Flawless

“Oh, yes, sorry. I didn’t have a chance yet to ask you if I could take the time—”

“You know how much we value our relationship with law enforcement. Take all the time you need,” Dr. Miro said.

“Thank you. I’ll be back as soon as—” She broke off. She’d been about to say as soon as possible. She restructured her reply. “As soon as I’ve done everything I can possibly do to help.”

But what that was, she really didn’t know.

Dr. Fuller shooed her out of the office to where her “man in black” was waiting in reception. Jake, the receptionist, wasn’t so much as looking at the agent. He was making every effort to look busy. The agent just stood there with his expression impassive and his hands folded behind his back.

He escorted her out, and she saw that his car was double-parked; apparently, for him, that was legal.

He opened the door for her and she stepped in. He was polite without showing the least emotion; she felt as if she had stepped into a movie about alien pod people.

The drive was silent, which made it feel even longer than she’d known it would be.

When they finally arrived, she discovered that no matter who you were, you went through the security screening. As she stood in line she realized that a lot of very normal people worked in the building. Three women in line in front of her were holding their Starbucks cups and chatting as they waited to go through the metal detector; behind her, two men were arguing over the virtues of an iPhone versus an Android phone.

Once through security, she was whisked up an elevator. The doors slid open, and she exited directly into a clean and sparse reception area where a young woman, who had apparently been waiting for her, greeted her then led her down a hall to a small office with a table that held a computer and several sheets of photos.

“I’m Millie,” the young woman told her, shuddering slightly. “Sounds ancient, doesn’t it? Short for Millicent. I don’t know what my parents were thinking. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? A soda or a bottle of water?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Kieran murmured.

Just then Craig Frasier stepped through the still-open door and said, “Morning, Millie. I’d love some coffee. Miss Finnegan, won’t you join me?”

“I’ll be right back,” Millie said cheerfully.

“Thank you,” Kieran said, as the other woman left.

Agent Frasier was wearing a suit very much like the one her escort had worn, though he had left off the sunglasses—inside, at least. She was struck again by the man’s rugged good looks and masculine appeal. She had seen several men down in the lobby who were tall, honed like steel and handsome. She was starting to think that it was an agency requirement. Or perhaps the job just called for people in good enough shape to jump over fences and coordinated enough to run through a traffic jam.

Agent Frasier smiled at her. “Thank you for coming in,” he said.

Did I have a choice? she wondered.

“Of course,” she said. “My employers understand my need to be here—they are frequently called in to work with law enforcement. They do psychological profiling, decide whether a defendant is fit to stand trial, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, I know,” he told her, but he didn’t elaborate on how he knew. She wondered if he’d worked with either of her bosses or if he’d run a background check on her.

“There are three pictures in front of you,” he told her, all business. “I’d like you to look at them.”

She nodded, sat down and glanced at the photos. They were of the thieves, and they were dressed completely in black—right down to their ski masks.

She looked over at him. “They’re in ski masks.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’m not sure why I’m doing this. You’ve already caught the thieves who took me hostage.”

He smiled. “Lift that top sheet. There are four mug shots underneath. Those are pictures of the men we caught last night, minus the ski masks. What I’d like you to do is take the shots from the jewelry store last night—from their security tapes—and line them up with the mug shots. Then I’d like you to compare them with some other pictures I have of a different robbery.” He hesitated and then said, “I don’t mean to lead the witness, but I don’t believe they’re the same men.”

Millie returned just then with a tray that held a coffeepot, two cups, cream and sugar. Agent Frasier thanked her and asked Kieran how she liked her coffee. She said, “Just cream.”

He poured her a cup, added cream and handed it to her. Then he sat opposite her and sipped his own coffee. The room grew very quiet.

At first Kieran felt unnerved. He sat there in silence, leaving her to study the photos, but there was no way for Agent Frasier to be in a room and not be noticeable.

She tried to give her attention to the pictures. The sooner she did what he’d asked of her, the sooner she could leave.

To her surprise, she quickly found herself deeply involved in what she was doing. According to their mug shots, the men who had been arrested the night before were Sam Banner, Robert Stella, Lenny Wiener and Mark O’Malley. She glanced at their faces and the stats on their mug shots, and then at the security stills, comparing carefully. Finally she went through them, pointing. “Mark O’Malley was driving the van, obviously. Looking at height and build, I think Sam Banner was the one who dragged me through the store and down the alley.”

Agent Frasier nodded. “All right. Now I want you to compare them to the men from the other robbery.”

He got up and moved to stand behind her, then pulled another sheet of photos from the bottom of the stack. “I realize it’s difficult, but do you recognize the men from yesterday in any of these other photos? The way they stood? Something else? I can show you some video, too.”

She was acutely aware of him behind her. The fabric of his suit, the heat of his body, the scent of his aftershave.

“Uh, video would be great.”

He reached over to tap the keyboard. His nails were neatly clipped. His fingers were long, and she was certain that his hands would be powerful.

She swallowed and tried to concentrate.

After a minute, she miraculously managed to do so. She took control of the keyboard herself, running the footage and stopping it when something struck her.

“There,” she said, pointing. “That’s Sam Banner. You can tell by the way he’s standing and by his height.”

“All right,” Frasier said, “what about this footage?”

He reached over again and cued up a new video.

“No, no, I don’t think that’s Sam Banner. They stand completely differently. Sam keeps his legs apart. He’s angled, almost as if he’s casual about what he’s doing. This man, he stands straighter, and he’s visibly tense. Watch his head move. He’s jerky. He looks—”

“As if he’s nervous and liable to pull the trigger any second?” Craig asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Just my opinion based on my observations, of course,” she said, swiveling her chair to look up at him.

He smiled. “Educated opinion, though, right?”

She shrugged. “Honestly, if you asked one of my bosses to—”

“Your bosses weren’t in the van with me,” he said, and walked back to take his seat.

She’d been about to stand; her work here was done.

But the way he sat, leaning forward expectantly, his eyes probing...

No, she wasn’t leaving yet.

“So what were you doing at the store yesterday?” he asked.

She immediately felt defensive, but she tried not to do any of the things that would betray her nervousness. Blinking, wetting her lips...

“A friend works there,” she said. “I went to see if he was there. Well, all right. He’s not really a friend. He was a friend. Not anymore.”

He looked down a moment, a slight smile curving his lips. “Care to explain?”

She shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, but she told herself that was okay. Explaining an awkward divorce would make anyone uneasy.

“Gary Benton was—is—married to a close friend of mine. They’re going through a very nasty divorce. I went to see him to remind him that they were adults and that...” She felt herself stiffen, but she was so angry at Gary that she couldn’t help it. “She went out of town to give him space, and he locked her dogs in a crate and didn’t feed them or let them out the whole time.”

“She should have called animal control,” he said.

“The logical answer, of course, but she was too upset to think straight, and—” She paused and looked away again. “She went to the store and said some pretty awful things. I went to ask him to stop being so nasty and trying to upset her. But he wasn’t there and, well, you know what happened next.”

He seemed to believe that. “Well, thank you again for your help,” he told her. “I’ll get you back to work.”

“Thanks,” she said.

He rose. She kept sitting.

He smiled at her. “I meant that literally. I’ll get you back to work.”

“Oh! Okay, thank you.”

She stood quickly, dismayed to feel herself blushing.

She felt his hand at the small of her back as he politely ushered her out.

She told Millie goodbye and passed another half dozen men and women in well-tailored suits as they left the building, walking past the line where people were still lined up, chatting as they waited to pass through security.

She noticed an interesting group waiting their turn. They weren’t in suits and didn’t look at all like members of the FBI.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“A teachers’ group,” he told her.

“Oh?”

“They’re going to take a class in keeping schools safe.”

“I didn’t know the FBI offered anything like that.”

He flashed her a smile. “We’re a friendly crowd, not the enemy,” he said.

“I wasn’t suggesting that. I just never thought of the FBI as being so...open-door,” she told him. “Practically warm and cuddly.”

“Well, that depends on who you are and what you’re up to,” he told her.

A car was waiting for them. Double-parked again, she noticed. Craig Frasier seated her before walking around to slide into the driver’s seat himself.

“In a city full of very different crimes, I find this to be an especially interesting case,” he said as he drove.

“I think it’s a terrifying case,” she said. “Men holding up jewelry stores and killing people, but making it look as if other people are the killers.”

She realized from his expression, which had hardened as she spoke, that he was accustomed to dealing with people killing people. That had to be difficult. Then again, she had known when she took her job that she would be dealing with criminals whose behavior made her brothers’ previous escapades look like child’s play.

“Actually, I was referring to you,” he said.

“Me?” She prayed there was no fear—or guilt—in her voice.

“Bartender by night, assistant crime fighter by day.”

“I’m a psychologist, not a crime fighter.”

“A therapist.”

“Yes.”

“What sort of cases have you handled?”

She took a breath and shrugged. “I haven’t been in the role that long—I’m pretty fresh out of school. But so far I’ve spoken with a woman regarding a competency hearing. And I was asked to speak separately with a husband and wife suspected in the death of their newborn. That one was very sad.”

“Life can be sad,” he said wearily. “And you’re a bartender on top of all that?”

“It’s a family business,” she said. She winced. Did that make her family sound like the Mafia?

They’d reached her office, she realized. He had the car in Park and was ready to hop out and open her door for her. Professional courtesy? Was he always like that?

“Thank you,” she said quickly, opening her door. “I appreciate the ride back.”

“Thanks for your help,” he told her.

“Of course,” she said quickly as she stepped out of the car, then bent to look back in at him. “Um, goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Miss Finnegan. And my thanks again.”

She closed the door and hurried toward the building. When she got upstairs, she was grateful to discover that both her bosses were in consultation. She hurried to her own office and began to write up her report on the parents she had interviewed the other day. Both were heartbroken; in her opinion, neither had in any way been responsible for the death of their child. It was sad, as she’d told Agent Frasier, but infant deaths still occurred through no one’s fault. She was convinced this was just such a case.

Eventually her bosses finished their consultation and came in to see her, quizzing her about her visit to the FBI. They both seemed pleased that she’d been consulted.

“If you’re needed again, you just go right on over, Kieran,” Dr. Miro said.

“We always help whenever we can,” Dr. Fuller assured her.

She smiled weakly. “Of course.”

They left a few minutes later, and Kieran realized she’d worked through lunch and the day was nearly done.

* * *

Craig spent most of the rest of the day reinterviewing everyone he could get hold of who had been at any of the robberies. The prosecutor, Julian Smith, wanted to charge the men they’d caught with the murders, and they finally got together to discuss that with him late in the afternoon. Craig, Mike and Eagan argued against bringing charges, showed him the security footage, brought up Kieran’s insistence that the tapes showed two different men and emphasized that the men in custody had been caught with toy weapons.

Smith was a hard-ass, though. He wanted to throw everything at the defendants that he could possibly throw. On top of that, the media was already calling them murderers.

Everyone in the city wanted the crime spree to be over.

“They were toy guns!” Craig said, slamming the table with the flat of his hand. “Even a public defender will be able to make that case. Give us some time to work this.”

“Toy guns this time, real ones the last,” Smith said. “You could have been killed, Agent Frasier. I’d think you’d want them locked away forever.”

“And I’d think you would want them charged for the appropriate crimes,” Craig said.

“Yes, well, real guns or not, there are laws—” Smith began.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Eagan protested, raising a hand. “Smith, give my men time to work this. You’re going to want all available evidence and witnesses concurring about the facts, aren’t you?”

Smith finally left in a huff after agreeing to give them more time. “But not too much,” he’d said threateningly.

It was nearly seven o’clock after a damned long night and day.

Mike was heading to the hospital for a checkup. One of the perks of being FBI was that doctors bent their schedules to see you after hours. Craig offered to tag along, seeing as he had no plans for the night.

“Hell, no,” Mike told him. “Leave me alone. Let me be grouchy and crotchety tonight, go in, go home and then hit a bottle of Scotch and my bed. You should go do something fun. Shake off this job for a few hours.”

But when he left the building at last, Craig wasn’t ready to go home.

And he wasn’t sure why, but he found himself heading for Finnegan’s on Broadway.

Maybe he did know why. Kieran Finnegan intrigued him. She’d been helpful, pointing out body language he might not have noticed himself.

But she’d also been nervous. Nervous just because she’d been in an FBI office?

He doubted that.

He had a feeling she was still hiding something. So what the hell was it?

Had she somehow been in league with the thieves?

He relived the previous night in his mind. It didn’t seem likely, though he couldn’t say it wasn’t possible.

It certainly seemed like a coincidence that she’d even been there. She had a day job, and though he doubted she worked two jobs every day of her life, she’d been slated to work at the bar that night. He knew from the NYPD report he’d read through that she had her own apartment near St. Marks Place. Not right next to the pub, but not much of a subway trip, either. On a beautiful day and with a little time, she could even walk it easily enough.

But if she was involved, what was his plan? Come right out and ask her what the hell she was acting so guilty about in the hope she would confess?

She would hardly admit to being guilty, so that wouldn’t do anything except raise her suspicions and make it even harder for him to figure out what was going on.

He would have to take a more indirect approach. Luckily for him, Finnegan’s was known for its food as well as its hospitality and selection of beers on tap.

Couldn’t hurt to get some dinner.

Old double wooden doors with frosted, etched glass faced Broadway, the sidewalk in front protected by a green-striped canopy overhead. Inside there were a number of booths to the right and a few more to the left, tables filling the rest of the room, and a long bar lined with taps at the rear. The place was busy with the dinner crowd and a number of cocktail-hour stragglers. He quickly saw that Kieran Finnegan was there, standing behind the bar and talking to a waitress. A tall man with dark red hair was also working behind the bar—one of her brothers, he was certain.

He started to head that way, then chose a booth that gave him an unimpeded view of the bar instead. He watched the action for a while. Another tall man, this one with lighter red hair, was working the floor along with two young women.

Before long one of the women headed to his table. He didn’t think that she was a Finnegan. She was petite and blonde, with lively blue eyes and a quick smile. “Hello. Welcome to Finnegan’s. What can I get you?”

He was in an Irish pub, so he figured why not order Guinness on draft? He asked for a menu, as well.

“Special tonight is fish-and-chips. Really good,” she told him.

“Then forget the menu. I’ll have fish-and-chips.”

She brought his beer quickly. He thanked her and sipped it as he continued to people watch. A group of young women seemed to be holding a baby shower. Business executives filled several of the tables. An older couple sat and ate a quiet dinner; the bar stools were mostly filled.

When his food came, he thanked the waitress again. “So this is a family business, huh?” he asked.

“Yup, and the Finnegans are all working tonight. That’s Danny on the floor there, Declan and Kevin behind the bar—and Kieran is back there, too.”

“Are you related, too?” he asked her.

She laughed. “Actually, I’m the only one—well, besides the kitchen staff—who isn’t a Finnegan or almost one. That’s Mary Kathleen O’Shaunnessy over there,” she said, pointing. “She’s Declan’s fiancée. And I,” she told him brightly, “am Debbie Buenger, an old family friend. I went to school with Kevin and Kieran—who are twins, by the way. Anyhow, enjoy the fish. Our food is great, so if you haven’t been in here before, you’re in for a treat.”

“I don’t think I’ve been in before—and I’m pretty sure I’d remember. I have a lot of friends who love this place, though.”

She gave him another of her charming smiles. “What’s not to love?” she asked, and moved on.

The fish was delicious.

At least at first glance, Finnegan’s seemed to be everything a pub was supposed to be. He couldn’t help but allow his mind to consider the possibility that there was something going on beneath the surface, though, since there had definitely been something off about Kieran Finnegan both last night and today. Were they laundering money? Raising funds for the Irish Republican Army? He doubted that. The violence seemed to have dropped substantially in Ireland since just about the time the Twin Towers had been hit.

What, then? Was there an illegal poker game in the back?

He’d nearly finished his meal when he paused, taking a sip of his beer, to stare at the bar again. Kieran happened to look up at just that moment and see him. She was visibly startled.

She also looked guilty—again.

She stared at him so long that Debbie—waiting in front of her with a tray of shot glasses—had to say something to stop her from pouring as whiskey started sloshing over the rim of the glass she was filling.

Kieran looked away quickly, flushing, and reached a bar rag. She said something to Debbie, who smiled and replied cheerfully.

Within a few minutes Kieran came around from behind the bar and walked over to his table.

He liked the way she moved, almost in rhythm with the music of the Dropkick Murphys playing in the background.

For a minute, he thought she was going to demand to know what he was doing in her bar and ask him to leave.

But she just looked at him, puzzled and uneasy.

“Agent Frasier,” she said after a long moment.

“Guilty as charged.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Eating.”

What did she think he was doing there? He would love to know.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. Um, I hope you’re enjoying your dinner.”

“I am. Very much.”

“It’s only pub food, nothing gourmet.”

“I love pub food,” he said blandly, curious to see where she would take their conversation. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Are you watching me for some reason?” she asked him.

Was he?

She was certainly a pleasure to watch, with her long, long legs, blue eyes and fiery hair. But he doubted that saying as much would please her any more than would giving voice to his suspicions that she was keeping something from him.

“Actually,” he heard himself say, “I wanted to talk to you again but figured I’d wait a bit. You seemed to be pretty busy when I came in, and I was hungry anyway.”

“Being busy is a good thing for—for a business,” she said.

He smiled. “Yes, of course. But I was wondering...” He paused, surprised that the right approach came to him so quickly. “The thing is, the prosecutor wants to charge the men from last night with murder, but I don’t think they’re the killers.”

“Yes, I know. I spent the morning studying video footage, remember?” she said, smiling for the first time since she’d come over to his table.

“I’d like to get you to Rikers so you can speak with the men. They were held in lockup last night, but they were arraigned on grand larceny today. The prosecutor wants to add homicide charges right away. I’d like to counter him with more than grainy video, toy guns and my own gut feeling. Would you come with me to talk to them?”

She seemed surprised—and relieved. And still uncomfortable.

“Um, sure.”

He saw the taller bartender heading in their direction. One of her brothers, but which one?

The question was quickly answered.

“Declan Finnegan,” the man said, holding out his hand.

There was a definite family resemblance, at least in height and coloring, Craig thought, rising to offer his hand. “I’m Craig Frasier. Special agent, FBI.”

“Pleased to meet you, and thank you for keeping Kieran safe and sending her back to us. Your meal is on the house. The least we can do,” he added, when Craig started to protest.

“Kieran did extremely well on her own. She’s quite competent in a tough situation,” Craig said. “And thank you, but I need a bill. We’re not allowed to accept gifts, not even a meal.”

Her brother shot Kieran a frown, but he didn’t object. “I’d love to hear more about what happened last night. If you’ve got some time, come on up to the bar when you’ve finished your dinner.”

“Will do,” Craig promised.

Kieran’s face grew a full shade paler. “Great,” she said, not quite managing a smile. Then she turned and walked away.

Her attitude made him even more certain that something was going on, whether at the pub or just with her, and he was going to find out what.

* * *

Things had gone from bad to really bad.

There was Craig Frasier sitting at the bar. And there were her brothers—all three of them—chatting with him as comfortably as if they’d known him all their lives.

Danny didn’t have the sense to realize that a federal agent might, at any moment, ask him questions he might not be prepared to answer. Honestly, her baby brother could be so oblivious.