LITMIR.BIZ

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his. “Hey, that’s prime stuff, my friend. Sip it.”

      “Yeah, yeah, of course,” Shaw murmured.

      “Okay, so, you got in today—”

      “Early. Just after seven. This is an important true find. The historical value is immense.”

      “Of course. I understand,” Craig assured him. “So, today. You haven’t opened any of the other coffins in the catacomb, have you?”

      “No. Some of the coffins have disintegrated, and the remains are down to bones and dust and spiderwebs. Remnants of fabric...belt buckles, shoe buckles...” John rambled, studying the amber liquid in his glass.

      “But you found Ms. Gilbert in the first coffin?”

      Shaw nodded glumly.

      “What made you open that one first?” Craig asked.

      The question seemed to confuse Shaw for a minute. “It seemed to be the best preserved.” He paused, staring up at Craig. “Actually, it was at an odd angle on the shelf. As if it had been moved. Oh...that was obviously because someone had been there! They’d put her body in it!”

      “Do you remember it being that way the day before?”

      “No! That must’ve been it. There was something different!” John Shaw said. “I didn’t realize it immediately. It was such a...subtle difference. The thing is, I thought I’d start with the best preserved, but so did—” He frowned at Craig. “It was definitely the best preserved. And someone else knew that, too. Her killer.”

      Jeannette had been dead at least a week, possibly two. But she’d been placed in that coffin in a forgotten crypt much more recently than that.

      The killer had learned about the historical find, and he’d made use of it for his own designs.

      “Excuse me,” Craig said abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”

      He wanted to see where Kieran was; it suddenly seemed important.

      She wasn’t at the bar. She wasn’t on the floor.

      He hurried down the hallway to the office, not bothering to knock.

      Kieran was there, and Craig let out a sigh of relief.

      But then he saw that she wasn’t alone. She was sitting there, on the sofa in front of the desk, talking earnestly with her twin brother, Kevin.

      They both looked up at him, startled—and their expressions could only be described as guilty.

      * * *

      Kieran jumped up, looking at Craig and then Kevin.

      “Hey,” she said, talking to her brother first. “You’ve got that audition—you better get going!”

      “Yep, right,” Kevin said, rising quickly. “Definitely. Craig, are you involved in the situation over at the old church? No one is supposed to know anything yet, but I think that everyone everywhere knows that the body of Jeannette Gilbert was found in an old coffin. I think someone tweeted it. So much for the ‘please keep silent’ request. I’m sorry. Sounds terrible. But, what is the FBI doing in on it?”

      “There’s a similarity to another murder, down in Virginia,” Craig said. “We may be looking at a serial killer.”

      “Oh?” Kevin said. “So...” His gaze fell on Kieran, and his voice sounded a little sick. “You’re going to be involved with the investigation?”

      Craig nodded. “Lead for the FBI.”

      “Better get going, Kevin,” Kieran said. “This is truly so horrible, but we all have to keep working.”

      “Yeah. I’ll see you all later tonight,” Kevin said, and headed out of the office.

      When he was gone, Kieran looked at Craig.

      “What was that all about?” he asked her.

      “That—what?” she asked.

      “I sometimes wonder how your brother manages to be an actor. He’s a horrible liar.”

      “What did he lie about?”

      “What are you lying about?”

      She arched her brows, wishing she’d met and fallen in love with an auto mechanic, a taxi driver—anyone but an FBI agent.

      “Since I haven’t said anything, I haven’t lied about anything, either!” she protested. He wouldn’t let it be, she thought. Hell, he was an investigator. It was what he did. But what could she say? Betray a confidence?

      “It’s about Kevin’s love life,” she said. There. That was the truth. “And I’m just not—Well, you know, you can’t talk to me sometimes and I can’t talk to you.”

      It was the semitruth, but he probably wouldn’t have let it go at that. Except that her cell phone started ringing and she pulled it from her jeans pocket. Caller ID quickly informed her that it was one of her two psychiatrist bosses, Dr. Fuller.

      “Hey,” she said, answering the phone gratefully. “Is everything all right? We did decide to close today, right?”

      “We did—until about an hour ago,” Dr. Fuller said, his tone regretful. “I was actually planning a day of tennis.”

      The man was very good at what he did; beyond being a gifted psychiatrist, he had an unbelievable wealth of knowledge in all things related to his field—his pharmaceutical awareness was nearly uncanny. He could rattle off the names of dozens of drugs, what they did for what, and who should and shouldn’t take them with greater ease than most people could recite the alphabet. He could offer empathy that would crack the hardest core, and be staunch and unwavering when needed.

      He also looked bizarrely like a pinup underwear model and loved his wife and the game of tennis with absolute passion.

      “Oh?” Kieran said, looking over at Craig and wondering if he could or couldn’t hear her employer’s words as well, since he was standing so close to her.

      “We’ve gotten a call from Assistant Director Richard Egan—Craig’s boss,” Fuller said.

      “Oh?” she repeated, certain now from his wary expression that Craig could hear the conversation. But this was not unusual; her bosses were frequently called in as consultants by the NYPD, the FBI and other local law-enforcement agencies. As the doctors’ psychologist, Kieran often worked on evaluations for those perps in custody, and with the doctors on identifying the personality type of those still at large.

      “He wants us in on the old church murder. They’ll have someone up from Quantico, he told me, but, for the moment, he wants us in. I’m on my way, but I’m up in Connecticut. I was thinking you might go over—it’s right by Finnegan’s.”

      “I’m at the bar now.”

      “Can you go over right away? I’m not sure how long they’ll keep the body in situ, and I want our own photos, notes of everything you see. Can you go?”

      She glanced at Craig. He was wearing a very hard expression.

      “Of course,” Kieran said. “Special Agent Frasier is right in front of me. He’ll be happy to see that I’m accompanied over.”

      “Great. I’ll see you as soon as traffic allows,” Dr. Fuller said.

      Craig groaned aloud. “I don’t like this one,” he said softly. “I don’t like it at all. I really wish that you weren’t involved.”

      “Craig—”

      He lifted a hand to stop her. “I know. It’s what you do. I just wish that it wasn’t what you did on this particular case.”

      Because of Kevin, she’d wind up involved one way or the other. Better that she’d been asked to go in; better that she could see the victim and the surroundings

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