The FBI Thrillers Collection (38 page)

Delion said, “So the guy thinks one day, I want to murder a priest, but before I do, I’m going to kill other people and rub the priest’s nose in it when I confess it to him, watch him squirm because he’s bound to silence. Do you think the perp is that sick?” Dane saw that Delion had included Nick in the question. She looked intent, like she was thinking ferociously. He didn’t know why, but he liked that.

Dane said, “That may be close enough.”

“Jesus, Dane. Then we’ve got to look for any other murders involving priests.”

Nick said slowly, her brow furrowed, “I just don’t know. That makes it sound pretty unlikely.”

None of them said anything more. Dane watched Archbishop Lugano stare down at his brother, his lips moving in a prayer. Then he crossed himself, his movements a smooth ritual, leaned down, and kissed Michael’s forehead.

Dane felt tears film his eyes. He nodded to Delion and turned abruptly away, realizing that Nick was still holding his hand. “I just can’t stay any longer,” he said, and she understood. They made their way through the waves of black-garbed priests and walked together from the chapel.

CHICAGO

Nick’s
eyes were wide open, she knew they were, but she couldn’t see anything. No, wait. She was in a room, dark, almost black. She could feel how thick the blackness was, how heavy it was settling around her, with not a shred of light coming in. She lay there, on her back, looking up at a ceiling she couldn’t really see, wondering what was happening, hoping she wasn’t dead.

She tasted something sour, something that made her want to gag, but she knew she shouldn’t gag or she’d start to choke. At least she was alive.

There was something in her mouth, something at the back of her throat. Then she remembered.

It had been a lovely evening in December, just a few days before Christmas, not too cold, no snow for the past three days, and the winds were fairly calm. Such a splendid occasion, perfectly orchestrated, naturally so, since John’s private assistant had arranged it. Albia’s birthday dinner was at John’s magnificent Rushton Avenue condominium penthouse, looking out on Lake Michigan. It hadn’t been just the three of them, no, Elliott Benson was there, a man
she didn’t trust, didn’t like. He was rich and charming, supposedly a friend of John’s, and she’d been told they’d known each other since college, but the truth was, whenever she had to spend time with him, she always wanted to go home and take a shower. She’d wanted it just to be the three of them, no aides, no other important people to coddle who had been or would be of assistance to John’s career, but Albia had wanted him there.

Albia was John’s older sister, an elegant, articulate woman, rich in her own right from ownership of several successful men’s boutiques. Albia had been in John’s corner since their mother had died when he was only sixteen and Albia twenty-three. She was turning fifty-five, but she looked a dozen years younger. She’d married when she’d turned thirty, been widowed just a year later. Albia had always been reserved, even standoffish with all the campaign volunteers, but since John had begun dating Nick, she’d warmed up considerably. Nick felt very close to her, indeed she was becoming a confidante.

Tonight, there was so much excitement, a feast on the dining table, a gorgeous diamond bracelet, presented by John to his sister, around Albia’s wrist, winking and glittering in the soft glow of the half dozen lighted candles on the table. Elliott Benson had charmed and joked and flattered Albia, presenting her with diamond earrings that easily rivaled the bracelet John had gotten her. They were in her ears, gorgeous earrings. Elliott was trying to outdo John, it was easy enough to see, at least to Nick. Why had Albia wanted him there?

Nick’s gift to Albia was a silk scarf imprinted with a Picasso painting that she’d found in Barcelona. Albia, exclaiming over that lovely scarf, had said, “Oh, I remember that Mother had a scarf very similar to this one. She loved that scarf—”

And her voice had dropped like a stone off a cliff.

Nick, filled with Albia’s pleasure, pleased that her scarf
had reminded her of John’s mother, said, “Oh, John, you’ve never spoken of your mother.”

John shot a look at his sister. She shook her head slightly, as if in apology, and looked back down at her plate.

“That’s right, John,” Elliott said, “I never even met your mother. Hey, didn’t she die? A long time ago?”

“That’s right,” John said, his voice curt. “Nicola, you knew, didn’t you? It was a car accident. It’s been many, many years. We don’t often speak about her.”

She said, “A car accident? Oh my, I hadn’t realized. I’m so very sorry. It must have been such a shock to both of you.”

“Not to my father,” John said.

Elliott started to say something, then chewed thoughtfully on a medallion of veal and stared at one of the paintings on the dining room wall.

Albia said, “It was a bad time. Would you please pass me the green beans, Nicola?”

Elliott told stories of college days. All of them involved girls that both men had wanted. His stories were funny, utterly charming, and many times he made himself the dupe, but still, it was a very strange thing. “Then, of course,” he said, “there was Melissa—no, let’s not speak of her this evening. I’m sorry, John. Another toast. To Albia, the loveliest lady in Chicago.” And while he drank the toast, he looked at Nick and she wanted to slap that oily look off his handsome face.

Over a dessert of crème brûlée, Nick felt a sudden cramp, then another, this one stronger, more vicious. She had to excuse herself to run to the bathroom, where she got sick, and soon felt so ill, so utterly miserable, that she just wanted to curl up and die.

The pain was ghastly, her belly twisting and knotting. She threw up until she was shaking and sweating and couldn’t stand. She remembered hugging the toilet with
Elliott, John, and Albia standing next to her, not knowing what to do until Albia said, “I think we should call an ambulance, John. She’s really sick. Elliott, go wait downstairs for them. Go, both of you! Quickly!”

And here she was in a hospital bed and they’d pumped her stomach. She remembered now that they’d told her about that before she fell asleep again, thanks to something very nice they’d given her. At least her stomach was calm. In fact, her belly felt hollow, scooped out, shrunk down to nothing at all. It hurt, but it was a dull ache, as if she’d been hungry for too long.

She remembered now that after they’d pumped her stomach, she lay on the hospital gurney feeling like she’d been bludgeoned with several baseball bats. Just on the edge of blissful drugged sleep, she remembered all those mad eyes staring at her from behind ski masks in her dreams, breathed in the smell of the exhaust from the big dark car that had nearly flattened her into the concrete.

It was so very dark. She turned her head just a bit and saw a flashing red light. What was that?

Then she heard a movement. Someone was in the room, close to her. She nearly stopped breathing.

She whispered around that miserable tube down her throat, “Who’s there?”

A man, she knew it was a man, and his breathing was close to her, too close.

“Nicola.”

Thank God, it was John. Why had she thought it could be Elliott Benson? There was no reason for him to be here.

She started crying, she couldn’t help it.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Nicola. You’ll be fine. You must stop crying.”

But she couldn’t.

He rang the bell. In just a moment, the door opened, flooding the hospital room with light from the hallway. Then the overhead light in the room went on.

“What’s the problem, Senator?”

“She’s crying and she’ll choke if you don’t get that tube out of her throat.”

“Yes, we have an order for that, once she is awake.” She was standing over Nicola now, saying, “This isn’t fun, is it? Okay, this won’t be pleasant, Nicola, but it’s quick.”

After the tube came out, her throat felt like it was burning inside.

The nurse said, “Don’t be alarmed about the pain in your throat. After all that’s happened, it’ll be sore for a couple more days.” The nurse took a Kleenex and wiped her eyes, her face. “You’ll be just fine now, I promise.”

She got the tears under control. She took a dozen good-sized breaths, calmed her heartbeat. “What happened?”

“Probably food poisoning,” John said. “You ate something bad, but we got you to the emergency room in time.”

“But what about you? Albia? Are you ill?”

“No, we’re fine. So is Elliott.”

“It appears,” the nurse said as she took Nicola’s pulse, “that only you ate whatever was bad.” She eased Nicola’s arm back under the covers. “The senator believes it might have been a raspberry vinaigrette. You’ve got to sleep now. Senator Rothman will see to everything.”

And she wondered, why hadn’t John or Albia or Elliott gotten ill from the food?

John kissed her forehead, not her mouth, and she didn’t blame him a bit for that. She wished she could have something to get rid of the dreadful taste, but she was so tired, so empty of words and feelings, that she just closed her eyes.

She heard John say to the nurse, “I’ll be back in the morning to speak with the doctor, see that she’s discharged. Oh, no, I can’t. I have a meeting with the mayor. I’ll send one of my people to see to things.”

They continued speaking, in low voices, into the hallway. The overhead light clicked off. The door closed.

She was shut into the blackness again. But she knew this time she was alone and it was warm here, nothing to disturb her except that small nagging voice in her head: food
poisoning from vinaigrette dressing? What nonsense. She’d eaten so little of everything because she was excited about Albia’s birthday, the gift she’d given her, and she wanted desperately for Albia to be her friend, to accept her. She wondered as she fell back into sleep if she would have died if she’d eaten more.

She’d had food poisoning before, on a hunting trip with her dad, when she’d eaten bad meat. It hadn’t been like this.

The next morning, the doctors couldn’t say exactly what had made her sick. They’d taken blood tests, said they would analyze what was in her stomach, and tested both the senator and his sister, but nothing was found.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Beasley, John’s cook and housekeeper, had already thrown all the food away, washed all the dishes. No way to know, the doctors said. Finally they’d let her go.

She’d nearly died. For the second time in a week and a half.

SAN FRANCISCO

Nick
touched her fingertips to her throat, remembering how it had hurt for a good two days after she’d left the hospital in Chicago. She turned on her side, saw Dane’s outline on that wretched too-short sofa not more than twelve feet from her, sighed, and finally fell asleep in her bed at the Bennington Hotel. She was afraid, afraid those mad, dark eyes would come gleaming out of the darkness at her, just over her head, hovering just out of reach. She prayed she wouldn’t have any more nightmares.

Dane, sprawled on the sofa across the room, never stirred. He awoke with a start at 7 a.m. to see Nick Jones dressed in the blue jeans and white shirt he’d bought her, feet bare, pacing back and forth in front of him. He realized he’d slept hard, which was unexpected since the damned sofa was too short and hard as the floor. The TV
was on, he could see the reflection of the colors in the mirror over the vanity table, but there was no sound.

“Thank God you’re awake.”

For as long as he could remember, when Dane woke up, he was instantly alert, and he was now. “What’s the matter, Nick?”

She blew out her breath, splayed her hands in front of her. She took a step closer to him and said, “I know what’s going on. I know.”

Dane
swung his legs over the side of the sofa and stood quickly, the blankets falling to the floor at his feet. “You know what?” His sweatpants were low on his belly, and he quickly pulled them back up. He grabbed her hands, covered them. “What, Nick? What do you know?”

“Yes, okay. Listen, you were out like a light last night. I woke up, then couldn’t go back to sleep and so I watched TV, turned down really low. It’s a show, Dane, a TV show on the Premier Channel, a new one, just started probably a couple of weeks ago. It came on at eleven o’clock, called
The Consultant
. It was about these murders in Chicago and how this special Federal consultant comes in and solves them. It was kind of
X-Files
-y, you know, unexplained stuff that gives you goose bumps and makes you look toward the window if it’s really dark outside. I wasn’t really paying too much attention until there was this creepy guy in a confessional, and I realized he was talking to a priest
about what he’d done, taunting him about the people he’d killed, and then when the priest was pleading with him to stop, he laughed and shot him through the forehead. Dane, it wasn’t about murders in Chicago, it was like the murders right here, in San Francisco.”

Dane rubbed his forehead, dashed his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t get his brain around what she’d just said. It didn’t seem possible. He said finally, “You’re telling me that some asshole murdered my brother because he was following the script of some idiotic TV show?”

“Yes. When the show was over, I watched all the credits and wrote down everything I could.”

Dane dragged his fingers through his hair again, drew a deep breath, and said, “I’m going to order some coffee, then you’re going to tell me everything, every little detail. Oh damn, let me call Delion. You’re pretty sure about this?”

“I’m positive. I just couldn’t believe it. I nearly woke you up, but realized that there wasn’t much of anything you could do at midnight. And you were so tired.”

“It’s okay.”

LOS ANGELES

After
arriving at LAX on the 9 a.m. Southwest shuttle from Oakland airport, where Nick was allowed through despite having no ID after Delion filled out papers in triplicate and spoke to two supervisors, Inspector Delion, Special Agent Carver, and the woman they introduced as Ms. Nick Jones, with no designation at all, stepped into Executive Producer Frank Pauley’s corner office with its big glass windows that looked across Pico toward the ocean. You couldn’t see it because the smog was sitting heavy and gray over the city, but you could see the golf course.

Mr. Pauley was slightly built, tall, pleasant looking, and very pale. Surely that shouldn’t be right, Nick thought.
Wasn’t everyone in LA supposed to be tanned from head to toe? He looked to be somewhere in his forties, and had a nice smile, albeit a nervous one when he met them. She couldn’t blame him for that.

He shook hands all around, offered them coffee, and pointed them to the very long gray sofa that lined half the wall. It must have been at least eighteen feet long. There were chairs facing that sofa, all of them gray, and three coffee tables spaced out to form separate sitting groups.

Frank Pauley said, waving toward the sofa, “I just took over. I inherited this office and all the gray from the last executive producer. He said he liked a really big casting couch.” He grinned at Nick, who didn’t grin back, and said, “You called, Inspector Delion, because you believe that the murders in
The Consultant
that played last night are similar to murders that were committed in San Francisco over the last week and a half.”

“That’s right,” Delion said. “But before we discuss any more of this, we’d like to see the show, compare all the points, make a final determination. Ms. Jones is the only one of us who’s seen it so far.”

“This is, naturally, very disturbing. Just a moment, please.” Frank Pauley turned to the gray phone, punched in a couple of buttons.

Nick said, “Thank God you’ve only aired two of the shows.”

Dane said, “We’ll watch both episodes, Mr. Pauley. If we’ve got a match with San Francisco, we’ll find out whether there have been any crimes that follow the first episode. We have no way of knowing whether the murderer would continue if you stop showing the episodes. But I presume the studio will announce that the show’s been canceled?”

Frank Pauley cleared his throat. “Let me be up front here. Our lawyers have recommended that we immediately cancel the show and provide you with complete
cooperation. Naturally, the studio is appalled that some maniac would do this, if, indeed, we discover that the episode does match the murders in San Francisco.”

Dane said, “We appreciate it. Naturally you will have to be concerned about legal action.”

“We always are,” Frank Pauley said. “They’re waiting for us in room fifty-one.”

“Room fifty-one?” Nick said.

“A little joke, Ms. Jones, just a little film joke. It’s our own private theater. We can see the first and second episodes now, if you wish.”

Delion said, “Later, perhaps we can see the third episode as well.”

“That’s not a problem,” Pauley said, waving a left hand that sported four diamond rings. Dane felt a man’s instant distaste. Hey, maybe four different wives had given them to him, one never knew, here in LA.

They sat in the small darkened theater and watched the second episode of
The Consultant.
The city was Chicago, the church, St. John’s, the priest, Father Paul. Dane watched Father Paul as he listened to a man telling him about the murder he’d just committed—an old woman he’d bludgeoned to death, no sport in that, was there? But hey, she was another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, wasn’t she? Two nights later, a black activist was garroted in front of a club, ah, yes, yet another soul lost from Father Paul’s parish, and what was the priest going to do about it? The murderer mocks the priest’s beliefs, claims the Church is the perfect calling for men who can’t face life, that the priest is nothing but a coward who can’t even tell a soul, because he’s bound by rules that really don’t make a whole lot of sense, now do they?

In the fourth and final meeting, after two more murders, the priest loses it. He sobs, pleading with the murderer, raging against God for allowing this monster to exist, raging against his own deeply held beliefs, hating his own
helplessness. The murderer laughs, tells him you live like a coward, you die like a coward, and shoots the priest in the forehead.

Dane leaned forward and shut off the projector. He said to Pauley, “Your writers made a mistake here. A priest is bound to silence only when it is a real confession, that is, when the penitent truly means to repent. In a case like this, where the man is mocking the sacrament itself, the priest isn’t bound to silence.”

Pauley stared at him. “But I thought—”

“I know,” Dane said. “Everybody believes that. But the Church makes that exception. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be out in the hall.”

The truth was, he couldn’t bear the show another minute. He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, trying to get a grip on himself. But he kept seeing the man firing that gun, shooting the priest in the forehead.

He felt her hand on his arm. They stood still, saying nothing, for a very long time. Finally, Dane drew several deep breaths and raised his head. “Thank you,” he said.

She only nodded.

Delion came out of the small theater. “You didn’t miss much. We have this big-shot consultant dude with some mythical agency in Washington, D.C., come riding into town—the guy’s real sensitive, feels people’s pain, all that crapola—he cleans the whole mess up because the local cops are stupid and don’t have any extrasensory abilities, and he can ‘see’ things, ‘intuit’ things that they can’t. It ended good except for five dead people.”

Dane said, “He killed two more people in the show than he did in San Francisco.”

“Yes. And maybe that means then that your brother didn’t stick to the script and that’s why the guy shot him after the two murders. Remember, your brother told Father Binney that he was going to make a decision that would change his life forever. There’s only one threat your brother could have made to shut this guy down.”

“Yes,” Dane said. “Michael told the killer that he was going to tell the police about what this man had done.”

Nick said, “And the guy had no choice but to shoot him. Father Michael Joseph wrecked the guy’s script. He stopped him.”

“Your brother must have told him what he was planning to do on Sunday night and the guy had no choice but to kill him. The other two people in the show were a guy who owned a bakery and a prominent businessman. If it hadn’t been for Father Michael Joseph, there might be two more dead people in San Francisco.”

“The guy kept saying that this Father Paul had lost another soul from his parish,” Dane said. “Do we know if the two victims in San Francisco attended Saint Bartholomew’s?”

“They’re not on the membership list,” Delion said. “But if the guy was following the script, the chances are good that they did attend mass occasionally. That would tie it all up with a pretty bow, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dane said, “it would. Not that it’s any help.”

Delion just shook his head. “I don’t believe this. A damned script. The guy’s copycatting a damned TV script.”

“Not copycatting,” Dane said. “Don’t forget, the murders took place before the show aired. Look, at least we know for sure the guy has to be here, has to be somehow involved with the show. No outsider would know the scripts that well.”

Savich
typed on MAX’s screen:
Episode One of
The Consultant
—set in Boston, three murders: a secretary, a bookie, and an insurance salesman, about two to three weeks ago.
“Dane, I’ll check—Hey, wait a second. Ah, Sherlock, who was reading over my shoulder, just said these murders were not in Boston, but actually happened two and a half weeks ago, in Pasadena, California.”

“Bingo,” Dane said. “I’ll tell Delion and he can call the cops in Pasadena. Nice and close to Los Angeles.”

“Dane, the guy’s officially taken this show on the road. You’re now formally FBI, working this case. If you want to use the San Francisco field office, call Bert Cartwright, coordinate with him. You will remain in charge of the Federal part of the investigation, all right?”

“Yes, all right, but the thing is, Savich, the killer has to be here in Los Angeles, someone working for the studio, someone working on this specific show, or with access to it.”

“Yes, of course, you’re right. I’ll let Gil Rainy know—he’s the SAC down in LA—that you’ll be coordinating with him. But you’ll be calling the shots. I’ll make sure everyone’s clear on that.”

“Thanks, Savich.”

There was a brief silence, then a chuckle. “And that means you’ve got MAX at your disposal.”

There was incredulity in Dane’s voice. “You mean you’re going to send MAX out for me?”

“Get a grip here, Dane. Deep-six that fantasy. No, let me know what you need and I will—personally—set MAX to work.”

“Oh, so I didn’t catch you in a weak moment.”

“Never that weak.” A pause, then, “How are you holding up, Dane?”

“Michael’s funeral is on Friday afternoon.”

The words were spoken with finality, cold and frozen over.

Savich said, after a pause, “Just call when you need something.”

“Thanks, Savich.” Dane closed his cell phone and walked into the West LA Division on Butler Avenue. It was a big blocky concrete box with an in-your-eye bright orange tile entrance, evidently someone’s idea of cheering up the place. Truth be told, the building was old and ugly, but humongous, nearly a full city block, with a parking lot
beside it for the black-and-whites. Across the street was another lot and a maintenance station. It was in an old part of town, with lots of weeds, old houses, and little greenery anywhere.

Dane flipped open his shield for the officers standing at the front desk, got a nod from one of them, and walked to the stairs. He heard a loud mix of voices before he even saw the signs. He met Patty, a nice older lady who was a volunteer receptionist, kept chocolate chip cookies on a big plate on her desk, and tracked all the detectives. She told him they had three homicide detectives and Detective Flynn was inside with the two cops from San Francisco. Dane assumed Delion had just rolled Nick into the mix.

He walked into the large room, much bigger than the homicide room in San Francisco. All the detectives here were stationed in this room filled with gnarly workstations and funky orange lockers against the rear wall.

Patty had told him Detective Flynn’s desk was down three rows. He walked past a man whose shirt was hanging out, past a woman who was shouting to another detective to
shut the fuck up,
and then there was Flynn—impossible to miss Flynn, he’d been told, and it was true. He saw Nick sitting quietly in the corner, reading a magazine. Well, no, she wasn’t reading, just using it as a prop. What was she thinking?

Dane walked up to Delion and told him, “The murders from the first episode of
The Consultant,
they were in Pasadena. Two, two and a half weeks ago.”

Detective Mark Flynn didn’t wait for an introduction, just lifted his phone and started dialing.