Hot Pursuit

by Stuart Woods

  She partly closed her front door and pointed to some marks around the lock. “What do you make of that?” she asked.

  Fred held a finger to his lips and stepped inside the door. He examined the lock and the plate that received the bolt. “Someone has attempted to get into your apartment,” he said softly, “but I don’t think he made it. Please wait here and be very quiet.” Fred drew his pistol and began walking silently from room to room. He checked her apartment’s upstairs, too, then came back.

  “No one is here but us,” he said. “I’ll go deliver the letters now. Please lock the door behind me, and don’t open it for anyone but me.”

  “All right,” Pat said. “Anything you say, Fred.”

  Fred went to the bottom of the staircase, slipped off his shoes, and walked slowly up the stairs, walking on the outside of each step to avoid squeaks, and with his pistol at the ready. He stopped on the third floor and examined the lock, finding no marks. He slipped a letter under the door and continued to the fourth floor, where he found the door closed and unmarked.

  One more floor to go. He was feeling better about things now. His feeling changed when his head rose enough to have a view of the fifth-floor apartment. The door was ajar. Fred stopped and listened for about a minute, waiting for any sound at all—a footstep, a drawer closing, anything. He heard nothing. He continued up the stairs as quietly as possible and paused at the door and listened again. Still nothing. With a single finger, he pushed the door open slowly, hoping it wouldn’t squeak. When the door was fully open he looked around the doorjamb and peered into the apartment. All he saw was a single foot, wearing a brown loafer and an argyle sock. It was entirely immobile. As he continued into the apartment a second foot came into view. The leg to which it was attached was drawn up, and another step revealed a man lying facedown on the floor, inert, with a bloody hole in the back of his head. His face rested in a pool of dark blood. He looked up and saw another man seated on a white sofa, his head flung back and the top of the sofa and the wall behind it covered in gore and blood.

  Fred had seen such sights before on battlefields, and he knew that the color of the blood made the killings some hours old. Nevertheless, he carefully searched the rest of the apartment and found no one else there. He paused to look into a bedroom that had been converted to an art studio. There were two drawing tables in the room, and the cork-covered walls had various graphic designs, in various stages of completion, pinned to them. Fred called 911.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a female operator asked.

  “A double shooting,” Fred replied.

  “Is an ambulance required?” she asked, skipping the obvious question in favor of brevity.

  “Only one from the morgue,” Fred answered.

  She asked for the address and his name, and he gave them.

  “Do you live at this address?”

  “No, I’m visiting a friend who lives on the ground floor. I came upstairs to deliver a letter.”

  “Please hold.” Thirty seconds later she came back. “A unit has been dispatched. Please don’t touch anything in the apartment, and wait at the downstairs door for the police to arrive.”

  “Will do,” Fred said, then hung up. He left the apartment and walked slowly down the stairs, still using his phone.

  “Woodman & Weld,” Joan said.

  “It’s Fred. Give me Mr. Barrington, please.”

  “Hi, Fred, he’s on a call. Can he call you back?”

  “Please interrupt him and tell him it’s urgent.”

  Stone was on the line in seconds. “What is it, Fred?”

  “A double homicide on the top floor of Ms. Frank’s building. I’ve already called nine-one-one.”

  “Is Pat all right?”

  “Yes. Her door had been tampered with, but the bloke didn’t get inside. She’s safe, and the police are on the way. They told me to wait at the front door.”

  “Then you do that. I’ll call the commissioner and make sure a good detective team is sent. Tell Pat to stay in her apartment until the police arrive.”

  “Yes, sir.” Fred hung up and hurried down the stairs. He stopped for a moment on the ground floor to recover his shoes, then he went to the Frank apartment and rapped on the door, standing directly in front of the eyehole.

  She opened the door. “Come on in, Fred.”

  “I have to wait by the front door.”

  “Why?”

  “Do two young men occupy your top floor?”

  “Yes, they’re commercial artists. I haven’t met them yet. Have you?”

  “In a manner of speaking. They’ve both been shot and are quite dead.”

  Pat put a hand to her mouth.

  “Powder room, miss, if you’re going to be sick.”

  She took her hand away. “I’m not. What about the others upstairs?”

  “No one’s answering. I’ll let the police take care of that.”

  They heard a police car coming down Park Avenue and turning into East Sixty-third Street.

  “That will be them,” Fred said. “Excuse me, please.” He holstered his weapon, turned, and walked to the front door, in time to open it for two uniforms.

  “Top floor,” he said to the men, pointing upstairs. “I don’t know if anyone’s home on the third and fourth floors.”

  “Did you call nine-one-one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait here.”

  “I’ll be in there,” Fred said, pointing at the door. “Landlady’s apartment.”

  19

  STONE GOT to Pat’s building five minutes after the uniforms and ten minutes before the detectives. Pat buzzed him in and met him at the door; Fred brought him up to date.

  The doorbell rang, and Stone buzzed in two detectives; he knew the older of the two but didn’t like him much. “Hello, Harry.”

  “Barrington. You mixed up in this?”

  Stone shook his head. “I just got here. Fred Flicker, here, found the bodies.”

  Fred told his story.

  “Okay,” Harry said. “We’re going upstairs and check this out.”

  “You might check the apartments on the third and fourth floors,” Fred said. “Somebody might be home.”

  “What about the second floor?”

  “This apartment is a duplex,” Stone said.

  “Everybody stay here,” Harry said, and the two detectives left, leaving the door open behind them.

  “May I make some coffee?” Stone asked Pat.

  “You sit down, I need something to do. Fred?”

  “Thank you, miss, no.”

  Stone sat down and was presently rewarded with a steaming mug of strong black stuff.

  The detectives returned. “All right,” Harry said, “we’ve got a crime-scene team on the way, and the medical examiner will be here shortly, too. Who are the two dead guys?”

  Pat got a notebook from a kitchen drawer. “David Teal and Bruce Palmer.”

  “Gay guys?”

  “I’ve no idea,” she replied. “I just became the owner of the building a couple of days ago, and I haven’t met my tenants yet.”

  “Harry,” Stone said, “you have any interest in my take on this?”

  “Not much,” Harry said, “but go ahead.”

  “Your suspect is a man named Kevin Keyes, who resides in Wichita, Kansas. He’s an ex–airline pilot who does occasional charter flights, and he’s the ex-boyfriend of Ms. Frank, here. I believe he followed her here after she ended their relationship. Mr. Keyes, or whoever the killer is, probably got into the building by ringing all the doorbells. The guys upstairs buzzed him in. He tried to get past Ms. Frank’s front door and failed. One of the guys upstairs probably wanted to know who he’d let into the building, and he may have come downstairs. Keyes then marched him back upstairs and shot both guys, so t
hey couldn’t identify him. Keyes is registered at the Court Plaza hotel in Times Square, and he’s driving a dark, rented Nissan Altima.

  “Pat, you want to give them Keyes’s description?”

  “Six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. He’s a bodybuilder and heavily muscled.”

  Fred spoke up. “Ms. Frank believes he may be on both steroids and cocaine.”

  “A bad mixture,” Stone said. “Pat, would you say that Keyes has a quick temper and is subject to rages?”

  “I would,” Pat replied. “And he owns several guns.”

  “Who owns this building?” Harry asked.

  “I told you, I do,” Pat replied. “My sister made me a gift of it.”

  The doorbell rang, and Harry admitted two men with stretchers and another with a large case. He sent them upstairs and returned to Pat’s apartment. “You know what bothers me about this?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “The double homicide upstairs?” Stone inquired.

  “Nah. It’s too simple—that’s what bothers me. I never walked into a homicide before where I got handed the scenario and the killer on a platter, complete with an address. Jesus, I’m surprised nobody got his Social Security number.”

  “I probably have that somewhere,” Pat said, “if you want it.”

  “Y’see? It’s all too simple.”

  “Feel free to make it more complicated,” Stone said.

  “Oh, I don’t have to do that,” Harry said. “It will make itself complicated pretty quick.”

  “While it’s getting complicated,” Stone said, “you might send a SWAT team over to the Court Plaza and invite Mr. Keyes up to the precinct for a chat.”

  “You telling me how to do my job?” Harry asked.

  “Somebody’s got to,” Stone said.

  “And why do you think I need a SWAT team?”

  “Oh, I don’t know: the suspect is a big, strong, angry man who is known to own several guns and who is probably crazed by a combination of steroids and cocaine. If you’d rather just go over there and ask him a few polite questions, go right ahead.”

  “You were always a smart-ass, Barrington.”

  “And you were always a stupid ass, Harry.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “You get it,” Harry said to his young partner.

  He left and came back with two middle-aged men in suits.

  “I’m Detective Robert Miller,” one of them said. “This is my partner, Dominic Legano.”

  “What the fuck are you two doing here?” Harry asked.

  “This is our case—the commissioner sent us,” Miller said. “You can leave now.”

  “The fuck we’re leaving,” Harry said.

  Miller produced a cell phone. “Let’s see: you’re out of the Nineteenth precinct, right? And your captain is Don Haley?” He started to dial a number.

  “Awright, awright,” Harry said. “Take the fucking case and stick it up your ass. Come on,” he said to his partner, and they both walked out of the apartment. At the door, the younger man looked back and shrugged.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” Miller called after them. He turned to the group. “All right,” he said, “will somebody fill us in?”

  Stone and Fred went through the whole thing again while Legano took notes. When he had finished, Miller got out his cell phone again and pressed a speed-dial button. “This is Bob Miller. I need a SWAT team at the Court Plaza in Times Square to pick up a suspect in a double homicide. Name is Kevin Keyes, registered guest, six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. Consider him armed and dangerous. Possibly high on something.” He chatted for another minute with whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up. “Okay, Dom, let’s go upstairs and view the carnage, see what the boys have to say about the corpses and the scene. Please excuse us for a few minutes,” he said to Stone, “and I’d be grateful if you’d all remain until we’re done here.”

  “Glad to,” Stone said.

  “You bet,” Pat said.

  “Righto,” Fred echoed.

  —

  ANOTHER HOUR PASSED, during which men with stretchers brought two body bags down in the elevator. The detectives returned.

  “Anybody think of anything else?” Miller asked.

  Everybody shook their heads.

  “Ms. Frank,” Miller said, “you should give some thought to getting out of the house for a few days. Do you have anywhere you can go?”

  “She does,” Stone said.

  Legano took down their information, and the detectives shook their hands and left.

  “I think it’s time we got you to my house, Pat,” Stone said. “Any objections?”

  “Not even one,” Pat said, “but I may have a better idea.”

  20

  HOLLY ARRIVED at her White House office to find Millie Martindale already at her desk, and she was wearing the dress she had worn yesterday. “Good morning, Millie,” she said.

  “Morning, ma’am,” Millie said.

  “Tell me, did you get lucky last night, or did you spend the night at your desk?”

  “Both,” Millie replied. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”

  Holly went to the adjacent utility room and made coffee. She came back with two mugs and found Millie sitting across from her desk, shuffling papers in her lap. Holly handed her a mug.

  “Any cream and sugar?” Millie asked.

  “If you drink it black for twenty-one days, you’ll never have it any other way again, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time, too.”

  Millie tasted the coffee and made a face.

  “Tough it out,” Holly said. “What have you got?”

  “Identities for two of our fuzzy photographs.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I sort of took a shortcut,” Millie said. “I spent my junior year at Oxford, and I have a friend from those days who’s now teaching there. He’s a couple of years older than me, and I knew he went to Eton, so I had a talk with him. His first year there he knew two boys, identical twins, who had unusual accents. Their names were John and James Whittleworth, and he made them as Arabs, though they didn’t look it.”

  “And Whittleworth isn’t a very Arabic name,” Holly pointed out.

  “They were a little darker of skin but had blond hair.”

  “Go on.”

  “I got the registrar’s office at Eton at four o’clock this morning—it’s five hours later there—and they dug up the boys’ records. Their father’s name was Martindale, like my last name, and their mother’s Fatima, which might explain their appearance and accents.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Not for long. I researched the father, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exist. Not the mother, either. There was a record of only one visit to the school by the parents, early in the boys’ three-year stay at the school. They never went home for the holidays, even at Christmas, and their school fees were paid by an official of a private bank in London, Devin’s, which turns out to have Middle Eastern owners.”

  “How about graduation? Did the parents turn up for that?”

  “Neither of them. A chauffeured car picked them up after the ceremony, which was twelve years ago, and they were never heard from again. Mail to them—invitations to alumni events, pleas for money, et cetera—was sent to the bank and never replied to.”

  “Did they go to university after Eton? Most of their graduates do.”

  “There is no record of the boys applying for any university.”

  “Are there any photographs of them—maybe in yearbooks?”

  “None. They didn’t play any sports or participate in other extracurricular activities, except shooting classes and chess. Otherwise they kept to themselves. One other thing, they were tutored in elocution by a young instructor there, and by the
time they left school, their accents were indistinguishable from the upper-class English spoken by all the boys, except the Scots, the Irish, and some foreigners.”

  “Is there any indication of where they might be now?”

  “None whatever—they simply evanesced. No British passport has been issued for either of them, so if they left the country, they had other papers.”

  “Well, wherever they are, they have been very carefully groomed,” Holly observed. “What about the third man in the photos?”

  “So far, a total blank. Can you ask your friends at the Agency why they believe he spent time at Berkeley? If we can find out when he was there, maybe we have a chance of running him down.”

  “I’ll make a call,” Holly said. “Good work on the twins.”

  Millie actually blushed. “Thank you.”

  “Go home, take a nap, and get a change of clothes.”

  “Thank you,” Millie said gratefully, then evanesced.

  Holly called Lance Cabot and was immediately put through.

  “Good morning, Holly.”

  “Good morning, Lance. I have some information for you, and then I’d like you to get some for me.”

  “Do you mind if I record our conversation? It’s easier than taking notes.”

  “Go ahead. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  Holly related what Millie had turned up on the twins.

  “That’s extremely good work,” Lance said.

  “I thought so. I have hopes for her.”

  “Just shows how one personal relationship can cut through the fog and turn up useful information.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s useful in this case,” Holly said.

  “Au contraire,” Lance said, in his best accent. “We now know the two are identical twins—that could be most helpful. We know Devin’s Bank—we might even have an asset there.”

  “That would be very helpful indeed,” Holly said.

  “Now, what do you need from me?”

  “Millie drew a blank on the third photograph, the one who was said to have spent some time at Berkeley. I’d like to know where that information came from and if there’s any more of it.”