The Monarch (7 page)

“Fuck,” Wagner said.

“Well, check again. That's impossible!” Benoit stomped over to the painting after shouting into his phone. “Connie, I'm standing right . . .
my God
.” Benoit reached a shaking hand out and touched the painting near the bottom before the blood left his face.

“Mr. Benoit?” Wagner said, but the unsteady curator paid no attention to him.

Then Benoit inhaled like a fist had hit his breadbasket. The phone fell from his hand and clattered to the floor as he slumped to his knees in front of the painting, his arm shooting out for purchase. Evans stepped in, catching him. The man looked up, sobbing.

“Take it easy, buddy,” Evans said a moment before Benoit grabbed his chest with his other arm. His eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled over, slamming to the floor with an audible crack.

“Jesus! Benoit!” Evans fell to his knees and rolled him over, pressing his fingers to his neck. “Shit, no pulse,” Evans said to Wagner.

“Get the doc in here. Quick!” Matthews said to an agent by the door as Evans cleared Benoit's airway and started CPR.

Wagner picked Benoit's phone up off the floor. He could still hear a woman's voice coming from it, calling Benoit's name.

“This is Agent Wagner with the FBI. Who is this?” Wagner demanded. “What did you say to Benoit?”

“It's Connie Baker, Agent Wagner. From the museum. What's happening there?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

“What did you say to Benoit, Ms. Baker?”

“Nothing. I mean, I just told him there was a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“The replica of
The
Just Judges
isn't missing, after all.”

“You've got the painting there? You're sure?”

“I'm standing right in front of it,” Connie said. Wagner looked at the dripping painting and felt his own heart rate skip a beat.

“But if the replica is there, then that makes this—­”

“Agent Wagner,” Special Agent Duke Roberts, Evans's partner, called from the doorway. “You better come out here. Jesus, what did you do to the museum guy?”

Wagner's head spun. Spangler and Matthews ran in past him and knelt beside Benoit. Spangler took over for Evans, who stood up and moved beside Wagner, catching his breath. Evans leaned in so no one could hear him.

“Fucker's gone,” he said.

“Who's gone? What's happening, Agent Wagner?” Connie's voice begged from the phone. Evans grimaced.

“Joe, you really need to come out here,” Duke said again.

“What is it, Duke?” Evans asked.

“That woman's out here.”

“What woman?” Wagner said.

“Emily Burrows. The one the NYPD lost.”

“Told you they'd find her,” Evans said with a smile.

“No one found her,” Duke said. “She just walked in off the street.”

“Agent Wagner!” Connie shouted from the phone. “What is going on?!”

“I wish to hell I knew.”

T
WENTY MINUTES AFTER
Wagner asked Emily Burrows to take a seat in one of the small conference rooms, he returned with vending machine coffee and tea. Getting the beverages only took a minute, but letting her mind work on itself in the solitude was his real goal. That, and an attempt to get background information on her. They had some, but it would be morning before they'd had time to do a full workup. He needed to finish up before the news broadcast ran. It didn't give him much time.

“Tea with milk, right?” Wagner said, placing the tepid paper cup in front of her. He took a seat at the head of the table.

“Ta,” she said with a slight smile.

He smiled warmly and sipped his own cooling coffee as he watched her. She was taller than he'd expected. She didn't wear any makeup to speak of, but she had a fresh-­faced look; her reddish-­brown hair clean and shiny. It bounced slightly when she turned her head too quickly, which she was doing quite a bit. She was nervous and fidgety, but for all he knew that was her normal demeanor. She smelled faintly of powder and lilacs, which unfortunately reminded him of Benoit.

Why isn't she asking why she's here?

“We just need a ­couple of things for the record before we start, Miss Burrows,” Wagner said, opening his notebook. One of the envelopes sent to the media sat on the table. He hadn't decided yet if he'd use it or not.

“Which record is this?”

Wagner ignored her question and continued. “Your full name is Emily Katherine Burrows. You live at 145 Jackson Place, Apartment 3E. In Washington Heights. You've lived there for two and half years. You're a writer and you're here on a work visa from the UK that expires next month. Is that all correct?” Wagner asked.

“Uh, yes,” she said.

“Anything else you want to say, anything you think I should know before we begin?”

She shook her head, the curls bouncing.

“What about Detective Minelli? The NYPD officer sent to bring you here. Anything to say about ditching him?”

“Oh, I didn't ditch him. I . . . I'm afraid I just got turned around in the crowds on the street. I tried to find him, but when I couldn't I assumed you'd want me to just come here. As I did,” she said, playing with her scarf as she talked.

“Uh-­huh,” he said. He sat quietly and just looked at her for a minute. He made some notes and then picked up his coffee and leaned back. “Why'd you leave Interpol?”

“To write,” Emily said, shrugging. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“What kind of writing do you do?”

“True crime books and articles,” Emily said.

“Anything I would have heard of?”

“No, I doubt—­”

“Does it pay good money?” Wagner noticed her eyes widen slightly.

“It pays fine. Nothing special,” she said. She reached for the tea, but took her hand back without picking it up. Wagner made a decision then. He reached into the envelope.

“When did you write . . . this,” he said, placing
The Monarch's Reign
on the table between them. She had no reaction to it, which Wagner thought spoke volumes.
She's not asking why she's here because she already knows. But how?

“About two years ago,” she said.

“I see. I've looked at the summary on the back of the book, but I have to be honest, I haven't had time to read much of it, yet,” Wagner said, turning the book over to show the blurb he was talking about. “
The greatest thief you'
ve never heard of
,” he said, reading the bold text on the glossy cover. “What exactly does that mean? And what does it have to do with this symbol?”

“I first heard of it during my time at Interpol,” she said. “There were rumors—­I think you call it chatter here—­about a network of black market collectors. They were anonymous, powerful, and dangerous, from all accounts. They didn't care where their items came from, and in fact, would circulate lists of items they wanted.”

“To what end?” Wagner asked.

“For all intents and purposes, they were shopping lists. High-­caliber thieves would steal the items on the lists, knowing they had a, well, very motivated buyer willing to pay top dollar for items they would usually find impossible to fence. During our investigations, we started to hear about something else. Some
one
else, actually.”

“A thief,” Wagner said, tapping the blurb.

“Not just
a
thief,
the
thief. The only one with the moxie to steal from the stealers. About sixteen years ago this thief the collectors dubbed The Monarch first appeared. He'd steal items back from these collectors and anonymously return them to their rightful owners.”

“Like Robin Hood,” Wagner said, his notebook abandoned.

“Not quite. Just like the collectors, The Monarch operated anonymously, but he used surrogates to collect finder's fees from museums and insurance companies. Huge fees.”

“How huge?”

“Over the years? Hundreds of millions.”

“Of
dollars
?” Wagner said.

“Yes.”

“The collectors must have
loved
him,” he said.

“Like a plague,” she said. “They started offering rewards for The Monarch, some of them higher than the value of the works he'd taken. They were, to put it mildly, enraged. But it didn't work. For sixteen years The Monarch, well, reigned over them. And then about five years ago, poof. He stopped. No one knows why. A few collectors apparently tried to take the credit for stopping him, but their claims never checked out. And to this day, no one knows The Monarch's true identity.”

“Amazing,” Wagner said, turning the book over in his hands. He realized he wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. “But why did they call him The Monarch?”

“It's in reference to the monarch butterfly.”

“Of course,” Wagner said, tapping the book's cover art.

“He left it on the walls of the private vaults after each theft. But they got it wrong,” she said, catching Wagner off guard. He looked up into Emily's eyes and for the first time he saw a strength in them. She'd been through some sort of ordeal to find out what she was about to tell him.

“How so?” Wagner asked.

“The Monarch's symbol is actually an African symbol.”

“African?” Wagner said in surprise. He hadn't seen that coming. “What does it mean?”

“The one who burns you, be not burned.”

“What does—­”

“It's a symbol of forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?”

“There's no way to know for sure, but I like to think that before The Monarch became The Monarch, he did something he thought was terrible. Being The Monarch was his way of seeking forgiveness. And rather than punishing the collectors and the thieves, he'd forgive them and give them another chance. But it's all in my book.”

Wagner shook his head and decided it was his turn to tell her something.

“Miss Burrows, I have something to tell you, which may shock you,” Wagner said. He beat the newscast by a few minutes, giving her an overview of what he was already starting to think of as The Monarch case, including the distribution of her book to the media. Through it all she nodded quietly, only seeming taken aback by the distribution of her book, not the murders themselves. But there was nothing conclusive in her behavior. He didn't have a baseline for her so for all he knew she reacted the same way when asked for directions.

He said, “Does it concern you that the subject of your book—­the only book on the subject—­is a killer?”

“He's not a killer,” she said too fast.

“If what you just told me is true, then you don't know that. You don't even know if The Monarch is a he or a she,” Wagner said.

“Let's just say it's a hunch. Regardless, I spent two years getting inside The Monarch's head. I may not have discovered his true identity, but that doesn't mean I don't
know
him. Believe me. And I can guarantee you he had nothing to do with these atrocities,” she said. Wagner noted the defensive tone in her answer.
She's actually offended.

After a quick double knock on the conference room's door, Evans stuck his head in.

“It's starting. Just the prelim stuff, but it could be important.”

“I'll be right there,” Wagner said, closing his notebook and suppressing a sigh. He took one of his business cards out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I'd like you to come downtown tomorrow so we can continue our conversation, if it's not too much trouble. Say ten o'clock?” Wagner said. Of course, it wasn't an option, but he wanted to see what she'd say, given a choice.

“Oh, um, sure. That would be fine,” she said, standing up. She wrapped her scarf around her neck and waited for him to dismiss her.
She wants out of here. At least that'
s normal.
Wagner made a decision then that went against all protocol, but with her reactions throughout their brief interview, he needed to see her reaction to one more thing.

“If you have another minute, I'd like your impressions on something that just turned up. We're not sure what to make of it, but maybe you'll have some ideas,” Wagner said.

Emily agreed and he led her down the hall to the Crime Scene Reconstruction Room, nodding to a few ­people along the way. A ­couple of NYPD uniforms stood outside the door while they waited for the armored car to transport the painting to FBI Headquarters at 29 Federal Plaza.

“It's not a body, is it?” Emily said with obvious revulsion.

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Wagner said.

Wagner yanked the sliding door open and watched Emily's face. For a terrible moment, he thought she was going to pass out. She steadied herself, but her pupil dilations, nostril flares, and the rapid rising of her chest told him all he needed to know.

She turned toward him, eyes moist, and said, “What is it?”

He let her off the hook for the moment and walked her out of the building without making her get closer to the ruined
Just Judges
painting. He was short on time, and he preferred to let what she saw percolate in her mind overnight.

“There you are,” Evans said, coming down the stairs to the lobby. “Matthews is looking for you. Did you really show Burrows the painting?”

“Don't worry about it,” Wagner said, watching Emily on the sidewalk outside through the lobby's giant windows.

“So what's the verdict?” Evans asked as they headed up the stairs.

“I don't know, yet. She's hiding something. When the newscast is over, send a car over to sit on her apartment. Make sure she can see them.”

“You got it,” Evans said.

E
MILY HALF EXPECTED
to see someone following her when she looked back. There were a few ­people on the sidewalk behind her, but most of them faced the other way. She was being paranoid, but the realization did little to abate the tension she felt.