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23

Joe Doherty, sallow-faced as ever, drew on a cigarette as he looked around Bradford Dekker's conference table. He was the only person there who was smoking, and the fixed expression on the face of the Erie County Sheriff made it clear that in his view that was one too many. 'I mean it. Those things wil kil you one day, my friend,' murmured Bob Skinner, sat on his right.

'You keep telling me that,' replied the American, quietly, 'but living does that in the end, any way you look at it. Look at your father-in-law; I bet he never smoked in his life.'

'You lose,' said Dekker, close enough to overhear. 'Mr Grace loved a Monte Cristo after dinner.'

'That's true,' Skinner agreed. 'He always had a supply handy, wherever he went. The Dominican Republic variety, of course, never Cuban,' he added with a faint grin, which vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

'Shit!' he whispered, then glanced along the table. 'Lieutenant Schultz, can you remember; did you find any cigars at the cabin? I don't remember seeing any.'

The New York detective frowned as he searched his memory, then opened a folder on the desk before him and looked through several pages. 'I don't recal that, sir,' he answered, final y, 'and there's no mention of them on the inventory.'

'So? Could that be the first thing we know about this kil er: that he's a cigar smoker, and couldn't resist taking them with him?'

'Unless the first guys on the scene found them,' said Schultz, quickly.

'Those boys out there can be a touch .. .'

'I resent that, Lieutenant,' snapped Dekker, cutting across him, 'on behalf of county police forces everywhere. You State people ...'

'Resent all you like, Brad, but it's a valid point.' The only female voice in the room belonged to Superintendent Barbara Weston, the head of the New York State Police, a severe-looking woman in her early fifties.

Doherty's presence at the hastily cal ed morning conference in Buffalo had attracted a top-drawer turn-out from the agencies involved. There were nine people at the table; three FBI: the deputy director. Brand and Kosinski; three from the State police: Weston, Schultz and Small; Dekker and his chief of detectives, Eddie Brady, and Skinner himself. The DCC

had been invited by Doherty, with Dekker's agreement, to attend the conference as an observer, although his presence had caused the superintendent to raise a disapproving eyebrow.

'Yes, it probably is, Barbara,' Doherty drawled. 'It might have been more tactfully put, that's all. We will check it out. . . discreetly, I promise.

If Bob and Brad are certain that there should have been cigars in the cabin, that may be significant. As Deputy Chief Skinner points out, at the moment we know nothing about this man other than he's a professional.

If he took the damn things, that's item number one in his personal profile. He's hardly going to fence them, is he; no, he's gonna smoke 'em.' He smiled. 'Trust me on this.'

He paused, stubbing out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray which Dekker's secretary had found for him, then taking a mouthful of coffee from the mug before him on the table. 'Okay, let's cut the trivia, end the inter-force sniping and get this discussion on the road. What are we looking at here?'

With barely a break, he answered his own question. 'Four homicides, one of them a double, in three different states, all within the last month.

Common factors are as fol ows. We have three men and one woman, all retired and aged over sixty .. . over seventy in the case of Mr Grace. We have three incidents reported initially as burglary-related homicide, and accepted as such by the responsible jurisdictions.

'Common factors, the men's profession, their political allegiance, and the fact that they al worked in Washington at the time of the Kennedy administration.'

Skinner raised a hand. 'Common factors that we know of, Joe.'

'Three's enough for me, buddy.'

'Maybe, but should it be?' Barbara Weston broke in. 'They have crime everywhere, even in Asshole, Montana, or wherever. And the three locations are hundreds, even thousands of miles apart. Okay, three retired lawyers are burglarised; lawyers are rich, so they get robbed. Okay, so they're all Democrats. Democrats get killed every day in this country; so do Republicans. Okay, so they al worked in Washington. It's just about before my time, but in the early sixties, it's my understanding that every ambitious young Democrat lawyer wanted to be there, and that a hell of a lot of them made it.'

'Leo Grace wasn't an ambitious young lawyer, Barbara,' Sheriff Dekker interjected. 'He was a senator in this state's legislature for six years before he joined the Attorney General's office under Kennedy.'

'Okay, strike out the young lawyer part, but don't tell me that he wasn't ambitious.' Her gaze switched to Doherty. 'And what about Garrett and Wilkins? Do we know whether they worked in the same area as Senator Grace? In fact do we know if they ever even met?'

'No, we do not,' the Deputy Director admitted, his face showing his impatience. 'Their files aren't complete, we only know that they worked in DC, not what they did there. Come on, Superintendent, spit it out. Say what you're leading up to.'

'If you insist, Mr Doherty. Frankly, I think that the Bureau's grounds for showing up here are at best questionable and at worst contrived. Our friend from Scotland . . . your friend . . . shows up here and is given instant access to material it would take me weeks screw out of you.

Next thing we know he's used it to weave a fancy conspiracy theory and you're jumping in to back him up, to the extent of letting him take part in a conference that he has no business even observing.

'He sees a hit-man rubbing out retired Democrats; I see a single burglary homicide on my territory and I see no reason why Lieutenant Schultz and his team shouldn't be al owed to clear it up. As for your friend, I sympathise with his loss, but I'd advise him to bury his father in-law and get the hell back home.'

Doherty's eyes narrowed. 'I hear. . .'

Skinner put a hand on his shoulder, looking past him, along the table.

'A second please, Joe. Superintendent, I know that you're a career police officer, but you're appointed by the governor, and the state senate, so let me ask you something. Have you ever in your life worked as a member of a criminal investigation team?'

Barbara Weston hesitated for a second too long.

'No,' he said, fixing her with an icy, unblinking glare, locking eyes with her so powerfully that it seemed that however hard she might try, she could not look away. 'I didn't think so; your type of copper exists the world over.

'Well, madam, I have dirtied my hands with crime for nearly al my professional career. I've chased villains of all shapes and sizes: serial killers, gangsters, thieves, terrorists, drug pushers and all the rest, and do you know what? I've caught nearly al of them; apart from the ones that the competition got to before I did.

'I haven't done that by being lucky, or weaving fanciful theories.

I've done it by being a bloody good analytical detective. If Joe Doherty's 90

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invited me to sit at this table, he hasn't done so because he's my friend.

He's done it because he thinks I can contribute something. And what I'm telling you is this; these four murders are linked. That isn't supposition; at the least, it's a probability flowing from the facts as they exist. And in my experience there's a very fine line between probability and certainty.

'Oh yes, and one more thing. If you want me to go home before this crime is cleared up, you may have to deport me ... but I don't think you have the clout to do that.'

He released the Superintendent from his glare and nodded to Doherty.

'I'm sorry, Joe. You were saying?'

'You just said it,' muttered the Deputy Director, tersely, and turned back to Weston. 'You want me to give Bob status, Barbara? Okay, as of now he's a special adviser in this investigation which will. . .' he leaned on the word '. . . be co-ordinated by the Bureau. We can do this one of two ways; either we take things over completely, or we work in cooperation with your department, using the skil s and local expertise of Schultz and Smal , partnered with Special Agent Kosinski.'

He glanced along at Dekker. 'Same would go for your department, Brad, given that we're certain the killer came to Buffalo also.

'You two people up for that or would you rather butt out now?'

'I'm more than happy to work with the Bureau,' replied the Sheriff, quickly. He and Doherty turned back to the Superintendent.

'I'm not being frozen out of my own jurisdiction, Mr Deputy Director, not by you or by anyone else. We'll go along with you, but I insist on being advised of any development that could lead to an indictment in this state.'

Doherty nodded. 'You wil be so advised,' he agreed. 'But you will not move for any such indictment, nor release the identity of any person who might be a suspect. My director was confirmed in office by a political colleague of your state governor; remember that.' Weston's eyes blazed at his blatant threat, but she said nothing more.

'Fine,' he said, looking around the table once more. 'Let's move forward. Brand, Kosinski, you are seconded to this investigation, until otherwise advised by me. Troy, you wil remain in New York as I have said, and wil co-ordinate things here, advising me, Sheriff Dekker and Superintendent Weston of progress made. You wil concentrate first and foremost on putting a name to our killer.'

'How are we going to do that, sir?' asked the Special Agent.

'Bob?' Doherty's invitation took his friend by surprise. 'Come on, don't hold back. You are the senior detective here. I've been out of the field for years.'

'You probably won't, Mr Kosinski,' Skinner answered, bluntly. 'Like I said earlier, this guy's been covering his tracks pretty careful y. So all you can do is to concentrate on the basics, and hope he's made a mistake.

You have to look out for the use of a stolen credit card, but that is not going to happen. No, I would send the forensic team back out to the cabin, and keep them at the house until they've been over every inch of it. Look for matches between the two locations; fingerprints, fibres from clothing. ..'

'Cigar butts?' murmured Barbara Weston sarcastically.

'Yes!' Skinner snapped at her. 'You never dismiss anything, until you've disproved it, or you're in neglect of your duty as an investigator.'

He looked at the Erie County detective chief. 'Right, Mr Brady?'

'Absolutely, sir,' the man concurred.

'That being the case . . .' he continued. 'Leo lovecr ars, but there were none in the cabin, so it's a real possibility that our man took them.

He's a cool bastard this one, so maybe, just maybe, he smoked one while he was going through the house. If he did, then, just maybe, he left the stub. Criminals have been caught through simpler mistakes than that.

There's a guy doing life in Britain who probably wouldn't have been convicted if he'd paid cash for his petrol on a few specific days, years before he was arrested.'

He turned to Schultz, who looked back at him, intently. 'Lieutenant, you should send your people back to that cabin and you tell them to look for cigar butts. Tell them to look in the garbage if they have to. If they find any, tel them to take saliva samples from every one, and do DNA comparisons against Leo Grace. If one doesn't match, that could be your killer.'

'It would be, surely, sir?' Kosinski said.

'Not necessarily, son. Leo was generous with his Monte Cristos; first Christmas after Sarah and I were married he sent me a box. He could have had friends for supper any time before he was kil ed and handed them round. I know that as part of your investigation you'l be trying to trace everyone who was in the cabin that last time they were there, to eliminate their fingerprints. If you find any, and if you find any butts, you should take spit samples as wel as prints.

'However, as I said, that's a long shot. Back to the basics; if you find any matching traces at both locations, other than of Leo and Susannah, you're on a winner. But even if you don't, you should feed every wild 92

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print you have into your mainframe and see what you get. Fibre matches are more difficult, but you have to do them too. I'd suggest too that you make sure your teams take comparison samples from every garment, every towel, in the cabin and the house.

'You think this is overkil , Superintendent?' he asked, with a glance at Eddie Brady, the Erie County detective chief. 'Wel it ain't. It's what you have to do when you're dealing with a man like this. You have to look closely at the scene, then closer and closer and closer, until you find that one tiny mistake, the one that's going to catch him. You also have to look in the right way. I had an inquiry in Scotland a while back that might have been written off as a suicide, had a young police constable not looked at the scene and spotted something that to her eye was wrong.'

He grinned at Kosinski, Schultz and Small. 'Sorry, lads,' he chuckled.

'You're in for some boring times, but that's what you signed up for.'

He leaned back in his chair. 'That's what I'd do, Joe.'

The Deputy Director nodded. 'That's what'l happen. Now,' he went on, briskly, 'let's look at the other crimes we're targeting. First, the murder of Sander Garrett: Special Agent Brand, you wil go to Nevada, where you will interface with the City of North Las Vegas Police Department. I have already spoken to Chief of Police Hall, although I have not briefed him in detail on what this is all about. His is a small department, with fewer than two hundred officers, so he may well be glad to see you.

'Zak, I want you to examine the scope and structure of the investigation as it has been carried out so far, looking initially at the forensic reports on Mr Garrett's house. Chief Hall didn't say so, but I have a feeling that you won't find a hell of a lot. If you feel that it's necessary, and the crime scene is still reasonably intact, you have my authority to fly in a team of our people to go over the place with the same thoroughness that is being applied to the Grace residences. When you're satisfied that you have all you're gonna get, touch base with Troy to run comparisons on unidentified prints and fibre samples.