Mistletoe and Murder

Chapter Fifteen

At the head of the alley, Jacob slowed. He looked left and right, listened for several seconds, then shook his head. “He’s gone.”

Two other officers joined him. The female of the pair gave a thumbs-down. “I’d have done better in my regulation shoes, but with or without them, that guy’s fast and slippery. Did Harris call it in?”

“He was on the phone when we left.” Jacob combed the alley one last time, then motioned to the other two. “Go back to the hall and talk to the caterers. One of them might have seen him skulking around.”

“I can’t believe he’d take a risk like that.” Still bent over, Dylan wiped a bead of sweat from his upper lip. “That was a suicide mission, infiltrating a police party. And for what?”

“Not the canapés, that’s for sure.” Pulling out his cell phone, Jacob punched in the captain’s number. When he ended the call, Dylan stared in disbelief.

“You actually think he’d want to hurt all those people? Those cops?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. The hall needs to be evacuated and searched.”

“Merry Christmas, everyone.”

“Can you walk?”

Disdain marred Dylan’s features. “Yes, I can walk. But I can’t run ten blocks flat out and not be winded. Neither can Warren.”

“Unless he’s been working out.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be the Warren Critch I knew, but then he backed down from Romana six years ago, and he’s sure as hell done an about-face in that regard.” Dylan swept an arm around the network of snow-encrusted alleys. “We missed him, Knight. He jumped into a Dumpster or scuttled up a fire escape. I still think you’re out in left field, though, thinking he’d blow up a roomful of cops. Assuming he even knows how to construct a bomb.”

“Internet’s full of information, Hoag.”

“And you figure, wherever he’s holed up, that Warren’s online? Man, what is it with you and Romana? He doesn’t want to make a statement to the world-‘Hey, look at me! I’m a raving lunatic who likes to kill people.’ He wants you and Romana to pay for what he seriously believes you did.”

“And then?”

Dylan popped apart his fingers. “Like I said before, poof. So long U.S. of A., hello Amazon hideaway. You won’t catch him once he’s out of the country.”

“Probably true.” Jacob took a final look around. “But he’s a long way from out right now. And I’m a long way from finished searching for him.”

WARREN CRITCH STUMBLED INTO his basement room, slammed the door, locked it and backed across the floor to the window. He snaked a hand under the blinds to make sure he’d locked them, too, then dropped onto a hard chair and fought for calm.

No fists banged on his door. No knuckles tapped on his windows. The panic of flight began to subside. He’d be fine, just had to get through a few more days, then he’d be high above the clouds, soaring off to his new life.

He shouldn’t have gone to the party tonight. Cops were adept at seeing through disguises. Better to have saved this one for his escape.

But the voice in his head had been pushing him hard lately. It pushed him even now.

Still struggling for composure, he stripped away the gray mustache and wig, peeled the sideburns from his cheeks and ordered himself to empty his mind. Keep it blank. Keep control.

Then he looked down at the table and spied the sprig of mistletoe.

“ROMANA, SLOW DOWN.” JACOB SET his hands on her shoulders to keep her in place. “Start again, and go through it slowly. Pretend I’m just learning to speak English.”

She made a frustrated sound but stopped talking and sucked in a deep breath.

It was Sunday afternoon, and they were in Jacob’s apartment above the theater. Snow had been falling since dawn from clouds more forbidding than his captain’s face when they’d discovered two pipe bombs buried inside a pair of trash cans at Rushton Hall.

He and Harris had been on the streets ever since.

Finding Romana waiting for him when he’d arrived home had been a welcome sight at first. Then he’d looked closer and realized she’d been ready to deck him.

“Fifteen hours,” she repeated now. “You’ve been on the hunt and virtually incommunicado, for more than half a day.”

“Romana, I’m here. I’m listening.”

She glared at him, then gave in and sighed. “You look too damn good. I can’t think when I’m this tired.”

He tipped up her chin. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“No, but I ate, which is probably more than you did. Did O’Keefe ever catch up with you?”

“No, why?”

“Because I told him what I discovered, and if you’d seen him, he would have told you, and I wouldn’t have to go through it all again. Which I will.” She held up a forestalling hand. “I just need one more minute, okay? You can’t spend fifteen hours being annoyed and not feel like kicking something when you’re done.”

He covered a flicker of amusement. “Are you done, then?”

“Yes.” She whooshed out one last breath. “Yes. Okay, I’ll keep it simple. Point number one, Belinda and James Barret did in fact have an affair. It was one of the secrets he referred to in the inscription on the watch he gave her. Point number two, he gave her the watch because she rushed his partner’s autopsy through to its conclusion.” At his doubtful stare, she smiled. “I know. Thought of it myself. We can verify the legitimacy of the results later and should, because, point number three, Dr. Gorman claims that Connor, and possibly Belinda as well, faked his signature on some of the medical shipment and autopsy reports.”

Jacob rubbed his thumbs in circles on her shoulders. “You realize if that last thing gets out, your ex’s crimes are going to hit the gossip fan all over again.”

“Doesn’t matter. I want Fitz back. A bit of emotional discomfort will be nothing if we can make that happen. Which brings me to point number four. The pink strip.”

It took Jacob a moment to clue in. When he did, his insides turned to liquid. “Pink-as in pregnant?”

“Yes, pregnant, but no, not me, so you can wipe that shocked look off your face and let me finish. Except that now I just want to laugh, and that’s totally inappropriate, so I must be even more tired than I realized.”

“Second that.” Jacob dropped his forehead onto hers. “Okay, whose strip turned…” His head came up. “Belinda’s?”

“So says Dr. Gorman. Now I’ll admit, he has lapses, and he’s the only person I know who can nod off in the middle of a party hall evacuation, but he was very definite about it, Jacob. He said he found Belinda outside the women’s washroom holding a pink strip and staring at it as if she’d never seen the color before.”

Something clicked in Jacob’s head. He glanced around the apartment. “I have the police report.”

“Here?” She bunched the front of his T-shirt in excited fists. “You have it here?”

“Somewhere.”

“Figures.”

It took twenty minutes to unearth the folder, and in the end it was Romana who thought to look in the fridge.

“Six brothers, sixth sense.” She handed it to him. “I need coffee. You read, I’ll brew.”

“No, don’t.” He caught her wrist before she could move. “Get your coat and boots.”

“You want to go out for coffee?”

“I want to go to the forensics lab.”

She used her forefinger to lower the folder. “Let me guess, there’s no mention of a pregnancy.”

He slapped the file closed. “There’s no autopsy report.”

HE WENT THROUGH THE PAPERS three times. They were all in order. All false, but they’d work. The people who created these things were among the best in the business.

Warren Critch would be a ghost after today. From the ashes of his life would emerge one Willem Cortez, scientist of no particular note, traveling to Venezuela to study the feathered fauna of the Amazon rain forest.

Oh, yes, everything was in order-with one very large exception. Romana Grey and Jacob Knight were still alive.

He stripped mistletoe leaves from a long sprig and let them fall willy-nilly onto the pictures in front of him. With a crimson paint pen, he drew in pools of blood. As a morbid amusement, he made droplets spurt from the holes in their chests.

The order remained the same. Romana would die first, Jacob second. One bullet apiece, fired from a gun exactly like the one that should have killed Jacob six years ago.

He squeezed the pen hard between his fingers, felt laughter surge into his throat. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hope to contain it. It emerged in a watery blast…

That sounded dangerously close to a sob.

“GOOD MORNING, DETECTIVE.”

The morgue attendant Jacob jostled past stared after him in confusion.

“He hasn’t eaten today,” Romana explained. She raised her voice. “Left, Jacob, turn left for Path Lab Records.”

The automatic door clanged shut before she could get inside and, being carded, merely blinked red at her when she turned the handle.

“Always the gentleman.” Setting her elbow high on the frame, she crossed her feet at the ankles, knocked and waited. When the door opened, he pulled her inside, turned her to the right and said simply, “Find the Cs.”

It was all on computer, of course, but the original hand-signed reports were methodically boxed and filed. As Romana swept her gaze over row upon row of metal containers, a chill rippled across her skin. Were there really this many dead people in the city’s cemeteries?

“God, it’s a creepy world down here.”

Jacob brushed past her, his eyes on the upper shelves. “It’s a quieter one than the world up there.”

“Nothing morbid about that thought.” She skimmed a finger over the labeled fronts. “You need to spend a few hours playing air hockey with my nephews. You’ll crave silence when you’re done, but it won’t be the silence of death.”

“You’re assuming I’m good with kids.”

She smiled, kept skimming. “You would be. It’s all down to exposure and practice. And not minding jam fingers in your hair… CRIS to CRIV. It’s here.”

Jacob levered the box down so she could leaf through the files. She paused partway. “Mary Cristleman? I went to high school with her. My God, she died five years ago.”

“Romana…”

“I can read, flick and have a memory at the same time.” She continued to page forward. “Here it is. Critch, Belinda.” Extracting the folder, she opened it and scanned. “Okay, well, Dr. Gorman signed it-or so it would seem.”

“We’ll take it to the police lab for verification. Is there anything down here you know for sure Gorman signed?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” She pressed the folder into his stomach. “Connor’s termination papers. I was here when Gorman pink-slipped him. The forms will be in the human resources section.”

Fifteen minutes later, and in possession of both files, they returned to Jacob’s vehicle and headed for the station. Romana held the signatures up side by side in front of her. “They look identical to me, or close enough in terms of pressure points and loops that I can’t see a difference.”

“What, are you a handwriting expert now, Professor Grey?”

“No, just observant. If one was a carbon copy of the other, I’d be suspicious, but these are both similar and different enough to be genuine.”

“Sounds like you’ve done a little forgery in your life.”

Her smile was completely false. “High school physics was a tough subject, and Grandma Grey frowned on anything less than an A.”

“You doctored your report cards?”

“You don’t need to look so shocked. I didn’t touch the originals. I made new ones, and made Grandma Grey very happy. On the down side, I never understood the significance of the ripple tank.”

“Water moves outward in mathematically aligned waves. End of lesson.” He squinted through the windshield at the blowing snow. “What’s the time difference between Connor’s termination and Belinda’s death?”

“I knew you were going to ask that.” She straightened the files on her lap. “Six months. Belinda died first.”

“Who was the assist on the autopsy?”

“I hate you.”

His lips moved, and he reached a hand toward the folder. “Who, Romana?”

Could you hate a man and love him at the same time? Right now it seemed entirely possible.

“You know you’re only postponing the inevitable, don’t you?”

“I know. Still tired here.” But she made herself reopen the file. “Oh.” Surprise washed through her. “Not Connor. That’s good.” She frowned. “I think.”

“Patrick?”

“Well, I see a P and an N and a bunch of squiggly things in between, so I’d guess Patrick.”

“Okay, let’s run with that for a minute.”

“Snow’s getting heavier, Knight. I’ll run, you watch the road.” Bracing a foot on the dash, she studied the signatures. “Let’s say Gorman had begun signing reports without actually reading them-age, apathy, routine. Patrick does the autopsy, Gorman takes a nap. Gorman wakes up, signs off. Second scenario, Gorman does the autopsy, forgets about the pink strip and misses the pregnancy.”

“While Patrick is doing what?”

“Well, being upset about Belinda, I imagine.” Leaning over, she set a hand on his chest. “Think with your heart, Detective.”

“Any other scenario?”

“Barret-Mr. or Mrs.-pays one or both doctors-more likely Patrick-to overlook certain details.”

The trace of a smile appeared. “That’s thinking with your heart.”

“Heart, wallet, how do we know where Patrick’s priorities lie? But I’ll go with the heart for now, because unrequited love has to sting just a little.”

“You’re getting muddled, aren’t you?”

“Very.” A cell phone rang, and Romana glanced around. “You or me?”

A female voice emerged from the dashboard speaker. “Phone’s yours. Radio’s mine.”

She pulled out her cell, read the screen and covered her ear while Jacob fielded the incoming police call beside her. “O’Keefe, hi… Sorry, what? There’s a lot of interference.”

“Where are you?” he shouted from the other end.

She wiped steam from the window. “On Main, a few blocks north of Fountain Square, I think. I can’t read the street signs.”

“Well tell Jacob to hang a right and get over to Hyde Park.” “Mick, we’ve got Belinda’s autopsy report…” But he cut her off. “One of our patrols responded to a call about an injured woman. It’s Fitz, Romana. Your cousin’s been found. She’s alive.”