Forger of Light

by Nupur Tustin

  “Looks like what sealed the victim’s fate is that a federal agent spoke with him but failed to arrest him,” Soldi had succinctly summarized the situation.

  “That it does,” Blake agreed. But that had led to an even more troubling conclusion. Reynolds’ killer—and by extension, Celine’s—had been trolling the area, watching for law enforcement to make contact with the sculptor and haul him off to jail.

  “Find anything interesting in the apartment?” Blake had asked.

  “Depends on what you mean by interesting,” Soldi replied. “Books—a ton of them—and shards of ceramic and plaster. Whoever killed him wasn’t too impressed with his art.”

  Or they’d been searching the place—looking for whatever it was that Reynolds knew about the Gardner heist.

  “You think he had a line on one of the stolen works?” Soldi asked.

  “Seems like it,” Blake had conceded unhappily. Soldi was a little too quick on the uptake for his taste.

  “Terminal A,” the chauffeur announced, head swiveling to the right. They were in the third of four lanes—each one jammed with cars.

  Blake glanced at his watch. There was no way they’d be able to change lanes in time to let him out at the curb.

  “Keep circling,” he instructed the driver as he unlocked his door and peered to the right and left. “And try to get over to the right as you do it.” He took one last look around and then slid out the door.

  With a small grunt of effort Blake hoisted Julia’s blue rolling duffel bag into the cargo area of the Suburban. He pushed it against Celine’s red-and-gold case and stepped back.

  “You can put your stuff in there,” he told Jonah, jerking his thumb in the direction of the open tailgate. He’d helped Celine and Julia with their luggage; it was the gentlemanly thing to do. Damned if he was going to provide Jonah—douchebag—Hibbert with the same service.

  Blake walked around to the curb and opened the rear passenger door for the two women. He couldn’t understand why they’d allowed the reporter to accompany them. Hibbert had already given him attitude about having to ride in an armored vehicle.

  “You’re free to arrange your own transport, then,” Blake had coldly informed him, quickly bringing the bozo back in line.

  Julia gave Hibbert—struggling to lift his suitcase to tailgate-level—a wry glance, turned to Blake, a sympathetic expression on her face, and mouthed an apology.

  “Couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to bring him with,” Julia said quietly once they were all seated in the car.

  “How about that we’re going to a crime scene and reporters aren’t welcome,” Blake grumbled. He kept his eyes peeled on the rearview mirror. Hibbert was still struggling with his case. What a sorry excuse for a man!

  “Want I should go help him?” the agent beside him spoke up.

  “We’ll be here all day if you don’t,” Celine said with a smile that eased Blake’s stormy mood.

  The agent—a muscular fellow—got out of the car, casually strolled around to the back, and effortlessly lifted Hibbert’s scarred brown suitcase into the cargo area. Much to Blake’s annoyance, he also opened the door for the guy.

  But his murmured explanation—“Force of habit, boss; I always hold open doors for women.”— when he returned behind the wheel soothed Blake’s irritation, making him grin.

  With a quick glance behind him, the agent pulled away from the curb, easing the Suburban’s massive bulk into traffic.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Mind if we go straight to Reynolds’ apartment?”

  Blake turned, his gaze focused on the women. As far as he was concerned, Jonah’s opinion didn’t count.

  But the reporter wasn’t one to take a hint.

  “Seriously?” he exclaimed. “Hello, we just landed!”

  Blake was about to explode, but Julia fortunately intervened.

  “We’re not here on a pleasure trip, Jonah.” His former colleague leaned across Celine to glare at the reporter.

  “I’m sure we can drop you off somewhere if you don’t want to come with,” Celine added. “But I thought you wanted to see how we work—for your article?”

  “What article?” Blake growled, his temper getting the better of him. “This is a crime scene, dammit. He’s not writing anything.”

  “Relax.” Julia turned to face him. “She’s referring to the exclusive Jonah gets to write once this is all over.”

  Blake forced himself to cool down.

  “Listen”—he re-focused on the women—“I know it’s been a long flight. But I need you both to see the crime scene while it’s still intact. Before Soldi—the guy in charge of Cambridge PD’s Criminal Investigations Unit—releases it. He has an officer posted at the door of Reynolds’ apartment. But not for long.”

  Soldi in fact had promised him no more than a few hours. “Budget shortage. Don’t have a lot of men. An officer posted in front of the apartment is one less officer on the ground, you know what I mean, Special Agent?”

  Blake had known exactly what Soldi meant. He didn’t have much time. He looked at his former colleague.

  Julia seemed to understand the message in his eyes.

  “You think there’s something of interest there?”

  She leaned forward, straining against her seatbelt to do so. Her blue eyes had sharpened—a hunting dog that had caught the scent of prey.

  “Bound to be.”

  He elaborated the theory that he and Soldi had surmised best fit the situation. The General wanted Reynolds out of the way. Framing him for a murder—successful or not—in Paso Robles had been a convenient solution.

  “Except it didn’t work,” Celine softly said. “Killing two birds with one stone. That must’ve been what Sister Mary Catherine meant. I can’t believe I didn’t catch that either.”

  She sounded . . . lost? . . . dejected? Blake didn’t have the words to express what he saw in her face and attitude. He’d seen firsthand how she’d reacted to Grayson’s murder—once she’d recovered from the trauma of being kidnapped and had time to reflect on—make that brood over—the incident.

  She’d begun to question her abilities and every failure to get it right dented her confidence even further.

  The low hum of speeding traffic thrummed in his ears.

  “We all make mistakes,” he said gruffly, not knowing what else to say.

  “Are you guys sure about this theory?” Jonah piped up in his annoying nasal voice. “I mean yesterday you were certain he’d poisoned Celine and was out to get her again. Granted his murder comes as quite the twist, but . . .”

  Blake twisted around, fixing his gray eyes on the reporter. “There were aspects of his story that we never had a chance to check out. Who handed Reynolds the poisoned chocolates?”

  “Someone handed them to him?” Jonah bleated.

  “How do you think they got there?”

  Jonah shrugged. “He could’ve brought them with, right?”

  He turned to Celine for confirmation.

  She shook her head. “No, Blake’s right. Someone was waiting for Reynolds at the winery.

  “I saw it,” she added when Jonah still looked stubbornly unconvinced.

  “The mailman,” Blake murmured. They’d had no time to pursue that angle.

  “A mailman?” Jonah repeated, his eyes cutting away from Celine. “How do you know?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Blake shrugged. “Bottom line is someone wanted Reynolds out of the way right from the start.”

  In the rearview mirror, Blake could see Julia’s brow wrinkling as she considered the ideas he’d laid out.

  “Because of what he has?” she asked. “What he knows?”

  She didn’t have to add about the Gardner heist. It was clear to them all what she meant.

  “Something like that,” he replied. “An arrest would’ve been a low-key affair—”

  “Leaving his apartment open to be searched,” Julia finished his thought. “But that’s not the ca
se anymore.”

  The roar of the Ted Williams Tunnel—named for the Boston Red Sox baseball legend—filled Celine’s ears. She sat, wedged between Julia’s squat, solid form and Jonah’s bony elbow.

  He nudged her with it just then.

  “We’re traveling under the harbor,” he said—brown eyes round and owl-like behind his spectacles. “Underwater in a car. Can you believe it?”

  Celine looked over at him.

  “Yes.” She ejected the word through tightly clenched teeth. Her arms pressed into her midriff, fingers tightly interlaced.

  It wasn’t just that Jonah’s presence and his whiny attitude toward Blake had begun to chafe her. (She ought to have insisted he stay behind—but Boston was Jonah’s home. Who was she to tell the reporter he couldn’t return?)

  What was infinitely worse was the knowledge that Anthony Reynolds had known—without a shadow of a doubt—that he was going to die. Known it, and been unable to do a thing about it—as though he was inside a plane in free fall.

  The realization was sobering. No one deserved to go through an experience like that. What must those last few hours have been like for him?

  If it helps, he was angry and betrayed, Sister Mary Catherine interrupted her thoughts. To the very end, that’s how he felt, not terrified.

  “He felt he’d been backed into a corner,” Celine uttered her impressions out loud. “He was determined to put up a fight. That’s why he called Penny when he figured he’d been a target all along.”

  The General’s decision may have been made long before she’d met the sculptor, but Reynolds had only recognized the threat in the final hours of his life.

  Blake’s gaze met and held hers in the rearview mirror. “I can tell you exactly when Reynolds made up his mind. When he scraped his chair back in the middle of our conversation.” He exhaled heavily. “I’ll never understand why he didn’t confide in me. He had a federal agent before him—someone ready to listen and—”

  “He wouldn’t have known whom to trust,” Celine said. “In his state of mind, paranoid, fearful, he—”

  “Would’ve taken you for a corrupt agent, on the General’s take,” Julia finished the sentence, a wry expression on her face.

  Because the General had made it clear he had law enforcement in his corner, Celine thought. A name accompanied the thought as Julia continued to speak—“And with good reason. God knows, we’ve had plenty of corruption within the ranks.”—A Polish name.

  “Aha!” Jonah slapped his thigh—so loudly and suddenly, Celine nearly jumped out of her skin. “The truth comes out at last.” He leaned over to grin at Julia. “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Not unless you want to be booted out of the car.” It was Blake who responded, his eyes grim, his voice quiet.

  “And speaking of corruption”—Julia smiled sweetly at the reporter—“isn’t it a violation of journalistic ethics to publish unverified content?”

  Jonah subsided back into his seat. “That’s diff—” he began to huff.

  “No, it’s not, Jonah,” Celine immediately contradicted him, her long-suppressed outrage bubbling over. “It’s no different at all. You have a responsibility to check your facts before presenting them to the public as incontrovertible truths. Doing anything less is pandering to sensationalism at best, dishonest and dishonorable at worst.”

  Done scolding the reporter, she leaned back, exhausted, and closed her eyes. The Polish name pealed in her ears again.

  “Wozniak,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Who is Wozniak?”

  “What’s Wozniak got to do with anything?” Jonah asked.

  Celine’s eyes jolted open.

  “You know who this Wozniak is?” Blake and Julia voiced the question in Celine’s mind.

  Jonah blinked, startled, as all three of them stared at him, then he swallowed. “Well, no, not personally. But who doesn’t know of him? I mean, hello, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple?” His tone turned sarcastic. “Are you seriously telling us the Apple guy is involved in this?”

  “Of course not,” Celine snapped. “It’s a name I keep hearing. If it referred to the Apple guy, I’d have seen an image of an apple as I heard the name.”

  Julia squeezed her hand, an unspoken suggestion to calm down. “What exactly are you seeing?” she probed gently.

  “A key,” Celine replied. “A big golden key. That signifies Wozniak is the key to everything.”

  “Wozniak,” Julia repeated the name as she exchanged a glance with Blake. “Could be a client of Reynolds, right? Or a friend?”

  “Or his killer,” Blake agreed. “We’ll have to check it out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Twenty minutes later, the armored FBI vehicle left the freeway and cruised down a narrow tree-lined street.

  Brookline, Celine read the name on the green street sign at the corner.

  “We’re in Cambridge now,” Julia announced as Celine sat forward, scanning the street. “Reynolds’ neighborhood.”

  “I know,” Celine said softly. She swiveled her head from side to side, straining to see out the windows on either side of her. “I can feel it.” The tugging sensation in her solar plexus had been growing stronger since they’d exited the freeway.

  She felt like a dog on a leash, pulled by a power she didn’t fully comprehend.

  Had she been walking, she’d have been propelled forward—from Brookline onto Allston, where the trees grew sparser and two- and three-story clapboard houses rose skyward from constricted lots on either side of the street. Past the Starbucks on the left.

  The coffee shop caught her attention, she didn’t know why. Her gaze trailed back to it as the car made a smooth right onto Grove Avenue.

  Wozniak. Wozniak.

  The name rang ever louder in her head—like the insistent peal of a bell summoning the faithful to prayer.

  It was accompanied by a sudden, inexplicable craving for coffee. A thick, frothy, mint-chocolaty concoction. She could taste it on her tongue. Peppermint mocha.

  The craving subsided as unexpectedly as it had arisen.

  And before Celine could question it, the Suburban rolled to a stop in front of an imposing structure of red brick and gray clapboard. Sixty Grove Avenue—Reynolds’ apartment building—took up an entire block along Allston Street, stretching from Grove Avenue to Sidney Street.

  “This is it,” Blake said.

  He climbed out and held Julia’s door open for her, keeping his hand on the door until Celine stepped out. Then he released his hold on it.

  The door swung back.

  “Hey!” Jonah yelped. He slid toward the door, thrusting it open to clamber out. But a second later, setting foot on the sidewalk and craning his neck up, he emitted a low whistle of admiration.

  “Wow, this is some place!”

  Gazing up at the brick-and-clapboard structure, Celine found herself agreeing with him. The combination of warm red on the first story with dark gray above it was quite elegant. Wide marble steps, between freshly painted black railings, led up to glass double doors.

  Beyond the doors, she spotted gold-framed paintings hanging on the foyer walls and potted plants adorning the floor.

  Jonah whistled again—enviously. “Reynolds must have been doing well for himself.”

  “Looks like it,” Julia commented, taking stock of the place. “It must cost a pretty packet to live here.”

  “That it does.” Blake led the way up the short flight of stairs. “Reynolds was paying about five grand a month for his apartment.” At the entrance, he pushed against the double doors, holding them wide open.

  “It’s not particularly large, but he did have the entire floor to himself.”

  The doorman acknowledged them with a nod as they entered the foyer.

  “Definitely doing well,” Julia murmured as they took the stairs—also marble—up to Reynolds’ apartment. “Who knew sculpting was such a lucrative profession?”

  “He was a fine sculptor,” Celine r
eminded them, the rebuke coming out tarter than she’d intended “He’d paid his dues and earned his reputation.”

  Her tone caused Blake to turn around, and she bit her lip, mortified, as his intense gray eyes bore into her.

  Why she’d felt obliged to defend Reynolds, she didn’t know. Was it because he was dead and no longer able to stand up for himself? Whatever the case, something close to anger had lashed out inside of her, stinging through her veins when she’d heard the others commenting on the murdered man’s financial status.

  It wasn’t as though he didn’t deserve his success.

  She clenched her fists, grateful when Blake deftly changed the subject.

  “Cambridge Police, as I mentioned, has charge of the crime scene. One of their guys will be posted up there. Didn’t want them releasing the scene before you two had a chance to look at it. You, however”—he turned to Jonah—“will be waiting outside. I’m not letting you into a crime scene.”

  Celine caught the grimace on Jonah’s face, but the reporter accepted the stricture without argument.

  Thank goodness! She’d had about as much as she could take of his complaints and snide remarks.

  Clutching the banisters, she followed close on Blake’s heels—edgy, apprehensive, bracing herself for the awful sensations that would surely assail her when she stepped into the crime scene.

  She hadn’t stumbled upon the dead body—thank heavens—but the residual energy from the brutal murder would linger weeks and months after the event.

  As it had long after Dirck had been killed. Long after he’d gone into the light.

  Energy as dark as that—fraught with trauma—takes time to dissipate, Celine, Sister Mary Catherine had explained. Be prepared for it—

  Dear God! A dark figure suddenly swam into view, shattering the brittle hold Celine had upon herself.

  Gripping the smooth black railing, she forced herself to look.

  Through the ringing in her ears, she made out a woman—a slender, jeans-clad woman, her dark brown hair pulled back into a bun. Celine pressed herself closer to the railing as the woman whisked past, taking them in with a quick, harried smile.