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Chapter Two
The hands of the clock ticked slowly toward 2:00 a.m. Angel had spoken to her boss three times since viewing the body and his sniveling assistant twice. This time she had a somewhat different number in mind.
She was positioning her thumb over the seventh digit when the head of forensic pathology pushed through the lab door. His smile was automatic, his chuckle a welcome sound in the sterile grid of hospital corridors.
“He won’t mind,” Joe Thomas assured her. “Two, four, six o’clock. Time of day or night is irrelevant to Noah Graydon. As you should know after eighteen months of back-and-forth phone conversations.”
Angel’s own smile blossomed. “Good to hear, Dr. T, but in actual fact, I was calling my mother. And after almost thirty years of close association, I can promise you time means a great deal to her. More than her new Harley, in fact.”
“Amazing woman.” Joe used a blue checked handkerchief to polish his glasses. “She crunches numbers in Alaska for the better part of four decades, then meets a long distance trucker and decides to go off and live the life.”
“Everyone should live the life.” Angel closed her phone, met his brown eyes. “Not sure about the Harley yet, but I’m always open to new. Why did you think I was calling Noah?”
“Come on, Angel, I’ve met Bergman’s snotty assistant. The voice of reason would be a welcome change after that. Unfortunately, in terms of your latest murder victim, I’m leaning toward a mugging gone awry.”
“Been talking to your wife, huh?”
“Yes, I have, and yes, the word junkie came up, but she’s only trying to keep things simple after that nightmare of a childnapping case you two were involved in.”
Angel dropped the cell phone into her coat pocket. “So what’s the deal with Foret?”
Joe crooked a finger. “Come into my parlor, pretty fly, and I’ll show you.”
“Great, I get to see a naked dead man on an empty stomach. Missed dinner,” she explained, “along with the ending to the play.”
“Who was the unlucky guy?”
She shed her coat, grinned. “A podiatrist your wife and my so-called friend introduced me to last week. He looks, talks and acts like a department store mannequin. He has polished skin, Joe, right down to the cleft in his chin. He also has an icky foot fetish which I’ll be kind and not go into. Now fess up. Why did you think I was calling Noah?”
He pinched her chin before snapping on a pair of medical gloves. “Cat with a fish, Angel, that’s you. Okay, I thought that because it’s what you do when you’re feeling edgy, and Liz told me about the shadow thing tonight. You thought someone was watching you.”
Unperturbed, Angel circled the examining table. “Watching all of us, Doc. I’m not totally paranoid.”
“Just ultra sensitive to dark shadows. And bats.”
“Some people would call the shadow part intuitive.”
“Was anyone lurking?”
“Not that I saw, but shadows shift, and anyone in them would know how to move fast. I’m not saying there’s a deep dark plot involved here, but I’m not thinking junkie either. The pennies on Foret’s eyelids,” she elaborated at Joe’s slight frown. “It’s too old-world for someone who’s desperate.”
“Are you thinking hired hit?”
“Could be. Foret worked for the State Department—that’s all the information Bergman has or is giving us right now—but I’m guessing he was high level. He was also on that dock for a reason. We’ll start there.”
“Well, deep breath, stomach muscles tight, let’s have a look at Mr. Foret’s wounds.”
The better part of an hour crawled by, leaving in its wake the eerie sense of mortality that struck her from time to time.
As Joe’s colleague had suggested, it was the slash to Foret’s carotid artery that had done the job. He’d bled out swiftly with little time to react and only one hand with which to defend himself. Most of the scoring was on his throat and neck, but there was also a nick on his collarbone and a shallow scrape on the back of his hand.
“There’s possible blood and or skin under the fingernails of his left hand,” Joe noted. “I’ll have those things plus the contents of his stomach analyzed and on your desk by noon.”
“Sunday dinner should be fun.”
Joe blinked at her through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Is it Sunday already?”
“Between home, work and the Victim’s Support Center, you and Liz work way too hard.” Angel moved away from the table, shook the smell of death from her hair and arms. “You should take a cruise.”
“We thought about it, but I get seasick.”
She couldn’t resist a laugh. The man dissected dead bodies, but a few ocean swells did him in. The human mind fascinated.
She heard a thump. The door to the examining room swung open, and a second Dr. Thomas squished in.
“Liz called,” he explained before his brother could ask. “There’s a liver coming in from Atlanta. The patient’s being prepped for transplant surgery, so I decided to drop in and thaw my nimble fingers. Dead guy on the table aside, have any new donors been wheeled in tonight?”
Twisted amusement rose in Angel’s throat. “Foret’s are the only body parts in the vicinity, Graeme, so put your eyes back in their sockets, go upstairs and scrub.”
Several inches taller and a great deal more handsome than his comfortable-looking older brother, Graeme Thomas was nevertheless an inherently nice guy. Didn’t mean he couldn’t flirt with the best of them. “You talk so sweet, Angel.” Flashing a grin, he set his cheek next to hers from behind, wrapped his arms around her waist and swayed. “Sure you won’t marry me?”
“That would make me what? Wife number four?”
“It’s my lucky number. Come on, what do you say? You, me, Elvis, a neon chapel? I’ll even rent us a pink Cadillac.”
She smiled and patted his exposed cheek. “Really tempted, but I’ll settle for dinner and a DVD.”
“Topped off by a chat with Noah Graydon?”
“Not you, too.” She sighed out a breath, disentangled and turned. “Noah’s a friend, okay? On the invisible side, but if people can connect through the Internet, then the phone should be a no-brainer.”
“I guess.” But he caught her hand. “The Vegas offer stands. You get tired of a voice on the phone, you know where I’ll be.”
“Yeah, up to your elbows in body parts. I’ll hold tight to that image. Send the report over when you get it, Joe. I’m going to try for—” she brought her watch into focus “—whoa, four straight hours of alone time. Tell Liz I’ll finish the prelims, and she should go ahead and streak her hair.”
“Are all women anal with their priorities?” Graeme wondered aloud.
Angel pulled on her gloves, worked the fingers down. “No more so than men with their HD TVs and game-day rituals. Good luck in surgery, Graeme.”
Her boot heels echoed in the empty corridor outside. Swinging her coat on, she murmured, “It’s like being the last live cell in a dead body. No way could I do your job, Dr. T.”
Still, as her newly emancipated mother liked to say, life tossed what it tossed. Go with it or go crazy.
At twenty-nine, Angel didn’t think life had tossed all that much her way yet. But three girlfriends and a messy divorce later, her father had done his level best to drive his first wife crazy. Thankfully, poetic justice had intervened. He’d wound up with a shrew for a second wife along with the proverbial stepchild from hell. As Angel saw it, occasionally life and fate got together and tossed a very satisfying fair ball into the mix.
Deep in the pocket of her black coat, her cell phone began to hum. At three-something in the morning, the news wasn’t likely to be good, but ever the optimist, she pulled it out.
The number on the screen brought a smile to her lips, even if it didn’t surprise. For all his solitary ways, the man knew everything, often before anyone else in the department.
She greeted him with an amused, “Well, hi there, tall, dark and mysterious. What’s got you up so late on a Saturday night?”
“Mostly the thought of you being up so late on a Saturday night.”
Noah Graydon’s voice flowed through her veins like honey laced with dark rum. She’d been intrigued by him since their first conversation, a year and a half ago. Today, she was as much entranced as intrigued. Unfortunately, she was also inured, or heading that way.
Noah was a man of darkness, a voice in the night. For reasons she had yet to determine, he preferred to exist in a world of shadow and half-light. No one saw him except Joe. And no one who knew him, if indeed anyone in the Boston office did, would talk about his predilection for solitude.
And so their entire relationship had evolved over the phone. Didn’t make him a stranger exactly, but if she’d been the cat Joe had labeled her, curiosity would have killed her several lifetimes ago.
Smiling, even though she knew where their conversation would ultimately wind up, Angel pushed the elevator call button, then bumped her shoulder lightly against the wall while she waited.
“I’m at the path lab and creeped out, Noah. Say something pretty so I can erase the picture of dead body parts that are whizzing through my brain.”
“Bed of roses.”
She set her head on the wall. “Been listening to Bon Jovi, huh?”
“That’s why the Boston office snapped you up, Angel. You’re all about extrapolation. Okay, pretty. Close your eyes and imagine the Cape. Turning leaves and bonfires. Think cold nights, a walk in the woods and a glass of wine waiting when you return.”
A more tranquil smile curved her lips. “You have a truly amazing voice, Graydon. I swear I can smell those leaves burning.” The elevator doors slid open, and she glanced inside. “Yuck. Empty gurney with rumpled sheets.” She sidestepped it as she entered.
His low chuckle might have brought back the Cape if she hadn’t recalled the unholy hour. A clunk of gears preceded the elevator’s arduous upward climb.
“I hear you’ve got a body,” he remarked.
“We do, and I’ve just come from a close encounter with it. It’s big, pale and hairless, a bit like that enormous baby the drunk stork delivered to the wrong people in the Bugs Bunny cartoon.”
“Well, there’s a picture. Thanks for that, Angel.”
“Welcome. Do you know what Foret’s story is?”
“He’s got ties to the White House.”
“Figured as much. Just please don’t tell me he’s related to someone who’s going to make my life hell until his murder’s solved.”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“Explains the eight-hundred-dollar suit.”
“Attached to the State Department.”
“Saw the credentials. Tell me what I didn’t see, or probably wouldn’t know.”
“He’s close personal friends with the current Secretary of State.”
At last, the inevitable X factor reared its head. “Oh, good. That means there’ll be pressure to solve and close fast. Bergman can’t be aware of the last thing, Noah, or instead of sniveling, his assistant would be apoplectic. Is there any whisper about a dockyard rendezvous?”
“Give me time, Angel. I just dug up the Secretary of State connection. Any theories yet?”
Angel caught herself stroking the bottom of her cell phone and gave her fingers a speculative look.
“Only that I don’t think he was rolled by someone hungry for a fix. It’s true, any cash he had in his wallet was gone, but he was still wearing his platinum Tag Heuer watch, diamond tiepin and ring. Signet, not wedding. So either the killer was dumb as well as desperate, or the money was taken to make Foret’s death look like a really bad mugging.”
“How did you read the pennies on his eyes?”
“I’ve heard of similar cases.”
“Yeah?”
“Three times last year. Once in Boston, twice in New York. All of the murders had gangland connections. One gang, three killers.”
“This isn’t gang-related.”
It wouldn’t be, she thought. Far too simple. “And you know that because?”
“Victim doesn’t fit the profile.”
“Yes, well, Noah, it’s late and I’m tired, and it was really cold on that dock. I wasn’t thinking profile so much as get him to Joe and find the largest possible coffee.”
Another chuckle reached her. It almost reached into her. “Don’t turn diva on me, Angel. It wasn’t a criticism. You only came to Boston eighteen months ago. You can’t know what I do.”
Eighteen months, and some odd number of days. Angel started to lean a hip on the gurney, but spied the soiled under-sheet and opted for the elevator rail instead. “Waiting, Graydon. What exactly is it you know?”
“This isn’t an isolated murder.” Softly said, but a chill chased itself along her spine.
“Definitely do not like the sound of that. Are we talking serial killing?”
“I’d say so.”
Frustration crept in as the elevator ground to a halt. “How can you think that already? Have you been talking to Joe?”
“I don’t have to talk to Joe.”
“Then how…?”
“Look for a note.”
Again, the words were softly uttered; however, far from diminishing their impact, Noah’s tone gave them a punch that silenced Angel’s automatic protest.
“What kind of note?” she asked instead.
“A cryptic one. This killer’s looking to be understood, but only by the cleverest of the clever.”
She pictured him leaning forward in his chair, staring at the rain-smeared city lights outside his window.
“It’ll be small,” he continued. “Ordinary, like a tossed off scrap of paper. But it will be there. Look hard enough, and you’ll find it.”
Her resistance dissolved. “You’re the best criminal profiler in the business, Graydon. I trust you more than anyone I know. So I’ll look. And if there’s a note, I’ll find it. Bergman…”
