Dying to Tell (26 page)

sixty

“Raina Iskandr, I presume?”
Angel said as she pushed a small wooden crate out of her way. “Put the gun down. I came here to talk to you—
again
.”

“I do not think so, Professor Tucker.” Raina's eyes locked on Angel. “Have you not come here to do me harm?”

“No, I haven't.”

“Then why did you break in as you did? Those who come to talk come through the front door, no?”

I said, “Don't do anything to piss her off. Let's talk our way out
of this.”

“Raina, listen.” Angel eased up onto her feet. “I've come here to find out what you have to do with William Mendelson's murder. Is this because of your grandfather? Did you avenge him for your blood oath?”

Great plan—antagonize a murderer holding a gun to your head. “Nice, Angel. Maybe you should accuse her of being Lizzie Borden's reincarnation?”

Raina took a step back and lowered her gun a few inches. “William Mendelson's murder was a debt long overdue and it matters not how it was paid. For that reason, Professor, you have wasted your time.”

“No, I haven't. You've been lying to everyone since you arrived, Raina.” Angel walked around two of the fallen shipping containers and opened the distance from Raina another three feet. “You claimed to be with the Egyptology and Archeological Research Group at American University. American U hasn't heard from you in over a year. Care to explain that?”

“I need not explain anything to you, Professor Tucker.” Raina's eyes flashed a little, and when she tried to move a box out of the way, she held one arm down and favored it. “Now, please do not move again or I may have to shoot you. You are, after all, a burglar.”

I walked to Raina and looked at her arm. It looked like it was bandaged beneath her tunic sleeve. “Angel, her right arm is injured. My guess is one of Bear's deputies grazed her at William's house yesterday. She broke in there.”

“You got shot, Raina?” Angel pointed to her arm. “You were at William's house yesterday. You broke in. For what?”

No response.

“It must hurt.”

Raina lifted her chin. “Yes, I returned to the Mendelson house to retrieve the rest of what was promised to me. The police interrupted. No matter. It was a wasted trip, and I've made other arrangements.”

“And she's holding a .22 handgun,” I said. “Same caliber used in the bank robbery and to shoot Poor Nic. You need to get out of here, Angel, fast. I can't help, either. There's no electricity for me to use in here. You're on your own for now.”

Angel's eyes dropped to the handgun. “A .22? You shot Nicholas? And the bank robbery …”

“Nicholas—the old man? The … how do you say it, the gangster? No more of this.” Raina backed up a step. “I suggest you do not play games with me. Now, tell me, why are you here?”

“I told you. Just to talk.” Angel looked for an escape. “I want to know about William. If you killed him, I understand—and I can't say that I blame you.”

“You do not know anything. You understand nothing.”

“Did you kill him because of the vendetta?”

“Blood oath, Angel.” Geez, she sounded more and more like me.

“Blood oath,” she corrected. “Because William killed Youssif—your grandfather—back during the war?”

The name Youssif set Raina's eyes ablaze. She stepped back again, lowering the handgun. “What do you know about my grandfather?”

“Why don't you tell me about him,” Angel said. “All I know is that a German spy murdered him in Cairo during the war and that your family swore revenge.”

“Not revenge—justice.” Raina's mouth tightened, her jaw lifted, and she prodded the air with her gun. “Surely you understand that. You sought justice for your husband, did you not?”

“She's well informed, Angel,” I said. “Ask her if—”

“Yes, I wanted justice. And yes, I got it.” Angel took another step back. “Did William kill your grandfather?”

Raina wet her lips. She seemed to be sizing Angel up—perhaps to answer the question or perhaps to see which Amphora Trading crate her body would fit into. “He sought forgiveness for my grandfather, yes.” Her voice softened. “And he wished to make amends. Yes, guilt told me what I needed to know.”

I said, “Amends?”

Angel asked her that, too, and added, “So you met with William?”

“It does not matter.” Raina stiffened and waved the gun around the room like a magic wand. “This has been my life's work and it is nearly over. I swore to my mother that I would find grandfather's killer. She witnessed it—so many years ago now—and it consumed her entire life. A life wasted. My grandfather helped you Americans. He helped them with the Nazi spies. And for what? To be murdered and have his life's work stolen?”

“Keep her talking, Angel,” I said. “I have to find you a way out of this.”

“Raina, I know it was unfair. I know—”

“You know nothing. My family was ruined when grandfather was killed and his work stolen.
Ruined
. It has taken my family seventy years and me two decades of reclaiming my country's stolen antiquities to reach this point. And after all these years and so many false hopes, someone found me
and led me to William. Revenge is a wondrous motivation, is it not, Professor Tucker?”

Angel stared. “You've been searching for Egyptian artifacts around the US?”

“Yes, and the world. I have searched for them wherever they were hidden.”

“I don't understand.”

I did. “Angel, Raina didn't know who killed her grandfather, but her mother knew the killer had a fortune in his antiquities. If she found the stolen artifacts, she might be able to trace them from seller to seller and maybe find out who first stole them from Cairo. She might find the killer.”

“I know about Youssif, Raina.” Angel retold my story of Youssif's murder and my own grandfather's role. When she was through, she said, “Raina, it's not a coincidence that my husband's grandfather and yours worked together in Cairo. Please, I understand. But murder isn't the answer …”

“Did you learn of my grandfather from your husband and his family?”

“Yes, sort of. It was, well, you won't understand …” Angel stuttered trying to find an answer—her face showed the strain and fear that grew each time Raina waved the gun at her. “It was …”

“William told you,” I said.

“William,” she said. The words calmed her.

“No matter. It is not murder if you are avenging murder. It is justice.” Raina smiled a faint, painful smile and lowered her gun to her side. “But you are correct, Professor Tucker. Many Egyptian antiquities were looted during the war—and afterward, too. Stealing from my country has been a pastime of those who came for science and learning and left as simple thieves. It has been that way for generations—for millennia. I found many stolen antiquities, and often, they had been passed along, sold, and stolen again. It has been an endless journey.”

“And you followed the trail here?” Angel asked. “To William?”

Raina shook her head. “No. Years ago, my family learned of a man selling one of my grandfather's pieces—a jeweled weapon he'd found during a dig south of the Valley of the Kings. My father found the man here in Washington and tried to learn where he had obtained the piece. He refused to provide the information. He died for his resistance.”

Cy Gray.

She went on. “Many years later, a similar discovery brought us back to America. But my father was impatient and did not get the man to talk in time. Once again, silence kept the truth hidden.”

Claude Holister.

“Angel, she just admitted that her family murdered Cy Gray and Claude Holister.”

“I know.” Angel stepped back beside a
ten-foot
-high stack of shipping crates. “Raina, you said someone led you to William. Who?”

Raina lifted the gun. “It does not matter. Soon I will have the last of my family's possessions and I'll be through. I'll go and you will never see me again. So for now, Professor Tucker, you will have to stay here.” She waved the gun toward a steel door in the far corner of the warehouse. “It will be uncomfortable, I'm afraid. But it is necessary. I require a day to retrieve the remainder of my grandfather's possessions, complete my duty, and leave this country. You know too much and I have but a simple choice—kill you too, or lock you here for the time it takes me to be done.”

Kill her too?

Angel didn't move. “I want to know more about William. Who led him to you?”

“Revenge, Professor Tucker, and guilt.” Raina made a show of pulling back the handgun's hammer. “Last April I found someone selling my grandfather's artifacts and they led me here, to Washington, where the others had been as well. I purchased many items—for very large sums of money, too. It took time, but I was able to find the source in Winchester.”

“William sold some of the antiquities?” Angel asked.

“I purchased the items over the Internet—the seller refused to meet me but emailed photographs of some of the items and provided small pieces to establish their authenticity. I transferred payment and the items were shipped here.” She raised her chin. “Amphora has been my, my … my front company for recovering stolen items. I communicated through here until I was sure I had located the person who had the rest of my grandfather's treasures. When I did, I arranged a meeting to make a considerable final payment for the rest.”

I said, “That's the payments Cal and Bear found in the bank account, Angel. The money's been coming from her.”

Angel repeated me.

Raina shrugged. “It was not my money. The Ministry of Antiquities provided me with resources to purchase items in order to find those responsible for our country's thefts. Then, in time, they take action against those people.”

“You mean they kill them.” Angel's words were icy.

“No—it is not that way.” Raina shook her head. “It does not matter that you understand. Into the back room, Professor. It does not matter the how and why of my business. It only matters that it is ending.”

Angel didn't budge. “When did you first meet with William?”

“You ask too many questions—but fine, I will explain.” Raina watched her with an
interested-killer
sort of look on her face. “After I received several of my grandfather's artifacts from someone here in Winchester—
and
already paid nearly half a million of your dollars—William contacted my embassy. He told them he wished to return many artifacts. He sought no payment. He claimed he had come by them innocently during the war. He wanted assurances he would not be prosecuted and his name would remain anonymous. I have worked through the Consulate over the years and this information was passed to me.”

“Raina, didn't it strike you odd that you'd been buying some of the pieces for months and then suddenly William comes forward and wants to give them back? For free?”

Raina looked down for a moment. When she looked back up, her eyes were back to their angry, determined stare. “Perhaps, yes. But it did not matter. And it does not matter now. Move back toward the room. Now.”

Angel refused to move and Raina stepped forward and reached for her arm. Angel blocked Raina's arm and jabbed a punch into her bandaged right arm, knocking her back a step as she cried out in pain. Then Angel made a jump toward the stack of shipping crates.

But Raina was too agile and skilled. She recovered and sprang forward, delivering a leg sweep that buckled Angel's knees beneath her. As Angel fell sideways and down, Raina pivoted on the ball of her left foot, twisted her body in a crisp spiral and snapped out a right kick into Angel's jaw, sending her crashing to the floor.

“Angel, stop! You can't take her!” I rushed forward and tried to grab Raina's gun, but my fingers found only air. “Stop it, Angel!”

Raina jumped forward and landed beside Angel, grabbed her arm, and twisted it behind her. Then she pressed the pistol to the back of her head.

“Enough, Professor.”

“Angel, are you okay?” I could do no more than watch Raina's performance. “Don't move. She'll shoot. Do as she tells you. I'll get you out of this somehow.”

“Professor, do not anger me further.” She tugged Angel to her feet, wincing as her right arm took the weight. “To the back room, quickly, before I change my mind.”

Angel threw scared, defeated eyes at me. “Change your mind about what?”

“Letting you live.”

sixty-one

By the time Bear
returned to the Task Force office it was early evening. He'd spent hours going over Keys's story and chasing down false leads on the bank robber. So far, nothing made sense and the questions were piling up. As he walked in and tossed his coat over a chair
in the bullpen, Cal spun around in his chair and held up a handful of documents.

“Bear, you're not gonna believe what I found, man.” He handed him the documents. “This whole case is messed up. Really messed up.”

Bear frowned, dropped the pile of papers onto a desk, and headed for the coffeepot. “Your pal Keys thinks it's all about a fortune in stolen World War II Egyptian relics.” He told Cal the story as Keys had told it to him and Poor Nic, ending with, “And that junk is worth a fortune.”

“And ol' Keys has known about it all this time? He never let on.” Cal leaned back against one of the bullpen desks. “I got that beat, man. The crime scene team said Marshal Mendelson had no gunshot residue on his hands or arms. I'm confirming that with the lab now.”

“Then he didn't pull the trigger,” Bear said. “And that means it was murder, not suicide. Anything else?”

Cal's cell phone rang and he took the call. His face grimaced and he nodded several times. “Can you email me a photo and any distinguishing marks? Thanks.” When he tapped off his call, he stared at the screen, waiting for the email he'd asked for.

“What do you have, Cal?” Bear asked.

“That was the West Virginia State boys. They found Karen Simms. Poor Nic's small blue Fiat went down a ravine outside Morgantown. Someone rammed it off the road a couple hours ago—the wreck is pretty bad, man. There was a witness and the body has Simms's ID, too—they'll send everything over soon as they can.”

Bear's mouth tightened. “Dammit.”

“They're sending a crime scene photo and a scan of her ID now.”

“So, Simms isn't a missing person anymore—she's a homicide. That's three murders in two days.” Bear returned and picked up the papers Cal had given him and took them to his office with Cal in tow. There he slumped into his chair, took a long sip of his coffee, and started reading. After two pages, his eyes widened; he'd gotten to the background report on Franklin Thorne. “Are you saying Thorne's a phony?”

Cal shrugged. “Don't know and that's the problem. I ran his background like I told you and got nothing—no credit, two IDs with different info. So I got a copy of his resume from the bank HR department and had one of the guys check his references, college, the whole shootin' match.”

“And it's all bogus?” A knot formed in Bear's stomach. “All of it?”

“All of it. The phone numbers for his former employers all went out of service within a month of his starting at the bank. The college numbers too. But when I
cross-checked
the college telephones on the Internet, none of the numbers were what he gave out. His resume is all bullshit, Bear. Pure bullshit.”

“What the hell is going on here, Cal? Thorne's in on this?” Bear stood and went to his window to look out. The sun was already down and the parking lot lights were on as it began to snow again. “Is Larry Conti downstairs in the holding cell?”

Cal nodded and picked up the desk phone. “Roberts, it's Cal. Bring Conti up to Detective Braddock's office, pronto.”

Bear retrieved another cup of coffee for himself and Cal along with a third cup. They waited for the deputies to bring a handcuffed Larry Conti to the office and sat him down in the corner as Cal received a message on his cell phone and looked it over.

Bear took the handcuffs off Conti. “Okay, Conti. Time for you to man up.”

“I didn't kill anyone, Detective Braddock. You have to believe me.”

“I do, pal. But you can help yourself, too.” Bear handed Conti a cup of coffee and waited for him to take a few sips. “Larry, we have a body. We want you to take a look.”

Cal nodded and held his cell phone up for Conti to see. “It's bad, man. But tell us what you think.”

The photograph on his cell phone was of a badly damaged car on its hood. All the windows were shattered and a body was crumpled half in, half out of the driver's window with an arm and long blond hair hanging out amidst glass and debris. The woman's face was obscured but she had been pretty and young—features masked by
bluish-gray
bruised flesh and broken bones.

“They're sending more photos, Larry,” Cal said. “But do you think …”

Larry took the phone and fanned through to a
close-up
photo of the body hanging out the broken car window. He stared and manipulated the photo to enlarge it around the body's arm and hand—specifically the body's gold bracelet. As soon as he did, he burst into tears and looked away. “Oh, jeez, no. I gave her that bracelet when we started dating. Her name in hieroglyphs …” He couldn't finish the words and dropped his head into his hands. “I loved her. I do. Who did this to her? Who butchered her like this?”

Bear looked at the cell phone photograph and took it out of Conti's view. “We were hoping you'd help us find her, but not like this. And there's more. Thorne is a ghost—none of his references check out and no one can find a trace of him before he started at the bank. Marshal Mendelson was found murdered …”

Conti jumped up. “Marshal's dead? Holy shit, no, no, no. You gotta believe me. We didn't think this would happen.”

“
We?
” Cal took Conti's shoulder and sat him back down. “Start talking, man. Maybe you'll walk out of here tonight.”

Conti's face was ashen and he looked from Cal to Bear and back several times. Finally, he closed his eyes and dropped his head. “Karen and I have been dating off and on, I told you that. Well, she confided in me a few months back about stuff at the bank. Thorne made moves on her and she was worried about her promotion so she didn't stop him. She sorta played along, get it? But then one night, in the summer sometime, she noticed Thorne and Marshal coming and going all hours of the night at the bank. So she cut him off. Was it him? Did Thorne kill her? Did he?”

“Karen watched Thorne and Marshal from her apartment balcony?” Bear asked.

Conti's face turned into rage. “Was it Thorne? Was it him and Marshal? Shit, I told you that Marshal wanted me to keep following the Chairman and I refused. Well, I kept the Chairman aware of what Marshal was doing, too. Karen saw him and Thorne in the bank before midnight a few times—staying for hours. I kept the Chairman advised, and after he was killed, I deleted all the voicemails between him and me so you wouldn't find out. I should have told you. But for two guys who hated each other, Marshal and Thorne were doing a lot of overtime together.”

Bear sat back. “I'm thinking Karen knew about William's secret account and caught someone skimming, right?”

“She said it was Marshal,” Conti added. “I should have told you all this before, Detectives, but I was scared I'd be next. Now Karen's dead and it's all my fault. I screwed up, didn't I?”

“Yeah, man, you did,” Cal said. “But you're helpin' yourself out now.”

Bear went on. “You said you told William about Marshal wanting you to follow him around. Maybe William confronted Marshal and Thorne—maybe that's why he was in the bank so late all the time. He tried to catch them doing whatever they were doing. Maybe he did and they killed him.”

“You think they found out what Karen knew about the account and what she'd seen?” Cal asked. “So they killed her? Then Thorne decided he was
scot-free
without Marshal, and …”

“Thorne tried to make Marshal look like he committed suicide.” Bear looked at Conti. “Anything else, Larry? Don't make me ask twice.”

A uniformed deputy knocked on Bear's office door. “Detective, someone here to see you. He says it's urgent.”

Poor Nic walked past the deputy into the office with his left arm in a sling. His face was pale and his voice hard and tight. “Forgive the intrusion, Detective Braddock, but there is a matter most urgent.”

“Glad you're here, Nic.” Bear cast a glance at Cal, who slid a chair over for Poor Nic to take, but he refused it. Then Bear had Cal show him the cell phone photograph of the blue Fiat at the bottom of the ravine. “We found your Fiat. And …”

Poor Nic took one look at the photo and nodded. “I thought she had found refuge somewhere. I had hoped, anyway.”

“She's dead, Nic,” Cal said. “If you'd told us sooner …”

Poor Nic held up his hand. “It is not my responsibility or yours. It was not you nor I who killed her.”

Cal shrugged.

“Detective, in light of Miss Simms's murder, I am concerned for Angela.”

Bear's eyes flared. “What about her?”

“Mr. Thorne tells me she went to DC this afternoon—investigating leads regarding Raina Iskandr.” Poor Nic waited for questions but when Bear had none, he continued. “That is troubling, no?”

“Yes, it is,” Bear said.

Poor Nic raised his chin. “I fear Angela has located Raina Iskandr—and that woman is hungry.”

Cal looked at Bear and both of them stared at Poor Nic.

Cal asked, “Hungry for what, Nic?”

“A dish that is best served cold, Detectives: revenge.”