Her Last Chance (19 page)

Maybe it was a copycat killer
taking the opportunity to get rid of a liability. Both Brook Duvall and Admiral
Chambers were right up there in Marsh’s sights—the admiral had found out Pru
had probably screwed him out of a painting worth millions—a painting that could
change his miserable life.

Detective Cochrane put a
restraining hand on his arm. “He might not appreciate chatting, right now.”

Brook’s face was ashen, his eyes
bloodshot from tears still visible on his cheeks. He had a lost quality about
him, of someone whose world had shattered without them seeing it coming.

“We’re old friends.” Marsh shook
Cochrane’s pudgy hand off his arm and walked over to the other man.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Brook.”
Marsh squeezed the guy’s shoulder and studied him. Wearing jeans and a L.L.
Bean sweater, he looked as if he’d been in the country.

“Were you out of town?” Marsh asked
quietly.

Duvall nodded. “We have a house in
the Hamptons.” And then he started to cry. Threw himself on Marsh’s shirtfront
like they were brothers. “Pru hated the beach house, hated fishing and fresh
air. Never wanted to come with us. Oh, God, oh, God…”

While Marsh had trouble believing
the Duvalls had been faithful to each other, he had no doubt Brook was devastated
by the murder—didn’t mean he hadn’t done it though, or hadn’t set it up.

“What did she do when you were
away?” Marsh probed, noted Detective Cochrane’s interested gaze watching the
senator carefully.

Brook drew himself upright, wiped
his eyes. Marsh offered the man a handkerchief and had the weird thought that
he’d have to get another one for Josie because he bet right now she was letting
go of all the tears she’d bottled up since they’d woken to the phone ringing at
four a.m. this morning.

And he’d behaved like a total
asshole because everything he believed in was being challenged. The law. His
personal code of ethics. And his views on marriage that he knew she wouldn’t
share. And how the hell did he deal with
that
when he was smack bang in
the middle of a murder investigation and law enforcement snafu? How did he deal
with that when a killer was putting every effort into making sure the woman he
loved died viciously and soon?

Vince was protecting her… and more
guilt ate at him because it should be him. But he couldn’t leave Steve Dancer
to face the wolves alone. Couldn’t stand the guilt of knowing he hadn’t been
doing his job properly because he’d been too busy in bed with Josephine.

Dammit
.

Brook looked away. “She had her own
friends and social life. Geoffrey is getting her desk calendar from the
apartment.” Tears shone like varnish on his cheeks under the harsh glare of the
strip lights. “I’ve told the police everything I know.”

Pru had called Dancer to set up a
lunch date and Marsh would bet she was somehow involved in the situation Dancer
now found himself in. Pru Duvall was somehow involved in her own death.

Marsh grabbed Brook’s arm, forced
the man to meet his eyes. “I know this is painful for you, but did she have a
boyfriend?”

Brook didn’t bristle, didn’t blink.
“I don’t know—we didn’t…”

He started crying and Marsh felt
like a bastard for pushing, but he pushed anyway. “You didn’t have a sexual
relationship with your wife?”

Brook shook his head. His lawyer
came out of the room behind him followed by Special Agent Sam Walker, who
looked like he’d spent the week in his clothes. Brook’s lawyer hustled him away
with a wary glare. Poor bastard.

Agent Walker lounged against the
doorjamb in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up past his beefy elbows. They
exchanged a look and Marsh wanted to grab the other fed by the throat and slam
him through the wall. Walker looked about ready to do the same to him.

“What’s going on?” Walker asked
Cochrane, ignoring Marsh.

Marsh held his tongue. The detective
shrugged and moved along the corridor. “Your man’s through here, Agent Hayes—”

Walker blocked his path. “No way
are you getting in to see the suspect.”

Marsh was taller, but Walker was
broader. Brawling was not in the FBI’s Code of Conduct Handbook, but it
wouldn’t be the first time Marsh had broken that particular rule. He planted
both hands on the other guy’s chest and shoved him back a step. “Don’t fuck
with me, not today.” He held the man’s gaze, watched him bristle and raise his
fists.
Come on. Give me an excuse…

“Hey, Special Agent
in Charge
,
this isn’t a pissing contest.” Detective Cochrane grabbed his arm. “Your guy’s
down here.” Cochrane pulled him along and he went because Steve Dancer needed
him.

Marsh followed him until they
entered a viewing room. The Forgery and Fine Art team were as tight as family.
They relied on each other. Supported each other, and steered clear of the
competitive bullshit that invaded other divisions. Dancer was more than just
another agent. He was his best friend.

Dancer sat with sagging shoulders
in a hardback chair. Unfocused eyes registering nothing, dried blood caked his
face, giving him a wretched appearance. Keeping hold of the rage that coursed
through his veins, Marsh managed to sound casual.

“Has he seen a doctor?” he asked.

Cochrane nodded, rubbed his
moustache. “Got a busted nose.”

The flesh around one eye was red,
swollen completely closed. Dancer’s pallor shone white behind the dried brown
blood.

“What evidence do you have?” Marsh
asked. “Did he provide DNA? Have you run it yet?”

There was no way Dancer was the
Blade Hunter.

“We’ve got semen on Mrs. Duvall’s
body, although we haven’t run it yet.” Cochrane smoothed his palm over the bald
spot on top of his head. “Your guy says his zipper was undone when he came to.
Says he was drugged and doesn’t remember a damned thing.”

“The perp has never left semen
behind before—”

“Yeah, that bothers me,” Detective
Cochrane admitted as he pulled at the tight collar of his shirt. “And he looks
twenty, even though I see from his file he’s thirty-three, but he still isn’t
old enough to have knifed Josephine Maxwell when she was a child—well, he is,
but he’d have been a kid too…”

Kids did god-awful things every
day. But neither figured a kid was into this type of sophisticated torture.

“And we’re tracking the timeline
and trying to place Agent Dancer at other scenes. But your guy has never
traveled outside the US, so that fries the theory of this perp as an
international killer.”

Inside the square sterile room,
Special Agent Nicholl leaned over Dancer and placed a photograph in front of
him. Even from this distance Marsh could see the blood on the digital image.

Marsh stared through the glass,
knowing Dancer couldn’t see him but hoping to infuse the other man with some
form of hope.

“He isn’t the Blade Hunter.”

Cochrane stroked his moustache. “So
either he did Prudence Duvall and set it up as a copycat—a very obvious
copycat—or he’s being set up.”

The unspoken question was
why
and
by whom
?

Cochrane was watching him closely,
looking for what, Marsh didn’t know. He no longer trusted these guys to get the
job done. “What about the knife?” Marsh asked.

“At the lab with everything else.”
He shrugged, scratched his head. “You know in the real world how long it takes
for those results to come in.”

“No CSI timeline for us, huh? Make
sure it gets top priority.” Marsh sent a grim look at the detective. “You got
motive?”

The detective laughed with a
smoker’s rasp. “No motive.”

Marsh stared at Agent Nicholl who
was trying to push Dancer into a confession. Dancer shouted something at the
other fed, fury firing up his one good eye. Nicholl was an excellent
interviewer, but when you had the wrong guy…

“Does he fit the profile the FBI
generated?” Marsh asked.

Detective Cochrane stared through
the window beside Marsh, and Marsh watched him though the reflective
surface—the same way Cochrane watched him back. Both looking for clues, for
tells that someone knew more than they were letting on.

Unfortunately, Marsh didn’t know a
damned thing.

“Steve Dancer is a single white
male who lives alone. Above average intelligence. Raised by his mother.
Interested in law enforcement.” Cochrane shrugged. “He fits some of the profile
but not all.”

Marsh looked through the glass at
the best man he knew. “As a kid Dancer missed most of his formal education, but
arranged his own home-schooling program so he could nurse his mother who
suffered from MS. Then, after she died, he worked three jobs to pay his way
through MIT—graduated top of his class at the age of twenty.” A muscle ticked
near his eye.

What the hell had Prudence
Duvall been up to?

The scene through the one-way
window twisted his gut. Dancer had stopped talking and rested his forehead on
clenched fists against the table. Nicholl left the room and Marsh heard
footsteps along the corridor and the rattle of the doorknob as Nicholl entered
the viewing room.

He stopped dead when he saw Marsh.

“Sir.” He nodded his head, pursed
his lips and seemed to make up his mind. “Special Agent Dancer refused counsel,
but he’s been asking for you.”

Grinding his teeth, Marsh pulled
out his cell phone and held up his hand for a moment’s silence. “Dora, get
Colavecchia back here immediately. Yeah, I don’t care what he says and I don’t
care what Dancer says either. Colavecchia defends Dancer whether he wants it or
not. Tell him I’m calling in all the chips this time.”

Benedict Colavecchia, Brett Lovine
and Marsh had been best friends for fifteen years growing up. He was going to
talk to Lovine next and he was going to obtain Steve Dancer’s exit visa from
this shithole, whatever the cost to himself, his job, or his friendships. He
knew things about the Director of the FBI that no one else knew. He pocketed
the cell phone knowing he needed to make the second call in private. Steve
Dancer was innocent and the Blade Hunter was out there, trying to get to Josie.

He wanted to play games? Game on.

***

“What. Are. You.
Doing?” Each word boomed out like it was a whole sentence.

“What. Does. It. Look. Like?” Josie
tried to imitate Vince’s deep rumble but sounded more like a dog with parvo.
She turned away, sick and tired of trying to pretend everything was all right
when it was so far from all right she was ready to volunteer for a straitjacket
and a padded cell.

Sitting on her knees in the closet,
she was surrounded by shoes. After years of being a pack rat—grinding childhood
poverty did that to a girl—she was finally having a clean out.

There was a pair of sparkly
stilettos that Elizabeth had loaned her for some party her old roommate Pete
had needed a date for. A straight date.

The heels had damn near crippled
her and Pete had gone home with a blond named Dave.

She threw the stiletto at the bed,
but it missed and thumped to the floor. Next came a pair of lime green Doc
Martens that had seemed like a good idea at the time. She lobbed them out.

“Hey!” Vince yelped.

“Then get out of the way!” she
snapped at the big man.

Vince rubbed his shin like she’d
shot him. Then he picked up the sparkling high heels and checked the size.

“You want ‘em, you can have ‘em,”
she told him.

He laughed the way she knew he
would. “Thought my girlfriend might look good in them, but they’re two sizes
too big.”

Josie stretched her eyebrows high,
though the effect was lost as he couldn’t see her face beneath the rack of
clothes. “I do not have big feet.”

“I never said you did, but Laura
has got the tiniest feet I ever saw.” He’d never told her about his girlfriend
before, it was like they’d crossed some barrier or threshold whereby she was
suddenly to be trusted with classified information.

Maybe because she didn’t have long
to live…

“What exactly did you do to be a
war hero?” She made her tone as dubious as possible because baiting Vince was a
damn sight better than crying in the bottom of a smelly closet.

“I single handedly rescued
thirty-six orphans from a refugee camp in Darfur that was under attack by rebel
forces.”

Suddenly very white teeth were
smiling at her from a yard away. His diamond stud twinkled.

“You’re making that up.” Josie
glared at him, chewing her lip.

“Why would I do that?” His tone
suggested he was laughing at her. “That’s what the press reported.” He crouched
lower. “That’s what my military record says.”

It was so obviously not the truth,
but… if he could do that…

“Do you really think you can save
me?” Josie swallowed and the tears started to flow. They were hot on her lashes
and hotter still on her cheeks.

Big hands hauled her from the
closet as if she were a rag doll.

“Josephine.” He hugged her to the
wall of his chest and wrapped her in his big strong arms and she wanted to
believe Vincent would be enough to protect her from this man who dogged her
life like a ghost. She told herself to be grateful it was Vince and not Marsh
she was crying all over.

“I’ll do for you what I did for
those kids,” he told her.

“What was that?” Her words were
muffled and her nose was running. God, she hated tears.

Vince didn’t answer and Josephine
knew whatever it was, it wasn’t in his file. She hoped it would be enough.

Chapter
Sixteen

__________________

“Y
ou got anything from the
tip called in?” Marsh walked fast. He’d parked a block east of the church the
closest he could get even with a shiny gold badge.

Detective Cochrane had been sent to
babysit him. Marsh didn’t care as long as the veteran cop didn’t get in his
way.

“Disposable, bought in Manhattan
last week.” Cochrane was having a hard time keeping up with his stride, but
Marsh didn’t ease the pace. The little man huffed out deep breaths, clouds of
water vapor condensing in the frigid air, his feet shuffling quickly through
piles of fallen leaves. “The feds are checking it out. Maybe they’ll get
something off a surveillance camera or those financial records they’re always
pulling.”

Marsh snorted. He wished the Blade
Hunter was dumb enough to leave a trail. “You read all the files?” Marsh asked.
He needed to know the detective was up to speed on this investigation.

“Sure, I read them and Special
Agent Walker got a hit on what he thinks might be a Jane Doe who fits Margo
Maxwell’s description, but he’s waiting for a court order to begin the
exhumation—”

“And he never mentioned it to
Josie?”

“You guys were out of town…”

Boston, right. A million miles
away.

“And until they’re certain…”

Walker hadn’t informed him of any
of this, despite Marsh sharing the information on Admiral Chambers—who’d right
now be Marsh’s prime suspect for Pru Duvall’s killing, except, the whole thing
was
so
planned, so organized, so reeking of the Blade Hunter’s insidious
style.

So how the hell did Pru Duvall and
Steve Dancer fit in? She didn’t fit the profile of the other victims. And
Dancer—he had to be a fall guy. Why him?

Marsh dodged a streetlight and kept
moving. He checked his cell phone, made sure it was set to vibrate only. He was
expecting the shit to hit the fan any minute when the admiral was hauled in for
questioning. Unless the admiral was a damn sight smarter than he looked, Marsh
doubted the guy had much to worry about except being caught in an extramarital
affair. But his parents would go ape shit and the admiral’s wife was going to
freak. Brett Lovine had already gone ballistic.

Clenching his fingers, he knew he’d
deal with the devil himself as long as Josephine was safe. He’d been an
asshole, but he was going to make it up to her.

Keep her safe, Vince…I can fix
anything but dead.

This was a nice part of Brooklyn.
The sky was so blue it provided a deep backdrop for the bright-yellow Aspen
leaves. They weren’t far from Greenwood Cemetery and Marsh paused for a second,
sure he heard the squawk of parrots. That nailed it on the head. He was going
insane.

“Why would the perp set up Special
Agent Dancer?” Cochrane asked.

That question bugged him constantly.

The UNSUB had targeted Josephine,
then Lynn, then Pru and Dancer—and the only link Marsh could see was…himself.

Do I know this fucker?

Or had that picture on the front
page of
The NY News
been the catalyst the UNSUB needed to target his
next set of victims? Had he been following Josie that day and seen Marsh
talking to Pru Duvall in Washington Square? Did he have a source inside the
investigative team? He shot the detective a look. The wrinkled suit and worn
brown shoes screamed bad pay and crappy fashion sense. He didn’t look dirty,
but then they never did.

Cochrane remained silent, as
watchful of him as he was of the NYPD detective. Thirty seconds later they were
opposite a big old ruined church that was surrounded by acid yellow police
tape. The walls of the limestone building looked solid, but the roof was
buckled and the windows broken and boarded up. The cross on top of the old
church tower was crooked and tilted to the north.

Why here?

A priest was talking to a beat cop
and shaking his head with a worried expression on his face. A dead birch tree
threw a shadow over the two men as they stood speaking too softly to overhear.

Marsh passed an old weathered sign
and made out the faint shadow of a name.
St Mary’s.
He took out his cell
and dialed Agent Walker. “Did you figure out this was the same church Josephine
Maxwell attended as a kid?”

The long pause told him the agent
had already made the connection.

“You speak to the priest from back
then?” Marsh asked, eyeing the gray-haired man talking to the uniformed
officer.

“Priest from her day is dead.”
Walker sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth.

“Talk to anybody else from the
parish?” asked Marsh.

“I’ve been chasing evidence and
leads since Angela Morelli was murdered last week. I haven’t slept in—”

“I’m not questioning your
dedication, Agent Walker, just your results.” He snapped the phone shut and
flashed his badge to the cop, who looked all of twenty and puffed up with
self-importance. The detective gave the beat cop a roll of his eyes, making the
rookie grin as the kid backed away. Marsh didn’t let his mood show. This was no
good for law-enforcement relations—was that what the perp wanted? Cops divided
and not sharing information? Purposely screwing up the investigation and
slowing them all down?

Marsh held out his hand to the
elderly gentleman in a tweed jacket and dog collar.

“SAC Marshall Hayes, and this is
Detective Cochrane, NYPD.” He indicated Cochrane with his right hand, realizing
he didn’t even know the guy’s first name.

“Father Malcolm.” The priest held
out his hand to shake first Marsh’s and then Cochrane’s. “I’m the priest of
this parish.”

“Were you ever in charge of this
church, Father?” Marsh asked, noticing the brisk wind that made both the priest
and the detective shiver. Inside he felt as hot as a volcano on the verge of
eruption. Every cell in his body was fueled with rage and focused on catching
this killer. Nothing else mattered.

Father Malcolm had wiry gray
whiskers and nose hair that bordered on fluffy. “I was the priest here up until
four years ago—”

“When did you start here, Father?”
Marsh asked.

“March, 1998.” The man crinkled a
smile at him. Seemed to realize a murder scene wasn’t the place for smiles and
became somber again. “It was Father Mike before that—the best preacher and the
best man I ever had the pleasure of working under.”

“You knew him? You served with him
here?” Excitement and hope started to trickle back inside Marsh’s mind.

“I worked under him for four years.
I thought he was odds on favorite to become Bishop.” His mouth twisted with old
regret. “He joined Our Lord in—”

“Sorry to cut in, Father,”
Detective Cochrane put in and Marsh could hear the same excitement in his tone
that he felt rising up inside. “But do you remember any missionaries from
Africa coming here about twenty years ago?”

“Well, yes.” The priest recovered
himself, hunched his shoulders up, crossing his arms as another gust of wind
blasted down the street. “We’ve had lots of missionaries from Africa over the
years—”

“It was about the time a woman
called Margo Maxwell disappeared. Do you remember anyone in particular, Father
Malcolm?” Marsh tried not to sound as desperate as he felt.

Thick wiry brows scrunched up into
a bristled line. He shook his head. “I remember Margo—she was a beautiful woman
and no one was surprised when she ran off. Her husband was a man…in need of
counseling.”

Marsh held the priest’s gaze. “I
met her husband, Father Malcolm. I know what sort of man he was.”

“Well, it is no excuse for going
off with another man, especially when they left that poor little girl at the
mercy of—”

“We don’t believe Margo ran off.
She was murdered, like the woman was murdered in that church last night.” Marsh
held the old man’s stare, pissed at the judgmental attitude of a church that’d
done nothing to help a small child. “Margo didn’t abandon her daughter. She was
stolen from her in the most brutal way imaginable.”

And although it wasn’t proven yet,
he knew it was true.

“We think it might be connected to
the visit of an African missionary around the same time she disappeared,”
Cochrane finished, sending Marsh a warning,
take it easy
, glance.

The old man had raised a hand to
his chest as if feeling a pain there. “I don’t remember the names…”

Marsh’s hope deflated like a popping
balloon.

“…but it’ll be in the old church
records.”

Anticipation made him want to grab
the clergyman by the collar and shake him, but Cochrane spoke first. “We need
to see those records, Father.”

***

The smell was a
combination of fermented carpet and moldy mouse poop.

“I’ll open a window.” Father
Malcolm walked over to the barred window and pulled it open.

“You have problems with theft,
Father?” Marsh eyed the steel bars.

“People’ll steal anything that
ain’t nailed down.” Cochrane stood at the door, looking at the row of filing
cabinets. Sweat glistened on his face from the walk over.

Numbness had washed over Marsh.
Calm. Purpose. Do the job. Find the name. Find the killer before he got Josie.
He wanted to call her, wanted to tell her he loved her—because what if
something did happen to her…?
Shit
. Why hadn’t he already told her that?
Because he was an idiot. Because right now she hated him? His cell phone
weighed like a piece of lead in his pocket. Dancer was sitting in a cell with a
broken nose.
I love you’s
could wait.

“Where are the files?” Focus.
Saving her life would give him time to make everything up to her, but if she
died…

Father Malcolm coughed with
embarrassment. “Well, we had a break-in about six months ago and—”

“Did you report it?” Marsh’s gaze
connected with Cochrane’s with the unspoken question.
Could it be the
killer?
This UNSUB wasn’t omnipotent, but he was pretty damn thorough.

“We caught a couple of teenage boys
in here, high on drugs. They’d emptied everything from the cabinets and were
trying to break into the manse.”

The priest nodded toward the
white-painted doorway. He lived in a big old rambling house next door and ran a
very modern looking square box of a church across the street. What the church
lacked in character it probably made up for in central heating.

“They were looking for money,” the
priest offered.

Junkies. Maybe…

“So, what did the church do—give
them ten Hail Mary’s?” Cochrane raised a thick dark brow that matched his
moustache and sauntered over to the nearest filing cabinet.

“We prosecuted them, Detective,”
the father’s eyes had turned to stone. “You have to repent to deserve
forgiveness.”

Marsh didn’t want to discuss
theology and the law. “And this is pertinent because…?”

A metal drawer screamed along its
runner as Cochrane opened it. Documents and files spilled out haphazardly.

Ah
.

“Because we never got around to
sorting it out. We just threw it all back in the filing cabinets and figured
we’d do it another day.” Father Malcolm shrugged and removed his jacket,
showing off remarkably tanned forearms. “I’ll get the deacons down here. We’ll
sort this out in no time.”

They didn’t have time. Marsh
pressed his first finger into his temple and closed his eyes, concentrating on
relieving the pressure building inside his skull. His cell vibrated in his
pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the display. There were so many people
he didn’t want to talk to right now, but maybe it was Josie… Yeah right, or a
break in the case—

Philip Faraday
? What the
hell did he want?

Possibly his fifty-million dollar
painting?

“Mr. Faraday, what can I do for
you?” Marsh answered.

Now that the admiral had admitted
what actually happened, as far as Marsh and the DA could tell, it was a case of
he said/she said that they wouldn’t pursue. They could sue each other until
they were blue but there weren’t going to be any criminal charges. As far as
the DA was concerned Faraday owned the painting and could sell it as he saw
fit. He might want to wait until it was authenticated but that wasn’t Marsh’s
business.

“Special Agent in Charge.” Faraday
sounded like he was talking through a big smile. “I hear I can have my painting
back. And I hear from one of your agents that you think the painting might
really be a Vermeer.” Excitement made his voice shake.

Aiden must have already called the
guy. Marsh rolled his eyes. “Yeah, look.” Marsh tried to keep the distaste out
of his tone, but knew it wasn’t working, “I’m in the middle of a really
important investigation—”

“Mrs. Duvall’s murder?” The man’s
voice was soft with sorrow. “I saw it on the news. Tragic.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss an
ongoing—”

“You are such an arrogant ass, do
you know that? You come into my gallery, take
my
painting and then don’t
even have the courtesy to apologize or return it? I’m filing a complaint.”

Join the club.

“I expect my painting back
today
or else I’m going to the press,” Faraday continued, but Marsh zoned him out.
The press.
Going to the press
…

Damn it, why hadn’t he thought of
that before?

He rang off, ignoring the indignant
ire spilling from Philip Faraday’s mouth. Then he called information and got a
number for Nelson Landry.

Time to reverse the flow of news.
Time to start directing an operation.

***

Josie put the phone
in the cradle and stood up, determined to feel energized instead of scared
stupid. Weeping in a closet was not how she was going to live her life, but
clearing out all the excess crap felt good.