Dreaming Death

by Heather Graham

  Keenan looked at her, unable to restrain a certain amount of amusement. “Aw, and she likes you so much!”

  They were back, seated in his office. He had his computer open. “Angela has sent all the video she’s managed to get on the McCarron trial.” He looked at her. “Time to figure out what it is that’s bugging you.” He got up, coming around to the side chair where she sat. “Take my seat, Special Agent Hanson. And go for it.”

  She stood, looking at him for a minute.

  “I know you must think this is a wild-goose chase, looking for something from years ago.”

  “Hey, there’s very little we discount here in the Krewe.”

  She offered him a grimace.

  “There’s just something I’m missing.”

  He frowned. “Maybe something important that just needs to be jarred. Whoever this is did send the kidney to you.”

  She hit the Start key on his computer. He took her chair, but she looked at him nervously. She smiled. “You don’t have to sit there and watch me. Maybe you could go and get something done?”

  He didn’t bother reminding her that, often enough, just sitting and watching was part of the game.

  “Maybe I’ll check on another wronged wife,” he said. “She wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly, either.”

  “I doubt the Smiths’ housekeeper is going to just open a door for you again.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  He left her and headed to Jackson’s office. Jackson was in. He waved a hand to indicate that Keenan should take a chair.

  “I’m going over and over everything. I’m trying to make sure that the press hasn’t leaked out the details of the murders.”

  “I’m not sure we can help that,” Keenan told him. “And I’m curious. Is this killer pleased or angered by the fact that we didn’t let his letter—with a piece of kidney—get to the media?”

  “I don’t know. But I believe, if there is something else, it will go to the media this time.” Jackson leaned back. “So, what are your thoughts?”

  “Jill the Ripper,” Keenan said.

  “Cindy Hardy?” Jackson asked, surprised. “Physically, I don’t think that the woman could have pulled it off.”

  “Maybe not. But maybe she knows more than she’s sharing. She lied to us about being home the night Billie Bingham was killed. We went back and questioned her. She said she was with a man, but she wouldn’t tell us who. She told me to get a subpoena. Can we force her to talk?”

  Jackson looked at him, arching a brow. “Ever hear of pleading the Fifth?”

  “Yeah. Well, I tried to look intimidating, anyway. But right now, I’d like to have a conversation with a different Smith—Sandra Smith.”

  “Think she’ll tell you anything?”

  “If nothing else, I might learn how she feels about her husband—and how much she knows about his outside activities.” He shrugged. “She might be protective and loyal to the core—no matter what he’s doing. But we can find out about her feelings, if nothing else. Jackson, Colin Smith is the only connector we have anywhere—he was seeing not just Billie Bingham but Jess Marlborough, too. We need to see if we can connect him to Andrea Simon.”

  “Go for it. We’re watching Smith, you know.” He picked up his phone and hit a few keys. “A friend of yours is tailing her, Axel Tiger. Will Chan is on Colin Smith right now, and Axel has been watching Sandra. We’ve attached our apps, and I know exactly where they are. Well, I know where my agents are.” He looked up at Keenan. “Sandra Smith is at a boutique in a mall in Arlington. Give Axel a call; let him know what you’re up to.”

  “Will do,” Keenan said. He stood and headed out, determining just what he was going to say when he found her. They didn’t want her to know she was being followed. And if he knew Axel, she had no clue. He’d have to have something to explain why he was at the same mall. Well, everyone had a mother, and maybe his mom deserved a present from a cool boutique—for putting up with him and his siblings and the grandkids, too. He just hoped that if it was a place Sandra Smith was shopping, he could even pretend that he could afford to buy something there.

  * * *

  It was different, watching the trial now, as an adult, from what it had been back when she’d been a kid.

  Then, Stacey had been worried sick about her father testifying. Though her mother had never said it, she, too, had been concerned.

  What if the man hadn’t been convicted?

  He could snap his fingers, so it seemed, and make people wind up dead.

  But McCarron had been convicted. He’d tried to wrangle his way out of the death penalty. He’d talked and talked after—not about others, though. Just about his own deeds. He kept trying to bargain for his life with the promise he could bring the police to more bodies.

  Eventually, his time had come.

  Now, watching the trial tapes, Stacey tried to find what it was that was bothering her so much. Something that had sparked in her mind, reminding her of the trial.

  When she saw it at last, she didn’t believe it.

  She had to run it over and over again.

  Watch every inflection made by the woman who had drawn her attention. Because, of course, she had changed. So much!

  Was she sure?

  She ran it all yet again. Because it made no sense. No sense whatsoever.

  * * *

  Parked and heading toward the chic boutique where Sandra Smith was known to be shopping, Keenan saw Special Agent Axel Tiger leaning against a tall-top table outside a café. He appeared to be absorbed in reading on a small tablet.

  Keenan knew better. Seeing Axel, he wondered why he hadn’t thought to talk to his friend sooner. Axel had very recently and suddenly married.

  A most unusual woman. Like Stacey, she more than saw the dead. Sometimes, she could touch an object or person and receive a strange intuition. Axel had told him that in trying on a dress, his new wife had helped catch a murderer.

  She and Stacey needed to meet.

  “Hey,” Axel said.

  “Hey,” Keenan replied. “She’s still in there?”

  “Oh, yeah, trying on everything in the shop.”

  “Sorry about this. I didn’t know they had you on surveillance duty.”

  “I’m on something back down in my neck of the woods tomorrow,” Axel told him. “I volunteered. I knew you had this case. Thought I’d pitch in while I was still around.”

  For blending into a crowd, Axel wasn’t really the man to pick. Tall and dark with striking light eyes, he was memorable. His ancestry included both the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of Florida, along with whatever European his mom’s family might have been.

  Keenan knew he didn’t blend in easily himself—six-five wasn’t gigantic, but it was unusual enough.

  But Axel could be so smooth, he was able to make it look like he just happened to be going the same way.

  “You’re leaving tomorrow?” he asked Axel.

  Axel nodded. “Bodies on the beach,” he said.

  “And the local cops don’t want it?”

  Axel shrugged. “They’re missing their heads and hands.”

  “Oh, I see. Well. What time?”

  “Noon,” Axel said, frowning.

  “What about your lovely new wife?”

  “She’s not sure yet—she’s working up here. She trains dogs.”

  “I know. She’s got something going with the police—and us, right?”

  Axel nodded.

  “Think my new partner and I could meet you both in the morning?”

  Axel looked at him with curiosity. “The dream thing, huh?”

  “Right. How did you know?”

  “Jackson talked to me this morning. I haven’t even met our newest member yet.”

  “Would morning work?”

  Axel
laughed softly. “You mean me and my lovely new wife?”

  “I do.”

  “Sure. Eight o’clock, the office?”

  “The morgue.”

  Axel nodded gravely and said, “If that’s what you need.”

  “All right, thanks. I’m going to get on in. I mean, they’ll run out of clothing for the woman to try on at some point.”

  “Yep. Better get in there!”

  Keenan didn’t see Sandra at first; she was apparently in a dressing room.

  He pretended to give his attention to a swing stand of purses, studying them intently—and with awe that a woman’s purse could cost so much.

  “Pure Italian leather!” a saleswoman told him cheerfully.

  They might have been pure gold, for the prices being charged.

  The saleswoman looked at him expectantly. Luckily, at that moment, Sandra Smith came out of the dressing room instructing someone unseen as to which pile of clothing she was purchasing and which pile needed to be put back.

  Keenan pretended surprise to see her. “Mrs. Smith!”

  She was surprised to see him—and not pleased.

  “Are you taking me in, Special Agent Wallace?” Her voice was low. She wanted to challenge him, but she didn’t want to be heard.

  “Should I be taking you in?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I mean...us asking your husband about his knowledge of prostitutes has to be extremely uncomfortable for you.”

  “You are monsters, all of you,” she said.

  “Mrs. Smith, we’re doing our jobs, that’s all,” he assured her.

  “Men are all such...idiots,” she told him.

  “So, oh, dear...then, you do know about...”

  “I’m the wife of a congressman, Special Agent Wallace.”

  “Congressional terms don’t go forever,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, is that it! You want to make sure that he’s voted out?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “We haven’t publicized anything about him. No one knows that he came to our offices to help us. His knowledge of the women who were killed is something that can help us.”

  The saleslady called out, “Mrs. Smith? You did want these, right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, still staring at Keenan, tall and perfectly fit and regal. “Do you mind, Special Agent Wallace? I need to pay for my purchases—and I don’t want to waylay you from your shopping. Though, frankly, I don’t see you wearing anything in here.”

  “My mother’s birthday is coming up,” he said, then he added pleasantly, “Trust me. We’re completely tight-lipped on this case. If the gossip rags are casting aspersions on your husband, I swear to you, we have had nothing to do with it. Quieter is better for us.”

  She pushed back a lock of her perfectly coiffed hair. “Run my husband through the mud however you like. I will not be thrown, and we will be back on the campaign trail, making all of you look like petulant children who couldn’t solve a murder committed right in front of them. Excuse me.”

  She headed to the counter with a credit card and paid quickly, asking that her things be sent to her house.

  “Oh, you don’t even want to take this cute little top?” the friendly saleswoman asked.

  “You heard me!” Sandra Smith snapped. “Sent to my house!” She spun and left the shop without so much as a glance back. The saleswoman sighed with relief and muttered, “Cow!”

  Then she realized that Keenan was looking at her and that he’d heard her. Her cheeks flushed crimson.

  He grinned.

  “I, uh... Did you need some help, sir?” she asked.

  “No, thanks. Sorry, I can’t afford a thing in here!”

  The girl grinned at him and said softly, “Neither can I!”

  He waved and strode out.

  Axel was gone—subtly still on the trail of Sandra Smith.

  As Keenan headed for his car, his phone rang. “You’ve got something,” he said to Stacey without preamble.

  “Something. Something that doesn’t make sense in the least!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come on in. You’re going to have to see it to believe it.”

  Twelve

  “Do you see what I’m talking about?” Stacey asked Keenan.

  She was sure that he was going to have to study the video several times, as she had.

  But he spotted it far more quickly.

  “Yes,” Keenan said, leaning back in his chair after freezing the screen. “It’s Billie Bingham,” he said.

  “I’ve watched nearly all the footage. She didn’t testify, but she was in the courtroom every day. I didn’t get it at first, but it explains the familiarity I felt when I saw...”

  “Her corpse,” Keenan finished for her. “Well, yes, she changed her hairstyle, and back then she looked like such a serious and prim young woman. But that is definitely her. And I guess she became the reigning queen of escort services here about six to eight years ago... I don’t know. I didn’t pay that much attention to tabloids, but she was certainly becoming notorious at least five years ago. After this, though... So, Billie Bingham was at McCarron’s trial.”

  “And now she’s dead!”

  “Yes, a victim of this killer,” Keenan said thoughtfully, still looking at the screen.

  “Keenan, I’ve watched this so many times; she looks at McCarron. And he looks at her. As though they know each other. But she wasn’t one of the delusional women testifying for him, saying he was a good man.”

  “Tell me everything that you remember about your dad’s part in all this, the investigation, and the murders.”

  Stacey waved a hand in the air. “In the end, as you know, McCarron admitted to a number of murders—not just the murders of Anderson and Vargas. But that’s what he was on trial for. There were other charges having to do with the murders. Charges that had to do with his attempts to bribe doctors for friends, that kind of thing.” She hesitated. “My dad was a private investigator; he was working for Anderson’s wife, and he had pictures of McCarron going into the building and coming out of it. There were no eyewitnesses to the murders, but they had proof that McCarron hired the man who was supposed to kill my father.” She paused, trying to remember what might be relevant. She looked at Keenan, frowning. “This may not have anything to do with anything, but why was Billie at that trial, looking as fresh and pure as a baby doll? Was that a planned costume for court, or did she make the change into what she was after the trial? And—” she added, frustrated “—what can it have to do with this case? Except that Billie was there, and now Billie has been murdered?”

  “One of the men murdered was a surgeon who specialized in transplants. Heart transplants, to be exact. But he headed the department. And Anderson was a philanthropist, right? And an outspoken advocate for organ donation?”

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “In fact, their bodies were discovered by another transplant doctor, Dr. Henry Lawrence.” She gasped suddenly. “Is his name on the lists of doctors? I know he was up-and-coming. He was a protégé of Dr. Vargas’s. I remember that he cried at the trial. You should have seen the way that McCarron looked at him. McCarron just kept staring at him, as if he hated him so much. Well, of course, you can see it. It’s all in the video. Or, I should say, videos. There are hours of viewing pleasure to be found there,” she added dryly.

  “Anything else from the video?” Keenan asked her.

  “I guess that was it,” she said, worried that all she had done was recognize someone who couldn’t be the killer—since she was already dead.

  Keenan pulled up the list of names of transplant doctors they were currently investigating. “I can’t find Dr. Henry Lawrence here,” he told Stacey. “I’ll have Angela search for him. He may have been so traumatized by what happened that he left the field and the area completely. But you’re right—if
Billie Bingham was at that trial, who knows what else might connect.”

  “But Billie is dead.”

  He smiled at her. “That doesn’t mean that Billie wasn’t somehow involved.” He pushed back and told her, “There is an agent you haven’t met yet, Axel Tiger. He’s a friend of mine. He worked a really strange case in Florida—his home—recently.”

  She smiled. “I know that I’m far from knowing the whole Krewe—I am, as you’ve often liked to remind me, a rookie.”

  “I think I mentioned others with very different talents.”

  “Axel has a different talent?”

  “Axel is extremely talented, but no, he’s not the one with the unusual talent. His wife tried on a dress—and that led her to a murder victim. You see things in your dreams; she sees them when she touches things. Axel was down in Florida for a time, and came back to headquarters after a very sudden wedding. But a good one! Beside the point. They’re going to meet us tomorrow morning at the morgue.”

  “At the morgue?”

  “I’m going to ask her to touch a body.” He hesitated, looking at her. “And you.”

  Stacey didn’t protest. “Okay. So, where do we go from here, until tomorrow morning?”

  He couldn’t help the smile that curled into his lips. “Well, there’s the concept of working like normal people and going home for the night.”

  “I love that concept. But I’m coming to know you. You have another idea.”

  “Lafayette Square. I’d like to see my great-grandfather, if we can find him. He’s always investigating something. He’ll go after a dog owner who doesn’t pick up after his pooch if there’s nothing else going on. But if I know him, this case will have caught his attention, and he’ll be watching from vantage points we could never achieve.”

  “Let’s do it. We’ll stop by Angela’s office first and ask her to search for Dr. Henry Lawrence?”

  “Yes.” He glanced back at his computer. He hadn’t gone through all the video of the McCarron trial as Stacey had, but he’d seen something of it.

  “I thought of someone else,” he said.