By Blood Written Page 22

  Hank scooted forward in the chair. “Ms. Robinson, if you’d just let me lay out some of the facts for you.”

  “The last time I checked, the FBI manual didn’t have a swastika on it. You’re not the Gestapo and this is still sort of a free country and you are in my private space. I’ll thank you to leave now.”

  Hank stood up. “Ms. Robinson, you’re making a mistake here.”

  “Now,” she commanded, her voice lowering and stone cold. “If you don’t leave my office immediately, I’m going to call my attorney, and if he approves, I’m going to call the New York City police and have you arrested for trespass-ing.”

  Hank stood there a second, helpless. He held out his hands, palms toward her in supplication, and pushed the chair backward with the backs of his knees.

  “Good day, Ms. Robinson,” he said as he turned for the door. “Thanks for your time.”

  Once outside, Hank Powell walked down Fifty-third Street toward Third Avenue. He couldn’t make any sense of this.

  He was stunned, confused. Here was this obviously well-educated, intelligent, sophisticated, high-powered woman who turned on him like a cornered badger. It was almost as if Taylor Robinson hated cops.

  What Hank Powell did not know, and could not possibly have known, was that Taylor Robinson did hate police.

  Hated them to the core of her soul …

  CHAPTER 22

  Thursday morning, Manhattan

  Taylor Robinson stood in the silence of her office, staring at the closed door. From the outside, she appeared calm, almost serenely so. But in her chest, she felt a pounding that, for a moment, genuinely frightened her. She fought to control her breathing, to loosen her neck and jaw muscles.

  To stay in control.

  She turned and walked to the window. Through the film of dust and grime, she watched as, to her right, the FBI agent exited the building and walked down the stoop onto the sidewalk. He paused, standing still, then shook his head and walked off in the direction of Third Avenue.

  She stayed like that for what felt like a long time. Her mind went blank, as if the encounter with the FBI agent-

  what was his name?-had caused something inside her to empty.

  How long had he been here? She had, for the moment, lost perception of time. She gazed out the window to the traffic below on East Fifty-third. Behind her, she heard a door open.

  “Taylor?”

  Taylor turned. Her assistant, Anne, was in the doorway, a concerned look on her face.

  “Yes?” she answered blankly.

  “Are you okay?”

  Taylor turned and looked back out the window. The sun was breaking through a layer of gray overcast, throwing random beams of bright yellow light on the street below. She turned back and faced the young woman.

  “I’m going out for a while,” she said.

  She had spent her entire life since that day trying to forget.

  It had been her fault, her fault, and she had carried that weight around inside her over half her life.

  Over half her life. Twenty years. Twenty years that Jack never got. And many more in front of her that he would never have.

  It was supposed to have been the best summer ever.

  Her brother, three years her senior, was home from VMI.

  John Prentice Robinson was his full name, but no one ever seemed able to call him that with a straight face. He was too playful, too spontaneous, too reckless, to be a John Prentice Robinson. He was the family prankster, the practical joke master, the puncturer of pretense, the outrageous smart ass that everyone loved. He would always, in everyone’s perception, be a Jack. And she adored him.

  Handsome, rugged, a born athlete … He had captained the soccer team and track team in private school, then gone onto the Virginia Military Institute, where he was soon captain of the varsity shooting team. He came home that summer as a prime candidate for the Olympics.

  Her brother, Jack, on the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team.

  He was home for just a week, only a week, before heading out to Colorado Springs to spend the rest of the summer training. The days had been buoyant, happy. Her father-

  one of Greenwich, Connecticut’s most prominent cardiolo-gists-had even taken time off from his rounds. They played tennis at the country club, hosted a grand summer party, danced and swam and sang and drank.

  Taylor felt as if it would go on forever. That they would always be young and energetic and happy, that life would always be a banquet.

  That day, that day it all ended, her father woke early, left in his Mercedes to make his hospital rounds. Her mother slept late, as did Taylor and Jack, and then went out for a tennis date at the club.

  Jack climbed into his Jeep and drove off to meet friends for lunch.

  Taylor relaxed, hanging around the house, debating what to do with the rest of the day. She had chores to do, had promised her mother to do some laundry and clean up her room. Her senior year would begin in a few weeks as well.

  So maybe it was time she started going through the stack of college catalogs that had been coming in the mail for months.

  Then the phone rang. Her best friend, Dori, invited her over to spend the afternoon swimming, sunbathing, listening to music, talking about boys. The usual …

  Just guilty enough at neglecting her chores to feel it, but not guilty enough to say no to Dori, Taylor rushed into her bedroom and changed into her bikini, then threw on a T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs just as Dori pulled up in her convert-ible Mustang. Taylor grabbed her purse and bag, then ran for the back door. Dori honked the horn and yelled to her.

  As Taylor went out the back door, she slapped her hand across the burglar alarm panel.

  And hit the wrong button. The burglar alarm system her father had installed a few years earlier had a silent mode.

  No one ever used it.

  She didn’t mean to do it.

  God, she didn’t mean to do it.

  They would later stitch together from bits and pieces how it all happened.

  At two-twelve that afternoon, an automated call came into the Greenwich Police Department reporting a breakin at the Robinson home. Dispatch sent a prowl car to investigate. Riding alone that shift was a young, rookie patrolman barely older than Jack. In fact, he had just a week earlier finished his probationary period, which required him to ride along with an older, more experienced officer.

  When the officer arrives, a Jeep is in the driveway behind the house.

  The officer exits the squad car carefully. There’s no sign of a breakin. The officer stands there a moment.

  Suddenly, the sliding glass door to the patio courtyard opens up and a young blond man in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and running shoes steps out.

  With his hands in his pockets …

  The officer unsnaps his weapon.

  Jack, smiling, gregarious as always, never met a fellow he didn’t like, walks toward the officer.

  With his hands in his pockets …

  “Stop right there,” the officer commands, holding his left palm out, his right hand on the butt of his pistol.

  Jack grins, keeps walking: “What’s up, Barney Fife?”

  “Stop,” the officer yells.

  Jack suddenly pulls his hand out, cocked, his index finger pointing like the barrel of a gun, his thumb like the hammer, like a seven-year-old boy playing cowboys and Indians. He points it at the officer.

  Who draws his weapon and fires.

  John Prentice Robinson, star athlete, captain of the varsity shooting team, prankster and naively stupid young man, came home that afternoon and didn’t realize he’d set off the burglar alarm when he came in. And as a result, he died that afternoon on the warm clay tiles of the courtyard patio of his parents’ two-million-dollar home, of a single gunshot wound to the chest.

  They buried him three days later next to his grandparents.

  Devastation is too tepid a word, too mild a description, for what happened to Taylor, her parents, her family.

&
nbsp; The city settles for one-point-five million. Taylor refuses any part of it.

  Her father shuts down, buries himself in his work.

  Her mother begins drinking heavily, becomes a recluse, goes on about a dozen different medications for anxiety, depression, insomnia.

  Her parents begin fighting, worse than ever. Her father spends more and more time at the hospital.

  Taylor spends her last year at home in a haze, retreats into her schoolwork, graduates with honors and goes on to Smith College. At the time she chose Smith, she had no idea why she chose it, other than it was away from home.

  Her parents sell the house, divorce. Her father relocates to Miami and eventually marries a woman Taylor cannot stand. Her mother goes into rehab, comes out clean and sober, but depressed and miserable. The sound of her voice gives Taylor a headache.

  The weight never completely goes away. That corner of her heart is locked away, leaden.

  And filled with hatred for macho cowboy cops and their guns. Their stupid, goddamn fucking guns.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” the voice said. “Are you okay?”

  The voice was young, feminine. A woman’s voice. Taylor looked up. It was a young woman in a dark blue ski parka and jeans.

  Taylor looked around. She was sitting on a concrete bench, so cold she couldn’t feel her hips, the backs of her legs. The bench was on a walk overlooking the East River. To her left and above, the Queensboro Bridge towered over it like the drawbridge to a castle.

  Sutton Place. She’d walked up to Sutton Place. But when?

  How long had she been there?

  “Ma’am?” the voice asked again.

  “What?” Taylor said, finally.

  “You’ve been sitting there staring for a long time. I walked my dog like an hour and a half ago and you were sitting there staring out at the river. I saw you from my apartment.

  I thought I’d just make sure you were okay.”

  “Thanks,” Taylor said, standing up. Her legs tingled as the circulation was restored. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

  “You don’t have to apologize. It’s a public bench. I just thought I’d make sure you were okay.”

  Taylor looked into the young woman’s face. It was round, pale, with an aquiline nose and large blue eyes. It’s a myth, Taylor thought, that New Yorkers are cold and unfriendly.

  “I appreciate that,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to work.

  I don’t know where my mind was at.”

  The young girl smiled. “Okay, have a good day. I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, lying. “I’m fine.”

  Taylor realized she was cold, chilled almost completely through. As she walked the blocks back to her office, the movement began to warm her, and as it did, she started thinking in a more organized, focused fashion.

  Powell, that was his name. Special Agent Powell of the FBI. He had come into her office and announced that the man she loved, the man she was going to marry, the man upon whom her fortune and reputation were built, was a psycho, a killer.

  She had to think this through. She had to remember as much of the conversation as possible, everything that had happened in the short couple of minutes he was in her office.

  What he had said stunned her, caught her off guard. But now she had her footing back, and, as always, she knew it was better to act, to do something, even if it was wrong.

  She had looked at his badge, his credentials. They looked real enough, but fake ID cards could be purchased anywhere.

  And as far as she knew, that badge could have come from a war surplus store. She wouldn’t know a real FBI badge from a fake if it ran up behind her and bit her on the ankles.

  But why would a fake FBI agent concoct such a story?

  What good would it do anyone?

  Why?

  As she walked, one scenario after another played in her head. This was a conspiracy by a rival publishing house.

  Maybe Michael had made enemies somewhere in the past who now sought to cause him harm. Maybe she had enemies who wanted to hurt her and were using Michael to do it.

  She turned left on Second Avenue and headed south toward East Fifty-third and her office, oblivious to the crowds around her on the sidewalk. There had to be a way to handle this. This had to be taken care of as quickly and as quietly as possible. This would be a public relations disaster if she made a single misstep.

  Hank Powell reached over the front seat and handed cash to the painfully skinny, dark-skinned driver and climbed out of the cab at Federal Plaza. Five minutes later, he’d worked his way through the tight security and was on his way to the FBI New York City Field Office.

  Once inside, he tracked down SAC Joyce Parelli in her office and threw his overcoat onto the chair across from her desk.

  “You’re not going to believe the morning I’ve had,” he said.

  Joyce Parelli, a third-generation Italian-three generations in America, three generations in law enforcement-who sounded like she’d rarely set foot out of her native Brooklyn, grinned. She was amused to see Hank Powell, normally so composed one could almost call him smug, exasperated.

  “Ah, my poor delicate little rosebud,” she said. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

  Too agitated to sit, Powell paced back and forth, his arms in constant motion. “I just got thrown out of somebody’s office! You believe that? I’m an employee and a representative of the United States government and I got tossed out like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman!”

  Parelli laughed out loud this time. “And who threw you out, boobala?”

  “Michael Schiftmann’s literary agent, that’s who! And if it won’t be a violation of the sex-discrimination statutes, would it be all right if I described her as a first-class bitch?”

  Joyce Parelli sat up. “Wait a minute!”

  Hank stopped pacing. “What?”

  Parelli leaned down behind her desk and pulled out a standard, government-issue black plastic wastebasket. She shuffled around in the garbage for a moment and extracted a crumpled roll of newspaper.

  “What?” Hank repeated.

  “Shush, it’s here somewhere.” Parelli spread the paper out on her desk and started thumbing through it. “I know I saw it here.”

  Hank stood at her desk, leaning over slightly, as she scanned page after page.

  “Damn it,” she muttered. “I know it’s- There! Found it.” She spun the paper around on her desk, facing Hank, and jabbed at an item with the bright red fingernail of her index finger.

  Hank looked down. “Liz Smith? Who the hell is-?”

  “Gossip column,” Parelli answered. “Read.”

  Hank bent down and focused. ” ‘Who’s the hot new power couple in the N.Y. literary scene?’” he read aloud. ” ‘Word around the publishing campfire is that superstar novelist and tall, dark, handsome hunk Michael Schiftmann has popped the question to his glitterati literary agent, Taylor Robinson. When you’re making the kind of moolah these two are bringing in, you may as well keep it in the family.’”

  Hank stood up, shocked. “May as well keep it in the family …” he muttered. “Serves me right for not reading the tabloids.”

  Parelli nodded. “That would certainly explain why you weren’t a welcome guest in her office this morning.”

  Hank nodded, thinking. “Yes, it certainly would, wouldn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 23

  Friday morning, FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia Hank Powell was at his desk early the next morning, reexamining the stack of files in front of him and trying to figure out what to do next. He couldn’t get his mind off the interview with Taylor Robinson. It festered inside him like a wound gone septic. He was angry, but more than that, he was embarrassed.

  He kept trying to figure out what could possibly have triggered her outbursts. There were only two options he could come up with. First, Taylor Robinson was so far in love with this guy that she was simply unable to grasp the concept that he might
not be what she thought he was. Either that, or she knew what he was and was part of it.

  But could that really be an option? What were the chances that Taylor Robinson was as psycho as her fiance? What were the chances that two such completely evil people could find each other in this world and glom on to each other?

  “Probably better than you think,” he whispered to himself.

  He reached for his third cup of coffee just as the phone rang. “I’ve got Max Bransford on line one,” Sallie said.

  “Thanks,” Hank answered, pressing the blinking button on his desk set.

  “Good morning, Max,” Hank said brightly. “How’s tricks?”

  “Hank, I gotta talk to you,” Bransford said, his voice serious.

  Hank felt his neck stiffen. “What’s up?”

  “Yesterday morning, I got called into Major Katz’s office.

  He’s my division commander and immediate supervisor. He reports directly to the assistant chief.”

  “Okay,” Hank said. “And?”

  “It was a come-to-Jesus meeting on the Exotica Tans murders.”

  Hank sat there for a moment, holding the phone, waiting for Bransford to continue.

  “Anyway, he wanted the case summarized right then and there. Apparently there’s some political pressure on this one.

  Either that or somebody leaked to the chief that we had a possible suspect. So I didn’t have any choice. I laid it all out for him.”

  Hank had a bad feeling about where this was going. “And?”

  “And,” Bransford continued, “he called the DA’s office then and there and arranged a meeting. We were in there for four hours yesterday.”

  “So what happened?”

  Bransford sighed heavily, almost wearily, into the phone.

  “Bottom line, Hank, is the DA’s going to the grand jury. The shit’s gonna hit the fan down here.”

  “No!” Hank said. “You can’t do that, Max. It’s too early.

  We don’t have enough.”

  “The DA is talking about getting one of the judges to sign off on a search warrant. He’s gonna try and get hair and tissue samples from Schiftmann.”