Eric Lustbader - Blood Trust

She weighed the merits of making another unannounced visit to M. Bob Evrette at Middle Bay Bancorp before or after she hauled Andrew Gunn’s ass in for questioning. The forensics detail she had sent over to Middle Bay had spent hours spraying, powdering, irradiating every last goddamn thing in Billy Warren’s office. They’d found nothing, except what you’d expect to find: Warren’s own fingerprints. She looked over the list of bank personnel one more time, though what she expected to find there she couldn’t say.

This was the most damnable case she’d ever run across in her decade in the department. Heroe was something of a wunderkind at Metro. She was the youngest detective to make highest grade in the department’s history. She was such a legend that headhunters from virtually every branch of the federal clandestine services had made a play for her. She’d turned them all down, not because she wasn’t intrigued, but because she was incredibly loyal. As a female in a male-dominated universe it was of paramount importance to her to have a boss who both understood her and wasn’t intimidated by her. Alan Fraine had plucked her as a new recruit, mentored her, made sure she took all the right exams, and had protected her from the good-old-boy cabal at work in every police department that had, at first, sought to impede her progress.

She was smart enough to understand that no matter her talent and expertise, she never would have risen so high so fast were it not for Fraine’s efforts. In fact, without him, she might not have risen at all. She was what might be called a three-strike woman. Besides her gender and her mixed race, she had her physical appearance going against her. She was beautiful and built like a brick shithouse, as her granny used to say. She was part African-American, part Cherokee. She’d been born and raised in New Orleans, mostly by her granny. When she was six, her father had died in an oil rig accident—a fire on an offshore station that had left no trace of him. Her mother had tried to carry on, but Heroe’s father had been the love of her life, and she’d never recovered, spiraling down into a drunkard’s purgatory, despite her mother-in-law’s efforts. Granny, a full-blooded Cherokee, was not someone to be trifled with. She was revered in New Orleans, had often, in her younger days, been Queen of the Mardi Gras. At ninety, she still turned heads when she walked down the streets of Tremé, where she had lived all her life. Heroe got most of her looks from her granny.

When she was a kid, Granny used to tell her stories before she went to bed. Tales of Cherokee warriors and maidens, of course. But the stories Heroe loved best were the ones concerning Aladdin. She was sure Granny had made up most of them, because she was an inveterate storyteller. The story Heroe liked best concerned the genie who lights the way. This was not the famous genie in the lamp, but another one, who taught Aladdin how to see in the dark when everyone else was blind.

Fraine was her genie who lights the way.

She was no more than five minutes from Rachel Cowan’s house when her cell phone emitted a peculiar ring. She unclipped it, then saw her phone was unengaged. The ringtone continued. Rummaging in her handbag, she drew out Naomi Wilde’s cell. For a moment she stared at it, as if it had grown a head. The screen read UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. She pressed the green button and heard a man’s voice.

“Naomi?”

“No. This is Chief Detective Nona Heroe, head of the Violent Crimes Unit at Metro. Who’s calling, please?”

There was silence for so long, Heroe felt compelled to say, “Hello. Are you there?”

“This is Jack McClure. Where is Naomi and why are you answering her cell?”

JACK, SITTING in the 737 waiting for all the children to get settled, felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. A chief detective answering Naomi’s phone could not be good news.

“… why are you answering her cell?”

“Mr. McClure, I’ve heard of you.”

“You didn’t answer my questions.” His anxiety lent him impatience.

“Agent Wilde is missing.”

“Missing?” Given her communiques while he was out of touch, that was ominous.

“We found her car. It had gone off the road, down an embankment in rural Maryland. But we didn’t find her body, nor did we find any trace that she’d been in the car when it went off the road.”

Now Jack was truly worried. “What does her partner say?”

“Frankly, Agent McKinsey hasn’t been much help, and now, thanks to the intervention of Andrew Gunn, I can’t talk to him.”

“Fortress Securities,” Jack said, “that Andrew Gunn?”

“None other.”

Gunn had ties to Henry Holt Carson. “Why wasn’t it McKinsey’s boss who extracted him?”

“A question that needs to be answered.” There was a small pause. “Listen, Mr. McClure—”

“Jack. Please.”

“Fine. I know from talking to Naomi’s associates that you and she were friends, so I’m thinking maybe I can trust you.”

“You can, Chief.”

“Cut that out. It’s Nona.”

Jack laughed. He liked this woman.

“I’m very sorry to say this, but my gut is telling me that Naomi is dead.”

Jack struggled to accept this. “What gives you that feeling?”

Heroe told him about her suspicions concerning Peter McKinsey.

“It might very well be that you’re right,” Jack said. “I’m in Macedonia. While I was out of cell range, Naomi left three voice mails and now I’m very sorry I didn’t get them until a short time ago.”

Then he told Heroe about Naomi’s suspicions regarding her partner, following him out to Teddy Roosevelt Island. He did not tell her about Annika’s possible involvement, telling himself that bringing her into it would muddy the investigation unnecessarily. Not that that wasn’t true, but for his own reasons he was determined to protect Annika until he could determine exactly what her part in all this was.

“Christ,” Heroe said, “I think I’d better haul my ass out to the island tout de suite and have a look-see.” There was a short pause. “The man who was with McKinsey, could he be this Mbreti you told me about?”

“It’s possible, but I have a feeling not. Judging from Naomi’s description this man is an Arab of some sort. The way these people work, it makes more sense that Mbreti is a Caucasian American.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Jack knew he’d hit upon something important, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what.

He was silent so long that Heroe said, “What is it? Have you thought of something else?”

“I’m not sure. But, listen, since it seems clear that neither Naomi nor you trust McKinsey, is there any way to track her movements in the hours before she went missing?”

Heroe sighed heavily. “Without trusting him, I don’t know how. He claimed they were following leads on how Arjeta Kraja was brought into the country. He also said the leads were dead ends. According to his account, they then went back to the office. They were exhausted, which I can believe. He said Agent Wilde said she was going home. That, I’m afraid, is the sum and substance of his account.”

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

“No,” she said, “indeed it doesn’t.”

Jack considered. “So you can’t get to him.”

“He’s become a protected entity,” she said. “Just like your friend, Alli Carson.”

Jack heard the slight rebuke in her voice. “Alli was framed. Believe me, she’s got nothing to do with this.”

“You can’t deny that her frame was the trigger for three, maybe four homicides.”

Now they were skirting too close to Annika for his comfort. “All I’m saying is that pursuing her is going in the wrong direction.”