False Front (26 page)

Lucinda sighed deeply but was not aware she had done so until Jake gave her hand a squeeze. She turned toward him and flashed a weak, tight smile. She certainly would be glad when she saw the back of Special Agent Racanelli.

When they reached the field office, Racanelli led them into the strategy room. Photos of Trappatino spanning a decade were fastened to the wall with crime scene photos taped beneath each one. On the long conference table were stacks of murder books – the suspected homicide history of the man they now had in custody. Jake and Lucinda started at opposite ends of the table, absorbing as much as they could in preparation for taking part in the questioning of Julius Trappatino.

They hadn’t met in the middle yet when an agent burst into the room. ‘Selma Boone just got a call from her sister.’

Lucinda and Jake followed the agent down the hall to the room where Selma sat in a stark wooden chair in front of an aged wooden table. She was a tiny, thin woman who looked younger than her years with a heart-shaped face, cupid-bow mouth, smooth, youthful skin and short brown hair streaked with gray – the only telltale sign that she was past forty. She wore an ecru, cotton, short-sleeved sweater hanging over a pair of jeans. Lucinda instinctively knew that the lack of jewelry and make-up was not Selma’s usual look but only the by-product of being awakened suddenly and hustled out of the house without any time to tend to her appearance.

‘Ms Boone,’ Lucinda said, ‘I understand your sister called.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She was in a bit of a tizzy because she drove by the house to check on me and saw all the police cars and yellow tape outside her townhouse. She wanted my reassurance that I had gotten away before anything bad had happened. I told her that nothing bad had happened except for being rushed out of the house by men dressed in black with no idea of where they were taking me.’

‘How did she respond to that?’ Jake asked.

‘She got angry and started yelling at me for not heeding her warning.’

‘Did you tell her we wanted to talk to her?’

‘Yes, sir. She told me that if she pulled into the parking lot, she’d be shot dead before she could get inside the doors. She said she knew that’s what happened to some guy named Rowland. She said he went to the FBI and all it got him was dead.’

Jake winced at that assessment but accepted that it was true. ‘Listen, Ms Boone, Lieutenant Pierce here is not FBI. You think she might talk to her if you called her back?’

‘Maybe. But now that her paranoia has been reinforced by what just happened, I can’t say for sure.’

When they were set up to record and trace, Selma followed Jake’s directions, placing the cell on the table and turning on the speaker phone. Olivia answered with a curt, ‘Yes, Selma.’

‘Olivia, I have a homicide detective here. She’s not FBI but she thinks she can get you in here safely. Will you talk to her?’

Olivia let the silence hang in the air for a long thirty seconds. Then she said, ‘Is she local law enforcement?’

‘Yes, but not here – she came up from Virginia.’

‘Virginia?’ she said. ‘Has she connected me to anyone in Virginia?’

‘I don’t know,’ Selma began.

Lucinda joined the conversation. ‘Ms Cartwright, yes we have. We have connected you in some way to three different individuals currently in the state.’

‘Are any of them alive?’ Olivia asked.

‘One of them,’ Lucinda said.

‘Probably Tess.’

Lucinda felt her heart beat harder. ‘What is Tess’s last name?’

‘I don’t feel comfortable doing that on a cell phone – as I’m sure you know, they are very vulnerable to security hacks.’

‘Let me pick you up and bring you in.’

‘No. I won’t make it to the door.’

‘Yes, you will, Olivia. I’ll drive you through the manned gate and into the secure garage. We’ll take the elevator up. You’ll never be outside and exposed for a moment.’

After another moment of silence, she said, ‘There’s a chiropractic center in the twelve hundred block of Chambers Street. Pull up in front of it, open the passenger door and I’ll come out and jump in your car.’

‘OK,’ Lucinda said, jotting down the address.

‘And don’t come in a marked car or in one of those black monstrosities that look like they belong to the FBI or a gangster.’

‘OK.’

‘And come alone. If I see anyone else in the car, I won’t come out. If I see any cars following you, I won’t come out.’

‘All right, Ms Cartwright. When do you want me there?’

‘Twenty minutes. It’s less than a ten minute drive so you should have no problem getting here on time. If you’re more than five minutes late, I’ll be gone. And it won’t be easy to find me again.’ Olivia terminated the call.

‘All I need now is a non-threatening vehicle to drive,’ Lucinda said.

‘I can take you in my personal car,’ Agent Racanelli said.

‘Weren’t you listening, Agent?’ Lucinda snapped. ‘I need to be alone when I pick her up.’

Without responding to Lucinda, Racanelli turned to Jake. ‘You are not going to let her go out there alone, are you? If it needs to be a solitary person, we do have a female agent who could do it. Cartwright won’t know it’s not the woman she talked to.’

‘Shut up, Racanelli,’ Jake said, ‘and give the lieutenant your damn car keys.’

‘How can I trust her with my car? How can we trust her not to screw this up?’

Jake stepped forward into Racanelli’s space, his chest nearly bumping the short man in the chin. ‘Because she is twice as smart as you, has at least double your experience and because I trust her a hell of a lot more than I trust you.’

‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity stand for something, Lovett. Or have you forgotten?’

‘Do I need to call your SAC or will you accept my order and turn over your keys?’

Racanelli opened his mouth but thought better of making another comment. He pulled his car keys out of his pocket, tossed them on the table and left the room.

‘Good riddance,’ Lucinda said as she scooped up the keys.

‘I’m sorry, Lucinda,’ Jake said.

‘Not your fault, Jake. It looks like he drives a Ford. I’ll go down and click the door button and find the car that responds.’

‘I can ask him what he’s driving and where it’s parked,’ Jake offered.

‘Oh, please, don’t give him that satisfaction.’

In the garage, Lucinda had to roam around, following the sound of the unknown vehicle. It took three presses of the remote before she found a light tan Ford Focus with a Rutgers University sticker in the rear window.

With instructions from the GPS, it was easy to find the address. She did it in less than eight minutes. She pulled up in front of the building, got out, opened the passenger door and slid back in behind the steering wheel. She focused on the chiropractic office entrance, looking for Olivia Cartwright. Then, suddenly, a woman with a size and facial features similar to Selma’s slipped into the car and pulled the door shut.

‘Where did you come from?’ Lucinda asked.

‘You don’t need to know,’ she said and proceeded to ball up her small body in the foot well of the front passenger seat.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I don’t want anyone to see me. Just drive.’

Lucinda pulled away from the curb and said, ‘OK, now, tell me Tess’s last name.’

‘Don’t talk to me. Someone will see you. Someone will guess I’m in here and then we’re both dead.’

Lucinda rolled her eyes. ‘Just answer that one question.’

‘No. Stop talking to me or I’ll jump out of this car whether you stop or not.’

Lucinda glanced to her left and was delighted to find a child lock. She engaged it but didn’t call Olivia’s bluff. ‘I will look straight ahead. I will keep my lip movement to a minimum. Just answer the damned question because I won’t shut up until you do.’

Olivia glared up at her, then said, ‘Scott. Tess Scott. Oh, wait, it’s Tess Middleton now. Now, please, no more questions until we reach safety.’ Olivia bent her head down and wrapped her arms over it like a little school child in a 1950s filmstrip demonstrating the duck and cover position during an air-raid drill.

Lucinda wanted to clap her hands with delight over the connection to Tess Middleton but kept them firmly on the steering wheel. She was certain that Bonnie/Olivia possessed all the information needed to make sense of all the disparate puzzle pieces strewn around in her head.

FIFTY-TWO

‘
H
ey, Lovett,’ Racanelli said as he walked in the room.

Pointing a finger at the agent, Jake said, ‘Don’t start.’

‘Hey!’ Racanelli said, throwing out his hands and pulling his neck down into his shoulders. ‘Just wanted you to know we found two phones in Trappatino’s car. One is connected to a regular AT&T cell account listed in the name of Joseph Trevor, the other is a prepaid disposable with no record of any calls and only one phone number in the contact list.’

‘Any name with that number?’

‘Nope. It leads to another disposable.’

‘Interesting,’ Jake said. ‘I guess we’ll have to call that number and see what we can find out.’

Racanelli left the room and returned with the phone, handing it to Jake.

Jake placed it on the table, dialed the number and turned on the speaker. The call was picked up in the middle of the first ring. ‘Is it done?’ a female voice asked.

Jake did not know what to say so he remained silent.

‘Trap. Answer me.’

‘What?’ Jake said.

‘Stop toying with me. Is it done?’

‘Is what done?’

‘Stop jerking me around.’

‘May I ask who this is, please?’ Jake asked.

The woman gasped and disconnected the call.

Jake turned to Racanelli. ‘Trap as in Trappatino?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I think I’ll go see what Mr Trappatino has to say about that.’

‘OK, let’s go,’ Racanelli said.

‘I don’t think so – I’ll talk to him one-on-one.’

‘You’re shutting me out?’

‘Yeah, Racanelli.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘No. Not at all. I don’t trust your judgment and because of that, I will not be comfortable with you in the room. I don’t mind, though, if you watch the live video in the control room.’

‘You son of a bitch.’

‘I’d prefer, if you call me names, you to pick something that does not reflect negatively on my mother,’ Jake said and walked down the hall, listening to Racanelli grumble behind him.

Jake studied the killer in the control room before going in to question him. His body was lanky but well developed. Muscles strained against the sleeves and shoulders of his shirt. His hair was black and medium length. Stubble darkened his face. His mouth was set in a look of disdain. His eyes were devoid of any expression – they sat in his sockets, obviously alert, but cold under half-elevated lids.

Jake flipped the chair around and straddled it backwards. ‘Well, Mr Trappatino – or should I call you Trap?’

Trappatino did not respond – he stared straight ahead at Jake’s face.

‘We found a cell phone in your car. It only had one number on it so we called it. What do you think we heard?’

Trappatino languidly closed his eyes and opened them again.

‘Well, I’ll tell you. A woman answered. And she said: “Is it done?” Now, I was wondering what she was talking about. What did that woman want you to do?’

‘You’re in the FBI. You figure it out.’

‘I imagine I will. At this point, I’d say it was connected to your little escapade that we interrupted. I imagine you were hired to kill Bonnie Upchurch, now known as Olivia Cartwright – is that right?’

Trappatino blinked but did not say a word.

‘Well, I hate to tell you this, Trap, but even if you had succeeded with that explosion, you would have failed in your mission. Sure people would be dead, but the one you were hired to kill wasn’t in the house.’

Trappatino’s eyelids lowered further until he peered out of narrow slits. ‘Bullshit. I saw her.’

‘Oh, you saw a dark-haired, petite woman who looks an awful lot like the old Bonnie Upchurch but it wasn’t her. It was her sister.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I can’t wait until the lieutenant brings Olivia Cartwright back here. I’ll let you have a glimpse of her and her sister together. I’ll bet you won’t be able to tell which woman you saw go into the house. In the meantime, why don’t you fill me in on who hired you to kill that woman?’

Trappatino laughed. ‘Just like that, hunh?’

‘It would save us both a lot of time.’

‘Right now, time is not my big concern.’

‘I can’t argue with that,’ Jake said.

‘Wouldn’t do you much good if you tried.’

‘You know, Trap, I understand why you never rolled on one of your clients. That wouldn’t be good for business. But now, the situation has shifted. You have no future in the killing business.’

‘People just like you have said that to me before.’

‘But see, Trap, here’s where this case is different. We caught you red-handed in that rowhouse. You’re not going to be able to wriggle and slip away laughing at all of us. This time, the evidence is there and you were there. And at this moment in history, post 9/11, we can slap terrorism charges on you on top of the breaking and entry, attempted arson and attempted murder charges. All the prosecutor has to do is whisper “terrorism” and you’re toast. Life in prison at the minimum.’

Trappatino shrugged.

‘We’re going to find out who hired you, Trap,’ Jake continued. ‘And when we do, that person will want a lawyer and that attorney will advise the client to claim that you acted on your own. And that person will pretend to be in shock. If it’s a woman, she’ll dress in black, cry and point a well-manicured finger in your direction – making sure her hand shakes, just a little bit, when she does to add credence to her testimony. You stay on this ship, Trap, and you’re going to sink beneath the waves all by your lonesome.’

Trappatino turned his face a little to the left and stared into the space over Jake’s shoulder.

‘Yeah, well, just saying, Trap. You think about it. I’ve gotta run right now. But I’ll be back.’

Jake walked out of the room, shut the door behind him and leaned against the wall. He was very pleased with that interview. He’d got nothing from Trappatino but he’d planted the seeds. After the killer had a bit of time to think it over, he may decide to cooperate. Then again, it could all backfire. The thrill of not knowing surged through Jake’s veins.