Robin Burcell - The Bone Chamber

She shrugged, tried to smile, and added, “So I kicked his ass out, got the landlord to give me an extra two weeks to get the rent money together, and what good did that do? Nothing, because I had to use my rent money to get my car out of hock, because that son of a bitch sweet-talked me into borrowing it, then left it parked in a construction zone after he ran off with his new girlfriend. It got towed.”

Syd was tempted to tell the woman she was better off without the guy and was almost glad when her cell phone vibrated. Whatever Penny and her boyfriend were about, it wasn’t related to her case. “Excuse me,” she said, when she saw it was Scotty.

“You ready for dinner?” he asked. “I thought we could meet at King Yen’s.”

“Can I call you back in a few?” she said, moving away toward the window for a bit of privacy.

“I’ve already made the reservations.”

He’d proposed to her there and, no doubt, had chosen that spot for tonight in hopes that they could discuss their relationship. Her fault, she supposed, for not squelching the dinner thing. That didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, give him any ideas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

She disconnected, was just tucking her phone on her belt when she noticed a man in a long overcoat looking into the window of Scotty’s Jeep parked just down the street. “You get a lot of car thefts in this area?” she asked Penny.

“Don’t even get me started on this crappy neighborhood.”

The man straightened, started walking up the sidewalk. He was white, clean-shaven, too healthy-looking to match the profile of some dirtbag hoping to smash a car window for a stereo. Even so, Sydney kept her eye on him, then noticed a second man across the street, also in an overcoat, paralleling the first man. The second man started across the street, and she noticed a vertical ridge running down the length of his coat. A ridge about the length of a long barrel of an assault weapon hidden beneath. The momentary thought that these were the missing bank robbers fled when she realized Scotty would not have called her for dinner if the robbers were still out there.

Her gaze flew to the man on this side of the street. The one walking toward Penny Dearborn’s front door.

Syd glanced at Penny. “Where’s your phone?”

“Downstairs. But it was shut off.”

Every telephone in the U.S. was supposed to have 911 access, even if it was shut off for nonpayment, and 911 access meant instant address relayed to the cops, far superior to using a cell phone. “Please tell me you have a phone up here?” she asked, looking around.

“Packed,” she said, pointing at all the boxes. “Somewhere.”

Syd drew her weapon, stepped back from the window, then pulled out her cell phone. “This paranoid boyfriend of yours,” she said to Penny. “He happen to show you any of these escape routes?”

“Damn it, Tex!” Zach Griffin paced his office as far ashis landline would allow without pulling the phone from the outlet. “You were supposed to be tailing her.”

“We were. She left the Smithsonian. Archer was on her like white on rice.”

“Apparently not close enough.”

“Close enough to hear the security guard telling her that there was some fight between lovers, maybe that was the assault she was asking about. He wanted her to talk to some other security guard, but she left, went straight from there to the police department. She was getting reports on towed cars. That was when we lost her. Delivery truck got between us and her car, and Archer lost the point.”

He had to figure out Fitzpatrick’s logic if he was to have any hope of finding her. “The police have been kept out of the loop, she’s got to know that by now, so why go there at all?”

“Because she’s thinking like a cop, a Fed, not a spy.”

Zach paced in the other direction, but the phone cord stopped him from moving farther. “A cop…Towed vehicles…”

Hindsight forced him to see the consequences of letting Fitzpatrick believe she had recommended Tasha for the job, all because he didn’t want Tasha’s connection to his agency known. But as a result, Fitzpatrick believed she was responsible for recommending Tasha for the drawing, which meant guilt over her death. And if a by-the-book FBI agent wanted to allay that guilt?

Bring the killer to justice.

By looking up towed cars…? For what?

She used to be a cop, so think like one…

She had reason to believe Tasha’s murder was connected to the drawing. If so, she’d realize she needed to identify her Jane Doe-Alessandra-to determine if there was a connection. But his agency had taken over the investigation, had kept it from the local police once they realized the connection and what it could do to their operation. In essence, there were no records of the case at the police department.

Unless they’d overlooked something…

But what?

Towed cars…

Hell. “Get back to MPDC. Run an audit on every towed car that clerk ran.”

“What kind of connection could she possibly make?”

“If Alessandra was in a car before she went missing, that car might very well have ended up towed, because she never got back to it.”

“But Alessandra didn’t own a car.”

“No, but she certainly could have borrowed one. And who the hell knows what happened to the person she borrowed it from. Maybe they’re watching that person now, to see who comes calling.”

“I’m on it.”

He stared out the window watching the bright headlights zip down Twelfth Street. No doubt they’d been hasty when they’d chosen Fitzpatrick, even though she had been the logical choice because of her preoccupation with her father’s killer in San Quentin. Once she completed the sketch, he’d firmly believed that she’d want to get back to San Francisco and her family for Thanksgiving, which meant she probably wouldn’t give the sketch more than a passing thought.

Her former relationship with Special Agent Scott Ryan was another factor. The guy was heading to the top of the administration ladder, liked to do things by the book, and liked his women the same, just what Zach needed for this op. Administration says jump, subordinate says how high. Tasha had led him to believe that Sydney Fitzpatrick had been cut from the same cloth as Scott Ryan.

Apparently she was wrong.

And now, because of this miscalculation, Sydney Fitzpatrick was out there, God knew where, playing cop in a game that was out of her league. A game that had one rule: Kill or be killed.

The only escape route Penny’s ex had ever truly planned was the attic. Penny, however, refused to go up there by herself. So Plan B it was, and Sydney hated Plan B. It was such a misnomer, like one had some other plan waiting, ready to go. She stood just inside the slatted closet door, peering out, cell phone in one hand, weapon in the other, hoping this didn’t get them killed, because there wasn’t enough time to think of something else. Before someone even answered the 911 call on her cell phone, the front door crashed open downstairs. After that, the only thing Syd heard was the pounding of her heart. Cops announced their arrival. These guys weren’t cops.

And no one was answering the damned 911 call on her cell.

She looked between the crack in the closet door, to the stack of boxes, the bulky figure-a decoy-covered by a blanket behind the boxes. She prayed Penny would keep quiet.

Someone moved downstairs. She heard the opening of doors. One man or two?

And then the quiet footfall. Someone ascending the steps. The squeak of a floorboard down the hallway. Closer. Now outside the bedroom. On the threshold.