The Beginning

by Catherine Coulter

  He grinned down at her. “You’re doing very well. Don’t whine. You took karate before, so it’s not at all new to you. Learning how to fall is very important.”

  “I’m still not going to get up. It’s been two years.”

  He sighed, then offered her his hand. “All right. It can be your turn now. But I didn’t do all that just to torture you. If you don’t know how to fall properly, you might as well hang it up. Now it’s your turn. You get to toss me around.”

  She grabbed his hand, leaped to her feet, and took the position.

  He grinned at her. Her look was intense, as grim as could be. She wanted to kill him. “Never stop thinking, Sherlock. Never stop looking at my eyes. Get your muscles ready, but don’t tense. You know how to do it. Okay? Let’s go.”

  He let her throw him, using his own momentum to help her. But she was hooting and shouting that she’d finally gotten him on the mat. “Not bad,” he said as he got back to his feet. They went through that single routine for another half hour.

  She finally stepped back, bent over, her chest heaving, so exhausted she could barely breathe. “Enough. I’m nearly dead. I’ve nearly sweated off my eyebrows.”

  He tossed her a towel. It was perfectly dry. He wasn’t even sweating. “Now that you’ve gotten a renewed taste, what do you think?”

  She threw the towel at him. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life.”

  He laughed and tossed the towel back to her.

  “I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

  “Yeah, but on the other hand, it’s you in control and not a gun.”

  “You can’t smack someone from twenty feet, sir. Even I could have blown you away if you hadn’t been so close to me.”

  “True, but I was and if it had been the real thing, then you’d be dead. I don’t want that to happen. I’ll be spending a lot of time training you. I don’t want you to go get yourself shot. Now, there’s a class that would be great for you. It’s both women and men, and the guy who teaches it is an old buddy of mine. His name’s Chico and he’s one tough buzzard. He might let you in even if you do have skinny little arms.”

  She laughed. It was impossible not to. They both showered and changed. He walked her home, gave her a salute, and said, “You get your apartment furnished this weekend, Sherlock. No more excuses. See you at headquarters Monday. Here’s Chico’s phone number. Oh, Sherlock. You might be kind of sore tomorrow, but nothing too bad. Be sure to take a long hot bath. Maybe a couple of aspirin, too. You might also consider some ice packs first.”

  He paused a moment, looking at her face, clean of any makeup, her ratty hair, curls straggling around her face. He cocked his head to one side, then just smiled at her. “You did fine, Sherlock, just fine. I plan to overlook all your whining.”

  She eyed the sidewalk, wondering if she could possibly throw him.

  “I’m watching your eyes. I’m seeing right into your twisted mind. Nah, Sherlock, don’t try to toss me into the flower bed, not tonight.” He waved and walked away.

  She stood watching him a moment before she went into the town house. And then she watched him until he turned at the corner, east.

  “Is that Savich?”

  She was so startled she nearly fell over backward. As she was flailing for balance, he came out from behind a tree. “Oh my heavens, it’s you, Douglas. You nearly stopped my heart. Is something the matter? Is everyone all right?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve been waiting for you, Lacey. I came over hoping we could have dinner. But you weren’t here.”

  “No, I was at the gym. Savich beat the stuffing out of me.” At his stare, she added, “Karate. I don’t know if you remember, but I began taking karate lessons two years ago, then stopped. I’m getting back into it, starting with learning how to fall.”

  “Why with him?”

  “I’ll be taking classes with a guy named Chico after tonight. Knowing Savich, he’ll want me there every night.”

  “Is the guy coming on to you, Lacey?”

  “Goodness, Douglas, he’s my boss. He’s the chief of the unit. It’s all business.”

  “Yeah, he’s got the best way to get to you.”

  He was jealous. It was amazing to see this side of him. She smiled up at him and lightly placed her hand on his arm. “Agent Savich is a professional. He has no interest in anybody in his unit, not the kind you’re worried about.” She thought about Hannah Paisley. Was there something between Savich and Hannah?

  Douglas saw the lie in her eyes. Why? He’d never known her to lie, but on the other hand, he hadn’t seen her in five months. The damnable FBI had had her in their clutches for sixteen weeks. What more would they do to her? He breathed in deeply. “Why don’t we go inside? You can change, then I’ll take you to dinner. I’ve got to go back to San Francisco in the morning.”

  “That would be nice, Douglas. When you get home, you’ll be speaking to Candice Addams, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and preceded him into her empty town house.

  NINE

  She smiled at the guard and flipped open her black FBI wallet. Her beautiful gold star shone.

  “You’re Agent Sherlock?” He checked the list in his hand. “You’re a new agent?”

  “Yes, I would like to go to my office and do some more work.”

  “Hey, you can’t light your pipe here in the building, Sherlock.”

  “That’s too bad. I’ve got a really nice blend.”

  “Guess you hear that lots, huh?”

  The guard was about her age, black, his head shaved, a real hard jaw. “No,” she said, grinning at him, “this was the very first time.”

  “How about: Do you live on Baker Street?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “All right. But I’ll be thinking of a new one you really haven’t heard before. You’re clean. Sign right here. On your way out, check with me again. Oh, my name’s Nick.”

  She waved back at the guard. She walked to the elevators, the low heels of her shoes loud on the marble floor. If anyone asked, she planned to say that she wanted to do more study on the Radnich case. She exited the elevator at the fifth floor, walked down a long hall, turned right, then left, down another hall. She unlocked the door to the CAU. It was dark. Unfortunately she had to light up the entire area. It was different at night. The absence of people, laughing, talking, just breathing, robbed her of even an illusion of safety. She was alone in this large room. She also had her SIG in her holster.

  “Don’t be a goon and a wimp.” She laughed, a ghostly sound in the room. She hated the overhead fluorescent lights.

  She brought up the menu on her computer and checked all the available databases. She found him after only twenty minutes. She would have found him in under two minutes if he’d killed any more women in the past seven years. But he hadn’t.

  She read the profile, then read it again, cursed. She could have written it. She’d written profiles, dozens of them, during her graduate courses in Criminal Psychology. She’d even written her Master’s thesis on The Inclusive Psychometry of the Serial Criminal. She supposedly knew all the ingredients that went into the psychotic mind, co-mingled in endless patterns to produce a monster. The “inclusive” had been her advisor’s idea. She still thought it sounded obtuse and pretentious, but her advisor had patted her on the back and told her he knew what the professionals respected. She’d passed, so at least she must have sounded convincing in her defense. In fact, she’d gotten high grades on all the various protocols, tests, and measuring tools she’d developed to predict and judge the depths of contamination in the serial murderer’s mind. None of it had helped. He’d gone underground.

  But even the FBI profile hadn’t provided a clue about where to find him. There was nothing at all that provided a different slant or perspective. Nothing new. Wait. She scrolled up again and reread two sentences. “The subject would never vary in his execution. His mind is locked into performing this single repetitive act agai
n and again.”

  It made sense. As far as she knew, each of the seven murders had been utterly identical. She slowly went through all the police reports, including Belinda’s, then printed them out.

  She hated the autopsy reports, but through the courses she’d taken, she’d learned to remove herself from the gruesome details, most of which were couched in medicalese. But the photos were different, tougher. She didn’t read Belinda’s autopsy report. She knew she’d have to, but not now. No, not now, or tomorrow either. She printed out all of them, including Belinda’s.

  She had to stop. She’d barely be able to carry out all the papers she’d already printed out.

  Nick was smiling, that jaw of his out there, when he saw her. “You got lots of stuff there, Agent Sherlock. You gonna take it all back to two twenty-one B Baker Street now? I just remembered the two twenty-one B part.”

  “Yep. It’s all on Moriarty, you know. I’ll catch that villain yet.”

  “I don’t know about this Moriarty. But I did see a Sherlock Holmes movie about that hound. Boy, was that hound mean.”

  “It was a good one,” she agreed as she signed out.

  “You’ll be working more overtime?”

  “Probably. They’re all real hardnoses here. They never let up.”

  When she reached her car, she clicked her security alarm before she reached her Ford Explorer. Everything worked. Lights went on inside. No one had broken in.

  When she got to her town house, she checked all the entries, then fastened the dead bolts and the two chains. She turned on the security alarm. She left her bedroom door open.

  She read over the reports far into the night. But not Belinda’s, not just yet.

  “FEAST your eyes on this, Sherlock.”

  She looked down at a map with dots on it. The computer had connected a number of lines. “It’s the Star of David, Ollie. So what?”

  He was rubbing his hands together. “Nothing bad happened, Sherlock. Savich and I got there and we talked with everybody. You know Savich, he was cool and low-key and then he showed this to everyone. I thought Captain Samuels—she’s with the St. Petersburg Police Department—was going to kiss him. These four dots are where the killer’s already hit. Savich just did some extrapolation and voilà!”

  “It could be anything, Ollie. A Star of David?” She studied the three dots that represented murder sites. They formed a nearly perfect right-sideup equilateral triangle. The other murder could very well be the beginning of an upside-down equilateral triangle, but who knew? “Well, sure, it could be, but it could also be random.”

  “We’ll soon see,” Ollie said. “If you go with Savich’s reasoning, then the guy is going to kill right here next.” He pointed to the next point.

  “That’s pretty neat,” she said. “But no ideas on how the Ghost gets into the nursing homes and out again without anyone noticing?”

  “Not yet. But the surveillance on the next one Savich pinpointed is going to be intense. You know what? The media took up your word. All the papers and TV are screaming about the Ghost murdering their grandmothers.”

  “Surely not. How would they know about our saying that?”

  Ollie looked down at his black wing tips. “Well, I kind of said it to a TV woman who was really pretty and wanted something so badly.” Ollie looked up at her and grinned. “I thought Savich was going to deck me.”

  “Better you than me. He’s already thrown me all over that gym of his. I’m still sore, but I don’t dare say anything because he’ll accuse me of whining.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? He’s got you into karate?”

  She nodded.

  “He told me I was one of the best basketball players in the Bureau. He said I should keep myself in shape playing games with all my nieces and nephews. He said kids kept you honest and in shape out of fear of humiliation.”

  “Ha. He just said that because he realized he couldn’t throw you around, the sexist jerk.”

  “Nah, he cleaned my clock but good when I asked him about karate. He really flatten you, Sherlock?”

  “More times than I can count.”

  “What’s this about a sexist jerk?”

  Both she and Ollie turned to see Savich standing behind them, his laptop in one hand, a modem in the other.

  “I don’t know about any sexist jerk, do you, Ollie?”

  “Me? I never even heard the word except from Maria, and she didn’t even know what it meant.”

  Savich grunted at them. “What do you think of the Star of David angle, Sherlock?”

  “It’s so weird as to have a grain of truth in it. But you know, the murders started in Virginia, not Florida. That could put a monkey wrench in the works.”

  “Agreed. We’ll see soon enough. The local cops are covering the next probable nursing home.”

  She frowned at him. “I do prefer comparing all the physical evidence, but truth be told there isn’t all that much. Actually, this Star of David thing, well, I have this feeling you’re right. But I also have the feeling it won’t matter. He’ll probably kill at the nursing home you picked out but no one will see him.”

  “She’s said what I’m feeling,” Ollie said. “It’s driving me nuts. I’ve asked the computer to compare and contrast all sorts of evidence, but we’re coming up with nothing.”

  “We’ll get him, Ollie.”

  “I sure hope so,” Sherlock said. She turned to Ollie. “Did your future mother-in-law convince Maria that you’re a workaholic since you were gone for the whole weekend?”

  “No, I blamed it on the chief. I told her that Agent Savich would kick me into the street if I didn’t go with him. Then I’d be blackballed and permanently on unemployment. She backed off.”

  Savich laughed and walked back to his office. Sherlock saw Hannah Paisley rise quickly and follow him. To her surprise, Ollie was watching Hannah, a frown on his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing really. I wish Hannah would be a little more cool about Savich.”

  Sherlock didn’t say a word; she didn’t want to know anything personal about anybody. It was safer that way. But Ollie didn’t notice, said thoughtfully, “I heard Savich and Hannah dated before she came to the Unit. Then when she joined the Unit, word was that Savich called it off. I heard him say that no one in the Unit should dip his Bureau quill into Bureau ink.”

  “Now that was sexist, Ollie. You think Hannah’s still interested, then?”

  “Oh yeah, look at her. She can’t keep her eyes off him. Why don’t you talk to her, Sherlock? Maybe she’d listen to you. Savich isn’t interested, or if he is, he still wouldn’t go near a woman agent in his unit.”

  Sherlock shook her head as she punched up one of the forensic reports. She didn’t care what Savich did with his Bureau quill. Goodness, she thought. She’d just made a joke to herself. It had been a long time. She saw Hannah come out of Savich’s office, her face set. She wasn’t about to say a word to that formidable woman. She sincerely doubted Hannah Paisley would listen to her opinion on the time of day. She went back to work on the Ghost.

  SHERLOCK unfolded the Boston Globe, the last large city newspaper in her pile. She was tired of scouring the ten largest city newspapers every day of the week, but she couldn’t stop. She’d done it for nearly seven years. It cost a fortune for all the subscriptions, but she had enough money from her trust fund so she’d never have to worry about feeding herself and buying as many subscriptions as she wanted. She knew he was out there. She would never stop.

  She couldn’t believe it. She nearly dropped her coffee cup. It was on page three. Not a big article, but large enough to immediately catch her eye. She read:

  “Yesterday evening at 6:30, Hillary Ramsgate, 28, a stockbroker with Hameson, Lyle & Obermeyer, was found brutally murdered in an abandoned warehouse on Pier Forty-one. Detective Ralph Budnack of the BPD said that she had apparently been led through a bizarre game that had resulted in her death from multiple stab wounds to her chest and
abdomen. A note tied around her neck said that she had lost the game and had to pay the forfeit. At this point, police say they’re following leads.”

  He was back. In Boston. He’d begun again. She prayed this poor woman was his first victim of this new cycle, that she hadn’t missed others, or that he hadn’t murdered women in small towns where the AP wouldn’t pick up the story.

  Hillary Ramsgate. Poor woman. She reread the newspaper article, then rose from her kitchen table. She had died just as Belinda and six other women in San Francisco had seven years ago. They’d all lost the game.

  What the newspaper article didn’t say was that her tongue had also been cut out. The police were holding that back. But Sherlock knew all about that. She’d been brutally stabbed and her tongue had been sliced out.

  She realized then that yesterday had been the seventh anniversary of the last murder.

  Seven years. He’d struck seven years ago to the day. The monster was back.

  SHERLOCK was pacing back and forth in front of Savich’s office when he came around the corner. He watched her a moment. He said very quietly, so as not to startle her, “Sherlock, it’s seven in the morning. What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

  When she turned abruptly to face him, he saw more pain on her face than he’d seen in a long time. Then the hollow, despairing look was gone. She’d gotten a grip. She’d hidden the pain again. And left nothing at all.

  What was going on here?

  “Sherlock? What’s wrong?”

  She smoothed out her face. What had he seen? She even managed a smile. “I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I have a favor to ask. I need to take a few days off and go to Boston.”

  He unlocked his office door and waved her in. “Boston?”

  “Yes. I have a sick aunt. It’s an emergency. I know I’ve only been in the Unit a couple of weeks, but there’s not anyone else to see to this situation.”

  “Your aunt is elderly?”

  “Not really, well, she’s got Alzheimer’s. She’s gotten suddenly worse.”

  “A relative called you?”