The FBI Thrillers Collection

by Catherine Coulter

  “Oh yes.”

  B.B. climbed out of his cruiser to meet them in the driveway. “Sheriff, Agent Warnecki. Somebody with the boys, Sheriff?”

  “The boys went over to the Claussons’ for dinner and Foosball with their friends.”

  “Are you going to arrest him, Sheriff?”

  Dix said, “We’ll see, B.B.” He turned to scan the house as he murmured to Ruth, “When Christie disappeared, everyone in the department became the boys’ substitute mothers.” He turned back to B.B. “We’ve got all our ducks in a row. Now, where did he go this afternoon?”

  “He drove to Tara about two o’clock, then came back here maybe an hour ago. Looks like he turned on every light in the house.”

  It did indeed, Dix thought, scanning the house. “I want you to stay in your car, B.B. If for some reason Dr. Holcombe leaves the house before we do, give me a call.”

  “Especially if he’s running around waving a gun,” Ruth added.

  Dix took Ruth’s arm, and they walked up the stone pathway to the front door. Gordon answered the door looking like an aristocrat in a gray cashmere turtleneck sweater and black slacks. Elegant and worldly, but exhausted, his eyes hooded and dull.

  He knows we’re here for him, Dix thought, he knows.

  Gordon paused in the doorway, staring at them. “Dix, Agent Warnecki. It’s Sunday; to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “We’d like to speak to you, Gordon.”

  Gordon looked over Dix’s shoulder. “I’ve seen your deputy outside. I hope you don’t want to bring him in, too.”

  “No, my deputy is guarding our backs.” Dix walked into the entryway as Gordon gestured them in.

  “We’ve got some things to discuss with you, Gordon, like who hired Tommy Dempsey and Jackie Slater.”

  “Who? Oh, those men you killed in the car chase. Oh, all right. Come on in then, it’s not like I can stop you.” Gordon waved them into the living room.

  Dix and Ruth watched Gordon walk to a drink trolley on the far side of the room, lift a brandy bottle, an eyebrow arched. “Either of you want a drink?”

  Ruth and Dix shook their heads. Dix said, “No, we’re fine.”

  Ruth looked around the large open space, all windows and rich oak, dominated by a large grand piano at the far end of the room. The walls were covered with musical scores, beautifully framed—all of them, she knew, originals penned by the composers themselves. It was a comfortable room, elegant and subtle, filled with earth tones and oversized leather furniture. A fire burned brightly in the stone fireplace.

  They watched Gordon pour himself a liberal amount of brandy, splashing some of it over the side of the snifter, as if he’d already had too much.

  “You have a lovely Steinway, Dr. Holcombe. I noticed it when we were here before.”

  “Yes, you saw everything, didn’t you, when you searched my house?” Gordon walked to the eleven-foot black grand piano and laid a hand lightly on the keys. “Did you know that Steinway fought at the Battle of Waterloo?”

  They shook their heads, and Gordon sighed, sipped his brandy. “Who cares?”

  Dix said without preamble, “I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet, Gordon, that we know who hired Dempsey and Slater. Or perhaps you already know?”

  “How would I know? Tell me, Dix.”

  “Helen Rafferty.”

  His hand jerked, and more brandy spilled out of his snifter. “Helen hired those two thugs? Why, for heaven’s sake? To kill Agent Warnecki here? Helen didn’t even know her last Saturday. That makes no sense, Dix.”

  “No, Helen didn’t hire them to kill Ruth. She hired them to kill Erin.”

  “What did you say? Kill Erin? That’s crazy. Why would Helen do such an insane thing? No, I was thinking it was that boy lover of Marian’s, Sam Moraga. I heard he wanted Erin but she didn’t want him.” He stopped dead, stared at them. “Wait a minute, here, Dix. This means you no longer think I killed Erin? You think I’m innocent?”

  Dix said, “We know you didn’t hire them, Gordon. Our apologies for believing you did.”

  “We also know Sam Moraga had nothing to do with Erin’s murder, either,” Ruth said.

  “So you’re blaming Helen? I don’t understand any of this, Dix.” He leaned heavily against the grand piano.

  Dix said, “We’re cops, Gordon. It’s our job to keep asking questions until all the pieces fit together. And for a while there, all the pieces pointed right at you. But in the end, they didn’t fit when it came to your killing Erin and Walt. Truth be told, Gordon, we think you really loved Erin.”

  “Yes, yes, of course I did, Dix. She was filled with light, filled with love.” For a moment, they were afraid he would burst into tears. He got hold of himself and managed to look contemptuous. “So you’ve been going down the list. Very well. Tell me what you think Helen had to do with it.”

  “Ruth and I spent the afternoon combing through Helen’s bank records. We found three large withdrawals she made in the past three weeks, in cash. We’ve been through her telephone records as well. She called Richmond twice, Tommy Dempsey’s number specifically. There was one call from Dempsey’s number to hers, last Thursday. Helen may have been a good receptionist, but she wasn’t an experienced criminal. She left a trail.”

  “She hired those men to murder my Erin? But that can’t be right, Dix. She always supported me, helped me. I think she loved me. Why would she do such a thing?”

  Ruth said, “It’s not so hard to figure out, is it, Gordon? Helen saw that Erin Bushnell wasn’t like the other students you took as lovers. She realized that Erin was the first woman you really loved, the one who might be with you for the long term, not just until she graduated. Helen had made herself accept that you turned her away because of your infirmity—that’s what she called it—your need for stimulation and even inspiration from those talented young women. So Helen was able to accept them, because they were temporary. Only she was a constant.

  “But then you met Erin and everything changed.”

  Gordon gulped down brandy, coughed, wiped his brimming eyes. “I would have given Erin anything. Anything.”

  “Yes, we know, and so did Helen. And she couldn’t live with that. She snapped.”

  “I still can’t believe it. How could someone like Helen find two criminals?”

  Ruth said, “We called Helen’s brother, Dave Rafferty. We asked him if Helen ever mentioned either of the men. He’s a high-school teacher, and he remembered he’d had Dempsey’s younger brother in a class. He was a troubled kid whose older brother was in and out of prison. Dave thought he’d probably talked to Helen about him. So she must have tracked the older Dempsey down.”

  Dix continued, “We think it was Helen who told them about Winkel’s Cave, as a good place to hide Erin’s body. Otherwise, they would have had no way of knowing about it. Did you or Chappy ever take Helen there?”

  Gordon said, “I don’t remember. Maybe Chappy took her there. I never liked that cave when we were boys, it was Chappy’s place.”

  “Helen knew about that entrance, she knew about the cave chamber. We think they chose how to kill Erin all on their own, though. Did you know they used a hallucinogenic drug to disable her, and after they killed her, they embalmed her and posed her? Did you know that, Gordon?”

  He looked like he was going to faint. “They embalmed her? Like morticians do?”

  Ruth nodded. “Morticians and insane people. We know that Dempsey’s stepfather worked in a funeral home. He must have hung around the place, watched the process. So Dempsey did something to really confuse things. He and Slater embalmed her, and as a final touch, posed her to make it look like a ritual killing rather than a contract killing, in case she was found too soon. And that part of it worked like a charm. It was an excellent distraction. We were led to believe a ritual serial killer might have murdered Erin Bushnell. We thought there might be other victims, and spent some time and effort looking for them—including all your former student lovers. And be
cause they are all alive and well, it didn’t really settle comfortably that you were some maniac serial killer.”

  Gordon’s face went white. “You believed I was capable of that? A killer who did that over and over?”

  “They made it look possible,” Ruth said. “But we know now it isn’t.”

  Dix said, “Whatever else Dempsey and Slater were, they were savvy when it came to their own survival. Until they made the mistake of coming after Ruth.”

  Gordon sat down on the piano bench, then looked over at Ruth. “However did you get away from them in that cave?”

  “That’s a good question. I know that if they realized I was there they would have killed me. They killed Walt, so there is no doubt they would have killed me, too. We believe that after I inhaled or touched the drug they used on Erin, I fell and struck my head. Still, I must have gotten my wits together enough to find my way out of the cave without them seeing me, maybe after they left. And I must have wandered through the woods until I collapsed near Dix’s house.”

  “But that’s at least four, five miles from Winkel’s Cave.”

  Ruth shrugged. “Neither Dix nor I can figure any other way I could have ended up in his woods.”

  “She’s in excellent shape,” Dix said, bringing Gordon’s attention back to him. “So even while she was hallucinating and sick, she could have wandered for hours. We figure Dempsey and Slater must have told Helen about finding Ruth’s car, with her wallet locked inside. So they knew she was an FBI agent. I’ll bet that shook them, because they had to believe she knew what they’d done. I imagine they searched for her for hours.”

  Dix continued, “Helen must have contacted them when she learned I found an unconscious woman in my woods who couldn’t remember what had happened to her. It didn’t seem like they had a choice, really, so they risked coming to my house Saturday night to kill her. The only thing they didn’t count on was dying.”

  Gordon was shaking his head. “I still can’t believe someone as devoted and kind as my Helen would have hired men like Dempsey and Slater. No, I think this is all a ruse to try to trap me somehow. I know you believe I hired them, maybe with Chappy’s help since he knows so many people in Richmond. That’s what you believe, isn’t it?”

  Dix said, “Oh no, Gordon, you’re being the actor here. You do believe Helen did it because she called you on Wednesday night and told you what she’d done. And that’s why you strangled her.”

  “That is insulting and ridiculous! You ask anyone, Helen had to come into my office to swat flies! I couldn’t kill anyone.”

  Ruth said, “We know Helen called you Wednesday night—again, Gordon, her phone records. She probably told you all about it when you went over to her house to see her. Was she remorseful, tearful, Gordon? Truly upset about the death and pain she’d caused? Did she intend to tell everyone and ruin your life? Did you kill her in a rage, for revenge, or was it more cold-blooded than that? I go for cold-blooded, myself, because you strangled her in her sleep, when she couldn’t see you, when she was at her most vulnerable. Were you trying to protect your reputation and your cushy little wood-paneled job?”

  Gordon slammed his fist down on the keyboard. “I don’t want to talk to either of you any more about this! You accused me of murdering Erin; you’ve had me watched continuously; you’ve searched my house, my office, my e-mail, for God’s sake. And you have found nothing! And through all this I have cooperated with you. And here, after all that, you have the gall to come to my house and accuse me of murdering Helen. You have no proof of anything!”

  So much for a distraught confession, Dix thought.

  But Gordon wasn’t through. “You are right about one thing, Dix. If what you say about Helen is true, then there is nothing left for me. Everything will come out now, no hope for it. I will have nothing—not Erin, not my reputation, my career, my good name. It’s only a matter of time before the board of directors of Stanislaus very civilly demands my resignation. Can you imagine how Chappy will delight in that? Of course you can. You have ruined my life, Dix, ruined it!”

  Gordon stuck out his hands. “So arrest me, find yourself a grand jury to indict me. You know it’s impossible because I didn’t kill Helen and so you can’t have any proof that I did. You think I’m stupid and weak or you wouldn’t even have come here.

  “Damn you both. Get out of my house. Don’t come back unless you come to arrest me.”

  It was as if he’d yelled out all his passion. He slumped forward, looking ineffably weary. He whispered, not looking at them, “Please leave. I want to be alone to mourn Erin, and Walt and Helen. I’m tired to my soul. I want to go to bed.”

  CHAPTER 38

  TARA

  MAESTRO, VIRGINIA

  MONDAY MORNING

  RUTH AND DIX sat facing Tony and Cynthia. Chappy sat in his big winged patriarch’s chair, his fingertips tapping.

  Dix looked around at Christie’s family, who were utterly silent. He didn’t think he’d ever been in their company when one of them wasn’t insulting or complaining about one of the others. He sat as silently as Ruth, tapping his foot, waiting for one of them to speak about Gordon. Of course they knew everything. It was all over Maestro.

  But no one said a word.

  Dix finally said, “So which one of you is going to tell me where Gordon went off to?”

  Chappy shrugged. “Can’t imagine why you’d think any of us would have a clue, Dix.” Chappy sat back and folded his hands over his belly. He chuckled, shook his head. “So old Twister’s gone into the wind, has he? Milt at the post office called me this morning, said your deputies were banging on doors trying to find him, but it seems he’s a ghost. How did you let that happen, Dix? Didn’t you have a deputy watching his house?”

  “We know a driver with Flying Cabs picked Gordon up on the street behind his house and drove him to Elderville. He was dropped off in a residential neighborhood. No one we’ve spoken to in the area knows him, no one saw him. Someone else must have picked him up from there.”

  “Good for him, I say,” Cynthia said, and toasted all of them with her last bite of muffin.

  “Uncle Gordon was free to go, Dix. And you don’t really have any proof against him, do you?” Tony asked. He sat forward, clasped his elegant hands between his knees. “Who cares if he took off? If you find out where he is, you still can’t bring him back.”

  “He left because there wasn’t anything here for him anymore, Dix,” Cynthia said. “He was ruined. He couldn’t face the humiliation, so he left.”

  Dix said, “That’s certainly putting the best face on it, Cynthia. The fact is, though, Gordon is no more accomplished a criminal than Helen Rafferty was. He knows he’s left tracks. That’s why he snuck off while he could.”

  The silence returned, none of them meeting Dix’s eyes.

  Dix looked at Tony. “I find it interesting that you didn’t bother to tell me all of Gordon’s accounts were closed out. I don’t suppose you helped him with that, Tony? I certainly can’t imagine Chappy doing it.”

  “It isn’t against the law to give a man his own money,” Tony said.

  Dix looked at each of them, wondering if there were words that would convince them. He didn’t think so. They were finally together on something, not set against one another. He gave it a try anyway. “I know Gordon wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the wherewithal to plan something like this.”

  Chappy chuckled. “Evidently old Twister’s got unplumbed depths. Who would have thought it possible?”

  Tony asked, “Who cares if someone helped arrange transportation, money, ID, whatever, for him, Dix? It’s not against the law.”

  Chappy grinned. “Hey, maybe I did it for old Twister.”

  Dix shook his head. “Chappy, you’re the only one I wouldn’t suspect of that. You can’t be in the same room with Gordon without your tearing into each other. I wouldn’t have thought you’d do anything for Gordon except visit him in jail, joking about a file in a cake.”

 
; Chappy rose slowly to his feet. He shook a finger at Dix. “Are you nuts, Dix? Gordon and I are brothers. All we’ve ever done is have some fun with each other.”

  Ruth said, “You know where he is, don’t you, Chappy?”

  Chappy smiled down at her. “He was going on about killing himself, the little pissant. I wasn’t going to let my own brother do that, not after we lost Christie, Dix. And he’s not going to spend the last years of his life rotting in prison, either. Not unless you can prove what he did and, of course, find him. Naturally, I have no clue where he is, Agent Ruth.”

  Dix said, “So I gather Gordon won’t be coming for a visit anytime soon. If he does, I think we’ll have to notify the Justice Department about a fake passport, won’t we?”

  Dix rose together with Ruth. “Chappy, you never cease to surprise me. I’d like to bring the boys over sometime soon. This has been a difficult time for them. Would that suit you?”

  “That would be nice, Dix,” Chappy said. “Real nice.”

  CHAPTER 39

  GREYHAVEN INN

  GREAT BEAR ROAD

  MAESTRO, VIRGINIA

  MONDAY LUNCHTIME

  “SORRY WE’RE LATE, guys, but we had a little business with Chappy, Tony, and Cynthia.”

  Sherlock grinned up at them and Savich rose to hug Ruth and shake Dix’s hand.

  “You two look like you could use a little more sleep,” Dix said. “You had a wild time last night.”

  “True enough,” Savich said. “We slept in this morning.”

  “At least until Sean jumped on the bed and began a war dance,” Sherlock said.

  Once they were all seated and had ordered, Dix looked around the large room with a huge quarried gray stone fireplace at one end and beams overhead.

  “This is one of the best-kept secrets for lunch in Maestro. Wait till you taste the vegetarian minestrone, Dillon.” He raised his coffee cup. “To a conclusion, of sorts, to the trouble in Maestro.”