Flawless(48)

“On another note,” Dr. Miro said, folding her hands on her lap, “we’ve had a call from assistant director Richard Eagan of the FBI.”

“Oh?” Kieran said, suddenly feeling guilty.

He knew! He was calling her to tell her to keep her hands off his agent.

She told herself that was ridiculous.

And, of course, it was.

“You heard about this morning?” Dr. Miro said, shaking her head. “There’s been another robbery, and another murder.”

Kieran nodded.

I heard about it before 7:00 a.m.

Dr. Miro went on. “Eagan was very impressed with your work on the robbery you were caught up in, and he’d like your help again as his agents continue interviewing the men from the other night.”

“I’ve interviewed them once already, and I said I didn’t believe that they were the killers, which has now been established,” Kieran said.

“They’re looking for something different now.”

“Where and when one or all of them might have come in contact with the killers,” Kieran said.

“You are intuitive,” Dr. Miro said, sounding impressed.

“Ah, yes, intuitive,” Kieran said, deciding not to explain that she really knew because Craig had told her so.

“Eagan seems to think that you’re the woman for the job of interviewing them again. Apparently they were all more comfortable and talkative with you than with his agents, so he’d like you to talk to them, see if you can find the connection between them and the killers,” Dr. Miro said, patting down her short gray hair as she rose. “I wanted to let you know an agent will be arriving to escort you back to Rikers.”

An agent?

Craig Frasier?

Kieran looked at her cell. He hadn’t called her. He had driven her to the office that morning, and he hadn’t left until she was inside with the door double-locked since it was too early for anyone else to be there.

But he’d been distracted, grim. No surprise. As soon as he left her he was on his way to the scene of a crime.

The murder of a twenty-two-year-old woman.

These people killed without blinking, and she couldn’t help but be afraid that she was on their radar.

After all, she’d been on the news after the robbery, and then she had been the “any decent person” to lend a hand to the girl on the tracks.

The girl who might have been there in her place.

She sat at her desk and began jotting down questions she might ask the thieves that afternoon.

It suddenly seemed more imperative than ever that the killers be caught as swiftly as possible. So many lives might well be at stake.

Including her own.





CHAPTER

NINE

AS LONG AS he had been in the field, Craig still had a tough time when it came to viewing victims of violent crime. It was hardest to bear when it was a child, when the crime had been particularly heinous or when torture had been involved—even when death had been a blessing after torture had been inflicted.

Maria Antonescu lay in the narrow little alley behind a row of jewelry stores, faceup. She’d died with her eyes open; they seemed to mirror shock and confusion.

Why?

She lay on her back, knocked down by the impact of the bullet.

Death had been quick, at least. They’d shot her straight through the heart.

Young, so young. Pretty, a little bit round, and working as a cleaning woman to stay in the United States. They’d checked immediately to discover if any of the other stores that had been held up used the same service, but none did.

Craig felt a momentary rage rip through him; he couldn’t begin to comprehend the callousness that allowed these men to kill people as easily as they swatted flies.

He hunkered down by the body. Despite his feelings, it was necessary. The medical examiner was there; he’d determined time of death to have been between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.

“Her equipment was packed, vacuum back in the closet, along with her brooms and mops,” Craig said, looking at Mike, who’d been waiting for him at the scene and had stayed with the ME. “She was almost finished here. If she’d left five minutes earlier, she’d still be alive. The owner’s been using the same cleaning service for over twenty-five years. All diamonds are locked in the vaults at night, and all workers—his own staff and contractors like Miss Antonescu—are bonded. That’s why she was allowed to work through the night with no one else present. They’ve never had an incident before. The alarm never went off, so she must have shut down the system while she was working.”

“Or she turned it off because she was on her way out,” Mike said.

“Either that, or...” Craig murmured.

“Or?”

Craig hesitated. The dead girl was stretched out before him, that look of horror still in her eyes.

“Or she was involved and she let them in.”

“But how the hell did they know the combination to the safe?” Mike demanded. “She wouldn’t have known that, and the cops who were first on the scene said it hadn’t been forced.”

Craig shook his head. “That I don’t know,” he said. “What I do know is that they dragged her out here and...” He rose to demonstrate what he thought had happened. “My guess is someone had her by the arm, forced her out the door and pushed her forward. Then someone else shot her at point-blank range. With something powerful. A .44 Magnum, I suspect.”