The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  “While we are waiting, I want to go over your security measures again.”

  Mrs. Sutton sighed. Her eyes shifted to the ornate window.

  The husband sighed as well. How many times had they been over this information with how many jurisdictions, and how many other detectives?

  “That window?” he nodded to the pane his wife stared at. “That window probably costs more than your car, detective.”

  Nicole didn’t doubt it. To the naked eye, the window looked like any other upscale etched-glass pane. Beautiful, but commonplace in this part of town, with its mansions built in the Roaring Twenties. But Nicole knew that this glass window was impregnated with lead to interfere with any infrared and other video surveillance equipment. Plus, the pane was as bullet-resistant as possible, with a full four-layer thickness of alternating glass and polycarbonate material. To boot, it was one-way bullet resistant. Meaning that the beautifully etched window could stop an armor-piercing sniper shot, yet she could easily shoot out the window with her pistol. The technology existed, but it was just extremely expensive.

  “I am telling you, detective, that our house is as secure as the White House,” Mr. Sutton declared.

  “Really?” a voice came from behind them. Everyone in the room turned as the closet door creaked open.

  “Well,” a man’s voice said as he stepped out of the closet. “Then the president might want to be a little worried.”

  Mr. Sutton jumped from his seat and dove for a side table drawer. Nicole leapt up after him, slamming the drawer shut before the husband could find his gun.

  “Don’t,” Nicole said as she gripped the husband’s wrist. “That is Kent Harbinger. The profiler you requested.”

  * * *

  Kent relished the shock and horror crossing Mr. and Mrs. Sutton’s faces. Exactly the response that he wanted. He wanted to strip them of their self-created masks as the grieving parents. He wanted to see what brewed in their bellies.

  “H-H-How long?” Mrs. Sutton stammered. “How long have you been there?”

  “Five hours, give or take,” Kent answered.

  He loved the way Mrs. Sutton’s eyes flickered back and forth as she tried to think of what she and her husband might have said before Nicole arrived. What dark secrets might they have spilled when they thought they spoke in privacy?

  Oh, he heard plenty, all right.

  “I still don’t understand how you got past our security,” Mr. Sutton blurted out.

  Kent shrugged. “It was simple. I just had to wait for your cook, the lovely Maria, to come home with groceries. I waited for her to bend over just the slightest, so that I could see her punch in the code on the keypad. Then your maid, the svelte Antonia, rushed in once when the phone rang, so I was able to make a copy of her thumbprint on the pad.”

  Fury covered Mr. Sutton’s face. “Fired. They are all fired.”

  “Please,” Kent reprimanded the husband. “It wasn’t their fault. I could have gotten in half a dozen ways, and I wasn’t even trying that hard. If it weren’t for the fact that I just finished Halo and am waiting for the newest version of Gears of War, I probably would have shined on this meeting. Your attempt at the ‘Diet Coke’ of Witness Protection plans is pretty meager.”

  “Kent,” Nicole rumbled, stepping between him and the husband. Her tone was much more conciliatory to Mr. Sutton. “Special Agent Harbinger is not meaning to imply that your security is lacking.”

  “Um, yes I am,” Kent said as he stepped around her. “For spending all this time and money moving around, you haven’t changed your lifestyle at all.”

  The husband’s face blotched with anger. “We have changed our names, routed our financials through Switzerland, severed all ties to—”

  Kent nodded toward the large wine rack in the corner. “And where do you still get your excellent vintages? You still use the same sommelier in New York, don’t you?”

  Mr. Sutton looked at his wife, who shied away from his glare, looking down as she spoke. “They are the only ones who import directly from Croatia.”

  “And don’t get too pissed off, Mr. Sutton, because I believe you are using the same Cuban cigar procurer. I believe his name is Horace.”

  The husband’s face flared a very interesting shade of fuchsia.

  “You have left a breadcrumb trail, which really should be renamed a bread loaf trail, so wide a blind, catatonic, and legless man could have followed it. I mean, come on. You still use a driver. A driver—in this city? You didn’t think that was a bit obvious?”

  As Mr. Sutton sputtered and his wife’s eyes dilated, Nicole stepped between them again. “Special Agent Harbinger has some fairly unconventional methods. However, he clearly has uncovered some very important facts,” Nicole gave Kent the evil eye as she continued, “and I am sure he will share with us how they all fit together.”

  “So my suggestion is that we start over,” she said, although Nicole’s tone did not sound at all like that was a suggestion. It was more like an order.

  She guided Kent toward the wife. “Mrs. Carla Sutton, this is Special Agent Harbinger.”

  If Carla were this beautiful now, with her long, naturally blonde hair and athletic figure, Kent could only imagine the looker she had been back when the Suttons were first married. He held out his hand. To his surprise, the wife took it readily.

  The handshake was firm, but sensual. It seemed that she took to another male, an alpha male, coming on the scene. Kent let his fingers slide off her palm as they separated. His little, “perhaps if this were a different time or place” signal. He wouldn’t call it a smile that flashed over her lips. It wasn’t that overt, but Kent was pretty damn sure that the woman was trying to figure out a place and time to make a rendezvous happen.

  “And this is Mr. Raymond Sutton.”

  Kent had to admit that the husband kept himself in shape. Was it a sincere desire to stay fit, or was he just trying to keep up with his stunning wife? Obviously the guy had family money, because that chick and this guy never would have hooked up otherwise.

  The husband’s handshake went beyond firm into the realm of viselike. He seemed to have caught on to Kent’s and his wife’s nonverbal cues. Either that, or Kent had just called out the king in his own castle. Whichever, Kent made sure not to allow a painful grimace to come to his face. Let Mr. Sutton think that he kind of liked this manhandling. As a matter of fact, Kent used his thumb to stroke the side of the husband’s hand. The man jerked his hand back as if a black mamba had just bitten him.

  Keep them guessing was Kent’s motto. The less potential witnesses knew about him, especially ones who had been through the police system as frequently as these two had been, the better.

  Why? Because all people lie. Really, they lie with a capital “L”, but a family under duress? They were so busy lying to the police, their spouses, and especially themselves. After several years of this unrelenting fear, Kent doubted that they knew the truth themselves anymore.

  The husband rubbed his hand unconsciously as he scowled. “So, are you going to tell us when this madman is going to try to take our daughter?”

  Clearly, as much as Mr. Sutton did not like Kent, he feared for his daughter more.

  “No,” Kent answered. “The question we should be asking ourselves is why he hasn’t already taken her.”

  It was Mrs. Sutton who stepped forward. “She has twenty-four-hour bodyguards and—”

  “If it were me, I could have taken her a hundred times over.”

  “Kent,” Nicole rumbled again. But they hadn’t asked for the nicey-nice police department that had to worry about citizen relations. They had asked for someone who could actually solve their problem.

  “Kids are the easiest to snatch. Small. Gullible. The proverbial candy and all.” He looked down the hallway that led to the girl’s bedroom. “Which is why I need to talk to Lyla.”

  Both parents stumbled over the other, each trying to be the first one to object. Well, what he said next was go
ing to blow their minds.

  “Alone.”

  * * *

  Pandemonium swirled about the room.

  Nicole tried to calm the Suttons. “Let’s just take a moment before we say anything we will regret later.”

  “Over my dead body,” Mr. Sutton blurted out.

  Kind of like that, Nicole thought.

  For someone so good at his job, Kent certainly brought out the worst in people.

  Mrs. Sutton tried to block Kent’s path. “Lyla’s therapist doesn’t want her constantly reminded of the threat she is under.”

  “Okay, how about we remove the threat?” Kent suggested with a knowing smirk. “How’s that sound?”

  The wife’s face clouded over. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, let’s catch the guy. Solve the case. Get our man. Pinch the collar. However you want to describe it.”

  Nicole interrupted what more than likely would have been a list twenty metaphors long in five different languages. “I think they get your point, Kent.”

  Mr. Sutton’s eyes closed down to slits as he glared at the profiler. “You are that cocky?”

  Oh, God. The husband just directly challenged Kent. This was not going to go well.

  “No,” Kent stated sharply. “I am cocky enough to say that if I can speak with her alone, then I can solve this in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “What?” all three of them asked the profiler at once.

  “Don’t let me talk to her alone, and it will take me, I don’t know, three or four days.” Kent shrugged. “Depends on how long it takes me to crack Gears of War.”

  Nicole could strangle Kent when he got into this “scorched earth” mode. But even for the profiler, it was rare for him to give a time line for solving a case. Wasn’t he always the one preaching the unpredictability of serial killers? Yes, Kent could think like a serial killer like no one else, and leap ahead to pick out the next victim before the killer could, but how did that help him here? They knew the victim. Lyla.

  Certainly, Kent’s arrogance knew no bounds. However, he backed it up with plenty of convictions. What other people might toss aside as hubris, Nicole knew that if Kent committed to a timetable, he had already figured out some aspect of the case that a hundred other detectives had not.

  Which stirred both admiration and jealousy.

  They had both read the same damn file. How could Kent be so far ahead of the game?

  “Well?” Kent asked Mrs. Sutton as he looked down the hallway. The woman’s eyes flickered from the profiler to her daughter’s bedroom door, and then to her husband. The question was clear. Should she allow Kent to pass?

  “A day?” the husband asked again.

  “My soft target is thirteen hours, but twenty-four hours? Absolutely.”

  Nicole could see the thoughts reeling through Mr. Sutton’s head. Could this really be over before the sun rose again? Could this really be over at all? Nicole had seen many a haunted victim, detective, and even a few police chiefs look at Kent with that mixture of hope—and then the dread that the hope might be false. Usually, they either gave themselves over to Kent or lashed out at him for daring to bring hope back into the equation. She prepared to intercede if Mr. Sutton was the latter.

  Finally, the tall man’s shoulders sagged as he nodded. “We’ve got to try.”

  A choking sob came from Mrs. Sutton. The woman looked as surprised as everyone else that she had acted so emotionally. Immediately her back straightened, and she gave a curt nod to Kent as she got out of the profiler’s path.

  “Kent,” Nicole said. “She’s fragile. You’ll take care?”

  But the profiler looked like she had insulted his mother’s virtue. “What? I’m great with kids.”

  No, no you aren’t, Nicole wanted to say, but with both parents watching, how could she?

  * * *

  Kent went to move past Mrs. Sutton when her hand found his arm. “Please. Please…” The next words were more of a strangled cry than a statement, “It has to end.”

  Before he could respond, Mrs. Sutton was striding toward the living room. Kent could still feel the heat upon his arm. The strong fingers that had dug into his flesh. That chick would be a killer in the bedroom. The wound-too-tight ones usually were. Then, of course, they usually tried to smash car windows in or shoot someone, but in the bedroom they were spectacular.

  He glanced over his shoulder to Nicole, who was herding the Suttons back to the couch. Just one more reason he loved the detective. She knew how to run interference better than most pro linebackers, even when she itched to be in the middle of the case. But not this one. This one would take him somewhere he preferred that Nicole not follow.

  Arriving at Lyla’s bedroom door, Kent opened it unannounced.

  The girl sprang back, seeming more than a little startled. The pictures really did her no justice. With perfect skin and flowing blonde hair, Lyla looked ready for a Teen Beat photo shoot. Only the dark circles under her eyes marred her near-perfect beauty. He could see why the killer had chosen her.

  “What? How? Don’t you knock?” Lyla finally blurted out in false indignation.

  “I figured since you were busy listening to everything we said, that I wouldn’t catch you indisposed.”

  Lyla crossed her arms against her chest as she sat on the corner of her bed. But as guilty and embarrassed as she was, her lips were stuck in a smile. It was odd to see the incongruence of the look in her eye and that grin. The image reminded Kent of the Joker from Batman. No matter how he felt, his lips were locked in a permanent smile.

  Was this how she coped? Did she stuff all the fear and rage behind that smile? Did everyone else in her life believe the expression? He glanced around the room. It looked like the typical preteen girl’s room. Or at least what someone thought a preteen girl’s room should look like. Posters of the current boy band, bedazzled pillows, glitter, and feathered pens. There was lots of pink, with some blue and green mixed in. He seriously doubted if Lyla had picked any of it out. The walls were covered in bright dynamic colors to distract from the darkness hanging over the house.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” she asked. Now her tone matched her smile. Like a doll, Kent thought. Saying and acting the way she thought she should.

  Kent went over to her too-neat desk, turned the chair backward, and sat down. “You’ve talked to a lot of cops, haven’t you?”

  The girl just nodded. They both knew the answer to that question.

  “Well, I’m different,” Kent stated. “Actually, I only have one question for you.”

  Lyla’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Only one?”

  “Yep.” He watched closely for her reaction to his question. “Do you know who wants you dead?”

  The girl blinked twice, opened her mouth, and then shut it again before she spoke. “If I knew, wouldn’t I have told someone?”

  Kent shrugged. “You tell me…”

  Lyla took a deep breath, and then grinned. A real grin. “I just answered a question with a question, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.” Kent leaned forward against the chair’s back. “Do you know what that means?”

  “I was lying or evading the truth?”

  “Or you were just taken off guard, and are a nervous twelve-year-old.”

  He had already liked Lyla just from the case file. A tough, smart young lady. Meeting her, though, his respect only increased. Kent would never tell Nicole, but he actually liked working with kids. They had far fewer barriers than adults. Simply put, they had less time on this earth to learn how to lie effectively.

  Adults put up artificial wall after artificial wall to mask their true feelings. Now, he could try to break those walls down, but Kent preferred to seduce his way around them, slipping and sliding between the cracks.

  With children, though, there was an even more effective means. You simply allowed their own curiosity to expose their true intent. Even the most refractory child psychopaths usually were their own undoing. They ha
d to know what you knew. They had to test limits. It was in their nature. And with a witness such as Lyla? It would do no good to try to storm her defenses. They were there for a reason. Far better to let her slip out the back door she had created for herself.

  “No, I don’t know who is after me,” she stated, maintaining eye contact.

  “All right, then,” Kent said as he scanned the room. “So, do you have a PS3 or Wii lying around?”

  “No,” Lyla answered cautiously. “My parents won’t allow me anything with access to the Internet. You know, for ‘security reasons’,” she said, making air quotes.

  “Oh, too bad,” Kent replied.

  Silence stretched out. Kent rode with it. The more the girl drove the conversation, the better. And sure enough, Lyla finally asked, “Why?”

  Kent rolled his head from side to side trying to get the kink out that he had gotten while watching the Suttons for four hours through the crack in the closet door. “I was just trying to find something to kill the time.” He pointed toward the door. “I can’t exactly go out there, so quickly. Your parents probably want to proverbially ‘get their money’s worth’.”

  “You do realize that ‘different’ is not necessarily better?” Lyla asked, playfully.

  Kent chuckled. “My partner could not agree more.” He cracked his neck. “No worries, though. I’ll just hang out for a few minutes, and then leave.”

  The girl swung her legs back and forth like a metronome. He could practically see the gears cranking away in her head. Kent just pretended to study the walls when Lyla suddenly planted her feet on the floor.

  “Well, I do have an iPod touch,” she said as she fished around under her bed then pulled the device out from between the bed frame slats. “It doesn’t have much on it, though.”

  “Angry Birds?” Kent asked.

  “Well, duh! Of course Angry Birds,” Lyla said, rolling her eyes as she turned on the iPod.

  Absolutely no electronic devices? Airtight security, huh? What kid these days didn’t have one or more cell phones, MP3 player, or video camera at their fingertips? Was this iPod Lyla’s only act of defiance that threatened her security, or had there been more?