The bullet slammed into O’Banion’s left shoulder. Blood was now streaming down the side of his face and along his arm.
“That all you got, shithole?” O’Banion could scarcely speak, but his eyes seemed alight with an unearthly glow. “You and the bitch’ll have to do better than that.”
The next shot took off the side of his head. He jerked backward, and Gunn shot him again, this time through the right eye. Blood spurted in torrents, covering him from head to toe. Bits of pink tissue and brain matter littered Vera’s cheeks.
“Jesus,” she said, as what was left of O’Banion’s head arched back at her. “Jesus Christ.”
* * *
TAROQ’S HEAT threatened to scald her, or so it seemed to Caroline. He took her at the sink. As she turned her back on him, he pulled down her jeans. Bracing her elbows on the sink top, she wrapped her long fingers around the spigot. He entered her, roughly and without prelude. The first time, when he had begun to caress and fondle her, she told him to stop. Now she lifted her head to stare at the Syrian.
The rhythmic battering commenced. As usual, she felt neither pleasure nor pain. Sex was for manipulation, not ecstasy. Besides, from an early age she had been unable to lose herself in sex. She had never experienced a climax, or even anything approaching it. Sex for her was like fixing a car’s engine. Satisfaction came when the engine started up and the car began to move in the direction she desired.
Men, women, she had experimented with both—and multiple combinations—but the result was always the same. How ironic to possess a body made for sex and to feel nothing from it. That was just one of the tricks life had played on her. No remorse or guilt. For her, “cruelty” was a word without meaning. When she was a child, she had read the definitions of these words in a dictionary, but she could not get her mind around the concepts. She might as well have been reading Martian.
When she grew older, trolling through the libraries in D.C., she had read through various psychiatric texts and learned about herself, or, more accurately, learned how the world would view her if it ever got to know her. She knew then and there that job number one was to ensure that it never did. This work began with her parents. No biggie there. Her father was so preoccupied with his Machiavellian designs, not to mention his serial mistresses, he paid her scant attention. As for her mother, she was addicted to all manner of psychotropic pills, which she compounded with the precision of a bartender mixing cocktails. Each one of her powdered elixirs was dependent on the time of day and where she was in her menstrual cycle. As a result, she was uninterested in anything other than herself, though when the occasion called for it she could give a convincing performance as a good wife and mother. She had a personality as fragile as porcelain. Her father—a force of nature—had married her because of her family’s Philadelphia Main Line pedigree and connections inside the Beltway, which, in the early days, he used to brilliant advantage. That he soon crushed her with the brute force of his personality was of little matter to him. He’d gotten what he needed from her and, in all but name, had moved on.
Caroline’s teachers were more difficult to hide from. They sent her to psychologists who wanted to probe the inner workings of her mind. She spit in their faces and left school. There was no scandal, no possibility of consequence, her father saw to that. Not out of love or concern; it was a knee-jerk response.
Finally, her parents, or what passed for them, woke from their self-inflicted torpor and insisted that she “get help.” After six months of planning, while remaining unresponsive to the shrinks’ various techniques, she vanished—completely, utterly, irrevocably. It had taken her that long to ensure that when her father sent his hired minions after her, they’d never be able to find her. She used computers to help her, erasing not only her tracks, but all trace of Caroline Lynette Carson.
Taroq had the endurance of a Tantric practitioner, but she knew how to bring him to his limit. The pounding was now so intense tears rolled down her cheeks. She’d had enough of this particular scenario, so she squeezed her inner muscles with such force that Taroq emitted a deep groan, despite his innate caution. She smiled at her pale reflection in the window, superimposed over the Syrian, all unknowing, as he sat, deep in the discussion of men, to which she was excluded.
She was still a teenager when she had found the Syrian. Or perhaps he had found her, it was difficult to say. The point was that they had discovered a common ground, a place where the chaos of life made sense to both of them. On the same wavelength, they began to work together—tentatively at first, each wary of the other. But, at length, there sprang up between them a working relationship of sorts. It was, by necessity, clandestine. Each for their own reasons, neither of them wanted the relationship known, and so it became their most closely guarded secret.
Then, either by accident or by design, someone found out about it and all hell had broken loose.
Behind her, Taroq spent himself, and with a flick of her hips and shoulders she shook him off her. His legs folded up beneath him and he slid down onto his haunches, leaning against her legs. Without either thought or emotion, she ran her fingers through the moist warmth of his thick hair.
“Habibi,” he said, still panting, “one of these days you will surely be the death of me.”
* * *
CHIEF DETECTIVE Heroe sat in her office, for the fifteenth time poring over report after report on the three murders and the disappearance of Agent Naomi Wilde, which she believed to be the fourth murder. Her gut told her that all four were connected, and yet, she could find no tangible evidence to link them. She’d sent her people out to interview all of Warren’s friends and associates. She herself had run down his public history on government databases and had scrutinized every file on his hard drive at work. A more squeaky-clean individual would be hard to find.
This same crew was now in the process of running down all of Naomi Wilde’s friends and associates. Grabbing her coat and pocketbook, Heroe left the office, went down to her car, and took off. She was due to interview Wilde’s sister in less than an hour from now, but she doubted that would lead anywhere. The woman’s husband had just left her and she was a basket case.
She weighed the merits of making another unannounced visit to M. Bob Evrette at Middle Bay Bancorp before or after she hauled Andrew Gunn’s ass in for questioning. The forensics detail she had sent over to Middle Bay had spent hours spraying, powdering, irradiating every last goddamn thing in Billy Warren’s office. They’d found nothing, except what you’d expect to find: Warren’s own fingerprints. She looked over the list of bank personnel one more time, though what she expected to find there she couldn’t say.
This was the most damnable case she’d ever run across in her decade in the department. Heroe was something of a wunderkind at Metro. She was the youngest detective to make highest grade in the department’s history. She was such a legend that headhunters from virtually every branch of the federal clandestine services had made a play for her. She’d turned them all down, not because she wasn’t intrigued, but because she was incredibly loyal. As a female in a male-dominated universe it was of paramount importance to her to have a boss who both understood her and wasn’t intimidated by her. Alan Fraine had plucked her as a new recruit, mentored her, made sure she took all the right exams, and had protected her from the good-old-boy cabal at work in every police department that had, at first, sought to impede her progress.
She was smart enough to understand that no matter her talent and expertise, she never would have risen so high so fast were it not for Fraine’s efforts. In fact, without him, she might not have risen at all. She was what might be called a three-strike woman. Besides her gender and her mixed race, she had her physical appearance going against her. She was beautiful and built like a brick shithouse, as her granny used to say. She was part African-American, part Cherokee. She’d been born and raised in New Orleans, mostly by her granny. When she was six, her father had died in an oil rig accident—a fire on an offshore station th
at had left no trace of him. Her mother had tried to carry on, but Heroe’s father had been the love of her life, and she’d never recovered, spiraling down into a drunkard’s purgatory, despite her mother-in-law’s efforts. Granny, a full-blooded Cherokee, was not someone to be trifled with. She was revered in New Orleans, had often, in her younger days, been Queen of the Mardi Gras. At ninety, she still turned heads when she walked down the streets of Tremé, where she had lived all her life. Heroe got most of her looks from her granny.
When she was a kid, Granny used to tell her stories before she went to bed. Tales of Cherokee warriors and maidens, of course. But the stories Heroe loved best were the ones concerning Aladdin. She was sure Granny had made up most of them, because she was an inveterate storyteller. The story Heroe liked best concerned the genie who lights the way. This was not the famous genie in the lamp, but another one, who taught Aladdin how to see in the dark when everyone else was blind.
Fraine was her genie who lights the way.
She was no more than five minutes from Rachel Cowan’s house when her cell phone emitted a peculiar ring. She unclipped it, then saw her phone was unengaged. The ringtone continued. Rummaging in her handbag, she drew out Naomi Wilde’s cell. For a moment she stared at it, as if it had grown a head. The screen read UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. She pressed the green button and heard a man’s voice.
“Naomi?”
“No. This is Chief Detective Nona Heroe, head of the Violent Crimes Unit at Metro. Who’s calling, please?”
There was silence for so long, Heroe felt compelled to say, “Hello. Are you there?”
“This is Jack McClure. Where is Naomi and why are you answering her cell?”
* * *
JACK, SITTING in the 737 waiting for all the children to get settled, felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. A chief detective answering Naomi’s phone could not be good news.
“… why are you answering her cell?”
“Mr. McClure, I’ve heard of you.”
“You didn’t answer my questions.” His anxiety lent him impatience.
“Agent Wilde is missing.”
“Missing?” Given her communiques while he was out of touch, that was ominous.
“We found her car. It had gone off the road, down an embankment in rural Maryland. But we didn’t find her body, nor did we find any trace that she’d been in the car when it went off the road.”
Now Jack was truly worried. “What does her partner say?”
“Frankly, Agent McKinsey hasn’t been much help, and now, thanks to the intervention of Andrew Gunn, I can’t talk to him.”
“Fortress Securities,” Jack said, “that Andrew Gunn?”
“None other.”
Gunn had ties to Henry Holt Carson. “Why wasn’t it McKinsey’s boss who extracted him?”
“A question that needs to be answered.” There was a small pause. “Listen, Mr. McClure—”
“Jack. Please.”
“Fine. I know from talking to Naomi’s associates that you and she were friends, so I’m thinking maybe I can trust you.”
“You can, Chief.”
“Cut that out. It’s Nona.”
Jack laughed. He liked this woman.
“I’m very sorry to say this, but my gut is telling me that Naomi is dead.”
Jack struggled to accept this. “What gives you that feeling?”
Heroe told him about her suspicions concerning Peter McKinsey.
“It might very well be that you’re right,” Jack said. “I’m in Macedonia. While I was out of cell range, Naomi left three voice mails and now I’m very sorry I didn’t get them until a short time ago.”
Then he told Heroe about Naomi’s suspicions regarding her partner, following him out to Teddy Roosevelt Island. He did not tell her about Annika’s possible involvement, telling himself that bringing her into it would muddy the investigation unnecessarily. Not that that wasn’t true, but for his own reasons he was determined to protect Annika until he could determine exactly what her part in all this was.
“Christ,” Heroe said, “I think I’d better haul my ass out to the island tout de suite and have a look-see.” There was a short pause. “The man who was with McKinsey, could he be this Mbreti you told me about?”
“It’s possible, but I have a feeling not. Judging from Naomi’s description this man is an Arab of some sort. The way these people work, it makes more sense that Mbreti is a Caucasian American.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Jack knew he’d hit upon something important, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what.
He was silent so long that Heroe said, “What is it? Have you thought of something else?”
“I’m not sure. But, listen, since it seems clear that neither Naomi nor you trust McKinsey, is there any way to track her movements in the hours before she went missing?”
Heroe sighed heavily. “Without trusting him, I don’t know how. He claimed they were following leads on how Arjeta Kraja was brought into the country. He also said the leads were dead ends. According to his account, they then went back to the office. They were exhausted, which I can believe. He said Agent Wilde said she was going home. That, I’m afraid, is the sum and substance of his account.”
“Doesn’t sound like much.”
“No,” she said, “indeed it doesn’t.”
Jack considered. “So you can’t get to him.”
“He’s become a protected entity,” she said. “Just like your friend, Alli Carson.”
Jack heard the slight rebuke in her voice. “Alli was framed. Believe me, she’s got nothing to do with this.”
“You can’t deny that her frame was the trigger for three, maybe four homicides.”
Now they were skirting too close to Annika for his comfort. “All I’m saying is that pursuing her is going in the wrong direction.”
“Agent McKinsey doesn’t think so,” Heroe said.
“Can you think of a better reason to look elsewhere?”
* * *
THREE MINUTES after exchanging cell numbers with McClure, Heroe pulled up outside Rachel Cowan’s house. She figured she’d have to work ten lifetimes to afford that kind of mansion. Plus, the only black people around here were probably housekeepers and gardeners. The nannies were all young girls from Ireland or the Baltics.
She opened Naomi Wilde’s file, which she had obtained from Naomi’s superior, and read it again. Thirty-six years old, born in Wheeling, West Virginia, moved to D.C. when she was four. One living sibling, Rachel, two years her senior. Graduated with honors from Georgetown University, majoring in criminology, minoring in psychology. Tried her hand at forensic pathology before applying to the Secret Service. Partnered with Peter McKinsey for six years. Assigned to protect the FLOTUS following the election of Edward Carson a year and a half ago. Commendations, highest marks, et cetera, et cetera. Heroe decided that she was looking at the jacket of an exemplary agent, and she felt a particular pang of sorrow, of loss, as if Naomi Wilde were her own sister.
She got out of the car and, checking out the sprinkling of A-list cars, went up the steps and rang the bell. She had a flash of a uniformed maid opening the door, but it was Rachel Cowan, ragged as a battlefield pennant, who greeted her and ushered her inside.
The interior did not disappoint. It was a breathtaking display of egregious consumerism run rampant. They stood in the vast living room. Rachel was either too aggrieved or too rude to ask her to sit down. Glancing around, Heroe didn’t know whether she would want to. This level of consumerism gave her hives.
“I apologize for disturbing you at what must be a difficult time,” Heroe said.
“And yet you did.”
Not a promising beginning.
Rachel, perhaps appropriately dressed in the color of dried blood, stood with her hands clasped in front of her. There were deep circles under her eyes, which were red and raw-looking. She looked exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept in days, and her eyes kept darting here and th
ere. Heroe wondered whether she was on some medication, or ought to be.
“No matter,” Rachel continued as if there had been no pause. “What is it you want?”
Heroe took out her pad, giving her a bit more time to assess her subject. She strongly suspected that she needed to strike the right tone to get Rachel to open up.
“I understand your sister was here to see you yesterday.”
“That’s right.” There was a wary note in her voice.
“Can you tell me about it?” Heroe said as casually as she could.
Rachel turned gimlet-eyed and she crossed her arms over her breasts. “Why? Are you investigating her or something?”
Heroe gestured. “It’s nothing like that, I assure you.”
“Because if you are, there isn’t a better or more dedicated agent in the Secret Service.”
“Your loyalty is admirable, Mrs. Cowan, and I appreciate your opinion. But not to worry, we’re interested in Naomi’s partner.”
Rachel seemed to relax somewhat. “I doubt I can help you, then. Peter stayed in the car while Naomi and I were together.”
Heroe made a notation. “You mean he drove her here?”
Rachel nodded. “That’s right.”
“So you didn’t see her car?”
“They came in one car, that much I saw, and it wasn’t hers.”
Interesting, Heroe thought. So it stands to reason that Wilde and McKinsey went from here directly to the place where she was killed, otherwise she would have retrieved her cell from her car.
“Do you know McKinsey well?”
Rachel made a sound, as if releasing a puff of air. “I don’t know him at all, beyond meeting him a couple of times.”
“Your sister never spoke to you about him?”
“Naomi never spoke to me—or anyone, for that matter—about anything pertaining to her work. She made that clear to every person she knew, including me.”
Heroe wrote that down, but she needed to be certain, so she said, “Did your sister mention Peter McKinsey yesterday in any context whatsoever?”
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