The Final Deception Read online

  “Oh, dear, Mr. Agent. If you wish, of course, I believe I could give you the scraps instead.”

  He smiled. “No, no, I’m so sorry. The pup would love the scraps. I’ll hit the buffet,” he assured her.

  As she went in to get the scraps, Kieran arched a brow to him.

  “I haven’t eaten all day,” he said.

  “Well, that’s sad, but you and Mike are adults,” Kieran reminded him.

  “We’d originally planned to come to the pub,” he said. “But...”

  “You ate my blueberry pie instead,” Kieran said faux sweetly.

  “You weren’t touching it. Oh, that’s because you didn’t really go there for pie.” He gave her a stern look.

  Kieran let out a sound of aggravation. “Well, Ruff is not a service dog. We can’t take him into the bodega. I should be able to watch him while you go to the buffet and make yourself a meal, since your guys in the blue suits and black cars are never far away. A sedan is back in front of our place, and I’m pretty sure one followed Danny and me from the pub to Annie’s Sunrise.”

  Craig smiled; Egan was true to his word. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see who was in the car. Someone new, he thought, fresh out of the Academy. Egan liked to put young agents on surveillance duty while they learned the ropes. But they would be expected to give a report at the end of shift every day, and every agent wanted to follow through on their first assignments if they wished to rise within the Bureau. “I’ll go in and fix a to-go box,” Craig said. “Shall I get anything for you?”

  She smiled. “I’m fine. I’m just going to wait here...in full view of that black sedan.”

  He smiled, nodded, and went in. As he headed to grab his food from the bodega’s buffet bar, Mrs. Dimitri was on her way out with a little wrapped package for the dog.

  There was no way to keep Kieran out of something once she was determined she had to see it through to the end, he thought to himself. There were only two things to do: be there if she did get herself into trouble, and catch Nicholson and a second killer if there was one—fast.

  He selected food, weighed his box, and paid his bill to Mr. Dimitri at the cash register while his wife chatted with Kieran.

  “Good women are not easy to find, my friend,” Mr. Dimitri told him.

  “I know.”

  Mr. Dimitri leaned over his counter. “You keep that one, yes?”

  “Doing my best,” Craig assured him.

  Mr. Dimitri smiled. “Good men are not so easy to find either. She knows she has a good man. Kiss and make up.”

  Grinning, Craig headed out. He thanked Mrs. Dimitri again for the dog’s scraps, set an arm around Kieran, and waved goodbye.

  “You’re smiling,” she told him.

  “Why not?”

  She didn’t answer. They started walking back, Ruff apparently aware treats awaited him in the bag that was being carried.

  “So, anything else new today?” he asked her.

  “Oh, yes, actually. Cliff Watkins was in the pub. His office is downtown, and apparently this case has caused all kinds of new work for him and his law clerks.”

  “What did he have to say? Any insight into Nicholson’s escape?”

  “Nope. We didn’t talk long. He took two shots in two swallows and headed out.”

  “He’s in a bad place, I imagine,” Craig said. After a few seconds he went on, “Mike and I had a chat with Raoul Nicholson’s older son.”

  “And how was that?” she demanded.

  He smiled at her. Tell her everything? She was in it full throttle. No way out.

  “He says he hasn’t had contact with his father since he left home when he was eighteen. He thinks his own father would kill him, and basically his mother is obsessed with his father and would never say he had done anything wrong. Seems honest. He’s a journalist for an internet paper. We’ll study a lot of what he’s written and try to see if there is something between the lines.”

  “What about the younger boy?”

  “He’s in school down in Princeton. We’ll drive there tomorrow and see if he supports everything his brother had to say. First, we’re going to check on the two men who worked with Nicholson at his shop.”

  “Bart Washington and Mark Givens,” Kieran said.

  “What, you’ve already been to see them, too?” he demanded.

  “No. I just know the case.” She hesitated. “There’s his old pastor, too,” Kieran reminded him. “Axel Cunningham.”

  “From everything I’ve heard, that was a parting of the ways because of Nicholson. The way it sounds to me, Nicholson’s old church—with Axel Cunningham the pastor—was on the fundamentalist side, but nothing compared to what Nicholson thought should be the tenor of the church. I got that from his son Thomas. Thing is, how could he have just disappeared? I’m referring to Nicholson, of course. If you’re right, someone helped get him escape. Then...say that someone lured Blom, got the key, killed Blom and Charles Mayhew, and is still on the loose out there somewhere. So, what did he do with Nicholson? Unless it was all Nicholson. Damn, but we need answers!”

  She touched his face gently. “He just escaped, you know.”

  “And you’ve heard about the first forty-eight hours being the most important, right?” He shook his head. “We’re running out of time. Getting nowhere.”

  “But you are getting somewhere. You’re getting the pieces. A few more, and you will put it all together. I know you.”

  He smiled at that, pausing on the street and turning toward her.

  “You know what I think we should do?”

  “What?”

  He nodded gravely. “Sex. Lots of it. Lots of hot, dirty, wild, wicked sex...”

  “Always the romantic,” she said.

  He laughed softly. “I try.”

  “Well,” she murmured, stooping to pick up Ruff, “it sounds fine to me. We’ll head back, you eat, I’ll feed junior here and put him to bed—in his bed, downstairs—and fall for your every romantic word.”

  “Deal,” he told her, walking faster.

  And faster.

  She laughed and kept up.

  He lifted a hand to the agent in the sedan as they reached their building.

  Egan always said a man should clear out his mind, then set to a problem again.

  Well, he was going to clear his mind. And he had a hell of way to do it.

  * * *

  Monday morning Craig had gone with Mike to conduct their various interviews. He’d left in a good mood after checking to see if a dark sedan, with an agent within, was still parked down the street.

  “If he’s going to follow me anyway, he can give me a ride downtown to my office,” Kieran had suggested. She still had an hour after Craig left before she needed to report in. She decided to give Ruff a little tug-of-war time. After a bit, she became tired of it, and just patted the dog, who loved and craved the attention. He’d learned to take a flying leap up into her arms, and when she rose to get prepared to head out for the day, he jumped up to her.

  She laughed, catching him, and walked over to the living room windows. She gazed out at the street below.

  The FBI sedan was there, the agent waiting to drive her to work.

  Once again, though, she noted she was being watched from another quarter.

  He was there again: the man in the trench coat.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BART WASHINGTON SAT on his porch at a pleasant little house in Brooklyn. It was a two-story home, in an area where the lot sizes were very small, but he had a small front yard with nicely mowed grass, a narrow strip of land on the left and on the right, and probably a little patch of grass in the back.

  He was an older man, dark and wizened, with graying hair and a lean physique. His wrinkled face was somber as he shook hands with Craig and Mike, asking if they’d like to talk
inside or out, and could he get them anything?

  They demurred, and since Mr. Washington seemed to enjoy his porch, Craig and Mike drew up plastic all-weather chairs by him to talk.

  “I know what’s happened. And I’m reckoning you know the police already spoke to me and Mark when Raoul was arrested, and then again on Saturday,” Washington said.

  “Yes, and thank you for speaking with us again,” Craig told him.

  Washington shook his head in thought. “We knew he was a religious man. Didn’t know his religion, didn’t understand his religion, but hey, it’s America still, isn’t it? I mean, we couldn’t believe it when we found out that he...that he murdered people. That he burned them. I mean, that’s like, well, medieval!”

  “Did anyone come to see him specifically when you were working, anyone who might have agreed with his thought pattern? Did you ever see him behave oddly?”

  “This is New York,” Washington said wearily. “You’re going to have to be more specific when you ask that kind of a question.”

  Craig offered him a rueful smile. “I’m sure you’ve heard he claimed a voice, some kind of higher power, told him certain people were witches. He told a psychologist the people he killed were evil and would have killed others.”

  “You think that might have been true? I mean, that he knew something about those people maybe no one else did?” Washington asked, and then he answered himself. “That is ridiculous. He murdered people. He was a holier-than-thou, cold-blooded killer.”

  “Did you ever see him talking to himself?” Craig asked.

  Washington frowned suddenly. “You know... I always thought he had earphones on, or maybe he had his phone on speaker when he was in his office. We’d see him often...talking on the phone, or so we thought. I mean, maybe he was on the phone...” He trailed off, shaking his head again. “I still don’t know. I can tell you this—he was often in his office while Mark and I were working. I mean, that meant nothing. He was the boss. Figured he was talking to accounts or whatever. Sometimes though, now that you ask, I did see him just sitting there, staring ahead, as if he was listening to someone. I guess maybe that was kind of odd, but I don’t think it occurred to me until now. And then again, like I said, maybe he was listening to someone rant about the way they wanted a certain job done or something like that.”

  “We caught him on a workday. Do you remember hearing the Fireman had been apprehended? Were you still at work then, and if so, can you remember anything about that day?” Mike asked.

  “Was he in his office a lot that day?” Craig prompted quietly when Washington was silent, thinking back. “Listening, as you say, or maybe on the phone?”

  Washington looked at him, frowning. “Yeah,” he said. “He was in his office...and then came out and asked me and Mark to keep working on a project we were doing for a guy in Williamsburg. Mark and I were fine with it. He was leaving early, but he paid us for our work. We weren’t paying him.” He cast his head to angle curiously. “Do you think he heard a voice because someone called him?”

  “We don’t know,” Craig said.

  “You haven’t seen or heard anything from him, right, Mr. Washington?” Mike asked.

  “What do you think?” Washington asked roughly. He shook his head. “Sorry—no. I’m scared of that guy. I don’t think he’d come near me. I have a permit for a hunting rifle. And I promise you, right now I have it loaded and ready to go. Wife died last year, but I got grandkids, and I want to be around for them. I’m ready if he does come anywhere near here. I’m sixty-seven. I like doing stuff with my hands—didn’t mind working in the shop. But after this...well, I’m retired now. I want my life to be nice and easy here in my golden years.”

  “What about Mark Givens?” Craig asked.

  “I don’t know why you’re asking me. I’m sure you’ve checked up on him, and you’re gonna to speak with him, too.”

  “We will,” Craig agreed.

  “We know he took a job at a deli in Tribeca. We’re meeting him at noon, right before he starts his shift,” Mike said.

  “So, what about him?” Washington leaned back in his chair.

  “Was he closer to Raoul Nicholson by any chance? Maybe he heard him talking to whoever he was talking to—or listening to,” Craig said.

  “Mark is in his fifties—has a kid in college. He had to keep working,” Washington said. “Was he closer to Raoul? No. Were we close? Yeah, just the two of us, day in, day out. We got along real well, although...” He paused, frowning again.

  “What is it?” Mike asked, pressing him.

  “On my birthday Mark came in with a present for me. Not much, just a big insulated coffee mug. Nicholson had a fit. We were welcome to be pagans on our own time, but birthdays were not to be celebrated at his place of business. He couldn’t make us understand we were sinners, but there would be no presents, no holidays, and no partying at his business. It was a sin, he said. Satan instigated that kind of dangerous foolery. Well, I was mighty pissed. So was Mark. But like I said, Mark has a kid in college. Can’t rock the boat too much. We tossed the mug in a dumpster as he watched.” Washington grinned. “I went back and got it, of course, but...like I said, he just acted as if he was so holy all the time. Me, I’m a Baptist, but I’ve never seen anything like the way Nicholson wanted to be. Shouldn’t have been so surprised when we found out he killed people he thought were sinners.” He shivered suddenly. “When you boys leave, I’m going to be sitting back inside my house, holding on to that shotgun for dear life.”

  Craig nodded. He knew that seeing this man had been important. Elimination of suspects was crucial to narrowing down who could be the guilty party. And one of Nicholson’s coworkers could know a lot about what made the man tick. In fact, he was making Craig wonder more and more if Nicholson’s “voice” had somehow been a real one, playing on the man’s extreme religious practice and his belief in himself as a messiah.

  But Bart Washington had never been in any kind of legal trouble in his life, nor did anything in his background suggest that he would know about the security measures in an elegant building on the Upper East Side. “Hey, listen, if anything scares you—if you think you’re facing a real threat—you dial 911 right away,” Mike told him as the agents stood.

  “And if something is just making you suspicious, call us,” Craig said, offering one of his cards.

  Washington took the card and slid it into the pocket on his T-shirt. “You bet I will. I’m even keeping my distance from my family right now, staying here all locked in, or keeping watch on the porch. He’s not getting close to me, I promise.”

  “Thank you again for your time.”

  They waved to him, walking down the street to the car. Craig slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Do you really think Nicholson heard the voice because someone pulling his strings actually called him on his cell phone to tell him about witches?”

  “I’m calling Egan. We’ll get a list of his calls. I know he hadn’t called any of his victims. We looked into that right away. But if someone was calling him...”

  “If someone called him to tell him to kill, it will have been on a burner phone. If there is someone out there who helped engineer his escape and either helped him into Mayhew’s building or got in and killed the man himself...well, they’d have been smart enough to not be traceable.”

  “I agree. But it will help to know if he did receive several calls from a burner phone. We’ll know that maybe he was hearing a real voice. And,” he said, looking over at Mike, “we’ll know there is another killer out there, a killer with an agenda, rather than a religious calling.”

  * * *

  Traffic seemed to be especially heavy, but Milo DeLuca, the FBI agent on Kieran watch duty, was an able and competent driver—not losing patience and not prone to sit on his horn.

  He was from Ohio, he told her as he drove; Cincinnati specifical
ly, a fine city, in spite of the fact people loved to tease people about being from Ohio. He’d graduated from the Academy about a year and a half ago, loved his job, and wanted to stay with the FBI forever.

  Monday traffic was intense, but the agent kept up an easy flow of conversation. He wasn’t obnoxious about it, just pleasant.

  They reached the office building in Midtown where Drs. Fuller and Miro kept their offices. Milo left the car in a spot where he shouldn’t have parked, but that seemed to be okay with their Bureau cars.

  He insisted on walking her up to her office, where Jake, their young receptionist, greeted her—and eyed her escort. But Milo DeLuca was a friendly guy, and he started chatting with Jake, who wasn’t much older, and the two had moved on to sports before Kieran even went down the hallway. She found that Dr. Fuller was in Dr. Miro’s office, and the two of them were discussing the events of the weekend.

  They both looked up, falling silent as she tapped on the door frame, since the door was ajar, and they knew she had heard them discussing Raoul Nicholson.

  “Kieran!” Dr. Miro said. She stood from the chair behind her desk. Dr. Miro was a tiny ball of energy. Where Bentley Fuller stood several inches over six feet and could have played a heartthrob on any soap opera, Allison Miro was eight or so years older, plainer in her look and attire, but arresting with her energy and her simple love for humanity—and the determination she would find the best of it.

  “Morning,” Kieran said.

  “We were just talking about you,” Fuller said.

  “You must have had a dreadful weekend. Not that you’re not accustomed to dealing with hard and dangerous situations,” Miro reflected.

  “We’re just so sorry. We should have never asked you to see Raoul Nicholson,” Fuller said apologetically.

  “Why not? I do work here,” Kieran said.

  “Yes, but...” Fuller began.

  “Nicholson escaped,” Miro concluded.

  “And he was at it again!” Fuller said with a sigh.

  “We don’t want you to be in danger, dear,” Miro said. “Bentley and I...well, we chose our practice. And you do such incredible work, helping those who have been abused, those who need help to live on their own, or to become good parents, put together a life after tragedy or trauma...” Her voice trailed off.