Vortex by Catherine Coulter

Sherlock

Driving to Brickson, New York

Tuesday afternoon

Sherlock called Dillon while waiting for Special Agent Kelly Giusti of the New York Field Office to pick her up from the Thirty-Fourth Street helicopter pad in her new white Fiat she called Baby. “I’m here at the helipad. Kelly’s not here yet, probably caught in traffic so I have a few minutes. How’s Sean? What’s happening on the Southern Front?”

She heard him pause, knew something was going on, waited. He said, “Sean is fine. Actually, I have something interesting involving a CIA operative and the CIA brass. And yes, I won the first round. The operative, Olivia’s her name, is up to her neck in trouble. I’ll know more when we speak tonight. Is it as frigid in New York as here?”

“More so, I’ll bet, given the cold air whooshing down the long canyons between the tall buildings. I’m bundled to my eyebrows, don’t worry.”

“I can’t imagine Brickson, New York, is a hotbed of crime, but New York certainly is. You be careful, all right? And call me when you figure out what happened or if you need any help on my end.”

She grinned into her cell. “Of course I’ll be careful and I’ll keep you posted. Here’s Kelly. Brickson’s roughly an hour east, depending on traffic, so she can give me all the details. Miss me. Talk to you later. Make sure Sean brushes his teeth.”

Savich laughed and disconnected.

“Hey, Sherlock! Bless you for coming.”

After Sherlock stowed her go-bag in Baby’s back seat and quickly climbed in, Kelly fired her up, turned the heat on high. “You ready? Baby loves to let it rip, but since this is business, I’ll keep her law-abiding. There won’t be much traffic, since it’s freezing and only crazy people are out today. And cops. And we don’t need that embarrassment. Listen to that wind, it’s howling louder than a chorus of witches.”

Once they were out of the worst of Manhattan traffic, of which there wasn’t much, Kelly turned, gave Sherlock a smile. “Thank you again for coming. My SAC, Mr. Zachery—well, of course you know him. He sends his thanks, said to tell Savich hello for him. He, ah, wanted me to tell you you weren’t to feel pressured to find answers to solve this mess.”

Sherlock groaned. “Thanks loads.”

Kelly turned, grinned at her. “All right, that was a whopper. We’re all praying you’ll see something everyone missed.” She gave Sherlock a fat smile, then grew serious. “We’re driving directly to the crime scene in Brickson. You know the basics, but let me give you all the details so you’ll know what to expect. As you know, we weren’t involved in this triple murder until four weeks ago. It happened at the house of a Dr. Douglas Madison. He, his wife, Ellen, and a neighbor, a Mr. Stanley La Shea, were shot to death. The local police thought it was a home invasion or a robbery gone bad at first—their jewelry, rings, and wallets were missing, but it didn’t quite add up. They found out Dr. Madison had recently broken off an affair with a local real estate agent, Angela Storin. The same Ms. Storin had reported her Walther PPK stolen two weeks before the murders, and it turns out the bullets were the same caliber as the crime scene bullets, which doesn’t prove anything, but still. We’ve checked the few traffic cams, surveyed the neighbors, but nothing.

“The Madison house is large, like most of the houses in that neighborhood, the lots big and filled with mature trees. Easy to sneak around, and like I said, we interviewed everyone in a three-block radius of the house. We checked Storin’s cell phone location records, but we haven’t been able to put her near the crime scene.

“Storin claims she was at home by herself, but I’m as sure as I can be she murdered all of them—Dr. Madison, his wife, and the neighbor. Storin’s been married twice, and both her previous husbands are both dead, probably murdered.

“Her first husband, Martin Orloff, divorced her six years ago and remarried, died in a hang glider accident while on vacation in Rio with his new wife. It was obvious someone had cut partly through the flight controls, but no one was ever arrested. Angela Storin’s passport records show she was in Brazil at the time, but again, not enough. That case is still open too.

“Her second husband, Philip Storin, was shot to death in his car three years ago, about a year after he divorced her and moved to Alabama. From Ms. Storin’s credit card records, they were able to show she was in Alabama at that time, too. She’d attended a real estate conference in Huntsville and that was the reason she was even in Alabama. Unfortunately, she had an excellent alibi, a seminar with a dozen other real estate agents. I know in my gut she did it, but I can’t figure out how, no one can. The case is still open.

“When the local Brickson police discovered all this, they called the FBI in New York City to investigate her as a possible Serial. I’ve worked the case solid for a week now, turning over every rock I can find. I hate to admit it, Sherlock, but I’ve hit a wall; I can’t see my way through to nailing Angela Storin. And I know she’s guilty. I’ve interviewed her, of course, not that she said much; her lawyer did the talking. She simply repeated she was innocent, but she barely kept the smirk behind her eyes. But I saw that smirk, that gleam of ‘I’m smarter than you,’ and she knew I knew, but—” Kelly shrugged. “She did it on purpose, all the while acting like this brave little soldier being tortured by the gestapo. I’ve studied people like her, Sherlock, as have you. Other than the placid façade she never dropped, I still saw the arrogance. And I could see there’s something off about her, something missing, you could say. The lead police detective I spoke to believed that, too, said when he spoke to her she was ‘scary calm,’ utterly emotionless, and expressed surprise he even called her, much less actually came to see her, to question her. Her? And that’s why he was pleased to turn it over to us.

“She has flummoxed everyone, Sherlock; even the lead detective in Brickson admitted it. He told me he was relieved to hand over the case to the FBI and that I was made the lead.”

Sherlock said, “So she admitted the affair. Did she admit Dr. Madison had broken it off?”

“She didn’t deny it, she couldn’t, but added that that sort of affair always fizzles out, no harm no foul, both parties unhurt. But according to Madison’s sister, he said he’d slept with her for about six weeks, but got his act together, realized he loved his wife, and told Storin it was over. When asked about this, Storin said his sister hates her, and we can’t believe anything she says about her or their affair.

“You’ve seen her photo. Storin’s a plain, frumpy forty-year-old woman who wears low baize pumps, suits in dull colors with no particular style, no makeup, hair that hangs limp. The thing is, behind that plain and proper person she presents to the world, she’s what I said—she’s arrogant, thinks she’s smarter than me, than everyone.

“She’s recognized as the best upper-end real estate agent in the area. The locals no longer wonder why she presents herself as a dowd, they just shake their heads, call it her shtick.”

Kelly banged her fist on the steering wheel and apologized to the Fiat. “It really threw me when I first met this prim, plain woman who badly needed a makeover. And all I could think was, how did you land two husbands and a lover? You must be great in bed.” Kelly spurted out a laugh.

Sherlock repeated slowly, “You sensed something was off with her, Kelly, sensed there was a lot more going on with her than she showed to the world. That’s a powerful feeling, and it can be the best clue we’ve got. What interests me is you told me Storin has traveled from New York to Washington dozens of times in the past three years. Planes, trains, automobiles. But you said you didn’t know where she goes, or why.”

Kelly said, “We do know she took Dr. Madison with her five or six times when they were together, so everyone’s thinking it has to be some kind of convenient hideaway where they wouldn’t be recognized. Of course we examined Dr. Madison’s records, Storin’s as well, but we don’t know where they stayed. Washington, Maryland, Virginia? We don’t know. We’re stuck, Sherlock. We have only a bone-deep knowledge she’s guilty of multiple murders. We have no witnesses, no gun, nothing I can grab on to, nothing to shake it out of her, and believe me, I’ve tried. Her lawyer, Abel Clooney, is a powerhouse, articulate, and he protects Storin, treats her like she’s Mother Teresa. Makes you want to kick his capped teeth off. You’ll meet him.”

Sherlock laughed. “He’s expensive, I gather?”

“Costs the moon. She’s the top in her field, lots of substantial commissions from the properties she sells, so she can afford him. I can’t dispute it, she does have a very healthy bank account.”

Kelly fell silent as she passed a slower SUV.

Sherlock watched Kelly tap her gloved fingers on Baby’s steering wheel. She said, “I wonder why she murdered the wife and the neighbor? Why didn’t she kill only Dr. Madison?”

“Differing ideas about that,” Kelly said. “My opinion is Storin hated the wife, decided she was the only stumbling block to true love and had to be removed. Or she believed Dr. Madison betrayed her—that fits with her murdering her two ex-husbands—and the wife was bonus points. Or she wanted to murder them both. You’ll look, tell me what you think. But it’s obvious Mrs. Madison was shot first.

“Bottom line, I can’t let her get away with murdering three people, five counting the ex-husbands. I know who she is, Sherlock, what she is, and that’s a psychopath, a stone-cold killer.”

Kelly signaled, steered the Fiat around an eighteen-wheeler, earning a honk from the driver and a thumbs-up.

Sherlock thought about this. “Angela Storin owned a Walther PPK, had a license?”

“Correct. She claims the Walther was stolen two weeks before the murders. She called the local cops to report it. She claims she’d only shot it once, that her second husband gave it to her, registered it, showed her how to use it, but she says she hates guns, never used it. She also claims she put it in a cardboard box in her garage, simply forgot about it.” Kelly turned on her blinker and took the Brickson exit. “Brickson is one of Manhattan’s bedroom communities, mostly middle-class, a mixed community, but the doctor’s neighborhood, in the north end, is the primo spot to live.”

A few blocks off the highway, Kelly turned right onto Hickory Street. The lots grew larger, as did the houses. Most were older, established, their yards filled with trees hunkered down in the frigid winter wind.

The Madison house was at least a hundred years old, with a deep wraparound porch. It sat in the middle of a heavily forested lot, looked for all the world like a precious old queen from a bygone era. The closest neighbors were a hundred feet away through swells of maple and oak trees, a good cover for someone not wanting to be seen. It was obvious no one had been taking care of the yard. Potted hanging plants were dead, the grass overgrown.

Sherlock wanted to be alone in the house so Kelly handed her the keys and stayed in the car, heater on high, working on her tablet. Even bundled up to her eyebrows, Sherlock was shivering as she removed the yellow crime scene tape and stepped into the empty house. She stood silent a moment in the bare oak entry hall. There was a faint smell of chemicals from the CSI team.

She imagined the house had been welcoming when it was filled with life and light and central heating, but now it felt abandoned, as if even the spirits had moved on. It was all shadows and emptiness and stale air. And very cold.