No Holds Barred

A reporter’s voice was saying, “This was the scene early this morning when attorney Piper MacPherson returned to her apartment. Our source tells us that Ms. MacPherson worked on the appeal that set accused Rose Petal Killer, Patrick Lightman, free. Will she be his next victim?”

Mike Nelson pulled out his phone. “I’ll find out how they got that video clip.”

“Whoever set up this little scene could easily have shot it on his cell phone before he left,” Duncan said. “Then he could have attached it to an email. Starkweather just said it’s accessible on YouTube.”

Abe switched channels and caught another replay of the tape. A reporter gave the same information in a voice-over.

Piper made herself look carefully at it this time. “Someone shot the scene from the open doorway, then stepped inside for the close-up of the sheet. But why would anyone do this?”

There were three full beats of silence before Duncan directed a question to Abe. “Who knows she worked on the brief? So far you’ve kept a tight lid on that.”

“Intentionally,” Abe said. “No one from my office leaked it.”

“Well, somebody found out,” Duncan said. “And whoever did this is angry enough at her to paint a target on her back.”

Great, Piper thought. She could picture it clearly in her mind. How could a day that had started out so normally become a nightmare so quickly?

3

TWO HOURS LATER, DUNCAN STOOD in the alley gazing at the wooden staircase that led to Piper’s small apartment. Finally, he was alone.

Monticello had left first, waiting only until Piper had showered and changed so that he could personally escort her to work. Most members of the press who’d finally tracked down Piper’s apartment had scurried after Abe’s limo.

Mike Nelson had lingered longer. His men had talked to Piper’s landlady, who owned the high-end dress shop beneath Piper’s apartment, but the spare key was hanging from a rack in her office. One of the police department’s tech men had tracked down the email message that had been sent to the TV stations. Both it and the attached video clip had been sent from a stolen smartphone. The owner hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

The uniformed officers had questioned shop owners, but the incident had taken place hours before most of them had unlocked their doors. When Nelson had left, he’d taken everyone and everything with him— crime scene techs, the uniforms, the sheet and the rose petals. Back at the precinct, Nelson and his partner would begin the tedious job of trying to track down where the roses and the sheet and the vellum note paper had been purchased. Tedious work, but it might pay off. They might get a description, even a name.

Duncan had hung around, instead of getting a late start to his golf game, because he did some of his best thinking as he wandered through a deserted crime scene. The quiet, the lack of other people, helped him to see things more clearly. He was frequently called in to consult on cases to do exactly what he was doing now. Lingering, noticing the small details, theorizing. He agreed totally with Piper. It wasn’t Patrick Lightman who’d done this. Adrienne was checking on the man’s alibi, but there were too many things about the scene that didn’t fit into the RPK’s M.O.

So who had done it? And why? Those were the key questions any profiler asked.

First, the perpetrator was smart. He’d had to gather data on the Lightman case and on Piper’s schedule. And to pull it off as a media event in such a short amount of time, he’d had to have contacts at the local new stations.

No matter what angle Duncan viewed it from, he didn’t think it was the work of a copycat who was planning to kill other women in the “style” of the RPK. His gut told him that the “who” was someone who had a personal vendetta against Piper. But whoever was trying to get to her was going to have to go through him.

Duncan wasn’t sure when he’d made that decision. Perhaps it had been when he’d been studying the rose petals strewn across the sheet and Abe Monticello had mentioned her name. For just an instant, he’d seen the image of her he’d carried somewhere in his head all these years. He’d seen her lying beneath those petals.

Or perhaps it had been a decision that had been made for him seven years ago, when he’d stood under that stone arch with her. He was Scottish enough that he couldn’t ignore the power of legends.

When he made the decision, it was irreversible. And it would lead to complications. While she’d been kneeling next to him studying the little picnic scene, he’d wanted his hands on her. And once he started down that path….

When his cell phone rang, he wasn’t surprised to see Reid’s number on the caller ID. That meant that the news about Piper had made its way to Scotland. And when there was trouble, Cam always made the first call to Reid, the oldest brother.

“I’m assuming you’ve got Piper’s back,” Reid said.

“Yes. I assume that our family in Scotland got the news and contacted you.”

Reid laughed. “Sibling jealousy just never completely fades away. If it makes you feel better, no one has contacted me. I’m in France again with the VP and I caught it on the evening news. I thought I’d check with you before I got the call. I knew Piper was living in D.C., but I wasn’t aware that she was working for Abe Monticello or that she was working on the RPK case. Your paths didn’t cross during the trial, I take it.”

“The FBI refused to share anything for that appeal.”

“What’s going on?”

“Wish I had a better handle on that.” Then Duncan gave his brother a condensed version of what had happened and what they knew or theorized so far. While it helped to run through all the essentials again, it increased his sense that Piper could really be in danger.

“Could be it’s someone who’s unhappy with the fact that she helped to set Lightman free.”

“That’s a long list, but the police will have to start with Suzanne Macks’s family, especially her twin brother, Sid.” They’d been through quite a bit already. So if he could find anything that would narrow the list and eliminate them….

“I assume you have a plan,” Reid said.

“Working on it.”

“If I were you, I’d consider getting her the hell out of Dodge. Working on the vice president’s security detail, I don’t often have the luxury of doing that when my guy becomes a possible target.”

“I’m considering that.” The problem was to get Piper to agree.

“I’ll leave it in your very capable hands, and I’ll call the Scotland group to let them know that you’re handling it.”

After glancing at his watch, Duncan glanced down the alley, trying to see and think about it the same way the man who was threatening Piper’s life had. She’d told Nelson that she ran at the same time every morning. That didn’t surprise him. Her route took her past the shops on the street. Turning, he stepped out of the alley and glanced up and down the street. It was bustling now with both cars and pedestrian traffic. At six o’clock, she would have been easy to spot from a variety of locations. A regular routine made a serial killer’s work easy.

The perpetrator hadn’t had much to carry in, Duncan mused as he turned to walk down the alley and climb the stairs. The sheet, a couple of plastic bags filled with petals and the note. Everything could have been easily tucked into one bag. Maybe a backpack or a shopping bag. He recalled Piper’s observation that the sheet had been new with the folds from the original packaging still apparent. She had a good eye for detail.

On the landing he crouched down to examine the lock. Duncan found nothing to contradict Nelson’s judgment that it hadn’t been tampered with. He took a slim tool out of his pocket, and twenty seconds later he was inside the apartment. Then he pantomimed moving the coffee table aside, shaking out the sheet. Thirty seconds. Adjusting and tucking the edges to replicate a perfect square took two minutes. Scattering the petals ate up another thirty. Tops.

He gave himself another thirty to examine the scene in his mind and thirty after that to make adjustments. Then he backed up to the door, took his cell phone out of his pocket and took a video, first panning the scene, then zooming in on the sheet and the petals.

It took him another minute to prop the ladder-backed chair against the door. Halfway down the stairs, he glanced at his watch. Seven or eight minutes from start to finish. Ten if the guy let nerves slow him down. But nothing else in the apartment had been disturbed. Whoever it was had come for one purpose only. To set up the scene, record it and get it on TV.

Mission accomplished.

Then he remembered the bag or whatever the guy must have used to carry in his props. If it had been a shopping bag, it hadn’t been in the apartment. And it wasn’t needed anymore.

On a hunch, he stopped by the Dumpster at the end of the alley. Duncan held his breath, ignoring the mix of odors he released as he lifted the lid. A Macy’s bag lay right on the top, and inside he found a sales slip and the plastic covering for a single sheet.

Bingo.

He had his phone out, intending to pass the information along to Mike Nelson, when a long dark sedan pulled up to the mouth of the alley and his boss stepped out.

Adrienne Monticello was a tall, slender blonde with long curly hair. Today, she wore it pulled back into a ponytail. She had the same camera-ready good looks as her brother and she knew how to dress to enhance them. Her jacket and slacks were purple, her shoes designer. Gold winked at her ears and on her wrist. Although he knew she was in her mid-fifties, she could pass for a decade younger.

She whipped her oversize sunglasses off as she approached, and her expression was worried. “You aren’t answering your phone.”

“I don’t like to be interrupted when I walk through a crime scene.” And that’s how she’d figured out where to track him down. The fact that she’d left the office to do so didn’t bode well.

“Abe called me. He says you don’t believe that Lightman was involved in this.”

“He wasn’t.”