53
While Stone and Holly stood and stared at Shelley’s handbag, Dino walked over to it and began rummaging inside. Finally, exasperated, he took hold of the bag, turned it upside down, and emptied the contents onto the desktop.
Stone and Holly walked over and gazed at the jumbled heap of the bag’s contents. Holly poked around with a finger and came up with a lighted cell phone, the source of the music. “This was missing from the scene of Fair Sutherlin’s murder, remember?”
“I remember,” Stone said, “but look at this.” He picked up a second cell phone, then, rummaging through the pile, came up with four others. “One of these is Shelley’s,” he said, “and I’d be willing to bet a large sum that the others belong to Mimi Kendrick, Milly Hart, Charlotte Kirby, and Muffy Brandon.”
“Souvenirs,” Dino said. “Serial killers often take souvenirs from their victims.”
“So I made a mistake,” Shelley said from the bedroom doorway.
The others turned to look and found her pointing a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at them, FBI combat-style.
“One little mistake,” Shelley repeated. She seemed to tighten her grip on the weapon.
“Shelley, are you going to kill us all to cover yourself?” Stone asked. “That won’t work. People saw you enter the hotel. You’re well known by now to the staff. You can’t kill everybody.”
Shelley thought about it. “Dino,” she said, “I want you to do exactly as I say.”
“That depends on what you say, Shelley,” Dino replied.
“I want you to pick up my bag and hold it open, and, Stone, I want you to rake everything on the desktop into the bag. And don’t either of you try to use a weapon or I will have to kill you all.”
Dino shrugged, picked up the bag, and held it open. Stone raked the pile of junk, including all the cell phones, into the bag.
“Now what?” Dino asked.
“Bring it over here and set it on the floor three feet in front of me,” Shelley said.
Dino did as she directed.
Shelley, keeping her pistol pointed at them, picked up her handbag and backed over to the door. She set it down, opened the door, then picked up the bag and backed out of the suite, letting the door slam behind her.
Dino produced his own weapon and started for the door.
“Let her go, Dino,” Stone said. “We can’t have a gunfight in the hotel.” He got out his cell phone, looked up a number in his frequently called list, and pressed it. He waited for a moment. “This is Stone Barrington. I met with Deputy Director Smith this morning. I want to speak to him immediately. This is an extreme emergency. I’ll hold while you find him.” Stone covered the phone with his hand. “Let’s let the FBI deal with this,” he said.
“We should call the DCPD, too,” Dino r Seminded him.
“Let Kerry do that. His word will carry more weight.”
Dino walked to the terrace door and opened it. Hot D.C. air flooded into the room, as did noise from the traffic below.
“Stone? It’s Kerry Smith. What’s wrong?”
“Listen to me carefully, Kerry: it’s not over. Charlotte Kirby was not the March Hare. The March Hare is Shelley Bach.”
There was a brief silence. “Tell me this is a joke.”
“It is not a joke. We’ve just found the cell phones of the five murdered women in Shelley’s handbag. She pointed a gun at us, then took her bag and left our suite at the Hay-Adams.”
“She’s headed down Sixteenth Street,” Dino called from the terrace. “Her car is a silver SUV, a BMW, I think.”
Stone repeated that information to Kerry Smith. “She’s armed and dangerous, Kerry, and we have no idea where she’s headed.”
“Can you back this up with evidence, Stone?” Kerry asked.
“The evidence is in her handbag,” Stone replied, “and Dino Bacchetti, Holly Barker, and I can testify to that.”
“How many phones were in the bag?”
“Six, in all. One must have been Shelley’s. We called Fair Sutherlin’s phone, and Shelley’s bag began to ring.”
“How about the other four? Can you swear that they belong to the other victims?”
“No, that’s just our assumption. You’d do well to capture that bag, as well as Shelley.”
“All right, I’ll issue the orders immediately. You three stay there. I’m going to send some agents to talk to you.”
“We’ll be right here,” Stone said, and hung up. He put the phone into its holster, went to the bar, and poured himself a stiff bourbon. “Anybody else?”
“Me,” Dino said.
“Me,” Holly said.
Stone poured the drinks, and they all sat down.
Dino was the first to speak. “I’ve been sleeping with a serial murderer since we arrived in this town,” he said.
“Do you know,” Stone said, “that in all our investigating and checking, we never checked the whereabouts of Shelley at the times of the various murders? Not once?”
“When she got called to go to the White House, after Mrs. Kendrick’s murder, she was already at the White House,” Dino said.
“It never occurred to me,” Holly said. “She was the FBI’s lead investigator on all the murders. If she hadn’t hung on to those phones, nobody could ever have made even one of the charges stick.”
“So, she was just one of Brix Kendrick’s conquests,” Dino said.
Stone nodded. “She eliminated Mimi from Kendrick’s life. That makes sense-she wanted him to herself. Then, when he didn’t play that way, she started taking revenge.”
“And she was right among us the whole time,” Dino added. “She knew every detail of our investigation from day one.”
Holly took a swig of her scotch. “And now I’m going to have to call the first lady and director of my agency a">
“That we got it wrong twice,” Stone said. “At our dinner with the Lees, when we told them Charlotte Kirby was the killer, and, of course, now.”
“We’re going to look like assholes,” Dino said. “Amend that: we are assholes.”
“You’re not going to get an argument from me,” Stone said.
Holly said nothing.
Stone got up and started toward the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Dino said. “The FBI will be here in a minute.”
“I’m going to pack,” Stone said. “Then I’m going to answer their questions for as long as it takes. Then I’m going to get the hell out of D.C.”
Dino got up and started toward his bedroom. “Good idea,” he shouted over his shoulder.
“Fellas,” Holly called out, “this may take longer than you think.”
54
Stone answered the doorbell, and special agent Dave King stepped inside and introduced his partner, Special Agent Ann Potter.
“Now,” King said, “tell me what the hell is going on here.”
“Dave,” Stone said, “do you remember that when we visited the crime scene at Fair Sutherlin’s apartment, Shelley Bach asked if you had found her cell phone?”
“Yes, I do,” King said. “We had not found it.”
“That’s because it was in Shelley’s handbag at that moment. She had taken it on an earlier visit that afternoon, after she murdered Ms. Sutherlin.”
“Are you completely nuts?” King asked.
“Listen to me, Dave: Holly had the CIA do a search for the Sutherlin cell phone, and it was at this hotel. She had them call the number, and we heard it go off. It was in Shelley’s handbag.”
“Shelley was here?”
“She was. She was in the bathroom when the phone rang. We emptied out her bag, and there were six phones in it. We believe one was Shelley’s and the others belonged to the five women.”
“You don’t know that,” King said.
“She came out of the bathroom with a gun in her hand, took the bag, and left.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Holly,” Stone said, “can you put traces on the other four cell phones, and on Shelley’s, as well?”
“I’ve got Shelley’s number,” Dino said.
“I’ve got Milly Hart’s,” Stone said. “Don’t bother with the Kendrick phone. She’s been dead for a year. Can you get the numbers for Brandon and Kirby?”
“Of course,” Holly said. “I’ll be right back.” She went into the bedroom to use the phone.