Endgame (Last Chance Series) (2 page)

New York City

INTERROGATION ROOMS RANKED only slightly above gas station restrooms in the stench and filth department. Which was too bad, considering the amount of time Madison Harper spent in them. Suc
king in a final breath of semi-clean air, she opened the door and walked into the room, immediately commanding the attention of the detective in the corner and the unsub at the table.

The latter looked to be at odds with his surroundings, although he was showing some signs of wear and tear. His white button-down was starting to wilt, and the creases in his khakis weren't as pristine as they'd once been. With a little luck, she'd soon be responsible for adding some sweat to the ensemble.

With a subtle nod at the detective, she lifted the bag she held onto the table, making a show of pulling out a blood-spattered pipe. Still without breaking the silence, she carefully laid the pipe on a battered bookshelf, and then, just as carefully, turned her back on it.

"Mr. Jackson." She held her hand out to the man at the table, ignoring the flash of surprise in the detective's eyes. It was always the same. Derision, surprise, skepticism, and then ultimately resentful admiration. Profiler's lot in life.

"Who the hell are you?" Paul Jackson glared up at her through bloodshot eyes. She waited a beat, and then another, delighted to see him shooting a sideways glance at the pipe. So far so good.

"My name is Madison Harper." They shook hands as if they were at a business meeting, and then she sat across from him at the table. Detective Barton shifted, l
eaning back against the windowsill, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.

Skepticism.

Madison bit back a smile.

"You another detective?" Jackson was studying her now, trying to figure out who the hell she was, and more importantly if he could use her to his advantage. It was there in the tilt of his head, and the twist of his brows.

"No." She shook her head, pulling a stack of files out of the case and dropping them onto the table. "FBI. We've been working with the police. Trying to solve Connie Weston's murder."

Murder was a kind word for the act. A vivacious fifth grader, Connie had disappeared on a walk to the corner grocery, only to be discovered dead in an abandoned warehouse five days later. The child had been raped, sodomized, and then beaten in the head with the pipe on the bookshelf. There were no fingerprints, and no trace elements to tie Jackson to the murder, but Madison was nevertheless certain of his guilt.

The trick was to get him to admit as much.

"I already told Barney Fife there," Jackson inclined his head toward Barton, but his gaze was back on the pipe, "I didn't do it."

Barton shifted again, looking a lot like he wanted to tear into Jackson, but he had his orders, and to his credit, despite his obvious disapproval he didn't attempt to interfere. They'd been round and round their approach, and only when his lieutenant had insisted had Barton agreed to play it her way. But apparently he lived by his word.

"Maybe not on purpose," she said, noting that Jackso
n had indeed started to sweat, his hands clenched in an attempt to hold on to control.

Jackson worked for the local cable company and had been in the area the day Connie disappeared. He was newly divorced, and recently discharged from the army. His sheet included a suspected rape and a couple of arson charges from his youth. And he'd been
the primary suspect in a New Jersey rape a couple of years back, a hooker named Belinda Markham.

Until today he'd been the picture of helpful, cocky and confident. Even volunteered to take a lie detector test. He was definitely the kind of man who could have approached Connie without scaring her. The eleven-year-old would never have seen it coming. Not when she was so close to home. Even in New York there was a comfort zone.

"We know you did it, you sick bastard. Just tell us how." Barton evidently had lost whatever willpower he'd summoned, and he stepped menacingly toward Jackson, his face twisted in anger.

Jackson immediately regained some of his former bravado, glaring up at
the detective through narrowed eyes. "I didn't do nothing."

Madison swallowed a rebuke, settling instead for a visual one, and then smiled at Jackson, reaching out to touch his hand, her skin crawling with the action, her body held in tight control so that her revulsion was not apparent. "We're not blaming you, Paul. I've seen the pictures." She made a play of pulling them out of an envelope.

She let her gaze sweep over the tiny form clad only in the plaid skirt of her school uniform, focusing instead on Jackson, who stared at the photograph as though in a hypnotic trance. It was as if he simply couldn't pull his eyes away.

"The man who killed her obviously felt remorse, Paul. See how he laid her jacket over her face? It's a protectiv
e move, meant to shield her from harm. Whoever did this obviously had a heart."

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, and looked up to meet Detective Barton's eyes. His skepticism was fading.

"She was a pretty little girl." Jackson's voice was soft now, all traces of contentiousness gone. "Really sweet."

Madison grabbed onto the adjective. To call someone sweet you had to know them. Or at least have met them
. She felt a flash of triumph. She was getting close. "Not so sweet, surely?" She looked up to meet Jackson's eyes, only to find he was again staring at the pipe, his breathing uneven.

"I mean girls that age—they don't know what they've got, do they?" She waited a moment, making sure she had his full attention. "Wearing their skirts so short. Their legs all tanned and bare. They hardly leave anything to the imagination. And girls like that hardly ever wear bras. It's enough to drive a man crazy, isn't it?"

Jackson nodded slightly, his gaze now alternating between the pipe and the photograph. There were circles of sweat under his arms now, and beads of it on his forehead. With a slight nod, Madison indicated that it was time for the final act.

Barton pushed off of the windowsill and walked over to pull out the chair beside Jackson. "Did you know that when a person is bludgeoned to death, like Connie here—" he poked a finger at the photograph "—blood flies everywhere?"

Unconsciously, Jackson looked down at his hands.

"All we have to do, Paul, is test you for trace." It was far too late for that, but the man had no way of knowing. Besides, he'd turned the corner, found his out
. He'd never meant to kill Connie. He'd only wanted to seduce her. In his mind, her friendlessness had meant she wanted him. It was only afterward, when he realized the reality was nothing like the fantasy—that Connie was frightened and hurt—that he knew he had to kill her. To cover up what he'd done.

Madison knew it all. She could see it
. Feel his impotence. His building rage. She could smell Connie's fear as it filled the room, surrounding him, robbing him of his fantasy—of his triumph. She could feel his hand as it closed around the steel of the pipe. All he wanted was to erase his mistake. Stop the crying. Make it go away. He'd been wrong. She wasn't the one. And for that she had to pay. Remorse and anger twisted in his gut, until there was nothing left to do but hit her, and hit her, and hit her....

"I didn't mean to hurt her."

Madison jerked back to the present, her breath coming in gasps. Jackson was looking at her, his eyes begging her to understand.

"Of course not," she whispered, her hand still on his, not daring to break eye contact
.

"It's just that she kept coming on to me." The words came out on a sigh.

Again Madison swallowed bile. "It's not your fault, Paul. How could you have known she'd fight you?"

"She did." He was earnest now, intent on explaining. "She screamed and she screamed, and she kicked me. I didn't know what to do. Then she tried to run away."

"And so you killed her." Madison kept her voice soft, non-condemning, almost as if she were consoling a friend.

He shot a look at the pipe again, and then buried his head in his hands. "I only meant to make her stop screaming." He looked up, nothing left of the confident man. "I just wanted to touch her. To show her what it was like to be with a man. I just wanted to make her feel good."

Madison refrained from voicing her real thoughts.

There was one more hurdle to jump first
. "And Belinda Markham? Did you want to make her feel good, too?"

Jackson looked startled for a moment and then suddenly dead calm. "No.
She was a whore. I just wanted to fuck her."

With a sigh, she stood up and, without looking at Jackson or Barton, walked out of the interrogation room.

"Good work in there." Walter Blythe turned from the two-way mirror. Blythe was the director of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and for all practical purposes he'd written the book on profiling. Furthermore, he had no business here, and her skin crawled with the premonition that something bad was about to happen. "You managed to solve a case that's been dangling over the NYPD for more than a year now."

"I did my job." It was a non
-answer, but it was the best she could do. Graciously receiving compliments had never been her strong suit "Why are you here?"

Blythe smiled. "You don't beat around the bush, do you?"

"Not much purpose in it." She leaned back against the desk, watching through the mirror as Barton placed handcuffs on Jackson.

"I got a call today from the director. And his call came from the White House. It seems your godfather's got a problem, and he needs you."

"Something's wrong with Cullen?" Madison frowned. Cullen Pulaski wasn't the type of man to need anyone's help.

"He's fine. But he believes several colleagues of his have been murdered."

"And the FBI is getting involved?" Curiosity tinged with worry surged through her, cresting on a note of resentment. Whatever her godfather wanted, she wasn't going to like it.

"No, Madison." Blythe's expression was forbidding. "
You're
going to be involved. He wants you to head up a task force he's forming. And he's got the backing to do it. As of now you're relieved of your normal duties."

"But my cases..."

Blythe waved a hand through the air, cutting her off. "Will be handed over to another profiler. As of now, you're off the job."

She opened her mouth to protest, but Barton chose that moment to bring Jackson out of the interrogation room. It was as if he were a different man. Instead of jovial and cocksure, his demeanor was hangdog and defeated.

She'd won and Jackson knew it.

They walked past, Detective Barton's gaze colliding with hers.

Resentful admiration.

She'd danced with the devil and made him pay his due, but still she was being punished. She shot a look at Blythe, who shrugged in answer.

Hell of a world.

*****

THE FLORIDA KEYS DINER was seedy at best, decrepit at worst, and nothing new in the long line of places he'd frequented of late. Decorated with gator heads, Formica and table jukeboxes in various states of disrepair, it was an odd fusion of swamp rat and Buddy Holly.

It suited his purpose. Hell, he blended right in. Which was more than he could say for the suits in the corner. Stoking his anger, Gabriel Roarke strode across the room, his movements calculated to go unnoticed. Odds were, his cover was blown, but old habits died hard.

A vague sense of unease mixed with his irritation as he recognized the men at the table. Something big was coming down if the director was here—something Gabe had the distinct feeling he wouldn't like.

Especially if it involved Cullen Pulaski.

The second man was recognizable if for no other reason than his face was plastered across the country's newspapers on an almost daily basis. It had been said on more than one occasion that the U.S. was run by the nouveau riche, and Cullen Pulaski was a card-carrying member. A renowned mathematician with a nose for business, Cullen had scored big during the tech revolution, placing him at the top of the industrial elite. His company, Dreamscape, was a permanent fixture on the Fortune 500, and that was just icing on the cake. Gabriel had worked with him years ago, and despite their differences, the two men had gotten along.

Grudgingly.

Gabe was a loner, and Cullen was as outgoing as they come, a politicians' politician. Only he preferred pulling the strings from a distance. And for the most part, what he wanted, he got. Which somehow only made Gabe angrier. To hell with the business of the CIA, when Cullen Pulaski called, everyone had damn well better come running.

"So, what the hell's this all about?" Gabe barked, sliding into the booth, his jaw locked in anger. "You're compromising my operation."

"It couldn't be helped." Cullen shrugged, dismissing Gabe's anger as if it were of no accord. "I needed you."

"And that was worth blowing a two-year investigation?" Incredulity and outrage washed through Gabe as he glared at the older man.

Evan Jensen lifted a hand, demanding silence. Not more than forty-five, Jensen was the CIA's youngest deputy director. But what he didn't have in seniority, he more than made up for with sheer presence. "I wouldn't have called you in if it wasn't important."