The FBI Thrillers Collection

by Catherine Coulter

  Fleurette grabbed his arm. “All these cop cars. Detective Raven, what’s happened?”

  He searched her face as he said, “Eliza Vickers was just murdered.”

  Her face went utterly white. Her eyes went blank. Then she whimpered, deep in her throat, and sank to her knees on the floor.

  Ben closed the door behind Callie and flipped off the light switch. It was completely dark inside the brownstone, not even a shadow for Günter to shoot at. He eased up the window a crack and yelled out, “We’re okay in here. Spread out and check the neighborhood, we’ll be leaving here soon.”

  “That you, Ben?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep down. There’s no sign of anyone here, but we’re on it.” He recognized Sergeant Teddy Russell’s voice.

  Ben held his gun at his side. “Fleurette, push your twenty-two over to me.”

  He heard the small gun slide across the marble tile. It hit his boot. He put it in his belt holster.

  “Detective—”

  “No, no, stay quiet for a while longer.” He pulled out his cell and called Captain Halloway, who answered like he’d been awake for hours. Ben quickly told him what was happening.

  “Just keep the women safe, Ben. I’ll handle everything else. Do you know the lead officer at Ms. LaFleurette’s house?”

  “It’s Sergeant Teddy Russell.”

  “He’s a good man. He’ll get things done. Hang tight, Ben, hang tight and protect the women. We’ll get you out of there soon enough.”

  Ben punched off his cell, then leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes a moment and let the events of the evening race through his brain. Incredible, all of it. At least Fleurette was alive. He said, “Let’s stay down, and stay quiet. We don’t know if the guy’s out there yet. He’s good at losing himself in the shadows.”

  Ben heard Callie moving toward Fleurette. “Stay down,” he said. He opened his cell to call Savich while they waited. “We made it, Savich. Yes, I told her about Eliza. She’s holding up. We’ll be at your house as soon as I’m certain it’s safe to take Fleurette outside.” He heard Savich speaking to someone in the background, Sherlock, probably. “Okay, I hear the cops coming up the stairs. I’ll see you at your house.” Ben slowly rose. He went to the front door, stood to the side, and identified himself as he opened it. “Hey, Teddy, good to see you. Is it clear?”

  “Not yet, Ben. Stay inside a few minutes longer until the rest of my men check in.”

  Ben nodded. “I spoke to Captain Halloway. He said he told you he was sending more squad cars.”

  “Yes, we’re all spread out now, canvassing everything within a mile of the house, but it’s tough, folks who live in this area like to party on Friday night.”

  “The guy we’re looking for is American, probably in his fifties, white.”

  Sergeant Teddy Russell, a twenty-four-year veteran, put his beefy hand on the butt of the Smith & Wesson 1911 holstered at his belt, and looked from Ben to the two women. “Boy, you guys in Metro sure like to live on the edge.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  GEORGETOWN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  FLEURETTE SAT at the kitchen table, a hot mug of coffee held between her hands, her head down, her blond hair straggling out of its ponytail. She was wearing an oversized cable knit navy sweater, blue jeans, and boots. An orange duffel bag and oversized purse lay at her feet.

  “Thank you, Agent Savich,” she said at last, still not looking up. “You probably saved my life.”

  “I’m just happy that Ben got there in time. You’ll be staying with my wife and me for a while, all right?”

  Fleurette shuddered. “Thank you.” She raised her head and looked from him to Sherlock. “Do you often have people like me staying with you?”

  “No,” Sherlock said, pouring more hot coffee into her mug, “not often. Here, drink this down, Fleurette, you need it.”

  Callie was leaning into Ben. She looked dazed and absolutely exhausted. She said, “I’ve got to call Mom, tell her what’s happened.”

  Savich said, “No, not yet, Callie. She doesn’t need to know right now. Let her rest, let her have a bit more recovery time before we hit her with Eliza’s murder. We’ll go over tomorrow.” He watched Sherlock walk quietly out of the kitchen. He nodded to Ben, said to Fleurette, “Keep drinking that hot coffee.”

  He found his wife sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, her face in her hands. He sat beside her and pulled her into his arms.

  In the kitchen, Lily and Simon were cutting slices of apple pie and heating them in the microwave. Lily said, “Fleurette, you need sugar, it will help calm you.”

  “I really don’t want—”

  “I know it’s not chocolate,” Simon Russo said, “but it’s a good excuse to eat the best apple pie in the universe and not feel guilty about the calories.”

  Fleurette actually smiled. It fell off her face quickly enough, but it was a start. There was enough left for all of them to have a small slice. For a while, there was only the sound of chewing in the kitchen.

  “DILLON?” Sherlock’s voice was muffled against his shoulder. “I’m sorry I’m falling apart like this. It’s just that—”

  “If you weren’t falling apart, then I would be,” he said, and kissed her hair. “It’s tough, sweetheart, really tough. I’m as sorry as you are. Eliza was special.”

  “Yes. Dillon, I liked her so very much and I’d only met her. Just twice and the funeral.”

  “But all three times were emotional, the kinds of meetings that draw people together. I really liked her, too, I really did.” He drew a deep breath, kissed her again. “Why did he feel he had to kill her?”

  “This time, we don’t even know. Maybe she knew something after all, and he was afraid she was going to break. And she did break, she called you. Oh God, Mr. Maitland brought in the agents too soon.”

  “It was after Justice Califano’s funeral, everyone believed it was over.”

  Ben stood alone in the archway of the living room. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s something I forgot to tell you. When Callie and I went to see Fleurette at the Supreme Court Building this morning, only Eliza was there. She was cleaning out Justice Califano’s stuff, and constantly answering the phone, really harried. We spoke for just a few moments. Before we left, I asked her if there was anything I could do. She hesitated, I’m sure of it. She looked sort of undecided, like there was something on her mind, but then the phone rang again and she waved us out. Damn, Savich, I didn’t think anything about it.”

  “So maybe she did know something,” Sherlock said. “But what? And he was there, in the condo, with her. Do you think he let her pick up the phone, dial you, speak to you?”

  Savich said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe he needed to take a risk again, and so when he heard her on the phone to me, that was it, this time. And then he garroted her, just like Justice Califano and Danny O’Malley.”

  Sherlock said against Dillon’s neck, “And Fleurette was helpless, just like Eliza.”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “She did have a gun, a twenty-two revolver, but he wouldn’t have given her the chance to get to it.”

  Sherlock said, “Eliza was strong, probably stronger than Danny O’Malley. She must have fought him.”

  Both Ben and Savich were silent for a moment. Ben felt Callie come up behind him. He hadn’t heard her, but somehow he knew she was there. She leaned against him, but said nothing.

  Savich said, “Yes, I’ll bet she did fight him, fought him as hard as she could. They took her to Quantico. Dr. Conrad went out there to do the autopsy. Since we were there so quickly, I doubt Günter took the time to remove all evidence of himself. Maybe we’ll be lucky and she managed to scratch him. Something, all we need is something.”

  They sat together, listening to the low buzz of conversation coming from the kitchen. Savich looked up to see that Ben and Callie had gon
e.

  Suddenly, they heard a cry from Sean.

  As one, they looked up. “Life goes on,” Savich said as he slowly rose, bringing Sherlock with him. Sherlock straightened, scrubbed her hands over her face, and went up with him to see what had awakened Sean.

  FBI HEADQUARTERS

  SATURDAY MORNING

  DR. CONRAD TACKED up a blow-up photo of Eliza Vickers on the corkboard behind him. “Eliza Vickers fought hard. She was a big woman, one hundred fifty pounds, strong and very fit.” He pointed to her hands. “She has defensive cuts, and she injured him at least once, scored some of his skin off. We can’t be certain yet, but the skin was probably from his neck or face. It was under her nails along with some of his blood, and there had been no attempt to clean it off. You said he was laughing when he left, Agent Savich, but he had to be hurting, too, and bleeding. He had to know he was leaving us evidence.”

  Savich said, “He was laughing because he knew I heard him killing her. He did that on purpose.”

  Dr. Conrad continued. “We have easily enough for DNA analysis, and as soon as that is complete, we will try to find a match, not just through domestic databases, but through Interpol.”

  Agent Frank Halley said, “Okay, he had to get the hell out of Dodge, so he didn’t have time to clean up after himself. The profilers might be right, though, the guy is so damned arrogant, he might not have cared, just blew us off.”

  “That’s possible,” Jimmy Maitland said. “Anyone who uses Günter Grass as an alias is about as egotistical as any killer I’ve ever seen.”

  Savich heard Sherlock’s cell phone play the beginning bars of Bolero, and looked up.

  He watched her face as she listened, then said, her voice urgent, “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Don’t force his hand. Don’t hurt him.” He was stepping toward her as she jumped to her feet. “Dillon, we’ve got to go, now. It’s Samantha’s boy, they’ve found him, and there’s trouble.”

  Jimmy Maitland didn’t hesitate. “Samantha’s son? Tell me later. Go, but you call me when you get back, okay?”

  Savich nodded, even as he was running for the conference room door. “Ben, Callie, you’re with us.”

  As they raced from the elevator toward their cars in the garage, Sherlock said, “I had the Boston field office put out an alert on the name Austin Douglas Barrister. If it turned up, I was to be called immediately. That was Chief Howard Gerber of the Petersboro, Maryland Police Department. He said they have a hostage situation, a man inside a house with his wife and two children. The Hostage Rescue Team was trying to talk him out when the guy yelled out that his name wasn’t Martin Thornton, it was Austin Douglas Barrister. Chief Gerber realized he’d just read that name, looked it up, and called me. I told him we’d be there as soon as we could.”

  “Don’t lose us,” Savich shouted to Ben and gunned the Porsche out of the garage.

  Savich headed the Porsche north on the Beltway. Sherlock said to him as well as to Ben on her cell phone, “The siren is great, Ben. We want to get there as fast as possible. Until we got this break, we couldn’t locate Austin Barrister. It was like he disappeared off the face of the earth. Neither the Boston field office nor MAX could track him down.

  “Okay, now, it looks like Petersboro is about ten miles due west of Alston, Maryland, off 270. We’re about forty-five minutes away, particularly with you, Ben, sitting on the siren. We’ll probably get there with a four-car escort.”

  Ben said, “I’m with you. Tell Savich we’re right behind him, at least I’m trying. That Porsche is something.” Ben laughed as he shut down his cell.

  Savich said to his wife, “You didn’t tell me you’d put a tag in the system.”

  “Yep, I didn’t really think it would result in anything, but who knew?”

  Savich shook his head, amazed as always with her ingenuity, signaled, and passed a Beemer at one hundred miles per hour. “So he’s been using the name Martin Thornton since he ran away from Boston.”

  “Yes. The Hostage Rescue Team was probably calling his name over and over, you know how they do—Martin, do you hear us, Martin?—and he must have cracked and shouted out his real name.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Thank God for a police chief who remembered the alert and acted quickly on it.”

  Inside the Crown Vic, Callie watched the traffic whiz by them, cars pulling over quickly as they neared, looking almost as if they were standing still. When they reached a clear stretch, all she could see of the Porsche was a flash of red.

  “More pedal to the metal,” Ben said, and soon the Porsche came back into sight.

  “This is the strangest day of my life.”

  “You really think this is a strange day?”

  “Don’t arch that supercilious eyebrow at me, Ben Raven. First I’m allowed in a meeting on the sacred fifth floor of the FBI building, and the next thing I know, we’re chasing Savich’s Porsche to Maryland to find this guy who’s the son of a woman who was murdered thirty years ago.”

  “That’s why I went into law enforcement,” Ben said, “the excitement. It’s nonstop.”

  “Yeah, right, so you say. The cops I’ve talked to usually whine about how boring it is—on the phone and the computer all day.”

  They rounded a bend and the Porsche accelerated forward out of a curve. “My oh my,” Ben said. “Be still my heart. That car can go, just look at it.”

  Callie laughed at him. “So get yourself one—to go with your truck.”

  “Would you prefer I picked you up in a Porsche or a truck?”

  “Now we’re going on a date? You’re asking me my car preference?”

  He shrugged. “It might be fun in the truck. You and my dog could hang out the window, tongues lolling in the wind. Well, at least it could be fun in the summer. Now, about a Porsche—I’d probably get so many speeding tickets I’d get drummed off the force.”

  She laughed again, shook her head, and laughed some more. It felt great.

  “Now, seriously, the thing about Porsches is that the minute your foot connects to the accelerator, it gains weight and pushes down harder and harder. Just look at Savich. You think he’s got a clue how fast he’s going?”

  “Yes, I think he knows exactly how fast he’s going.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right, in this situation. What do you think, one hundred and ten miles an hour?”

  She shook her head, tapped her fingers to her chin. “No, more like one twenty.” She paused, then turned to him. “Okay, I understand now. You’ve been distracting me. And you’ve done it very well. You’ve made me laugh. Thank you. Now, for our first date, I want to ride in the truck. I want to drive out in the wilds of Virginia to some country barbecue place where they don’t have any tablecloths, just long wooden tables, and tubs filled with ice and beer. Hey, you’re losing sight of him.”

  The Crown Vic leapt forward. One hundred miles an hour. Ben heard sirens behind him. Good, their escort was with them. He had to get closer to Savich, or the cops would go nuts at the sight of that speeding Porsche. He got on his radio, called dispatch. “This is Detective Ben Raven, on Highway 270. We’re just past Rockville, Maryland. We’re heading up to Alston, then ten miles west to Petersboro. FBI Agent Dillon Savich is in front of me, driving a red Porsche 911. My siren’s on and I’ve got two cop cars behind me. Alert the highway patrol about our position and the Porsche. This is an emergency.” He listened, said yes a couple of times, and punched off.

  “Okay, if we’re lucky everything should be all right. Let’s hear it for a show of competence.”

  “An amazing thing, competence. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I trip over it.”

  Ben caught sight of the Porsche. “He just passed a patrol car coming off an exit onto the freeway. I’m going to call dispatch again, just to be sure.” Ben memorized the patrol car number and radioed dispatch again.

  They watched the patrol car pull back a bit. “Good.”

  Callie said suddenly, “Why
would he go after Fleurette?”

  So much for distracting her, Ben thought, and said, “I’ve been wondering the same thing. Maybe she’s another loose end. Like Eliza.”

  “I don’t think Eliza was just a loose end. Don’t forget, she was calling Savich, to tell him something, maybe something she knew but hadn’t said anything about before. And why not? Because she was afraid? Or because she was a part of something that led to my stepfather’s murder?”

  “Whoa—that’s a giant leap. But you’re a reporter, you’re paid to make wild guesses, right?”

  “Do you really think it’s such a wild guess?”

  “Maybe. Who knows? Hey, I’m trying to keep from killing us here. I’m now going one hundred and ten miles an hour. Keep an eye out for more patrol cars. Or any pedestrians who might be running across the highway.” He laid a gloved hand on her leg as she laughed again. “You really want a down-home, hoe-down kind of country place where you get barbecue sauce all over your face and Billy Bob tries to make a pass at you?”

  She laughed again. “That’s it exactly. And just think, I’ll be with such a guy’s guy—truck, beer, testosterone, nice butt. What more could a girl ask? Look, Alton’s coming up. I’ll keep an eye out for Petersboro.”

  “Just watch the Porsche. Sherlock probably has MAX on her lap and he’s providing them directions.”

  “Nah, she’s a real navigator. I’ll bet she’s using a plain old map.”

  Ben slowed to match the Porsche. The squad cars behind him kept thirty feet back.

  Savich led them directly into a subdivision of ranch-style homes not far from the highway. A half-dozen squad cars were angled around one of them, a dozen or more police huddled behind them, using the cars for shields.

  CHAPTER

  28

  PETERSBORO, MARYLAND

  NEIGHBORS WERE GATHERED, talking and pointing, looking both scared and excited, held behind a police line half a block away from the house. Savich pulled the Porsche behind a squad car three houses away from where Austin Douglas Barrister lived. Ben and the two highway patrol cars pulled in behind him.