Power Play (An FBI Thriller)

by Catherine Coulter

  She cocked her head at him, and he said quickly, “You look pretty good after being on your own for four months. When can we get out of here?”

  “Champing at the bit for a case already, Special Agent Drummond? You’ve only been here fifteen minutes. We haven’t even had time to go over the coffee schedule and introduce you around. Are we calling you Nick or Nicholas these days?”

  “You know what they say about rolling stones and moss. Nicholas will do fine.”

  She looked at her watch. “We can get out of here right about now, Nicholas. You’re in luck. We’ve caught a murder.”

  He felt the punch of adrenaline. “A murder? Is it terrorism-related?”

  “I don’t think so. I heard about it two minutes ago. It’s time to get briefed.”

  SAC Milo Zachery joined them in the hall. In his tailored gray suit, white shirt, and purple-and-black-striped tie, Nicholas thought he looked a lot snazzier than Penderley ever had. Slick clothes, fresh haircut. He looked like a big-dog federal agent all the way down to his highly polished wingtips. Nicholas knew Zachery was focused, smart, and willing to let his agents use their brains with only subtle hands on the reins.

  Nicholas shook his new boss’s hand.

  “Good to see you, Drummond. I’ll handle your briefing myself. Walk with me.”

  Mike gave him a manic grin, her adrenaline on a level with his, and he was reminded of that night in Paris several months earlier, Mike barely upright, leaning against the overturned couch, bleeding from a gunshot to the arm, her face beat-up, and smiling. He thanked the good Lord she was here and whole and ready to kick butt.

  Nicholas smiled back and gestured for her to go first.

  “Such lovely manners from the first Brit in the FBI. I could get used to this.”

  “Still cheeky, are we? It’s good to see that some things haven’t changed.”

  “Come on, you two.” Zachery walked them past his office, down the blue-carpeted senior management hallway, straight out the door and to the elevators. As he punched the down button, he said, “You’re headed to 26 Wall Street. Stabbing. The NYPD called us since it’s on federal land, so it’s our case. I thought it would be a good idea to get Drummond here liaising with the locals as soon as possible. And aren’t you two lucky? Someone managed to get themselves dead on your first morning. Go on down there and figure out what happened.”

  The elevator doors opened and Zachery waved them in. “Drummond, I know you’re going to be our big cyber-crime/computer-terrorism guy, but we also need to teach you to drive on the right side of the road, get your boots dirty on the ground first.” He smiled and clapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “Glad you’re with us, Drummond. Welcome to the FBI. Good hunting.” He turned and said over his shoulder, “Oh, yes, Mike, keep him in line.”

  2

  DEATH OF THE MESSENGER

  Mike’s black Crown Vic waited for them in the garage. She jangled the car keys at him, then drew them back. “Maybe I should drive, even though you need the practice. Wall Street’s pretty crazy.”

  “Contrary to popular belief, I do know how to manage the streets of New York. I have American blood, too, you know.”

  She laughed and got behind the wheel. Once they were out of the garage, she said, “Next time out, you’ll drive. It’s a requirement that you know all the streets. But not today. So tell me, did you really live up to Savich’s lofty standards at the academy? And Sherlock’s?”

  “I tried my pitiful best, Agent Caine.” He watched her come within an inch of a lane-cutting taxi without blinking an eye.

  “What have you been doing here in New York for the last two weeks?”

  He never looked away from the pedestrian zigzagging in front of the Crown Vic. “Oh, a bit of this and that, getting set up. That’s about it.” Not to mention I shopped for furniture until I nearly cut my own wrists, fought with Nigel on where all the bloody furniture should go, and was forced to have dinner with my ex at a French in place big on presentation and light on food. In short, I haven’t used my brain for two bloody weeks. But he didn’t tell her any of that.

  She sped through a yellow light. “I’ve missed having you around. Come on, now, tell me about your new digs.”

  Not in this lifetime. “Nothing much to tell, really. It’s a place to live, that’s all.”

  Nicholas’s grandfather, in a magnanimous show of support for his grandson’s decision to move to America, had purchased him a brownstone. No matter how hard Nicholas had protested, the Baron—and his parents, he suspected—refused to allow Nicholas his wish, an anonymous flat somewhere in Chelsea.

  He was now saddled with a behemoth town house on East 70th Street, much to his butler Nigel’s delight. Five floors, five bedrooms. Oh, yes, this sort of opulence was just the ticket for fitting in with the rest of the agents in the New York Field Office.

  Mike slowly turned onto a street packed with pedestrians. “I can’t wait to see it. Invite me over for a beer later, all right?”

  And again he thought, Not in this lifetime. He said, “Where is our crime scene?”

  “Just off Wall Street. Right there.”

  Mike threaded through dozens of people across to Pine Street, not far from Federal Hall. He saw the yellow sawhorse barrier with NYPD on it, three blue-and-whites, lights revolving, flashing the stone buildings.

  They badged the NYPD cop at the barrier, signed in to the scene, and were led to the small side street. It was going to be a beautiful day, he saw, already warming nicely. Considering the number of crime scenes he’d handled in the pouring rain in London, this certainly was preferable.

  “What do we have here?” he asked the young NYPD officer standing inside the tape. His badge read F WILSON, and he looked barely old enough to vote, much less be a cop. Even though Nicholas knew he couldn’t be more than five years older than the cop, he felt ancient, until Wilson spoke like the seasoned professional he was.

  “Stabbing,” Wilson said. “It’s right there on your land. Another five feet and it would be ours. But, no, this guy decides to get himself dead and make it all yours. I hear it’s your first day on the job. Welcome to New York.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wilson grinned. “We’ve been canvassing, got a small group of people held aside who were nearby when it happened. Most say the suspect was a Caucasian male, brown hair, medium height, wearing jeans and a white hoodie.”

  Nicholas looked over at the small knot of people at the street corner, gaping at the scene, some recording everything with their phones, others standing quietly, obviously shell-shocked. He said, “Rather a detailed description, that.”

  “I know, right? Amazing, really, since most witnesses can rarely agree on the sex of the suspect. Talk about lucking out—from the statements so far, there were two men arguing, then a struggle, then one guy turned away and the other guy stabbed him from behind and took off, running.”

  Mike said, “Hold everyone here, Officer Wilson. We’ll want to speak to them as well. We need to get a look at the body, then we’ll be right back.”

  Wilson saluted her and moved away from the tape to let them in.

  Nicholas took his time walking toward the dead man, noticed Mike was taking in everything as well. Special Agent Louisa Barry, one of their crime scene techs, was snapping on nitrile gloves, ready to get to work. Nicholas smiled at her, then went down on his haunches beside a man who was seriously dead. He was in his late forties to early fifties, his brown eyes staring sightlessly into the sky, salt-and-pepper hair combed slightly to the side to cover the beginnings of a receding hairline, his suit rumpled and creased. From the angle of his body on the pavement, and the way his arms were flung out from his body, Nicholas thought he’d fallen to his knees, then onto his back and died. The blood pooled beneath him, dark and thick, but it was disturbed, like a child’s finger painting, swirls and whorls whipping across the sidewalk. What were you arguing about? Why’d he stab you in the back?

  “See anything interestin
g?” Mike asked, studying the blood pool.

  “It’s what I’m not seeing that’s interesting,” Nicholas said. “No murder weapon. The guy stabbed him, then pulled out the knife and took off. I wonder if any of the witnesses saw the killer do that.”

  Mike said, “He still has his wallet, isn’t that right, Louisa?” He looked up at her, holding the man’s belongings.

  “Right here.”

  Nicholas asked, “What’s his name?” He hated calling a once-living, once-breathing man a corpse. He deserved more than that.

  “Jonathan Charles Pearce. Lives on the Upper East Side. Money and cards left in the wallet. His cell’s a BlackBerry Touch, and here’s a nice old watch and a set of keys. Cell is password-protected, I can’t access it without my tools.”

  Nicholas said, “Do you carry a UFED in the field, perchance?”

  “Is that British for ‘Universal Forensic Extraction Device’?” And she grinned. “Yeah, so happens I have a Touch Ultimate on the truck. Hang on a minute.”

  “Good,” he said. “Are there any cameras around?”

  Louisa said, “Nothing that points directly to this spot, but there’s a traffic cam at the intersection of Pine and William, and the building itself has a camera on the corner. Might have something from one of those.”

  “Excellent, Louisa, thank you.”

  “By the way, Nicholas, it’s good to have you on board. Welcome to New York.”

  “It’s good to be here.”

  In the next instant, Louisa was headed to the mobile command unit.

  Mike said, “Glad she brought it. With the UFED, we’ll get the passcode broken and access the data in no time. So, Nicholas, it doesn’t appear Mr. Pearce was the victim of a robbery.”

  “No, it would seem not. A fight between two men. But about what?”

  “Whatever it was, the killer lost it and stabbed Mr. Pearce in the back with a dozen people looking on.”

  • • •

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