Tail Spin ft-12

by Catherine Coulter

  Where were the EMTs? She would be all right, she had to be. She was the only one who could tell them who hired her to kill Rachael.

  When the paramedics arrived two minutes later, the FBI had the customers in pretty good control, but the EMTs still had to weave their way with their equipment through a crowd of people, some of whom were now crying.

  Savich tried to keep the area clear, but some people were trying to crowd close, see the blood and gore, because that’s the way some people were. More’s the pity, there was plenty to see. He told the paramedics about her wounds.

  An older woman, brisk, calm, her breath smelling of lemons, fastened an oxygen mask on Perky’s nose. Then she studied Perky’s shoulder, removed the tie, and wrapped a pressure bandage around it. “Bad,” she said, “but with what you guys have done, she should make it.” She jumped to her feet. “Okay, guys, let’s get her onto the gurney.” Savich had to smile because all the paramedics on this crew were female. Perky’s black wig fell off when they lifted her.

  The paramedics were soon out the front door with Perky strapped down on a gurney, her black skirts hanging down on either side, her black boots hanging free of the white sheet. Steve was directing his clerks to take care of the customers. One young girl, who looked pale and shocky, was wandering around the first floor, pausing to pick up a fallen book and trying to reshelve it.

  The customers were walking slowly out of what would become a famous bookstore for the next three months. Savich walked over to Steve Olson, the manager, but he couldn’t shake his hand, his were covered with Perky’s blood. He turned to look around the bookstore. “I’m sorry about this, Steve, didn’t mean for this to happen. You did good, thank you. Sherlock is calling our boss, and he’ll send FBIpeople down here to handle the media. You need me, here’s my card. Tell the media what happened straight out and keep repeating it. Remember, no one was hurt or killed and we got the bad guy. Hey, that teenage girl she caught as a hostage, take good care of her, she did good.”

  Sherlock said, “Please call me, Steve, give me her name and address. We want to thank her, speak to her parents, tell them what a heroine she is.”

  “You and Sherlock,” Steve said, shaking his head as he took Sherlock’s card. He pressed his palm over his chest. “Here I am trying to calm everyone down and my heart is suddenly ready to burst right out.” He nodded to them once more, then turned to his assistant manager to order coffee and tea from the cafe on the second floor. He yelled, “Chocolate decadence cake for everyone!”

  Savich said to Sherlock, “Perky’s got to be forty, at least, just like Donley Everett said. Amazing.” He leaned down, picked up her black wig.

  “She was costuming,” Sherlock said, “a very good disguise, too, for an assassin. She’s about as hard-boiled as they get. I’ll bet she’s been at this for a very long time. I’ll bet you Jack’s old unit has a file on her. Well, at least she’s out of business now.

  “I’ll tell you, Dillon, if the bitch doesn’t make it, I’m going to punch her lights out.” She swallowed, placed her hand on his arm, but she didn’t say anything. Perky had tried to kill him twice. Close, too close.

  Savich, oblivious, said, “I’m thinking if she pulls through this, we’ll take her to Quantico. A nice visit with Dr. Hicks could be very helpful if he can get her under hypnosis. I’ll bet my next paycheck she isn’t going to give us the time of day, even if we offer her a deal.”

  Sherlock said, “She’ll lawyer up, won’t say a word. I bet hypnosis won’t even be on the table.

  “I don’t want to deal with the media, Dillon. Let’s get out of here. I called Mr. Maitland, gave him a quick overview. He isn’t happy—I mean, we did shoot up a Barnes & Noble bookstore—but he’ll deal with things. I told him Perky would be able to tell us who hired her to kill Senator Abbott and to kill Rachael. That cheered him up. Oh yeah, I asked Dane and Ollie to follow the ambulance to the hospital to get Donley Everett checked out. He was probably still moaning in the backseat of Ollie’s car.”

  Savich and Sherlock went out the back of the Barnes & Noble, back to K-Martique. They walked up the steep stairs and stepped through the open doorway into Perky’s apartment.

  “Dillon, wait a moment.”

  He turned, smiled at his wife. He pulled her against him, stroked her hair. She said against his neck, “When we’re through here, we’re going to the gym. Yes, even before we spill out every single detail to Mr. Maitland six times. We’re going to the gym. Get away from all this for a while. I’ve got to do something physical or I’m going to explode. You’d better look out—I just might take you down.”

  “In your dreams.” He laughed as he walked to Perky’s desk, turned on her laptop. He played around with it for several minutes, humming as he worked, then sat back in the desk chair, frowning.

  “She’s got the sucker passworded. It’d take me a while, but it would be a piece of cake for MAX.” He unplugged the laptop, set it on the floor by the front door.

  They looked through the desk drawers, found a checkbook, rubber-banded stack of paid bills, some invoices. The invoices were for repairs, for merchandise for her store, and the only checks used were written to utilities, nothing personal to help them. They found a couple dozen catalogs for Goth stuff, with some of the pages folded down. And an envelope filled with five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

  “Her traveling money,” Sherlock said, labeling the envelope and putting it in her jacket pocket.

  In the kitchen they found three boxes of Grape-Nuts cereal, all unopened, and not much else in the cabinets. In the refrigerator were several dozen frozen bagels, fat-free cream cheese, and a half-gallon bottle of soy milk.

  In the night table drawer by the narrow black-quilted bed, they found nipple rings in bright primary colors, black liquid eyeliner, three pairs of fangs, and two ornate bottles containing ruby red liquid, to simulate blood, they assumed. The best find was a paperback, the cover illustrated with a score of black knife slashes, titled Sex for Vamps: How to Bleed Your Way to Pleasure.

  “Hmm,” Sherlock said, picking up the book. “Pictures, you think?”

  He laughed at her, grabbed the book, and began to thumb through it. “Now, would you look at this?”

  They stared at a man wearing a black leather codpiece, a whip held high in his hand, a mask over his lower face. Beneath him, naked, on her stomach, tied with black leather straps to the four posts of the bed, lay a woman looking over her shoulder at the man.

  Savich looked up. “Dare I turn the page?”

  “Well, maybe better not. We’re professionals, after all.”

  The most interesting thing they found in Pearl Compton’s, aka Perky’s, apartment was an address book, filled with numbers. No names, just initials beside every number.

  Hallelujah.

  THIRTY

  World Gym Georgetown

  Wednesday evening

  We’ve got information overload,” Savich said as he increased the speed and incline of the treadmill. “It beats not knowing anything.” Sherlock matched his speed, but not the incline. She didn’t want to push it, not when she still had plans to throw her husband to the mat at least a dozen times. Never had she considered a bookstore dangerous, particularly the Georgetown Barnes & Noble, but that was all changed now. Perky dashing up that down escalator, black boots pounding, waving a gun around, grabbing that teenage girl as a hostage—the chaos, the screaming—it could have been a disaster. Dillon could have been killed. Perky had tried to shoot her, too, impossible to forget that. But that didn’t bother her. She’d been terrified for Dillon.

  Sherlock punched up the speed, viciously, to match her mood, a mix of fury and fear so corroding she thought she’d choke on it. She shot a look at Dillon. He’d already moved on, his run smooth and steady, his breathing easy, moved on just as she would have done if she’d been in his shoes, curse him. But she hadn’t been anywhere near his shoes, and that was the problem. She owed Dane the world.

  S
ometimes—like right that instant—being married to Savich scared her to death. Because she was who she was, she’d far rather be pissed off than scared. She knew the only thing for it was to let off some serious steam.

  Savich slowed a bit and turned to her. “Okay, what we know for sure is that Donley Everett is going down hard. The prosecutor had him sign his confession on the dotted line, so it’s all wrapped up. It’s a pity but I believe him; he doesn’t have a clue who hired Perky. But maybe he can give us a more specific location for where he buried Clay Huggins’s body.”

  “Hypnotize him.”

  “Yeah, we could do that. Good idea.”

  All right, so he didn’t have a clue that her insides were at the boiling point; he was a guy, after all. More to the point, and the point galled her, she hadn’t said anything.

  Everything’s okay, it’s over. Calm down. It’s not like you haven’t faced this before. She cleared her throat, said, “I wonder how Angel’s keepers are doing with her attitude at Fairfax Juvie. Do you think she’s been released yet?”

  “Probably. Maybe Angel’s got a chance. She’s a bright girl.”

  “Yeah, yeah, so am I, and look what happened to me.” A black eyebrow shot up as Savich turned to look at her. What was with the snark? He said, “What happened to you is that you married your boss—a pretty cool guy—you get to chase down bad guys, and you get to stay in shape. It’s like the perfect life for you.” She didn’t laugh, as he’d expected her to. She said abruptly, “It’s a bummer about those phone numbers you got off Angel’s cell phone. You were so happy to think your five hundred dollars paid off.”

  No more snark, that was good. Savich pushed the incline higher and breathed deeply, steadily. “Yeah, I was hopeful we might have Roderick Lloyd more in the loop, maybe calling Perky’s boss, talking about killing Rachael in Parlow, but what we got are calls to Pizza Mac’s, ordering double pepperoni, thick crust.”

  He still wasn’t breathing hard, Sherlock thought, feeling a line of sweat snake down her back. She wanted to punch him for that, as well.

  He said, “And the other three calls to bookies—three different bookies—and he owed all of them money.”

  Elvis belted out “Blue Suede Shoes.” Savich pulled his cell off the clip on his waistband.

  “Yes? Savich here.” He slowed down and listened. When he punched off, he sped up again and said, “That was Dane calling from Memorial. He said Perky is still in surgery, but it looks good. She should be okay unless something unexpected happens. Then, just maybe, we can cut a deal with her.”

  “It could be a week before she’s up to physically visiting Quantico. Maybe we can deal with her at the hospital, have Dr. Hicks visit her.”

  “That’s a good thought.”

  Sherlock pushed the cool-down button, a bit on the violent side. “I like to impress the boss.”

  That black eyebrow of his went up again. “You do, every single day.”

  “You’re a guy, so you’re easy,” she said, and stepped off the treadmill. “We need to get back to Dr. MacLean.”

  Elvis’s voice crooned out again. “Yeah, Savich here. Hi, Jack. Talk to me.” And Savich listened, asked a few questions, listened for a very long time, actually, then, finally, punched off, looking thoughtful.

  “What? He and Rachael okay?”

  “Yeah, no problem. He told me a bit more about Laurel, Quincy and Stefanos. He said Laurel is the Big Peg, her husband is a slime, and Quincy probably has ulcers He said Laurel hates Rachael’s guts, doesn’t try to hide it. About Quincy, Jack said that’s a tougher call. Quincy Abbott’s all about packaging—he’s flashy, a near prince in his nice Italian duds, and he’s a coward, which probably also makes him a bully, but he’s under his sister’s thumb. He said Quincy’s toupee is prime.

  “If we need to reach Jack, he said he’s staying with Rachael in her house in Chevy Chase.”

  Sherlock said, stretching, “I’m not at all sure I like the sound of that.”

  That eyebrow of his went up again.

  “For heaven’s sake, I’m not talking about sex. I bet they could sleep in the same bed and Jack wouldn’t touch her. Well, that’s optimistic. I was talking about the danger.”

  “You know Jack is good. Nothing surprises him. He’s focused and wily. Don’t worry, he won’t let anything happen to Rachael. They’re going to see Senator Abbott’s head staffer, Greg Nichols, tomorrow morning. Nichols is already heading up another senator’s staff. Jack said he can’t wait to see what Nichols has to say to them.”

  “I’d like to speak to Nichols, too, feel out how much influence he had over Senator Abbott.”

  Savich nodded, sighed. “Jack asked me about Timothy MacLean, asked me what he could do. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything to tell him.”

  Sherlock sighed right along with him, her righteous snark all gone in the face of what was happening to Timothy MacLean.

  Savich began to slow his stride. “I’m thinking you and I should focus on the two who appear to have the best motives—Congresswoman McManus and Pierre Barbeau. We’ve got to check out timelines, see if Jean David Barbeau drowned before the first attempt on Timothy’s life. To be on the safe side, I’ll have Ruth and Dane begin on his other patients.”

  “That sounds logical.”

  Savich said, “Let’s visit the congresswoman first, see what she’s got in the way of an alibi—not that it matters since she would have hired a thug to do the deed. I’ll have Ollie check with the Atlanta detective who worked her dead husband’s case, see if they had any leads. Maybe we can get a line on the thug she hired—in Savannah, was it?”

  “That’s what Dr. MacLean said.” She cocked her head to the side as Dillon ended his cooldown. “Do you believe she really had her trucker husband murdered so he wouldn’t stop her run for Congress?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Sherlock chewed on that for a moment. “Maybe so. Still, I’m betting on Pierre Barbeau. Lots of wormy stuff going on there.”

  “We’ll find out. How’s your French?”

  Laughter spurted out of her, from wherever it was hiding. “You’ve never complained before.”

  He grinned as he wiped his face with a towel. “You made me forget why I was asking.”

  Sherlock popped her knuckles. “You ready to come with me to the slam room?”

  “Is that its new name?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m going to make sure you’ll relate to it shortly.” She swatted at him with her towel as she walked past him.

  Because he saw blood in her eyes and wasn’t a fool, Savich allowed himself to be pummeled and thrown, and generally smacked around. The kick pad he’d held for her fared no better. He thought, at the end, it was worth it because Sherlock was laughing as she counted the number of times she’d thrown him. Violence, he thought, as he showered, appeared to calm the woman down and restore her perspective He’d even called a halt several times during his royal butt-kicking to stretch and rub his muscles, and give her a chance to hoot and dance.

  They stopped off at Dizzy Dan’s for pizzas, one vegetarian for Savich and Sean, the other a pepperoni for the carnivore.

  They ordered in two more when Savich’s sister Lily and her husband, Simon, walked in right behind them. A short visit, they said, but neither Savich nor Sherlock believed them once they made a beeline for Sean, a new computer game in hand.

  Lily was four months pregnant now, just beginning to show. “Practice is everything,” she told Sean every time he challenged her to another game of Treasures of the Ninja.

  They were finally asleep at midnight. Elvis sang in Savich’s ear just as he was revving his race car at the Indy 500. He was instantly awake. “Savich here. Oh, no. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m sorry too.” He clicked off. Sherlock was propped up on her elbow. “Who was that? What happened?”

  “That was the hospital. Perky’s dead. The surgeon said she came through surgery fine. She was in and out of recovery in an hour, still doing fine, and back in h
er room. No need for the ICU. When the nurse went to check on her maybe an hour later, she was simply dead.” He slammed his fist against his night table. “I was going to assign an agent to guard her beginning tomorrow. I’m an idiot.”

  “It sounds like she died from a surgical complication.”

  “We’ll know tomorrow, after the autopsy. But what if it wasn’t from unexpected complications?”

  Savich cursed, something he so rarely did he sounded faintly ridiculous. Then he got up, pulled on sweatpants, and said over his shoulder as he walked out of the bedroom, “I’m going to see if I can’t come up with a plan to get things moving.” He was talking more to himself now than to her. “Yeah, and MAX can maybe do something with all those initials and numbers in Perky’s address book.”

  Sherlock didn’t sleep again until he came back to bed. She didn’t speak, simply curled up against him, her palm over his heart, and felt the strong, steady beat. She felt him begin to relax, and it simply all came out of her mouth. “You could have died. I was so scared this afternoon when she tried to kill you, Dillon, so scared I couldn’t help you. I wanted to kill you.”

  He kissed her hair, her ear. “Don’t you think it scared me spitless when she fired at you? And she looked at me the instant before she turned to you.”

  “I love you, Dillon. I loved you even when I kicked you into the wall mirror in the slam room.”

  “I won’t forget,” he said, and kissed her eyebrow. “We’ll deal with this in the morning, Sherlock. Go to sleep.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Washington, D.C.

  Thursday morning

  Jack and Rachael were nearing the Hart Senate Office Building on

  Constitution Avenue for their nine o’clock appointment with Greg

  Nichols in his new position with the senior senator from Oregon, Jessie Jankel, when Ollie called. “Turn on your radio, Jack, you’ll want to hear this. It’s Savich holding an FBI press conference.”