sixty-one

By the time Bear returned to the Task Force office it was early evening. He’d spent hours going over Keys’s story and chasing down false leads on the bank robber. So far, nothing made sense and the questions were piling up. As he walked in and tossed his coat over a chair in the bullpen, Cal spun around in his chair and held up a handful of documents.

“Bear, you’re not gonna believe what I found, man.” He handed him the documents. “This whole case is messed up. Really messed up.”

Bear frowned, dropped the pile of papers onto a desk, and headed for the coffeepot. “Your pal Keys thinks it’s all about a fortune in stolen World War II Egyptian relics.” He told Cal the story as Keys had told it to him and Poor Nic, ending with, “And that junk is worth a fortune.”

“And ol’ Keys has known about it all this time? He never let on.” Cal leaned back against one of the bullpen desks. “I got that beat, man. The crime scene team said Marshal Mendelson had no gunshot residue on his hands or arms. I’m confirming that with the lab now.”

“Then he didn’t pull the trigger,” Bear said. “And that means it was murder, not suicide. Anything else?”

Cal’s cell phone rang and he took the call. His face grimaced and he nodded several times. “Can you email me a photo and any distinguishing marks? Thanks.” When he tapped off his call, he stared at the screen, waiting for the email he’d asked for.

“What do you have, Cal?” Bear asked.

“That was the West Virginia State boys. They found Karen Simms. Poor Nic’s small blue Fiat went down a ravine outside Morgantown. Someone rammed it off the road a couple hours ago—the wreck is pretty bad, man. There was a witness and the body has Simms’s ID, too—they’ll send everything over soon as they can.”

Bear’s mouth tightened. “Dammit.”

“They’re sending a crime scene photo and a scan of her ID now.”

“So, Simms isn’t a missing person anymore—she’s a homicide. That’s three murders in two days.” Bear returned and picked up the papers Cal had given him and took them to his office with Cal in tow. There he slumped into his chair, took a long sip of his coffee, and started reading. After two pages, his eyes widened; he’d gotten to the background report on Franklin Thorne. “Are you saying Thorne’s a phony?”

Cal shrugged. “Don’t know and that’s the problem. I ran his background like I told you and got nothing—no credit, two IDs with different info. So I got a copy of his resume from the bank HR department and had one of the guys check his references, college, the whole shootin’ match.”

“And it’s all bogus?” A knot formed in Bear’s stomach. “All of it?”

“All of it. The phone numbers for his former employers all went out of service within a month of his starting at the bank. The college numbers too. But when I cross-checked the college telephones on the Internet, none of the numbers were what he gave out. His resume is all bullshit, Bear. Pure bullshit.”

“What the hell is going on here, Cal? Thorne’s in on this?” Bear stood and went to his window to look out. The sun was already down and the parking lot lights were on as it began to snow again. “Is Larry Conti downstairs in the holding cell?”

Cal nodded and picked up the desk phone. “Roberts, it’s Cal. Bring Conti up to Detective Braddock’s office, pronto.”

Bear retrieved another cup of coffee for himself and Cal along with a third cup. They waited for the deputies to bring a handcuffed Larry Conti to the office and sat him down in the corner as Cal received a message on his cell phone and looked it over.

Bear took the handcuffs off Conti. “Okay, Conti. Time for you to man up.”

“I didn’t kill anyone, Detective Braddock. You have to believe me.”

“I do, pal. But you can help yourself, too.” Bear handed Conti a cup of coffee and waited for him to take a few sips. “Larry, we have a body. We want you to take a look.”

Cal nodded and held his cell phone up for Conti to see. “It’s bad, man. But tell us what you think.”

The photograph on his cell phone was of a badly damaged car on its hood. All the windows were shattered and a body was crumpled half in, half out of the driver’s window with an arm and long blond hair hanging out amidst glass and debris. The woman’s face was obscured but she had been pretty and young—features masked by bluish-gray bruised flesh and broken bones.

“They’re sending more photos, Larry,” Cal said. “But do you think …”

Larry took the phone and fanned through to a close-up photo of the body hanging out the broken car window. He stared and manipulated the photo to enlarge it around the body’s arm and hand—specifically the body’s gold bracelet. As soon as he did, he burst into tears and looked away. “Oh, jeez, no. I gave her that bracelet when we started dating. Her name in hieroglyphs …” He couldn’t finish the words and dropped his head into his hands. “I loved her. I do. Who did this to her? Who butchered her like this?”

Bear looked at the cell phone photograph and took it out of Conti’s view. “We were hoping you’d help us find her, but not like this. And there’s more. Thorne is a ghost—none of his references check out and no one can find a trace of him before he started at the bank. Marshal Mendelson was found murdered …”

Conti jumped up. “Marshal’s dead? Holy shit, no, no, no. You gotta believe me. We didn’t think this would happen.”

“We?” Cal took Conti’s shoulder and sat him back down. “Start talking, man. Maybe you’ll walk out of here tonight.”

Conti’s face was ashen and he looked from Cal to Bear and back several times. Finally, he closed his eyes and dropped his head. “Karen and I have been dating off and on, I told you that. Well, she confided in me a few months back about stuff at the bank. Thorne made moves on her and she was worried about her promotion so she didn’t stop him. She sorta played along, get it? But then one night, in the summer sometime, she noticed Thorne and Marshal coming and going all hours of the night at the bank. So she cut him off. Was it him? Did Thorne kill her? Did he?”

“Karen watched Thorne and Marshal from her apartment balcony?” Bear asked.

Conti’s face turned into rage. “Was it Thorne? Was it him and Marshal? Shit, I told you that Marshal wanted me to keep following the Chairman and I refused. Well, I kept the Chairman aware of what Marshal was doing, too. Karen saw him and Thorne in the bank before midnight a few times—staying for hours. I kept the Chairman advised, and after he was killed, I deleted all the voicemails between him and me so you wouldn’t find out. I should have told you. But for two guys who hated each other, Marshal and Thorne were doing a lot of overtime together.”

Bear sat back. “I’m thinking Karen knew about William’s secret account and caught someone skimming, right?”

“She said it was Marshal,” Conti added. “I should have told you all this before, Detectives, but I was scared I’d be next. Now Karen’s dead and it’s all my fault. I screwed up, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, man, you did,” Cal said. “But you’re helpin’ yourself out now.”

Bear went on. “You said you told William about Marshal wanting you to follow him around. Maybe William confronted Marshal and Thorne—maybe that’s why he was in the bank so late all the time. He tried to catch them doing whatever they were doing. Maybe he did and they killed him.”

“You think they found out what Karen knew about the account and what she’d seen?” Cal asked. “So they killed her? Then Thorne decided he was scot-free without Marshal, and …”

“Thorne tried to make Marshal look like he committed suicide.” Bear looked at Conti. “Anything else, Larry? Don’t make me ask twice.”

A uniformed deputy knocked on Bear’s office door. “Detective, someone here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

Poor Nic walked past the deputy into the office with his left arm in a sling. His face was pale and his voice hard and tight. “Forgive the intrusion, Detective Braddock, but there is a matter most urgent.”

“Glad you’re here, Nic.” Bear cast a glance at Cal, who slid a chair over for Poor Nic to take, but he refused it. Then Bear had Cal show him the cell phone photograph of the blue Fiat at the bottom of the ravine. “We found your Fiat. And …”

Poor Nic took one look at the photo and nodded. “I thought she had found refuge somewhere. I had hoped, anyway.”

“She’s dead, Nic,” Cal said. “If you’d told us sooner …”

Poor Nic held up his hand. “It is not my responsibility or yours. It was not you nor I who killed her.”

Cal shrugged.

“Detective, in light of Miss Simms’s murder, I am concerned for Angela.”

Bear’s eyes flared. “What about her?”

“Mr. Thorne tells me she went to DC this afternoon—investigating leads regarding Raina Iskandr.” Poor Nic waited for questions but when Bear had none, he continued. “That is troubling, no?”

“Yes, it is,” Bear said.

Poor Nic raised his chin. “I fear Angela has located Raina Iskandr—and that woman is hungry.”

Cal looked at Bear and both of them stared at Poor Nic.

Cal asked, “Hungry for what, Nic?”

“A dish that is best served cold, Detectives: revenge.”