Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney) (21 page)

Tracy jumped in her seat as if she’d been shocked. The atmosphere inside the room was suddenly electric.

“Where’s your sense of sisterhood, Tracy?” Elizabeth taunted. “I’ll admit, in the beginning it was just business. I seduced Jeff as part of a job. But the sexual chemistry between us was so insane, it soon became more than a job. For both of us,” she added, like a scorpion delivering its sting.

Beneath the table, Tracy dug her nails into her palms so hard they bled.

Don’t cry. Don’t show emotion. Not to her.

“So what was this job?” Her voice was calm and measured. “I’m curious.”

“I was hired to split the two of you up.”

“Why? Who hired you?”

Elizabeth smiled. “That would be telling. Let’s just say that not everyone out there is as convinced of your saintly status as you seem to be. Some people just see you as a conniving, thieving little bitch who deserves to get her comeuppance. And did you ever get it, Tracy!” She laughed cruelly.

Tracy kept her cool. “How much were you paid?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand,” said Elizabeth. “Of course I wouldn’t get out of bed for that today. But this
was
a decade ago. And all I had to do was get into bed, Jeff’s bed. Which wasn’t exactly a hardship.”

Jean Rizzo winced. He knew how much this exchange must be hurting Tracy, but he prayed she stayed on this track. Elizabeth was getting emotional, giving far more away than she intended to. If Tracy could just press the right button, surely, he told himself, she’d crack.

Tracy said, “They think Jeff’s involved in this, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Elizabeth laughed. “Agent Buck seems to believe Jeff masterminded my entire career and that odd little Canadian fellow thinks he’s running around bumping off prostitutes. Or that I am, I wasn’t quite sure. He showed me some horrible photographs. Not very gentlemanly of him.”

“So you don’t work with Jeff?” Tracy pressed her

Attagirl,
thought Jean Rizzo.

“No. I don’t. And I don’t know anything about any murders either. I wouldn’t have the stomach for that sort of thing.”

“If you don’t work with Jeff, what were you doing at his hotel last week? You were seen meeting in the park, then returning to the Gramercy together.”

“Was I now?” Elizabeth smirked.

“What were you doing?” Tracy repeated.

“What do you think we were doing? Playing Scrabble? Dear oh dear, poor Tracy. Has it really been that long?” Elizabeth laughed. “I’m not a nun and Jeff’s certainly no monk. We were enjoying ourselves. You interrupted us in London all those years ago. So let’s just say we made up for lost time. I’m not in business with Jeff. Our relationship is based purely on pleasure.”

The pain seared through Tracy like a hot poker. It wasn’t just Jeff, although God knew the thought of him with this cold, calculating, horrendous woman hurt like hell. It was the embarrassment. The shame. The truth was, it
had
been that long. After Jeff’s betrayal, Nicholas had filled the void left in Tracy’s heart. But the sexual side of her, the romantic, passionate life that had once meant so much to her? That had gone forever. Elizabeth Kennedy had taken it from her.
That
was what Tracy couldn’t forgive. It was
that
that made today a victory for Elizabeth, not for her. Elizabeth might be going to jail. But it was Tracy who was serving a life sentence with no parole.

With a huge effort of will, she managed to control her emotions.

“You say you care about Jeff. If that’s true, you should want to help clear his name.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Everyone knows you work with a partner.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“This is me you’re talking to,” said Tracy. “At least three of the jobs you pulled off could not possibly have been done alone. I know that for a fact.”

“And which three might those be? Hypothetically, of course. Your friends on the other side of that glass have nothing on me other than what they discovered tonight.” Elizabeth waved mockingly at the mirror. “Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence by pretending otherwise.”

Tracy said, deadpan, “Hong Kong, Chicago and Lima.”

Elizabeth nodded but said nothing.

“What if Rizzo’s right and your partner is the one killing these girls?”

“He isn’t right.”

“Are you sure? Because someone is killing them, Elizabeth. After each of your jobs. For all we know, he might be out there right now, looking for his next target.”

Elizabeth looked thoughtful. There was a long pause. Jean Rizzo held his breath.

Then Elizabeth said, “Let’s say I have a partner. And let’s say I give you his name. What do I get in return?”

“You don’t get anything,” said Tracy. “Other than clearing Jeff of suspicion and potentially saving another woman’s life.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No deal. I want my lawyer here and a plea deal in place. I’ll serve no more than a year for tonight’s robbery. Sorry. Attempted robbery.” She bowed dramatically to the audience behind the mirror. “No other charges will be brought against me.”

Tracy burst out laughing. “You’re out of your mind! They’ll never agree to that.”

“Then they don’t get their name.”

The door opened. Jean Rizzo asked Tracy to step out.

In the anteroom, Tracy told the assembled agents, “You heard her. I tried, but without a deal she won’t talk. Not yet, anyway.”

Milton Buck looked at his boss.“I say give her the deal.”

Tracy’s eyes widened. “What? No! Are you insane? You’d let her walk away from this?”

“She’s the monkey. I want the organ grinder.”

“I agree.” Jean Rizzo’s voice was low but firm. “I’m sorry, Tracy, but Buck’s right. Elizabeth Kennedy hasn’t killed anyone. It’s her partner we need.”

In desperation, Tracy turned to Special Agent Soltan. “You can have both. She’ll give you that name if you keep up the pressure. Maybe trade it for a shorter sentence . . . But a year? And dropping all charges? You’re just rolling over. She’s playing you! All we need is a little time.”

“We don’t have time,” said Jean. “What if he’s in New York right now? He could kill again in hours.”

Special Agent Soltan said, “Call her lawyer.”

AFTER THAT, EVERYTHING HAPPENED
so quickly, Tracy felt as if she were in a dream. Elizabeth’s attorney arrived within fifteen minutes. The deal was hammered out and signed in less time than it took one of the junior agents to brew a fresh pot of coffee.

“I want the name,” Agent Buck said.

Buck sat opposite Elizabeth and her lawyer in the interview room, making much of being back in charge. Jean Rizzo stood at the back of the room, a few feet from Tracy. Tracy’s face was set like flint. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Jean.

He promised me Elizabeth would go to jail. He promised me, if I helped him find her, he would put her away. I trusted him and he lied to me.

Milton Buck went on. “I want every scrap of information you have about him. I want dates, I want times, I want details. On every job. And I want to know where he is right now.”

“You can have the name and the details. But I don’t know where he is right now.”

Agent Buck stiffened. “Are you for real?”

“I haven’t seen him face-to-face in almost three years.”

“You’re a liar!”

Elizabeth shrugged. “We’re all liars when we need to be, Agent Buck. But this happens to be the truth. We communicate by e-mail and occasionally by phone. It’s business. We aren’t
friends
. If we were, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I am capable of loyalty, you know, whatever the saintly Miss Whitney may think.”

Tracy looked away.

“In any case, that’s my offer. You can take it or leave it.”

Jean Rizzo was getting antsy. “For Christ’s sake, Buck. We don’t have time for this.”

“Fine,” Milton Buck barked. “Give me the name.”

Elizabeth glanced at her attorney, who nodded.

“My partner is actually an old acquaintance of Tracy’s. Funny how closely our lives have become intertwined, isn’t it?”

Despite herself, Tracy looked up.

“His name”—Elizabeth paused for effect—“is Daniel Cooper.”

PART THREE

CHAPTER 19

D
ANIEL COOPER WAITED PATIENTLY
for the captain to turn off the seat-belt sign. Then he pushed his economy seat back as far as it would go and snapped off a single square of Lindt chocolate in celebration, closing his eyes and savoring the sweetness as it melted on his tongue.

All pleasure was sin, of course. Over the years, Daniel Cooper had learned to rein in most of his baser human desires.
I am a vessel of justice, a pure servant of the Lord.
And yet he knew he was still not worthy. Not yet. When he became worthy, when he’d fully atoned for his sins, the Lord would deliver Tracy Whitney to him. He felt sure that that day was moving ever closer. Tracy—
his
Tracy, his soul mate—was coming to him at last. All those years he’d thought she was dead! Or if not dead then disappeared, gone, lost to him forever. But he’d been wrong. The Lord had given him another chance. Daniel intended to grab that chance with both hands.

Beneath the cover of his airline blanket, Daniel Cooper started to touch himself.

God had called Daniel Cooper to hunt down lawbreakers and bring them to justice, but society had other ideas. When Daniel tried to join the New York City police force he had been rejected. Officially he was deemed too short, but in reality Daniel knew that his assessors simply didn’t like him. They found him creepy. When the FBI also rejected him, but accepted far less qualified candidates in his class, Daniel hacked into his psychiatric evaluation.
Highly intelligent. Lacking empathy. Deceitful.
Someone had added a handwritten note:
borderline psychotic?

With law enforcement closed to him, Daniel Cooper worked first as a private investigator and later as an employee of an insurance company, tracking down defrauders. It was in this latter capacity that he first crossed paths with Tracy Whitney.

Daniel Cooper believed he could save Tracy Whitney. God had told him so in dream after dream, even as the devil tempted him with unclean thoughts about Tracy’s body. Daniel made it his personal mission to catch Tracy and bring her to justice. But throughout her long career as a con artist, she had eluded him time and time again. First by herself, and later with the appalling Jeff Stevens, she mocked all her would-be captors. In their arrogance, police forces across the globe underestimated Tracy Whitney. Daniel Cooper tried to warn them—in Madrid, in London, in New York, in Amsterdam. But like the Pharisees, they remained blinded with pride. And so the evildoers triumphed.

It was Amsterdam that changed everything.

Tracy and Jeff had stolen the Lucullan Diamond, smuggling it out of the city by homing pigeon. Weeks of surveillance and planning by Daniel Cooper had been for naught. This time it was the moronic Inspector van Duren who had let Whitney slip through Cooper’s net. Daniel would never forget the way Tracy stopped at the boarding gate at Schiphol Airport, turned to him and waved.
Waved.
Tracy Whitney had looked right into his eyes and seen his secrets. It was in that moment that the bond between them had been cemented.

What God has joined together, let no man cast asunder.

Daniel Cooper had looked back at Tracy Whitney on that fateful day and seen something in her eyes that he could neither forgive, nor forget: pity. Tracy Whitney—thief, goddess, whore—had
dared
to feel sorry for
him.

It was not to be borne.

God was sending him a message that day. Clearly, he had not atoned sufficiently for his sins. He had not paid a high enough price. Tracy was to be his salvation and he hers, but he did not yet deserve her. There was more work to be done.

Daniel Cooper resigned from the insurance company the next day. He would begin by humiliating the police and authorities who had allowed Tracy to escape so many times through their arrogance and pride.
And lo, the proud will be made humble and the humble raised high.
From his years spent chasing Tracy across Europe, Daniel Cooper knew better than anyone just how easy it was to outwit dummy local law enforcement. As for Interpol, the entire organization was a joke! Just like the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude. Daniel would enjoy outsmarting them, just as Tracy had done. Only Daniel’s heists would be even bigger, even grander, even better executed than Tracy’s.

Tracy Whitney and Jeff Stevens had taught him how useful a woman could be as a lure in scams, disabling weak, carnally corrupted men. Preferring to work in the shadows himself, Daniel Cooper began scouting around for a suitable female partner.

He found Elizabeth Kennedy by chance, through a contact in London. She was very young, perhaps nineteen, sexually alluring and utterly amoral. Perfect, on paper. When Daniel Cooper met her in person, in a café in Shoreditch, he found her devoid of human emotion or at least of feminine frailty. Fresh out of Youth Custody, where she’d been sent for credit-card fraud—rather an ingenious case in Daniel Cooper’s opinion, in which she’d been unlucky to get caught—Elizabeth was mature, intelligent and focused. Of equal importance, she was willing to accept Daniel Cooper’s authority in exchange for a steady stream of work and a fifty-fifty share of the profits.

For the first couple of years, the partnership worked flawlessly. Daniel and Elizabeth planned and executed a string of jewel and art thefts around the globe, closely following the successful Whitney-Stevens model. But they were better than Tracy and Jeff. They worked harder, aimed higher and made more money. It was astonishing how quickly they became rich.

Elizabeth bought herself diamonds and cars and vacations and invested in real estate. Daniel Cooper saved every penny in a string of safe, untraceable Swiss bank accounts. He had no need for material comforts, nor, he felt, did he deserve them, preferring to live simply. Besides, the money was for him and Tracy. One day, once the other part of the Lord’s work had been completed and Daniel’s soul had been washed clean of his mother’s blood, he and Tracy would be married. Daniel Cooper would treat Tracy Whitney like a queen and she would worship and adore him, and live to please him, and tell him every day how much better a lover he was than that vacuous popinjay Jeff Stevens.

It was Daniel Cooper’s hatred of Jeff Stevens that led him to make his first mistake: using Elizabeth as a “honey trap” to break up Jeff and Tracy’s marriage. The plan had worked. All Daniel Cooper’s plans worked. He was a genius. But success came at a cost. The first, tragic consequence was that Tracy Whitney went to ground, disappearing so effectively that not even Daniel Cooper could find her. For nine long years Daniel had believed she was dead. Just thinking about that time made him shiver.

The second consequence was the effect of the job on Elizabeth. Much to Daniel Cooper’s surprise, it turned out that the aloof Miss Kennedy
did
have feelings after all. She had begun to care for Stevens and to fall under his spell, just as Tracy had done before her. Daniel and Elizabeth continued to pull off spectacular heists together across the globe. But after the honey-trap episode, and Tracy’s disappearance, the dynamic between the two of them was never quite the same. Elizabeth began to grow restless, and to tire of her partner’s demands. Inevitably, her standards began to slip.

Things came to a head last summer in L.A. when Elizabeth screwed up the Brookstein job. But, as Daniel now knew, it had all been part of God’s plan. For it was in Los Angeles, miraculously, that the Lord had brought Tracy Whitney back to him. Back from the dead.

Once again, God had sent Daniel a message, and he had used Tracy Whitney as the messenger.

I am pleased with you, My son,
God was saying.
Through your sacrifices, you have appeased My wrath and atoned for your sins. Now you shall win your bride, and achieve eternal redemption.

Elizabeth Kennedy’s arrest in New York had been a surprise to Daniel Cooper, but not a problem. Elizabeth had outlived her usefulness anyway. She was no longer Daniel Cooper’s concern. God’s plan for him had moved into a new, and a final, phase.

It was all about Tracy now.

Beneath the blanket, Daniel Cooper was about to reach climax. Reaching lower, he grabbed his scrotum and dug his fingernails into his own flesh so hard he drew blood. Tears of agony streamed down his face. He bit his tongue to stop himself from screaming as his erection collapsed in his hand.

“I’m sorry, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’m so sorry!”

The plane soared upward into the night.

THE RESTAURANT WAS OFF
Bleecker, and quaint and European in feel. There were gingham tablecloths and old wicker chairs with floral cushions and mismatched china. Christmas carols were playing on low in the background. Under different circumstances, it would have been romantic. As it was, Tracy and Jean Rizzo were both exhausted.

It had been three days since Elizabeth Kennedy’s arrest and the breakthrough in Jean’s case. Three days of relentless debriefing about Daniel Cooper, overshadowed by gnawing anxiety: the Bible Killer had
not
struck again, at least not in the expected time frame. If it
was
Cooper, he was changing his MO, perhaps in response to Elizabeth’s arrest. Or perhaps, as Milton Buck repeatedly and smugly reminded both Jean and Tracy, Daniel Cooper had better things to do than waste his time bumping off hookers. Perhaps Jean Rizzo’s theory of a connection between the murders and the thefts was no more than a fantasy, a castle in the sky.

Jean ordered a bottle of Bordeaux and poured a large glass for Tracy.

Tracy said, “I’m still angry with you. You do know that?”

“I know.”

“You promised me Elizabeth would be put away.”

“And she will be. Just not for as long as we would have liked.”

“A year! That’s a joke, Jean, and you know it. You realize you may never find Cooper? You and Buck had Elizabeth, and you traded her for what? A name. A shadow.”

Jean Rizzo took a big slug of wine. “We’ll find him. We have to.”

He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

Tracy looked at his heavy-lidded gray eyes and the traces of salt and pepper in his once-dark hair and thought,
He looks tired. Defeated.
Though she wouldn’t admit it, even to herself, she’d grown fond of Jean. She hoped for his sake, as much as for the murdered girls’, that Daniel Cooper was the man they’d been looking for. Deep down she still found it hard to reconcile her own memories of Cooper with this image of a ruthless, sadistic killer.

“You knew him,” said Jean, once their appetizers arrived, two Caesar salads with extra anchovies. He and Tracy had remarkably similar tastes. “I know we’ve been grilling Elizabeth for days. But what were
your
perceptions?”

Tracy rubbed her eyes. She was tired too. “I really
didn’t
know him. He was a shadow to me. Always a step or two behind. Never really a threat. I guess I thought he was kind of . . .”

“What?”

She searched for the right word. “Pathetic? I don’t know. He was smart. Jeff used to think he was in love with me,” she added, laughing.

“And was he?”

“He never gave me any reason to think so. In fact he spent years of his life doing everything he could to send me back to jail, so I’m gonna say no! Jeff thought he was dangerous.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Not really. Which is weird because I had a lot more reason to hate him than Jeff ever had.”

Rizzo raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Daniel Cooper knew I was innocent of the crime I went down for. He actually came to see me in that hellhole in Louisiana and told me as much.”

“Cooper came to the penitentiary?”

Tracy nodded, an involuntary shiver running through her. She never spoke of her time in prison. Never. Those were the darkest days of her life. It had taken her decades to stop dreaming about Big Bertha and Ernestine Littlechap and Lola and Paulita. The beatings. The terror. The hopelessness.

“The insurance company sent him. He sat there and told me he could prove I never took that Renoir. That Joe Romano framed me for the insurance money. But when I asked him for help, he refused. He left me in that filthy prison to rot.”

Jean digested this information. “Why do you think he did that?”

Tracy considered. “I don’t know. It was as if . . .” She struggled to put her impressions into words. “I got the sense it wasn’t personal. He was like a machine. I guess he and Elizabeth have a lot in common in that regard. I honestly don’t think it occurred to him that he
should
have gotten me out of there.”

“That’s very forgiving of you to say,” Jean observed.

Tracy shrugged. “You asked me my impressions of Cooper. I’m telling you. When I got out of jail there were a long list of people I needed to get revenge on. Joe Romano, Anthony Orsatti, Perry Pope, that bastard judge, Lawrence. They were so corrupt, so wicked, and they thought they were untouchable.” Tracy’s green eyes flashed with anger at the memory. Not for the first time Jean Rizzo thought how beautiful she looked when her blood was up. “Daniel Cooper was many things but he wasn’t corrupt. Quite the opposite in fact. There was something of the zealot about him.”

“And yet he’s spent the last decade as a world-class art and jewelry thief,” said Jean. “Isn’t that corruption?”

“It depends on how you look at it,” said Tracy. “I doubt he sees it that way.”

“So you’re not surprised Cooper turned to crime?”

“To be frank with you, I haven’t given Daniel Cooper a thought in the last ten years.”

“Do you think he killed those girls?”

The question was so direct, Tracy was taken aback.

“I don’t know.”

She watched Jean’s face crumple, like a paper bag with the air sucked out of it.

“I know that’s not the answer you want. You want me to have a gut instinct on this, but the truth is I just don’t know. Part of me always felt a little sorry for him. Now that I know all that stuff from the FBI files, about his mother being murdered when he was a kid and him finding her body . . .” She trailed off. “I don’t know. He seems to have led a sad and lonely life, that’s all.”