The Angel (28 page)

me and just had the jitters over being taped. That’s natural—

it all seems so exciting until someone sticks a camera in your face.” Keira looked down again at the river, but her sculler was out of sight. “Simon, what if Patsy was talking about someone else?”

“Keira, just tell the police everything, and let them do their job. You’ve done all you can at this point.”

“I know, but what if Patsy told someone else that story—

someone who decided to look for the ruin and the angel, and then turned around and killed her?”

Simon didn’t answer.

“You’ve thought about this, too,” Keira said. “If it’s the same person who killed that sheep in Ireland, left me trapped in the ruin—maybe even tried to kill me—and took the stone angel, then Patsy would have known who it was. Murdering her kept her from telling anyone.”

“Whoever was responsible obviously wanted a lot of blood,” Simon said.

Keira felt her mouth go dry. “Just like with the sheep.”

“I’ll tell the police here and in Ireland about the tape—”

“Where are you right now? At the Garrison house?”

A half-beat’s pause. “I’m at BPD Headquarters.”

“You’re looking into Deirdre McCarthy’s murder. How—” But she stopped herself, then sighed. “I’ll be damned. You’re a cop, aren’t you? What are you—a fed, right? ATF, FBI, the marshals?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you a spook? What would happen if I Googled you? Would my computer blow up? Would I end up on some watch list?” But Simon didn’t answer, and she knew he wasn’t going to. “You know the FBI director is Abigail’s father, right?”

“Yes. I know.”

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His tone told her everything. “Oh. I get it now. You’re an FBI agent. Do Owen and Abigail know?”

“Focus on your own situation. We’ll talk later.”

She pictured his vivid green eyes and could almost feel her fingers in his hair. She’d made love to him with such abandon last night. But as close as she’d felt to him then—even now—she realized she didn’t know Simon at all. He was charming, good-looking and very sexy, but also controlled—and he was a federal agent.

“You have secrets, Simon.”

“Everyone has secrets.”

She thought of her mother, her uncle—Patsy. And a teenage girl murdered thirty years ago. “I’m driving out to see my mother after I talk to Colm. Simon, I’m sorry you had to be there this morning, but I can’t imagine having had to find Patsy without you.”

“Keira…” But he didn’t go on.

“Good disaster planner that you are,” she said, “I figure you’ll want directions to my mother’s cabin.”

He sighed softly. “I could fall in love with you, you know.”

Her heart jumped, and she smiled, even as she bit back more tears. “I’d like that,” she said, and gave him direc

tions to her mother’s cabin.

When she hung up, Colm exhaled and rushed to her, hugged her fiercely, then stood back. “Keira,” he said, his voice cracking. “Dear heaven, tell me everything.”

He listened intently, without interruption, as she filled him in.

When she finished, he shook his head with obvious emotion. “I’m so sorry. What a grisly business. Of course I’ll find the tape of Patsy telling the story. I haven’t watched it yet myself, but I’ll get it to the police straight away.”

She jotted down her uncle’s phone number, then added 256

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Simon’s. “If you need anything, call my uncle or Simon, okay? I don’t have Abigail Browning’s number, but feel free to get in touch with her, too—”

“I will, indeed. And I’ll take a closer look at your sketches,” Colm said, then added briskly, “If I can be of any assistance at all in finding this bloody bastard—”

“I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt. If I’m respon

sible in any way—”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Keira,” Colm said. “Let the police sort out what’s going on. You’ve done all you can. Just be with your family and friends now and remember the good times you had with Patsy.”

She smiled at him. “I like hearing you say her name with your Irish accent.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Happier times are ahead, Keira.”

“It’s hard to believe that right now. Well, I should go. I need to see my mother and tell her about Patsy.”

Colm grabbed his cell phone and tucked it into her hand.

“Take it.” His eyes sparked, and he winked at her. “I remember this Simon Cahill from the auction, and I have a feeling you’d be wise to stay in touch with him.”

Keira felt a rush of heat. “Probably so. Thank you for the phone.”

Colm gave her a quick grin. “I’ll be taking up a collec

tion for you for a phone of your own.”

“I don’t blame you. You’re a good friend, Colm.”

She ran down the stairs and out to the street, jumping in her car and heading out to Storrow Drive and onto Route 2. In less than two hours, she’d be at her mother’s cabin.

Boston Police Department Headquarters
Roxbury, Massachusetts

11:25 a.m., EDT

June 24

Simon stood in a small, hot room in the sprawling head

quarters of the Boston Police Department with the file of Deirdre McCarthy’s murder in front of him and Norman Estabrook, soon to be in federal custody, on the phone.

“You’re a dead man, Cahill,” Estabrook said. Simon didn’t have time to listen to threats. “Yeah, whatever.”

“I trusted you.”

That was a lie. Estabrook didn’t trust anyone. Simon didn’t care.

Abigail Browning materialized in the doorway of the room where the BPD had led him, her arms crossed, her remarkable self-control firmly in place. He doubted now was the time to tell her how much she reminded him of her father.

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Estabrook wasn’t finished. “I have feds swarming over me right now because of you.”

“Trust me now, Norm.” Estabrook hated being called Norm. “Give yourself up peacefully, or they’ll kill you.”

“I didn’t get to be a billionaire by giving up. You’re dead, Cahill.”

“How’d you find out about me?”

“Process of elimination.
You
trust
me
now. You’re dead. Dead, dead, dead.”

Estabrook could be remarkably petulant, but he typi

cally wasn’t one for empty threats. He was a portly, blandlooking, dangerous forty-year-old who thrived on risk and beating the odds. But Simon wasn’t worried. After months of helping Estabrook plan, execute and survive his adven

tures—of insinuating himself into Estabrook’s life—

Simon was glad to be rid of him. Estabrook had decided to cross the line from ultrarich thrill seeker to international criminal. No one had done it to him.

“First I kill John March,” Estabrook said. “Then I kill you.”

“Send me a postcard from prison. It’ll be your biggest adventure ever.”

Estabrook sputtered, and Simon disconnected. He’d had enough.

John March’s daughter walked into the room. “Well, Special Agent Cahill, should I ask what that was all about?”

But she just nodded to the file. “I see you and I are here for the same reason. What do we have?”

“An ugly murder, Detective.”

She picked up Deirdre McCarthy’s high school gradua

tion picture. “Sweet-looking kid, wasn’t she? No wonder she ended up collecting angels.”

Simon nodded. Deirdre was pretty, but it was her

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kindness that people who knew her had told police most defined her. If there were demon-fighting angels, Deirdre McCarthy wouldn’t have been one.

Her mother, on the other hand…Patsy McCarthy had calmly predicted to more than one investigator that she would die fighting the devil with her bare hands. Simon thought of the tiny, crumpled body on the hooked rug and wondered if her premonition had come to fruition. Abigail set the picture back down. “I see you’re armed,” she said.

“I had to look like a proper FBI agent before I came in here.” But Simon couldn’t pull off irreverence. He’d read the summary of the exhaustive investigation into Deirdre’s kidnapping, torture, rape and murder. Now her mother was dead, slain in her own home. He looked again at Deirdre’s picture, taken on a day when kids thought about their lives ahead of them. And a year later, she was dead. “Her killer stalked her for at least two weeks before he grabbed her. He took pictures of her—police found them in his apartment afterward.”

“Deirdre didn’t know she was being stalked?”

“She never filed a police report or said anything to her mother.”

“Would she have?”

Simon didn’t hesitate. “She’d have told her mother. It was just the two of them. She was a sweet kid who told her mother everything.”

“Nobody tells anyone everything.” Abigail swallowed visibly as she continued to flip through the file. “She was kidnapped on the summer solstice. No wonder Bob hates this time of year. I had no idea about this poor girl—not a damn inkling. He never said a word.”

“He wouldn’t. It’s not how he’s wired.”

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She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t argue. “How long did this monster have her?”

“Three weeks. You don’t need to read the file to know what he did to her.”

“No, I imagine I don’t.”

“Killing her was an afterthought. Either he just got tired of her, or he knew she couldn’t live much longer. He slit her throat and dumped her body in Boston Harbor.”

“Bob never even hinted…” Abigail’s expression tight

ened as she came to the photographs taken after Deirdre’s body had washed ashore. “Eight years I’ve worked here, and I’ve never heard of this case.” She shut the file. “The killer—Stuart Fuller. Who was he?”

“A twenty-four-year-old road worker. He wasn’t on the radar—no record. He grew up in a rough family. The father was in and out of prison and beat the hell out of his wife, and she beat the hell out of their kids. They lived all over the place. Stuart moved to South Boston to get away from his family two months before he kidnapped Deirdre.”

Abigail had no visible reaction. “How did the police find him?”

“They didn’t. He set himself on fire and jumped in Boston Harbor a week after Deirdre’s body turned up.”

“It was the right guy?”

“Police found overwhelming evidence—”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Simon had known it wasn’t, but he didn’t give her an answer.

She folded her arms on her chest again, pacing in the small room. “For seven years, I didn’t know who killed my husband. Why, what happened. Any of it. I met Bob when I was still a recruit. He wasn’t easy to win over.”

“I can imagine,” Simon said.

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She didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s taught me so much.”

“Abigail, that hasn’t changed—”

“I believed I was teaching Bob what it’s like to lose someone close to you to violence, when all the time, he knew and just never said anything.”

“Some people bury something like that down deep and learn just not to go there.”

“You had it right. Bob doesn’t need a reason to be emo

tionally repressed. It’s natural for him.” She stalked to the door, but turned to Simon, her expression softening slightly. “Where’s Owen?”

“I dropped him off on Beacon Hill. Fiona O’Reilly’s at the Garrison house practicing with her friends.” Simon tried to smile. “We could hear the Irish music all the way out on the street.”

“I hope it’s therapeutic for her.”

“Yeah. Hope so. Today’s been a tough one.”

She gave a curt nod. “Bob?”

“He took off two seconds after Owen and I got there.”

“Did he say where—”

“No. He didn’t say a word to either of us.”

“He’s got the bit in his teeth, then.”

Simon nodded. “I expect so.”

“We don’t need Bob O’Reilly going off half-cocked. One more question for you, Simon, before I leave.” Her dark eyes leveled on him. “Just how well do you know my father?”

“As I said, some people learn to bury the bad and just don’t go there.”

John March had lost a friend and undoubtedly blamed himself for Brendan Cahill’s execution, and to tell his daughter required confronting those feelings—that reality—

in a way that keeping silent didn’t.

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Abigail took in Simon’s nonanswer. “I have to be some

where right now, but we’re not finished.”

“Hope not.” He grinned at her. “I like weddings.”

She scowled at him. “You’re even less invited than you were last night.”

But he saw some of the tension go out of her, if only for a moment, and she left, shutting the door behind her. Simon opened Deirdre McCarthy’s file again and turned to the last page Abigail had looked at.

It was a report on the Fuller family submitted by a BPD detective sergeant named John March.

Speaking of people who buried their emotions. Abigail had to have seen her father’s name. She didn’t miss anything. According to everyone who knew him back in his BPD days, March had been hardworking, hard-driving and am

bitious, putting himself through law school at night, figuring out how he could advance his career and still be a decent husband and father.

And friend, Simon thought, visualizing his own father’s execution. What did John March owe the memory of the friend whose son he believed he’d helped orphan? Simon knew the answer, because John March had lived it. He set the file on the table and left. He wanted to be with Keira—now, not later. Deirdre McCarthy’s murder had hung over Keira’s life since the summer she was conceived, but no one—not her mother, her uncle, her grandparents or Patsy herself—had told her or her younger cousins about the girl next door, the friend who’d lost her life to violence. And yet Simon understood why they hadn’t. Once he was on the road, navigating the busy urban streets, he called March’s private number, barely letting the FBI director get out a greeting. “Do you care that Norman Estabrook just threatened to kill you?”

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