A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  A Study in Crimson

  A Prequel to the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series

  by

  Chris Orcutt

  A Study in Crimson

  A Prequel to the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series

  by Chris Orcutt

  Copyright © 2018 by Chris Orcutt

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews. This work is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

  First Print Edition: 2018

  First Ebook Edition: 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13 (Print book): 978-0996278393 (Have Pen, Will Travel)

  The publisher of this work and cover artist is Have Pen, Will Travel Publishing. Book cover image, “Inscription lipstick hugs and kisses,” (stock photo ID # 676186567) by Golubovystock, used under license from Shutterstock, Inc.

  Also by Chris Orcutt:

  Nick Chase’s Great Escape (A Comic Novel)

  I Hope You Boys Know What You’re Doing! (Short Stories & Poems)

  A Real Piece of Work (Dakota Stevens Mystery #1)

  The Rich Are Different (Dakota Stevens Mystery #2)

  A Truth Stranger Than Fiction (Dakota Stevens Mystery #3)

  The Perfect Triple Threat (Dakota Stevens Mystery #4)

  The Man, The Myth, The Legend (Short Stories)

  One Hundred Miles from Manhattan (A Novel)

  The Ronald and Other Plays (Plays

  Perpetuating Trouble (A Memoir)

  www.orcutt.net

  For Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Ian Fleming,

  the two peerless masters whose creations

  inspired me to become a fiction writer.

  “Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said Stamford, introducing us.

  — From A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  1

  One-Way Ticket

  I no longer worked for the Bureau, but the Director had summoned me to headquarters, so I was going, and that was that.

  My lack of resistance surprised me. Maybe it’s something they subliminally program into you during your training at Quantico: If the FBI Director summons you to Washington, you go, no questions asked.

  At 4:30 a.m. on a Monday, there was a knock at my door. The Director had sent two agents from the Manhattan field office to pick me up. After waiting in the hallway while I dressed and wrote Ashley a note, they drove me downtown in silence, handed me a ticket for the 6:00 a.m. Amtrak, and dumped me in front of Penn Station. They didn’t even wish me luck. Boarding the train, I noticed the ticket they’d given me was one-way. This was mildly disconcerting. Either the Bureau was being cheap, or they knew I wouldn’t be returning to Manhattan.

  The train slogged into Union Station half an hour late. In the great hall upstairs, another pair of reticent agents whisked me out to a car. We sped down Pennsylvania Avenue to that behemoth, sandy brown building whose overhanging top floor looks as if it will shear away at any moment and topple to the sidewalk: FBI Headquarters.

  Descending into the garage beneath, we drove around for a while and finally stopped at a guarded elevator. I’d heard about this elevator when I worked here, but I’d never seen it. Unarmed but dressed in my best Hickey Freeman navy pinstripe suit, I boarded the elevator with the agents. One of them inserted a key and punched a button. The doors closed and we rose quickly to the top floor.

  When the doors opened, the agents led me into a waiting room and pointed to a chair. I took my time sitting down; I didn’t want them thinking I was taking orders. They strode away, leaving me in the hands of Mrs. Greer, a homely older woman whose frigate-sized desk formed an imposing barrier between the waiting area and the heavy double doors of Director Reeves’s office. Mrs. Greer typed fast enough to provide electricity to Appalachia, and she wore headphones attached to a Dictaphone. I didn’t think people still used those things, but apparently Director Reeves did.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Greer,” I said. “Do you have any idea what the Director wants with me?”

  “No, Mr. Stevens,” she said, continuing to type. “But he should be with you shortly.”

  I settled back into the chair to wait. This outer office was a sensory deprivation chamber. There were no clocks, and because I’d been in a rush this morning, I’d forgotten to put on my watch—a vintage Omega that had belonged to my grandfather. There were no windows. There were no magazines, no reading matter of any kind. The only sound was the relentless, mercurial clicking of Mrs. Greer’s computer keys, like a thousand tap dancers running the New York City Marathon.

  It all seemed calculated to wear down the resolve of the visitor, to impress upon him—in this case, me—the power of the man with whom you were about to meet. Even the air itself seemed party to the conspiracy, perfectly odorless as it was, and seemingly composed of the minimum amount of oxygen necessary to sustain human consciousness. For all I knew, this wasn’t even the real waiting room; this could be a special one for people the Director wanted to torture before granting them an audience. A single mirror behind Mrs. Greer’s desk forced me to stare at myself. I suspected that the Director had a camera behind the mirror so he could observe my every expression. Or was the mirror there only to make me paranoid?

  Nobody came out. Nobody went in. Nobody called. Nothing happened but the incessant clicking of those keys. Mrs. Greer could have been typing gibberish, and I had no way of telling otherwise. Time crawled across a desert. I began to seethe. What was this about? Why had I been rudely roused at four thirty this morning and summoned to Washington? I hadn’t done anything illegal—at least not that I knew of. Maybe I hadn’t completed my exit paperwork properly when I’d resigned last year. Or maybe they wanted me back and the Director was going to make a personal plea. Yeah, right.

  Across the room a water cooler gurgled, but there were no cups for it. Another subtle torture device. After a while I found myself staring at the beige carpet, trying to find a stimulating pattern in it. Eventually I closed my eyes. Heat was building under my suit, and I became aware of a prickly sensation on my neck. By now I’d been waiting for at least an hour, and I was plenty irritated. To calm myself, I breathed slowly and deeply, and meditated on something pleasant: beautiful redheads.

  I remembered the cinnamon redhead bank robber who had whispered promises of sexual favors in exchange for letting her go; luckily my partner was with me, so I didn’t take her up on her very enticing offer. I thought of the more strawberry than blonde, and married, waitress at the diner on Broadway, and how often I found myself there flirting with her. I thought of curly redhead Bernadette Peters, whom I’d seen in Annie Get Your Gun from a second row seat—close enough to observe the perspiration beading on her upper lip. And lastly I thought of the petite Texas redhead whose name I never learned but with whom I made out in the most remote nook of Strand Bookstore near Union Square. A heady bouquet of lilacs stuck out of her shoulder bag. I had literally pinched myself at the time, because I couldn’t believe my luck: a redhead with soft lips, and the piquant aroma of my favorite flower wafting around us.

  “Mr. Stevens?”

  When I came to, the little Texas firebrand was gone, sadly supplanted by Mrs. Greer
.

  “The Director will see you now,” she said.

  “Already?” I said, getting to my feet.

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic, young man,” she said.

  “To hell there isn’t,” I said, “but I’m not going to argue with you. So, where’s Oz? Through there?”

  She smirked. “He can hear everything you say, you know.”

  “Good,” I said, “he can hear this then—I’m leaving.” I headed for the elevator.

  “The elevator is locked, Mr. Stevens. You might as well see the Director.”

  I checked it, and sure enough, you needed a key to call it. I turned around and marched straight past Mrs. Greer, into the Director’s office. As a minor act of rebellion, I left the doors open, making her have to get up to close them.

  I’d only seen Director Reeves in person a few times. Once, when I was nominated for a Service to America Medal (which I didn’t win), he dropped by my cubicle to commend me on solving the Hagerstown Kidnapping case. A couple other times, I’d seen him and his entourage striding down the hall in the Lab.

  Even in his late sixties, Director Reeves was an imposing man. Six-and-a-half feet tall, with iron-gray, closely cropped hair, he had survived two tours in Vietnam, graduated magna cum laude from Yale, and worked his way up from a lowly Special Agent in Boston to become head of the Bureau. He remained seated. In the window behind him, towering over the buildings across Pennsylvania Avenue, was the Washington Monument. I cleared my throat. Director Reeves glanced up from some papers. He was not amused.

  “Oz, Stevens?” He pointed across his desk. “Sit down, please.”

  Easing into the chair, I noticed another man in the chair next to mine. Ruddy-faced and white-haired, he had that broad-shouldered but puffy look of aging former football players, as though if you could strip away the layers of fat and time, you’d find a star of the gridiron underneath. The Director put down his papers.

  “Mr. Stevens,” he said, “this is Harold Standish, a friend of mine from college. He has a situation with his daughter, and I told him you’d be glad to help.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I don’t work for the Bureau anymore.”

  “Yes, I know that,” he said. “But I also know you’re starting a private investigations firm, and that you’re leveraging your experience with the Bureau to do it.”

  He held up a sheaf of papers. Among them I recognized my applications for a New York State PI license, and a New York City handgun concealed carry permit. On all of my applications I had listed the FBI as my former employer. He put the papers down.

  “Never mind that you’ve been doing investigations without a license for several months,” he said. “It’s amazing how quickly these things can go to the top or the bottom of the pile with one phone call.”

  “Point taken, sir,” I said.

  The Director nodded at Mr. Standish, who breathed heavily and began. He had a strident voice that didn’t match his ursine frame.

  “Well, Mr. Stevens,” he said, “my daughter is a sophomore at Harvard. Actually I should call her my youngest daughter, as she is the issue from my second wife and myself.”

  He actually said “issue.” I stifled a laugh.

  “Sally has always been academically gifted,” he continued. “Valedictorian of her class at Miss Porter’s, straight A’s her freshman year at Harvard. However, in this first semester of sophomore year, she’s barely passing. She’s never in her dorm when I call, and her mother receives only the occasional short email from her. She didn’t come home for our Labor Day house party either, without a word of explanation as to why, and—”

  “Pardon me, Mr. Standish,” I said. “It sounds like you need a family counselor, not a detective.”

  “Let him finish, Stevens,” the Director said. “Go on, Harold.”

  “I have reason to believe that Sally is”—Mr. Standish gulped—“involved with an older man.” He scowled at me. “A professor—about your age, I think. Doctor Malone. He’s a ‘sexuality researcher’ or some such nonsense, and Sally has been working as his assistant since early August.”

  “Well, if she’s over eighteen,” I said, “it’s not illegal. Unethical, maybe. Did you talk to the university?”

  Standish’s face flushed. “I…yes, I spoke to multiple people in the administration. Apparently, Dr. Malone is not employed by Harvard. He has some ‘independent research grant,’ so he isn’t bound by the university bylaws governing faculty, which means there’s nothing they can do. So, I hired a Boston private detective, who reported that Sally comes and goes from Malone’s apartment at all hours.”

  “Due respect, sir,” I said, “if you have a detective, what do you need me for?”

  “Because Stevens,” Director Reeves said, “the PI is dead. Shot in his car a week ago, while staking out Dr. Malone’s North End apartment.”

  “Could be a coincidence,” I said. “Besides—and I’m sorry if this comes off callous—isn’t his death a state matter?”

  “It is.” The Director nodded at Mr. Standish. “Which is what I told Harold when he contacted me. I explained I can’t put Bureau resources on a case that isn’t under federal jurisdiction. Of course if you discover evidence that indicates a federal crime, then the Bureau can get involved. Until then, however”—the Director smirked at me—“you’ll have to suffice.”

  Standish set his jaw. “Mr. Stevens,” he said, “Director Reeves tells me you’re well-trained, persistent and that you don’t scare easily.”

  “Yes, except sharks and rats,” I said. “Oh, and also—”

  “I want you to make contact with this Doctor Malone,” Mr. Standish said. “That’s Dr. Geoff Malone, spelled with a ‘G.’ I want you to discourage him from seeing my daughter anymore.”

  “Spelled with a ‘G,’ huh?” I said. “I don’t like him already.”

  “I’m quite serious, Mr. Stevens,” Standish said.

  “So am I. The ‘G’ spelling is pretentious.”

  “I want this man to stay away from my daughter!” He pounded a fist on the Director’s desk. “I want my little girl back!”

  He doubled over in his chair and wept into his hands. Director Reeves glared at me with his jaw clenched, looking like he ached to kick me, which he probably would have, had his desk not been in the way. We waited for Standish to blow his nose into a handkerchief, and when Standish re-pocketed it, I decided to take a mulligan with him.

  “Sir,” I said, “please forgive me for being flip. I’m a little punchy. I’ve been up since four thirty, I’ve been on a train for three hours, and”—I glanced at the Director—“I’ve been waiting in the outer office for an hour. Mr. Standish…are you asking me to beat up your daughter’s boyfriend?”

  “Of course not,” Standish said, scowling. “But I think a few firm words might scare him off.”

  “So you’re asking me to threaten him?”

  Standish shrugged.

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I said. “In front of the Director of the FBI?”

  “Harold and I are old friends, Stevens,” the Director said, “going all the way back to our days at New Haven. Harold believes, and I concur, that Dr. Malone may be engaged in something nefarious. We would like Sally extricated from the situation—quietly.”

  “I have a few questions, sir,” I said.

  “Naturally.”

  “Well…for starters, why me?”

  “A combination of things,” Reeves said. “You’re the right age. You went to college”—he flipped a page in my personnel file—“right down the road, so you know the area. You were an excellent Special Agent, if only for eleven years. And, apparently…you’re quite good-looking, something we might be able to use in luring Sally away from Dr. Malone.”

  “Why, thank you, sir.” I crossed my legs and waggled my foot. “I’m f
lattered.”

  He made a huff that was half growl and leaned across the desk.

  “That’s what some of the women in the building have said about you, Stevens. Personally, I don’t get what they see in you.”

  “Well, would you let me know, sir?”

  “Let you know what?”

  “What they see in me,” I said. “Whatever it is, I’d like to hone it.”

  The Director shook his head, glanced at his wristwatch. “Do you have another question, Stevens?”

  “Yes. If I’m doing this privately, how can I traipse around Harvard without—”

  Reeves held up a hand, silencing me. “I will direct an agent in the Boston office to assist you—unofficially. I’ll also arrange for you to be at the university as a postdoctoral Fellow. Harvard Fellows basically have the run of the place, and your specialty will be in criminal psychology and profiling—an area in which you have some expertise.”

  “That I do, sir.”

  “There you have it then,” he said. “I’m expediting the paperwork so you’ll be fully licensed in Massachusetts as a private investigator. You’ll have everything except a handgun. As you know, Mass is extremely restrictive.”

  “Sir,” I said, “given that my predecessor was murdered, I won’t be taking this case without a gun.”

  Staring at me, the Director drummed his fingers on the desk blotter.

  “Fine,” he finally said. “But it might take a day or two. The Boston agent will bring everything to your hotel. Mr. Standish will be putting you up at the Charles in Cambridge.” The Director raised an eyebrow. “No objections, I trust.”

  “I’ll make do.”

  “Anything else, Stevens?” the Director asked. “I meet with the A-G in fifteen minutes.”

  “Mr. Standish,” I said, turning to him, “I’ll need a recent photo of Sally, a copy of her schedule and—”

  “You will be provided with everything you need,” the Director said.

  “Then the only item left is my fee, which—”