Dead End (18 page)

“Start from the beginning, maybe we can piece it together.”

“Well, it started with Brendan calling me earlier tonight. He said he found the reports that were missing from Dylan’s file, that he’d left them in the office. He said he was going back to pick them up, but he had a tire that was losing air, so I told him I’d come over and get him.” She stopped to take a sip from the glass of water the counter waitress had brought her. “When I got there, he was on the phone. He didn’t even hear me ring the bell, so I went inside. I could see him back in the kitchen area, and when he saw me he waved, you know, like ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He got off the phone, and we started out of the house. We got as far as the top of the sidewalk when Luther showed up, started to yell at Brendan to drop the gun and let me go, and something about, it was all over, not to hurt me . . .” She rubbed at her eyes. “The next thing I knew, Luther was shooting at Brendan and Brendan fell . . .”

“Had you seen a gun in Brendan’s hand?” Will asked quietly.

“Not outside, but then again, I wouldn’t have. He was behind me. I knew that he had one with him, though. I saw him put it in his belt.”

“He needed a gun to go to the office?” Will frowned.

“A lot of agents don’t go anywhere without their Glocks; you know that, Will.”

“True enough.” Will stirred a packet of sugar into his iced tea. “Had you felt threatened, did you know that Brendan had pulled the gun?”

“I had no clue.” She shook her head vehemently. “I had no idea there was anything wrong until Luther showed up and started shouting at Brendan.”

“You said Luther was yelling at Brendan to drop the gun, to not hurt you, to let you go . . .”

“Right.”

“Did Brendan yell anything back at Luther?”

“It all happened so fast, I don’t . . .” She rubbed her index finger across her chin, a gesture he’d seen her use when she was deep in thought. “He called him a bastard. ‘Luther, you bastard.’ That’s the only thing I remember hearing him say.”

“That’s an odd thing to say, don’t you think? Under those circumstances?” Will frowned.

“I don’t know. He might have said something else. I was just so stunned, so startled, I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on. Everything happened so fast, Will . . .”

His phone rang, and he took it from his pocket.

“Fletcher.” He listened for a moment, then said, “I’m with her right now. Sure. No problem.”

He folded over the phone and returned it to his pocket.

“That was John. He’s on his way in from the airport.”

“Does he want me to meet him at his office?”

“No. He wants me to take you home and make sure you get some sleep. He’ll give us a call in the morning.”

She frowned. “You’d think he’d want to talk to me.”

“He does. In the morning. Right now, he wants to talk to Luther Blue.”

23

Luther sat calmly in the small leather side chair that faced John Mancini’s desk and waited for the interrogation to begin. He’d been there for almost two hours awaiting John’s arrival, in the company of Special Agent Harold Kimble, a man Luther considered to be stupid and without imagination. He might actually enjoy this.

“Okay, Agent Blue,” Mancini was saying as he eased himself into his own well-worn leather chair. “It’s been a long night for all of us, so let’s get to the point. What the hell happened?”

“I shot Agent Shields,” Luther told him. “I killed him.”

“We know that part, Luther,” John said, his face and voice both weary. “Let’s talk about why.”

“He was going to kill Dr. McCall.”

“Why would he want to do that?” John frowned.

“I’m thinking it was because she was—”

“You’re thinking? You don’t know?” Kimble rose half out of his seat.

“Sit down, Harold.” John motioned him back into his chair. “Let him finish.”

“I think it was because she’d been asking about the reports that were missing from the Bureau file of the investigation into Dylan Shields’s death.”

“Why would that have been a concern to Agent Shields? He and Dylan were cousins.”

“I believe it was because the reports would show that Agent Shields—Brendan—fired the shots that killed Dylan.”

“Agent Blue, you understand the seriousness of this accusation?”

“Sir, I understand full well. That’s why when I found the reports—”

“You found the reports?” Mancini’s eyebrows rose in tandem. “All three of them?”

“Yes, sir, Agent Lowery’s report, Agent Raymond’s report, and a memo from Agent Shields. Connor Shields. I found them by accident. I was looking through the McCullum file, and I found the reports in an envelope stuck in the back of the file. I immediately realized these were the missing reports—”

“How did you know about that? How did you know they were missing?”

“Sir”—Luther smiled benignly—“everyone in the unit knew about the missing reports. Dr. McCall had, at one time, asked just about everyone about them, especially the report written by Agent Lowery.”

“Had she asked you?”

“No, not directly, but I heard about it from several people. And then, with Agent Lowery having been found dead so recently, I thought I’d read over her report and see what the big deal was.”

“The big deal?”

“There was a buzz going around the office that there was something in her report that might have been the reason she’d been killed. So I thought if maybe I looked over the report, something might jump out at me.”

“And did something?”

“Not at first. I had to go back to the old file—the original file. It took me a few hours, but I figured it out.”

Mancini gestured for him to continue. It was all Luther could do to keep from grinning like a fool. He had the man eating out of his hand.

“The file contained the customary list of FBI personnel assigned to the op. It’s stapled in the front of the file. So that’s where I started. With the players. I heard that’s what Dr. McCall had done, so I did the same. I read through the file, read all the reports, to put the entire op into perspective. Then I read the other three reports again, in context. That’s when I realized several things.” He paused for effect. Mancini and Kimble were hanging on every word. He let them hang for as long as he could. “Agent Lowery’s report mentioned seeing Agent Brendan Shields leaving the building identified as Building A on the diagram.”

He looked from one to the other, then asked, “May I show you?”

“Please do.”

“If we could get the file in here? I left it on my desk, with the original reports.” Luther smiled weakly at John. “I made a copy of the three reports, but I gave them to Dr. McCall.”

“Why?”

“Because she’d been looking for them.”

“When did you give her these reports?”

“Tonight. After I . . . after the . . . after the shooting at Agent Shields’s.”

“You took them with you?”

“Yes. I wanted to confront him about why—”

Mancini held up a hand to stop him. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

“I can run down and get the file, if you like.”

“Please . . .”

Luther hustled down the hall to his office, buoyed by his own enjoyment of the situation. He was relishing the spotlight, loving the script he’d written for himself. It was, he thought, quite simply brilliant. By the end of the night, he’d be hailed as a hero. He could hardly wait to get to the part where he’d explain how he’d saved Annie McCall’s life.

He returned with the file and opened it on Mancini’s desk.

“Okay, here’s the list of personnel, in front, then the list of documents in the file. I think everyone agrees that all the documents were here except for Agent Lowery’s report, a memo from Agent Shields—that would be Connor Shields—and a sketch of the scene from Agent Lou Raymond.” He looked up first at Mancini, then at Kimble, and said meaningfully, “Interesting, don’t you think, that both Agents Lowery and Raymond died suspiciously? She, murdered just last week, and he, a one-car accident on a dark stretch of highway?”

“How do you know Lowery was murdered?”

“Sir, everyone in this unit knows she was murdered.”

“And you found all three of those items in the McCullum file yesterday? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” John leaned back in his chair, and Luther could feel his eyes bore through him.

“Yes, of course it does.” Luther nodded calmly. “I was thinking, if someone had gone to the pains to remove the reports in the first place, why didn’t they just destroy them? It makes no sense to hide them in another file, where they could be found, but who knows what this person was thinking? Maybe he’d just stuck them in there to get rid of them when someone else came in the room, and meant to go back to get them . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t the one who put them in there in the first place. I only found them.”

He flipped open the cover of the file and took out the three documents under discussion. He handed them in turn to Mancini. “Here’s the sketch Lou Raymond made of the scene, showing where everyone was at the time of the shooting. Here’s the report from Melissa Lowery, and the memo to the file from Connor Shields.”

He gave John a minute to look over the documents, then said, “You’ll notice Brendan Shields is not listed on the personnel list, and his name does not appear on the diagram Lou made showing where everyone was standing. But Lowery notes that she saw Brendan exiting the building—the building from which the shots were fired that killed Dylan Shields and badly injured his brother Aidan—right after she and the others arrived on the scene.” He leaned over the desk to point to a section on the back of the report. “As you can see, Brendan was noted carrying a high-powered rifle in one hand and a rifle case in the other. Lowery’s report notes he told her that he’d gone into the building to see if he could apprehend the shooter, but found the building empty of all except Bureau personnel at that time.”

John studied the sketch.

“Here you see who all went into the building; Lou places them all right here.” Luther pointed to the sketch showing six stick figures representing each of the agents who had gone into the building after Dylan had been shot. “Brendan is not represented on the sketch.”

“So we have one report indicating that Brendan was on the scene, in the building, with a high-powered rifle—despite the fact that his name does not appear on the list of assigned personnel. And we have a sketch by a fellow agent that doesn’t place him on the team that went into the building, yet he was seen coming out right around the time that some of the other agents arrived on the scene.” John rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It is incriminating.”

“And, sir, you have the report from Connor Shields there.” Luther pointed to it.

“The significance of that is . . .” John skimmed the report. “Of course. I remember. Connor was supposed to have been on this op with Aidan. At the last minute, we pulled him off to sent him to . . .” He hesitated. “We needed him someplace else that night. We sent Dylan in as a substitute because he and Connor look so much alike that even—”

He stopped in midsentence, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

“They looked so much alike, even someone in their own family couldn’t tell them apart in the dark.” Luther finished the sentence.

“You seem to be implying that Brendan thought he was killing Connor,” John said thoughtfully.

“I think the evidence could be interpreted that way.”

“Why would Brendan want to kill Connor?”

“I guess you would have to ask Connor that, sir.”

“I guess I will.” John nodded. “In the meantime, let’s get back to what happened tonight.”

“Yes, sir. I went to Brendan Shields’s home with the copies I’d made of the reports.”

“Was he expecting you?”

“Well, I’d called him earlier in the afternoon, and—”

“Did you tell him what you’d found?”

“Not in so many words, but I may have implied it. I probably did.” Luther appeared contrite for a moment. “In retrospect, I should have kept my mouth shut about that.”

“What time was that?”

“Late afternoon, early evening. Maybe around six or so.”

John gestured for him to continue.

“Anyway, I called him again, just a few minutes before I arrived. I’d been to his house once before, but wasn’t sure of where to turn off Capital Road. He told me he was just leaving, and that now wasn’t a good time for me to come by. He tried to brush me off, but since I was almost there—”

“Did he give you directions then?”

“No . . .”

“You said you weren’t sure where you were going. How did you find the house?”

“A lucky guess, I suppose.”

“Lucky for Dr. McCall.” Kimble nodded.

“Yes. Well, I pulled up in front of the house, and I saw Agent Shields exiting the front door with Dr. McCall. He had her by the arm, and it looked as if he was steering her along. I got out of the car and called to him. He turned slightly, and that’s when I saw he had his gun in his right hand.”

“Where was the gun pointed?”

“Square at Dr. McCall’s back.”

“So you did what?”

“I called to him to drop the gun, to let her go. But he sort of pulled her in front of him as he came down the sidewalk. By this time, he had the gun raised and pointed in my direction, and he appeared to be about to fire, so I fired first. There were civilians in the area, the woman next door had started out of her house and went back in—”

“How many shots did you fire?”

“Two.”

“How many shots did Agent Shields fire?”

“None, sir. I shot him before he could fire.”

“And both of your shots struck Agent Shields.”

“Yes, sir.” Luther lowered his voice and tried to appear sorrowful. He gave it his all. “Sir, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that this happened. I’ve known Agent Shields for years—God, we worked together—I couldn’t believe what I was seeing in that file. I wanted to talk to him about it, I thought there must be another explanation. That’s why I went there. I wanted him to tell me there was another reason why he’d been in that building before the rest of the team went in, why he was there at all, since he hadn’t been part of that team.” Luther looked up at his boss and said sadly, “I’d tried, but I couldn’t think of one.”

“Why do you suppose Dr. McCall was there?”

“I have no idea, sir. I guess you’ll have to talk to her about that.”

“Oh, I’ll definitely do that.”

“Just out of curiosity, why had you pulled the McCullum file?” John asked.

“Oh. Well, I was looking for the name of a CI that we used in that case. I have another case in Detroit and I could use a little inside information.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes, thanks. I already put in a call.”

“Good. In the meantime, we owe you a huge thank-you. It appears you may very well have saved Dr. McCall’s life. Of course we need your gun and your badge until the investigation is complete . . .”

Luther nodded solemnly.

“. . . and the Director is going to want to talk to you first thing in the morning. He and the Shields brothers—that’s the last generation, Thomas and Frank—go way back. This is going to be very hard on everyone; I’m sure you understand that. But God only knows what might have happened to Annie if you hadn’t been there to save her.”

“I only did what any of us would have done, sir.”

John nodded and stood up, a clear sign that the interview was over.

Luther was half out the door when John called to him. “I’m going to ask you not to discuss this with anyone for the time being. We have the local police to deal with. We’re going to try to keep this out of the press as much as possible. I don’t have to tell you what a PR nightmare this is going to be. And then there’s the Shields family. As I’m sure you know, they’ve given more than their share to the Bureau. Brendan’s father is going to be heartbroken over this whole thing. We need to be sensitive and respectful of their situation. And it goes without saying that I have your word you will not be leaving the area.”

For a moment, John Mancini appeared to be about to cry.

Luther left the office feeling better than he had in a long, long time.

Were it not for the fact that it would surely have drawn suspicion, he’d have been skipping down the hall and whistling a happy tune. He’d gotten rid of one horrendous thorn in his side and made himself look like a hero at the same time. Oh, sure, his original plan had been to get rid of Annie, too, but then that woman next door had come out and blown that.

What the hell, at least he’d come out of it looking good. And it was actually better for him in the long run, he rationalized as he walked to the elevator. Annie could corroborate his version of what happened, and no one would ever question Anne Marie McCall.

All in all, it had been a very good day.