The Lost Key Read online

  A low, throaty voice said near his ear, “Needs a bit of sprucing up, don’t you think? How about a nice photo of the queen, front and center?”

  Speak of the devil.

  “The queen is hanging happily over my bed in my new digs.” He bent his head back to see Agent Mike Caine looking down at him, smiling widely. She was wearing her signature black jeans, motorcycle boots, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her badge hung on a lanyard around her neck, and her black-rimmed reading glasses were tucked into her blouse pocket.

  “I wonder why I didn’t smell you first.” And he leaned up, sniffed. “Ah, there it is, that lovely jasmine, like my mum. Hi, Mike, long time no see.”

  “Yeah, yeah, all of two weeks since your graduation. So you’re all settled in to these new digs of yours? By the way, where are your new digs?”

  He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to tell anyone, it was too embarrassing. Fact was, he’d lost a big argument with his grandfather about where he’d lay his head in New York. He shrugged, looked over her shoulder at several agents walking by. “All settled in. A fairly nice bed in an okay place over there—” And he waved his hand vaguely toward the east.

  She cocked her head at him, and he said quickly, “You look pretty good after being on your own for four months. When can we get out of here?”

  “Champing at the bit for a case already, Special Agent Drummond? You’ve only been here fifteen minutes. We haven’t even had time to go over the coffee schedule and introduce you around. Are we calling you Nick or Nicholas these days?”

  “You know what they say about rolling stones and moss. Nicholas will do fine.”

  She looked at her watch. “You’re in luck. We’ve caught a murder.”

  He felt the punch of adrenaline. “A murder? Is it terrorism related?”

  “I don’t think so. I heard about it two minutes ago. Time to get briefed.”

  Milo Zachery joined them in the hall. In his tailored gray suit, white shirt, and purple-and-black striped tie, Nicholas thought he looked a lot snazzier than Penderley ever had. Slick clothes, fresh haircut. He looked like a big-dog federal agent all the way to his highly polished wing tips. Nicholas knew Zachery was focused, smart, and willing to let his agents use their brains with only subtle hands on the reins.

  Nicholas shook his new boss’s hand.

  “Good to see you, Drummond. I’ll handle your briefing myself. Walk with me.”

  Mike gave him a manic grin, her adrenaline on a level with his, and he was reminded of that night in Paris several months earlier, Mike barely upright, leaning against the overturned couch, bleeding from a gunshot to the arm, her face beat up, and smiling. He thanked the good Lord she was here and whole and ready to kick butt.

  Nicholas smiled back and gestured for her to go first.

  “Such lovely manners from the first Brit in the FBI. I could get used to this.”

  “Still cheeky, are we? It’s good to see that some things haven’t changed.”

  “Come on, you two.” Zachery walked them past his office, down the blue-carpeted senior management hallway, straight out the door and to the elevators. As he punched the down button, he said, “You’re headed to Twenty-six Wall Street. Stabbing. The NYPD called us since it’s on federal land, so it’s our case. I thought it would be a good idea to get Drummond here liaising with the locals as soon as possible. And aren’t you two lucky, someone managed to get themselves dead on your first morning. Go on down there and figure out what happened.”

  The elevator doors opened and Zachery waved them in. “Drummond, I know you’re going to be our big cyber-crime computer-terrorism guy, but we also need to teach you to drive on the right side of the road, get your boots dirty on the ground first.” He smiled and clapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “Glad you’re with us, Drummond. Welcome to the FBI. Good hunting.” He turned, and said over his shoulder, “Oh, yes. Mike, keep him in line.”

  2

  Mike’s black Crown Vic waited for them in the garage. She jangled the car keys at Nicholas, then drew them back. “Maybe I should drive, even though you need the practice. Wall Street’s pretty crazy.”

  “Contrary to popular belief, I do know how to manage the streets of New York. I have American blood, too, you know.”

  She laughed and got behind the wheel. Once they were out of the garage, she said, “Next time out, you’ll drive. It’s a requirement that you know all the streets. But not today. So tell me, did you really live up to Savich’s lofty standards at the Academy? And Sherlock’s?”

  “I tried my pitiful best, Agent Caine.” He watched her come within an inch of a lane-cutting taxi without blinking an eye.

  “What have you been doing here in New York for the last two weeks?”

  He never looked away from the pedestrian zigzagging in front of the Crown Vic. “Oh, a bit of this and that, getting set up, that’s about it.” Not to mention I shopped for furniture until I nearly cut my own wrists, fought with Nigel on where all the bloody furniture should go, and was forced to have dinner with my ex at a French in-place big on presentation and light on food. In short, I haven’t used my brain for two bloody weeks—but he didn’t tell her any of that.

  She sped through a yellow light. “I’ve missed having you around. Come on, now, tell me about your new place.”

  Not in this lifetime. “Nothing much to tell, really. It’s a place to live, that’s all.” Nicholas’s grandfather, in a magnanimous show of support for his grandson’s decision to move to America, had purchased Nicholas a brownstone. No matter how hard Nicholas had protested, the baron, and his parents, he suspected, refused to allow Nicholas his wish, an anonymous apartment somewhere in Chelsea.

  He was now saddled with a behemoth town house on East 69th Street, much to his butler Nigel’s delight. Five bedrooms, five floors. Oh, yes, this sort of opulence was just the ticket for fitting in with the rest of the agents in the New York Field Office.

  Mike slowly turned onto a street packed with pedestrians. “I can’t wait to see it. Invite me over for a beer later, all right?”

  And again he thought, Not in this lifetime. He said, “Where is our crime scene?”

  “Just off Wall Street. Right there.”

  Mike threaded through dozens of people across to Pine Street, not far from Federal Hall. He saw the yellow sawhorse barrier with NYPD on it, three blue-and-whites, lights revolving, reflecting off the stone buildings.

  They badged the NYPD cop at the barrier, signed in to the scene, and were led to the small side street. It was going to be a beautiful day, he saw, already warming nicely. Considering the number of crime scenes he’d handled in the pouring rain in London, this certainly was preferable.

  “What do we have here?” he asked the young NYPD officer standing inside the tape. His badge read F. WILSON, and he looked barely old enough to vote, much less be a cop. Even though Nicholas knew he couldn’t be more than five years older than the cop, he felt ancient, until Wilson spoke like the seasoned professional he was. “Stabbing,” Wilson said, “and aren’t you in luck, it’s right there on your land. Another five feet and it would be ours, but no, this guy decides to get himself dead and make it all yours. I hear it’s your first day on the job. Welcome to New York.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wilson grinned. “We’ve been canvassing, got a small group of people held aside who were nearby when it happened. Most say the suspect was a Caucasian male, brown hair, medium height, wearing jeans and a white hoodie.”

  Nicholas looked over at the small knot of people standing on the street corner, gaping at the scene, some recording everything with their phones, others standing quietly, obviously shell-shocked. He said, “Rather a detailed description, that.”

  “I know, right? Amazing, really, since most witnesses can rarely agree on the sex of the suspect. Talk about lucking out—from the statements so
far, there were two men arguing, then a struggle, then one guy turned away and the other man stabbed him from behind and took off running.”

  Mike said, “Hold everyone here, Officer Wilson. We’ll want to speak to them as well. We need to get a look at the body, and we’ll be right back.”

  Wilson saluted her and moved away from the tape to let them in.

  Nicholas took his time walking toward the dead man, noticed Mike was taking in everything as well. Special Agent Louisa Barry, one of their crime scene techs, was snapping on nitrile gloves, ready to get to work. Nicholas smiled at her, then went down on his haunches beside a man who was seriously dead. He was in his late forties to early fifties, his brown eyes staring sightlessly into the sky, salt-and-pepper hair combed slightly to the side to cover the beginnings of a receding hairline, his suit rumpled and creased. From the angle of his body on the pavement, and the way his arms were flung out from his body, Nicholas thought he’d fallen to his knees, then onto his back and died. The blood pooled beneath him, dark and thick, but it was disturbed, like a child’s finger painting, swirls and whorls whipping across the sidewalk. What were you arguing about? Why’d he stab you in the back?

  “See anything interesting?” Mike asked, studying the blood pool.

  “It’s what I’m not seeing that’s interesting,” Nicholas said. “No murder weapon. The guy stabbed him, then pulled out the knife and took off. I wonder if any of the witnesses saw the killer do that.”

  Mike said, “He still had his wallet, isn’t that right, Louisa?” She looked up at Louisa, holding the man’s belongings.

  “Right here.”

  Nicholas asked, “What’s his name?” He hated calling a once living, breathing man a corpse. He deserved more than that.

  “Jonathan Charles Pearce. Lived on the Upper East Side. Money and cards left in the wallet. His cell’s a BlackBerry Touch, and here’s a nice old watch and a set of keys. Cell is password protected, I can’t access it without my tools.”

  Nicholas said, “Do you carry a UFED in the field, perchance?”

  “Is that British for Universal Forensic Extraction Device?” And she grinned. “Yeah, so happens I have a Touch Ultimate on the truck. Hang on a minute.”

  “Good,” he said. “Are there any cameras around?”

  Louisa said, “Nothing that points directly to this spot, but there’s a traffic cam at the intersection of Pine and William, and the building itself has a camera on the corner. Might have something from one of those.”

  “Excellent, Louisa, thank you.”

  “By the way, Nicholas? It’s good to have you on board. Welcome to New York.”

  “It’s good to be here.”

  In the next instant, Louisa was headed to the mobile command unit.

  Mike said, “Glad she brought it. With the UFED we’ll get the pass code broken and access the data in no time. So, Nicholas, it doesn’t appear Mr. Pearce was the victim of a robbery.”

  “No, it would seem not. A fight between two men. About what?”

  “Whatever it was, the killer lost it and stabbed Mr. Pearce in the back with a dozen people looking on.”

  3

  Nicholas looked up at a sharp whistle to see a tall, beefy older man heading their way, people getting out of his way. He looked like a guided missile, ready to clear the scene and move on to his next case.

  “Here’s the ME, and good news for us, he’s the best,” Mike said. “You’ll like him.”

  The man reached them and stuck out his hand. Nicholas thought he meant to shake, but he was handing them both nitrile gloves.

  “You’re not allowed anywhere near my body without proper protection. See to it, now.”

  Mike snapped the gloves over the ones she was already wearing. She never argued with Janovich. “Good morning, Dr. Janovich. Now we’re double protected. I’d like you to meet my new partner, Special Agent Nicholas Drummond. We worked together on the Koh-i-Noor diamond case. Today’s his first day.”

  They shook hands. Janovich immediately pulled off his gloves and put on a fresh pair. “If I remember correctly, you knew the woman who died during that case. I’m sorry, that was tough.”

  Nicholas felt a familiar stab of pain. “Thank you, it was. I was Inspector Elaine York’s superior at New Scotland Yard. But now I’m here in America, working for the FBI.”

  “Welcome, welcome. I don’t know why we have a foreigner working for us, but in the long scheme of things, it doesn’t matter, does it? We shook hands, change your gloves.”

  Mike said, “This particular foreigner was born in L.A. Do you remember the sitcom A Fish out of Water, with Mitzie Manders? She’s Bo Horsley’s sister, and Nicholas’s mom.”

  Janovich blinked, his mouth widened in a huge smile. “You’re kidding. I loved that show. She is a beautiful lady, and she had wonderful comic timing. Tell your mother she has a fan in the New York OCME, will you?” He gave Nicholas a closer look and smiled. “Since you’re a foreigner, that stands for Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.”

  “I’ll tell her, and thank you,” Nicholas said, amused, but Janovich had already begun examining Mr. Pearce’s body, talking as he worked. Nicholas crouched down so he could listen in.

  “Stab wound to the right kidney. Took him down fast and hard from behind. Created quite a mess. I’d say this poor man bled out within three or four minutes. The blade would need to be at least five inches long to make a gash that deep. Not much of a cut in the shirt, I’m betting a stiletto of some sort.”

  “Who’s our killer, then?” Nicholas asked.

  Dr. Janovich glanced up at Nicholas and started, as if surprised to see him there at face level. He flashed a rare smile. “I guess I’ll have to let you figure that out.”

  Nicholas stood, groaning a little as his knees popped. Louisa hurried over to them. She handed Nicholas Pearce’s cell phone. “I got in, no problem. You’ll see Mr. Pearce received several texts recently. He was supposed to meet someone with the initials EP here this morning.”

  Nicholas said, “There was a short conversation between Pearce and EP. Listen to this: ‘I have news. Meet me at the Pine Street entrance of Fed Hall.’

  “And Pearce wrote back: ‘Can’t get downtown this a.m. Meet me at store instead?’

  “EP: ‘Nine-one-one.’

  “Pearce: ‘I hope this is the good kind of nine-one-one. On my way.’”

  —

  THERE WAS a fifteen-minute gap in time, then another outgoing message from 8:15 a.m. Only thirty minutes earlier.

  ‘I’m here, where are you?’

  Both Mike and Nicholas could imagine Pearce walking quickly, distracted, worrying about what this EP and his 911 alert were all about, wondering what was so important it couldn’t wait.

  The good kind of 911? What did that mean? And who was EP?

  “Evidently,” Mike said, “EP didn’t show up. Do you think it was a ploy to draw Pearce here to kill him?”

  “Or maybe EP did show up and it wasn’t a good kind of nine-one-one. They argued first, then EP killed him. Whatever, Mr. Pearce knew his killer. Maybe.”

  Janovich began his prep to take the body back to the OCME. Nicholas went down on his knees next to Mr. Jonathan Pearce. He said quietly, “We’ll find who did this, sir. Mark my words.”

  Mike said, “You know, we’ve had a lot of trouble with gangs recently. Committing a murder in broad daylight is a surefire way through initiation.”

  “Anything is possible. But it seems rather unlikely that a New York gang would congregate on Wall Street and send text messages to their victims.”

  “No, generally not. Unless it was a gang of stockbrokers.”

  He grinned at her. “I know what you mean. They’re a deadly bunch in London.”

  “Here, too.”

  “Well, then,” Nicholas said, “let’s get out of Dr
. Janovich’s way and see what the witnesses have to tell us.”

  They made their way to the group of witnesses huddled on the corner. There was another crowd gathered across the street, gaping and pointing, shooting more video with their phones, probably calling all their friends. He didn’t think there was a single crime scene in the world today that wasn’t recorded down to the blood on the sidewalk.

  Most of the witnesses were clearly upset, but a few were annoyed at having to stick around to talk to the police and be late to work. But most were eager to tell what they’d seen.

  Mike took the lead. “I’m Special Agent Caine, and this is Special Agent Drummond, FBI. We’d appreciate your telling us exactly what you saw.” A furious babble erupted, and Mike put up her hands. “One at a time, please. Sir?”

  He was the eldest of the group, a businessman in a gray wool suit. “I was walking across the street and heard the two men arguing. I looked over to see the older man fall.” He swallowed. “The dead man.”

  Nicholas asked, “How much older was he than the man who stabbed him?”

  “Twenty years, maybe. The guy, the killer, he looked about twenty-five, thirty. No more.”

  Mike was taking notes in her small spiral-bound reporter’s notebook. “Could you hear what they were arguing about?”

  “Not really, but they were fighting over something, I don’t know what.”

  “It was the phone,” said an older woman dressed in head-to-toe white cashmere, holding a small Chihuahua. “The guy wanted his phone. After he stabbed the older man, he grabbed the phone and used it. I had the most absurd thought—that he was calling nine-one-one. But who would stab someone, then call nine-one-one? But then people started yelling at the man and he dropped the phone and took off running.”