‘Special Agents Adams and Gallows,’ Mike said. He was trying his best to look nonchalant and hoping he was pulling it off: Dione had, after all, handled FBI-involved cases before. ‘You guys want some coffee?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Adams said. He was the senior partner: late thirties, with a bulky frame, carefully cropped blonde hair, and blue eyes. J. Edgar Hoover would likely have been proud of his look, though he seemed the more easy-going of the pair, and he was smiling as Dione got to her feet.
‘Special Agent Adams,’ Dione said, holding out a hand. Her skirt was mid-thigh and tight in black-and-chalk pinstripe. Standing up showed off her legs, but it also revealed that she was maybe an inch taller than either of the two agents. ‘You remember me? We consulted on that terrorism case in twenty twelve.’
‘I remember,’ Adams replied, taking the offered hand. Mike wondered what form of heterosexual male it took to ever forget meeting Dione. ‘This is my partner, Kirk Gallows. He wasn’t with the New York office back then.’
Gallows was also a blonde, but his hair was a little paler than Adams’s and his eyes had an icy quality to them. He was younger, a little better-looking, and had less sheer bulk than Adams, but there was a wiry quality to him and his handshake was firm, if of short duration. ‘You’re this Diana Hunter I’ve been hearing about?’ Gallows asked.
‘That would be me,’ Dione replied, still smiling. She indicated a couple of chairs pushed up against the wall near the door. ‘Grab a seat. You’re here about the Valentine Killer case, obviously.’ She settled back into her chair as they got theirs, pushing it back, leaning back in it, and crossing her legs. Mike took his own chair, coffee mug in hand, and sat down, trying to take his lead from Dione.
‘And, obviously, there’s a federal interest in that case,’ Adams said. ‘They missed him in L.A. and now he’s killing again in a different state. His latest victim being a British national makes matters more delicate.’
Dione nodded. ‘The international aspect is not relevant. The British Embassy has been informed. They contacted Miss Grover’s family yesterday and we’ve agreed to provide updates on progress when we can without prejudicing the case. That’s all in hand. As for the cross-state aspect… Well, Mike and I flew to L.A. and spoke to the case detectives in the LAPD. We have all the information they have and there’s no suspect, so there’s no actual fugitive…’
‘The FBI has a lot more experience with this kind of case,’ Gallows said. ‘Our labs and profilers–’
Dione shifted her gaze to the younger agent. ‘SCU has access to all the facilities required to handle a case like this. That’s one of the reasons we are handling it and not regular homicide detectives. Our staff have decades of experience in forensic analysis and criminal profiling. If we do require further advice, I’ll look to the FBI without hesitation, but that is not currently required.’
‘Winthrop still handling your forensic work?’ Adams asked.
‘Getting him to stop would require a presidential order or something.’
Adams nodded. ‘He’s good. You’re handling the profiling?’
‘Along with Winthrop. The problem is not evidence collection or working out the psychology. We’re confident we have everything he’s left us and we know as much as he’s let us see about how he operates and thinks. The problem is that this one has training.’
Gallows frowned. He had, presumably, read the case files from L.A. at the very least and formed his own opinions. ‘Training? What training? Where do you get that?’
‘A number of things. The method of execution is one of them. Do you have any idea how much it takes to snap someone’s neck the way he does it, Special Agent?’
‘Uh…’
‘The usual method is the way you see it in the movies. Get your opponent in a head lock, apply a lot of force. It’s brutal. You’d find it a lot harder to do than you’d think. This man has learned to use the minimum of force applied in just the right way. He faces his victim when he does it. Grips their skull and jaw with his hands, and it’s likely the victim has no idea what he’s doing until they’re dead. It’s unlikely they feel anything. It’s almost loving.’
‘Like he’s putting them out of their misery,’ Mike put in.
‘Yes… Then there are the other elements. He’s a meticulous planner, but he adapts well when the situation changes. He uses evasion techniques, possibly brainwashing.’
‘Brainwashing?!’ Gallows protested.
‘He sets up a base of operations in the area he wishes to work in. To do this, he finds a suitable couple with a private house and secure grounds. The primary victim requirements there are a young, blonde woman, and a stuffed bank account. Having killed the male partner, he then manages to persuade the woman to bankroll him for several months after the murders stop in an area. In L.A., her name was Mila Cooper. She went with her partner’s killer to Chicago and then Atlanta, where he almost certainly killed her too before moving on to Nashville. Threats don’t cut it. Miss Cooper was willingly cooperating with a man who murdered her lover.’
‘You have a single instance of that behaviour and you’re making a pattern of it?’
‘You’re not aware of the deaths in Paris in two thousand and three?’
Adams was smirking a little. ‘I believe that the NYPD has this in hand,’ he said.
‘You can’t just–’ Gallows began.
‘The FBI stands ready to provide any assistance required,’ Adams said firmly. ‘You have my number, Diana. It hasn’t changed.’
‘I have it, Andrew. We’ll keep you up to date with developments anyway. It’s always useful to have a fresh pair of eyes on a problem.’
Adams nodded. ‘Nice meeting you again.’ He turned to Mike, rising to his feet as he did so. ‘Nice making your acquaintance, Detective Williams. We can see ourselves out.’
Gallows could be heard starting an argument before the door closed behind them, and Dione got up, starting for the closet door at the back of the room with a frown on her face. ‘Gallows may be a problem,’ she said. ‘Did you see his tie?’ She opened the closet door to reveal the elevator hidden behind it.
‘Red. Power tie.’ At the sound of Mike’s voice, the elevator doors opened.
Dione stepped into the car and put her eyes to the retina scanner, speaking as she did so. ‘Power, individuality in this case. Adams is more of a team player. And his tie was a better match for his suit, just speaking on an aesthetic basis. Gallows will press for involvement. They’re based out of the New York office so he may decide to poke his nose in on his off-time if he’s that kind of man.’
Mike frowned. ‘So, what do we do?’
‘Well, first thing is me changing into something more practical than this silly outfit. Beyond that, let’s see if Adams can rein his partner in. If we have to do anything more complicated, it’ll be annoying.’
‘Uh, what kind of complicated?’ Mike had visions of vampires sneaking into the agent’s apartment with menacing intentions, though he somehow doubted that was what Dione meant… Probably.
‘Getting the commissioner involved. The paperwork will drive me crazy.’
~~~
Juliana was more or less settled into her life in one of Winthrop’s spare rooms. The old man she was meant to look after, despite his general protestations that he did not need looking after, had made it clear that this was her space and she could do what she liked with it. She had no idea what to do with it, given that her entire life had gone up in smoke, or down in blood, but she was considering redecorating and maybe putting up a few pictures… or something. The thing was that it was still Winthrop’s apartment and she was not used to it, and sometimes she needed to be somewhere a little younger.
Mary’s apartment was just across the hall. It was not exactly younger in feel: Mary had been born a Victorian and she had eclectic tastes for a teenager. It did sort of feel younger, especially when you walked into the lounge and saw the entertainment centre with an array of media and gam
ing equipment that would have made hardened geeks weep. So when Juliana wanted to feel more her age, she went across to visit her mentor in vampirism. Both apartments occupied a single floor with no access to the rest of the block they were in, so the doors were rarely locked when there was an occupant and Juliana could just trip between the two more or less whenever she wished.
This evening, however, Juliana walked into the lounge and came to a grinding halt when she found Mary sitting, cross-legged, in the middle of the floor, casually slaughtering some innocent monsters in her latest game.
‘Just give me a minute,’ Mary said, not taking her eyes off the screen. She was a true master of video gaming, manipulating the controls with an economy of movement and calmness which belied the explosive action on the big screen, but that was not what was stopping Juliana in her tracks.
Mary was a pretty girl. She was stick-thin and a little gangly, having had her physical development cut off abruptly by a vampire attack, but she was fit and there was muscle tone there, and her face was a picture. She still had some of the softness of youth about her features, and there were a few freckles across her cheeks, either side of a cute little nose. Her eyes were big and brown, and her auburn hair fell to the middle of her back but was always in a plait. Her chosen mode of dress generally ran to T-shirts and jeans or shorts, and running shoes, but tonight she was wearing a rather girlish satin bra, a pleated skirt, block-heeled Mary Janes, and knee socks in white fishnet.
Battle music changed to general background and the cries of monsters died away and Mary looked up. ‘What? You look like someone ate your cat.’
‘What are you wearing?’ Juliana managed.
‘Huh?’ Mary looked down at herself. ‘Oh… There are some CIA… operatives in the apartment across the street with all sorts of expensive surveillance equipment.’
‘Yeah…’
‘So I’m getting them used to me wandering around in not that much so I can nail them later. They’re men.’
Juliana closed her eyes and shook her head, but Mary was still sitting there when she opened them again. ‘Why do you even have an outfit like that?’
Mary’s cheeks coloured a little. ‘Well… Pat bought me the bra for Christmas about five years ago. Don’t think I’ve ever worn it. It’s, um, not like I need a bra.’ It was true that her small breasts were barely deforming the fabric. ‘And the rest was from a boyfriend I had in the eighties. He would go absolutely crazy for the schoolgirl look. I was considering going straight with him.’
‘Really? What happened?’
‘A year in Rikers for distributing child pornography.’
‘Oh.’
‘And when he got out, Dione had a quiet word with him and he moved out of the area. To New Mexico, I think.’
‘That’s terrible!’
Mary gave a shrug. ‘He wasn’t distributing pictures of me. Apparently, I was a little too old for his tastes. I think if he’d done that, Dione would have arranged for him to vanish entirely. Mind you, when I found out what he’d been doing, he was lucky he’d already been arrested. I was banned from holidaying in the south-west until nineteen ninety-six.’ She seemed quite calm and matter-of-fact about it, but Juliana could see the emotions boiling in her eyes. ‘Did you want something?’
‘Just to hang. I felt like… I dunno.’
‘Okay. You pour the wine. We’ll watch something moronic and chat.’
‘I don’t really drink that–’
‘You brought up my ex. You will sit on the sofa with me and drink alcohol until I have suppressed the urge to buy a ticket to Phoenix.’
‘I guess the booze isn’t going to get me drunk,’ Juliana said as she headed for the kitchen.
‘And don’t remind me of that either,’ Mary shouted after her.
3rd March.
Mary took one, long, steadying breath and checked everything was in place before she reached up and pulled the drapes aside. Then she picked up a coffee mug from the little table she had placed beside the window, just out of sight, and began to drink, contemplating the morning in nothing but a pair of panties.
After just over half a minute, she saw movement in the window opposite and the glint of light on coated optics. Then she stepped back a little, put her mug down, and picked up the waiting camera with its 250-millimetre telephoto lens. Through the viewfinder, as she snapped off a stream of pictures, she saw binoculars, the face which was rapidly revealed from behind them with its shocked expression, and then just the window with its array of recording equipment. And then there was the frantic movement of video cameras and the like as the spooks tried to shift their gear.
Smiling to herself, Mary put down her camera and taped the little sign she had made, just in case they did not leave immediately, to the window before closing the drapes again. Carefully written in thick black marker on a sheet of white paper was the word: PERVERTS!
~~~
‘Of course,’ Mary said, ‘the sign was just icing and petty revenge. They left because they knew they’d been blown.’
‘And in something of a hurry,’ Dione said. She had just returned from checking the apartment they had been using with a couple of burglary detectives from the precinct. ‘I left the forensics to the regular police, but they definitely arranged for the owner to be out of town so they could use the place, and they probably meant to do a better job of cleaning up after themselves.’
Mike frowned. ‘Doesn’t that imply they’ve had plans to use that place to watch us prior to Evan coming here? I mean, wouldn’t it take time to set up something like that?’
‘It’s the CIA, they have resources. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had plans in place to set up a surveillance operation if they needed to. But… These aren’t regular CIA we’re dealing with. The CIA doesn’t go around breaking the law if they can avoid it. They might go by the letter when the spirit might have said something different, but they don’t generally snap it like a twig.’
‘I don’t think they are. They have that provision for “protecting assets.” If Evan is, or was, a CIA operative, then this would be legal under those regulations. A little dubious, maybe, but I’m sure they could wriggle out of it.’
‘Further evidence that he’s CIA-trained. I suspect they’ll withdraw the more overt surveillance now. As Mary said, they know they’ve been made.’
‘But they’ll still have electronic methods of keeping tabs on us,’ Mary said. ‘We still need to be careful.’
‘Meanwhile, Evan is out there winding himself up for the next kill. Mike, we’re going to start running through that list of potential hideouts.’
‘I have eighteen in Manhattan alone,’ Mary said.
‘Then we had better get started.’
Interlude
New York, NY, 5th March 2015.
Connie really had her strut on today. It was bright outside, warm for early in March, and Mama’s Genuine Ice Cream Parlour was doing quite brisk business. That all contributed to Connie’s good mood, which lifted her chin and straightened her back. The crazy high-heeled pumps she had to wear for work did not bother her, nor did the silly 50s-style farm girl outfit, or the pigtails, or the excessive make-up. Everything was right with the world and Connie’s attitude seemed to rub off on the customers she served: they went away happier than when they came.
Mama’s Genuine Ice Cream Parlour was no longer run by Mama Brunetti. She had died, happily in her sleep at the age of ninety-three, and passed her shop on to her son, Orlando. The place had been doing badly for a few years, but Orlando had an idea. Capitalising on the fact that his mother had never modernised, Orlando had redecorated, shined up the chrome, and got himself an all-female staff who he dressed up in costumes out of 1950s pin-up pictures. Somehow, the place still managed a sort of family feel to it, maybe because nostalgia had a way of dulling the misogyny, but fathers seemed far more keen on bringing their kids in for ice cream now and business had picked up.
Connie had been there for five years no
w. She liked it because she got to meet all sorts of people, and people liked Connie. Orlando, who always stayed back of shop when he could because there was no way he was ‘Mama,’ had tried to pick Connie up on more than one occasion. She had told him no every time, but he had never got mad about it. It was not like she seemed to date much at all, which was kind of odd considering she had looks. Connie was just a pretty, really likeable sort of girl who also liked time to herself. And she was a real asset to the shop.
The bell over the door jingled and Connie glanced around to see who had walked in. Her mood shifted toward dark almost immediately, but it was not until she got closer and caught the man’s scent that she knew for sure. He was tall, moderately good-looking, with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, and he was a vampire. A carpathian who was, in Connie’s estimations, not good news. Still, he was a customer since he had taken a seat at one of the small tables, so he would be treated like one.
‘Welcome to Mama’s Genuine Ice Cream Parlour. What can I get you?’ Connie had perfected smiling without showing her own fangs quite a while ago. Getting it just right for the perky attitude required at Mama’s had been more difficult, but she had mastered it.
The man looked her up and down, taking extra time over long legs made longer by the heels on her white, open-toe pumps. ‘A scoop,’ he said. ‘Tutti frutti.’
‘Anything to drink?’
‘No, the ice cream will be fine.’
‘I’ll have that for you in a moment, sir.’ Connie spun on her heels and started for the counter. She could feel the man’s eyes on her behind as she walked away, but that was just about normal.
What was not normal was that, when Connie turned around from giving the order to the girl behind the counter, she heard the bell ring again. Mr Tutti Frutti had, apparently, decided not to wait for his ice cream.
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