Cutting Edge: A Novel of Suspense

by Allison Brennan

  “Sounds like splitting hairs to me.”

  “I pushed him, Duke. I didn’t let him off. But I didn’t have one teeny shred of evidence to tie him to any of the arsons. And the only thing that’s tying him to Butcher-Payne is his academic tit-for-tat exchanges with Dr. Payne.”

  “People have killed for less,” Duke said. “And you have one more connection. His relationship with Anya Ballard.”

  Nora rubbed her eyes. Duke tapped her chin up. “Hey, don’t fall asleep during the interrogation.”

  “I’m not tired. I’m frustrated. This seems too convenient.”

  Sean said bluntly, “I don’t think Anya killed herself.”

  Nora turned to the younger Rogan. “Why?”

  “Sean,” Duke said, “the evidence seems clear. It should be relatively easy to match the materials found in her room with the evidence at the crime scenes.”

  “I didn’t say Anya wasn’t an arsonist. I don’t know about that.” He frowned and glanced back toward the dormitory still rife with police activity. “I just don’t think Anya could slit anyone’s throat. She didn’t seem violent.”

  “Sometimes,” Duke said, “people are not who they appear to be.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Sean said. “I’m giving you my opinion based on spending an hour with her yesterday. Did you meet her?”

  Duke was surprised at Sean’s retort. “I didn’t mean to talk down to you. I was stating a fact.” Maybe he stated the obvious too often with Sean. He didn’t realize it bothered his brother.

  Nora said, “I don’t think we can make a determination one way or the other regarding who killed Larkin or whether those three kids killed themselves or—” She cut herself off.

  “Or what?”

  “Or they were murdered.”

  She turned to Sean again. “I want your honest opinion, Sean. When you saw Anya last night and heard the third voice, how certain are you that it was a girl?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, he was clearly reviewing the exchange. “Eighty percent,” he said finally.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Nora said. She punched numbers on her cell phone. “Ted, it’s Nora. I need you to grab the DMV photo and the Rose College student photo of Anya Ballard, the female deceased, and send it to Sara Ralston in the Reno office. Ask her to show the pics to all Starbucks employees at the address that’s in my report—it’s near the university. She needs to find Summer, who was working this morning, and make sure she sees Anya’s photo. I want to know if Anya Ballard was the girl seen with Russ Larkin Sunday morning, or if anyone else there recognizes her. And can you ask Rachel to get a copy of the suicide letter and fax it immediately to Quantico for handwriting analysis and assessment? Specifically, I want to know whether the person who wrote the suicide note also wrote the letters that have been sent to the media…. Great, thanks.” She hung up. “He’s on it.”

  “Did I miss something?” Sean asked.

  Nora said, “We know that Larkin met with a college-aged girl the day he was murdered. If we can rule out Anya Ballard, that gives us more reason to trust your memory about what you may have heard.”

  She spotted Sheriff Sanger driving up to take her to the county jail. “Sanger’s here,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Can we meet later at FBI headquarters? Say around seven?”

  “I’ll be there. I’m going to work with Jason on Russ’s laptop, see if we can find anything after your ERT prints it.”

  “How do you know—” She stopped herself. “You’ve worked with him before.”

  “I recommended him for the job,” Duke said. “He used to work for Rogan-Caruso part-time while in college.”

  “I should have known.” But she smiled. “Thanks, both of you, for your help.”

  Help? That was kind of formal. But before Duke could banter with her about their kiss yesterday, she walked off and slid into the front seat of Sheriff Sanger’s truck. They drove off.

  His help. He might be a consultant on this case, but he was going to be far more than mere help to Special Agent Nora English.

  “I’m going to stay on campus,” Sean said, “keep my ears open and my mouth closed. I might be able to pick up on something, like who the fourth person was.”

  “If there is a fourth person,” Duke said, “and he or she had any part in the suicide, then that person is dangerous. Especially if she killed them and tried to make it look like suicide.”

  Sean bristled at the suggestion he couldn’t take care of himself. “Duke, when are you ever going to treat me like a grown-up? I’m nearly twenty-five. I have two college degrees, a master’s, and an I.Q. that exceeds yours.”

  “Smart people do dumb things.” Duke realized he said the wrong thing—his “stating the obvious” problem with Sean. He was about to apologize when Sean hit the roof of his car.

  “I’m going to work for Kane.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  “You’re not my guardian anymore, Duke. I don’t even know if you’re my brother.”

  “I say the wrong thing and you jump down my throat? I’m concerned about your safety. You think maybe you’re overreacting here—”

  “I’m not overreacting,” Sean said. “You treat me as if I’m incapable of making tough decisions. You don’t like my friends, you won’t let me work for Rogan-Caruso, and when I can do something that helps, you balk because it’s dangerous. You can’t protect me for the rest of my life. Dammit, Duke. You were the only person I had after Mom and Dad died. Kane had his causes, Liam and Eden had each other, and I had no one—but you never walked away. I love you for that. But I can’t be coddled, protected, and managed. I don’t want to be. I want to contribute to Rogan-Caruso in a meaningful way, not under the watchful eye of my big brother.”

  Duke had never heard Sean articulate his feelings like this before. Sean usually mumbled his discontentment and walked away. Duke had always chosen to ignore Sean’s complaints rather than get to the heart of the matter. It was easier for Duke to pretend that he was still in control than to accept that Sean was a man who could make his own decisions, and was smart enough to make the right ones.

  Still, if anything happened to Sean because of a case or job that Duke had assigned him, Duke would be lost.

  “I’m proud of you, Sean.”

  Sean shuffled his feet. “You’ve never told me that before.”

  “Of course I have—” Duke stopped. Hadn’t he? Sean stared at him, dead serious. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I’ve always been proud of you.”

  “Even when I was expelled from Stanford?”

  “Furious as anything and I wanted to beat sense into you, but secretly proud that you’d devised and executed such an ingenious plan.”

  “Even when you were called to bail me out of jail in Massachusetts because I’d hacked into the Boston Police Department’s database and erased all my parking tickets?”

  “You could have saved me a lot of money if you’d been able to do that five years earlier with Eden and her hundred and sixty-some tickets.”

  Sean raised his eyebrow, his dimples showing his good humor. “You’re not serious.”

  Duke shook his head, then grinned. “But Sean, every time you’ve broken the rules—except for maybe the parking tickets—it was to help someone else, to defend the underdog. You weren’t doing it for personal gain, and I admire that greatly. It’s why I have tremendous respect for Kane. Our brother can be a real jerk, but he’s never done anything in his life for personal glory or wealth. Everything he’s done he’s done for others, and it’s hard not to admire his selflessness.”

  “You’re the most selfless person I know,” Sean said.

  Duke shook his head. “Okay, go. But I swear, Sean, you watch your ass or I’ll be kicking it hard.”

  “Thanks.” Sean started walking back toward the dorm, then turned back. “I’m serious, Duke. Maybe I never said it before. But you were my age when you took the responsibility of raising me
. You sacrificed a lot for me. That’s pretty damn selfless.”

  “You’re my brother,” Duke said. He’d never thought about anything he did or didn’t do because he had Sean in his life. “It wasn’t a sacrifice.”

  “But I’m not your son. And for a while it was okay for you to act like my father. But now? My father is dead. My brother isn’t. I need a brother.”

  Duke understood. Damn, he loved his brother. “Okay.”

  He walked two steps and turned around again. “By the way, I like that FBI agent. She’s hot.”

  Duke coughed. “She’s too old for you.”

  “I’m cool with older women.”

  Duke frowned. Sean couldn’t be serious. Not only was Nora more than ten years his senior, but she wasn’t available as far as Duke was concerned. Especially to his little brother. Until she told Duke to take a hike, he was going to keep coming back until she gave in to him. Because Duke knew she wanted to. He saw it in her eyes, tasted it on her lips last night.

  “Sean, I don’t think—”

  “Gotcha!” Sean pretended to lick his finger and made a mark in the air. “She’s not too old for you, bro. Don’t think I couldn’t see how you looked at her.”

  “I do not look at Nora any particular way.”

  Sean laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Duke protested.

  “I can see you’re serious,” Sean grinned. “I approve.”

  “I’m so glad I have your sanction, little brother.”

  He watched Sean saunter off, this time with a wave.

  But if he was going to be perfectly honest with himself, he was glad Sean liked Nora. He just hadn’t known his attraction was so obvious. Or maybe Sean was just more observant than Duke gave him credit for.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  Nora followed Sheriff Sanger into the county jail. Since the FBI didn’t have detention facilities, she’d been here many times over the years to interview suspects. After arraignment, the accused generally stayed in county jail until trial; then, if convicted, they were transported to a federal penitentiary.

  Nora didn’t like how Sanger had made a snap judgment on the suicides. The three could certainly have killed themselves out of guilt, but she needed more. And she needed more than Sanger’s theory that Cole was the instigator. Evidence and motive for a start.

  None of this fit in with her experience. And if she couldn’t rely on her experience, what good was she on the squad?

  Did she want to be right so badly that she was jeopardizing the case? She didn’t think so, but at the same time she’d had the very strong and very instant reaction that these suicides didn’t fit the mold. And while human behavior certainly couldn’t always be predicted, when someone went way off the reservation, Nora couldn’t help but question it.

  “Please bring Cole to interview room two,” Sanger ordered the desk sergeant.

  “He’s with his attorney in interview four.”

  “That was fast,” Sanger said.

  “It’s better this way,” Nora said.

  “How the hell is it better?” growled Sanger.

  She motioned for the sheriff to follow her, and the desk sergeant buzzed them into room two.

  Nora faced Sanger and leaned against the table. It was better not to be too aggressive with him, but she couldn’t deny she was in a fighting mood. “Cole has never spoken to us without his attorney present. You think he’s going to suddenly open up after you arrest him?”

  “I’ve known Leif Cole for years. I can get him to talk.”

  “Great. Talk about conflict of interest.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You and Cole have a history.”

  “That has nothing to do with this.”

  “Maybe not,” she said, not believing him, “but we still need information and evidence. If you honestly believe that Cole is responsible, then we need to find that evidence, because he’s sure as hell not going to confess when we have nothing.”

  “But he doesn’t know what we do or don’t have.”

  “If you play him wrong, he’ll never talk. He would love to bring the ACLU down on your ass, Lance. And neither you nor I want to spend our limited resources battling that giant.”

  “You know what I think?” Lance said. “I think that they killed themselves to protect Leif Cole and that maybe he was the one who told them to kill Payne. Payne was a thorn in his side for years.”

  If Leif Cole was guilty, Nora had been working off the wrong profile from the beginning. That was a poor excuse.

  Any decent profiler knew that a psychological assessment of a suspect when you didn’t have a suspect was nothing more than a guideline; it wasn’t rigid. She’d adapted when she learned Payne had been tortured—adding in the psychopathic factor. Was Cole a psychopath? If so, she’d missed it during their previous interviews. If not, which of the three students had killed Payne? Had they been in it together? Who had been the instigator? Groups behaved differently from individuals, and anarchist cells had a small-group mentality, each member goading the others into acts of civil disobedience and felonies.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Sanger was surprised. “I didn’t think you would cave that easily. You were certain he wasn’t responsible.”

  “I said maybe and what I’ve always said is that Leif Cole wasn’t involved in the arsons, but that he suspected who was. Sean Rogan said Professor Cole was involved with the student Anya Ballard.”

  “We’ll have a hard time getting that admitted into court. His defense will argue that it’s hearsay.”

  “Sean Rogan will make a good witness on that point,” Nora said. “Let me be the lead on this, okay?”

  Lance didn’t want to cede control—Nora saw it in his face and posture—but he reluctantly relented. “All right. I wouldn’t mind seeing you in action, anyway.”

  Before she could respond to that surprising statement, Leif Cole walked in with his attorney. The lawyer introduced himself as Gavin Shepherd.

  Shepherd got right to the point. “My client may or may not answer your questions, depending on whether he believes it’s relevant to determining what happened to the three students in question. You should also know that I am petitioning the court for immediate release for false arrest.”

  Sanger said, “False arrest? He refused to answer questions at the college, and I offered to interview him at the station. He got in my face, so I arrested him for attempting to intimidate a police officer.”

  That was interesting, Nora thought. Sanger hadn’t told her the charges. And Nora thought Shepherd had a point, especially if Sanger told the judge that Cole “got in his face.” Intimidation wasn’t the same as assault, and Sanger had forty pounds and two inches on the professor.

  Leif Cole slammed his palm on the table. “I asked you one simple question and you refused to answer.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Sanger said. “I ask the questions, you answer—or refuse to answer.”

  Nora cleared her throat while Gavin admonished his client. “Professor, what was your question?”

  “Is Anya okay? She was taken away in an ambulance. I just want to know if she’s going to be okay.”

  Sanger shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Nora realized the importance Sean Rogan’s observations yesterday had on why that information was important to Cole.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Professor. She died en route to the hospital.”

  Cole’s body shook, his hands fisted, and his jaw moved, trying to prevent a sob from escaping. He lost that battle and the gut-wrenching cry that was pulled from his heart brought goose bumps to Nora’s skin.

  She waited a long moment to give Cole time for initial grief. Her opinion about the propriety of a professor’s relationship with a student was put on the back burner; there was no doubt in her mind that Leif Cole cared deeply about Anya. This was no act.

  “Why?” Cole asked, his voice rough. “Why would she kill herself?”

&
nbsp; “Professor,” Nora said gently. “I’d like to ask you some questions about Anya and the others.”

  He didn’t respond.

  She plunged in. “I have a witness who said that you and Anya had an intimate relationship. Is that true?”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” Shepherd said. “It is irrelevant whether my client had a sexual relationship or not with Ms. Ballard.”

  “I’m trying to establish the relationship between Professor Cole and a student who died under suspicious circumstances. Let me ask it this way: Did you know Anya, Chris, and Scott outside of the classroom?”

  “Yes,” Cole said.

  “Did you ever think for a minute that one of them was contemplating suicide?”

  “Never. Especially not Anya.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I did have a relationship with her. I loved her. She was going to move in after graduation. I know what you’re thinking, I’m forty-two and she’s twenty-two, but it worked.”

  Sanger shifted in his seat and Nora shot him a look. He’d better not blow this.

  “When was the last time you spoke with Anya?” Nora asked.

  “Monday afternoon. In the organic garden. I tried calling her later that night, about ten or ten-thirty, after I got home from the meeting, and she didn’t answer. I knew—I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “How was her disposition in the garden?” Nora asked.

  “She was upset about something.”

  “Do you know what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Shepherd said, “My client doesn’t have to answer that.”

  “If Professor Cole has information on why Anya Ballard killed herself, then yes, I think he should answer it.”

  “Should is not a compelling reason,” Shepherd said.

  “Did you know that Anya and the two boys were arsonists?”

  “We’re not going to answer that,” the lawyer jumped in.

  “Did you know that there was a fatality in the Butcher-Payne fire? That Dr. Jonah Payne died?”

  Cole said, “A reporter called me Monday morning and told me about that.”