The FBI Thrillers Collection (37 page)

CHICAGO

Nick
had never been so happy in her life. Well, maybe when she’d had her Ph.D. diploma placed reverently into her hand, but that was more a huge sense of relief than pure, unadulterated happiness. It was because of her fiancé, John Kennedy Rothman, senior senator from Illinois. “No relation,” he’d told her, a lowly new volunteer in his reelection campaign three years before. That was before his wife, Cleo Rothman, disappeared, just up and ran away with one of his senior aides, Tod Gambol. Because everyone knew he loved his wife dearly, her abandoning her husband had given him an incredible sympathy vote and he’d been swept back into office by a 58/42 margin over his opponent, who’d been portrayed as too liberal for the fiscal health of both Illinois and the country, though he really hadn’t been at all. Truth was, John’s overpowering charm, his ability to look straight at a person and have that person believe that he would be the best at whatever he
tried, was the overriding reason he was voted in.

And now she was going to marry him. It was heady. There were nearly twenty years separating them, but she didn’t care. She had no parents to gainsay her decision, only two brothers, both Air Force pilots, both in Europe, both younger than she.

She knew all about campaigning now, what it would be like to live in a fishbowl. But the media really hadn’t come after her yet, and she prayed they wouldn’t, at least not until after they were married and she’d be able to simply step behind John as she smiled and waved.

It was a dark night, the wind whipping her hair back from her face, because it was, after all, Chicago. When you were walking the deep canyons, buildings soaring up on either side, and the wind swept off Lake Michigan, funneling through those buildings, whipping the temperature down, it could make your teeth chatter and your bones rattle. She ducked her head and walked faster. One more block and she’d be home. Why hadn’t she taken a taxi? No, ridiculous. When she got home, she’d sit in front of her small fireplace, pull over her legs the heavy red afghan that her mom had knitted eight years before, and read some essays from her senior medieval research class.

She looked both ways, didn’t see a single soul, and stepped into the street. It happened so fast, she wasn’t certain what had actually happened after she was safely back in her apartment. A black car, a big job, with four doors, swept up the street, lights off, and veered straight at her. She saw that it was accelerating, not slowing, not swerving out of the way. No, it was coming straight on, and it was going to hit her.

She hurled herself sideways. She hit a fire hydrant and went crashing down on her hip. She felt the hot air, smelled the sour rubber of the tires as the sedan sped by. She lay there, pain pulsing through her hip, wondering why no one was around. Not a single person was stupid enough to be out in this weather. Oh God. Would the car come back?

She got up, tried to run, but ended up hobbling back across the street. She saw a bum in the alley just next to her condo building. He’d seen everything.

“Crazy bugger,” the guy said, lifted a bottle to his mouth, and drank down a good pint.

She fumbled with her building door key, finally got it to turn, and almost fell into the lobby, so afraid that she just hung there, leaning against a huge palm, breathing hard. There was a neighbor, Mrs. Kranz, standing there. The old lady, the widow of a Chicago firefighter, helped her to her condo, stuffed aspirins down her throat, and sat her down as she built up the fire in the fireplace.

“What happened, dear?”

Dear God, it was hard to speak, hard to get enough saliva in her mouth. She finally got out, “Someone—someone tried to run me down.”

Mrs. Kranz patted her arm. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” At Nick’s nod, because she really couldn’t speak, Mrs. Kranz said, “A drunk, more like it. Right?”

Nick just shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” A drunk? She’d felt all the way to her bones that it was someone who wanted to hurt her. Maybe even kill her. Was that unlikely? Sure it was, but it didn’t change how she felt. A drunk. That might be right. Damn.

She thanked Mrs. Kranz, forgot the papers she was going to grade, and went to bed. She shuddered beneath the covers, cold from the inside out.

When she finally slept, it was only to see that big dark car again, then another and another, all around her. She saw a man driving each car, and each man was wearing a ski mask pulled over his face. There was a kaleidoscope of madness in each man’s eyes, but she didn’t recognize any of them. There were so many, she didn’t know where to look. She was spinning around, with all the cars coming toward her. She woke up screaming, breathing hard, soaked with sweat. She jerked up in bed. As she sat there in the predawn gloom, she saw those eyes again with their stark light of
madness and thought they looked somehow familiar. When she was breathing more easily, she got up, went to the bathroom, leaned over the sink, and drank from the faucet. No, that didn’t make any sense. There was no one who wanted to hurt her. She didn’t have any enemies except for maybe one of the ancient professors at the university who didn’t believe women should know anything about medieval history, much less teach it. Her hip throbbed with pain, and putting any weight at all on that leg made her groan. She took three aspirins and crawled back into bed.

She managed to sleep another hour, then awoke feeling groggy, her hip aching something fierce. She downed more aspirins, looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, and nearly scared herself to death. She looked pale, sick, like she’d been in a really bad accident. A drunk, she said to the image staring back at her. It had to be a drunk. She stripped off her pajamas, looked at the huge purple bruise covering her right hip, wished she had something stronger than aspirin, and got under the shower. Ten minutes later she felt a bit more human. It had to be a drunk, not an old relic of a professor, not a wild teenager out to scare her, no, a drunk, a simple up-front drunk.

The eyes, the madness, that was just a dream spun out of fear.

She didn’t bother reporting it to the police. She had no license plate, so what could they do? She told John about it, and he held her close, stroking her hair. He repeated what Mrs. Kranz had said. “A stupid drunk, that’s all. It’s all right, Nicola. It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

She didn’t sleep well after that night, not until her first night wrapped in a blanket atop a very hard, narrow cot in the upstairs dorm of a homeless shelter in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO

Wednesday
evening, after a day of endless interviews, trying to find any connection between the murdered gay
activist, the murdered old woman, and his brother, with no luck at all, Dane realized he had no choice but to take Nick with him to his brother’s wake. He’d had her with him most of the day, primarily because he just didn’t trust her to stay put in his room at the hotel, and she’d been a silent partner, saying very little and ordering more french fries for lunch at a fast food place in Ghiradelli Square.

But before he could take her to the wake, they had to stop at Macy’s in Union Square and buy her a black dress, both for the wake that night and for the funeral to be held on Friday afternoon. And black shoes. Neither of them wanted to, but it had to be done.

They didn’t arrive at the kind of Irish wake filled with a sea of voices, boisterous laughter, even louder sobs, lots of hair-raising stories about the deceased, lots of food, and too much booze. This wake was attended by more men wearing black than Dane could count, all of them somber, and only two women, Ms. Jones and Eloise DeMarks, his sister, both wearing simple black dresses, both looking pale.

Father Binney greeted them in a hushed whisper, told them that both Archbishop Lugano and Bishop Koshlap were there. Dane didn’t care, but Father Binney seemed to believe it was a great honor to Michael. So be it.

Eloise, tall and thin, her lipstick looking garish on her too-pale face, was dark-haired and dark-eyed just like her brothers. Grief bowed her shoulders, and she was as silent as their mother had been for those six long months before she finally left their philandering father. Dane didn’t know if their father knew one of his sons was dead. They hadn’t been able to reach him. Their mother had died of a ruptured appendix while traveling on safari in western Africa. Dane remembered that they hadn’t heard a word from their father then.

Dane didn’t want to view his brother’s body again. He simply couldn’t bear it. He waited at the back of the rectory chapel, his arms hanging at his sides, not moving, just wishing it was over.

His brother was dead. He’d forget for minutes at a time, but then it would smack him again—the terrible finality of it, the viciousness of it, the fact that he would never see his brother again, ever. Never get another phone call, another e-mail, another stupid joke about a priest, a rabbi, and a preacher . . .

How did people bear this pain?

Nick was standing just behind him. She picked up his hand, smoothed out the fist he’d made. Her skin was rough but warm. She said, “They’re honoring Father Michael Joseph, doing the best they can, but it’s so very hard, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t speak. He just nodded. He felt her fingers stroke his hand, gently massage his fingers, easing the muscles.

She said, “I want to see him one last time.”

He didn’t answer her, and didn’t look at her, until she returned to stand beside him.

“He’s beautiful, Dane, and he’s at peace. It’s just his body here, not his spirit. I firmly believe that there is a Heaven, and since Father Michael Joseph was such a fine man, he’s there, probably looking down at us, so happy to see that you’re here and that you’re safe. And he knows how much you love him, there’s no doubt at all in my mind about that. I know he must feel sorry for your pain. I’m sorry, Dane, so very sorry.”

He couldn’t find words. He squeezed her hand. “Just three weeks ago—Christmas was just three weeks ago, can you believe that? Michael and I went down to San Jose to be with Eloise, her husband, and our nephews. Michael gave me an autographed Jerry Rice football. It’s on my fireplace mantel. Only odd thing about it was that Jerry’s an Oakland Raider now. Michael thought that was a hoot. Jerry in silver and black. I never saw him after I flew out on the twenty-seventh.”

“What did you give Father Michael Joseph for
Christmas? I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call him just Michael.”

Dane said, “It’s all right. I gave him a Frisbee. I told him I wanted to see his robes flapping around when he ran after the thing. And I gave him a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, a topic that always fascinated Michael.” He fell silent, wondering what would happen to Michael’s things. He had to remember to ask Father Binney. He wanted to look at that book that Michael had touched, read, and see his inscription to his brother in the front. He’d written something smart-ass, but he didn’t remember exactly what.

Michael should have lived until he was at least eighty, maybe as an archbishop, like Lugano, that venerable old man with his mane of white hair. But he was dead because some madman had decided to kill him. For whatever reason.

Dane stood, back against the rectory wall, watching with Nick beside him, silent now, still holding his hand. It seemed that every priest in San Francisco had come, and each of them walked in his measured way over to Dane, each with something kind to say, each telling him what a shock it was to see how much he looked like Michael.

The whole time, Dane was wondering how they were going to catch the man who killed his brother and the other people. There wasn’t a single good lead, truth be told, even though Chief Kreider had told the media that all avenues were being explored, and some looked very hopeful. All of that was advanced cop talk for we ain’t got diddly, Delion had said under his breath.

Delion came up to him, nodded to Nick, and stood silently beside him. All three of them stood there in black, just like all the priests.

Dane said to Delion, “I’ve been thinking. Three murders in San Francisco—and no tie-in among the victims that anyone can find.”

“True, unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. We just have to find it.”

Dane looked toward his brother’s coffin, surrounded by branches of lit candles. “It seems like it was all well rehearsed, no mistakes, and that got me to wondering. Do you think this man has killed before?”

Delion frowned as he said, “You mean has he done this same sort of thing in another city?”

“Yes.”

“He’s some sort of serial killer? He comes to a city and randomly selects victims, then leaves to go someplace else?”

“No, not really that,” Dane said. “He targeted my brother, no question about that, maybe even before he killed the old woman and the gay activist. Chances are they were random. What do you think, Nick?”

She blinked, and he saw her surprise that he wanted her opinion. She said, “If that’s true, then Father Michael Joseph must have been the focus, don’t you think? Maybe the whole point of all this was so the guy could tell Father Michael Joseph what he’d done, and dare him to say anything. Maybe it was some sort of game to him, his selection of Father Michael Joseph, at least, determined before he did these horrible things. I don’t know. This is what you were talking about earlier and I thought a lot about it. I think you’re right.”

Dane said, “Yes, I still feel that way. I think it was all about the priest to him. There was planning here, his selection of my brother, or maybe any priest would do and Michael was a random choice, too.”