Flawless (8 page)

Declan slipped an arm around her when she walked over, studying her with pride in his eyes.

“We heard you kicked butt yesterday,” he said.

She shrugged and admitted, “I wouldn't have had the chance if Agent Frasier hadn't burst in the way that he did.”

“And you're still helping with the investigation, huh?” Danny asked.

“Um, yeah. I guess so,” she said.

“Immeasurably,” Craig said. “She's very observant about people.”

“Sounds like her,” Kevin said. “She was always psychoanalyzing us as kids. She had us pretty well nailed, too.”

“I'm sure Agent Frasier doesn't care about my childhood, and it's getting late,” she said, embarrassed.

“And I have an early call,” Kevin said. “Time to go.”

He'd gotten the job he'd auditioned for. She wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, but it had something to do with being a singing potato chip.

“Wanna take me home on your way?” she asked her brother.

“I'm not going home. I'm sleeping at your apartment,” he told her. “Early call, remember? And I didn't drive in, because I didn't want to deal with finding parking in the city.”

“How about I get you both home?” Agent Frasier asked. “I have a car.”

“Oh, really, that's okay. We can hop a train,” Kieran said.

“Works for me—thanks,” Kevin said, ignoring her.

“You two get going now,” Declan said. “Danny and I can close up. I have the weekly pro cleaning crew coming in tomorrow, so there's not much for us to do tonight anyway. And thanks, Craig.”

So she was calling the guy Agent Frasier and her brothers were on a first-name basis with the man.

She forced a stiff smile. “Well, thanks. I'll get my things.”

Kieran didn't have to make small talk. Kevin talked all the way. Apparently Craig had expressed interest in Kevin's career, and now Kevin was telling him how grateful he was that he had the family pub to fall back on. So many actors had trouble making it in the city because they couldn't find jobs to keep them going while they went through the arduous audition process.

They reached St. Marks and her apartment quickly; the traffic was light that time of night. She managed to jump out of the car before anyone could offer to help her. Her brother and Frasier exchanged goodbyes, and then Frasier told her, “I'll pick you up here tomorrow around eight thirty.”

“I need to talk to my bosses. I know they won't protest, but—”

“Don't worry. My boss will take care of that,” he told her.

“C'mon, time for bed,” Kevin said. “Early morning for both of us.”

Her apartment was directly above a Japanese restaurant and karaoke bar. Someone was warbling their way through “Don't Stop Believin',” and the sounds of laughter and conversation drifted all around them as they climbed the steps to her place. She loved her apartment, so she didn't mind that a bit of noise seeped up every night. It was one of four units on this floor, and there were eight more on the two floors above.

She loved her whole neighborhood, where there were still stores selling unusual items—crafts, imports—along with those carrying the usual T-shirts and souvenirs.

“I wonder if I should pop down and try a few numbers, get some practice in,” Kevin mused, more to himself than to her. “Nah, I should get to sleep.” He paused as she used her two keys in their respective locks. “You okay?”

“I'm fine, why?”

“You're so quiet. That FBI guy you're working with seems great. You're lucky—damned lucky—he came along.”

“Yes, especially when I shouldn't have been at the store at all. You're not going to point that out?”

“I'll let Declan keep the paternal thing going. You know you shouldn't have been there without me telling you. But listen, I love Julie, too, but you've got to draw a line. Let her cry on your shoulder, but stay the hell out of the shenanigans between her and Gary.”

“He could have killed those dogs,” Kieran said indignantly.

Inside now, she closed the door and double-bolted it, then headed to the living room closet. She took out the guest bedding while Kevin unfolded the sleeper-sofa. Her place was fairly small—only her bedroom, a tiny nook she used as an office, the kitchen and the living room—but it had been an incredibly lucky find. It had a private bathroom off her bedroom and a guest bathroom to the left of the kitchen, off the dining area.

Her sleeper-sofa was the only modern piece of furniture she had. The rest consisted of odds and ends and period pieces: an art deco buffet she'd found at an estate sale, a Duncan Phyfe love seat she'd found in pieces at a bric-a-brac shop and had reupholstered, and more. Her walls were covered with framed movie posters and prints of old masterpieces.

“Care if I keep the TV on while I fall asleep?” Kevin asked.

“Not at all. I'm accustomed to noise,” she reminded him, smiling.

“So what's your beef with Craig?” he asked, surprising her.

“I don't have a beef with him.”

“Then what's your problem?” he asked.

“I don't have a problem.”

“Okay then, what are you afraid of?”

“I'm not—”

“I'm your twin.”

“Yeah, and you and Danny have checkered pasts,” she reminded him.

He started to laugh. “You think a guy who chases
killers
for a living gives a damn about our little past transgressions? He's looking at the bigger picture.” He sobered, turned sympathetic. “If you're afraid working with the Feds is going to put you in danger, you should bow out of the investigation.”

“Afraid? They caught the guys.”

“But did they catch all of them? That's the real question, isn't it?”

Yes, it was. And she was certain they
hadn't
caught them all.

She waved a hand in the air. “Kevin, stop worrying about me and get your beauty rest. You need it to be a singing chip. I love you—good night.”

She headed into her bedroom. She was suddenly deeply tired.

She was almost asleep when she heard Kevin's sleepy voice. “Who is it?”

She sat up and looked at her bedside clock. Almost one o'clock. Was he rehearsing lines?

Hurriedly crawling out of bed, she went to her bedroom door and peered out.

Kevin was standing by the door, puzzled.

“What's going on?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Thought I heard someone at the door. Guess not. There's no one there now, anyway,” he said. “But I could have sworn I heard someone playing with the lock.” He shrugged. “Sorry I woke you. Probably just some drunk from downstairs looking for a place to crash.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

She gave him a quick hug and reminded him to get his beauty sleep.

She went back to bed. But then she began to wonder.

Had
someone been trying to get into her apartment? Not just any apartment,
her
apartment?

And if so...

Why?

She tried to be logical. Kevin had to be right. Some drunk had just wandered up from below. It wasn't an unheard-of occurrence, as she knew firsthand. They ran a pub, after all. Most of the time people more or less knew their limits, and when they didn't, Declan refused to keep serving them.

But alcohol was a moneymaker. Not every establishment was as careful as Finnegan's.

And yet...

She tossed and turned, glad that her twin was in the living room and that she had not one but two serious dead bolts on her door.

CHAPTER
FIVE

THEY HEADED OVER
from Queens on the three-lane Francis Buono Memorial Bridge, known unofficially as the Rikers Island Bridge.

She'd never been to Rikers Island before, either, though her employers had been there often enough.

“You been here before?” he asked, as if reading her mind.

She shook her head.

“It's pretty amazing. Inmates may be held here pending trial. Maybe their attorneys couldn't get them bail, or maybe they couldn't pay it. Or they might have been sentenced to under a year. Anything longer, and they'd be in prison. Rikers is a jail.”

She nodded, pretty sure that she'd more or less known that.

“How many inmates?” she asked.

“At any given time? More than thirteen thousand, but with guards and staff, including civilian employees, there may be as many as twenty thousand people on the island—even more on some days. It's like a city unto itself.”

“You've been here before, obviously.”

He nodded. “Too often.” He glanced her way. “This whole place is a mess. You've got New York prosecutors, federal prosecutors, even Jersey prosecutors, working here. But we're the ones charged with getting and presenting evidence. Any prosecutor's success always comes down to the evidence and statements—and ideally confessions—we can give them. Of course, they're also the ones who make the deals in spite of that evidence.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I just haven't been here before.”

“But this is what you do, right?” he asked. “Work with criminals.”

“So far I've only dealt with people who
might
be charged,” she said. “And usually the situation is sad. I think I told you—I talked with a couple suspected of killing their baby, but the expert physician who was brought in agreed that the child simply stopped breathing. Crib death. Not smothered, poisoned, ignored... I write a lot of reports,” she added. “Interview witnesses. It's amazing how people can be in the same place at the same time and see completely different things.”

“Because everything is perception,” he said. “Everything we see is filtered through the way we perceive it.”

“And here I liked to think I went to school for something useful,” she said.

He laughed. “I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't. Your help with the crime-scene footage was pretty amazing—you saw a lot that I didn't. But that more or less proves my point.”

“Will their attorneys be present?” she asked.

“No, oddly enough, I think they actually want to talk. They seem to want to convince us that they might be thieves, but they're not murderers.”

They arrived, headed through security and then went on to the building where the suspects were being held.

They went through another security check, where Craig turned over his gun. He seemed to know the guard who escorted them to the room where a man in jail coveralls was handcuffed to a table, waiting for them to arrive.

Kieran realized that it was the driver, Mark O'Malley. He looked at Craig Frasier with deep distrust and eyed
her
suspiciously, as well. She was still surprised that he hadn't asked that his attorney be present, then realized that while he might want to prove his point, he might not be at all certain that he really trusted them, so he would prefer to keep things somewhat off the record.

“Ah, so it's Black Widow and the Hulk,” he muttered, looking away and shaking his head. He hesitated and then said in a hurt tone, “You were there. You know we didn't stash any real guns anywhere. You
know
that! They want our blood. Yes, we robbed people, but we never killed anyone.”

There was a seat opposite O'Malley, and Craig Frasier indicated that she should take it. He remained standing, then took a step back.

“What?” O'Malley asked him. “You're antisocial?”

“I'm just here to watch out for Miss Finnegan. She's here to listen.”

“
Miss
Finnegan?” O'Malley stared at Kieran. “You're not with the Feds?”

She shook her head, studying O'Malley in return. He was young—late twenties to early thirties. He wasn't a bad-looking man. He had the air, though, of one who had come from nothing, who had scratched his way up since birth and dreamed of something better. Blue-eyed, blond-haired...in another world he could have been a California beach bum.

“You weren't a plant in the jewelry store?” O'Malley asked her.

She shook her head again.

He started to laugh. “Well, hell. Done in by a girl shopping for diamonds!”

Except she hadn't been a girl who'd wanted a diamond; she'd been trying to get rid of one.

“I'm a psychologist,” she said.

“A shrink, huh?” O'Malley asked.

“Psychiatrists are shrinks,” she said. “I'm more like someone you...someone you talk to.”

That brought a pained smile to his lips. “Yeah? Could have used you a few years ago. Not much to talk about now, is there? My family has pretty much disowned me, and I have a baby for a lawyer who wants me to confess to what I didn't do... A little late for talking, I guess.”

“Not at all. If you really didn't kill anyone, then you shouldn't confess to it,” Kieran told him.

“You know what we were carrying,” he said. “But some district attorney wants to charge us with first-degree murder, though I don't get the first-degree part at all, something to do with the laws about armed robbery. Not that it matters. I swear, we didn't kill anyone. And I was always in the car.”

“I'm pretty sure that, in the car or out of it, you can all be charged, since the murders occurred during the armed robbery and you were part of the robbery,” Kieran said.

“Except we weren't armed. And we didn't kill anyone. Someone is imitating us.”

Kieran didn't agree or disagree with his words; whether he and the others could prove themselves innocent of the murders, she didn't know. “At the moment, not many people believe that theory. You
appeared
to be armed, after all. Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not here to argue the law. I'm here to talk to you, and if you didn't kill anyone, then I'm also here to help you. I'm one of the few people open to the idea that you didn't,” she added softly. “I suspect that there really is a copycat group out there,” she said. “Unless
you
were copying
them
?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, we were first, hitting stores with our toy guns and stealing, but leaving everyone alive. Our biggest fear was being shot by a guard or caught by the police, but no matter what, as you saw, we couldn't shoot back.” He leaned forward. “I'm telling you, someone out there was hoping we'd be caught, that they'd get away with what they were doing because we'd been taken in.” He let out a deep sigh. “I've already written pages explaining every detail of the robberies we did plan and carry out. That child they gave me for a lawyer has them all. Someone has to prove we didn't kill anyone.” His shoulders sank, and he glanced over to where Craig Frasier stood, legs slightly spread, arms folded across his chest, silent and unreadable. “I don't suppose the agent over there thinks I might be telling the truth.”

“That agent is your best hope of the truth being accepted,” she told him.

He brightened. “You said ‘accepted.' So that means you really do believe me?”

“Yes, I tend toward believing you,” she said.

“They won't hit up another store now,” he said. “They won't—not for a long time. Not until we're tried and convicted for their crimes.”

“I'm sure the authorities have ways to find them whether or not they strike again,” Kieran said. She looked over at Craig Frasier.

He glanced at his watch. “We need to let Mr. O'Malley go now,” he told her. “Is there anything else you'd like to ask him?”

Mark O'Malley stared at her, clearly ready to give her any information she asked for.

“I think we're good,” she said.

Craig nodded toward the guard at the door. As he walked over to uncuff O'Malley and lead him away, she walked toward Craig and asked, “Are we done?”

A smiled cracked the stone of his features. “Not by a long shot. We've just begun. There are three more men.”

And so the afternoon went on. She interviewed the other three men; each time the story she heard was the same, except for the details of each man's participation in the robbery.

Each man swore passionately that they'd never killed. They had carried toy guns and no other weapons at any time. It was one thing to steal, another to kill. They had a certain code of honor, she realized as she spoke with them. All three men were deeply rooted in one form or another of religion, and all three had had a religious upbringing. In their minds, God forgave a man for taking from another who had too much, but he didn't forgive the taking of a life.

Through every session, Craig Frasier stood a few feet behind her, tall and stoic, expression unwavering, arms folded across his chest. He heard everything that was said, and she knew that he was close enough to step in if there was the least hint of trouble.

There wasn't. The men seemed almost baffled that anyone could think them capable of murder.

When the day was done at last and it was time to leave, they signed out and headed back across the bridge. As they drove, Frasier asked her, “What do you think?”

“I don't think any of those men killed anyone. In my opinion, you do have a copycat group out there. There must be a way to prove that forensically. There must be computer programs that compare height and body characteristics. I pointed out what I saw, and if I saw it, it must be obvious via computer comparison.”

“Yep. And I have a man on it. So far the charges against them are only for the attempted robbery. There are huge arguments going on above my pay grade. These men, as you know, claim that all their robberies were in the state of New York. The powers that be are arguing over whether they should face federal or state charges, or both. We're executing search warrants on their homes, and we'll see what those yield. In my gut, I know that the killers are still out there,” he told her.

“If you're so convinced,” Kieran said, “why do you need my opinion?”

“Verification,” he told her. He turned and looked at her. “No matter how things go down, you'll be called in to testify, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Kieran was uneasy, wondering why, even though he was driving, she felt as if he were watching her suspiciously, seeing how the reminder that she would have to appear in court would affect her.

She looked out the window. She could picture the scene. She would be sworn in, agreeing under oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—even though the prosecutor might well ask,
Why were you in that jewelry store?

I went to see someone I know who works there.

Is that the truth?

Yes.

Allow me to remind you that you're under oath.

All right, all right! I was returning a diamond my brother and my best friend stole.
But they didn't really steal it. They were just borrowing it.

And this “borrowed” diamond was in your possession?

“Miss Finnegan?”

“What?” She turned to look at Agent Frasier, startled.

“We're here,” he told her.

“Oh! Ah, thank you.”

They were parked in front of the offices of Fuller and Miro.

“No, thank
you
. I mean it. Thank you for your help.”

She knew she should get out of the car. That this would be the last she would see of Agent Craig Frasier, at least until the trial. And when that happened, the thieves were going to be the ones in the hot seat, not her.

She moved to get out of the car, but she was too late. He was already out of the driver's seat and coming around. He opened her door, and she scrambled out as quickly as she could. For a moment she was standing on the New York street just staring up at him. He was a foot away, but that was too close. The man was built like steel and seemed to tower over her, and while she wanted to run, she also wanted to reach out and touch him and find out if he was still somehow flesh and blood, despite the way he looked at that moment. His eyes were on her, and she was drawn to return his stare, as if he were somehow compelling her to. The man was almost impossibly attractive. She certainly didn't meet people like him every day. She found herself feeling sorry about saying goodbye, despite the way he seemed to be using X-ray vision to peer into her mind. Something stirred within her, and she wished she could meet him again in the pitch-dark, could simply touch him, feel him and...

Her fantasies moved in a very dangerous direction, as in hot, wild, wet sex, and she felt her face turning every shade of red.

She had to get away.

She reached out a hand to shake his. “Well, goodbye,” she said awkwardly.

She felt the length of his fingers curling around hers and the solid strength in his hand. And he smiled.

A smile that seemed to say that he was sure she was guilty as hell of
something
.

“Goodbye, Miss Finnegan,” he said. Then he headed back around the car to the driver's side. She watched him, knowing she should turn and head into her building.

He paused right before he slid into the driver's seat. “I'm sure we'll be seeing one another again,” he told her with a wave.

She did turn and flee then.

She had to forget him, forget her guilt, forget the whole situation.

And forget her totally inappropriate—and quite frankly, embarrassing—fantasies.

* * *

“So, how did the assessment go?” a deep, gruff and familiar voice inquired.