To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (6 page)

“I didn’t know what to do or say, Bianca.” Angie was fighting tears. It was early morning, and she sat in the kitchen of her sister’s house, telling her about Paavo finding the strange letter from his mother. “First the shock of Aulis’s attack, and then that awful letter!”

“There’s not much you could have said. You were there for him, that’s what matters.” Bianca was the oldest of her four sisters, the one she went to when she was troubled. She was little, like Angie, but outweighed her by about fifteen pounds. Where Angie’s hair was short and wavy with auburn highlights, Bianca’s was straight, chin-length, and dark brown.

“Hercules is
there
for him. The man is hurting and confused. I’ve seen Paavo upset about his cases and—maybe once or twice—even about me, but nothing like this. You know how quiet he gets when he’s upset; well, it was silent-movie time at our place last night. I kept waiting for a piano player to show up.”

Bianca had just taken a blueberry strudel from the oven, and cut a piece for Angie and one for herself.
“When Aulis gets better, Paavo can ask him about his past.”

“And if he doesn’t get better?” The two sisters looked at each other sadly. “If Cecily’s letter—
if
that’s what her name really is—is to be believed, Paavo’s whole life, his whole childhood, is based on a lie. It was such a strange, frightening letter. She gave Aulis her kids! I just don’t get it. How could any mother do that?”

“It’s hard to imagine that such a story could have been kept quiet all these years,” Bianca said, pouring hot coffee and then sitting across from Angie. “People know about such things—and talk.”

For the first time that morning, Angie smiled. “That’s right, they do. They’ll know. Neighbors will know. Anyone around at the time will know!”

“Slow down! This happened thirty years ago.”

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But we aren’t talking Harry Houdini here, either. She was just a woman with two kids, and no husband. Maybe she was heavily in debt, or…or owed money to some drug dealers. Who knows? That would be a reason to leave town!”

“Poor Paavo,” Bianca murmured. “What a thing to discover.”

“It’s got to have been really bad or she wouldn’t have left those kids, I just know it.” Angie sipped some coffee, lost in thought. “I wonder if he should be the one to find out. It could be potentially devastating for him. Aulis kept the past hidden for a reason. At the same time, it’s important. It’s the…the prelude, so to speak…of the good man he’s become. I’m afraid for him, Bianca. Maybe I should see what I can find out.”

Bianca was lifting a piece of strudel to her mouth, but put it down at Angie’s words. “Aren’t you supposed to be hiding until the police catch whoever
has been lurking around you, or your apartment, or whatever?”

Angie pushed her piece of strudel aside, her appetite gone. “Oh, the more I think about it, those two guys might have been salesmen, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or even Mormons. I might have made a mountain out of something completely innocent.”

“And Aulis’s shooting?” Bianca asked, with a worried frown.

“Well…” Angie didn’t even try to answer. Instead of mountains and molehills, she was clutching at straws.

“Ah, here you are,” Ray Faldo said as Paavo walked into the photo laboratory on the second floor of the Hall of Justice. “I’m just about ready to print. Give me a couple more minutes.”

Faldo was the best lab man in the department. He could work wonders with the equipment they owned, making it perform almost as well as top-of-the-line merchandise. That was why Paavo had gone to him for help. Faldo stared into the scope of a photo enlarger, slowly adjusting dials. “I made a negative of the photo,” he said, “and now I’m trying to see how large I can get it and keep it in focus.”

Paavo sat on a stool at the end of the counter where Faldo worked.

“Who are these people, anyway?” Faldo turned the magnification knob.

“I found the photo at a crime scene,” Paavo said. “It might be important.”

Faldo made a few final adjustments to the focus. “The woman’s quite a dish. A little flat-chested for my taste—”

“It’s the badges I’m interested in,” Paavo said, interrupting.

Faldo gave him an odd look, then he placed an
eight-by-ten piece of low-contrast resin-coated paper under the enlarger, set the timer, and flipped it on. “Badges? Oh, yeah. Those that she and the guy are wearing. Christ, is he her husband? Looks old enough to be her father. Homely bastard, isn’t he? They made a cute kid, though.” When the exposure was complete, he moved the paper into the developer tray, and after a short while turned it faceup. The enlarged photo began to appear.

“How’s your dad doing?” he asked as he used tongs to move the print into the stop bath.

Paavo shrugged, tamping down his impatience. “Same. Still in intensive care.”

“Well, he’s hanging in there. Good for him. I’ve been working with Ben on the CSU materials from the break-ins. Nothing I hate to say it, Paav, but the guys who did it were pros. Keep your girlfriend out of their way.”

“She’s found a place to stay until this is settled.”

“Good.” Faldo washed the print in plain water, squeegeed it, and hung it on an easel. “Here you go.”

As Faldo turned on the fluorescent overhead lights, Paavo walked up to the photo. He could see some kind of symbols on the badges, but they were angled in a way that made them hard to read, and were still a little blurry. “Can anything be done with these to make them clearer? I’d like to know what they say.”

“I doubt it, but I’ll give it a try. If you’re just curious about the badges, I can tell you about them. I used to wear one of those myself, years ago, before I decided I’d much rather live here in foggy and damp San Francisco than in hot and humid Washington.”

Paavo eyed Faldo with surprise. “You know what these badges are?”

“Sure.” Faldo grabbed a sponge and wiped up some spilled developer solution. “And if I didn’t, the building would be a dead giveaway for old-timers like me. It’s the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C.—Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Years back, when the post office moved out, other federal agencies moved in, including the FBI’s metropolitan office. The badges they’re wearing were picture IDs. Employees had to wear them to get inside. The blue background on the guy’s meant he was a special agent. She isn’t, of course, given the time. But it’s pretty darn certain both of them worked for the FBI.”

Angie unlocked the door to Aulis’s apartment. As she entered, she shuddered, finding being here as eerie this time as the last. An unearthly chill hung in the air, along with a musty smell.

The investigators had finished their work, so the cleaning service she’d hired would be coming by in about an hour.

Today, when she’d first arrived in the neighborhood, she’d knocked on doors and asked people if they’d seen anything strange—particularly a dark blue Mercury—before or since Aulis’s attack. As casually as she could slide it in, she also asked if they knew his old friend Cecily. To both questions, everyone’s answer was the same—no.

Paavo had told her that Aulis had lived in the small apartment for only the past fifteen years or so, but he had lived in the area for most of his life.

Her earlier phone calls to several of Aulis’s old friends—Paavo left the address book at their house after making calls about Aulis being hospitalized—had given the same results. The people she’d spoken with were all quite elderly, and sounded confused and anxious about her questions. She felt
bad about upsetting them, and stopped calling. For the moment, at least.

So far, her Ferrari had received more notice and interest from the neighbors than either her or her questions.

Now, walking around the ugly bloodstain inside the apartment, she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. Something despicable was going on here. She wanted to scream, “Stop! Leave us alone!” and to explain that there was nothing that she or Paavo or Aulis owned that anyone might want. But what good would it do to shout at the walls?

She’d brought in the mail and flipped through the bills and advertisements before placing them on the coffee table with other mail accumulated since the attack. Paavo would need to take care of the bills, plus any others unpaid. She should try to find them while they were on her mind.

Suddenly, outside the apartment, car wheels screeched, followed by a loud thud. She ran out to find a man lying on the street near her car. His head was bathed in blood.

Neighbors poured onto the street. “A dark blue car hit him!” a little boy informed anyone who would listen. “I saw it!”

A man dropped on his knees to the hit-and-run victim. Angie understood when he used the word
muerta
. The man was dead.

Since 1974, FBI headquarters has been housed in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, a two-and-a-half-million-square-foot monstrosity located on Pennsylvania Avenue between Ninth and Tenth streets in Washington, D.C. It stands seven stories tall in the front, but the rear rises to eleven stories. Of the more than seven thousand employees in the building, fewer than a thousand are special agents. Most employees work on maintaining files, running the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, indexing and confirming fingerprints, and handling freedom-of-information requests.

Special Agent Nelson Bradley stood at the third-floor window by his cubicle and watched a turbaned Sikh and a woman in a bright-hued sari emerge from a cab. His thoughts weren’t on the couple, who meant nothing to him, but on the message slip in his pudgy fingers. He didn’t like the way his fingers had gotten fat, or the way the rest of him had as well, or the way his hair had thinned, and the years wore heavy on his face.

Simply reading Paavo Smith’s name on the message slip had made his hip begin to throb, adding to
the generally aging and decrepit sentiment he had about himself. He hadn’t heard from Smith in years, not since San Francisco happened. That was how he thought of it—
San Francisco happened
.

He went back into his cubicle. The blue burlap-covered partitions that divided the agents’ desks made him feel like a rat in a maze. A Northern Telecom multibuttoned telephone set, filled with features he didn’t understand or care to use, waited silently for him. He hated his desk-bound job, but it was all he could handle ever since going out to Frisco on a special assignment with a gang task force. Several Vietnamese families working in computer hardware manufacturing had been victims of home invasions. The FBI found an informant within the Vietnamese community and set up a sting operation. Bradley was a part of it, and when the sting went south, he was nearly killed. A couple of homicide cops, Smith and his partner, Kowalski, happened to be in the neighborhood investigating the latest home-invasion murders when bullets started to fly. Kowalski had called for reinforcements as Smith went into the house with the agents to see if he could help. Smith found Bradley with his leg and hip torn up and bleeding badly. He pulled Bradley out of the back door and toward an ambulance that answered Kowalski’s call. Seconds after Bradley was clear of it, the house went up in a firebomb. The two other agents had been killed.

Bradley had heard that Kowalski, too, had been killed a while back. It was too bad. He’d been one of the good guys.

Bradley owed his life to Smith. He didn’t like being in debt to anyone. He liked it even less than he liked being stuck here at a desk job in headquarters when he’d always been a field agent. No wonder he’d put on so many pounds. But at least they
hadn’t been able to retire him on disability like they had wanted to do. He had fought them. Leave it to the Bureau to turn against you when you had given your all, he thought bitterly.

Always on his mind were the two guys who never had a chance for disability, Harris and Lane. They’d only been dead two weeks, he’d heard, when two new special agents were given their desks. Nobody cared, it seemed. Just him.

He returned Smith’s call, and was given a strange request. Smith wanted to know if, some thirty-five to forty years ago, anyone working for the FBI in Washington had been named “Cecily.” That was it, just the one name.

He told Smith it would take a while. For him to act on such a request without higher-up authorization was strictly illegal. He’d have to access employee records, which were protected from routine searches by anyone other than the personnel department.

He’d manage. Once he hacked into the database, he’d have plenty of time to manipulate it until he found what he needed. In fact, he had time for a lot of stuff these days. The work the Bureau gave him was garbage, something to keep him from twiddling his increasingly pudgy thumbs all day long. They wanted to insult him, to force him to ask for disability retirement, to somehow get rid of him.

No way. He’d stick around just to needle them. It was fun. It was payback.

“He’s been moved out of intensive care,” the nurse, a slim, blond woman in a crisp white uniform, said as she led Angie through a maze of corridors to Aulis’s new private room.

“That’s wonderful!” Angie cried. She felt as if her prayers had been answered. “He’s awake, then?” she asked.

“Not yet. He’s still in a coma,” the nurse said. “But it’s a light one. He can breathe on his own, his vital signs are strong, so he doesn’t need the special equipment in intensive care. He’s just not awake. We nurses call it a twilight sleep. The doctor will give you all the medical details, I’m sure.”

“But overall, this means he’s getting better?” Angie urged, trying hard to find some positive news.

“Let’s just say, it’s a good sign. Now, we have to wait and see how he is when he wakes up.”

“You’re saying he
will
wake up.”

As if jarred by the question, the nurse stopped and glanced sympathetically at Angie. “At his age…the doctor will be able to tell you more.”

Their gait was slower this time. “What has your experience been?” Angie asked.

“In my experience”—the nurse seemed hesitant—“in my experience, it’s pneumonia, not the coma, that you have to be worried about. For older people, having to lie on their backs, being unable to move, fluid collects in their lungs, and sometimes there isn’t a thing we can do about it.”

“I see.” The graveness of it was all but overwhelming. The two continued on in silence.

In the hallway, two nuns stood talking. They both wore traditional, cream-colored habits.

“Here we are.” The nurse turned in to the private room right where the nuns were standing. Their proximity gave Angie a chill, as if Aulis might be closer to death than anyone had been led to believe.

The nurse bustled about the room, quickly checking Aulis and scanning his chart. “I’ll leave Mr. Kokkonen in your hands,” she said, then was gone in a flurry of white.

Angie went to Aulis’s side and held his hand as she greeted him. She told him that she and Paavo
were well, and looked forward to him getting better and going home. She said a few more words, then stepped back, saddened that she could see no change, no reaction at all in the old man. She covered her face in her hands.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Angie glanced up to see one of the nuns in the doorway. She was an older woman, heavyset, with a round face. Her hands were folded, her expression curious but serene.

“Yes,” Angie said. “It’s just that I’m so worried.”

The nun entered the room. “I’m Sister Ignatius. I visit our Catholic patients here, along with Sister Agnes. But I’m afraid I don’t know this man.”

Angie placed her hand on Aulis’s. “His name is Aulis Kokkonen. He’s Lutheran, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind your visits or your prayers.”

The nun smiled. “Well, thank you. I’ll be sure to stop by, then, on my rounds. Is he a relative?”

“No…not yet. I’m dating his son.”

“Ah, I see,” the nun said warmly. She studied the bandages on Aulis’s head. “What happened to him?”

“He…he was shot.”

“Oh, my!”

“It was a robbery, we think, at his apartment.” As Angie began to explain what had happened, the thought that niggled at the back of her mind sprang forth and her eyes filled with tears. “First my apartment was burglarized, then Paavo’s—that’s my boyfriend—and a few days later, Mr. Kokkonen’s. I’m so scared that the three might be related…and if so, it all started with me.” She took a Kleenex from the bedside table and wiped away her tears.

“Why you?”

“I don’t know! That’s the problem. If it was me, why? I don’t understand the connection between
Paavo and Aulis and me with these robbers. Yet they struck my apartment first.”

Through her rimless eyeglasses, the nun’s warm brown eyes were calming. “It’s not your fault, dear You can’t know what would possess someone to go after another person.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Angie intoned, the nun’s words making her feel a little better. She even felt a twinge of good old Catholic guilt over her initial reaction to the two nuns in the hall.

“It does sound as if you and your friend need to be careful, however,” the nun cautioned.

“We’re trying to be,” Angie replied.

“Good. I’m glad.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh, gracious! I must go now. I’m sure Sister Agnes must be ready to leave without me. We can’t be late for evening prayers.”

“I’m glad to have met you, Sister,” Angie said. “My name is Angelina Amalfi, by the way. People call me Angie.”

“I’m sorry for your friend,” the nun said, and then she was gone.

The room felt emptier and colder. As Angie watched over Aulis, she said a few prayers as well, for Aulis, for herself, and especially for Paavo.

Paavo glanced at the clock on the once-white, now-in-need-of-paint wall in the Homicide bureau. Nine o’clock. At night.

The detail was empty, everyone gone but him. Mayfield and Sutter had been here until about ten minutes ago when a new case landed in their laps, a domestic dispute gone bad. Neighbors called the cops, but by the time the uniforms got there, all was quiet. They found the wife dead in the kitchen, the husband missing.

Nelson Bradley had phoned earlier and told
Paavo he’d best be able to access the personnel info when only the night-shift people were around. They were the forgotten people. There weren’t many of them, and no one bothered, at that time, to peer over anyone else’s shoulders to check on the validity of their “need to know” the data they were accessing.

A friend in Personnel had given Bradley the password and access codes to get into those files without raising red flags in the Integrity Branch. One disaffected employee helping another, Paavo thought. He guessed it was some sort of bureaucratic sense of justice.

Now he awaited Bradley’s call.

The evening quiet gave him a chance to make a few phone calls to speed up the identification of the hit-and-run victim outside Aulis’s apartment. Paavo didn’t like the preliminary findings, that the victim—slim, late thirties, no distinguishing characteristics—had no identification on him, and no fingerprints on file. He was a John Doe, and unless something dramatic turned up, he’d continue to be one.

The only interesting information came from a med tech at the scene, who had noticed the victim’s teeth. Several were missing, and the ones still in his mouth were decayed. In Paavo’s experience, most people with bad teeth ended up in a dentist’s chair at some point. The only ones he’d seen who hadn’t were generally from poor, third-world countries.

Witnesses couldn’t agree on whether John Doe was heading toward Angie’s car, or even scarier, Aulis’s apartment, when struck by a dark blue car with no license plates. Something in the features caused everyone to believe the driver was a woman with short hair. Just what it was about the features couldn’t be agreed upon, and the consensus was
that the car sped by too quickly for anyone to get a good enough look at the driver to attempt a composite drawing.

A few people also noticed another car, a black…or brown…or dark blue one, leave the scene immediately after the accident, going in the opposite direction from the hit-and-run driver. No details could be given about that driver, either.

The phone rang shrilly, and Paavo started. “Smith, Homicide.”

“It’s me.”

Paavo’s spine stiffened. “Any luck?”

“I searched the personnel files going back from thirty to forty years ago searching for the name Cecily,” Bradley said. “Thank God it isn’t that common a name. Anyway, there were three. I think I’ve got a good idea which one you want.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, first, let me ask you about the one who worked the longest for the Bureau. She was in her forties during that time—Cecily Drury. She was a typist for thirty years, and retired at age fifty-five.”

“Not her.”

“Then I’ve got a sixty-year-old librarian, Cecily Reiner, who spent a year reassigned from DOJ to put our library in order.”

“No.”

“This is it, then. Cecily Hampton Campbell, a young woman, only in her twenties, married to a special agent, Lawrence Campbell. She was hired to work in Ident—that was the old fingerprint identification section. It used to be a big paper operation with thousands of people, most of them women. It was like an assembly line. Anyway, she left Washington and was transferred to the San Francisco Field Office. Her record shows deceased. So does his. She died over thirty years ago.”

Paavo’s hand tightened on the receiver. That was her. The woman he’d spent a lifetime wondering about. To learn her name, hear of her marriage…her death…hit him a lot harder than he would have imagined. Cecily Hampton Campbell. “You were right. That’s the one. Would you send me her file? His, too.”

“I’ll need another day or so,” Bradley said. “Files this old are in storage. It could take a while to get them. Of course, you know I shouldn’t send them. This is confidential information.”

“I don’t think so.” Paavo’s voice was harsh, jagged. “There’s no privacy act for the dead.”

As soon as he hung up the phone, he searched California and then national death records for Cecily Hampton Campbell.

No record existed.