby.”

  “And Kieran still can’t think of anything or anyone who might feel that way about her?” Kendall asked Craig.

  “No. And it’s driving her crazy.”

  “Might have to do with that thing in the subway from a couple of years ago now. Miss Finnegan was all over the news then,” Kendall said.

  Craig wasn’t sure why Kendall reminding him of Kieran’s situation in the subway a few years back disturbed him so much. Actually, she had been meant as a target—but a young girl had wound up being pushed and nearly died a horrible death as a train was speeding into the station.

  Kieran had caught her. And when assailed by the press, she just murmured, “Anyone would lend a helping hand.”

  It became a temporary motto for the city.

  Actually, it was a pity it hadn’t seemed to have stuck around longer.

  “That is possible,” Mike said.

  Craig knew why he was disturbed.

  Damn it. The man was right. Maybe whoever this woman was, she remembered the subway incident, too. And she had heard of Kieran and...

  If someone could save a baby, maybe it was her?

  “I’m not sure it matters how this woman found Kieran. The thing is, she did,” he said gruffly. “But, that it was Kieran she found may not mean a thing. What’s important is that she was brutally cut down on the street after handing the baby over.”

  Kendall nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a good thing your girlfriend is smart as a whip as well, warning the building security clerk, calling 9-1-1 and you. Because if you think about it—there were cops already on the way when the woman was stabbed. The killer might have seen them milling on the street. If there hadn’t been cops around and he saw Kieran with the baby, he might have taken the time to retrieve his weapon and attempt to kill Miss Finnegan, as well. After all, at that point, she had the baby.”

  Again, Kendall was probably right.

  Again, it irritated Craig.

  “Yeah. Thank God she’s smart,” he said evenly.

  Mike offered Lance Kendall his hand. “Detective, we’ll keep tight on this. The city is in an uproar.” He hesitated and shrugged. “A woman murdered on the street in the middle of a crowd, and a baby involved. We’ll be on it day and night.”

  “Ditto. So, we learn anything, we keep one another posted,” Kendall said.

  “Yes,” Mike agreed.

  Kendall looked at Craig and offered him his hand.

  “Detective,” Craig said. He accepted the handshake.

  They parted ways. As they started walking, Mike punched Craig in the shoulder.

  “Hey!”

  “You know, men—and women—in different agencies can be jerks.”

  “Yeah, they can.”

  “Don’t you be the jerk, huh?”

  Craig lowered his head with a
half smile on his face.

  Mike was right.

  He was being a jerk. But a jerk doubly convinced that they had to find a killer—and fast.

  He looked at Mike. “How’s your Russian?” he asked.

  “Worse than my Spanish,” Mike told him.

  “You don’t speak Spanish at all,” Craig reminded him.

  “I rest my case. Actually? I’m kind of lying. I do speak some Russian. Had a Russian great-great-grandma who watched after me when I was a kid. Why?”

  “I was thinking we might head out to Brighton Beach,” Craig said. They had a friend working at a restaurant out by Brighton Beach pier. Jacob Wolff had been born in America; his mother had been Russian and his dad had been born in Israel. He worked undercover for a division of the FBI linked with Homeland Security—his job was to blend in with the locals so that he could hear all the chatter. Russian mob operations had become a more and more serious factor to the city in the past few years. So far, he’d been able to warn the authorities in time to stop two car bombs and the assassination of a local councilman—all without giving away his cover.

  He listened. And when people were comfortable in a place, they tended to speak a little too openly—dismissing a waiter as a nobody.

  “What? You don’t think his friends will look at us and think, Well, hell, they’re FBI right off the bat?”

  “Not if we go undercover, too.”

  Mike groaned. Craig had done a lot of undercover work, changing his look drastically for each assignment. Mike was an up-front, flat-out, find-the-truth kind of a guy.

  Dress up wasn’t his thing.

  “So swim shorts and Crocs, huh? Enough to look like we’re wannabe beach boys, huh?”

  “No one is ever going to call me a boy,” Mike said. He had Craig by a decade and was—as Craig liked to tease him—an old geezer in his midforties.

  “Wannabe beach whatevers? Come on, we won’t really be working. I’ll buy you a fizzy drink with an umbrella,” Craig said.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Craig grinned. “We’ll head to my apartment.”

  “Thought you were mainly living at Kieran’s apartment.”

  “Yep, that’s why we’re heading to my place.”

  “Think you ought to call her? Let her know that the case is a priority for us and that we’re part of the joint task force?” Mike suggested.

  “I’ll let her know,” Craig told him. “I just...”

  “What?”

  “I just need to try to figure out something to tell her that actually suggests we’re making headway on solving the case.”

  * * *

  “You know you did it. You can’t keep lying. You stalked her—you stalked her and then you killed her,” Kieran used her fiercest voice, trying to sound like a cop.

  Her twin looked at her and arched a brow. He lowered his head, trying to hide a smile. “No,” he said simply.

  “We can understand how it happened, how you must have felt—”

  “No,” Kevin said again.

  “She rejected you. You felt like an ass.”

  “No,” Kevin said again.

  “You were humiliated. In front of so many people.”

  “No, damn you!”

  Kevin looked up at her with fire in his eyes. “You idiots. Don’t you understand? I loved her. Whether she did or didn’t love me, I loved her. I would have never hurt her. I didn’t kill her, and when you get your heads out of your asses you’ll discover the truth. I’m innocent, and I’m done talking. I want my lawyer—now.”

  “He’s not here yet. We still have time—”

  “Get the hell out! I’ve asked for my lawyer and from here on out, we will wait for him to arrive.”

  Kieran set the script down and looked at her brother with a smile. “Wow. Did you do it?”

  “Nope. I am innocent,” he told her, and grimaced. “My character is innocent, at any rate. You see, he’s a rock star, and it really does look like he did it at first. The cops believe it was him—until they find a kid who was too terrified to come forward. She was actually killed by her stepfather. Because she totally rejected him!”

  “You’re really good,” she told him, leaning an elbow on the desk. They were in the office at Finnegan’s. She was sitting in Declan’s chair. She’d returned from the soup kitchen with Mary Kathleen at about three, and Kevin had been there ready to run lines with her.

  She’d popped into the back office to eat some fish and chips, and Kevin had joined her. They’d been running his lines for the filming that would take place on Monday and Tuesday.

  “You’re pretty good at that emoting thing yourself,” Kevin told her.

  “No, I’m not. You were laughing at me.”

  “Just because you’re not a big black cop who used to be a linebacker,” Kevin said.

  “Ah, but I love Arnie Westmore!” Kieran said. And she did. The actor who starred as the lead detective on the show Kevin would be filming was both strikingly handsome and definitely talented. He really had been a linebacker, too, with the Jets. She was thrilled that Kevin had scored a role on the show.

  There was a tap on the door. Kieran jumped up, hopeful that it was Craig.

  She had managed not to call him yet—mainly because she had kept busy all day.

  It wasn’t Craig. It was Danny. He poked his head in and asked, “Am I interrupting the great flow of dramatic practice?”

  “No, you’re not interrupting. Kevin knows his lines perfectly,” Kieran said, sitting back down. “I do believe he thinks that I’m horrible, and that I overact terribly, emoting here and there and everywhere.”

  “Come on—she was trying to sound as tough as a linebacker,” Kevin said.

  “Don’t kid yourself—Irish women are supposed to be tougher than linebackers, especially the Irish American kind,” Kieran assured him.

  “Remember when we were kids?” Kevin asked Danny. “We weren’t supposed to hurt our only sister. And then one day Dad said, ‘Hey! If she pinches you again, deck her!’”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Danny said. “But she was older than me—and she grew fast. And I was chicken. I never did deck her.”

  “None of us did.”

  “She was too scary,” Danny said.

  Kieran made a face at them both. “And she’s really tired of this story!” Kieran told them firmly. “I was not a terror as a sister!”

  “Well, it’s a good thing that you’re tough,” Kevin said. “Seeing you’re determined to get into or cause trouble at every turn.”

  “I am not—”

  “Sorry, sorry!” Kevin said. “Okay, trouble finds you. Your boyfriend is an FBI agent and you work with criminal psychologists. But, hey, yeah, trouble finds you.”

  “This time, it actually did,” Danny told Kevin.

  “But she’s going to let it go, right?” another voice asked.

  None of them had noticed Declan when he arrived at the office door, arms crossed over his chest, expression stern as he looked at them all.

  “I don’t know what you mean!” Kieran protested. “Craig might well be on the case.”

  “Craig, yes, the guy who wears a Glock and knows how to use it,” Declan said. “Kieran, honestly, think about it—”

  “Honestly! I am thinking. I’m not doing anything. I handed out food at a soup kitchen with your fiancée, and I’ve been a sounding board for my twin. I was happy to wait tables, but you were covered for the day. I am being an angel.”

  “Fallen,” Danny muttered.

  “I heard that!” she snapped at him.

  The phone on the desk rang; it was Mary Kathleen out on the floor—Saturday evening business was picking up. It wasn’t crazy, but she could use one of them to help out.

  Any one of them.

  “I’m going,” Kie
ran said, rising. “It’s a hard life to bear the burdens of this family, but I am willing to give my all.”

  She heard all three of her brothers laughing as she walked out. Shaking her head, Kieran went ahead behind the bar.

  Mary Kathleen was hurrying about. She glanced quickly at Kieran. “Terrific, I’m heading out on the floor. You can manage here?”

  “God help me, I hope so,” Kieran said. She was about to say that she’d grown up in the pub. It wouldn’t have sounded quite right. Neither of her parents had been drinkers. Tea had been mom’s go-to, and at best, her dad had a pint on a Sunday with his roast.

  A pub could be so many things. In the old days, the men had usually enjoyed their whiskey and pints in the main room—women and children had often been banished to another area. But Finnegan’s had always been a place where food and camaraderie were the most important aspects of the business. There were hours during certain days when everyone there really did know everyone else.

  However you looked at it, she knew how to handle a bar.

  She knew a lot of their clientele that day, and it was nice to chat. They all asked her how she was doing, how did she like her “real work.” And, of course, she asked back about them and their families as she served up their fare: Larry Adair, whiskey neat and fish and chips. John Martin, a pint of whatever was on special and shepherd’s pie. Brian McMann, a soda with lots of lime and corned beef and cabbage. Jillian Boyle, white wine and Guinness stew.

  She was moving about quickly and yet easily when the door to the pub opened just as the sun made a powerful streak down Broadway.

  For a moment, it was almost like a religious experience. There, in the midst of the tremendous light, was a tall, dark figure with a sweeping cloak around it—as if a presence from above or beyond had arrived with a powerful force.

  Kieran blinked, the figure stepped forward, and she saw that it was not a presence from above or beyond—and yet, it was still one containing a powerful force.

  Sister Teresa was just outside the pub. She looked at Kieran for a long moment, grinned and turned away.