The Soul Collectors (30 page)

Coop helped her turn over the body. They kept at it, fighting through their exhaustion, talking to each other so they didn’t miss anything. Checked over each other’s work and, wanting a fresh set of eyes, asked Ellis to look over everything.

Darby checked the clock as she stripped off her gloves. Twenty to eight.

She grabbed her kit, about to leave to allow Ellis to begin the autopsy, when Perkins insisted on doing a thorough inspection of her clothing. Spiders, especially some of the smaller ones, he said, could find all sorts of places to hide. She stood holding her arms out by her sides while Perkins checked every fold and crevice and corner. When he finished, he turned to Coop.

Darby went across the hall to strip out of her gear and found Keats still posted beside the door. She unbuckled her face shield.

‘Where’s Casey?’

‘He left,’ Keats said.

‘Where?’

‘Don’t worry, he’s safe.’ Keats nodded towards the locker-room door. ‘You should go on and get dressed. We’ll take you and Mr Cooper to your hotel. You look like you could use a shower.’

Coop came into the locker room a moment later. She had dressed first, told him she’d wait for him in the hall, and when she opened the door she saw Sergey heading her way, his phone pressed against an ear and heels smacking against the polished floor.

61

Sergey’s hair had been blown silly by the wind and his face had a thin veil of oily perspiration that made his olive skin look both pale and damp underneath the light. Darby saw fresh coffee stains dotting his white shirt and pinkish tie, probably from trying to guzzle a cup during the bumpy car ride here.

‘Prints came back,’ he said just as he reached her. ‘Vic is Mark Rizzo. Boston PD had logged his prints into the system, along with those of his wife and the twin girls.’

‘Standard procedure when a child disappears or is abducted,’ Darby said, aware of the weary sadness seeping through her. It was now official. Mark Rizzo was dead. ‘We have them on-hand for comparison purposes when we examine evidence. What about the finger? Is it …’

‘Yeah. It’s Sarah Casey’s.’

Darby nodded, as if confirming it herself. She had suspected this, of course, when she’d seen the chipped red fingernail polish. Now it was confirmed. The severed finger that had been stuffed down the vic’s throat – Mark Rizzo’s throat – belonged to Jack Casey’s daughter.

She recalled a part of her first conversation with Casey, back inside the Nahant PD:
They won’t kill me. Not yet
, he had said.
They’re going to send me a message first
. She thought,
His daughter’s severed finger.

Sergey spoke slowly: ‘Jack had his daughter printed as part of one of those child-safety programmes they do in the schools. This was a few years ago. After what happened to my son, I convinced him to load her prints and DNA into our system in the event these people ever targeted her.’

‘Did ID call you about the pictures?’

He nodded. ‘I just sent someone over there to collect them.’

‘I need to speak to Casey.’

‘He’s on the plane.’

‘Where’s he going?’

‘Nowhere.’ Sergey answered the question before she could ask it. ‘It’s our plane, the one we sent to Florida. It touched back down at Logan.’

‘You brought your forensic people back?’

‘Not all of them. I left a few at the safe house.’ Sergey moved the hair out of his eyes. ‘We had eight agents down there – four inside the house, the other four doing a perimeter watch, okay? The ones outside, we think were taken out from a distance. Silenced weapons, nobody heard a thing. The four we had inside the house, all headshots, and not one of them had pulled his weapon. I watched the video feed on the way over here. Way the bodies were found? It was like they had fallen asleep and then someone came up and shot them.’

‘Nerve agent?’

‘Don’t know anything yet. If they used it, I don’t know how they managed to get it inside the house. Maybe the outside A/C units. Put the gas in there.’

Coop came out of the door, shrugging into his suit jacket.

Darby said, ‘I was told Casey took the USB drive?’

Sergey nodded. ‘It’s on the plane. We processed it for prints before we let Jack look at it.’

‘What’s on it?’

‘A video. That’s all he’d tell me. He hasn’t let anyone watch it yet.’

‘We need to talk about Casey,’ Darby said, ‘his involvement.’

Sergey waved a hand, cutting her off. ‘I know where you’re going with this, and, yes, I agree. He’s been emotionally compromised, and he can’t be the one calling the shots. You won’t get any grief from him. That being said, I want to –
he
wants to stick close to this. You can’t blame him.’

‘I want to see the video.’

‘You will. Later. First, we need to get you two settled.’

Sergey pointed to a pair of agents hovering a few feet away. ‘These men will take you to the hotel. Shower, get something to eat, take a few hours to unwind. Don’t argue, you need some time away from this so you can look at it fresh, okay?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s make it ten. No, eleven. Give you some time to unwind before the meeting. Go and grab some sleep, decompress.’

Sergey turned to leave.

‘Hold up,’ Darby said. ‘I talked to Jack’s wife.’

He spun around on his heels, nearly tripping. ‘When?’

‘After you left, one of them called my cell phone and put her on the line. She told me Jack has to hold a press conference. They want him to –’

‘A press conference? For what reason.’

‘Do you know who Budd Dwyer was?’

Sergey shook his head, showed her his empty hands.

‘Budd Dwyer,’ Darby said, ‘was a politician from Pennsylvania accused of receiving bribes. Day before his sentencing, he calls a press conference. Has three of his staff members up there with him, and he hands each of them an envelope – letter to his wife, one for the governor and an organ donor card – and when he’s done he places the barrel of a .357 Magnum in his mouth and blows his head off.’

‘They want Casey to commit suicide on national TV?’ Sergey said.

‘First they want him to shoot Darren Waters.’

‘And if he doesn’t commit murder and suicide, then what?’

‘His wife said these people were going to mail her and their daughter to us,’ Darby said. ‘In pieces.’

The Secret Service agents led them to a different SUV, this one a Ford Expedition. Keats took the wheel and his partner had a cryptic conversation over a phone hooked into a big box mounted in the console.

‘I need to pick up some clothes from my condo,’ Darby said.

‘I’ll call and check,’ Keats said.

His partner made the call, hanging up less than a minute later.

‘You’re cleared,’ he said.

‘Cleared?’ Darby repeated. ‘Cleared of what?’

‘ERT found a cyanide gas canister mounted underneath your bed. Remote-controlled device.’

‘When was it set to go off?’

‘Didn’t have a timer on it, just a cell phone. You call and it lets out the gas. Pretty sophisticated construction too, from what we were told.’

Darby sank back in her seat, her jaw snapping shut.

Cyanide gas. Also known as Zyklon B when it was used in Hitler’s gas chambers and in the gas wagons that rounded up gypsies and homosexuals and killed them on the spot. And now these people that no one knew, these people who belonged to a group that didn’t have a name – they had wanted to turn her bedroom into a gas chamber. If she had gone back home instead of calling Coop’s friend for that room at the Custom House …

But you didn’t
.

No. No, she hadn’t. But it got her thinking back to what Coop had said about her lucky streak having to end at some point because that’s what lucky streaks did. They always did.

Coop was leaning forward in his seat and Keats was saying, ‘No need to go to a store. We’ve already purchased some clothing for you.’

‘I hope you didn’t buy me tighty-whities,’ Coop said. ‘I’m a boxer man.’

‘I didn’t do the shopping. Someone from the office did. A woman.’ Keats gave Coop a hard, stern look in the rear-view mirror and added, ‘I don’t shop for clothes for guys.’

Coop laughed. ‘Where you taking us?’

‘Four Seasons.’

‘How romantic.’

‘Hotel offers us several security advantages. They cater to visiting diplomats, our bozo politicians and other types.’

Coop eased back, turning to her with a grin on his face, trying to break the sombre mood.

‘Four Seasons,’ he whispered. ‘Ooo-la-la.’

Keats went up with her to her condo. The FBI’s Evidence Response Team was there, making a mess of her rooms – moving furniture, rugs and all of her bureau drawers. Black fingerprint powder covered every surface. All the lights had been turned on and when she stepped inside her bedroom she found her bed torn apart, the mattress propped up against a wall and a guy wearing a particle mask and an FBI windbreaker spraying a Super Glue mist against the metal bed frame. Two young guys stood on her porch dusting her sliding glass door and she caught flashlight beams crisscrossing through the darkness, searching the postage-stamp-sized backyard she shared with the ground-floor tenants.

She didn’t ask what else they had found; she’d get the details later from Sergey. She opened the folding doors to Beacon Hill’s version of a walk-in closet: a small space of carefully crafted shelves designed to maximize every last inch of space. She threw clothes into a suitcase, about to close the doors when she saw the bulky white shopping bag sitting on the top shelf. She hesitated for a moment, then grabbed the bag and stuffed it inside her suitcase.

A quick trip to the bathroom to grab her toiletries and then she was hauling her suitcase down the winding staircase. No sign of her neighbours. She wondered if the feds had evacuated the building as a precaution.

Back to the car and half an hour later it stopped.

When her door opened again, she saw a man dressed in what looked like a military uniform – a cream-coloured commander’s hat, dark navy-blue trousers and a matching long overcoat with gold bars on the sleeves and above the breast pocket. He stood under a roof heater a few feet away from a pair of gold-plated doors, the entrance of the Four Seasons Hotel.

The doorman grinned and welcomed them to the Four Seasons. Either the man hadn’t noticed the earpieces worn by the Secret Service agents or he was simply used to seeing such things, as the hotel, she knew, hosted a wide variety of foreign dignitaries and rich Middle Eastern types who often travelled with bodyguards.

Keats didn’t bother with the check-in and escorted them through a regal lobby full of warm, earth-tone colours – the brown and cream rug, the blond wood panelling and chairs and sofas arranged around pillar-type stones holding pots bursting with freshly cut flowers. She could see why people held lavish weddings here, why businesses held conferences meant to impress their staff and clients. The area gave off a distinctly powerful but elegant vibe.

They took the elevator to the top floor. She followed Keats and the other agent, who’d been assigned to Coop, down a quiet, carpeted hall. A moment later Keats dropped her suitcase in front of a small alcove separate from the rest of the rooms. Darby saw the bronze-plated sign mounted on the wall next to the door:
GARDEN SUITE
.

‘I’ll be posted outside your room,’ Keats said. ‘For obvious reasons, we prefer that you dine in. We’ll come for you at eleven, so take the time to unwind, sleep, whatever.’

Coop picked up her suitcase. Darby remained in the hallway for a moment.

She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. ‘If for some reason you need to come in and get us, could you do me a favour and, uh, you know …’

‘Knock?’

‘Yes. Knock.’

‘Of course. A gentleman such as myself always knocks first, then waits.’

‘I’d appreciate that, thanks.’

Keats cracked a thin smile. ‘Enjoy your stay.’

62

Darby’s first thought was that she had stepped through a time portal and into the top floor of one of those old historic mansions she’d once seen in Newport, Rhode Island. The space was immense, with Victorian-inspired sofas, chairs and heavy curtains; the only modern flourish was the soft lighting that glowed like candlelight across the cream and beige striped wallpaper. The warm air smelled of lavender – fresh lavender and not some sort of chemical scent, and it was coming from a huge bouquet of fresh-cut lavender sprinkled among white and red roses set up on the table.

She looked around, taking in the immense space and the adjoining kitchen – there was a kitchen in here, an actual kitchen – and she half expected some butler or maid from a Jane Austen novel to come waltzing into the room and tell her the duchess was ready to receive them.

She turned and walked, dragging the rolling suitcase behind her, into a master suite almost as big as her condo. Tall ceilings, and two lamps on cherrywood nightstands bracketing a king-sized bed. Coop stood next to the bed, going through the packages of clothes that had been left on top of the thick white velvet comforter.

Darby parked her suitcase at the foot of the bed and he held up a package of Hanes briefs.

‘Tighty-whities. What am I, ten?’

‘Let’s make a rule,’ she said, slipping out of her leather jacket. ‘No talking about the case.’

‘Fine with me. I could use a break.’

‘You want to crash?’

He shook his head, picking up a package holding a blue dress shirt. ‘I’m too wired to sleep. All I want is a long, hot shower.’

‘You mind if I go first?’

‘Not at all. It’ll give me time to raid the mini-bar.’

The bathroom, made of black and white marble, had a jacuzzi with windows overlooking the public garden. She could see the old lantern lights glowing around the street and in the distance as she undressed.

Hopping inside the shower, she wished she could stay under the hot water until it ran cold, but she didn’t want to waste time. She wanted to spend every available second with Coop. A part of her felt guilty for having these feelings right now, given the day’s gruesome events. It seemed wrong, almost abnormal. She was tingling with excitement and anticipation, and Casey was drowning in fear and terror.