“Who?”
“Dr. Vargas’s widow. She might be able to tell us more of what was going on at the time.”
“You think it could relate to now?”
“Who knows? We must try any possibility.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m going to check in with Fred and Jean, and we’ll let Jackson and Angela know our thoughts and what we’re doing.”
He made his call to Fred, filling him in on his conversation with Sandra Smith and what they had discovered about Billie Bingham through the old tapes.
“Jean and I paid a visit to Congressman Smith’s office—not to speak with Smith, who is supposedly a cooperative witness, but to his secretary. Agnes Merkle. She is something!”
“And what did you get from that experience? Anything?” Keenan asked him.
“A great deal of appreciation that I’m not related to that woman nor have ever had to work for anyone like her.”
“Great. Anything else?” he asked. He glanced at Stacey. She shrugged.
“Well, she admitted that she talked with Billie for him, and they discussed a monetary value on Billie’s silence over her relationship with Colin Smith. She also said it was none of our business—no matter what his sexual appetites, he was a good man. It wasn’t his fault if his home life was less than perfect.”
“So Agnes doesn’t like Smith’s wife.”
“Doesn’t seem to like her much. We’re going in some circles, checking on Peggy, seeing if she remembers anything else that happened in the office that might help. We’ve started on the missing men and found it to be a similar situation. The skull belonged to an Ethan Jones, and his disappearance was reported after he’d been missing for days—and it didn’t much upset the police. His disappearance was reported by a fellow who shared a cardboard-box home in the center of Baltimore. He said that Ethan really liked to sleep on Poe’s grave in the churchyard cemetery, but people just kept kicking him out. No family to be found. We’re working on the other disappearance in the area. We’ll have more later. I hope. This case can’t go cold—or get worse before it gets better.”
They agreed to catch up the next day; Jackson would be calling another task-force meeting the following afternoon.
They finished the call.
He looked at Stacey. “Let’s go and pay a visit to the ghosts of Lafayette Square.”
* * *
“Took you a hell of a long time to get back here,” the ghost of Bram Wallace told Keenan. He studied Stacey as he spoke. “And this is your new partner, eh? A pleasure to meet you, miss.”
Keenan was already slightly aggravated by his great-grandfather’s manner. It didn’t seem to bother Stacey at all, though. Bram certainly knew that she worked for the FBI.
But Stacey was simply curious to hear if Bram did have anything for them. The ghost of Philip Barton Key II stood next to Bram, casually watching movement in Lafayette Square.
“Sorry. There are leads we’ve been following,” he told his grandfather.
He didn’t remember Bram in life; the man had died when Keenan had been a toddler.
But he was easily able to see the family resemblance that had passed from Bram to Keenan’s grandfather and father and on to Keenan.
Bram was tall. Not quite six-five, but almost. And, Keenan thought with some amusement, the ghost of his ancestor liked to stand very straight near him, chin in the air, because no matter how old Keenan might become, Bram would see him as a youngster who needed to be schooled.
“We’ve been vigilant here,” Philip assured them. “But...well, I don’t think this fellow—or these fellows—will operate in the same area twice.”
“Did you see or hear anything?” Keenan asked Bram.
Bram nodded gravely.
“I saw a car. Black—the same car that Philip saw,” he said.
“Oh,” Keenan said, hoping he didn’t show the depth of his disappointment. He had hoped for something a little more.
“I saw the car,” Bram said. “I didn’t see the body—not until later, much later, after the dawn broke, after you and all the others came. I was out and about, you know.”
“Of course you were,” Stacey said.
“Right,” Keenan agreed. “Understandable. You couldn’t have expected someone to have left a mutilated body in Lafayette Square. I wanted to see you; Stacey wanted to meet you. We really weren’t expecting you to have anything.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t have anything,” Bram told him, frowning. He turned to the ghost of Philip Barton Key II. “Young people today! No patience.”
“We are on the trail of a really vicious killer,” Keenan reminded him.
“On the trail,” Bram growled. “Get on that trail fast! I’ve seen the newspapers, and that’s not the half of it, I’m sure.”
“Sir, do you know something that might help?” Stacey asked.
Bram nodded gravely.
“I didn’t see anything but the car moving away. Swiftly—but following traffic laws. It’s not what I saw that might help. It’s what I heard.”
“And?” Keenan said.
“They must have just carried the body from the car and put it down,” Bram said. “There were two of them—a man and a woman. I’m not completely sure what they were saying. She wanted something done right; he just wanted to be gone as soon as possible. I was already headed down the street. It was so late at night, so early in the morning, that there was nothing much going on. I wasn’t even sure where they’d come from, but at the time, I thought they were just a couple out doing some late-night partying—tourists, even if they did have a Washington politico car. But after, of course, when I heard what had happened, when I talked to Philip and saw all the reports... Well, it had to have been the killer or killers. Whatever it was, they were in it together. Maybe they were a couple just having a tiff after a late night. But with us both seeing that car and a mutilated body being left, I may be behind the times, but to me that sure as hell points toward something.”
* * *
“He’s cute,” Stacey said as they walked around the square.
Keenan eyed her as if she’d lost her mind. “Cute?” he queried.
“An older, grouchier you,” she said.
“A very grouchy me,” Keenan said. He stopped walking, and Stacey almost slammed into him. He was looking around.
“I doubt the murderer is coming back here for anything,” she said. “The next murder, he intends—or maybe now they intend—for it to happen indoors,” she finished quietly.
She’d seen the room shrouded in the mist. She’d seen the hearth.
“I love Lafayette Square,” he said, looking around at the historic buildings. He shook his head. “I love DC. Politics can get ugly, but the ideal remains, and people, our people, fight for their ideas and beliefs, and I also like to believe that, even when we take steps backward, we’ll take steps forward again.”
“I love it, too,” she said.
They were in public, but she took his hands. “And I’m a dreamer; I always believe that we’ll make it better, too.”
“Smith—whether he’s in on the killings or not—is a scumbag.”
“And, yes, sometimes, scumbags get into office. We have to believe they’ll be voted out.”
He nodded, gave himself a shake and apologized. “I’m sorry, I just... If Smith is in on this, he was making one of his statements, leaving the body here, in such an historic area.”
She smiled. “Much of DC is historic, you know.”
“Yes, of course. And...it’s home,” he said. “Shall we?”
Her smile broadened. Home, yes, and it meant more now than at any time since she’d moved in. He was referring to her apartment, and it was nice that he said it that way.
They’d only been together one night, she reminded herself.
And that didn’t matter; he was coming home with her again.
He made a face. “Should we grab some kind of fast food on the way?”
“How about I call for sushi and we pick it up?”
“That will work.”
He didn’t pull his hand away. It was late; not many people were out. She had a feeling that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t taboo in the FBI for two agents to be together—though, usually they weren’t in the same unit. With the Krewe, it was different, she knew.
Jackson Crow and Angela were married, for one. They were most often in the office, managing the many agents out in the field. But not always. Sometimes they were drawn in on cases, separately or together.
It was all part of the extraordinary way the Krewe worked. She chuckled thinking that Jackson Crow had possibly set them up, knowing that even among the different she was different, and Keenan could not only handle it but encourage her.
Over their takeout sushi, eaten right in the car after they picked it up, they both admitted that they’d taken White House tours—hoping to meet Abraham Lincoln or one of the other presidents rumored to haunt the Executive Mansion.
Neither of them had met Lincoln.
Stacey was eager to get home. Long days had turned into long nights.
To her surprise, when she opened the front door, she found that Marty Givens was waiting anxiously, as if waiting for her.
“You’re here!” she said.
“Uh, yes. Home after a very—”
“Very,” Keenan added.
“—long day,” Stacey said.
“Yes, of course, but... Special Agent Wallace, I am so, so glad that you’re here, too!”
Her pleasure couldn’t simply be the fact that it probably appeared that Stacey finally had a date.
“Yes. I’m here, too,” Keenan said.
“There was someone out there tonight,” Marty said. “Someone sneaking around!”
“There was?” Keenan asked.
Marty nodded gravely.
Stacey lowered her head, counting slowly. She lifted her head and smiled at Marty. “Marty, the alarm was set, right? On the main door. I heard it tick when I set my key in the lock.”
They had a high-tech system; keys for the apartment were specially crafted so that they armed and disarmed the main door alarm by being the right key.
“And I know,” Stacey continued, “that you have bolts on your door, right? You’re as safe as you can be. And I’m sure you know if our friends are home in the other apartments?”
Marty nodded but still looked upset.
“Nothing like a good alarm system,” Keenan said.
Stacey reminded herself that Marty lived alone and that she was a good person.
“We’re here now. Two FBI agents. We’re watching out for everything, I promise,” Stacey said.
“But you haven’t caught him yet, have you?” Marty asked.
“No,” Stacey admitted.
“Marty, we’ll be here all night,” Keenan said, smiling and speaking with gentle reassurance.
Marty smiled at last. “Thank heavens! Well, I think I can go to bed at last.”
Stacey forced a smile and a pleasant good-night. There was no way out of it: Marty would always trust a man with a gun more than a woman, trained agent or not.
Marty started up the stairs and then turned back, smiling happily now.
“So, so, happy that you’re here!” she told Keenan.
“Thanks, Marty!” he said.
Stacey had already turned to head into her own apartment. He followed her in, leaning on the kitchen counter as she set her bag down.
“I guess we have approval all the way round,” he said, grinning. “Pseudomom seems to like me!”
“My mom will surely like you,” Stacey said. She shook her head. “She probably thinks only a man can keep someone safe, too.”
“Some stereotypes are hard to break.” Before she could reply, he added, “Safety is in numbers. I wonder if someone was prowling around. Don’t take offense; we need to make sure that we’re vigilant.”
“Keenan, Marty tends to be paranoid. And I know she’s alone, so, I swear, I try to be very nice.”
“You are nice. But we’ll stay on alert.”
“I thought we were already on high alert.”
“Higher alert.”
She smiled. “Guns on the sink while we’re in the shower?”
“I think one will do,” he said, grinning.
There was no pretense after the night they’d already spent together.
But he was serious about the gun. She slid hers into the drawer of her nightstand; he brought his into the bathroom, setting it on top of her laundry hamper, within easy reach.
They showered together, for long moments just standing together beneath a spray that was hot enough to wash away some of the day, even though there was nothing that could really rinse away the intensity of their case.
But it was night. And they were working endless hours. This time was precious.
They were both determined to use it.
She wasn’t afraid with Keenan. If she slept, if she dreamed, if she woke screaming like a maniac, it was all right.
That added a touch extra.
Not, she thought quickly, that he really needed an extra touch of anything. He was so right for her in so many ways. He seemed to know just how to touch her. They could laugh and tease, and grow passionate and urgent, and even then, laugh again.
As he carried her to the bedroom, she wondered at how she’d never imagined that something so beautiful could exist in her life, that she could be with someone, loving the taste and feel and scent of him and the way he felt against her, and also know that she dared lie with him through the night.
He kissed her sweetly, wetly, hot as he touched her lips, traveled her body. The feel of being with him, so desperately wanting more and more...as if they could all but inhabit one another’s flesh.
Lying beside him...breathing. Just breathing.
“This is...amazing,” he said.
She rested her face against his chest, wriggling her nose a bit as she shifted, and his chest hair teased her.
“Yes.”
“I mean the sweeping, mind-blowing, ripsnorting, sheer nirvana climax part is so damned great, but man, this is amazing, too.”
She laughed.
“Ripsnorting? My, my, Special Agent Wallace, you do have a way with words.”
“Well, you know what I mean. At least I think you know what I mean.”
“Exactly,” she assured him, leaning up on his chest, lowering to kiss his lips, slowly, and lingeringly.
She felt her need for him swell again, but by then, they were mentally and physically exhausted.
Soon enough, she was asleep.
And thus, back in the room.
The room clouded with fog or haze, thick and dark, smelling and feeling like evil.
She couldn’t place where she was; she only knew that the killer was there, and the killer knew that she was there as well.
And the victim.
She couldn’t see the victim; she didn’t know where she was.
She didn’t even know if she herself was the intended victim.
But she did know something of the killer’s mind. This time, there would be no neat strangulation. Difficult as strangling another person could be, it required great strength in the hands when done manually, without any type of garrote to aid in the deed.
This time, he wanted blood. A knife slashing in the air. No hesitation, but slow enough. And the mutilation would go and on and on...
The organs would be preserved. That, after all, was what sanctioned the carnage. He was prepared. And he would do it as he knew to do it, keeping every needed organ as pristine as he knew how. Yes, yes, but then...
The slashing of the throat—
hard enough so that the blood loss would render his victim powerless...but not enough to kill instantly. He wanted to see this victim squirm and squeal and, yes, even choke out a few screams. He wanted to see her eyes, as she knew that death was imminent.
Close, close...closer.
The victim knew that he was there—and that he had come for her...
Who is it, who is it? Something screamed inside her.
But the fog was so dense and gray, the miasma so great.
The knife, even against the blinding depth of the fog, was glistening, high in the air, ready for the first strike.
A scream of terror broke free...
* * *
Keenan held her, smoothing back her hair, whispering her name and shaking her just slightly, gently.
The scream faded; her eyes opened.
“Keenan...”
“You’re okay. You’re with me.”
She stared at him wonderingly. “I’m so sorry; you’re sleeping with a freak!”
“You’re not a freak. You’re amazing. I’m so sorry that you being so amazing has to be so painful for you as well.”
“It helps that...that you’re here with me.”
He held her quietly and waited, and she sighed with frustration.
“I can’t see his face; I can’t even see his victim’s face!”
“You will.”
“But when?”
“In time,” he assured her. And he waited again; he let her go through her own thoughts and put them into words without pressing her.
“Okay. I did learn something. It’s one person who commits the murders. I still don’t know if he’s really medically trained, or if he’s been shown exactly what to do. It was as if I could slip into his head. Keenan, he couldn’t wait to rip her to shreds! He was thinking about the organs... He must have help. Because he was thinking that his indulgence in the terrible killing was sanctioned by someone—the someone who wanted the organs, I imagine. More than one person is involved, but...who I don’t know.”
“But we know what we’re looking for,” he told her.
“You think it really makes a difference?”
“A tremendous difference.”
Dreaming Death Page 20
