Where's Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread House?: A Gabby Grimm Fairy Tale Mystery #2 (13 page)

“Nothing,” I grumbled to myself. Where was
she? The last place to look was the closet. “Nettie, are you in
here?”

Even as I slid the door open, I could see the
shoes. Attractive leopard print three-inch heels. Stockings on the
legs. Skirt cut just above the knee. Gag across the mouth. She was
sitting on the floor in the dark, hands behind her. I started to
remove the duct tape, wondering why the gag. After all, there was
no one around. And then I knew. I could see it in Annette’s eyes.
She was terrified. He must be behind me. Even as I leaned across
with one hand to help her, I was reaching for my Glock with the
other. Flipping off the safety, I whirled around, just barely
catching him unaware.

“Hands in the air!” I bellowed in my best law
enforcement voice. “Now!”

The middle-aged man was short, fat, bald, and
dressed in black. The eyes were void of any surprise or conscience.
He looked right through me, like I didn’t exist. Even as he put his
hands above his head, he was already planning his next move. The
eyes were calculating the distance between us. I knew I only had
seconds before he activated the plan. He was a professional killer.
I held my weapon steady, knowing he was coming at me.

Seven seconds later, he launched himself at
me. He came in low and fast, faster than I expected a man of his
physical health and age. Without even thinking about it, I took him
out at the knee, aiming my right foot at the vulnerable cap and
striking a blow that sent him reeling onto his back. That’s the
benefit of having a boyfriend who’s Special Forces. One of Sam’s
favorite activities is to practice his kick boxing, and as his
occasional sparring partner, I’ve learned a few moves. I closed in
with my weapon aimed at his groin as the hit man writhed on the
ground.

“Give me a reason,” I warned him. This time,
he stayed on his back. Even as my eyes never strayed from his face,
I could hear shouting down the hallway.

“Annette!”

“We’re in here,” I shouted. “You bastards are
late!”

“We were turning off the gas. It took me this
long to get a crew from the gas company to shut off the line from
the street. Hello,” said Will, rounding the corner with a motley
crew of federal agents. “You’re not alone.”

“No, we’re not,” I replied, still not
trusting the human cannonball. His options were quickly
diminishing, and that made him even more dangerous. He had nothing
to lose. I also learned that from Sam, who dealt with desperate
people every day.

You can’t trust them for a second, Gabby.
Never let down your guard. They’re opportunists. They seize the
moment, and when they do, they kill. That’s why you always have to
make the first move. It has to be preemptive. You come in fast and
you come in hard. You establish your control, because if you don’t,
you’ll waste valuable time and effort trying to catch up.

“Damn!” one of the other agents moaned. “It’s
Frankie Galicchio, the Snuffman!”

“No way!” said another.

“Seriously, it is, man!”

“Are you boys done chatting about the Little
League game?” I demanded. “Because if you are, I’d appreciate it if
you would apprehend the suspect.”

“Yes, ma’am!” they said with great
enthusiasm. As Will supervised, they disarmed the suspect, who was
carrying what looked like a Beretta 92A1. More federal agents
filled the room. There seemed to be a lot of cheering upon seeing
the Snuffman in handcuffs.

Once I holstered my weapon, I reached down to
release my cousin from her restraints. As the tape came off her
mouth, a long, pain-racked sob escaped from her lips and filled the
air with a primitive sound so powerful, the law enforcement people
all turned in shock. Will dropped what he was doing, ran to her
side, and dropped to his knees.

“You’re okay, Annette. Take a deep breath!”
Despite his best efforts, she was going into shock. As scary as the
attack on me had been, it didn’t warrant this kind of reaction from
her. I was stunned. She was gasping for air. And then I saw the
blood spattered across the front of her blouse. How had I missed
that?

“Is she injured?” I asked. Will looked at me
as I said those words and then looked back at Nettie.

“That’s not her blood!”

“Whose is it?”

“Annette, was someone hurt?” He put his face
to hers, barely an inch away. She nodded. “Who?”

“Ke-ke-ke....”

“Kevin?” I suggested helpfully.

“Ye-ye-yes!”

“Where?” All those FBI agents quickly crowded
into the opening of the closet, jockeying for position. They were
elbowing each other and bitching. Someone actually fell against me
as I was hunched over, almost knocking me into my distraught
cousin. I gave the bastard a shove backwards. I felt like a wiener
drowning in a barrel of sauerkraut. Too much condiment, not enough
dog or bun. Annette’s right hand pointed behind them. We all turned
to look.

“Bath tub.”

The hunt was on. Two minutes later, the
blood-soaked body of Kevin Frist was found down the hall, in the
spa tub of the master bedroom of another condo. His limbs had been
severed from his trunk with a construction worker’s power saw.

“Holy mother of pearl,” I could hear one of
the agents exclaimed aloud. “If that isn’t the epitome of evil,
what is?”

There was also the sound of retching as one
of the agents was rushed away from the murder scene. A weak stomach
was no legitimate excuse for contaminating evidence.

Will and I took Annette to the emergency
room. She had a few bruises, but most of her wounds were
psychological. She had seen the horror of her boss slaughtered
before her eyes and immediately withdrew into herself. It didn’t
look like she was coming out anytime soon.

The consulting psychiatrist called to the
emergency room was a well-known trauma specialist who had worked
with returning vets. When Dr. Rayburn asked for a description of
the murder scene, I gave it to him in great detail. Will promised
to return after he had finished processing the Snuffman and
catching up on the report. That was fine with me. It wasn’t like
Annette and I were going anywhere, not given the state she was in.
By six, she was admitted for observation.

Just after nine, the medication took effect
and she fell sound asleep, knocked out by a powerful tranquilizer
cocktail that put her in La-La Land. I curled up for a little
shut-eye of my own, dozing fitfully in the chair beside Nettie’s
bed.

“Gabby.” A hand touched my shoulder and I
bolted up from my seat.

“What?” I shook myself back to consciousness.
It was Will.

“How is she?”

“Exhausted. Terrified. Horrified.”

“Damn it.” He patted her hand automatically,
as if it would comfort the sleeping patient, and in doing so, him
as well. That was the guilt talking. After all, he had reassured us
several times that Annette would be safe if she cooperated with the
FBI’s investigation. “This whole thing is unbelievable. Who would
have guessed?”

“I take it the Snuffman is a big collar.”

“Yeah, that too.” At least he had the good
sense not to take delight in leading the team who caught a really
bad guy while ruining a truly wonderful woman.

“Meaning?” I could tell there was more to the
story.

“Guess who hired Galicchio.”

“I give up. Who?”

“Kevin’s brother.”

Chapter Fourteen --

“His brother, the guy who went missing all
those years ago?”

“Yes, Kyle is alive and well. It gets better.
The new wife, Christine? She’s Kyle’s long-time girlfriend. It
turns out she and Kyle have been plotting to kill Kevin for
months.”

“Talk to me.” Now I was leaning forward. I
couldn’t help myself. There was a much bigger story here, one the
FBI hadn’t seen coming. I wanted to know why. “Where was Kyle all
these years?”

“Kevin hired Michael O’Callaghan, an IRA
gangster, to murder his brother back in 1993, when that million
dollars plus disappeared. According to Christine, who has already
agreed to testify against Kyle in exchange for not getting the
needle, Kyle took the money because Kevin was cheating him. He made
his way to Florida, put the money in a bank in Miami and then began
laundering it, until it was clean enough to move to Key West, where
he settled down to build his new life. Kevin tracked the money to
that bank account, thanks to a forensic accountant he hired, and
began stealing the money back, using a series of wire transfers he
arranged over the space of a week. That flushed Kyle out of hiding
and O’Callahan was waiting when Kyle showed up in New York to grab
the money back.”

“No love lost between the brothers?” I asked.
Will shook his head.

“That’s an understatement. What Kevin never
knew was that Kyle got the jump on O’Callaghan and had tortured
O’Callaghan into giving up the plan before he killed him. Kyle was
unable to resume his life, so he just stayed out of sight and spent
years plotting to rip off Frist and Company, using a number of
associates to help him. And even after he got the money back, he
kept going. All these years, he’s had his thugs sabotage the real
estate projects, bleeding his brother dry to the point that Kevin
couldn’t sustain the company any more. That’s when Kevin sold a
good portion of the company to the venture investment firm and came
up with the idea of blowing up Phase One to get the insurance money
and cover up the shoddy construction.”

“Where does Christine fit in?” I wondered.
“Did she break up the first marriage for Kyle’s benefit?”

“And then some. The idea was to use her to
ruin Kevin. It looks like she was pretty successful. Not only was
she feeding Kyle the financial information, she was meeting him
regularly for sex.”

“Which must mean Kyle has been nearby all
this time? How did he pull that off?”

“A lot of plastic surgery. And yes, he’s been
living in Greenwich, Connecticut all this time. He’s called himself
a venture capitalist.”

“Oh, let me guess. That investment firm that
bought the controlling shares of Frist and Company is owned by
Kyle?”

“You got it. Kyle is Blue Ridge.”

“Great. When do you get Kyle?” I wanted to
know. I wasn’t going to rest easy until he was in a maximum
security prison, under lock and key, without access to the outside
world.

“The federal judge signed off on the warrant
an hour ago. We’re just waiting for a special team to assemble and
move in. The concern is that Kyle has his mansion booby-trapped to
blow and an arsenal of weapons at his disposal to fend off any
efforts to apprehend him.”

“Right.” I nodded, still processing the
information. “How come Christine gave him up so easily?”

“Good question. Turns out Kevin treated her a
hell of a lot better than Kyle did. She developed feelings for the
bastard. Lately, she had a case of the guilts and started slipping
up. Last month, Kyle beat the crap out of her during a visit. She
told her husband she was mugged.”

“Nasty stuff, Will.”

“This case is going to be big, Gabriella.
Very sad, but very big.”

“You’re going to be tied up for a long time,”
I sighed. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

No wonder he was blue. Nettie was off-limits
until the conclusion of the trial. The star-crossed lovers were
separated by fate. Too bad, because this guy clearly had it bad for
my cousin.

“What’s the plan for Annette?”

“The doctors want to treat her for
psychological trauma. She’s likely to have nightmares for a long
time,” I confided.

“No doubt.”

“But I have my own plan.”

“You do?”

“Yup. I’m going to arrange to transfer her to
a hospital up in Vermont. There’s a great doctor up there who
specializes in PTSD. When the Klarsfeld family was taken hostage
last year, they needed a lot of psychological support after they
were threatened and tortured. I have a lot of confidence in this
particular doctor because I saw the results of her therapy. Annette
and I had already talked about her moving up there permanently. We
even talked about how she could earn a living. She needs to be with
her family.”

“She does,” he conceded sadly. She was
slipping out of his fingers. Say goodbye to the love that never got
a foothold. “She really wants this?”

“I think so. There are a number of jobs to
choose from on Black Forest Farm. She’ll have a nice, safe life,” I
reassured him.

“Good.” He swallowed hard, choking up. His
eyes were on the sleeping beauty in the bed. His fingers were
gripping the end of the hospital bed like it was a raft in rough
seas. The man was a study in miserable.

“What are your plans? Are you going to stay
with the FBI?”

“That was always the plan,” he agreed.

“And now?”

“Still the plan,” he insisted, but I didn’t
think his heart was in it.

“A cop’s wife has a miserable life. Always
wondering if the guy is going to come home. The long hours on the
job. Family holidays disrupted. The constant and unrelenting
challenges.”

“I know.” There is was. Acceptance. He knew
that he would be impacting Annette’s life in some really difficult
ways. It didn’t change his feelings for her. He still wanted her.
But he was willing to walk away from her to give her the life she
deserved.

“A smart guy might figure out a way to
minimize all that,” I said, tossing him a bone. “Maybe he’d ask for
a transfer to the Albany office and start the romance out slow,
while she healed.”

“Really?” There was that puppy dog hope in
the eyes. Will really did care about my cousin.

“You might be able to get together once in a
while to discuss the case, right? That would be legitimate.”

“Absolutely.”

“And since I got dragged into this mess, I
could probably chaperone from time to time, if you two wanted to
get to know each other better, especially if you managed that
transfer.”