A Perfect Obsession
A Perfect Obsession
Heather Graham
Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegan's, her family's pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple who've worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegan's in lower Manhattan.As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, it's clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to "preserve" that beauty by destroying the women who embody it…
Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.
Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.
Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegan’s, her family’s pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple who’ve worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegan’s in lower Manhattan.
As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, it’s clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to “preserve” that beauty by destroying the women who embody it...
Praise for New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
“Graham is the queen of romantic suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Flawless
“With an astonishing ease and facility, this talented and hard-working writer can cast her stories in any genre.”
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Graham stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] unique story with an equal balance of action, mystery, suspense and romance.”
—Goodreads on Flawless
“This chilling novel has everything: suspense, romance, intrigue and an ending that takes your breath away.”
—Suspense Magazine on The Betrayed
“Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life, using exceptionally vivid details to add depth to all the people and places.”
—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Waking the Dead
“[Waking the Dead is] not to be missed.”
—BookTalk
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM has written more than a hundred novels, many of which have been featured by the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. An avid scuba diver, ballroom dancer and mother of five, she still enjoys her South Florida home, but loves to travel as well, from locations such as Cairo, Egypt, to her own backyard, the Florida Keys. Reading, however, is the pastime she loves best, and she is a member of many writing groups. She’s the winner of a Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award and an International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Award. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America, and also the founder of The Slush Pile Players, an author band and theatrical group. Heather hosts the annual Writers for New Orleans conference to benefit both the city, which is near and dear to her heart, and various other causes, and she hosts a ball each year at the RT Booklovers Convention to benefit pediatric AIDS foundations.
For more information, check out her website, www.theoriginalheathergraham.com (http://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com). You can also find Heather on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HeatherGrahamAuthor).
A Perfect Obsession
Heather Graham
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Bryee-Annon Pozzessere and Joseph Hunton, with congratulations on their marriage.
And to Ellysse and Zohe Hunton, beautiful additions to our family.
Contents
Cover (#u52395c89-ee12-5411-9b43-97c29381044a)
Back Cover Text (#uad36f7c2-f876-55ce-8689-924aa7b7b673)
Praise (#u2f317601-a207-5328-9ca9-2eda5105ba3f)
About the Author (#u30d6cedd-f108-5c29-a233-aea827c97e8f)
Title Page (#ucbb4ea01-f948-502f-ad09-742d74d9d79e)
Dedication (#u5a51e316-253f-5df0-8e8e-093a7497f6ac)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1bc5e952-9e8d-5655-975c-d4b62a276152)
CHAPTER TWO (#u64becbca-a0b7-5234-8861-2b7cadc14476)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8997e3a0-9e7f-5133-879c-8456c4c4d95a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ud5b82213-2bb9-5bcd-89b8-c9d4dc91ada6)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u171dd674-69a1-5173-9aa0-cbbb8db8cdcb)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
“HORRIBLE! OH, GOD, HORRIBLE! Tragic!” John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegan’s pub.
Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.
Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.
It wasn’t just any body.
It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.
Finding the old graves wasn’t much of a shock—not in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Le Club Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The church’s congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Church—whose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old building had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, life—and business—went on.
They were expanding the wine cellar, and so work on the foundations went on, too.
It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased body—moments before it hit the news—that Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family pub, Finnegan’s on Broadway. Like the old church-nightclub behind it, Finnegan’s dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. They’d barely opened; it was still morning and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. She’d just been down in the basement, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.
“I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! By ‘they,’ I mean Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve Our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies...but then, opening a decaying coffin and finding Jeannette Gilbert!” He paused for a quick breath. “And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at the site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students there. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was...”
John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archaeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.
Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.
Jeannette Gilbert—media princess, supermodel and actress—had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging what he assumed were kidnappers for her safe return.
At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter had speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release.
Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move, and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—a gold digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.
In the past few weeks the celebrity magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor, struggling his way into TV, movies and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and that being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge, Kevin said.
While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.
Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.
It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.
Now Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it was evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.
Not that she knew any of the findings. In fact, she knew only one: Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb. But she knew it was unlikely that the woman had crawled into a historic coffin in a lost crypt to die of natural causes.
“It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to those of us who were working. I was there for hours while the police grilled me. And now...now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double shot of single malt scotch and swallowed it in a gulp.
He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.
It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.
After all, he’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.
The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was around the block from Le Club Vampyre.
The whole situation was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family from the mid-nineteenth century, dating back to her distant great-great-uncle. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.
As manager, Declan was the only one who made the pub his lifework. Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. Yet they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.
The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage at Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about the place for the past six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club like that in an old church!
The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown grave sites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.
Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.
Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about the earthly remains of the long dead.
Not the newly deceased.
At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. That was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archaeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s one night a month as long as she could remember.
When she’d seen him enter today looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch, and she’d sat with him so she could try to calm him.
“Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them.
Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert personally. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.
Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.
“I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find a body. Still, John Shaw worked with the dead all the time—the long dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.
But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.
He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently murdered.
“I was—I am—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built Saint Paul’s to accommodate folks farther north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built Saint Augustine’s for those a little north of Saint Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, until about seventy-five years ago, there was an entrance to the catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground outside, so most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves. Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart, and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”
He sipped his scotch again and looked at Kieran intently. “You’re not to say a word, not yet. The police...they asked me not to speak about this until...until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents is living, but she must have family...” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome!”
Once again he picked up his glass and swallowed the scotch in a gulp.
Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.
She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.
She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. It had all started as they danced around each other following a diamond heist. They were both assigned to the case, but Kieran’s involvement had been more than a little complicated. They’d progressed to each having a dresser drawer at the other’s apartment, and were now talking about moving in together.
While she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, but that hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.
And trusting her beloved brothers to behave wasn’t easy. They were never malicious; however, their ways of helping friends out of bad situations weren’t always the best.
Then again, she’d met Craig because of the Capeletti diamond and Danny’s determination to do the right thing...
And because of some criminal clientele.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to John, assuming that Craig had come to see her.
The door was still open; he stood in a pool of light, and her heart leaped as she saw him. Craig was, in her mind, entirely impressive, tall and broad-shouldered, with extraordinary eyes that seemed to take in everything.
But he had not, apparently, come to see her.
He greeted Kieran with a nod, held her shoulders for a minute—and then offered her a grim smile as he gently set her aside so he could move past her.
Something was up. Craig spent his free time here with her and her family. Her friends, coworkers and the usual clientele all knew that Craig and Kieran were a couple.
Today, however, there wasn’t even a quick kiss. Craig was being very official.
He was heading straight to the booth where John Shaw was seated.
Kieran stood there for a minute, perplexed.
Jeannette Gilbert had been killed, but as a local woman her death should’ve remained a matter for the New York City Police Department, not the FBI. And John Shaw had left the body less than an hour ago.
Why would Craig be here so quickly? And more to the point, why was the FBI involved?
She didn’t get a chance to slide back into the booth and find out what was going on; she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.
Her brother Kevin was next to her. He was a striking man—in anyone’s opinion, she thought. He was tall and fit, with fine features, dark red hair and deep blue eyes. They were twins, and it showed.
“I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“Sure,” she said.
“Not here. In the office,” he told her. To her surprise, he glanced uneasily at Craig, whom he liked and with whom he was pretty good friends.
Kevin whirled her and headed her down the entry aisle toward the bar, and then to the left and down the hallway to the business office. He peered in, as if afraid their older brother might be there, since it was, basically, Declan’s office.
He closed the door behind them.
“She’s dead, Kieran! She’s dead!” Kevin said, looking at her and shaking his head with dismay and anxiety.
She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t be talking about Jeannette Gilbert—no one knew that she’d been found at the church yet, not according to John Shaw.
Her heart quaked with fear. She was afraid he was talking about an old friend, or a longtime customer of the pub.
Someone he cared about deeply.
“Kevin, who?” she asked.
“Jeannette.”
She frowned. “Jeannette Gilbert?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I know that, because John Shaw just told me. But he only found her body a few hours ago. The police asked him not to say anything.”
Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, John Shaw might not have said anything, but one of the workers down there—a grunt, a student, I don’t know—came out and told people on the street, and the story was picked up, and there are already media crews there.”
She studied her brother. “Kevin, it’s terrible. A beautiful young woman has—I’m assuming—been murdered. But, Kevin, I’m afraid that terrible things do happen. But...we didn’t know Jeannette Gilbert. Not personally.”
“Yes,” he said. “We did.”
“We did?”
“I did,” he corrected. “Kieran, I was the so-called ‘mystery man’ she was dating! I might have been the last one to see her alive.”
* * *
The NYPD had been called in first; that was proper protocol, since New York City was where the body had been found.
She’d last been seen by her doorman entering her apartment; she was a longtime Manhattan resident. She had, in fact, grown up in Harlem, a little girl who’d lost both parents and gone on to live in a household filled with children and an aunt who hadn’t wanted another mouth to feed.
By the age of seventeen, however, she’d had an affair with a rock star.
While the rock star denied any kind of intimate relationship with her at the time, he’d gone on to put her in one of his music videos soon after.
An agent had picked her up and it had been a classic tale—little girl lost had become a megastar. By twenty-five, she was gracing runways all over the world and, because of her modeling, doing cameo spots on television shows and even appearing in small roles in several movies. She was considered a true supernova.
Jeannette’s physical appearance had been called perfect by every critic out there.
She could walk a runway.
She had beautiful skin, luscious hair, long legs and a body that didn’t quit.
Craig Frasier had learned all this about Jeannette in the last few hours. Before that, she’d only been a face he might have recognized on a magazine cover.
But he’d made it his business to read up on her quickly.
Because her death had suddenly become the focus of his life.
He’d been in his office, reading statements from witnesses about the murder of a known pimp, when he’d been summoned, along with his partner, Mike Dalton, to Assistant Director Richard Egan’s office.
Craig and Mike had been partners for years. Craig had been assigned a young, new agent when Mike was laid up on medical leave—a shot to the buttocks—about a year ago. He’d learned then how much he appreciated his partner; they knew each other’s minds. They naturally fell into a division of labor when it came to pounding the pavement and getting the inevitable paperwork done.
And there was no one Craig trusted more to have his back, especially in a shoot-out.
Egan, a good man himself, was hard-core Bureau. His personal life had suffered for it, but he never brought his personal life into the office. He was the best kind of authority figure, as well—dignified, fair, compassionate. And efficient. He never wasted time. There were two chairs in front of his desk, but he hadn’t waited for Craig and Mike to sit down. He’d started talking right away.
“I had a back-burner situation going on here,” he’d told them. “We’d been given information, but the local police down in Fredericksburg, Virginia, were handling the case. A girl—a perfect-looking girl, an artist’s model—disappeared about six months ago. A few weeks later, her body was found in a historic cemetery outside Fredericksburg, in a mausoleum. She’d been stabbed in the heart, then cleaned up, dressed up and laid out in a family mausoleum. She was discovered when the family’s matriarch died, since she’d been put in the matriarch’s space. As I said, it seemed to be a local matter, and the Fredericksburg PD and Virginia State Police had the murder. We were informed because of the unusual aspects.”
Egan had paused, running his hands through his hair. Then he’d resumed speaking. “We’re all aware of the high-profile disappearance of Jeannette Gilbert.”
Mike had nodded. “Yeah, we were briefed with the cops about her disappearance when she went missing. We weren’t really in on it, as you know. But we were on the lookout.”
“Ms. Gilbert’s been found. An archaeological dig at old Saint Augustine’s.”
“You mean—” Mike began.
But Egan had cut him off. Yeah, he meant the new nightclub. Egan wasn’t a fan. He’d gone on and ranted for a full minute about the destruction of old historic places. In his opinion, that suggested New York City had no real respect for the past.
Craig knew Mike hadn’t been asking his question because of the club; he’d been trying to ascertain if she’d been found dead.
Mike had glanced over at Craig, who shrugged.
They’d both just let Egan rant, figuring it was obvious. The poor girl was dead.
Egan had ended by saying, “Yes, she’s dead. And it is bizarre—as bizarre as that Fredericksburg case, maybe even more so. Because in this case, the perp had to know she’d be found quickly. He placed her in a historical site where anthropologists and archaeologists were expected to arrive imminently. Later, you can go over the info on the Virginia case, do some comparisons. We’re part of the task force on this, but we’re taking the lead, and you two are up for our division. Because, gentlemen, I believe we have a serial killer on our hands.”
They’d asked about the security tapes at the club.
Techs were going over those now, Egan had said.
“That’s a bitch!” Egan had exclaimed. “Try looking for something out of the ordinary when every damned customer in the place looks like an escapee from a B Goth flick or worse! Not to mention that the club closed down when the crypt was discovered. There’s no club security overnight other than the cameras, but cops have been patrolling the place since the historic folks stepped in.”
From the office, he and Mike had gone straight to the church. The ME on duty was Anthony Andrews, a fine and detail-oriented doctor, but he hadn’t really started his examination of the body yet.
Photographers were still taking pictures, trying to maintain the scene just as it had been after Professor Shaw had opened the first coffin and seen Jeannette Gilbert.
A half-dozen members of a forensic team were moving around, but Dr. Andrews delicately stopped the photo session to show Craig and Mike what he’d discovered. Gilbert had been killed in another location, stabbed through the heart, and then bathed and dressed and prepared before being placed in the old coffin.
Seeing her was heartbreaking. Craig hadn’t known the woman or really anything about her until today, but she’d been young and beautiful, and her life had been brutally taken. She lay in the old coffin, dressed in shimmering white, a wilted rose in her hands. With her eyes closed, it looked as if she slept.
Except, of course, she’d never wake again.
“Defensive wounds?” he’d asked Andrews.
“Not a one. She was taken by surprise. Whoever killed her stood close by—had to be someone who seemed trustworthy. Maybe someone she knew,” the ME had speculated. “Or she could’ve had some kind of opiate in her system. Anyway, she didn’t expect what was coming.”
“Time of death?” Mike had asked. “She’s been missing about two weeks.”
“I’m thinking one to two weeks,” Andrews replied. “And I don’t believe she’s been embalmed—but she was somehow preserved. Maybe in a freezer while he worked on her or made arrangements or...” He sighed. “I need to get her on the table.”
Two patrol officers, the first on the scene, had closed off the area. Luckily, the club had been closed, pending the investigation of the newly discovered crypt. Detective Larry McBride, with the major crimes division, had been the first to arrive. Craig and Mike had worked with him before. He was particularly mild mannered, but he had a brilliant mind and nothing deterred his focus.
“Glad you guys are lead on this,” McBride had told them. “This is... Well, I believe we have a real psychopath on our hands. Bizarre! Wherever he killed her, he bathed away the blood. I’ve got officers who’ll be doing rounds with pictures of the dress. Pending notification of the so-called aunt who raised the girl, they’ll be asking all her friends if she owned the dress. It’s possible the killer obtained it.”
“Checked the label,” Andrews had said. “It’s from Saks.”
McBride had nodded. “Nice dress. She looks like a princess.” He paused. “I have a daughter her age... So, anyway, no inside security by night—but cops watching on the street. The men on duty swore no one went in until Roger Gleason opened up to wait for the archaeologists. Gleason says he comes in every day, even though the club’s closed for a few days. I interviewed him personally, and he seems to be on the up-and-up. Says he’s personally not that interested in the historical stuff, but seeing that the work goes well will actually make his club more famous. Still, he’s not one of those guys who lets his own property go unattended. He was working up here—and heard Shaw’s screams. Shaw swears there was no one down there at the time but him, an associate professor and a few grad students. I have names and numbers, which I’ve emailed to you already. They were all questioned. I don’t think they had anything to do with Ms. Gilbert’s death. The mystery here is, how the hell did the bastard get in with the body? Anyway, the security footage is down at your office now. And, of course, we’re hoping Forensics can come up with something. This killer...well, they’re calling in shrinks. You know, profilers. The murder was cold, swift and brutal. But then, the killer takes all this time with her. He comes in like a shadow, and then leaves her on display, waiting to be found. I talked with Egan, and I’ve been hanging in for you guys. Actually, I’m almost afraid to leave. It’s a media frenzy out there.”
By now, the frenzy on the streets involved more than just media. Word had spread; dozens of celebrity-stalkers and those inclined to the macabre had congregated outside the club.
New York City’s finest were dealing with the facility and crowd control.
Craig had questioned Gleason himself before leaving. He seemed like a Wall Street type, and although his club might be Goth, he was far more prone to the elegant in his manner and dress.
“I need to talk to Shaw,” Craig had said.
But Shaw wasn’t there. They’d heard that when he’d first gotten up close and personal with the body, he’d screamed like a banshee.
And Allie Benoit, John Shaw’s grad student and assistant, had told him that Shaw had spoken with the police, and then freaked out and fled. Allie was pretty sure he’d gone to the pub—the pub whose back wall abutted that of the old church-turned-nightclub.
Finnegan’s.
He swore, walking around the corner and reaching the pub.
The damned man just had to go to Finnegan’s!
The pub had stood there almost as long as the church. It had seen the New York draft riots during the Civil War, and the violence of the Irish gangs that had once held huge sway in a city where immigrants poured in daily from around the world.
The pub had witnessed so much history.
Including the recent history of the diamond heist that had nearly cost his girlfriend her life.
“She won’t be involved!” he said firmly, speaking aloud.
But before he entered, he knew, somewhere in his gut, that the die was already cast.
Of all the pubs in the world.
Finnegan’s.
CHAPTER TWO (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
AS HE ENTERED the pub, Craig’s attention was all for his search. With luck, Kieran would be at the office today or—
But, no, she walked directly over to him.
And he couldn’t do what he wanted to do—tell her that she wasn’t to have the least interaction with anyone connected to the murder.
He didn’t have the right to make that kind of demand.
And since she was here, she might have already served John Shaw, and John Shaw would’ve talked to her...
At the moment, though, he needed Shaw. She’d understand that; he never had to explain himself or his intentions to Kieran.
She knew what he did for a living; he knew about her professional work for Drs. Fuller and Miro. They respected each other’s professions and discussed things when they could—or when the other might have a useful insight. Or when, as occasionally happened, they became involved in the same case.
Fuller and Miro worked with the police and the FBI. They often gave their considered opinion of a suspected criminal’s state of mind or behavior.
They’d been involved, all four of them together, in a situation before—the so-called Diamond Affair.
But now...
He wanted to hold her and yet he couldn’t; he was here professionally. He strode past her, his eyes on Shaw.
Even as he approached the booth where John Shaw was seated, he was still hating the fact that the church where Jeannette had been found was directly behind Finnegan’s. He’d come to terms with being in love with Kieran—and the fact that she, too, dealt with criminals.
However, it was still difficult for him to accept that she was sometimes too quick to put herself in danger in defense of others.
Yes, it seemed to be a Casablanca moment.
Of all the old abandoned dug out holes in Manhattan, the damned catacombs just had to be close to Finnegan’s!
Too close... This place was too close to where a young woman lay dead, where her body had been stashed with the bones of those long forgotten.
Craig knew John Shaw, and Shaw knew him; they’d met at the pub several times when the professor had come for his professional meetings or get-togethers—or when he just wanted to sip one of his ultra-lite beers and chill.
“Craig!” John said, looking up at him with surprise. “I—Oh, my. You’re coming to see me. So I guess it should be Special Agent Frasier. Not Craig. Look, I’m not sure what else I can say to anyone. All I know is that we opened that coffin and...and there she was.”
Craig slid into the booth and smiled at him. “You must be pretty rattled.”
“Yes. You’re here officially? The police told me not to say anything yet. They need to contact the poor girl’s family. I mean, that’s why you’re here—coming to me and not Kieran, right?”
“Yes, John, this is official. The NYPD detectives are on the case, of course, but we’re taking part, as well. We’ve put together a task force. This as a very high-profile murder.”
John nodded, his white hair—something of a strange mullet cut—flapping beside his ears. His glasses slid down his nose with his effort, and he pushed them back with his forefinger.
“Of course. This needs to be solved fast,” John said. “But...” His expression grew even more perplexed. “I don’t know how I can help any more. I don’t know how I can help, period. Professor Digby—Aldous Digby, one of my associates—and I were there, and three grad students. Oh, and two of the construction guys. The guys were watching—waiting to get back to work. I didn’t let them touch the coffin. Nice guys, but, you know, that coffin might be two hundred years old and, well, you need to have a delicate touch. And Ms. Gilbert... The second I saw her... I have to admit I screamed. I was rattled, as you said. But I made sure everyone got out. We did and then went up to the church—the club area—to wait for the police.”
“Right. So there were seven of you. I have the names,” Craig said. He was certain that the meticulous Detective McBride had sent his email.
He’d also seen Jeannette Gilbert’s body at the site.
He winced, the picture of her still so clear in his mind. Her lovely, pale, perfect face. The white dress. The red rose.
John nodded. “Seven of us were in there—and seven of us got out quicker than a flash. And we were all interviewed.” He sighed loudly. “Hell of a thing for the owner of that place. They’ve barely been open what, a month or two? Then they have to stop work and close up because an engineer finds the coffins in the dirt and then the catacombs. They bring us in, and... Sad. So sad. By God, she was beautiful! Poor thing.”
“Just to confirm, you were there yesterday, too?” Craig asked.
“Of course. I was there as soon as the situation was reported.” He paused. “Did you know that the land where the Waldorf Astoria sits was once a potter’s field? Think of how old this city is. A number of the parks we enjoy today were originally cemeteries. I worked the old slave cemetery they discovered a few years back, so it was natural that I’d work on this one, too.”
“You started on the church yesterday?”
“Yes. I did. I was called yesterday morning, and I made arrangements to get there as fast as possible.”
“And then?”
“I assessed the location. I called in Digby and my assistant, Allie Benoit. You don’t pry apart ancient caskets willy-nilly. We researched church plans, but the original architect’s plan is long gone.” He shook his head. “You must be familiar with what happened. The church sold the property to the club people. There was an outcry, not that it made any difference. But the building is so historic. Everyone wants to shop Fifth Avenue, see a show, bank on Wall Street. They forget that Wall Street was a wall. Canal Street was a canal—or a cesspool, really. Those are all part of our city’s origins, and we need to preserve history!”
Craig nodded, although he wasn’t convinced they’d needed to preserve the cesspool that had been Canal Street. He spoke quickly, not wanting the academic to bluster endlessly. “What time did you get in there yesterday?”
“Let’s see... They called us right around ten in the morning. I was there within the hour.”
“So, who was there then?” Craig asked. “Besides you and the colleagues and workers you’ve mentioned.”
“Oh, lots of people. Let’s see, the manager and owner, Roger Gleason. He’d been working down by the construction area. They stored their booze down there—in the old crypt they knew about, I mean, with the coffins and bodies all gone now. It’s a foundation, a basement. The basement—the crypts—were far more extensive than people realized. The wall had hidden some of the old coffins and shrouded corpses, so when some of the corpses were moved, the ‘second’ crypt was missed.”
“Okay. Anyone else know what was going on?”
“At least two construction workers and one of the barmaids-slash-dancers. Have you seen what they do in there? She was dressed up in a little black bra and skirt and wearing some wicked makeup. The girls dance on tables when they’re not handing out booze.”
“So, employees, construction workers—anyone else?”
“Oh, yeah, the rep from the historic preservation group. Henry Willoughby. Loves history. He’s not a scientist, but he’s a great hands-on guy, ready to protect the past and help out if he can. The man loves New York and studied history and architecture. His wife passed away a while back, and now he gives all his love to the city. He stayed long enough last night to check in with us, make sure we were ready to catalog the bodies and the artifacts we found. I would’ve brought in more crew, but—”
“Who stayed, then? Who was actually there when you kept working?”
“Me, Digby showed up, my grad students—plus a structural engineer and a construction worker, all to see that we didn’t bring down a wall, I assume.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, after I initially went in yesterday, the construction guys created a kind of door for us.”
“How long were you there yesterday?”
“It was almost midnight before I left. I didn’t touch or open anything. I stepped over the hole—where the wall broke when they were working on the foundations—into the crypt beyond. Digby and my grad students and I were there. We make drawings and assessments and plan before we start the actual work, so, yes, I’d say it was midnight. By then, of course, the vampire dancers were gone and all the club people had been told to go home. Once they made the find—the second crypt—they closed down, of course, but people were hanging around. It’s...it’s history being reclaimed! Roger Gleason, the owner, seems like a nice guy. He has a conscience and some perspective on what’s important. We didn’t have to get court orders or anything. He simply agreed to close for a few days. They had patrol officers covering the place, making sure that once the news about the crypt got out, some Goth freak or necrophilia-pursuing creep didn’t try to break in.”
Craig nodded. He knew the answers to most of what he was asking; he just wanted it from Shaw and he wanted to ensure that their facts were straight.
“Yesterday,” Shaw said, “you understand, was discovery day. I planned where to put some lights. I judged the space for people and decided on equipment. I did all the assessments, got my ducks in a row, you know what I mean?”
Craig nodded again. “This morning when you arrived—were things exactly as you’d left them?”
“What?”
“Had anything you’d done been changed? Were tools missing, anything like that?”
Shaw frowned. “I...I don’t think so. I don’t get it. I’d roped off different areas in the basement for my people. We had our little brushes and chisels and...no, I’m positive that our work tables were the way we’d left them,” he said. He leaned forward. “Didn’t Ms. Gilbert disappear about two weeks ago? She didn’t look as if she’d just been killed. She...she was beautiful as she lay there, but decay had set in. I guess down there, with the cool temperature, natural decay wouldn’t be what it would up here.” He briefly closed his eyes. “If she was embalmed, she wasn’t embalmed well, but she was dressed up. As if she’d been prepared for a viewing. Seeing her gave me chills! Chills! And I work with the dead all the time. When did she die?”
“The medical examiner is estimating her death to have been between one and two weeks ago. He’ll tell us more definitively when he’s done the autopsy.”
“So, you think that—”
“I don’t think anything yet,” Craig said. “We need more information from the experts before I can even speculate. Go on, please, tell me about this morning.”
“Okay,” John said. “This morning.” He looked longingly at his scotch glass.
It was empty.
“You want another?” Craig asked.
“Yeah,” John said huskily. “Yeah. The long dead are one thing. Fresh corpses...or not so fresh corpses...”
Craig knew what he meant.
He had seen the body.
He scanned the bar area but didn’t see Kieran. Declan Finnegan, however—looking like an old-time Irish bartender as he dried a glass, decked in a white apron tied around his waist—was behind the bar.
Craig walked over to him. Declan, he knew, had been fully aware that Craig was in the pub and that he’d been talking to John Shaw.
“You want another scotch for him?” Declan asked.
Declan was the oldest of the Finnegans; he wore his sense of responsibility and dignity well. All the Finnegan family were attractive and charming people with different degrees of red in their hair, and they all had eyes in varying shades of blue. Even a casual observer had to note that they were related.
Declan tended to be the most serious in demeanor. He didn’t ask questions, not of Craig; he knew he’d learn what was going on if and when it was appropriate.
“Thanks,” Craig said. “Any idea where Kieran is?”
“She and Kevin were helping out before. I’m not sure where they went.” He poured the scotch. “Anything for you?”
“Soda water.”
Declan quickly poured him a glass from the fountain, and Craig returned to the table. Where the hell had Kieran gone?
She was helping out her brother today, which meant she was working here somewhere. If he was going to start worrying every time she wasn’t in sight, he’d need to get a psych evaluation himself.
John Shaw took the scotch from him; it looked as if he was going to gulp it down. Craig set a hand on his. “Hey, that’s prime stuff, my friend. Sip it.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Shaw murmured.
“Okay, so, you got in today—”
“Early. Just after seven. This is an important true find. The historical value is immense.”
“Of course. I understand,” Craig assured him. “So, today. You haven’t opened any of the other coffins in the catacomb, have you?”
“No. Some of the coffins have disintegrated, and the remains are down to bones and dust and spiderwebs. Remnants of fabric...belt buckles, shoe buckles...” John rambled, studying the amber liquid in his glass.
“But you found Ms. Gilbert in the first coffin?”
Shaw nodded glumly.
“What made you open that one first?” Craig asked.
The question seemed to confuse Shaw for a minute. “It seemed to be the best preserved.” He paused, staring up at Craig. “Actually, it was at an odd angle on the shelf. As if it had been moved. Oh...that was obviously because someone had been there! They’d put her body in it!”
“Do you remember it being that way the day before?”
“No! That must’ve been it. There was something different!” John Shaw said. “I didn’t realize it immediately. It was such a...subtle difference. The thing is, I thought I’d start with the best preserved, but so did—” He frowned at Craig. “It was definitely the best preserved. And someone else knew that, too. Her killer.”
Jeannette had been dead at least a week, possibly two. But she’d been placed in that coffin in a forgotten crypt much more recently than that.
The killer had learned about the historical find, and he’d made use of it for his own designs.
“Excuse me,” Craig said abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”
He wanted to see where Kieran was; it suddenly seemed important.
She wasn’t at the bar. She wasn’t on the floor.
He hurried down the hallway to the office, not bothering to knock.
Kieran was there, and Craig let out a sigh of relief.
But then he saw that she wasn’t alone. She was sitting there, on the sofa in front of the desk, talking earnestly with her twin brother, Kevin.
They both looked up at him, startled—and their expressions could only be described as guilty.
* * *
Kieran jumped up, looking at Craig and then Kevin.
“Hey,” she said, talking to her brother first. “You’ve got that audition—you better get going!”
“Yep, right,” Kevin said, rising quickly. “Definitely. Craig, are you involved in the situation over at the old church? No one is supposed to know anything yet, but I think that everyone everywhere knows that the body of Jeannette Gilbert was found in an old coffin. I think someone tweeted it. So much for the ‘please keep silent’ request. I’m sorry. Sounds terrible. But, what is the FBI doing in on it?”
“There’s a similarity to another murder, down in Virginia,” Craig said. “We may be looking at a serial killer.”
“Oh?” Kevin said. “So...” His gaze fell on Kieran, and his voice sounded a little sick. “You’re going to be involved with the investigation?”
Craig nodded. “Lead for the FBI.”
“Better get going, Kevin,” Kieran said. “This is truly so horrible, but we all have to keep working.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you all later tonight,” Kevin said, and headed out of the office.
When he was gone, Kieran looked at Craig.
“What was that all about?” he asked her.
“That—what?” she asked.
“I sometimes wonder how your brother manages to be an actor. He’s a horrible liar.”
“What did he lie about?”
“What are you lying about?”
She arched her brows, wishing she’d met and fallen in love with an auto mechanic, a taxi driver—anyone but an FBI agent.
“Since I haven’t said anything, I haven’t lied about anything, either!” she protested. He wouldn’t let it be, she thought. Hell, he was an investigator. It was what he did. But what could she say? Betray a confidence?
“It’s about Kevin’s love life,” she said. There. That was the truth. “And I’m just not—Well, you know, you can’t talk to me sometimes and I can’t talk to you.”
It was the semitruth, but he probably wouldn’t have let it go at that. Except that her cell phone started ringing and she pulled it from her jeans pocket. Caller ID quickly informed her that it was one of her two psychiatrist bosses, Dr. Fuller.
“Hey,” she said, answering the phone gratefully. “Is everything all right? We did decide to close today, right?”
“We did—until about an hour ago,” Dr. Fuller said, his tone regretful. “I was actually planning a day of tennis.”
The man was very good at what he did; beyond being a gifted psychiatrist, he had an unbelievable wealth of knowledge in all things related to his field—his pharmaceutical awareness was nearly uncanny. He could rattle off the names of dozens of drugs, what they did for what, and who should and shouldn’t take them with greater ease than most people could recite the alphabet. He could offer empathy that would crack the hardest core, and be staunch and unwavering when needed.
He also looked bizarrely like a pinup underwear model and loved his wife and the game of tennis with absolute passion.
“Oh?” Kieran said, looking over at Craig and wondering if he could or couldn’t hear her employer’s words as well, since he was standing so close to her.
“We’ve gotten a call from Assistant Director Richard Egan—Craig’s boss,” Fuller said.
“Oh?” she repeated, certain now from his wary expression that Craig could hear the conversation. But this was not unusual; her bosses were frequently called in as consultants by the NYPD, the FBI and other local law-enforcement agencies. As the doctors’ psychologist, Kieran often worked on evaluations for those perps in custody, and with the doctors on identifying the personality type of those still at large.
“He wants us in on the old church murder. They’ll have someone up from Quantico, he told me, but, for the moment, he wants us in. I’m on my way, but I’m up in Connecticut. I was thinking you might go over—it’s right by Finnegan’s.”
“I’m at the bar now.”
“Can you go over right away? I’m not sure how long they’ll keep the body in situ, and I want our own photos, notes of everything you see. Can you go?”
She glanced at Craig. He was wearing a very hard expression.
“Of course,” Kieran said. “Special Agent Frasier is right in front of me. He’ll be happy to see that I’m accompanied over.”
“Great. I’ll see you as soon as traffic allows,” Dr. Fuller said.
Craig groaned aloud. “I don’t like this one,” he said softly. “I don’t like it at all. I really wish that you weren’t involved.”
“Craig—”
He lifted a hand to stop her. “I know. It’s what you do. I just wish that it wasn’t what you did on this particular case.”
Because of Kevin, she’d wind up involved one way or the other. Better that she’d been asked to go in; better that she could see the victim and the surroundings before trying to understand the psyche of the person who could do such things.
She smiled. Though she was fairly tall herself, she stood on her toes to plant a quick kiss on his lips.
“Face it. You don’t want me involved in any case.”
“Okay. True. But, this...well, I guess you’ll see for yourself. It isn’t—it isn’t something you should see. It isn’t something anyone should see, and it’s sure as hell something that never, ever should have happened. But...”
“I’m careful. I’m always careful, Craig, you know that. And I love my work with the doctors, even if it’s usually in an office.”
“Let’s go, then,” he said.
They left the office. While Craig dismissed the professor, Kieran spoke quickly with Declan, apologizing for running out, especially when the pub was now filling up. People who were never downtown were downtown that day. People who had nothing to do with architecture, churches, clubs, archaeology or anthropology. Despite police preference, Twitter had broadcast the news.
The building that had once been a place of worship and now housed Le Club Vampyre was, beyond a doubt, beautiful. It was grand and tall with flying buttresses. Gargoyles had been created for every rain gutter and more. Entrances were designed with pointed arches. Inside, she knew, the ceiling was vaulted, majestically painted with angels gracing the heights.
While Trinity and then Saint Paul’s Chapel had been designed for the use of the early British settlers, by the time Saint Augustine’s had been built, the city had grown. A colony had become a state in America, and that growing population had wanted to build something grand.
The church was literally in back of the pub, but they had to head out the front and come around to the parallel street entry. In doing so, they waded through a sea of media and onlookers to reach the interior of the church. Once inside, there still seemed to be a crowd.
“Seems like a lot of people at a crime scene,” Kieran murmured to Craig.
“Up here, in what is the nightclub area now,” Craig said, “you have a lot of cops. Some of the nightclub workers. Some historic board people. But not down below. Even before Gilbert was found, only a few people were allowed down there.”
“Ah.”
“Yep, lucky girl,” he said drily, looking ahead.
Kieran studied her surroundings quickly.
She’d been in the church a few times when it had still been a place of worship. While she’d grown up in the Catholic Church, her parents had loved the beauty of the Episcopal house of worship so close behind their pub. It had been fantastic then, so beautifully built, and it had seemed they always had a great reverend, super music and lots of good things. It had been sad to hear of the place being sold.
But not much had really been changed, not as far as the facade went, nor even the inner structure.
The new owner had maintained the feel of great space. Where the altar had once been, there was now a long bar. To the left and the right, the smaller altar areas had now become little nooks with plush chairs and coffee tables. To the far right was a bandstand and DJ’s box. Heavy red velvet drapes kept the antique feeling while allowing for the little nooks to close off for privacy. The center of the room—with the exception of a secondary bar—was empty, spacious and airy.
“There. Egan has gotten here himself, and he’s with the owner,” Craig said, taking her arm and walking over to a trio of men.
She knew Richard Egan, Craig’s boss, head of the criminal investigation division at the FBI’s New York headquarters. He looked the part; he was somewhere in his fifties, Kieran thought, with a headful of neatly cropped silver-white hair and a tall, lean, fit and extremely dignified physique. He nodded grimly as he saw them approach.
“Ms. Finnegan, thank you for coming so quickly. We have some of our people coming up, but due to the high-profile situation we have going on here, I wanted the good doctors Fuller and Miro in on it all as quickly as possible.” He paused for a moment to glance at Craig. “Mike says you went to look for Shaw?”
“I did, sir. I found him, and Ms. Finnegan, of course.”
“I’m grateful you were able to get here so quickly. Let me introduce you, Kieran,” Egan said, and turned to the other two men with whom he’d been standing. “Henry Willoughby, Ms. Kieran Finnegan.”
She quickly shook hands with the man. He was middle-aged, lean, with a trim ring of gray hair around his bald head. He was very solemn—clearly concerned with the goings-on. She’d seen him on a local news show occasionally; he had a fine way of speaking, and his enthusiasm over a museum opening or city history was contagious.
“Henry’s president of a wonderful group called Preserve Our Past,” Egan explained.
“Yes, of course, I’ve seen you on TV,” she said, and offered a small smile.
He returned it grimly.
“And I’m Roger Gleason, Ms. Finnegan, owner of Le Club Vampyre—the business and the building. Obviously, we’re very distressed by what’s happened here.”
“Certainly,” she said. Gleason was nothing like the other men. She judged him to be in his early forties. He was tall, stylish and handsome, with a sweep of blond hair that fell across his forehead. His suit, she estimated, had to have cost a month of the average workingman’s wages.
“I hope you can help us,” he said.
“I’m here for Drs. Fuller and Miro,” Kieran said. “Dr. Fuller will be here as soon as he can possibly get through traffic.”
“Yes, well, thank you, Ms. Finnegan,” Gleason said. “Traffic—he could be hours.”
He turned to Craig. “Do you think they can help?”
“Definitely. There’s never a guarantee that profiling a perp will result in apprehending him—no two human beings are really alike. But, yes, profiling has been key in solving many cases. I’ll bring Ms. Finnegan down to the crypt.
“Mike is still there?” he asked Egan.
Egan nodded. “Mike, the detective, the ME and the forensic team,” he said.
Craig nodded and led her behind the main bar—the old altar area. Kieran pictured the place as it had been as a church. Naturally, yes, the crypt would be beneath the altar.
They descended marble steps into the cool dankness of what had been a crypt and now housed spirits of a different kind. Rows and rows of wine and liquor bottles now lined the walls and were neatly arranged on the concrete floor.
The basement area here looked much like it did at Finnegan’s, she observed. Except, of course, at Finnegan’s, the cellar had always been solely for liquor storage.
Not “storage” for the dead.
“I wonder if the staff ever feels uncomfortable down here,” Kieran said.
“The dead who rested in this area are gone,” Craig said. “Besides, you need to—”
“Fear the living, not the dead,” Kieran said.
“Yep. They’re the ones who will hurt you.”
A patrolman stood to the far rear where large chunks of the wall had been knocked down and a broad opening had been created. Two women wearing jumpsuits that identified them as part of the forensic team were hunkered down over a black chest, working with samples. A photographer was snapping pictures.
She spotted Mike standing with another man who appeared grim and weary but calm.
He looked at her and nodded an acknowledgment. Kieran knew Craig’s partner well and liked him very much.
“This is Detective Larry McBride, NYPD,” Mike said. “Detective, this is Ms. Finnegan. She’s with the psychiatrists the Bureau often uses in the city, Drs. Fuller and Miro.”
The detective studied her as he offered a hand. He apparently hadn’t realized that it was still gloved. He pulled off the glove and shook her hand. “Ms. Finnegan. I know Dr. Fuller. Fine man.”
“You know him?”
He nodded, grimacing. “I’m a tennis player.”
“Ah,” Kieran said.
“Let’s do this,” Craig said. “Kieran, this way to the forgotten crypt.”
He turned her around and led her through the broken wall.
He was stoic. To anyone else it might appear that nothing bothered him. But she knew him well enough to know the crypt did bother him. Not because of those who had died long ago, and hopefully through natural means. He was a good agent, Egan had told her once, because he had empathy. He was sorry for the victim, the woman whose body he had already seen.
She realized that she was far more squeamish than he—and she also realized that she had never been on the site of a murder before. The murder hadn’t taken place here, but...
She paused for a minute, taking in what she saw.
The crypt stretched far beneath the earth. There were marble sarcophagi here and there amid the rows of what she could only think of as shelving—shelving for the dead. She thought that the rows seemed to go on endlessly, housing hundreds of interments. She’d been in the catacombs in Rome and this felt very similar, except that slabs for the dead were not just against the walls, they were in those endless rows of stone as well, one on top of the other. It was almost as if the tombs where the dead rested were many tiered bunks in a dormitory. Some of the shelving had broken marble slabs. Some had nothing, and bone peeked from rotting shrouds. Toward the front where she stood, coffins lay upon the same shelving. Most were deteriorating; all seemed to be covered with a haze of dust and cobwebs.
She pulled out her notepad and began sketching furiously, and then reached for her cell phone, taking pictures.
“Kieran?”
“Yes?” She turned.
Craig was watching her. From his expression, she knew that he was unhappy—and not because he wanted to prevent her work in any way. He just hated that she had to see this macabre place.
He tried a dry smile. “None of those is for Facebook, Twitter or any other social media?” he asked lightly.
She glared at him, refusing to answer.
He nodded. “To the left.”
She tensed, knowing she was about to look at the dead woman.
When she forced herself to turn, she felt chills seize hold of her spine and her limbs.
It was surreal.
Jeannette Gilbert still lay in the coffin—much as she had been found, Kieran surmised. The ME had been to the body, but as of yet, it remained undisturbed.
And the woman...
In life Jeannette Gilbert had been truly beautiful. Long, sweeping blond hair had curled over her shoulders, her lips had been generous and beautifully shaped, her cheekbones high. Now, even in death, she looked impossibly like a princess—as if she might be awakened by love’s first kiss.
And yet...
There seemed to be something out of focus. She just wasn’t quite perfect anymore. And, staring at the corpse, Kieran knew what it was.
She was decaying. And coming closer to her, Kieran felt as if the scent of that decay suddenly began to permeate her.
She forced herself not to back away. She saw then that the ME—out beyond the broken-down wall in the basement area—had a mask hanging around his neck. No doubt he’d donned it when he had examined the corpse.
Craig, however, stood at her side unflinching, staring down at the body with sadness and regret—and something steely in his expression that said that he wouldn’t stop until the killer was found.
She turned away from Craig quickly, actually taking a step closer to the corpse in the coffin as she lowered her head.
Kevin! Kevin had been the mystery man she had been dating. Had he been in love with Jeannette Gilbert? Possibly. And if so...well, she knew her twin. Jeannette would have been a nice woman; she would have cared about people. She might have been a supermodel, but she would have given to charities, cared about children, possibly visited cancer wards.
Thank God her brother wasn’t here to see this.
She swallowed hard and took pictures first this time, then sketched what she saw, adding little notes to her sketch.
The terrible smell of death seemed so close.
“This is how—where—she was found?” she asked Craig.
“Just about. The coffin was on the middle shelf. It appears to be the best preserved of those down here. That’s why Shaw opened it first, and, presumably, why the killer chose it.”
Kieran added to her notes.
“The entry wasn’t as big last night. More of the false wall was torn down to make way for Dr. Shaw and his crew and whatever historians might have been called in. He did note that the position on the shelf was a little extended, or more at an angle. Other than that, he noticed nothing that had changed in the crypt.”
As she studied the corpse, Kieran felt a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumped.
“Sorry, Kieran.”
It was Craig, at her side, introducing her to the ME.
“This is Dr. Anthony Andrews. One of the best MEs in the city,” Craig said, his hand now discreetly at her elbow, steadying her.
“You’re with the profiling people?” the ME asked.
“Yes, civilian profilers,” she said.
He nodded. “I need to bring this young lady to my office now. We’ve waited here a bit longer than I would have liked. Do you need more time?”
Kieran shook her head. “No, thank you. I was hoping that Dr. Fuller might make it, but...”
“Yes, traffic. He could be quite a while. I’m sure you’ve recorded and noted everything that can be given to him. You’re not a psychiatrist?”
“Psychologist,” Kieran said.
Andrews glanced at Craig and turned back to Kieran. “Well, my dear, in my mind, you might be best suited to understand the mind of such a killer. Too many psychiatrists are pill pushers. Psychologists have to work with the human creation without benefit of mind-altering drugs. Anyway, a pleasure to meet you, though I have seen you. Finnegan—you’re related to the owners of the pub behind us, right?”
“I’m one of the owners,” she told him. “There are four of us—my brothers, Declan, Kevin, Danny and myself. Declan manages the pub and usually tends bar.”
He grinned solemnly again. “Ah, well, then, your brother may not be a psychologist, too, but he’s is a heck of good listener. I’ve seen him talking to people at the bar. Seems to know what makes them tick. For now, if you’ll excuse me... I’ll get to my part in this investigation.”
She nodded and returned her phone and notepad to her bag.
Craig led her out.
Andrews called to him. “I’ve been told this takes precedence, so autopsy in about two hours. No, let me say precisely...3:00 p.m.”
“Thank you. Mike and I will be there,” Craig said.
He brought Kieran back to the marble steps.
She was glad of his arm. Not only was she affected by the dead body, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. That he had been Gilbert’s mystery man, and that the model had alluded to her feelings for him in several interviews.
She pictured the beautiful young woman on an autopsy table, giant pincers being used to crack open her ribs...
She winced inwardly and began to worry.
There was no way someone hadn’t seen something—or didn’t know something. She had to talk to Kevin, and he had to talk to Craig.
News about the murder was out. Speculation was no doubt rampant already.
And her twin was going to be a suspect in the murder.
CHAPTER THREE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
CRAIG HATED ATTENDING an autopsy.
He did, however, attend whenever possible. No detail was too small when seeking a murderer.
And here, downtown, it was easy enough to get to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Young and old, victim of accident or murder—or just having faced death unattended or from causes unknown—the bodies of the deceased in lower Manhattan came here. The OCME had two other locations—in Brooklyn and in Queens, serving those who died farther afield or when a death toll rose dramatically due to assaults by nature or by man.
This office was located on Twenty-Sixth Street—not far from Finnegan’s and Le Club Vampyre or the NYC offices of the FBI.
“You’ll have my tape for anything you might have forgotten here,” Dr. Andrews said when he was finished, stepping back from the gurney and nodding to his assistant so that the man could take the body to finish the sewing-up procedure. “But it’s the weirdest damned thing I’ve ever seen. From my findings, I believe she’s been dead for most of the two weeks she’s been missing. Maybe only ten days, though, which would mean that he kept her for just a few days—and has preserved her or tried to preserve her until he chose to leave her. Obviously, gentlemen, we all know that she wasn’t killed in the crypt. Wherever she was killed, there has to have been a massive blood spill—she was stabbed straight in the heart. But what’s so disturbing is the way that she was kept. She was not sexually assaulted, and her remains were treated tenderly.”
“As if the killer regretted the murder?” McBride asked.
“I can’t speak to the killer’s mind. The facts of the case are this—she has been dead approximately ten days up to two weeks. There are no defensive wounds anywhere on her body. She was kept on ice, or at a very low temperature, slowing decomposition, until she was brought to the crypt. The temperature below the ground is much cooler than above, more toward the preservation side, but not enough that more decay didn’t begin to set in. But, even on ice, I believe she had begun to decay before being brought to the crypt. There is no other wound on her other than the fatal jab to the heart. I’m going to suggest a strong, broad knife, one-and-one-half to two inches in breadth, five to six inches long. The fatal stab was inflicted in one smooth and determined motion.”
“By someone strong? A man?” Mike asked.
“Certainly, no one feeble delivered the thrust. But, no, if the knife was sharp enough, which it was, a person of average strength could have easily done the deed. I don’t know as yet what chemical compounds might have been in the body. When I receive the lab tests, I’ll let you know.”
“Well, we know how she died and when she died,” McBride said. “Now, if we only knew the name of the killer.”
“I want to get an info board and timeline going,” Craig said. “Also, see if they came up with anything from the security cameras in the club. We’ll set up in one of the conference rooms. I have a feeling our task force might get bigger, and we’ll be briefing a lot of people.”
He thanked Dr. Andrews and they headed out.
It was always good to leave the morgue.
* * *
Kieran thought that she was incredibly lucky in her employment. Dr. Fuller was a truly decent man—totally unaware of his looks and completely dedicated to his field. There wasn’t a narcissistic bone in his body. He was always courteous and caring of others.
Of course, if all else should fail, she also had Finnegan’s!
But her two roles converged nicely that day.
Traffic was exceptionally bad, and by the time Dr. Fuller arrived, Jeannette Gilbert’s body was long gone. Still, he headed first to the church to view the scene of the discovery, then he came around the corner to Finnegan’s and met with Kieran in Declan’s office.
Kieran got him a scotch—he said he needed one, just one—and ordered shepherd’s pie for him. He’d been driving a long time.
He ate quickly. He sipped his scotch as if it were nectar from above.
She’d already texted the pictures to him; she went over her sketches and her notes.
He sat for a minute, thoughtful.
“They’re going to suspect her manager and agent, Oswald Martin,” he said.
“Yes, I know. But you don’t think it was him?” Kieran asked.
“She was his meal ticket. He also worked with her for years,” Fuller pointed out. “Tell me—what were your impressions?”
Kieran looked at him and then plunged in. “Organized. The killer knew what he was doing. It’s likely he’s killed before.”
Fuller nodded. “As I understand it, the FBI’s on it because a body was found similarly in another state.”
Kieran continued with her assessment. “She trusted whoever killed her, so, therefore, I don’t think it was a random person off the street. Also, whoever did it is meticulous in his own habits. Maybe not clinically insane, but I’d say crazy, just not visibly so. Sociopath, beyond a doubt. His own satisfaction excludes any concern for others. The usual profile would suggest a young man, late twenties to early thirties. But I think he’s a little older. I also think he’s got a decent income, is well educated. After all, he can definitely do some research. He found out about the crypts under the church. What puzzles me, though, is why he placed her in a coffin there. He had to have known that she’d be found quickly.”
“Maybe he wanted her found,” Dr. Fuller speculated. “His first victim, however, was in a mausoleum many weeks before the woman whose space she was in died. Then again, maybe that didn’t please him.”
“You mean that killing is like art to him?”
“Killing—and displaying the body.”
Kieran nodded. “Jeannette was stunningly beautiful in life. Living art. Maybe he tried to preserve his victims, but couldn’t?”
“Possibly. Buying mortuary supplies might raise a question.”
Kieran gave him a brief, grim smile. “He’s living his life in his own mind. Maybe he saw something in her.” She thought of the original murder. “Dr. Fuller, what was the other victim like? What do you know about her?”
“Young. Her name was Cary Howell. That’s all I have. Frankly, we need to get over to the FBI offices. It’s just a short walk south on Broadway—I won’t even have to drive again. You ready?”
* * *
“Two hundred and eighty-five miles—driving time approximately five to six hours, with a couple of pit stops, down to Virginia,” Craig said. He had his board set up, having accrued more records on the Virginia case. “Victim number one—that we know of—Cary Howell, was found in a crypt when the matron of a family was about to go in.” He pointed to her picture. “Killed six months ago.”
Then he pointed to Jeannette’s photo. “Gentlemen,” he told McBride and Mike, “please note Cary and then Jeannette. I think you’ll agree it’s highly unlikely that we have a copycat on our hands—not when you see the details.”
“A rose in her hands,” Mike murmured.
“White dress,” McBride said. “Let me guess—Cary Howell was stabbed in the heart?”
“She was. Of course, you’ll note the decay of the body is much greater in the first case. She’d been there longer, and Virginia can be hot.” He glanced at his notes and looked over them. “In fact,” he said softly, “the Virginia ME bemoans the fact that the heat does what it does to bodies. The decay caused breakdowns that made certain chemical testing impossible for him.”
“Still, Virginia,” McBride said. “We need to find a suspect who was in Virginia when Cary Howell was killed—and here in New York when Jeannette was killed.”
“Not so easy,” Craig said. “The Virginia ME could only narrow down the time of death on Cary to about a week, and that week would have been six months ago. The drive to Virginia and back can be done in a day.”
“Still, we can find out who has been to Virginia,” McBride said. “Or if any of our suspects left the city around that time.”
“Not if they took side roads,” Mike noted.
“Hard to get in or out of New York City without hitting some kind of a camera,” McBride said.
“True—but there are ways,” Craig said. “But I don’t believe that Jeannette Gilbert went off with just anyone. She knew her killer. She trusted him. That makes me believe that the killer is from or lives in New York City since, even though she traveled for work, Jeannette spent her entire life here.”
“The other victim trusted her killer, too,” McBride said.
“But Jeannette Gilbert was a media star. She was known. Right now, I’d like to look at this case as if it is a separate situation. We need to focus on possible suspects right here in the city, people who were close to Jeannette Gilbert.”
“Sure,” McBride said glumly.
“Naturally, everyone at the church-nightclub was questioned immediately, but only Gleason had actually ever met Ms. Gilbert, and that was because of an ad done at the club. He made no attempt to hide and didn’t avoid any questions. He’ll remain on our radar. Number one suspect—according to the tabloids—is her manager, Oswald Martin,” Craig said. “I have officers out trying to find him now.”
“Can’t convict a man via the tabloids,” McBride noted.
Mike had a sheaf of notes in front of him. “She had a row with a photographer a while back—Leo Holt. High-fashion photographer. It was covered in the tabloids. And they lived in buildings on the same block by Central Park. However, there’s nothing to link him to her disappearance.”
“We really have nothing to link anyone yet. Thing is, I don’t think we’re going after the usual—because of Virginia. I don’t think it’s someone with whom she just had a petty argument. I don’t think it’s a scientist working at the scene, either.” Craig shook his head. “But I like charts and lists, so I’ll add Holt’s name.”
“Going in that direction, there’s John Shaw himself,” McBride offered. “He’s creepy enough, crazy enough. My gut says no, but you could write him down, too.”
Craig did. “Then,” he added, “we have the owner of the club. Roger Gleason.”
“Definitely slimy,” Mike said.
“Can’t convict on slimy,” McBride put in.
“No, but we have to start somewhere,” Craig said. “The first one who usually comes under suspicion is the significant other. In our case—the mystery man.”
Mike cleared his throat. “We don’t know who he is. That’s why he’s a mystery man.”
“We’re going to find out. We have statements from friends and associates and coworkers already, since she was listed as a missing person,” Craig said. “It will come out.”
“We have to add in every one of the people involved with Shaw,” Mike said. “His colleague, Professor Digby. Henry Willoughby had been there, too, representing the historic preservation group. And then the grad students.” He referred to his notes. “Allie Benoit, Joshua Harding and Sam Frick. All of them go to the university here, and all have worked with Dr. Shaw before.”
“There’s her family,” McBride said. “The aunt... She’s just kind of a sad sack. And the step-uncle, Tobias Green—a total asshole. Never bothered with the girl, begrudged every piece of food she put in her mouth as a kid—and threatened to sue the NYPD if we didn’t find her!”
“Add the asshole step-uncle to the list,” Mike said.
“I don’t think you should write asshole on that board of yours. Probably against Bureau policy,” McBride said wearily.
“He probably is an ass,” Craig agreed, “but I’m not sure if that puts him with the kind of man we’re looking for. Gilbert wouldn’t have feared him, but how would he have gotten to know our other victim?”
“And you can’t convict a guy for being an asshole,” McBride said sadly.
“We’ll still want to talk to him,” Craig murmured.
“Construction workers, bar employees—we’re missing people,” Mike said.
“Yeah, well, we could be missing suspects that include all of Manhattan and beyond, since the news was out about the find,” McBride said wearily. “What have we got off security tapes? Did Tech finish with them yet?”
“We got nothing,” Craig said.
“How can you have nothing? I saw the cameras there.”
“The techs studied the tapes over and over. Roger Gleason stayed late—until Professor Shaw was all set up for today. You see him and Shaw leaving together—in fact, you see Gleason setting the alarm. And, yes, the alarm company has been questioned and nothing went off last night. The cameras recorded through the night. You see no one go in and no one go out.”
“That’s impossible,” McBride said.
“It was a church,” Mike argued. “There’s more than one entrance. The door to the left leads to the offices—at least what was offices when it was a church. The door to the right led outside.”
“I tried it, Mike,” Craig replied. “It doesn’t open now. The next building is flush against it.”
“There has to be another way out,” Mike said. “I feel like an idiot. I went through every room at the place. I don’t remember another door, but—”
“There are two side doors next to the main pointed arch entry,” Craig said. “Locked from the outside, on the same alarm system. In an emergency, they open out.”
“I had Forensics inspect those doors. They weren’t jimmied. They weren’t opened,” Mike said.
“Shouldn’t pass a fire code that way,” McBride grumbled.
“That’s just it. An alarm to the fire department goes off when they’re opened,” Mike said.
“Something had to have happened—a technical failure?” McBride posited. “And of course there are no alleys.”
“It’s Manhattan,” Mike said. “Buildings wind up flush together because real estate is prime. No alleys,” he added, looking at Craig.
“No. No alleys,” Craig agreed.
“The cameras had to have been tampered with. Someone had to have jimmied the alarm system,” McBride said. “It’s looking like the owner himself might be guilty in this thing. Who the hell else could have done all that?”
Craig had to admit that it seemed the detective was right.
How had someone gotten into the church, carried the body downstairs and gotten it into the coffin without being seen?
“She was killed by a ghost,” Mike muttered.
“Seems that way,” McBride said, shaking his head. “But she’s still a real corpse. A ghost would have had to have carried in a real corpse!”
Craig’s buzzer rang then; he hit the intercom.
“Special Agent Frasier,” one of the secretaries said, “Dr. Fuller and Ms. Finnegan are here. I’ve taken the liberty of sending someone down to get them. Do I hold them out here or send them in?”
“Send them right in,” Craig said.
“Good. The shrinks can explain how ghosts work and make victims invisible, too,” McBride said, his sarcasm a cover for his exasperation. “Something’s wrong—film, tape, digital images. They had to be manipulated.”
“We have the best techs in the world,” Mike said.
“I don’t care how good you are, there’s always someone better,” McBride argued.
That was true enough, Craig thought.
“And that would point to someone who knew Le Club Vampyre,” he said aloud, glancing over at Mike.
“Or the church—when it was a church,” Mike said.
“It’s probably a new system. It’s different being a church and a nightclub,” Craig pointed out.
He was glad then to see Bentley Fuller walk in with Kieran.
“Guy looks like he’s in great shape. He’d make a solid FBI guy,” McBride commented beneath his breath, and he stood to greet Fuller.
Craig thanked them for coming. Kieran nodded at him and took a seat, but he picked up on her vibe right away. She looked uncomfortable. He wondered why. She hadn’t appeared so miserable the first time she’d come down to the FBI headquarters, back when they barely knew one another. By now, of course, she’d been here often enough. But still, there was something off about her.
Fuller walked right up to Craig’s board and stared at the image of Cary Howell.
“Wow,” Fuller murmured. “Same work—as in what the killer seemed to do. Same hand, too. I would be stunned if it wasn’t.”
Kieran was looking at the image, too.
“But here’s what different. Cary Howell was in a mausoleum. The old lady who died might have lived on for years, and Cary wouldn’t have been found until then. Why hide one girl and put the other where she’d be found the next day?” Craig asked.
“He thinks he’s an artist,” Kieran said.
“What?” Mike asked.
“He’s creating something with these women—art, in his mind. Temporary exhibits, if you will,” Dr. Fuller said. “I think he realized with his first victim that no one saw the true beauty of his creation since he didn’t make sure that the body was found quickly enough,” Fuller explained. “I do believe that Cary Howell was his first victim—or, I hate to say it—an earlier victim. He has been experimenting and learning.”
“Why put them in a coffin then, period?” Craig asked.
“Because they’re dead, and the dead belong in coffins, but their beauty should be remembered, honored,” Dr. Fuller said.
Craig glanced at Kieran. She was staring at his board. Her face was white.
“Kieran, are you all right?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she told him. She leaned forward. “I was looking at your suspect list. And the thing is—everyone in New York knew about the historical find.”
“Yes, but, everyone in New York didn’t know the layout of the church or where the wall had been broken,” Craig said.
“You have ‘mystery lover’ on the list,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t see Jeannette Gilbert dating anyone who wasn’t young, her age, say. Probably someone appealing. I don’t see that as John Shaw or Henry Willoughby or...”
She paused, her voice trailing.
“Or Roger Gleason?” he asked.
“Gleason is...interesting,” she admitted.
“I think most young women would find him appealing,” Mike said.
“Slimy,” McBride said, shaking his head.
Kieran glanced at McBride and nodded. “Some women are drawn to men like him, though. He keeps himself fit, he has a quick smile and—here’s something important—he had something to offer them. He must have seen plenty of young women coming in for a job at the club.”
“Rich as Croesus, he is. He owns the building,” Mike pointed out. “The whole old church. Man, that’s some mean property in Manhattan.”
Craig looked at Dr. Fuller. “What about Miss Gilbert’s manager, Oswald Martin? The man is in his late thirties. He made her rich. But she grew up, and maybe she wanted to go her own way.”
“Possible, but unlikely in my mind. She was making a fortune for him. He tried to rule her life, yes, but she was getting what she wanted. She could slip away when she wanted,” Fuller said. “She gave impromptu press interviews—without him around.”
“He might have been furious over the mystery lover,” Mike said.
“And she might have just made up the mystery lover for good press,” Fuller said.
Kieran looked at him quickly. “A mystery lover is always good press,” she said.
“We’re all speculating now,” Craig said, putting an end to the talk. “I have agents out to find Oswald. I plan to speak with him tonight. Can you, at the moment, give us anything helpful?” he asked Fuller.
“Yes, Kieran and I have talked, but we needed to know more about his first victim, which is why we came down now, without a complete report with explanations. This is what we’ve got so far. This man has money. He can come and go as he pleases. He’s got a respectable appearance. Normally, I would have said he was between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, but Kieran suggested a little older and I think she’s right. He’s gained the respect he receives and he’s intelligent. I imagine he pulled up the original church plans. They’re available online, by the way, though not even online—or in any archive—will you find a reference to the hidden crypt. Your killer listens to the news. He knew about the findings.”
“And how the hell did he get in?” Mike murmured.
“There’s always a way,” Craig said.
“But the security footage—”
“Yes, that remains a mystery,” Craig said, cutting off his partner. “What else can you tell us, Dr. Fuller?”
“The killer used a mausoleum before—a family mausoleum. He was dissatisfied. I believe he was in love with Ms. Gilbert—as he had been with Ms. Howell. Not sexually. His love is above all that. His love is for perfection, I believe. Both women were more than attractive. They were beautiful. He laid them out almost tenderly. They were...art.” Fuller kept his eye on the pictures as he spoke. “I’ll write up my complete report. You’ll have it first thing in the morning.”
Craig glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost eight o’clock, but he knew his day would go on; he was expecting Oswald Martin at the office soon.
If the man was innocent, he’d certainly agree to be questioned. And if he was guilty? Well, he’d agree, too. He’d want to appear to be cooperating.
“Dr. Fuller, thank you for coming in.”
“Well, then, I’m off. Heading to the office. I now feel the need for continued research on the minds of such men,” Dr. Fuller said.
Kieran stood.
“No need to join me. You were a godsend today, Kieran. Thank you,” he said. He smiled at her and then at Craig. “I’m quite certain that Special Agent Frasier will see to it that you get home safely.”
Kieran looked like a deer caught in headlights.
What the hell?
“Um, sure, thank you,” she said to Fuller. “Actually, I can just walk to Finnegan’s. I was supposed to be helping today. It’s a Friday night.”
It wasn’t unusual that she said she was going back to the pub. What struck Craig was the way she seemed to be so confused, unsure of what she really wanted to do.
“Someone will drive you,” Craig said. “I’ll meet you as soon as we’re done here.”
She nodded. Her smile for him was weak. She was almost out the door to the conference room when she seemed to remember Mike and McBride. She turned and bid them both goodbye, and then hurried out.
Craig didn’t get a chance to wonder about her behavior. The intercom buzzed again.
Oswald Martin was there. Were they ready for him?
Hell, yes.
* * *
Kieran had been sending Kevin texts half the day.
He hadn’t gotten back.
He might have gone home, but she doubted it. His audition might have run long. He might have had an instant callback.
But he should have texted her by then.
She looked at her phone as she was leaving the conference room and saw a missed text.
He was heading to the pub.
Walking out to reception, head still down over her phone, she crashed into a man coming toward the conference room.
She jumped, apologizing, as he steadied her, his hands on her shoulders.
She knew him from the tabloids.
Oswald Martin.
“Oh! I’m sorry, so sorry,” she murmured. He had an escort—a blue-suited FBI agent.
“It’s all right,” Martin said to her.
“This way, Mr. Martin,” his escort said.
“Yes,” Martin said, but he was still staring down at Kieran.
“I’m Oswald Martin,” he said.
“How do you do?” she murmured, not offering her name.
He kept looking at her, and then he took a card from his pocket. “If you’re ever looking for work, please...just see my card.” He thrust it at her and instinctively, Kieran took the card.
“Mr. Martin, if you will?” his FBI escort said firmly.
“Of course, of course,” he said. “My card—”
“Mr. Martin,” his escort repeated.
“Perfect!” Martin said, walking away.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
OSWALD MARTIN SEEMED appropriately grim, but comfortable and at ease as he spoke in the conference room with Craig, Mike and Detective Larry McBride.
He was horrified, a term that seemed to refer to everyone’s feeling about the discovery of Jeannette Gilbert, but he’d been begging the police to listen to him from the time she’d failed to respond to his call.
“The papers!” he said with disgust, waving a hand in the air. “Internet, media—whatever! These days, everything in the world is out there in a split-second tweet. That’s how I found out she was dead. Jeannette! A young woman—a beautiful girl I’ve worked with for nearly a decade—is killed, and I see it first on social media. I told the police over and over again that she wasn’t flighty, that she didn’t just take off and that she wouldn’t run away from me. But because I ‘discovered’ Jeannette, and because I’m older by several years, they just have to turn it into something dirty, something wrong. Yes, I loved her—like a big brother. And she loved me, in just the same way. The stuff I’ve read is disgusting. I was ‘angry’ about her so-called mystery lover. What a crock. She was twenty-seven years old. She’d seen other men through the years. I could advise her, no more. Did the police really investigate? No, they were just as bad as the tabloids!”
Martin was an interesting man. Late thirties, his head clean-shaven, one gold earring and all-black attire, he looked like a modern-day Aleister Crowley. Sure, he seemed appropriately “horrified.” But Craig wasn’t sure that the man was appropriately sad.
“We’re truly sorry,” Mike said gently. “The people there were asked not to tweet or say anything to anyone. Apparently, asking wasn’t enough.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a social media age, isn’t it?” Martin asked. He wasn’t waiting for an answer. He’d really made a statement. “I told Jeannette that all the time—that anything she did, anyone she saw, any word she uttered was up for grabs. She was a sweet kid. A truly sweet kid. The best. Her life sucked before I found her. I mean, I don’t know whether or not to hate her aunt. She took Jeannette in, but she treated her as if she were an unwanted pet! Almost like Cinderella with her stepsisters, you know? She was like an indentured servant. She was worked her little tail off. But the kid was beautiful. Beautiful. Perfect, you know?”
Perfect.
To Craig the word seemed to be disturbing.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Craig asked.
Martin sighed deeply, and not without aggravation.
“I told the police!” he said. “It was two weeks ago—or now it was two weeks ago plus a day or two! I saw her at dinner. We talked about what she was doing, what she aspired to do and the contract in the offing with a major cosmetics giant. She was going to be the new face of L’Amour, and you can only imagine... Anyway, I told her what the contract would mean. I told her that she’d really hit the big time, bigger and brighter than she’d ever been before. And I told her to quit handing out interviews, especially when it came to talking about this guy—this mystery lover—that everyone else seemed to know about. Everyone but me!”
“You talked where?” Craig asked.
“At Wine Bar Bacanalia!” Oswald Martin said. “A very public place. When we parted ways, we were in full view of every waitress, waiter, bartender and hostess in the place. You all should know this. I told everyone when I reported her missing. And I reported her missing because—due to the new contract—we had a meeting the next morning with the cosmetic company.”
“So,” Craig said lightly, “you reported her missing because she didn’t show up for her meeting with these people?”
“What are you, an idiot?” Martin demanded, looking at Craig. He quickly appeared to regret his words. “Sorry, sorry. You can’t possibly understand the importance of such a meeting!”
Yeah, what an idiot, Craig thought. He just didn’t understand fame and fortune.
“Sorry, sorry, truly sorry,” Martin muttered quickly. “Jeannette was a true pro. She grew up with nothing, but she was smart as a whip. She knew that the appointment we had could make the difference between her being a star who’d perhaps be forgotten as soon as a younger face came along or a supernova, shimmering in the public memory for decades. It was no publicity stunt when she didn’t show up. I tried so hard to make the police believe that. And then, of course, to the tabloids, I became like a monster, a slave driver, all for my own enrichment. Was Jeannette a major cash-flow outlet for me? You bet. But I represent other acting and modeling personalities, as well. Other than what you read in the tabloids, you won’t find anyone I’ve ever worked with who won’t tell you I’m a straight shooter!”
The man stared straight at Craig as he said the last; there was passion and sincerity in his voice. It seemed to be real, but, in Craig’s mind, it was far too early in the game to be certain.
“Naturally, we’ll be verifying what you’ve told us,” Craig said.
“Yep. And we’ll check out the cops who worked the missing person detail,” McBride said, the undertone in his voice so low Craig doubted Oswald Martin had the least idea of how deeply he had offended the officer who was there representing the City of New York.
“You travel much, Mr. Martin?” Craig asked.
“Around the USA, Europe, anywhere?” Mike added pleasantly.
“Of course. I travel all the time,” Martin said. He appeared to be perplexed. “Why do you ask?”
“You do any work in Virginia?” McBride asked.
“Not much, no. Most work in the US comes out of New York, Los Angeles and sometimes Miami,” Martin said, looking at them all. “Virginia? I mean, an ad campaign can take you almost anywhere, but even if Jeannette was headed to a certain location, it wouldn’t mean that I’d be there with her. I tried to accompany her—every star needs a shield!—but I couldn’t always, because, as I mentioned earlier, I do represent other people. Still...she was part of a shoot that was a public service announcement, encouraging people to enjoy the country. That was about six months ago. Yeah, we were in Virginia then. She filmed in Richmond and Williamsburg. And then Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Saint Augustine, Florida. I can send the footage of the announcement, if you like.”
“We would greatly appreciate it,” Craig assured him. “Along with the names of your other clients.”
Martin suddenly leaned forward. “You think that I’m going to balk at that? Well, you’re wrong. I didn’t kill Jeannette. And when that’s been proved, and you all look like a pack of in-your-face asses, I’ll be sitting pretty. Whatever you want, you go for it—and if I can provide it, so help me, I will. Now, are you through with me for the day?” he asked.
Craig smiled pleasantly. “Almost. Tell me. Have you ever frequented Le Club Vampyre?”
“Yeah. Hell, yeah. That place was a pile of publicity opportunities. We were at the opening, both Jeannette and me. Both openings, actually—the soft, which they had for critics and reviewers, and the hard, when they opened for the public. There are stunning pictures of Jeannette on the steps below the main arch. Her face was everywhere.” He sat back, deflated, and lowered his head. “Who knew?” he added softly.
It was the first time he seemed to show real emotion, in Craig’s mind.
“Are you through with me?” he asked tonelessly.
“For now,” Craig told him. “We may need to call you back in the future. Because I know you’re going to want to help in any way we may need. Also, we’d like a copy of your calendar for the last six months.”
“Jeannette only disappeared two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but knowing what she was doing prior to her disappearance may be of major importance,” Craig told him.
Martin nodded dully and stood. “Gentlemen...”
“I’ll see that you’re escorted out,” Mike said.
Craig and Larry remained in the room. When Martin was gone, the detective exploded. “He made it sound as if the NYPD is nothing but an organization of incompetents!”
“He’s bitter,” Craig said.
“He’s damned suspicious.”
That was a statement Craig didn’t argue.
* * *
“It started about six months ago,” Kevin told Kieran. They were seated in the office at Finnegan’s again; she was behind Declan’s desk while Kevin sat on the sofa by the wall. He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, but rather away, as if he were seeing the past play before him like a movie reel. “We were working on the Lilith music video.” He looked over at Kieran then, his expression apologetic. “I was a shirtless hunk. She was one of the recognized beauties. The song hit the charts at number one. The video claimed awards, too.”
Kieran nodded. She was proud of Kevin’s achievements, even when he was playing eye candy.
“I’ve seen it. It’s a good video. Though, honestly, I’m sorry, Kevin, I watched it for you. I didn’t even notice Jeannette Gilbert.”
He winced, and Kieran remembered that the dead woman had been someone he loved.
“There was a lot of filming for flashes of each beauty in the three minutes and twenty-eight seconds of the song,” Kevin said. “If you saw it again...”
“Of course.”
“So, we started talking on set. We just had so much in common and so much not in common. She was fascinated by our family and couldn’t wait to come to Finnegan’s. She has cousins and, contrary to what they write, she loves them...loved them, but...”
“But her parents died and she grew up with an aunt?”
Kevin nodded. “Her aunt had four children. Their father had passed away, too, and Jeannette’s aunt was remarried to a worthless piece of trash. He couldn’t see feeding another mouth. Jeannette spent her formative years hearing about being a burden and being told that she was going to have to get out on her own early, because they weren’t going to feed her forever. Anyway, she wasn’t a mean or bitter person. She bought her aunt a house in Brooklyn when she had the money to do so. But she loved that Declan ran this place now and that the rest of us had other work, but that we all helped out here. I guess she always wanted a real family—one where she was unconditionally welcome.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kieran said. Images of Jeannette Gilbert in death kept flashing before her eyes. “Kevin, how serious was your relationship? How often were you seeing one another?”
He hesitated and then shrugged. “At first? I thought it was going to be a one-night stand. Not on my part—I was like a starry-eyed kid. I couldn’t believe she’d even looked at me. I tried to maintain some dignity, but I figured I might have been a novelty to her, entertainment for that one night. And she had to leave the city for a work project. Anyway, when she was back, she called me and we started seeing one another. I lived for every chance to be with her. And she wasn’t keeping quiet because she was ashamed or anything like that. She wasn’t even trying to pretend that she was attainable to the zillions of men and boys drooling over her. She wanted something good and private, something...normal. Then one day I couldn’t reach her. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew she’d come to me when she could. We both knew that we wouldn’t always be able to contact one another. There were events that had to do with our professional lives. But then...then I heard...” He stopped speaking for a minute, and she watched his eyes fill with tears.
Before they could spill over, he continued. “I didn’t think that Oswald Martin had done her in, either. She didn’t hate him. He didn’t follow her every move. That was some writer’s imaginative speculation. But I did wonder if it was some kind of a publicity thing because she was about to become the face of one of the biggest new cosmetic firms to launch in the past twenty years. This is so, so...wrong!” he finished on a breath.
Kieran wanted to hold her twin and comfort him. She was afraid that the door was going to open any minute. While she knew that Kevin loved his brothers and would happily share this with them, keeping this on a need-to-know basis was best right now.
Declan or Danny couldn’t inadvertently spill information they didn’t have.
“Kevin, where did you two see each other?” she asked.
“My place,” he said huskily. “No one pays attention to my place. I saw her at her apartment only once. It was with a group of people. She invited me to a reading, a show that may or may not make it to Broadway.”
“But you stayed after.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t something anyone would have noticed. There were a number of actors there. She was friendly and nice to everyone. Her work reputation was amazing. She was never cross with a single makeup person, lighting person, cameraman...anyone.”
“You’re telling me that absolutely no one knows that you were seeing her, that this actually started six months ago, but no one knew?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he said.
Kieran pondered that. “Kevin, trust me, someone knew,” she said. “Someone saw you together somewhere.”
He shrugged. “She was with actors all the time. Posing at parties, openings, fashion shows. I don’t think anyone would have noticed me over anyone else.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Kevin, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. How serious did you two get?”
“We both knew we loved our careers. Sometimes it’s bad when two people are actors, or models, or in that kind of world. Egos clash. But maybe we were different enough. I really love acting. I take the underwear commercials or whatever because I see them as a stepping-stones. Jeannette didn’t love it so much. She loved art and images and what a good photographer could do with her. But we also wanted to make sure that our relationship worked. We weren’t making any real commitments until we’d been together at least a year. She was famous—I’m not. She wanted to make sure that I could handle that. Maybe she wanted to make sure that I didn’t want to use her, either. You know, fake a real love just to use her for more exposure and better parts. If we made it a year—trusting one another, still wanting one another, ready to deal with the whirlwind as a couple—then we’d put our relationship out there.” He paused. “She used to tease me. Said it would be the coolest thing in the world if we were secretly married here. At Finnegan’s.”
“Oh, Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that you kept all this from me. And for so long! I’m your twin.”
“Well, you’ve kept a fair amount from me, too, at times,” he reminded her.
“Sometimes I don’t talk because I’m professionally not able to do so,” she replied.
“What do I do?” he asked her. “Just step up now and tell the truth?”
“That’s probably the best. You can talk to Craig. He’ll believe you. You know that.”
Kieran started, hearing the doorknob twist. Then there was a bang on the door.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?”
It was Danny, the “baby” of the family, younger than Kevin and Kieran by a little more than a year. He was the wild child of the family, now a respectable tour guide for the City of New York, though, of course, he could still get into a great deal of trouble. Always with the best of intentions, of course.
Kieran stood quickly and opened the door. “Did I lock it?” she murmured.
Danny burst into the room and flipped on the TV. “This is so sad and so crazy!” he said. “Imagine, that poor girl found in Le Club Vampyre! And now... Wow! The bad boy of the silver screen stepping up and offering a huge sum of money for information on her murderer. Brent Westwood! You’ve got to see this news conference. It’s Brent Westwood saying that he was Jeannette Gilbert’s secret lover!”
* * *
It was past nine. Craig was getting ready to head home from the office, and he’d told Mike and McBride to do the same. But his office door opened.
“You might want to hold on just a minute!” Mike said, stepping back in.
“What—”
“Put the TV on. Any news channel,” Mike said. He’d already gone for the remote that controlled the screen on the far wall of Craig’s office.
Light and sound filled the room.
A man stood at the front of the New York field offices of the FBI, surrounded by a sea of reporters, all jockeying to get better positions with their microphones.
Craig recognized the guy; it took him a minute to know why.
Then he realized quickly that it was Brent Westwood, aging star of stage and screen. He was an exceptionally well-muscled man, an “action hero.” Craig remembered that he’d halfway paid attention to a slice of life news piece recently that had talked about the beautiful people of “yesteryear” who were still working hard at their craft, even if they weren’t getting the leading roles they’d once enjoyed.
The actor listened to a question from a reporter and answered it gravely.
“You had to know Jeannette to understand,” he said, the right amount of pathos in his voice. “She was, at heart, a shy girl. She wanted what we had to be special. We’re both public figures, but we didn’t want our relationship to be public. It was something so private, of the heart.”
“Weren’t you worried when she disappeared?” someone shouted.
“I’ll be honest. I thought it was a publicity venture, directed by those controlling her career,” he said, not mentioning any names.
“But wouldn’t she have told you?” another reporter asked.
“In this field, we have to be very careful. I knew that she’d tell me what was going on as soon as she felt that she could. Was I worried? Yes! But I knew that the police—New York’s finest—were working on finding her. I feared their anger, really, when she surfaced. I never expected that they would find her...as they did.”
He put a hand in front of his face, as if shielding himself from more questions—and as if hiding his tears, as well. “Please, I’m beside myself with grief, but I’m here to see if there is anything at all that I can do to help in the investigation into her death. This is...”
He broke down and turned away.
Mike groaned. “Great. He’s coming here. And he’s using this to garner publicity for himself. That girl had great taste in men.” He snickered. “Maybe she was looking for a father figure.”
“He was the biggest thing in action movies at one time,” Craig said.
“Guess they don’t know our offices actually close at night,” Mike muttered. He turned to the NYPD detective. “You want to handle this?”
“He probably knows you’re here, given what’s going on,” McBride said.
“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Craig said. He pointed to the screen. “There he is, going for the door—and there’s security. In less than a minute, someone will be calling up here.”
As he spoke, the intercom buzzed.
It was one of the young agents in reception.
“Do we go get him?”
Craig didn’t believe that the man pretending so much grief was Gilbert’s killer.
Such a recognizable man didn’t sneak around easily. Nor did he appear to be the type who would have dressed a murdered girl so carefully. Or managed to get down to Virginia to have carried out a murder there and done the same. Craig had no proof. It was only a gut feeling, but his gut feelings had served him well.
He toyed with the idea of having security send him away and tell him to come back during office hours.
But, of course, that would make the Bureau look callow.
And he wouldn’t do that.
“Of course, anyone with information that could lead to the solving of this heinous murder is thanked for bringing us information at any time,” he said.
And so Mike sat and McBride sighed, and they waited for the actor.
* * *
The three of them—Kevin, Kieran and Danny—stared at the flat-screen television in the office, watching as Brent Westwood spoke to the press.
Kevin’s expression was blank, stunned.
“I don’t get it,” Danny said. “Not that Westwood wasn’t—isn’t—a cool guy and all, but, hey, Jeannette Gilbert was a kid in comparison. Not that I’m judging. We’ve seen a lot of older guys with younger women and younger guys with older women who seem to be happy as larks. Love is love, right? No matter what our age, sex, race or preference. Still...I wonder if it all seems so shocking to us because the church—the club—is right behind us.” Staring at the screen, he was unaware when Kevin looked at Kieran with a warning glance.
Let it lie. Don’t let on about anything I was saying to you.
“And the whole grave thing,” Danny went on. “I mean, do you know that half our city parks are built on old graveyards?” He turned and looked at Kieran. “John Shaw was in today, right?”
“Yes, he was pretty shaken,” she murmured.
“I wonder... I’d love to get down into that basement sometime. Think he’ll take me down there?”
“I would think,” Kieran said.
“After all this, obviously. I mean, go figure. They make that kind of find, and then discover a missing starlet displayed down there. Wow. So sad. And still...”
Kieran could feel Kevin’s tension. He wasn’t angry with his younger brother. He was just ready to explode.
The door to the office opened and the last of their clan, Declan, stood there, looking in at the three of them. “I know you guys have other jobs, and, hey, I should be all right and well-staffed here for a Friday night. But Cody is on her honeymoon and with everything going on, those who came to gawk around the block are here now, hungry and thirsty. Mary Kathleen is running around out there like a madwoman. Don’t any of you actually help anymore when you’re here?” he asked.
“Hell, yeah! Sorry!” Danny said, leaping to his feet.
Kevin rose more slowly. “I’ll take the bar,” he said.
“No, no. Go home, Kevin,” Kieran said. “I don’t have real work tomorrow. It’s Saturday. That okay, Declan?”
“Sure. One good body actually involved in working would be great,” Declan said.
Kevin still appeared a little shaky.
“I’m so tired,” he murmured.
“Then go home,” Kieran said, jumping up. “I’ll be a bundle of energy, Declan. I promise.”
“Hey, well, you did work today, too,” Declan reminded her.
She nodded. “Yeah, kind of makes me need to work now,” she said, and headed out of the office. “Kevin, go home!”
“I’m going,” he assured them. “Thanks,” he said softly, and left.
Declan was right. Their Friday nights were often busy, even when Wall Street, the Financial District and the government offices closed and downtown became somewhat quiet. But Finnegan’s was known for bringing in great Irish bands and local talent, and people were often willing to hop on the subway or drive down for the established platform of good food, great taps and music. Also, when the club had opened around the block, many who had tired of the constant thrum of the dance music had found themselves wandering over for the more relaxed venue.
But tonight was exceptional—once again, because of the club. Not because it was opened.
Because it was closed.
And the talk among everyone had to do with poor Jeannette Gilbert.
And most of the talk was the same.
The slimy manager-agent had done it.
The mystery lover had done it. No, the mystery lover wasn’t a mystery anymore, and good God, everyone knew that Brent Westwood was no killer! He stood for truth, justice and the American way.
What about the step-uncle who had raised her? The jerk! Or her aunt, or her cousins?
What about the guy who had bought Saint Augustine and turned a venerable and historic old church into a club? Hey, that guy bore some watching, too. And then there were the freaks who wandered around the city. And that history group. Everyone knew that some of the city’s cling-to-the-past historians were insane. That was it! One of them had murdered her to prove the point that you needed to let the dead rest in peace!
Everyone had a theory, and Kieran heard them all.
She spoke with their regulars and also noted all the new people—those who probably hadn’t been downtown in years but had come down to witness the events at Le Club Vampyre, if only from the street. She noted businessmen and construction workers. Older women, younger women. All kinds of people.
One especially attractive young woman at the bar drew Kieran’s attention because she kept pulling out her phone and looking around the pub.
“Can I help you in any way?” Kieran asked her.
She smiled. “Just biding time,” the woman said. “That old clock on the wall is right? My cell phone has died.”
“Yes, it’s the right time,” Kieran told her.
“Thanks!” The woman smiled at her. “You have to be Kevin’s sister,” she said. “One of the Finnegan family.”
“Yes, I am. You know Kevin?”
“I was in a print ad with him about a year ago. He told me about this place. First time I’ve had a chance to get down here. Is he here somewhere?”
“No, he went home. I’m so sorry. You could give him a call.”
“Ah, well, I’m only here a few more minutes. I’ll call him, though, and I’ll come back.” She smiled. “You’re gorgeous—but then, so is Kevin!”
“Thank you. My twin has the camera charm, trust me!” Kieran said. She would have talked longer, but another patron called her and she moved on.
It was around 11:00 p.m. when Craig reached her on her cell, checking to see if she was still there. He told her he’d head into the pub, and they could go home together.
She felt her heart beating a little too quickly. She didn’t have to worry that she wasn’t saying anything to him about Kevin’s admission. Brent Westwood had gone to Craig’s office, claiming to be the mystery lover. But still...
Lying to him was so uncomfortable.
Was she really lying?
Yes, she reasoned, omitting the truth—an important truth—was a lie.
Luckily, when he arrived, he offered her a weary smile before heading to an empty bar stool. She watched him talk to Declan and order a soda. He looked tired. Despite knowing he’d have to be up for work early the next morning, he was waiting for her.
The Friday night crowd was diminishing, so Declan thanked her and told her to go on home.
She didn’t argue.
“Your place or mine?” Craig asked, pointing the way to his government car, parked down the street. Thanks to his decal, parking was much easier for Craig than it was for most people in the city. “You know,” he said, as they reached the car, “we don’t have to be asking that question of one another all the time. Moving in would be kind of like the right move now.”
“Probably,” she murmured. “My place tonight?”
“As you wish.”
She glanced his way. He had to be far beyond exhausted, but he was also easily able to go with the flow. She studied him for a moment; he seemed deep in thought, and, of course, she knew he was thinking about the day’s events.
She winced, turning away. She really was so in love with him. What was not to love? He was a walking wall of extremely striking testosterone, masculine to the hilt, yet he never behaved rudely, and never seemed threatened in any way by another man’s—or woman’s—talents or abilities. He was faultlessly courteous. Oh, he had a temper, she knew, but the ability to contain it. His features offered exceptionally fine cheekbones, a strong jaw and wonderful, hazel eyes that far too often seemed to be all-seeing.
“One day soon,” she murmured, finally responding to his comment about moving in together.
She was suddenly, almost irrationally, angry with her brothers. First, one of Danny’s best-intended foibles had gotten him into the trouble when she’d met Craig; now Kevin’s tragic romance seemed to be putting her once again in an extremely awkward situation.
That anger quickly dissipated. She felt so bad for her twin.
In minutes they reached her apartment above a sushi restaurant–karaoke bar in the Village.
Someone was warbling an Aerosmith number as they climbed the stairs. They were both so accustomed to the sometimes painful entertainment that they barely noticed.
Upstairs, she immediately headed for the shower. “Underground graves,” she muttered, heading in.
He joined her.
She wasn’t surprised. Or disappointed. Sharing a shower with Craig, she wouldn’t have to talk to him.
But as he stepped in behind her, slipping a bar of soap from her fingers and easing it down her back, she was the one who nervously spoke.
“So, what about the mystery lover?”
“Narcissistic blowhard,” he said, twirling her around, finding her lips.
His kiss was good, wonderful. Seductive. And it made her forget the day. Hot water and steam swirled around them. The soap made their naked flesh sleek and wet. They kissed and touched and stroked one another until they were certainly clean—and their sense of hunger and need was great. Then they stepped out of the shower, reached for towels, more or less forgot the concept of them and stumbled onto the bed in Kieran’s near-dark room, and back into one another’s arms. Once there, they eschewed foreplay. She crawled atop him and straddled him, and he entered her, the heat of his body bursting within her. They made love, again and again, their lips locked as they climaxed each time with a ferocity that left Kieran breathless. She marveled at it, amazed that she was with him, that the world could be so good, that sex was such an amazement every time.
He pulled her down into his arms and held her and stroked her hair. The glow of aftermath and a sense of warmth and security enveloped her.
And then she realized that he was lying there awake, no doubt thinking about the day once again.
And he picked up right where he had left off.
“Liar.”
“Pardon?” Warmth and serenity slipped away.
“That man. Brent Westwood. He’s a liar. I can’t prove it. There’s no way, really. Jeannette Gilbert is dead. But, in my gut, I know it. There’s no way in hell that man is the mystery lover Jeannette alluded to in her interviews. He’s a liar.” He smiled grimly as he stroked her face. “I will, however,” he assured her, “discover the truth.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
CRAIG STOOD JUST INSIDE the downed wall in the basement of Le Club Vampyre and looked around.
Techs had been studying the security footage of the club for hours; none as yet had discovered if the footage had been altered and, if so, how.
And if it hadn’t been altered, then it seemed that Jeannette Gilbert’s killer had slipped into a cloak of invisibility that had covered her, as well.
“We’ve established that the killer’s not stupid,” Mike said, watching Craig’s expression. “And, according to our good docs and Kieran, he’s organized, and we know that he’s killed before. According to the info we have on his first victim, he has a vision, a way of leaving his victims. Maybe he’s even trying to learn how to preserve them. He just hasn’t gotten it right yet.”
“Art,” Craig murmured. “Yes.” He stooped down to look at the floor. Everyone in the city who read a paper or turned on a computer or a television had known about the discovery of the early graves behind a false wall in the basement of the building. Anyone would have known. But who would have known how to enter the place without being seen?
“Makes Roger Gleason a good suspect,” Mike said. “He’s definitely been here. He’s a respectable man. He might have been meeting with Jeannette Gilbert for some kind of a publicity thing. Wasn’t she part of a promotional event here?”
“Yes, I believe she was. We don’t have anything on Roger Gleason—yet,” Craig said.
“You hear about the find...and a day later, bring a girl down here to bury. According to the autopsy, she was dead already,” Mike mused aloud.
“Yeah. He must have planned to leave her somewhere else. I wonder where,” Craig said. “I still can’t fathom how he got down here.”
“The security footage is somehow jimmied.”
Craig looked over at him. “Egan has our people working with their people. None of them can figure out how the tape was fixed. And if it wasn’t fixed, there’s another way in here.”
“Yeah? Under the ground?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, under the ground.”
Mike groaned. He was older; he actually had the seniority. But the two of them had been working together for years, and they had a great relationship.
Mike walked down the rows of tombs—those sealed and those not—muttering as he leaned over the shelves of the dead, pushing at the walls.
Craig did the same. It was eerie work; he tried not to look at the skeletal remains beneath their decaying shrouds. He thought about Shaw and the historical people.
They probably wouldn’t be happy. They worked with delicate chisels and tiny brushes, and he was pushing aside nearly two-hundred-year-old remains in his attempt to find what he was looking for.
It seemed, however, that he hit nothing but the solid granite on which the city sat.
“Special Agent Frasier!”
He nearly bumped his head, startled by the uniformed officer who had come to talk to him.
“There’s a rep here from the mayor’s office. She’s with Henry Willoughby, Aldous Digby and Roger Gleason. They’re waiting to talk to you in the storage area,” the officer told him.
“Yeah, of course,” Craig said. He glanced at Mike and shrugged.
The body was gone. Jeannette had been taken to the morgue.
The forensic team had gone over the area with a fine-tooth comb.
It had to be opened back up to the archaeologists, anthropologists and historians who would record the find and see that the remains were reinterred in a cemetery in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
He and Mike walked back out past the broken wall to where Roger Gleason was waiting with Henry Willoughby and Aldous Digby and a young woman in a smart pin-striped business suit. Her heels were too high for the marble steps that led to an uneven basement floor, but she represented the mayor, so he figured her attire had to be proper.
“Special Agents,” she said, addressing him and Mike and offering her hand in a shake. “I’m Sandra Adair from the mayor’s office. Naturally, we’re grateful for the federal interests here. And we’re appalled about the murder of Ms. Gilbert. But, gentlemen, we’ve spoken with Assistant Director Egan, and we’ve all agreed that it’s time to let the historians get back to work. Are we all in agreement?”
“Yes, I believe it’s all right for the work to continue,” Craig said politely. “With Ms. Gilbert now in the tender hands of the medical examiner, Professor Shaw and Professor Digby may continue their documentation of the long dead.”
He kept his voice modulated, trying to hide his irritation.
Willoughby lowered his head, smiling, no doubt aware of Craig’s feelings. Sandra Adair seemed oblivious, and Roger Gleason apparently didn’t care one way or another; he wasn’t reopening for business yet.
“Well, then, thank you, and, naturally, we’ll be anxious to hear that you’ve solved the murder of Ms. Gilbert,” Adair said. “Mr. Willoughby, I’ll leave it to you to call the experts back in. Oh, by the way, Special Agent Frasier. I don’t believe your phone has been working down here. I have a message for you from Detective McBride. He wants you to call him.”
“Thank you,” Craig said.
She turned to head back up the old marble steps. He gritted his teeth and then stepped forward to help her. She was annoying, but he didn’t want to see her flat on the ground with a broken ankle.
“We’re okay?” Digby asked. He let out a sigh. “To be honest, I’m anxious to do this work, but I’m equally anxious to get in and out.”
“Yes, we’ll need John Shaw,” Willoughby said as Craig headed up the stairs.
Craig turned back to Digby. “Professor, you were here when Ms. Gilbert was found. Is there anything in particular you noted? Anything you could tell us that might help in any way?”
Digby was thoughtful.
“The floor,” he said.
“The floor?”
“People had already been in, of course. But, there’s always a kind of a film—time and decay—on the floor. Now that I’ve had time to think, there was something a little off. It seemed to me that much of it was...too clean.”
“Was that before or after the body was found?” Craig asked him.
“When we first came down, I thought it odd. The tombs, the shrouds, the coffins all had that film. But the floor seemed clean. Right at the start.”
Before Craig could comment, Willoughby got down to business. “I’ll call Shaw so we can get moving. This is going to take weeks.”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Willoughby,” Craig said. He headed out then and didn’t look back.
He heard Mike speaking with Gleason, thanking him for his concern for the city.
Then Mike headed up after him.
An officer was at the main Gothic-arched doorway, keeping watch over who entered and exited. Craig nodded and headed out to the street, aware that Mike was with him.
“Rat terrier,” Mike said.
“Pardon?”
“It’s not really her fault. I mean, there’s no reason to stop the experts from their cataloging and corpse inspections,” he said drily. “She’s doing her job, that Ms. Adair. She’s just nervous-looking and yappy—like a rat terrier.”
Craig grinned. “Yesterday we dealt with an asshole—according to McBride—and today a rat terrier.”
“Yeah, but at least you don’t have to pretend to be polite to an asshole!” Mike said.
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Heather Graham
Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegan's, her family's pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple who've worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegan's in lower Manhattan.As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, it's clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to "preserve" that beauty by destroying the women who embody it…
Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.
Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.
Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegan’s, her family’s pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple who’ve worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegan’s in lower Manhattan.
As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, it’s clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to “preserve” that beauty by destroying the women who embody it...
Praise for New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
“Graham is the queen of romantic suspense.”
—RT Book Reviews on Flawless
“With an astonishing ease and facility, this talented and hard-working writer can cast her stories in any genre.”
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Graham stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] unique story with an equal balance of action, mystery, suspense and romance.”
—Goodreads on Flawless
“This chilling novel has everything: suspense, romance, intrigue and an ending that takes your breath away.”
—Suspense Magazine on The Betrayed
“Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life, using exceptionally vivid details to add depth to all the people and places.”
—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Waking the Dead
“[Waking the Dead is] not to be missed.”
—BookTalk
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM has written more than a hundred novels, many of which have been featured by the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. An avid scuba diver, ballroom dancer and mother of five, she still enjoys her South Florida home, but loves to travel as well, from locations such as Cairo, Egypt, to her own backyard, the Florida Keys. Reading, however, is the pastime she loves best, and she is a member of many writing groups. She’s the winner of a Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award and an International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Award. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America, and also the founder of The Slush Pile Players, an author band and theatrical group. Heather hosts the annual Writers for New Orleans conference to benefit both the city, which is near and dear to her heart, and various other causes, and she hosts a ball each year at the RT Booklovers Convention to benefit pediatric AIDS foundations.
For more information, check out her website, www.theoriginalheathergraham.com (http://www.theoriginalheathergraham.com). You can also find Heather on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HeatherGrahamAuthor).
A Perfect Obsession
Heather Graham
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Bryee-Annon Pozzessere and Joseph Hunton, with congratulations on their marriage.
And to Ellysse and Zohe Hunton, beautiful additions to our family.
Contents
Cover (#u52395c89-ee12-5411-9b43-97c29381044a)
Back Cover Text (#uad36f7c2-f876-55ce-8689-924aa7b7b673)
Praise (#u2f317601-a207-5328-9ca9-2eda5105ba3f)
About the Author (#u30d6cedd-f108-5c29-a233-aea827c97e8f)
Title Page (#ucbb4ea01-f948-502f-ad09-742d74d9d79e)
Dedication (#u5a51e316-253f-5df0-8e8e-093a7497f6ac)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1bc5e952-9e8d-5655-975c-d4b62a276152)
CHAPTER TWO (#u64becbca-a0b7-5234-8861-2b7cadc14476)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8997e3a0-9e7f-5133-879c-8456c4c4d95a)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ud5b82213-2bb9-5bcd-89b8-c9d4dc91ada6)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u171dd674-69a1-5173-9aa0-cbbb8db8cdcb)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
“HORRIBLE! OH, GOD, HORRIBLE! Tragic!” John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegan’s pub.
Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.
Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.
It wasn’t just any body.
It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.
Finding the old graves wasn’t much of a shock—not in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Le Club Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The church’s congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Church—whose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old building had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, life—and business—went on.
They were expanding the wine cellar, and so work on the foundations went on, too.
It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased body—moments before it hit the news—that Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family pub, Finnegan’s on Broadway. Like the old church-nightclub behind it, Finnegan’s dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. They’d barely opened; it was still morning and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. She’d just been down in the basement, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.
“I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! By ‘they,’ I mean Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve Our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies...but then, opening a decaying coffin and finding Jeannette Gilbert!” He paused for a quick breath. “And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at the site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students there. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was...”
John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archaeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.
Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.
Jeannette Gilbert—media princess, supermodel and actress—had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging what he assumed were kidnappers for her safe return.
At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter had speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release.
Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move, and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—a gold digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.
In the past few weeks the celebrity magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor, struggling his way into TV, movies and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and that being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge, Kevin said.
While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.
Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.
It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.
Now Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it was evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.
Not that she knew any of the findings. In fact, she knew only one: Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb. But she knew it was unlikely that the woman had crawled into a historic coffin in a lost crypt to die of natural causes.
“It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to those of us who were working. I was there for hours while the police grilled me. And now...now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double shot of single malt scotch and swallowed it in a gulp.
He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.
It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.
After all, he’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.
The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was around the block from Le Club Vampyre.
The whole situation was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family from the mid-nineteenth century, dating back to her distant great-great-uncle. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.
As manager, Declan was the only one who made the pub his lifework. Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. Yet they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.
The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage at Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about the place for the past six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club like that in an old church!
The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown grave sites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.
Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.
Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about the earthly remains of the long dead.
Not the newly deceased.
At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. That was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archaeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s one night a month as long as she could remember.
When she’d seen him enter today looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch, and she’d sat with him so she could try to calm him.
“Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them.
Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert personally. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.
Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.
“I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find a body. Still, John Shaw worked with the dead all the time—the long dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.
But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.
He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently murdered.
“I was—I am—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built Saint Paul’s to accommodate folks farther north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built Saint Augustine’s for those a little north of Saint Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, until about seventy-five years ago, there was an entrance to the catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground outside, so most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves. Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart, and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”
He sipped his scotch again and looked at Kieran intently. “You’re not to say a word, not yet. The police...they asked me not to speak about this until...until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents is living, but she must have family...” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome!”
Once again he picked up his glass and swallowed the scotch in a gulp.
Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.
She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.
She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. It had all started as they danced around each other following a diamond heist. They were both assigned to the case, but Kieran’s involvement had been more than a little complicated. They’d progressed to each having a dresser drawer at the other’s apartment, and were now talking about moving in together.
While she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, but that hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.
And trusting her beloved brothers to behave wasn’t easy. They were never malicious; however, their ways of helping friends out of bad situations weren’t always the best.
Then again, she’d met Craig because of the Capeletti diamond and Danny’s determination to do the right thing...
And because of some criminal clientele.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to John, assuming that Craig had come to see her.
The door was still open; he stood in a pool of light, and her heart leaped as she saw him. Craig was, in her mind, entirely impressive, tall and broad-shouldered, with extraordinary eyes that seemed to take in everything.
But he had not, apparently, come to see her.
He greeted Kieran with a nod, held her shoulders for a minute—and then offered her a grim smile as he gently set her aside so he could move past her.
Something was up. Craig spent his free time here with her and her family. Her friends, coworkers and the usual clientele all knew that Craig and Kieran were a couple.
Today, however, there wasn’t even a quick kiss. Craig was being very official.
He was heading straight to the booth where John Shaw was seated.
Kieran stood there for a minute, perplexed.
Jeannette Gilbert had been killed, but as a local woman her death should’ve remained a matter for the New York City Police Department, not the FBI. And John Shaw had left the body less than an hour ago.
Why would Craig be here so quickly? And more to the point, why was the FBI involved?
She didn’t get a chance to slide back into the booth and find out what was going on; she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.
Her brother Kevin was next to her. He was a striking man—in anyone’s opinion, she thought. He was tall and fit, with fine features, dark red hair and deep blue eyes. They were twins, and it showed.
“I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“Sure,” she said.
“Not here. In the office,” he told her. To her surprise, he glanced uneasily at Craig, whom he liked and with whom he was pretty good friends.
Kevin whirled her and headed her down the entry aisle toward the bar, and then to the left and down the hallway to the business office. He peered in, as if afraid their older brother might be there, since it was, basically, Declan’s office.
He closed the door behind them.
“She’s dead, Kieran! She’s dead!” Kevin said, looking at her and shaking his head with dismay and anxiety.
She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t be talking about Jeannette Gilbert—no one knew that she’d been found at the church yet, not according to John Shaw.
Her heart quaked with fear. She was afraid he was talking about an old friend, or a longtime customer of the pub.
Someone he cared about deeply.
“Kevin, who?” she asked.
“Jeannette.”
She frowned. “Jeannette Gilbert?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I know that, because John Shaw just told me. But he only found her body a few hours ago. The police asked him not to say anything.”
Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, John Shaw might not have said anything, but one of the workers down there—a grunt, a student, I don’t know—came out and told people on the street, and the story was picked up, and there are already media crews there.”
She studied her brother. “Kevin, it’s terrible. A beautiful young woman has—I’m assuming—been murdered. But, Kevin, I’m afraid that terrible things do happen. But...we didn’t know Jeannette Gilbert. Not personally.”
“Yes,” he said. “We did.”
“We did?”
“I did,” he corrected. “Kieran, I was the so-called ‘mystery man’ she was dating! I might have been the last one to see her alive.”
* * *
The NYPD had been called in first; that was proper protocol, since New York City was where the body had been found.
She’d last been seen by her doorman entering her apartment; she was a longtime Manhattan resident. She had, in fact, grown up in Harlem, a little girl who’d lost both parents and gone on to live in a household filled with children and an aunt who hadn’t wanted another mouth to feed.
By the age of seventeen, however, she’d had an affair with a rock star.
While the rock star denied any kind of intimate relationship with her at the time, he’d gone on to put her in one of his music videos soon after.
An agent had picked her up and it had been a classic tale—little girl lost had become a megastar. By twenty-five, she was gracing runways all over the world and, because of her modeling, doing cameo spots on television shows and even appearing in small roles in several movies. She was considered a true supernova.
Jeannette’s physical appearance had been called perfect by every critic out there.
She could walk a runway.
She had beautiful skin, luscious hair, long legs and a body that didn’t quit.
Craig Frasier had learned all this about Jeannette in the last few hours. Before that, she’d only been a face he might have recognized on a magazine cover.
But he’d made it his business to read up on her quickly.
Because her death had suddenly become the focus of his life.
He’d been in his office, reading statements from witnesses about the murder of a known pimp, when he’d been summoned, along with his partner, Mike Dalton, to Assistant Director Richard Egan’s office.
Craig and Mike had been partners for years. Craig had been assigned a young, new agent when Mike was laid up on medical leave—a shot to the buttocks—about a year ago. He’d learned then how much he appreciated his partner; they knew each other’s minds. They naturally fell into a division of labor when it came to pounding the pavement and getting the inevitable paperwork done.
And there was no one Craig trusted more to have his back, especially in a shoot-out.
Egan, a good man himself, was hard-core Bureau. His personal life had suffered for it, but he never brought his personal life into the office. He was the best kind of authority figure, as well—dignified, fair, compassionate. And efficient. He never wasted time. There were two chairs in front of his desk, but he hadn’t waited for Craig and Mike to sit down. He’d started talking right away.
“I had a back-burner situation going on here,” he’d told them. “We’d been given information, but the local police down in Fredericksburg, Virginia, were handling the case. A girl—a perfect-looking girl, an artist’s model—disappeared about six months ago. A few weeks later, her body was found in a historic cemetery outside Fredericksburg, in a mausoleum. She’d been stabbed in the heart, then cleaned up, dressed up and laid out in a family mausoleum. She was discovered when the family’s matriarch died, since she’d been put in the matriarch’s space. As I said, it seemed to be a local matter, and the Fredericksburg PD and Virginia State Police had the murder. We were informed because of the unusual aspects.”
Egan had paused, running his hands through his hair. Then he’d resumed speaking. “We’re all aware of the high-profile disappearance of Jeannette Gilbert.”
Mike had nodded. “Yeah, we were briefed with the cops about her disappearance when she went missing. We weren’t really in on it, as you know. But we were on the lookout.”
“Ms. Gilbert’s been found. An archaeological dig at old Saint Augustine’s.”
“You mean—” Mike began.
But Egan had cut him off. Yeah, he meant the new nightclub. Egan wasn’t a fan. He’d gone on and ranted for a full minute about the destruction of old historic places. In his opinion, that suggested New York City had no real respect for the past.
Craig knew Mike hadn’t been asking his question because of the club; he’d been trying to ascertain if she’d been found dead.
Mike had glanced over at Craig, who shrugged.
They’d both just let Egan rant, figuring it was obvious. The poor girl was dead.
Egan had ended by saying, “Yes, she’s dead. And it is bizarre—as bizarre as that Fredericksburg case, maybe even more so. Because in this case, the perp had to know she’d be found quickly. He placed her in a historical site where anthropologists and archaeologists were expected to arrive imminently. Later, you can go over the info on the Virginia case, do some comparisons. We’re part of the task force on this, but we’re taking the lead, and you two are up for our division. Because, gentlemen, I believe we have a serial killer on our hands.”
They’d asked about the security tapes at the club.
Techs were going over those now, Egan had said.
“That’s a bitch!” Egan had exclaimed. “Try looking for something out of the ordinary when every damned customer in the place looks like an escapee from a B Goth flick or worse! Not to mention that the club closed down when the crypt was discovered. There’s no club security overnight other than the cameras, but cops have been patrolling the place since the historic folks stepped in.”
From the office, he and Mike had gone straight to the church. The ME on duty was Anthony Andrews, a fine and detail-oriented doctor, but he hadn’t really started his examination of the body yet.
Photographers were still taking pictures, trying to maintain the scene just as it had been after Professor Shaw had opened the first coffin and seen Jeannette Gilbert.
A half-dozen members of a forensic team were moving around, but Dr. Andrews delicately stopped the photo session to show Craig and Mike what he’d discovered. Gilbert had been killed in another location, stabbed through the heart, and then bathed and dressed and prepared before being placed in the old coffin.
Seeing her was heartbreaking. Craig hadn’t known the woman or really anything about her until today, but she’d been young and beautiful, and her life had been brutally taken. She lay in the old coffin, dressed in shimmering white, a wilted rose in her hands. With her eyes closed, it looked as if she slept.
Except, of course, she’d never wake again.
“Defensive wounds?” he’d asked Andrews.
“Not a one. She was taken by surprise. Whoever killed her stood close by—had to be someone who seemed trustworthy. Maybe someone she knew,” the ME had speculated. “Or she could’ve had some kind of opiate in her system. Anyway, she didn’t expect what was coming.”
“Time of death?” Mike had asked. “She’s been missing about two weeks.”
“I’m thinking one to two weeks,” Andrews replied. “And I don’t believe she’s been embalmed—but she was somehow preserved. Maybe in a freezer while he worked on her or made arrangements or...” He sighed. “I need to get her on the table.”
Two patrol officers, the first on the scene, had closed off the area. Luckily, the club had been closed, pending the investigation of the newly discovered crypt. Detective Larry McBride, with the major crimes division, had been the first to arrive. Craig and Mike had worked with him before. He was particularly mild mannered, but he had a brilliant mind and nothing deterred his focus.
“Glad you guys are lead on this,” McBride had told them. “This is... Well, I believe we have a real psychopath on our hands. Bizarre! Wherever he killed her, he bathed away the blood. I’ve got officers who’ll be doing rounds with pictures of the dress. Pending notification of the so-called aunt who raised the girl, they’ll be asking all her friends if she owned the dress. It’s possible the killer obtained it.”
“Checked the label,” Andrews had said. “It’s from Saks.”
McBride had nodded. “Nice dress. She looks like a princess.” He paused. “I have a daughter her age... So, anyway, no inside security by night—but cops watching on the street. The men on duty swore no one went in until Roger Gleason opened up to wait for the archaeologists. Gleason says he comes in every day, even though the club’s closed for a few days. I interviewed him personally, and he seems to be on the up-and-up. Says he’s personally not that interested in the historical stuff, but seeing that the work goes well will actually make his club more famous. Still, he’s not one of those guys who lets his own property go unattended. He was working up here—and heard Shaw’s screams. Shaw swears there was no one down there at the time but him, an associate professor and a few grad students. I have names and numbers, which I’ve emailed to you already. They were all questioned. I don’t think they had anything to do with Ms. Gilbert’s death. The mystery here is, how the hell did the bastard get in with the body? Anyway, the security footage is down at your office now. And, of course, we’re hoping Forensics can come up with something. This killer...well, they’re calling in shrinks. You know, profilers. The murder was cold, swift and brutal. But then, the killer takes all this time with her. He comes in like a shadow, and then leaves her on display, waiting to be found. I talked with Egan, and I’ve been hanging in for you guys. Actually, I’m almost afraid to leave. It’s a media frenzy out there.”
By now, the frenzy on the streets involved more than just media. Word had spread; dozens of celebrity-stalkers and those inclined to the macabre had congregated outside the club.
New York City’s finest were dealing with the facility and crowd control.
Craig had questioned Gleason himself before leaving. He seemed like a Wall Street type, and although his club might be Goth, he was far more prone to the elegant in his manner and dress.
“I need to talk to Shaw,” Craig had said.
But Shaw wasn’t there. They’d heard that when he’d first gotten up close and personal with the body, he’d screamed like a banshee.
And Allie Benoit, John Shaw’s grad student and assistant, had told him that Shaw had spoken with the police, and then freaked out and fled. Allie was pretty sure he’d gone to the pub—the pub whose back wall abutted that of the old church-turned-nightclub.
Finnegan’s.
He swore, walking around the corner and reaching the pub.
The damned man just had to go to Finnegan’s!
The pub had stood there almost as long as the church. It had seen the New York draft riots during the Civil War, and the violence of the Irish gangs that had once held huge sway in a city where immigrants poured in daily from around the world.
The pub had witnessed so much history.
Including the recent history of the diamond heist that had nearly cost his girlfriend her life.
“She won’t be involved!” he said firmly, speaking aloud.
But before he entered, he knew, somewhere in his gut, that the die was already cast.
Of all the pubs in the world.
Finnegan’s.
CHAPTER TWO (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
AS HE ENTERED the pub, Craig’s attention was all for his search. With luck, Kieran would be at the office today or—
But, no, she walked directly over to him.
And he couldn’t do what he wanted to do—tell her that she wasn’t to have the least interaction with anyone connected to the murder.
He didn’t have the right to make that kind of demand.
And since she was here, she might have already served John Shaw, and John Shaw would’ve talked to her...
At the moment, though, he needed Shaw. She’d understand that; he never had to explain himself or his intentions to Kieran.
She knew what he did for a living; he knew about her professional work for Drs. Fuller and Miro. They respected each other’s professions and discussed things when they could—or when the other might have a useful insight. Or when, as occasionally happened, they became involved in the same case.
Fuller and Miro worked with the police and the FBI. They often gave their considered opinion of a suspected criminal’s state of mind or behavior.
They’d been involved, all four of them together, in a situation before—the so-called Diamond Affair.
But now...
He wanted to hold her and yet he couldn’t; he was here professionally. He strode past her, his eyes on Shaw.
Even as he approached the booth where John Shaw was seated, he was still hating the fact that the church where Jeannette had been found was directly behind Finnegan’s. He’d come to terms with being in love with Kieran—and the fact that she, too, dealt with criminals.
However, it was still difficult for him to accept that she was sometimes too quick to put herself in danger in defense of others.
Yes, it seemed to be a Casablanca moment.
Of all the old abandoned dug out holes in Manhattan, the damned catacombs just had to be close to Finnegan’s!
Too close... This place was too close to where a young woman lay dead, where her body had been stashed with the bones of those long forgotten.
Craig knew John Shaw, and Shaw knew him; they’d met at the pub several times when the professor had come for his professional meetings or get-togethers—or when he just wanted to sip one of his ultra-lite beers and chill.
“Craig!” John said, looking up at him with surprise. “I—Oh, my. You’re coming to see me. So I guess it should be Special Agent Frasier. Not Craig. Look, I’m not sure what else I can say to anyone. All I know is that we opened that coffin and...and there she was.”
Craig slid into the booth and smiled at him. “You must be pretty rattled.”
“Yes. You’re here officially? The police told me not to say anything yet. They need to contact the poor girl’s family. I mean, that’s why you’re here—coming to me and not Kieran, right?”
“Yes, John, this is official. The NYPD detectives are on the case, of course, but we’re taking part, as well. We’ve put together a task force. This as a very high-profile murder.”
John nodded, his white hair—something of a strange mullet cut—flapping beside his ears. His glasses slid down his nose with his effort, and he pushed them back with his forefinger.
“Of course. This needs to be solved fast,” John said. “But...” His expression grew even more perplexed. “I don’t know how I can help any more. I don’t know how I can help, period. Professor Digby—Aldous Digby, one of my associates—and I were there, and three grad students. Oh, and two of the construction guys. The guys were watching—waiting to get back to work. I didn’t let them touch the coffin. Nice guys, but, you know, that coffin might be two hundred years old and, well, you need to have a delicate touch. And Ms. Gilbert... The second I saw her... I have to admit I screamed. I was rattled, as you said. But I made sure everyone got out. We did and then went up to the church—the club area—to wait for the police.”
“Right. So there were seven of you. I have the names,” Craig said. He was certain that the meticulous Detective McBride had sent his email.
He’d also seen Jeannette Gilbert’s body at the site.
He winced, the picture of her still so clear in his mind. Her lovely, pale, perfect face. The white dress. The red rose.
John nodded. “Seven of us were in there—and seven of us got out quicker than a flash. And we were all interviewed.” He sighed loudly. “Hell of a thing for the owner of that place. They’ve barely been open what, a month or two? Then they have to stop work and close up because an engineer finds the coffins in the dirt and then the catacombs. They bring us in, and... Sad. So sad. By God, she was beautiful! Poor thing.”
“Just to confirm, you were there yesterday, too?” Craig asked.
“Of course. I was there as soon as the situation was reported.” He paused. “Did you know that the land where the Waldorf Astoria sits was once a potter’s field? Think of how old this city is. A number of the parks we enjoy today were originally cemeteries. I worked the old slave cemetery they discovered a few years back, so it was natural that I’d work on this one, too.”
“You started on the church yesterday?”
“Yes. I did. I was called yesterday morning, and I made arrangements to get there as fast as possible.”
“And then?”
“I assessed the location. I called in Digby and my assistant, Allie Benoit. You don’t pry apart ancient caskets willy-nilly. We researched church plans, but the original architect’s plan is long gone.” He shook his head. “You must be familiar with what happened. The church sold the property to the club people. There was an outcry, not that it made any difference. But the building is so historic. Everyone wants to shop Fifth Avenue, see a show, bank on Wall Street. They forget that Wall Street was a wall. Canal Street was a canal—or a cesspool, really. Those are all part of our city’s origins, and we need to preserve history!”
Craig nodded, although he wasn’t convinced they’d needed to preserve the cesspool that had been Canal Street. He spoke quickly, not wanting the academic to bluster endlessly. “What time did you get in there yesterday?”
“Let’s see... They called us right around ten in the morning. I was there within the hour.”
“So, who was there then?” Craig asked. “Besides you and the colleagues and workers you’ve mentioned.”
“Oh, lots of people. Let’s see, the manager and owner, Roger Gleason. He’d been working down by the construction area. They stored their booze down there—in the old crypt they knew about, I mean, with the coffins and bodies all gone now. It’s a foundation, a basement. The basement—the crypts—were far more extensive than people realized. The wall had hidden some of the old coffins and shrouded corpses, so when some of the corpses were moved, the ‘second’ crypt was missed.”
“Okay. Anyone else know what was going on?”
“At least two construction workers and one of the barmaids-slash-dancers. Have you seen what they do in there? She was dressed up in a little black bra and skirt and wearing some wicked makeup. The girls dance on tables when they’re not handing out booze.”
“So, employees, construction workers—anyone else?”
“Oh, yeah, the rep from the historic preservation group. Henry Willoughby. Loves history. He’s not a scientist, but he’s a great hands-on guy, ready to protect the past and help out if he can. The man loves New York and studied history and architecture. His wife passed away a while back, and now he gives all his love to the city. He stayed long enough last night to check in with us, make sure we were ready to catalog the bodies and the artifacts we found. I would’ve brought in more crew, but—”
“Who stayed, then? Who was actually there when you kept working?”
“Me, Digby showed up, my grad students—plus a structural engineer and a construction worker, all to see that we didn’t bring down a wall, I assume.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, after I initially went in yesterday, the construction guys created a kind of door for us.”
“How long were you there yesterday?”
“It was almost midnight before I left. I didn’t touch or open anything. I stepped over the hole—where the wall broke when they were working on the foundations—into the crypt beyond. Digby and my grad students and I were there. We make drawings and assessments and plan before we start the actual work, so, yes, I’d say it was midnight. By then, of course, the vampire dancers were gone and all the club people had been told to go home. Once they made the find—the second crypt—they closed down, of course, but people were hanging around. It’s...it’s history being reclaimed! Roger Gleason, the owner, seems like a nice guy. He has a conscience and some perspective on what’s important. We didn’t have to get court orders or anything. He simply agreed to close for a few days. They had patrol officers covering the place, making sure that once the news about the crypt got out, some Goth freak or necrophilia-pursuing creep didn’t try to break in.”
Craig nodded. He knew the answers to most of what he was asking; he just wanted it from Shaw and he wanted to ensure that their facts were straight.
“Yesterday,” Shaw said, “you understand, was discovery day. I planned where to put some lights. I judged the space for people and decided on equipment. I did all the assessments, got my ducks in a row, you know what I mean?”
Craig nodded again. “This morning when you arrived—were things exactly as you’d left them?”
“What?”
“Had anything you’d done been changed? Were tools missing, anything like that?”
Shaw frowned. “I...I don’t think so. I don’t get it. I’d roped off different areas in the basement for my people. We had our little brushes and chisels and...no, I’m positive that our work tables were the way we’d left them,” he said. He leaned forward. “Didn’t Ms. Gilbert disappear about two weeks ago? She didn’t look as if she’d just been killed. She...she was beautiful as she lay there, but decay had set in. I guess down there, with the cool temperature, natural decay wouldn’t be what it would up here.” He briefly closed his eyes. “If she was embalmed, she wasn’t embalmed well, but she was dressed up. As if she’d been prepared for a viewing. Seeing her gave me chills! Chills! And I work with the dead all the time. When did she die?”
“The medical examiner is estimating her death to have been between one and two weeks ago. He’ll tell us more definitively when he’s done the autopsy.”
“So, you think that—”
“I don’t think anything yet,” Craig said. “We need more information from the experts before I can even speculate. Go on, please, tell me about this morning.”
“Okay,” John said. “This morning.” He looked longingly at his scotch glass.
It was empty.
“You want another?” Craig asked.
“Yeah,” John said huskily. “Yeah. The long dead are one thing. Fresh corpses...or not so fresh corpses...”
Craig knew what he meant.
He had seen the body.
He scanned the bar area but didn’t see Kieran. Declan Finnegan, however—looking like an old-time Irish bartender as he dried a glass, decked in a white apron tied around his waist—was behind the bar.
Craig walked over to him. Declan, he knew, had been fully aware that Craig was in the pub and that he’d been talking to John Shaw.
“You want another scotch for him?” Declan asked.
Declan was the oldest of the Finnegans; he wore his sense of responsibility and dignity well. All the Finnegan family were attractive and charming people with different degrees of red in their hair, and they all had eyes in varying shades of blue. Even a casual observer had to note that they were related.
Declan tended to be the most serious in demeanor. He didn’t ask questions, not of Craig; he knew he’d learn what was going on if and when it was appropriate.
“Thanks,” Craig said. “Any idea where Kieran is?”
“She and Kevin were helping out before. I’m not sure where they went.” He poured the scotch. “Anything for you?”
“Soda water.”
Declan quickly poured him a glass from the fountain, and Craig returned to the table. Where the hell had Kieran gone?
She was helping out her brother today, which meant she was working here somewhere. If he was going to start worrying every time she wasn’t in sight, he’d need to get a psych evaluation himself.
John Shaw took the scotch from him; it looked as if he was going to gulp it down. Craig set a hand on his. “Hey, that’s prime stuff, my friend. Sip it.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Shaw murmured.
“Okay, so, you got in today—”
“Early. Just after seven. This is an important true find. The historical value is immense.”
“Of course. I understand,” Craig assured him. “So, today. You haven’t opened any of the other coffins in the catacomb, have you?”
“No. Some of the coffins have disintegrated, and the remains are down to bones and dust and spiderwebs. Remnants of fabric...belt buckles, shoe buckles...” John rambled, studying the amber liquid in his glass.
“But you found Ms. Gilbert in the first coffin?”
Shaw nodded glumly.
“What made you open that one first?” Craig asked.
The question seemed to confuse Shaw for a minute. “It seemed to be the best preserved.” He paused, staring up at Craig. “Actually, it was at an odd angle on the shelf. As if it had been moved. Oh...that was obviously because someone had been there! They’d put her body in it!”
“Do you remember it being that way the day before?”
“No! That must’ve been it. There was something different!” John Shaw said. “I didn’t realize it immediately. It was such a...subtle difference. The thing is, I thought I’d start with the best preserved, but so did—” He frowned at Craig. “It was definitely the best preserved. And someone else knew that, too. Her killer.”
Jeannette had been dead at least a week, possibly two. But she’d been placed in that coffin in a forgotten crypt much more recently than that.
The killer had learned about the historical find, and he’d made use of it for his own designs.
“Excuse me,” Craig said abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”
He wanted to see where Kieran was; it suddenly seemed important.
She wasn’t at the bar. She wasn’t on the floor.
He hurried down the hallway to the office, not bothering to knock.
Kieran was there, and Craig let out a sigh of relief.
But then he saw that she wasn’t alone. She was sitting there, on the sofa in front of the desk, talking earnestly with her twin brother, Kevin.
They both looked up at him, startled—and their expressions could only be described as guilty.
* * *
Kieran jumped up, looking at Craig and then Kevin.
“Hey,” she said, talking to her brother first. “You’ve got that audition—you better get going!”
“Yep, right,” Kevin said, rising quickly. “Definitely. Craig, are you involved in the situation over at the old church? No one is supposed to know anything yet, but I think that everyone everywhere knows that the body of Jeannette Gilbert was found in an old coffin. I think someone tweeted it. So much for the ‘please keep silent’ request. I’m sorry. Sounds terrible. But, what is the FBI doing in on it?”
“There’s a similarity to another murder, down in Virginia,” Craig said. “We may be looking at a serial killer.”
“Oh?” Kevin said. “So...” His gaze fell on Kieran, and his voice sounded a little sick. “You’re going to be involved with the investigation?”
Craig nodded. “Lead for the FBI.”
“Better get going, Kevin,” Kieran said. “This is truly so horrible, but we all have to keep working.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you all later tonight,” Kevin said, and headed out of the office.
When he was gone, Kieran looked at Craig.
“What was that all about?” he asked her.
“That—what?” she asked.
“I sometimes wonder how your brother manages to be an actor. He’s a horrible liar.”
“What did he lie about?”
“What are you lying about?”
She arched her brows, wishing she’d met and fallen in love with an auto mechanic, a taxi driver—anyone but an FBI agent.
“Since I haven’t said anything, I haven’t lied about anything, either!” she protested. He wouldn’t let it be, she thought. Hell, he was an investigator. It was what he did. But what could she say? Betray a confidence?
“It’s about Kevin’s love life,” she said. There. That was the truth. “And I’m just not—Well, you know, you can’t talk to me sometimes and I can’t talk to you.”
It was the semitruth, but he probably wouldn’t have let it go at that. Except that her cell phone started ringing and she pulled it from her jeans pocket. Caller ID quickly informed her that it was one of her two psychiatrist bosses, Dr. Fuller.
“Hey,” she said, answering the phone gratefully. “Is everything all right? We did decide to close today, right?”
“We did—until about an hour ago,” Dr. Fuller said, his tone regretful. “I was actually planning a day of tennis.”
The man was very good at what he did; beyond being a gifted psychiatrist, he had an unbelievable wealth of knowledge in all things related to his field—his pharmaceutical awareness was nearly uncanny. He could rattle off the names of dozens of drugs, what they did for what, and who should and shouldn’t take them with greater ease than most people could recite the alphabet. He could offer empathy that would crack the hardest core, and be staunch and unwavering when needed.
He also looked bizarrely like a pinup underwear model and loved his wife and the game of tennis with absolute passion.
“Oh?” Kieran said, looking over at Craig and wondering if he could or couldn’t hear her employer’s words as well, since he was standing so close to her.
“We’ve gotten a call from Assistant Director Richard Egan—Craig’s boss,” Fuller said.
“Oh?” she repeated, certain now from his wary expression that Craig could hear the conversation. But this was not unusual; her bosses were frequently called in as consultants by the NYPD, the FBI and other local law-enforcement agencies. As the doctors’ psychologist, Kieran often worked on evaluations for those perps in custody, and with the doctors on identifying the personality type of those still at large.
“He wants us in on the old church murder. They’ll have someone up from Quantico, he told me, but, for the moment, he wants us in. I’m on my way, but I’m up in Connecticut. I was thinking you might go over—it’s right by Finnegan’s.”
“I’m at the bar now.”
“Can you go over right away? I’m not sure how long they’ll keep the body in situ, and I want our own photos, notes of everything you see. Can you go?”
She glanced at Craig. He was wearing a very hard expression.
“Of course,” Kieran said. “Special Agent Frasier is right in front of me. He’ll be happy to see that I’m accompanied over.”
“Great. I’ll see you as soon as traffic allows,” Dr. Fuller said.
Craig groaned aloud. “I don’t like this one,” he said softly. “I don’t like it at all. I really wish that you weren’t involved.”
“Craig—”
He lifted a hand to stop her. “I know. It’s what you do. I just wish that it wasn’t what you did on this particular case.”
Because of Kevin, she’d wind up involved one way or the other. Better that she’d been asked to go in; better that she could see the victim and the surroundings before trying to understand the psyche of the person who could do such things.
She smiled. Though she was fairly tall herself, she stood on her toes to plant a quick kiss on his lips.
“Face it. You don’t want me involved in any case.”
“Okay. True. But, this...well, I guess you’ll see for yourself. It isn’t—it isn’t something you should see. It isn’t something anyone should see, and it’s sure as hell something that never, ever should have happened. But...”
“I’m careful. I’m always careful, Craig, you know that. And I love my work with the doctors, even if it’s usually in an office.”
“Let’s go, then,” he said.
They left the office. While Craig dismissed the professor, Kieran spoke quickly with Declan, apologizing for running out, especially when the pub was now filling up. People who were never downtown were downtown that day. People who had nothing to do with architecture, churches, clubs, archaeology or anthropology. Despite police preference, Twitter had broadcast the news.
The building that had once been a place of worship and now housed Le Club Vampyre was, beyond a doubt, beautiful. It was grand and tall with flying buttresses. Gargoyles had been created for every rain gutter and more. Entrances were designed with pointed arches. Inside, she knew, the ceiling was vaulted, majestically painted with angels gracing the heights.
While Trinity and then Saint Paul’s Chapel had been designed for the use of the early British settlers, by the time Saint Augustine’s had been built, the city had grown. A colony had become a state in America, and that growing population had wanted to build something grand.
The church was literally in back of the pub, but they had to head out the front and come around to the parallel street entry. In doing so, they waded through a sea of media and onlookers to reach the interior of the church. Once inside, there still seemed to be a crowd.
“Seems like a lot of people at a crime scene,” Kieran murmured to Craig.
“Up here, in what is the nightclub area now,” Craig said, “you have a lot of cops. Some of the nightclub workers. Some historic board people. But not down below. Even before Gilbert was found, only a few people were allowed down there.”
“Ah.”
“Yep, lucky girl,” he said drily, looking ahead.
Kieran studied her surroundings quickly.
She’d been in the church a few times when it had still been a place of worship. While she’d grown up in the Catholic Church, her parents had loved the beauty of the Episcopal house of worship so close behind their pub. It had been fantastic then, so beautifully built, and it had seemed they always had a great reverend, super music and lots of good things. It had been sad to hear of the place being sold.
But not much had really been changed, not as far as the facade went, nor even the inner structure.
The new owner had maintained the feel of great space. Where the altar had once been, there was now a long bar. To the left and the right, the smaller altar areas had now become little nooks with plush chairs and coffee tables. To the far right was a bandstand and DJ’s box. Heavy red velvet drapes kept the antique feeling while allowing for the little nooks to close off for privacy. The center of the room—with the exception of a secondary bar—was empty, spacious and airy.
“There. Egan has gotten here himself, and he’s with the owner,” Craig said, taking her arm and walking over to a trio of men.
She knew Richard Egan, Craig’s boss, head of the criminal investigation division at the FBI’s New York headquarters. He looked the part; he was somewhere in his fifties, Kieran thought, with a headful of neatly cropped silver-white hair and a tall, lean, fit and extremely dignified physique. He nodded grimly as he saw them approach.
“Ms. Finnegan, thank you for coming so quickly. We have some of our people coming up, but due to the high-profile situation we have going on here, I wanted the good doctors Fuller and Miro in on it all as quickly as possible.” He paused for a moment to glance at Craig. “Mike says you went to look for Shaw?”
“I did, sir. I found him, and Ms. Finnegan, of course.”
“I’m grateful you were able to get here so quickly. Let me introduce you, Kieran,” Egan said, and turned to the other two men with whom he’d been standing. “Henry Willoughby, Ms. Kieran Finnegan.”
She quickly shook hands with the man. He was middle-aged, lean, with a trim ring of gray hair around his bald head. He was very solemn—clearly concerned with the goings-on. She’d seen him on a local news show occasionally; he had a fine way of speaking, and his enthusiasm over a museum opening or city history was contagious.
“Henry’s president of a wonderful group called Preserve Our Past,” Egan explained.
“Yes, of course, I’ve seen you on TV,” she said, and offered a small smile.
He returned it grimly.
“And I’m Roger Gleason, Ms. Finnegan, owner of Le Club Vampyre—the business and the building. Obviously, we’re very distressed by what’s happened here.”
“Certainly,” she said. Gleason was nothing like the other men. She judged him to be in his early forties. He was tall, stylish and handsome, with a sweep of blond hair that fell across his forehead. His suit, she estimated, had to have cost a month of the average workingman’s wages.
“I hope you can help us,” he said.
“I’m here for Drs. Fuller and Miro,” Kieran said. “Dr. Fuller will be here as soon as he can possibly get through traffic.”
“Yes, well, thank you, Ms. Finnegan,” Gleason said. “Traffic—he could be hours.”
He turned to Craig. “Do you think they can help?”
“Definitely. There’s never a guarantee that profiling a perp will result in apprehending him—no two human beings are really alike. But, yes, profiling has been key in solving many cases. I’ll bring Ms. Finnegan down to the crypt.
“Mike is still there?” he asked Egan.
Egan nodded. “Mike, the detective, the ME and the forensic team,” he said.
Craig nodded and led her behind the main bar—the old altar area. Kieran pictured the place as it had been as a church. Naturally, yes, the crypt would be beneath the altar.
They descended marble steps into the cool dankness of what had been a crypt and now housed spirits of a different kind. Rows and rows of wine and liquor bottles now lined the walls and were neatly arranged on the concrete floor.
The basement area here looked much like it did at Finnegan’s, she observed. Except, of course, at Finnegan’s, the cellar had always been solely for liquor storage.
Not “storage” for the dead.
“I wonder if the staff ever feels uncomfortable down here,” Kieran said.
“The dead who rested in this area are gone,” Craig said. “Besides, you need to—”
“Fear the living, not the dead,” Kieran said.
“Yep. They’re the ones who will hurt you.”
A patrolman stood to the far rear where large chunks of the wall had been knocked down and a broad opening had been created. Two women wearing jumpsuits that identified them as part of the forensic team were hunkered down over a black chest, working with samples. A photographer was snapping pictures.
She spotted Mike standing with another man who appeared grim and weary but calm.
He looked at her and nodded an acknowledgment. Kieran knew Craig’s partner well and liked him very much.
“This is Detective Larry McBride, NYPD,” Mike said. “Detective, this is Ms. Finnegan. She’s with the psychiatrists the Bureau often uses in the city, Drs. Fuller and Miro.”
The detective studied her as he offered a hand. He apparently hadn’t realized that it was still gloved. He pulled off the glove and shook her hand. “Ms. Finnegan. I know Dr. Fuller. Fine man.”
“You know him?”
He nodded, grimacing. “I’m a tennis player.”
“Ah,” Kieran said.
“Let’s do this,” Craig said. “Kieran, this way to the forgotten crypt.”
He turned her around and led her through the broken wall.
He was stoic. To anyone else it might appear that nothing bothered him. But she knew him well enough to know the crypt did bother him. Not because of those who had died long ago, and hopefully through natural means. He was a good agent, Egan had told her once, because he had empathy. He was sorry for the victim, the woman whose body he had already seen.
She realized that she was far more squeamish than he—and she also realized that she had never been on the site of a murder before. The murder hadn’t taken place here, but...
She paused for a minute, taking in what she saw.
The crypt stretched far beneath the earth. There were marble sarcophagi here and there amid the rows of what she could only think of as shelving—shelving for the dead. She thought that the rows seemed to go on endlessly, housing hundreds of interments. She’d been in the catacombs in Rome and this felt very similar, except that slabs for the dead were not just against the walls, they were in those endless rows of stone as well, one on top of the other. It was almost as if the tombs where the dead rested were many tiered bunks in a dormitory. Some of the shelving had broken marble slabs. Some had nothing, and bone peeked from rotting shrouds. Toward the front where she stood, coffins lay upon the same shelving. Most were deteriorating; all seemed to be covered with a haze of dust and cobwebs.
She pulled out her notepad and began sketching furiously, and then reached for her cell phone, taking pictures.
“Kieran?”
“Yes?” She turned.
Craig was watching her. From his expression, she knew that he was unhappy—and not because he wanted to prevent her work in any way. He just hated that she had to see this macabre place.
He tried a dry smile. “None of those is for Facebook, Twitter or any other social media?” he asked lightly.
She glared at him, refusing to answer.
He nodded. “To the left.”
She tensed, knowing she was about to look at the dead woman.
When she forced herself to turn, she felt chills seize hold of her spine and her limbs.
It was surreal.
Jeannette Gilbert still lay in the coffin—much as she had been found, Kieran surmised. The ME had been to the body, but as of yet, it remained undisturbed.
And the woman...
In life Jeannette Gilbert had been truly beautiful. Long, sweeping blond hair had curled over her shoulders, her lips had been generous and beautifully shaped, her cheekbones high. Now, even in death, she looked impossibly like a princess—as if she might be awakened by love’s first kiss.
And yet...
There seemed to be something out of focus. She just wasn’t quite perfect anymore. And, staring at the corpse, Kieran knew what it was.
She was decaying. And coming closer to her, Kieran felt as if the scent of that decay suddenly began to permeate her.
She forced herself not to back away. She saw then that the ME—out beyond the broken-down wall in the basement area—had a mask hanging around his neck. No doubt he’d donned it when he had examined the corpse.
Craig, however, stood at her side unflinching, staring down at the body with sadness and regret—and something steely in his expression that said that he wouldn’t stop until the killer was found.
She turned away from Craig quickly, actually taking a step closer to the corpse in the coffin as she lowered her head.
Kevin! Kevin had been the mystery man she had been dating. Had he been in love with Jeannette Gilbert? Possibly. And if so...well, she knew her twin. Jeannette would have been a nice woman; she would have cared about people. She might have been a supermodel, but she would have given to charities, cared about children, possibly visited cancer wards.
Thank God her brother wasn’t here to see this.
She swallowed hard and took pictures first this time, then sketched what she saw, adding little notes to her sketch.
The terrible smell of death seemed so close.
“This is how—where—she was found?” she asked Craig.
“Just about. The coffin was on the middle shelf. It appears to be the best preserved of those down here. That’s why Shaw opened it first, and, presumably, why the killer chose it.”
Kieran added to her notes.
“The entry wasn’t as big last night. More of the false wall was torn down to make way for Dr. Shaw and his crew and whatever historians might have been called in. He did note that the position on the shelf was a little extended, or more at an angle. Other than that, he noticed nothing that had changed in the crypt.”
As she studied the corpse, Kieran felt a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumped.
“Sorry, Kieran.”
It was Craig, at her side, introducing her to the ME.
“This is Dr. Anthony Andrews. One of the best MEs in the city,” Craig said, his hand now discreetly at her elbow, steadying her.
“You’re with the profiling people?” the ME asked.
“Yes, civilian profilers,” she said.
He nodded. “I need to bring this young lady to my office now. We’ve waited here a bit longer than I would have liked. Do you need more time?”
Kieran shook her head. “No, thank you. I was hoping that Dr. Fuller might make it, but...”
“Yes, traffic. He could be quite a while. I’m sure you’ve recorded and noted everything that can be given to him. You’re not a psychiatrist?”
“Psychologist,” Kieran said.
Andrews glanced at Craig and turned back to Kieran. “Well, my dear, in my mind, you might be best suited to understand the mind of such a killer. Too many psychiatrists are pill pushers. Psychologists have to work with the human creation without benefit of mind-altering drugs. Anyway, a pleasure to meet you, though I have seen you. Finnegan—you’re related to the owners of the pub behind us, right?”
“I’m one of the owners,” she told him. “There are four of us—my brothers, Declan, Kevin, Danny and myself. Declan manages the pub and usually tends bar.”
He grinned solemnly again. “Ah, well, then, your brother may not be a psychologist, too, but he’s is a heck of good listener. I’ve seen him talking to people at the bar. Seems to know what makes them tick. For now, if you’ll excuse me... I’ll get to my part in this investigation.”
She nodded and returned her phone and notepad to her bag.
Craig led her out.
Andrews called to him. “I’ve been told this takes precedence, so autopsy in about two hours. No, let me say precisely...3:00 p.m.”
“Thank you. Mike and I will be there,” Craig said.
He brought Kieran back to the marble steps.
She was glad of his arm. Not only was she affected by the dead body, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. That he had been Gilbert’s mystery man, and that the model had alluded to her feelings for him in several interviews.
She pictured the beautiful young woman on an autopsy table, giant pincers being used to crack open her ribs...
She winced inwardly and began to worry.
There was no way someone hadn’t seen something—or didn’t know something. She had to talk to Kevin, and he had to talk to Craig.
News about the murder was out. Speculation was no doubt rampant already.
And her twin was going to be a suspect in the murder.
CHAPTER THREE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
CRAIG HATED ATTENDING an autopsy.
He did, however, attend whenever possible. No detail was too small when seeking a murderer.
And here, downtown, it was easy enough to get to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Young and old, victim of accident or murder—or just having faced death unattended or from causes unknown—the bodies of the deceased in lower Manhattan came here. The OCME had two other locations—in Brooklyn and in Queens, serving those who died farther afield or when a death toll rose dramatically due to assaults by nature or by man.
This office was located on Twenty-Sixth Street—not far from Finnegan’s and Le Club Vampyre or the NYC offices of the FBI.
“You’ll have my tape for anything you might have forgotten here,” Dr. Andrews said when he was finished, stepping back from the gurney and nodding to his assistant so that the man could take the body to finish the sewing-up procedure. “But it’s the weirdest damned thing I’ve ever seen. From my findings, I believe she’s been dead for most of the two weeks she’s been missing. Maybe only ten days, though, which would mean that he kept her for just a few days—and has preserved her or tried to preserve her until he chose to leave her. Obviously, gentlemen, we all know that she wasn’t killed in the crypt. Wherever she was killed, there has to have been a massive blood spill—she was stabbed straight in the heart. But what’s so disturbing is the way that she was kept. She was not sexually assaulted, and her remains were treated tenderly.”
“As if the killer regretted the murder?” McBride asked.
“I can’t speak to the killer’s mind. The facts of the case are this—she has been dead approximately ten days up to two weeks. There are no defensive wounds anywhere on her body. She was kept on ice, or at a very low temperature, slowing decomposition, until she was brought to the crypt. The temperature below the ground is much cooler than above, more toward the preservation side, but not enough that more decay didn’t begin to set in. But, even on ice, I believe she had begun to decay before being brought to the crypt. There is no other wound on her other than the fatal jab to the heart. I’m going to suggest a strong, broad knife, one-and-one-half to two inches in breadth, five to six inches long. The fatal stab was inflicted in one smooth and determined motion.”
“By someone strong? A man?” Mike asked.
“Certainly, no one feeble delivered the thrust. But, no, if the knife was sharp enough, which it was, a person of average strength could have easily done the deed. I don’t know as yet what chemical compounds might have been in the body. When I receive the lab tests, I’ll let you know.”
“Well, we know how she died and when she died,” McBride said. “Now, if we only knew the name of the killer.”
“I want to get an info board and timeline going,” Craig said. “Also, see if they came up with anything from the security cameras in the club. We’ll set up in one of the conference rooms. I have a feeling our task force might get bigger, and we’ll be briefing a lot of people.”
He thanked Dr. Andrews and they headed out.
It was always good to leave the morgue.
* * *
Kieran thought that she was incredibly lucky in her employment. Dr. Fuller was a truly decent man—totally unaware of his looks and completely dedicated to his field. There wasn’t a narcissistic bone in his body. He was always courteous and caring of others.
Of course, if all else should fail, she also had Finnegan’s!
But her two roles converged nicely that day.
Traffic was exceptionally bad, and by the time Dr. Fuller arrived, Jeannette Gilbert’s body was long gone. Still, he headed first to the church to view the scene of the discovery, then he came around the corner to Finnegan’s and met with Kieran in Declan’s office.
Kieran got him a scotch—he said he needed one, just one—and ordered shepherd’s pie for him. He’d been driving a long time.
He ate quickly. He sipped his scotch as if it were nectar from above.
She’d already texted the pictures to him; she went over her sketches and her notes.
He sat for a minute, thoughtful.
“They’re going to suspect her manager and agent, Oswald Martin,” he said.
“Yes, I know. But you don’t think it was him?” Kieran asked.
“She was his meal ticket. He also worked with her for years,” Fuller pointed out. “Tell me—what were your impressions?”
Kieran looked at him and then plunged in. “Organized. The killer knew what he was doing. It’s likely he’s killed before.”
Fuller nodded. “As I understand it, the FBI’s on it because a body was found similarly in another state.”
Kieran continued with her assessment. “She trusted whoever killed her, so, therefore, I don’t think it was a random person off the street. Also, whoever did it is meticulous in his own habits. Maybe not clinically insane, but I’d say crazy, just not visibly so. Sociopath, beyond a doubt. His own satisfaction excludes any concern for others. The usual profile would suggest a young man, late twenties to early thirties. But I think he’s a little older. I also think he’s got a decent income, is well educated. After all, he can definitely do some research. He found out about the crypts under the church. What puzzles me, though, is why he placed her in a coffin there. He had to have known that she’d be found quickly.”
“Maybe he wanted her found,” Dr. Fuller speculated. “His first victim, however, was in a mausoleum many weeks before the woman whose space she was in died. Then again, maybe that didn’t please him.”
“You mean that killing is like art to him?”
“Killing—and displaying the body.”
Kieran nodded. “Jeannette was stunningly beautiful in life. Living art. Maybe he tried to preserve his victims, but couldn’t?”
“Possibly. Buying mortuary supplies might raise a question.”
Kieran gave him a brief, grim smile. “He’s living his life in his own mind. Maybe he saw something in her.” She thought of the original murder. “Dr. Fuller, what was the other victim like? What do you know about her?”
“Young. Her name was Cary Howell. That’s all I have. Frankly, we need to get over to the FBI offices. It’s just a short walk south on Broadway—I won’t even have to drive again. You ready?”
* * *
“Two hundred and eighty-five miles—driving time approximately five to six hours, with a couple of pit stops, down to Virginia,” Craig said. He had his board set up, having accrued more records on the Virginia case. “Victim number one—that we know of—Cary Howell, was found in a crypt when the matron of a family was about to go in.” He pointed to her picture. “Killed six months ago.”
Then he pointed to Jeannette’s photo. “Gentlemen,” he told McBride and Mike, “please note Cary and then Jeannette. I think you’ll agree it’s highly unlikely that we have a copycat on our hands—not when you see the details.”
“A rose in her hands,” Mike murmured.
“White dress,” McBride said. “Let me guess—Cary Howell was stabbed in the heart?”
“She was. Of course, you’ll note the decay of the body is much greater in the first case. She’d been there longer, and Virginia can be hot.” He glanced at his notes and looked over them. “In fact,” he said softly, “the Virginia ME bemoans the fact that the heat does what it does to bodies. The decay caused breakdowns that made certain chemical testing impossible for him.”
“Still, Virginia,” McBride said. “We need to find a suspect who was in Virginia when Cary Howell was killed—and here in New York when Jeannette was killed.”
“Not so easy,” Craig said. “The Virginia ME could only narrow down the time of death on Cary to about a week, and that week would have been six months ago. The drive to Virginia and back can be done in a day.”
“Still, we can find out who has been to Virginia,” McBride said. “Or if any of our suspects left the city around that time.”
“Not if they took side roads,” Mike noted.
“Hard to get in or out of New York City without hitting some kind of a camera,” McBride said.
“True—but there are ways,” Craig said. “But I don’t believe that Jeannette Gilbert went off with just anyone. She knew her killer. She trusted him. That makes me believe that the killer is from or lives in New York City since, even though she traveled for work, Jeannette spent her entire life here.”
“The other victim trusted her killer, too,” McBride said.
“But Jeannette Gilbert was a media star. She was known. Right now, I’d like to look at this case as if it is a separate situation. We need to focus on possible suspects right here in the city, people who were close to Jeannette Gilbert.”
“Sure,” McBride said glumly.
“Naturally, everyone at the church-nightclub was questioned immediately, but only Gleason had actually ever met Ms. Gilbert, and that was because of an ad done at the club. He made no attempt to hide and didn’t avoid any questions. He’ll remain on our radar. Number one suspect—according to the tabloids—is her manager, Oswald Martin,” Craig said. “I have officers out trying to find him now.”
“Can’t convict a man via the tabloids,” McBride noted.
Mike had a sheaf of notes in front of him. “She had a row with a photographer a while back—Leo Holt. High-fashion photographer. It was covered in the tabloids. And they lived in buildings on the same block by Central Park. However, there’s nothing to link him to her disappearance.”
“We really have nothing to link anyone yet. Thing is, I don’t think we’re going after the usual—because of Virginia. I don’t think it’s someone with whom she just had a petty argument. I don’t think it’s a scientist working at the scene, either.” Craig shook his head. “But I like charts and lists, so I’ll add Holt’s name.”
“Going in that direction, there’s John Shaw himself,” McBride offered. “He’s creepy enough, crazy enough. My gut says no, but you could write him down, too.”
Craig did. “Then,” he added, “we have the owner of the club. Roger Gleason.”
“Definitely slimy,” Mike said.
“Can’t convict on slimy,” McBride put in.
“No, but we have to start somewhere,” Craig said. “The first one who usually comes under suspicion is the significant other. In our case—the mystery man.”
Mike cleared his throat. “We don’t know who he is. That’s why he’s a mystery man.”
“We’re going to find out. We have statements from friends and associates and coworkers already, since she was listed as a missing person,” Craig said. “It will come out.”
“We have to add in every one of the people involved with Shaw,” Mike said. “His colleague, Professor Digby. Henry Willoughby had been there, too, representing the historic preservation group. And then the grad students.” He referred to his notes. “Allie Benoit, Joshua Harding and Sam Frick. All of them go to the university here, and all have worked with Dr. Shaw before.”
“There’s her family,” McBride said. “The aunt... She’s just kind of a sad sack. And the step-uncle, Tobias Green—a total asshole. Never bothered with the girl, begrudged every piece of food she put in her mouth as a kid—and threatened to sue the NYPD if we didn’t find her!”
“Add the asshole step-uncle to the list,” Mike said.
“I don’t think you should write asshole on that board of yours. Probably against Bureau policy,” McBride said wearily.
“He probably is an ass,” Craig agreed, “but I’m not sure if that puts him with the kind of man we’re looking for. Gilbert wouldn’t have feared him, but how would he have gotten to know our other victim?”
“And you can’t convict a guy for being an asshole,” McBride said sadly.
“We’ll still want to talk to him,” Craig murmured.
“Construction workers, bar employees—we’re missing people,” Mike said.
“Yeah, well, we could be missing suspects that include all of Manhattan and beyond, since the news was out about the find,” McBride said wearily. “What have we got off security tapes? Did Tech finish with them yet?”
“We got nothing,” Craig said.
“How can you have nothing? I saw the cameras there.”
“The techs studied the tapes over and over. Roger Gleason stayed late—until Professor Shaw was all set up for today. You see him and Shaw leaving together—in fact, you see Gleason setting the alarm. And, yes, the alarm company has been questioned and nothing went off last night. The cameras recorded through the night. You see no one go in and no one go out.”
“That’s impossible,” McBride said.
“It was a church,” Mike argued. “There’s more than one entrance. The door to the left leads to the offices—at least what was offices when it was a church. The door to the right led outside.”
“I tried it, Mike,” Craig replied. “It doesn’t open now. The next building is flush against it.”
“There has to be another way out,” Mike said. “I feel like an idiot. I went through every room at the place. I don’t remember another door, but—”
“There are two side doors next to the main pointed arch entry,” Craig said. “Locked from the outside, on the same alarm system. In an emergency, they open out.”
“I had Forensics inspect those doors. They weren’t jimmied. They weren’t opened,” Mike said.
“Shouldn’t pass a fire code that way,” McBride grumbled.
“That’s just it. An alarm to the fire department goes off when they’re opened,” Mike said.
“Something had to have happened—a technical failure?” McBride posited. “And of course there are no alleys.”
“It’s Manhattan,” Mike said. “Buildings wind up flush together because real estate is prime. No alleys,” he added, looking at Craig.
“No. No alleys,” Craig agreed.
“The cameras had to have been tampered with. Someone had to have jimmied the alarm system,” McBride said. “It’s looking like the owner himself might be guilty in this thing. Who the hell else could have done all that?”
Craig had to admit that it seemed the detective was right.
How had someone gotten into the church, carried the body downstairs and gotten it into the coffin without being seen?
“She was killed by a ghost,” Mike muttered.
“Seems that way,” McBride said, shaking his head. “But she’s still a real corpse. A ghost would have had to have carried in a real corpse!”
Craig’s buzzer rang then; he hit the intercom.
“Special Agent Frasier,” one of the secretaries said, “Dr. Fuller and Ms. Finnegan are here. I’ve taken the liberty of sending someone down to get them. Do I hold them out here or send them in?”
“Send them right in,” Craig said.
“Good. The shrinks can explain how ghosts work and make victims invisible, too,” McBride said, his sarcasm a cover for his exasperation. “Something’s wrong—film, tape, digital images. They had to be manipulated.”
“We have the best techs in the world,” Mike said.
“I don’t care how good you are, there’s always someone better,” McBride argued.
That was true enough, Craig thought.
“And that would point to someone who knew Le Club Vampyre,” he said aloud, glancing over at Mike.
“Or the church—when it was a church,” Mike said.
“It’s probably a new system. It’s different being a church and a nightclub,” Craig pointed out.
He was glad then to see Bentley Fuller walk in with Kieran.
“Guy looks like he’s in great shape. He’d make a solid FBI guy,” McBride commented beneath his breath, and he stood to greet Fuller.
Craig thanked them for coming. Kieran nodded at him and took a seat, but he picked up on her vibe right away. She looked uncomfortable. He wondered why. She hadn’t appeared so miserable the first time she’d come down to the FBI headquarters, back when they barely knew one another. By now, of course, she’d been here often enough. But still, there was something off about her.
Fuller walked right up to Craig’s board and stared at the image of Cary Howell.
“Wow,” Fuller murmured. “Same work—as in what the killer seemed to do. Same hand, too. I would be stunned if it wasn’t.”
Kieran was looking at the image, too.
“But here’s what different. Cary Howell was in a mausoleum. The old lady who died might have lived on for years, and Cary wouldn’t have been found until then. Why hide one girl and put the other where she’d be found the next day?” Craig asked.
“He thinks he’s an artist,” Kieran said.
“What?” Mike asked.
“He’s creating something with these women—art, in his mind. Temporary exhibits, if you will,” Dr. Fuller said. “I think he realized with his first victim that no one saw the true beauty of his creation since he didn’t make sure that the body was found quickly enough,” Fuller explained. “I do believe that Cary Howell was his first victim—or, I hate to say it—an earlier victim. He has been experimenting and learning.”
“Why put them in a coffin then, period?” Craig asked.
“Because they’re dead, and the dead belong in coffins, but their beauty should be remembered, honored,” Dr. Fuller said.
Craig glanced at Kieran. She was staring at his board. Her face was white.
“Kieran, are you all right?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she told him. She leaned forward. “I was looking at your suspect list. And the thing is—everyone in New York knew about the historical find.”
“Yes, but, everyone in New York didn’t know the layout of the church or where the wall had been broken,” Craig said.
“You have ‘mystery lover’ on the list,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t see Jeannette Gilbert dating anyone who wasn’t young, her age, say. Probably someone appealing. I don’t see that as John Shaw or Henry Willoughby or...”
She paused, her voice trailing.
“Or Roger Gleason?” he asked.
“Gleason is...interesting,” she admitted.
“I think most young women would find him appealing,” Mike said.
“Slimy,” McBride said, shaking his head.
Kieran glanced at McBride and nodded. “Some women are drawn to men like him, though. He keeps himself fit, he has a quick smile and—here’s something important—he had something to offer them. He must have seen plenty of young women coming in for a job at the club.”
“Rich as Croesus, he is. He owns the building,” Mike pointed out. “The whole old church. Man, that’s some mean property in Manhattan.”
Craig looked at Dr. Fuller. “What about Miss Gilbert’s manager, Oswald Martin? The man is in his late thirties. He made her rich. But she grew up, and maybe she wanted to go her own way.”
“Possible, but unlikely in my mind. She was making a fortune for him. He tried to rule her life, yes, but she was getting what she wanted. She could slip away when she wanted,” Fuller said. “She gave impromptu press interviews—without him around.”
“He might have been furious over the mystery lover,” Mike said.
“And she might have just made up the mystery lover for good press,” Fuller said.
Kieran looked at him quickly. “A mystery lover is always good press,” she said.
“We’re all speculating now,” Craig said, putting an end to the talk. “I have agents out to find Oswald. I plan to speak with him tonight. Can you, at the moment, give us anything helpful?” he asked Fuller.
“Yes, Kieran and I have talked, but we needed to know more about his first victim, which is why we came down now, without a complete report with explanations. This is what we’ve got so far. This man has money. He can come and go as he pleases. He’s got a respectable appearance. Normally, I would have said he was between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, but Kieran suggested a little older and I think she’s right. He’s gained the respect he receives and he’s intelligent. I imagine he pulled up the original church plans. They’re available online, by the way, though not even online—or in any archive—will you find a reference to the hidden crypt. Your killer listens to the news. He knew about the findings.”
“And how the hell did he get in?” Mike murmured.
“There’s always a way,” Craig said.
“But the security footage—”
“Yes, that remains a mystery,” Craig said, cutting off his partner. “What else can you tell us, Dr. Fuller?”
“The killer used a mausoleum before—a family mausoleum. He was dissatisfied. I believe he was in love with Ms. Gilbert—as he had been with Ms. Howell. Not sexually. His love is above all that. His love is for perfection, I believe. Both women were more than attractive. They were beautiful. He laid them out almost tenderly. They were...art.” Fuller kept his eye on the pictures as he spoke. “I’ll write up my complete report. You’ll have it first thing in the morning.”
Craig glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost eight o’clock, but he knew his day would go on; he was expecting Oswald Martin at the office soon.
If the man was innocent, he’d certainly agree to be questioned. And if he was guilty? Well, he’d agree, too. He’d want to appear to be cooperating.
“Dr. Fuller, thank you for coming in.”
“Well, then, I’m off. Heading to the office. I now feel the need for continued research on the minds of such men,” Dr. Fuller said.
Kieran stood.
“No need to join me. You were a godsend today, Kieran. Thank you,” he said. He smiled at her and then at Craig. “I’m quite certain that Special Agent Frasier will see to it that you get home safely.”
Kieran looked like a deer caught in headlights.
What the hell?
“Um, sure, thank you,” she said to Fuller. “Actually, I can just walk to Finnegan’s. I was supposed to be helping today. It’s a Friday night.”
It wasn’t unusual that she said she was going back to the pub. What struck Craig was the way she seemed to be so confused, unsure of what she really wanted to do.
“Someone will drive you,” Craig said. “I’ll meet you as soon as we’re done here.”
She nodded. Her smile for him was weak. She was almost out the door to the conference room when she seemed to remember Mike and McBride. She turned and bid them both goodbye, and then hurried out.
Craig didn’t get a chance to wonder about her behavior. The intercom buzzed again.
Oswald Martin was there. Were they ready for him?
Hell, yes.
* * *
Kieran had been sending Kevin texts half the day.
He hadn’t gotten back.
He might have gone home, but she doubted it. His audition might have run long. He might have had an instant callback.
But he should have texted her by then.
She looked at her phone as she was leaving the conference room and saw a missed text.
He was heading to the pub.
Walking out to reception, head still down over her phone, she crashed into a man coming toward the conference room.
She jumped, apologizing, as he steadied her, his hands on her shoulders.
She knew him from the tabloids.
Oswald Martin.
“Oh! I’m sorry, so sorry,” she murmured. He had an escort—a blue-suited FBI agent.
“It’s all right,” Martin said to her.
“This way, Mr. Martin,” his escort said.
“Yes,” Martin said, but he was still staring down at Kieran.
“I’m Oswald Martin,” he said.
“How do you do?” she murmured, not offering her name.
He kept looking at her, and then he took a card from his pocket. “If you’re ever looking for work, please...just see my card.” He thrust it at her and instinctively, Kieran took the card.
“Mr. Martin, if you will?” his FBI escort said firmly.
“Of course, of course,” he said. “My card—”
“Mr. Martin,” his escort repeated.
“Perfect!” Martin said, walking away.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
OSWALD MARTIN SEEMED appropriately grim, but comfortable and at ease as he spoke in the conference room with Craig, Mike and Detective Larry McBride.
He was horrified, a term that seemed to refer to everyone’s feeling about the discovery of Jeannette Gilbert, but he’d been begging the police to listen to him from the time she’d failed to respond to his call.
“The papers!” he said with disgust, waving a hand in the air. “Internet, media—whatever! These days, everything in the world is out there in a split-second tweet. That’s how I found out she was dead. Jeannette! A young woman—a beautiful girl I’ve worked with for nearly a decade—is killed, and I see it first on social media. I told the police over and over again that she wasn’t flighty, that she didn’t just take off and that she wouldn’t run away from me. But because I ‘discovered’ Jeannette, and because I’m older by several years, they just have to turn it into something dirty, something wrong. Yes, I loved her—like a big brother. And she loved me, in just the same way. The stuff I’ve read is disgusting. I was ‘angry’ about her so-called mystery lover. What a crock. She was twenty-seven years old. She’d seen other men through the years. I could advise her, no more. Did the police really investigate? No, they were just as bad as the tabloids!”
Martin was an interesting man. Late thirties, his head clean-shaven, one gold earring and all-black attire, he looked like a modern-day Aleister Crowley. Sure, he seemed appropriately “horrified.” But Craig wasn’t sure that the man was appropriately sad.
“We’re truly sorry,” Mike said gently. “The people there were asked not to tweet or say anything to anyone. Apparently, asking wasn’t enough.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a social media age, isn’t it?” Martin asked. He wasn’t waiting for an answer. He’d really made a statement. “I told Jeannette that all the time—that anything she did, anyone she saw, any word she uttered was up for grabs. She was a sweet kid. A truly sweet kid. The best. Her life sucked before I found her. I mean, I don’t know whether or not to hate her aunt. She took Jeannette in, but she treated her as if she were an unwanted pet! Almost like Cinderella with her stepsisters, you know? She was like an indentured servant. She was worked her little tail off. But the kid was beautiful. Beautiful. Perfect, you know?”
Perfect.
To Craig the word seemed to be disturbing.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Craig asked.
Martin sighed deeply, and not without aggravation.
“I told the police!” he said. “It was two weeks ago—or now it was two weeks ago plus a day or two! I saw her at dinner. We talked about what she was doing, what she aspired to do and the contract in the offing with a major cosmetics giant. She was going to be the new face of L’Amour, and you can only imagine... Anyway, I told her what the contract would mean. I told her that she’d really hit the big time, bigger and brighter than she’d ever been before. And I told her to quit handing out interviews, especially when it came to talking about this guy—this mystery lover—that everyone else seemed to know about. Everyone but me!”
“You talked where?” Craig asked.
“At Wine Bar Bacanalia!” Oswald Martin said. “A very public place. When we parted ways, we were in full view of every waitress, waiter, bartender and hostess in the place. You all should know this. I told everyone when I reported her missing. And I reported her missing because—due to the new contract—we had a meeting the next morning with the cosmetic company.”
“So,” Craig said lightly, “you reported her missing because she didn’t show up for her meeting with these people?”
“What are you, an idiot?” Martin demanded, looking at Craig. He quickly appeared to regret his words. “Sorry, sorry. You can’t possibly understand the importance of such a meeting!”
Yeah, what an idiot, Craig thought. He just didn’t understand fame and fortune.
“Sorry, sorry, truly sorry,” Martin muttered quickly. “Jeannette was a true pro. She grew up with nothing, but she was smart as a whip. She knew that the appointment we had could make the difference between her being a star who’d perhaps be forgotten as soon as a younger face came along or a supernova, shimmering in the public memory for decades. It was no publicity stunt when she didn’t show up. I tried so hard to make the police believe that. And then, of course, to the tabloids, I became like a monster, a slave driver, all for my own enrichment. Was Jeannette a major cash-flow outlet for me? You bet. But I represent other acting and modeling personalities, as well. Other than what you read in the tabloids, you won’t find anyone I’ve ever worked with who won’t tell you I’m a straight shooter!”
The man stared straight at Craig as he said the last; there was passion and sincerity in his voice. It seemed to be real, but, in Craig’s mind, it was far too early in the game to be certain.
“Naturally, we’ll be verifying what you’ve told us,” Craig said.
“Yep. And we’ll check out the cops who worked the missing person detail,” McBride said, the undertone in his voice so low Craig doubted Oswald Martin had the least idea of how deeply he had offended the officer who was there representing the City of New York.
“You travel much, Mr. Martin?” Craig asked.
“Around the USA, Europe, anywhere?” Mike added pleasantly.
“Of course. I travel all the time,” Martin said. He appeared to be perplexed. “Why do you ask?”
“You do any work in Virginia?” McBride asked.
“Not much, no. Most work in the US comes out of New York, Los Angeles and sometimes Miami,” Martin said, looking at them all. “Virginia? I mean, an ad campaign can take you almost anywhere, but even if Jeannette was headed to a certain location, it wouldn’t mean that I’d be there with her. I tried to accompany her—every star needs a shield!—but I couldn’t always, because, as I mentioned earlier, I do represent other people. Still...she was part of a shoot that was a public service announcement, encouraging people to enjoy the country. That was about six months ago. Yeah, we were in Virginia then. She filmed in Richmond and Williamsburg. And then Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Saint Augustine, Florida. I can send the footage of the announcement, if you like.”
“We would greatly appreciate it,” Craig assured him. “Along with the names of your other clients.”
Martin suddenly leaned forward. “You think that I’m going to balk at that? Well, you’re wrong. I didn’t kill Jeannette. And when that’s been proved, and you all look like a pack of in-your-face asses, I’ll be sitting pretty. Whatever you want, you go for it—and if I can provide it, so help me, I will. Now, are you through with me for the day?” he asked.
Craig smiled pleasantly. “Almost. Tell me. Have you ever frequented Le Club Vampyre?”
“Yeah. Hell, yeah. That place was a pile of publicity opportunities. We were at the opening, both Jeannette and me. Both openings, actually—the soft, which they had for critics and reviewers, and the hard, when they opened for the public. There are stunning pictures of Jeannette on the steps below the main arch. Her face was everywhere.” He sat back, deflated, and lowered his head. “Who knew?” he added softly.
It was the first time he seemed to show real emotion, in Craig’s mind.
“Are you through with me?” he asked tonelessly.
“For now,” Craig told him. “We may need to call you back in the future. Because I know you’re going to want to help in any way we may need. Also, we’d like a copy of your calendar for the last six months.”
“Jeannette only disappeared two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but knowing what she was doing prior to her disappearance may be of major importance,” Craig told him.
Martin nodded dully and stood. “Gentlemen...”
“I’ll see that you’re escorted out,” Mike said.
Craig and Larry remained in the room. When Martin was gone, the detective exploded. “He made it sound as if the NYPD is nothing but an organization of incompetents!”
“He’s bitter,” Craig said.
“He’s damned suspicious.”
That was a statement Craig didn’t argue.
* * *
“It started about six months ago,” Kevin told Kieran. They were seated in the office at Finnegan’s again; she was behind Declan’s desk while Kevin sat on the sofa by the wall. He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, but rather away, as if he were seeing the past play before him like a movie reel. “We were working on the Lilith music video.” He looked over at Kieran then, his expression apologetic. “I was a shirtless hunk. She was one of the recognized beauties. The song hit the charts at number one. The video claimed awards, too.”
Kieran nodded. She was proud of Kevin’s achievements, even when he was playing eye candy.
“I’ve seen it. It’s a good video. Though, honestly, I’m sorry, Kevin, I watched it for you. I didn’t even notice Jeannette Gilbert.”
He winced, and Kieran remembered that the dead woman had been someone he loved.
“There was a lot of filming for flashes of each beauty in the three minutes and twenty-eight seconds of the song,” Kevin said. “If you saw it again...”
“Of course.”
“So, we started talking on set. We just had so much in common and so much not in common. She was fascinated by our family and couldn’t wait to come to Finnegan’s. She has cousins and, contrary to what they write, she loves them...loved them, but...”
“But her parents died and she grew up with an aunt?”
Kevin nodded. “Her aunt had four children. Their father had passed away, too, and Jeannette’s aunt was remarried to a worthless piece of trash. He couldn’t see feeding another mouth. Jeannette spent her formative years hearing about being a burden and being told that she was going to have to get out on her own early, because they weren’t going to feed her forever. Anyway, she wasn’t a mean or bitter person. She bought her aunt a house in Brooklyn when she had the money to do so. But she loved that Declan ran this place now and that the rest of us had other work, but that we all helped out here. I guess she always wanted a real family—one where she was unconditionally welcome.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kieran said. Images of Jeannette Gilbert in death kept flashing before her eyes. “Kevin, how serious was your relationship? How often were you seeing one another?”
He hesitated and then shrugged. “At first? I thought it was going to be a one-night stand. Not on my part—I was like a starry-eyed kid. I couldn’t believe she’d even looked at me. I tried to maintain some dignity, but I figured I might have been a novelty to her, entertainment for that one night. And she had to leave the city for a work project. Anyway, when she was back, she called me and we started seeing one another. I lived for every chance to be with her. And she wasn’t keeping quiet because she was ashamed or anything like that. She wasn’t even trying to pretend that she was attainable to the zillions of men and boys drooling over her. She wanted something good and private, something...normal. Then one day I couldn’t reach her. But I wasn’t crazy. I knew she’d come to me when she could. We both knew that we wouldn’t always be able to contact one another. There were events that had to do with our professional lives. But then...then I heard...” He stopped speaking for a minute, and she watched his eyes fill with tears.
Before they could spill over, he continued. “I didn’t think that Oswald Martin had done her in, either. She didn’t hate him. He didn’t follow her every move. That was some writer’s imaginative speculation. But I did wonder if it was some kind of a publicity thing because she was about to become the face of one of the biggest new cosmetic firms to launch in the past twenty years. This is so, so...wrong!” he finished on a breath.
Kieran wanted to hold her twin and comfort him. She was afraid that the door was going to open any minute. While she knew that Kevin loved his brothers and would happily share this with them, keeping this on a need-to-know basis was best right now.
Declan or Danny couldn’t inadvertently spill information they didn’t have.
“Kevin, where did you two see each other?” she asked.
“My place,” he said huskily. “No one pays attention to my place. I saw her at her apartment only once. It was with a group of people. She invited me to a reading, a show that may or may not make it to Broadway.”
“But you stayed after.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t something anyone would have noticed. There were a number of actors there. She was friendly and nice to everyone. Her work reputation was amazing. She was never cross with a single makeup person, lighting person, cameraman...anyone.”
“You’re telling me that absolutely no one knows that you were seeing her, that this actually started six months ago, but no one knew?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he said.
Kieran pondered that. “Kevin, trust me, someone knew,” she said. “Someone saw you together somewhere.”
He shrugged. “She was with actors all the time. Posing at parties, openings, fashion shows. I don’t think anyone would have noticed me over anyone else.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Kevin, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. How serious did you two get?”
“We both knew we loved our careers. Sometimes it’s bad when two people are actors, or models, or in that kind of world. Egos clash. But maybe we were different enough. I really love acting. I take the underwear commercials or whatever because I see them as a stepping-stones. Jeannette didn’t love it so much. She loved art and images and what a good photographer could do with her. But we also wanted to make sure that our relationship worked. We weren’t making any real commitments until we’d been together at least a year. She was famous—I’m not. She wanted to make sure that I could handle that. Maybe she wanted to make sure that I didn’t want to use her, either. You know, fake a real love just to use her for more exposure and better parts. If we made it a year—trusting one another, still wanting one another, ready to deal with the whirlwind as a couple—then we’d put our relationship out there.” He paused. “She used to tease me. Said it would be the coolest thing in the world if we were secretly married here. At Finnegan’s.”
“Oh, Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that you kept all this from me. And for so long! I’m your twin.”
“Well, you’ve kept a fair amount from me, too, at times,” he reminded her.
“Sometimes I don’t talk because I’m professionally not able to do so,” she replied.
“What do I do?” he asked her. “Just step up now and tell the truth?”
“That’s probably the best. You can talk to Craig. He’ll believe you. You know that.”
Kieran started, hearing the doorknob twist. Then there was a bang on the door.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?”
It was Danny, the “baby” of the family, younger than Kevin and Kieran by a little more than a year. He was the wild child of the family, now a respectable tour guide for the City of New York, though, of course, he could still get into a great deal of trouble. Always with the best of intentions, of course.
Kieran stood quickly and opened the door. “Did I lock it?” she murmured.
Danny burst into the room and flipped on the TV. “This is so sad and so crazy!” he said. “Imagine, that poor girl found in Le Club Vampyre! And now... Wow! The bad boy of the silver screen stepping up and offering a huge sum of money for information on her murderer. Brent Westwood! You’ve got to see this news conference. It’s Brent Westwood saying that he was Jeannette Gilbert’s secret lover!”
* * *
It was past nine. Craig was getting ready to head home from the office, and he’d told Mike and McBride to do the same. But his office door opened.
“You might want to hold on just a minute!” Mike said, stepping back in.
“What—”
“Put the TV on. Any news channel,” Mike said. He’d already gone for the remote that controlled the screen on the far wall of Craig’s office.
Light and sound filled the room.
A man stood at the front of the New York field offices of the FBI, surrounded by a sea of reporters, all jockeying to get better positions with their microphones.
Craig recognized the guy; it took him a minute to know why.
Then he realized quickly that it was Brent Westwood, aging star of stage and screen. He was an exceptionally well-muscled man, an “action hero.” Craig remembered that he’d halfway paid attention to a slice of life news piece recently that had talked about the beautiful people of “yesteryear” who were still working hard at their craft, even if they weren’t getting the leading roles they’d once enjoyed.
The actor listened to a question from a reporter and answered it gravely.
“You had to know Jeannette to understand,” he said, the right amount of pathos in his voice. “She was, at heart, a shy girl. She wanted what we had to be special. We’re both public figures, but we didn’t want our relationship to be public. It was something so private, of the heart.”
“Weren’t you worried when she disappeared?” someone shouted.
“I’ll be honest. I thought it was a publicity venture, directed by those controlling her career,” he said, not mentioning any names.
“But wouldn’t she have told you?” another reporter asked.
“In this field, we have to be very careful. I knew that she’d tell me what was going on as soon as she felt that she could. Was I worried? Yes! But I knew that the police—New York’s finest—were working on finding her. I feared their anger, really, when she surfaced. I never expected that they would find her...as they did.”
He put a hand in front of his face, as if shielding himself from more questions—and as if hiding his tears, as well. “Please, I’m beside myself with grief, but I’m here to see if there is anything at all that I can do to help in the investigation into her death. This is...”
He broke down and turned away.
Mike groaned. “Great. He’s coming here. And he’s using this to garner publicity for himself. That girl had great taste in men.” He snickered. “Maybe she was looking for a father figure.”
“He was the biggest thing in action movies at one time,” Craig said.
“Guess they don’t know our offices actually close at night,” Mike muttered. He turned to the NYPD detective. “You want to handle this?”
“He probably knows you’re here, given what’s going on,” McBride said.
“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Craig said. He pointed to the screen. “There he is, going for the door—and there’s security. In less than a minute, someone will be calling up here.”
As he spoke, the intercom buzzed.
It was one of the young agents in reception.
“Do we go get him?”
Craig didn’t believe that the man pretending so much grief was Gilbert’s killer.
Such a recognizable man didn’t sneak around easily. Nor did he appear to be the type who would have dressed a murdered girl so carefully. Or managed to get down to Virginia to have carried out a murder there and done the same. Craig had no proof. It was only a gut feeling, but his gut feelings had served him well.
He toyed with the idea of having security send him away and tell him to come back during office hours.
But, of course, that would make the Bureau look callow.
And he wouldn’t do that.
“Of course, anyone with information that could lead to the solving of this heinous murder is thanked for bringing us information at any time,” he said.
And so Mike sat and McBride sighed, and they waited for the actor.
* * *
The three of them—Kevin, Kieran and Danny—stared at the flat-screen television in the office, watching as Brent Westwood spoke to the press.
Kevin’s expression was blank, stunned.
“I don’t get it,” Danny said. “Not that Westwood wasn’t—isn’t—a cool guy and all, but, hey, Jeannette Gilbert was a kid in comparison. Not that I’m judging. We’ve seen a lot of older guys with younger women and younger guys with older women who seem to be happy as larks. Love is love, right? No matter what our age, sex, race or preference. Still...I wonder if it all seems so shocking to us because the church—the club—is right behind us.” Staring at the screen, he was unaware when Kevin looked at Kieran with a warning glance.
Let it lie. Don’t let on about anything I was saying to you.
“And the whole grave thing,” Danny went on. “I mean, do you know that half our city parks are built on old graveyards?” He turned and looked at Kieran. “John Shaw was in today, right?”
“Yes, he was pretty shaken,” she murmured.
“I wonder... I’d love to get down into that basement sometime. Think he’ll take me down there?”
“I would think,” Kieran said.
“After all this, obviously. I mean, go figure. They make that kind of find, and then discover a missing starlet displayed down there. Wow. So sad. And still...”
Kieran could feel Kevin’s tension. He wasn’t angry with his younger brother. He was just ready to explode.
The door to the office opened and the last of their clan, Declan, stood there, looking in at the three of them. “I know you guys have other jobs, and, hey, I should be all right and well-staffed here for a Friday night. But Cody is on her honeymoon and with everything going on, those who came to gawk around the block are here now, hungry and thirsty. Mary Kathleen is running around out there like a madwoman. Don’t any of you actually help anymore when you’re here?” he asked.
“Hell, yeah! Sorry!” Danny said, leaping to his feet.
Kevin rose more slowly. “I’ll take the bar,” he said.
“No, no. Go home, Kevin,” Kieran said. “I don’t have real work tomorrow. It’s Saturday. That okay, Declan?”
“Sure. One good body actually involved in working would be great,” Declan said.
Kevin still appeared a little shaky.
“I’m so tired,” he murmured.
“Then go home,” Kieran said, jumping up. “I’ll be a bundle of energy, Declan. I promise.”
“Hey, well, you did work today, too,” Declan reminded her.
She nodded. “Yeah, kind of makes me need to work now,” she said, and headed out of the office. “Kevin, go home!”
“I’m going,” he assured them. “Thanks,” he said softly, and left.
Declan was right. Their Friday nights were often busy, even when Wall Street, the Financial District and the government offices closed and downtown became somewhat quiet. But Finnegan’s was known for bringing in great Irish bands and local talent, and people were often willing to hop on the subway or drive down for the established platform of good food, great taps and music. Also, when the club had opened around the block, many who had tired of the constant thrum of the dance music had found themselves wandering over for the more relaxed venue.
But tonight was exceptional—once again, because of the club. Not because it was opened.
Because it was closed.
And the talk among everyone had to do with poor Jeannette Gilbert.
And most of the talk was the same.
The slimy manager-agent had done it.
The mystery lover had done it. No, the mystery lover wasn’t a mystery anymore, and good God, everyone knew that Brent Westwood was no killer! He stood for truth, justice and the American way.
What about the step-uncle who had raised her? The jerk! Or her aunt, or her cousins?
What about the guy who had bought Saint Augustine and turned a venerable and historic old church into a club? Hey, that guy bore some watching, too. And then there were the freaks who wandered around the city. And that history group. Everyone knew that some of the city’s cling-to-the-past historians were insane. That was it! One of them had murdered her to prove the point that you needed to let the dead rest in peace!
Everyone had a theory, and Kieran heard them all.
She spoke with their regulars and also noted all the new people—those who probably hadn’t been downtown in years but had come down to witness the events at Le Club Vampyre, if only from the street. She noted businessmen and construction workers. Older women, younger women. All kinds of people.
One especially attractive young woman at the bar drew Kieran’s attention because she kept pulling out her phone and looking around the pub.
“Can I help you in any way?” Kieran asked her.
She smiled. “Just biding time,” the woman said. “That old clock on the wall is right? My cell phone has died.”
“Yes, it’s the right time,” Kieran told her.
“Thanks!” The woman smiled at her. “You have to be Kevin’s sister,” she said. “One of the Finnegan family.”
“Yes, I am. You know Kevin?”
“I was in a print ad with him about a year ago. He told me about this place. First time I’ve had a chance to get down here. Is he here somewhere?”
“No, he went home. I’m so sorry. You could give him a call.”
“Ah, well, I’m only here a few more minutes. I’ll call him, though, and I’ll come back.” She smiled. “You’re gorgeous—but then, so is Kevin!”
“Thank you. My twin has the camera charm, trust me!” Kieran said. She would have talked longer, but another patron called her and she moved on.
It was around 11:00 p.m. when Craig reached her on her cell, checking to see if she was still there. He told her he’d head into the pub, and they could go home together.
She felt her heart beating a little too quickly. She didn’t have to worry that she wasn’t saying anything to him about Kevin’s admission. Brent Westwood had gone to Craig’s office, claiming to be the mystery lover. But still...
Lying to him was so uncomfortable.
Was she really lying?
Yes, she reasoned, omitting the truth—an important truth—was a lie.
Luckily, when he arrived, he offered her a weary smile before heading to an empty bar stool. She watched him talk to Declan and order a soda. He looked tired. Despite knowing he’d have to be up for work early the next morning, he was waiting for her.
The Friday night crowd was diminishing, so Declan thanked her and told her to go on home.
She didn’t argue.
“Your place or mine?” Craig asked, pointing the way to his government car, parked down the street. Thanks to his decal, parking was much easier for Craig than it was for most people in the city. “You know,” he said, as they reached the car, “we don’t have to be asking that question of one another all the time. Moving in would be kind of like the right move now.”
“Probably,” she murmured. “My place tonight?”
“As you wish.”
She glanced his way. He had to be far beyond exhausted, but he was also easily able to go with the flow. She studied him for a moment; he seemed deep in thought, and, of course, she knew he was thinking about the day’s events.
She winced, turning away. She really was so in love with him. What was not to love? He was a walking wall of extremely striking testosterone, masculine to the hilt, yet he never behaved rudely, and never seemed threatened in any way by another man’s—or woman’s—talents or abilities. He was faultlessly courteous. Oh, he had a temper, she knew, but the ability to contain it. His features offered exceptionally fine cheekbones, a strong jaw and wonderful, hazel eyes that far too often seemed to be all-seeing.
“One day soon,” she murmured, finally responding to his comment about moving in together.
She was suddenly, almost irrationally, angry with her brothers. First, one of Danny’s best-intended foibles had gotten him into the trouble when she’d met Craig; now Kevin’s tragic romance seemed to be putting her once again in an extremely awkward situation.
That anger quickly dissipated. She felt so bad for her twin.
In minutes they reached her apartment above a sushi restaurant–karaoke bar in the Village.
Someone was warbling an Aerosmith number as they climbed the stairs. They were both so accustomed to the sometimes painful entertainment that they barely noticed.
Upstairs, she immediately headed for the shower. “Underground graves,” she muttered, heading in.
He joined her.
She wasn’t surprised. Or disappointed. Sharing a shower with Craig, she wouldn’t have to talk to him.
But as he stepped in behind her, slipping a bar of soap from her fingers and easing it down her back, she was the one who nervously spoke.
“So, what about the mystery lover?”
“Narcissistic blowhard,” he said, twirling her around, finding her lips.
His kiss was good, wonderful. Seductive. And it made her forget the day. Hot water and steam swirled around them. The soap made their naked flesh sleek and wet. They kissed and touched and stroked one another until they were certainly clean—and their sense of hunger and need was great. Then they stepped out of the shower, reached for towels, more or less forgot the concept of them and stumbled onto the bed in Kieran’s near-dark room, and back into one another’s arms. Once there, they eschewed foreplay. She crawled atop him and straddled him, and he entered her, the heat of his body bursting within her. They made love, again and again, their lips locked as they climaxed each time with a ferocity that left Kieran breathless. She marveled at it, amazed that she was with him, that the world could be so good, that sex was such an amazement every time.
He pulled her down into his arms and held her and stroked her hair. The glow of aftermath and a sense of warmth and security enveloped her.
And then she realized that he was lying there awake, no doubt thinking about the day once again.
And he picked up right where he had left off.
“Liar.”
“Pardon?” Warmth and serenity slipped away.
“That man. Brent Westwood. He’s a liar. I can’t prove it. There’s no way, really. Jeannette Gilbert is dead. But, in my gut, I know it. There’s no way in hell that man is the mystery lover Jeannette alluded to in her interviews. He’s a liar.” He smiled grimly as he stroked her face. “I will, however,” he assured her, “discover the truth.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#u1331d861-6ae7-562e-8a2a-ce4c074c1eb4)
CRAIG STOOD JUST INSIDE the downed wall in the basement of Le Club Vampyre and looked around.
Techs had been studying the security footage of the club for hours; none as yet had discovered if the footage had been altered and, if so, how.
And if it hadn’t been altered, then it seemed that Jeannette Gilbert’s killer had slipped into a cloak of invisibility that had covered her, as well.
“We’ve established that the killer’s not stupid,” Mike said, watching Craig’s expression. “And, according to our good docs and Kieran, he’s organized, and we know that he’s killed before. According to the info we have on his first victim, he has a vision, a way of leaving his victims. Maybe he’s even trying to learn how to preserve them. He just hasn’t gotten it right yet.”
“Art,” Craig murmured. “Yes.” He stooped down to look at the floor. Everyone in the city who read a paper or turned on a computer or a television had known about the discovery of the early graves behind a false wall in the basement of the building. Anyone would have known. But who would have known how to enter the place without being seen?
“Makes Roger Gleason a good suspect,” Mike said. “He’s definitely been here. He’s a respectable man. He might have been meeting with Jeannette Gilbert for some kind of a publicity thing. Wasn’t she part of a promotional event here?”
“Yes, I believe she was. We don’t have anything on Roger Gleason—yet,” Craig said.
“You hear about the find...and a day later, bring a girl down here to bury. According to the autopsy, she was dead already,” Mike mused aloud.
“Yeah. He must have planned to leave her somewhere else. I wonder where,” Craig said. “I still can’t fathom how he got down here.”
“The security footage is somehow jimmied.”
Craig looked over at him. “Egan has our people working with their people. None of them can figure out how the tape was fixed. And if it wasn’t fixed, there’s another way in here.”
“Yeah? Under the ground?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, under the ground.”
Mike groaned. He was older; he actually had the seniority. But the two of them had been working together for years, and they had a great relationship.
Mike walked down the rows of tombs—those sealed and those not—muttering as he leaned over the shelves of the dead, pushing at the walls.
Craig did the same. It was eerie work; he tried not to look at the skeletal remains beneath their decaying shrouds. He thought about Shaw and the historical people.
They probably wouldn’t be happy. They worked with delicate chisels and tiny brushes, and he was pushing aside nearly two-hundred-year-old remains in his attempt to find what he was looking for.
It seemed, however, that he hit nothing but the solid granite on which the city sat.
“Special Agent Frasier!”
He nearly bumped his head, startled by the uniformed officer who had come to talk to him.
“There’s a rep here from the mayor’s office. She’s with Henry Willoughby, Aldous Digby and Roger Gleason. They’re waiting to talk to you in the storage area,” the officer told him.
“Yeah, of course,” Craig said. He glanced at Mike and shrugged.
The body was gone. Jeannette had been taken to the morgue.
The forensic team had gone over the area with a fine-tooth comb.
It had to be opened back up to the archaeologists, anthropologists and historians who would record the find and see that the remains were reinterred in a cemetery in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
He and Mike walked back out past the broken wall to where Roger Gleason was waiting with Henry Willoughby and Aldous Digby and a young woman in a smart pin-striped business suit. Her heels were too high for the marble steps that led to an uneven basement floor, but she represented the mayor, so he figured her attire had to be proper.
“Special Agents,” she said, addressing him and Mike and offering her hand in a shake. “I’m Sandra Adair from the mayor’s office. Naturally, we’re grateful for the federal interests here. And we’re appalled about the murder of Ms. Gilbert. But, gentlemen, we’ve spoken with Assistant Director Egan, and we’ve all agreed that it’s time to let the historians get back to work. Are we all in agreement?”
“Yes, I believe it’s all right for the work to continue,” Craig said politely. “With Ms. Gilbert now in the tender hands of the medical examiner, Professor Shaw and Professor Digby may continue their documentation of the long dead.”
He kept his voice modulated, trying to hide his irritation.
Willoughby lowered his head, smiling, no doubt aware of Craig’s feelings. Sandra Adair seemed oblivious, and Roger Gleason apparently didn’t care one way or another; he wasn’t reopening for business yet.
“Well, then, thank you, and, naturally, we’ll be anxious to hear that you’ve solved the murder of Ms. Gilbert,” Adair said. “Mr. Willoughby, I’ll leave it to you to call the experts back in. Oh, by the way, Special Agent Frasier. I don’t believe your phone has been working down here. I have a message for you from Detective McBride. He wants you to call him.”
“Thank you,” Craig said.
She turned to head back up the old marble steps. He gritted his teeth and then stepped forward to help her. She was annoying, but he didn’t want to see her flat on the ground with a broken ankle.
“We’re okay?” Digby asked. He let out a sigh. “To be honest, I’m anxious to do this work, but I’m equally anxious to get in and out.”
“Yes, we’ll need John Shaw,” Willoughby said as Craig headed up the stairs.
Craig turned back to Digby. “Professor, you were here when Ms. Gilbert was found. Is there anything in particular you noted? Anything you could tell us that might help in any way?”
Digby was thoughtful.
“The floor,” he said.
“The floor?”
“People had already been in, of course. But, there’s always a kind of a film—time and decay—on the floor. Now that I’ve had time to think, there was something a little off. It seemed to me that much of it was...too clean.”
“Was that before or after the body was found?” Craig asked him.
“When we first came down, I thought it odd. The tombs, the shrouds, the coffins all had that film. But the floor seemed clean. Right at the start.”
Before Craig could comment, Willoughby got down to business. “I’ll call Shaw so we can get moving. This is going to take weeks.”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Willoughby,” Craig said. He headed out then and didn’t look back.
He heard Mike speaking with Gleason, thanking him for his concern for the city.
Then Mike headed up after him.
An officer was at the main Gothic-arched doorway, keeping watch over who entered and exited. Craig nodded and headed out to the street, aware that Mike was with him.
“Rat terrier,” Mike said.
“Pardon?”
“It’s not really her fault. I mean, there’s no reason to stop the experts from their cataloging and corpse inspections,” he said drily. “She’s doing her job, that Ms. Adair. She’s just nervous-looking and yappy—like a rat terrier.”
Craig grinned. “Yesterday we dealt with an asshole—according to McBride—and today a rat terrier.”
“Yeah, but at least you don’t have to pretend to be polite to an asshole!” Mike said.
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Heather Graham
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegan′s, her family′s pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple who′ve worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegan′s in lower Manhattan.As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, it′s clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to «preserve» that beauty by destroying the women who embody it…