Whiplash

  "That's what's in my future? Whispering whenever I'm in the house? Maybe it was a mistake to settle here in the first place, but given the current market, I may not have a lot of choice. Thing is, Georgie's school was highly recommended by a friend of mine in L.A., and that's what locked me on target. Georgie really likes her school, likes the kids, sure likes her dance class and teacher."

  "Tough decision." Erin wiped her hands on a dish towel, found herself twisting it over and over. "Well, maybe it's not all that great a distance. I made it up to New Haven today to see my client, did it in under fifty minutes."

  "What client?"

  Big mouth, big mouth. Didn't matter. Who cared? "He's a professor at Yale, an old friend of my dad's. We ate in the Berkeley dining room, his college when he went there thirty years ago. Quite a place."

  "What are you doing for him?"

  Shut up, shut up. "Confidential, Agent Richards. Pull out my fingernails, you still can't make me talk. Tell me about Kesselring."

  Why doesn't she want to tell me? He said, "Kesselring wanted to see Blauvelt's body today and that was when I decided to deal with him myself. I called Dr. Ella Franks and she met us at our local morgue, in the basement in the Stone Bridge Memorial Hospital. I have to admit he asked her good questions, and he said right off he didn't believe the killer obliterated his face to prevent identification. We've all been wondering about that."

  Bowie thought back to the cold sterile room, standing across the autopsy table from Blauvelt's body. Bowie had watched Kesselring carefully as he stared down at Blauvelt's ruined face. "Dr. Franks, you said the killer struck a half-dozen blows to his face?"

  Dr. Franks nodded. "Yes, exactly half a dozen, like his killer counted the hits. It was postmortem. Why do you think the murderer did this to him?"

  Kesselring never looked away from Blauvelt's face. He said with complete certainty, "Rage, psychotic rage. Someone was really over the edge, so wound up he just didn't stop. He wanted to-how do you say it-erase the man, yes, that's it, the killer wanted to erase him, and he did."

  And Bowie had said to him, "If the killer didn't care about his being quickly identified, then why did he cut off Blauvelt's fingers? Why not cut off his feet?"

  Kesselring was silent a moment, chewing this over, and admitted it was strange. "Perhaps the psychotic rage had burned itself out, perhaps the killer heard someone coming. Perhaps he planned to come back and bury Blauvelt, but he was prevented from doing so."

  All of that made sense, Bowie thought, and cursed under his breath.

  Bowie had noticed that Dr. Franks, who admired him, dammit, respected what he said, was looking at Kesselring with something of the same expression he'd seen on Dolores Cliff's face. It burned his gut.

  Bowie shook his head at the memory of his own conceit. He said to Erin, "Then Kesselring asked to visit the Schiffer Hartwin offices. The lawyers were camped out there. Caskie Royal refused to see us, sent us a message to talk to his lawyers. Kesselring and I met briefly with Bender the Elder. He was cordial to Kesselring, but of course offered no help at all.

  "Then Kesselring wanted to speak to Carla Alvarez. We were both surprised when she agreed to see us, but then she simply smiled at us, and said she had no comment on the advice of their legal staff. And she didn't budge. I think she saw us just to rub our noses in it."

  Erin asked, "What about the guy who's manager of accounting, Turley Drexel?"

  "What do you know about Turley Drexel?"

  "Didn't Sherlock tell you? She said when she walked into Alvarez's office the morning Blauvelt's body was discovered, she interrupted Alvarez and Turley Drexel in a loud and nasty argument. She didn't know what it was about, but could there be something there?"

  "I'll check on that." He ran his fingers through his dark hair, making it stand on end. "This is precisely why there should be only one team working a case. This could be important, yet I didn't know about it."

  "It's called debriefing, Bowie. I'll bet you haven't told Sherlock all about Kesselring yet, have you?"

  "That's beside the point, I-well, smack me in the head. Okay, you're right. And you can stop that now."

  "Stop what?" He was standing two feet away from her, staring at her hard.

  "Stop being such a smart-mouth, even if you're right. It burns me."

  Erin gave him a fat smile. Without thinking, she took a single step toward him, leaned up, and kissed him, fast and light and easy, and stepped back. She laughed. "Suck it up, Agent Richards," and she snapped his thigh with the towel.

  "Georgie's almost asleep," Sherlock said from the kitchen doorway. "Since the walls are so thin in apartments, you know, I heard most of what you guys talked about." She raised an eyebrow, looked from one to the other. "Interesting."

  "What's interesting?" Bowie asked, lips seamed.

  "What you said about Kesselring. Where's he at this evening?"

  "He's dining at Chez Pierre. He wanted to see where Blauvelt had his last meal. He wanted to speak to Estafan, see if he could find other witnesses. I wonder what the owner Paul Remier thinks of him."

  Sherlock frowned. "Seems like a waste of time to me. He could read the reports, they're very thorough. Why is he rewalking in all our steps?"

  "Maybe he doesn't think the FBI is thorough enough," Erin said. "Or more likely, he thinks you're holding out on him."

  Bowie looked thoughtful. "Or maybe Kesselring knows more than he's told us and wants to see if anyone else does too."

  33

  STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

  Thursday morning

  Why hadn't Dr. Kender called? Surely he'd had plenty of time to think things through. Erin looked over at her fireplace, at the two loose bricks she'd dug out to stash a copy of Caskie Royal's papers. She'd awakened that morning feeling urgent, wanting to get something rolling or-or what? She didn't know, but she felt restless and unfocused. She felt something bad was coming, and it was driving her nuts.

  Fifteen minutes later, Erin gave up and dialed Dr. Kender's number. She got his voice mail. She checked the schedule he'd given her, and sure enough, he was teaching a graduate class on Ahmose I, first ruler in the Eighteenth Dynasty, who finished the campaign to expel the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, something she knew since she'd read the course syllabus. If he didn't call her by noon, she'd try again. She was anxious to talk over taking the next step, releasing the papers, come what may. What was holding him up?

  She grabbed her car keys and decided to see for herself. She drove past the Schiffer Hartwin corporate headquarters outside Stone Bridge, past the local police station with its American flag flying outside in a nicely planted flowerbed. She admitted she'd hoped to see a sign of Bowie, but she only saw two uniformed officers walking purposefully toward their patrol car. She knew Police Chief Amos had to be hating every minute the feds were there.

  She turned her beautiful Hummer right on Munson Avenue, just five minutes from the interstate. In her rearview mirror she could see a car she recognized turn right some twenty feet behind her.

  It was the same car that had been with her since she'd left her apartment.

  She couldn't make out the license plate. Her grandfather hadn't believed in coincidences, nor had her father. Genetically, she wasn't predisposed to, either.

  Time to test it out. She pressed her foot down on the gas and took a quick right onto Marple Drive, her tires screeching.

  The car turned a moment later, its tires screeching as well, even accelerated, gaining on her now.

  Coincidence would have been nice. This wasn't good.

  She tried to make out who was driving and how many were in the car but she couldn't tell because the windshield was darkly tinted, and who did that? No one on the up-and-up, that's for sure. It was time to do a U-turn, though her Hummer H3 didn't like them very much, and drive as fast as she could back to the police station.

  No, not yet. She had to find out who was after her. She speeded up again, turned a sharp left and another sharp left, and came
out again on Munson Avenue. She was only a half-mile from the police station, so she slowed down, hoping the car would close with her, when she heard a sound like a gas stove lighting and saw a glimpse of flames from the corner of her eye outside the left rear door. She unclipped her seat belt, hit the brake hard, flung the door open, and threw herself out of the car. She hit hard on her shoulder against the asphalt, and rolled just as the explosion ripped through the roof of her Hummer, burst out the side windows and the windshield, sending shards of glass flying out everywhere and waves of boiling air and shooting flames into the sky. She curled into a ball, covered her head with her arms, and prayed. The noise deafened her, made her ears ring, and the smell made her gag as she curled tighter. She tried to suck in air, but the explosion had eaten it all up. She felt something strike her back, and shook it off. She saw it was part of a car seat, burning brightly beside her. She didn't know how badly it had burned her, but she didn't hurt, didn't even feel it yet.

  She staggered to her feet and ran behind an oak tree at the edge of someone's front yard, and watched the lighter debris raining down. The road behind her Hummer was empty, her pursuer gone. But her car was a torch, and she felt the air boil hotter now than it had just a moment before. How was that possible? She was watching a nightmare, but it was real and it was happening here, right in front of her, in a nice middle-class neighborhood with no one around, thank God.

  Her beloved baby, her Hummer H3, that she'd proudly owned for three years since she bought it from a gentleman from Cabot, Vermont, who made cheese and whose fiancée had hated it. It was light blue and so beautiful all the guys envied it, and now it sat in the middle of the street, only its frame intact, a flaming, stinking, smoldering mess.

  Someone had meant for her to be in it.

  She heard a woman scream.

  Then a guy was yelling, "Go inside, kids. You heard me, Get inside. Jennifer, Todd, get inside now!"

  She looked at the still burning jagged piece of car seat that had struck her back, felt the sharp impact again, but it still didn't hurt. But the moment Erin heard sirens in the distance, a pain in her back detonated just like her car had and burned her all the way through to her backbone. Air whooshed out of her as she fell to her knees, and bent over on her hands and knees, sucking in big gulping breaths to keep from yelling.

  Someone leaned over her, she could see his shadow. "Miss, are you all right?"

  Her brain was mired in a wasteland of pain, throbbing hot pain.

  "No, she's not, Rick. Call an ambulance. How'd she blow up her car?"

  "It isn't a car, it's one of those big-ass Hummers. It exploded right in front of my house. Jeez, it smells bad."

  "What's she doing driving a Hummer?"

  "Call freaking 911!"

  Their voices washed over her, not really touching her. She was focused on the vicious pain in her back.

  34

  STONE BRIDGE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

  Dr. Henry Arch said, "I hope you're not vain, Ms. . . . ?"

  A long pause, then Erin said, "I don't remember if I'm vain or not."

  "You might end up with a bit of a scar on your upper back, near your right shoulder, Ms. . . . ?"

  Erin was lying flat on her stomach, drifting along in a cloud of morphine. She grinned up at him. "The way I'm beginning to feel, I really don't think I care."

  She heard a man's voice outside the cubicle. It was Bowie arguing with a woman. She'd lose, Erin would bet her currently fairly healthy bank account on it. Then he was there, beside her, and Dr. Arch said, "You her husband?"

  "No, I'm FBI Agent Bowie Richards. She's my daughter's ballet teacher."

  "I had no idea teaching kids how to demi-plié was so hazardous. You wouldn't think parents would get that pissed at her."

  Bowie looked down at her back and swallowed. The burn looked really bad-fiery red, oozing and angry. Thank the good Lord it wasn't all that big. He drew a deep breath and asked, "How serious is it?"

  Dr. Arch said, "If she's a back sleeper, she'll have to find another way for a couple of days. Almost all of the burn is second degree, but I'll admit, it looks like misery. Fortunately, the jacket she was wearing protected her from a truly critical burn. There aren't many deep spots, and all of it should heal without a graft. What's her name? Her purse wasn't with her when she was brought in."

  "Erin Pulaski."

  "I'm an Irish-Polish-American."

  "Me, I'm a Russian Swede." Dr. Arch was laughing as he lightly touched his gloved fingertips to her back.

  She reared up. "It doesn't hurt much but I think I'd be yelling without the morphine."

  "Sorry," Dr. Arch said.

  She felt Bowie's hand on her shoulder, lightly pushing her down. He leaned next to her face. "You hang in there, kiddo. I'm here and I'm not leaving."

  "What happened, Bowie? I sort of left the planet when the paramedics picked me up."

  "The paramedics got there fast and brought you in, that's all. Since there were half a dozen 911 calls, the whole police station knew about it real fast. I didn't realize it was you until I heard one of the patrol officers talk about 'Erin's poor Hummer' still burning on the street. Are you together enough to tell me what happened?"

  Erin didn't want to remember, she didn't want to think about anything, except maybe humming a nice chorus of "Forever Young" with the morphine playing a smooth bass. She closed her eyes and saw herself hurtling out of the Hummer door, and crashing against the curb. "Am I hurt anywhere else?"

  Dr. Arch said, "I haven't had time to check you as thoroughly as I'd like. I'll do that again as soon as we get your back taken care of, but from what I can see, so far you've just got a few bruises and scrapes. You won't even need any sutures."

  Her mind was fuzzing over. It felt bizarre and comforting at the same time. She said, "I don't suppose you caught the creeps who did this?"

  "Not yet," Bowie said. "Talk, Erin."

  ". . . I remembered my dad telling me a car on fire was a rolling bomb and believe me, I didn't even pause a nanosecond, I just slammed on the brake and threw myself out the driver's side door. My baby, Bowie, my Hummer exploded maybe three seconds later."

  There, it was said. Erin wasn't aware that tears were streaming down her dirty face until she felt Bowie's fingers wiping them away.

  "I'm sorry. You'll be okay, you heard Dr. Arch. Damn me for an idiot, I never seriously thought you'd be in danger because we let you get connected to the investigation-"

  "I'm fine, Bowie. It's not me, it's my Hummer, she's gone. Someone blew her up. She cruised all over town like a rock star, taking bows at every red light. I'd come out of the dry cleaner's to find guys draped all over her, but she was mine."

  "You survived, Ms. Pulaski," Dr. Arch said as he dabbed ointment on her back. "Suck it up."

  "You're a dolt, sir. You never saw my Hummer, never rode in her. All the guys in Stone Bridge were jealous of her, Bowie included, he just pretended he wasn't."

  "Yeah, yeah, poor me," Dr. Arch said as he did this and that to her back, better not to know, she thought. "Here I am stuck with a plain old three-year-old Ferrari F430, a boring bright racing red, U.S. specs put it zero to sixty in three point six seconds, and I've been too chicken to let it loose on the highway. My son, now, he's chomping at the bit. I told him he had maybe twenty more years to get himself prepared. Hold still now, I'm going to give you some more morphine."

  Bowie said, "You're alive, Erin. You'll replace the Hummer. I'll help you find one. Please don't tell me you're really crying for that car."

  "Okay, I won't." Erin closed her eyes again, and felt, all of a sudden, that she was floating some six feet above herself, nearly up to those removable tiles in the ceiling, and it was so lovely and calm up there next to the light fixture, where nothing bad could happen to her.

  Dr. Arch said thoughtfully, "Come to think of it, if my Ferrari exploded to smithereens, I might shed a couple buckets of tears myself. I take it all back, Ms. Pulaski, you go right ahead and wee
p." He was working on her shoulder now but she felt only a whisper touch against her skin. She vaguely heard him say to Bowie, "Would you look at that bruise. Well, it's no big deal in the great scheme of things. I don't think anything's broken, but we'll check her out with an X-ray. Say, if someone tried to blow her up, you're a federal cop, why don't you protect her from now on?"

  "That's my plan," Bowie said. She felt blessed warmth when he took her hand, but his fingers against her skin brought her right down from above and she didn't know if it was worth it.

  35

  Erin usually hated lying on her stomach, but with the lovely morphine, she could have been standing on her head and not felt uncomfortable at all. "It was a light brown sedan, a Mitsubishi, I think, not very old. It looked like one of those rental cars-nondescript, butt-plain. I've always wondered why they even make cars like that. I mean, who'd want to buy one? I couldn't make out the license, they'd dirtied it up."

  She'd have some pain for the next couple of days, Dr. Arch had told Bowie, but nothing a bit of Vicodin wouldn't handle. Her hair was still mostly in its thick French braid and they'd washed her face and all the rest of her he could see. She was lying on her stomach, her head to the side, looking like she didn't have a care in the world.

  He lightly smoothed back a hank of hair that had fallen across her face and tucked it back into the braid. "That's good, Erin. The tinted windows give us something to work with."

  She peered up at him with sudden interest. "It occurs to me that you look sort of cute, Bowie-all sorts of worried and mad."

  "What? Oh, well, thank you, but that's the morphine talking."

  "Nope, it's me."

  He said, "Well, I am worried and mad."

  "You wanna know something else?"