by Laer Carroll
Sasha could hardly blame the agent for her doubt. Sasha was barely twenty-two and stunningly, blondly gorgeous in a casual gold and red outfit that would have cost several thousand dollars if Sasha had not been given it at a fashion shoot.
Alicia grinned. "You of all people should know not to judge people by their appearances."
Shaker smiled slightly at some private joke.
Alicia said, "As if you didn't research the Hell out of her before you agreed to this meet."
Shaker examined Sasha closely, shook her head. "It's hard to believe you're 'The Deadliest Woman on the Planet'."
The shapechanger shrugged and began to tell the agent who she had most recently touched or stood close to that morning. After the fourth detailed description Shaker held up a hand.
"Very well. What's the trick? And none of that 'psychic powers' shit."
Sasha gave her the official story, that she had a very sensitive nose when she wanted it to be and that somehow her brain could interpret the DNA of people and animals she could smell.
"I can only tell you what they look like at maturity, without scars and burns and whatever. I would guess that the people I told you about are in their thirties and more, but I can't SEE that."
This was a lie. Sasha could read age easily but that ability seemed a little too scary to let anyone know about it.
Shaker looked at her thoughtfully then turned her gaze to her old college friend.
"She's for real, isn't she?"
"Real as a heart attack. This serial murder case—"
"Yes, I remember you telling me about it."
"She bent over in the morgue and sniffed the perp's stuff on this woman's belly. Then she told us there were two men and described them well enough we could find them in surveil discs. After that it was routine."
Routine for you two , Sasha thought at Alicia. She was still amazed sometimes at the work Alicia and David had done taking the problem the rest of the way to arrest and conviction.
"Very well then," said the agent briskly, sitting up and leaning toward Sasha.
The previous day the thirteen-year-old daughter of a very rich couple had been kidnapped from their home. They had been surprised and annoyed but not alarmed when they arrived home and found the girl missing, assuming she was with her best friend and had not left a note saying so. But that night they had gotten a call from purported kidnappers demanding a ransom.
Rich people were always in danger of kidnap/ransom attempts. They guarded against it several ways and were usually successful. But if it did happen they turned to the security company to which they subscribed to handle such emergencies.
"So how did you get involved?"
"The insurance companies require security companies to notify the FBI. Me personally? I'm in charge of kidnaps in this area."
"But why come to me?"
The FBI woman drained her foam cup of coffee and raised it high and looked at the waiter to ask for a refill. Sasha waited for the waiter to bring it.
"Because I've dealt with two attempts very similar to this one in the last year and I think it's the same gang. Or part of the previous gangs. In both cases the hostage turned up dead or badly injured even though all demands were met. I'm afraid that will happen here."
Sasha had a sister nearly the same age as the kidnapped girl. She said, "I'll do what I can. How do we handle this?"
"We can only pay a set rate for consultants, and it's not much. I can add to it out of my—"
"Screw that. I'll do it for free. Pro bono , that's the legal term, right?"
"But— "
"OK, whatever. But let's fill out the paperwork later."
It turned out the agent had come prepared. Sasha quickly read through the triplicate form the woman pulled out of her purse, signed it, then stood. She paused briefly to say goodbye to her two detective friends and began quickly walking for the door.
Behind her the agent said, "Is she always like this?" as she threw down money for her coffee and turned to go.
Sasha heard David Trent stand and say, with a grin in his voice, "You have no idea how abrupt Sasha can be when she decides to do something." He had after all seen surveillance discs of Sasha dealing with bank robbers. And personally seen her hole a dozen quarters thrown into the air in a drum roll of pistol fire so rapid the pistol sounded like a fully automatic weapon.
Outside in the cool breeze Sasha was walking rapidly down Broadway. Behind her was the rapid clack-clack of the FBI agent's modestly high heels.
"Hey, my car is across the street in the underground!"
Sasha said nothing, just turned into the pharmacy a few doors down from the pizza place.
She briefly surveyed the brightly lit interior, then headed to the Toys section. She grabbed a mesh sack of marbles. A few aisles away she snagged a long white scarf.
In the short check-out line near the entrance Special Agent Shaker caught up with her. "Marbles? Have you lost yours?"
Sasha grinned at her as she began to create a belt around her waist from the scarf and fill it with marbles. She liked a woman who kept her wits in an urgent situation.
At checkout the clerk said, "This is opened. Let us get you another."
Sasha assured her none of the marbles were missing. As she was still adding marbles inside the folded scarf the clerk shrugged and rang up the two purchases.
Outside the entrance Sasha threw the receipt and labels and empty marble bag into a trash can.
"Your car?"
"This way." The agent walked quickly to a walkway across the street, crossing out of the shadow of the Federal Building then back into it as she headed toward the spinning glass doors to the building with Sasha behind her. At the security desk she showed her badge to the guards and told them Sasha was with her.
At the elevators Shaker punched the down button.
"Marbles?"
"I'm pretty sure you won't be lending me a weapon. So I've improvised my own."
"But marbles?"
"I can put one of these into an eye—or an ear—at fifty feet. At a hundred miles an hour they tend to discourage people from annoying me."
One of the would-be Down passengers standing nearby abruptly turned and walked away.
The two women grinned at each other.
"A—black SUV? Could you be more cliché?"
"It's 'consonant with the dignity of the Bureau'."
"She quoted solemnly."
Not only Sasha but the agent was in a bit of a hurry. She drove quickly into an exit aisle and her tires squeaked slightly as she hurried around corners. At the exit she briefly hit the siren and red/blue flasher to push into the traffic. But then of course she had to slow to the ambient flow, which seemed half-filled with yellow taxis and a quarter-filled with delivery trucks .
She drove a few blocks south then west and turned right onto West St. This was a divided highway alongside the Hudson River and the traffic speed picked up to fifty miles an hour or better. Only once did agent Shaker have to hit the siren and flasher to get past a clot of traffic.
Sasha paged through the file folder on the Thompson family that Shaker had handed her upon entering the SUV. She lingered longest on the photos of Eliza Thompson. She was a mildly pretty ash blond with long hair, a nice smile, and a gangling body.
She laid the folder on the seat beside her and began to watch the river as they rode north. It was busy with barges and sailboats and tugs, reminding her that New York was still one of the great ports of the world, though much more of the traffic came in via Long Island Sound and the Atlantic south of the East River. For a long stretch there were well over a dozen piers servicing much river traffic.
She could also watch Shaker as they planned what Sasha would do at the crime scene.
"I put you down as a consultant because that pays the biggest bucks. But if anyone asks you're observing Bureau business for a college thesis. Probably no one will ask; I'll just bring you in and you quietly snoop."
"Fine. What's t
he layout like?"
"You have to see it to believe it. The Thompsons own this high-rise just off the west side of Central Park. They live on the top three floors. God knows why three people need that much space. But he was married before and they had several kids, so it may have made sense once.
"The rest of the building is rented to his several businesses and to a few other businesses. On the bottom floor is this upscale restaurant."
"So lots of people have access to the building. "
"There are levels of security. Anyone can walk into the restaurant and the parking garage down under. But you have to have a keycard to get above the second floor. Then another keycard to get into the residence. I have someone analyzing the security set-up and they'll have a list of people who entered and left in the last 48 hours."
"Forty eight because someone might have gotten in a day early and laid low overnight."
Shaker glanced at her. "You have a sneaky mind."
Sasha dimpled. She had an adorable dimple. Many men, and a few women, had said so. "Thank you!"
There was a landscaped rooftop garden only the family could visit, unless there was a party there. The elevator to the rooftop was separate from the residence elevator, another security precaution.
It would not have kept out Sasha, who could climb buildings like a spider and leap over a hundred feet from rooftop to rooftop.
"If someone got to the roof they could rappelle to the residence and break in through a window."
"Good thought. We checked it, of course."
"What are the Thompsons like?"
The man was near sixty but in good shape. A driven businessman who married money and used it to multiply the fortune many-fold. The wife was a mid-thirties trophy wife.
"The first wife died and it was three years before he remarried, but the kids from the first marriage still hated the second wife. I gather in the last few years the animosity has decreased but not gone away."
"You think some of them might be involved in this? Presumably they have access to the residence, too."
"I have someone looking into them of course. But it was a good thought. Do you watch a lot of crime shows? "
"No. Never. Any free time I have is spent in practice. Or it was before the Olympics. But my mom was a DA for many years. She didn't talk much about work, but we learned about her cases anyway."
"Oh, yeah. She was called The Shark."
Sasha grinned, looking amazingly shark-like herself for such a beautiful woman.
"She still is."
The piers were left behind and in a few blocks the highway entered a green riverside park. The day was clear and the scenery was quite beautiful. Sasha turned her head to the right to watch the park pass by.
In a few blocks Shaker veered off onto the 79th Street off-ramp. A few blocks further the street dead-ended and the agent turned right and drove a couple of blocks. She nodded her head toward the left. A stately grey pile was there at the dead end, looking more like a medieval castle than a museum.
"The Museum of Natural History. You ever been there?"
"No."
"Find some time. I used to take my kids there. They loved the dinosaurs. And on the other side is the Space Science Museum. They've got a walk-through model of the space plane and the trans-lunar shuttle. And you can take a virtual tour of the Space Hotel the Hilton chain is planning."
"You have kids?"
"Three of them— We're almost there."
Shaker turned left then left again and they were traveling north with Central Park spread out to their right. Its miles of greenery and the lake in its northern end were magnificent.
On the left side tall brown, grey, and beige buildings stood. It was as if a cliff-face had grown to the edge of a forest .
"You ever been there?" The agent nodded her head toward the park.
"We had a fashion shoot there and I sometimes go to the outdoor Argentine tango dance every weekend. But the park where I go to is near my home. Prospect Park. It's almost as big."
"Here we are."
Shaker turned on her left-turn blinker and brought the SUV to a halt at a traffic light. At a break in the traffic she made the turn and drove into and down a ramp to an echoing garage under a building. The garage went on perhaps the length of an entire city block before them.
At a ticket kiosk Shaker inserted a laser card and the traffic rail lifted to let the SUV into the parking area. Near an elevator the agent parked in a Reserved for Police area and the two got out. Presumably the FBI plates would keep the vehicle from being ticketed or towed.
The laser card got the elevator to the lowest of the three residence levels. It opened to a hallway. Straight ahead a pair of double doors opened into a high-ceilinged ballroom. The uniformed NYPD police officer just inside the entrance nodded at the FBI agent and looked curiously at Sasha when Shaker said "She's with me."
Inside Shaker said, "Wander at will. Cover every floor but concentrate on Eliza's bedroom and the living room when you've finished the rest. Compile a list of strangers you detect and come down to get me." Then the agent was gone to confer with a tall police officer with plenty of stripes on his uniform sleeves.
Sasha bound her hair up in a bun and put on her glare-adjustable sunglasses. The opacity had set itself to mild blocking. This was just enough to disguise her increasingly famous face. It did nothing to disguise her beauty .
She got occasional looks but no one approached her. She wandered, idly inspecting various desks and instrument set-ups in passing. The FBI and police were making good use of the enormous space. She wondered if they were doing more harm than good, too many cooks spoiling the broth.
At the far end of the ballroom was a low stage with a lectern near its front center. Behind were red velvet curtains drawn to each side. Sasha inspected each modest dressing room and makeup room and closet. She did not expect to find anything but she liked to be thorough.
At the far end of the back area there were a few narrow windows looking west. She could see out dingy glass to see a courtyard below, two long narrow buildings on each side of it, and a building similar the one she was in at the far end of the long narrow block which seemed to be typical of this part of the city.
The second floor was devoted to recreation. There were two table-tennis courts, an exercise area filled with all kinds of machines, a sauna/shower, and a small locker room. To one side there was a separate near-sound-proofed room containing a small movie theater with perhaps three dozen very comfortable chairs and a huge flat-screen on the far wall.
The theater was not much used. The tiny skin fragments everyone shed had long ago settled and decayed. As she walked through the theater Sasha got very faint images of a few dozen humans and a couple of dogs and a cat.
On the front edges of the front seats she scented several DNA stains where legs clad only in shorts or bikinis had rested against the seats. A hand placed on each invisible stain garnered more details, two thin people who were brother and sister, four others who were cousins with each other and the siblings. Sasha guessed these were half-siblings or cousins of Eliza. The genetic material read early adolescence.
One of the ghosts was close to the photo of Eliza which Sasha had studied at the beginning of their trip. Apparently the offspring of her step-sisters and step-brothers had no grudge against their half-aunt.
Sasha pulled a wire-frame chair near a table-tennis table and sat in it, feet up on the edge of the table. She entered brief summaries into her info slate of all the people she had ghost-viewed so far in this room. She left off the ghosts from the ballroom. They were too old to be of value, and too numerous to bother with.
Entering the top floor, Sasha encountered a young FBI agent outside the living room door. He looked vaguely college-preppie in a dark blue suit and narrow tie over a white shirt. His shoes were black and shiny.
"I'm the expert consultant Special Agent Shaker called in. She wants me to view the girl's bedroom."
"Yes. I received in
structions about you. Come in but please be quiet."
Sasha nodded and entered as he held the door for her. There was a foyer beyond with a table near the door where she guessed mail and keys often lay. Its dark brown top gleamed empty now. Closets were set into one side of the long narrow room.
The home seemed church quiet for a moment but Sasha smelled grief and fear and anger and saw ghost images of several people. The strongest were of the three Thompsons from the photos she had seen earlier.
Then the far door of the foyer opened and a maid stepped through, a Puerto Rican mix perhaps. She was clad in a grey dress and wore a white apron.
"Hello, Luisa. Could you take Ms. Canaro to Eliza's room? She's supposed to examine it. "
"Yes, of course. This way please."
Sasha nodded and followed the maid into a hallway. To the right further along the hall was a large door-less doorway. The sound of a news program on a TV came from it. Sasha guessed it opened into the living room or a den.
Luisa had gone left and Sasha followed her to another doorway. This one had a door but it was open.
Luisa gestured toward the room's interior. "Would you like some coffee or tea? Or anything?"
In Spanish Sasha said, "No. Nothing. Thank you."
Luisa also spoke in Spanish. "You won't take anything away will you?"
"No, I'm just supposed look around, get a better idea of what Eliza was like."
The woman followed Sasha into the room. She gestured at three walls. They had posters on them. One was of ballet dancers, one of horses, and one of a long-haired rather evil looking young man with a bare chest covered by a guitar.
"There are the three things she loved. I don't understand this one." She was looking at the man.
"I don't either. Nor would my two sisters. My middle sister has all the boys in love with her, not the other way around. My youngest is in love with a world-famous violinist. But he's quite handsome. Not like this."
For a moment they stood in silent disapproval of the man's image. Then Luisa turned to go. Sasha stopped her with a gesture.
Several weak ghost images told Sasha Eliza's cousins had all visited her but several days ago. But another ghost image was quite strong. It was of a half-uncle who must have handled something in here. And he smelled strongly of horse.
