“I worked for the Hartford Courant. I wrote an article about him. When Linc was in the hospital, he came, every single day. When Linc died, he, well, he helped me, comforted me. I came to believe he could really speak to Linc sometimes, believed it to my soul. He spoke to Linc several times after we married. And now August is dead too.”
She turned away from Cheney, walked to the dark brown leather sofa, and sat down. She leaned her head back, her hands limp in her lap. “I never asked anyone else to contact Linc for me. I guess I’ve never believed in any of the rest of them, only August.” Julia looked at the empty fireplace grate. “People believed I married August for his money. What with the money from King Fahd, I had no need to marry anyone. I was fine all by myself, and I had a skill. I’d already proved I could support Linc and myself.”
“Didn’t your husband send you money?” Her smile was bitter. “Yes, but I put all of it in Line’s college fund. I guess it was some sort of weird point of honor to me. After Linc died, I gave all the money to a children’s medical research foundation. I, well, I simply couldn’t bear to use it.”
After a moment of silence, Julia said, looking away from him, looking at something he couldn’t see. “Everyone died. Everyone I ever loved has died.”
He didn’t think, simply said right out, “I won’t die anytime soon, Julia. And you won’t either. And we’re going to find out why August died, together. Tell me more about your husband—I know he was quite a bit older than you. From reading the inspectors’ notes, that was why they believed you wanted out. They believed you wanted a divorce, he wouldn’t give you one, so you had him murdered.”
“I know.”
“Were you his first wife?”
“No. August married for the first time when he was in his late thirties—yes, I know, a late bloomer. His first wife, a musician, died after only a couple of years, of pancreatic cancer. She was only in her twenties, younger than I am now, as a matter of fact. He didn’t remarry. When I was interviewing him for my newspaper, we spent a good deal of time together. I liked him; he seemed to really like me as well. I always held back, truth be told, because his big claim to fame was that he was a psychic medium and I simply didn’t know if I could buy that—until Linc.
“He didn’t demand sex from me, never even seemed interested, maybe not a big surprise since he was so much older. And I was frozen anyway. But I cared deeply about him, and he about me. I admired him, I was loyal to him, faithful to him, although that doesn’t make any grand statement about my morals—I was simply never tempted. If someone else had come along before he was murdered, well, that might have made things difficult.”
“Are your folks still living, Julia?”
“I suspect you already know most of these answers. Isn’t everything in those files?”
“A lot of it, yes, but it’s not from your mouth, with your feelings, your own thoughts.”
“They died skiing at Vail the year before Linc died. It was a stupid accident, really, and entirely their fault. Both Dad and Mom loved to ski off-trail, always ignored all the off-limits warnings. An avalanche got them in a posted avalanche area. No, Cheney, I don’t have any brothers or sisters, as you most certainly already know.”
She looked suddenly beaten down and he hated it. He carefully laid all the files back onto August Ransom’s desktop. He started to tell her—he didn’t know what—when his cell phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Cheney, Savich here. Get to a computer, I’m sending you an e-mail with an attachment of the guy we believe tried to kill Julia Ransom. We need you and her to verify. Call back whether it’s the guy and I’ll tell you about him.”
“You got it, Savich,” Cheney said. “Let’s get on your computer, Julia.”
CHAPTER 24
Cheney called up the attachment and stared at the full-color image of the man’s face. “That’s him,” Julia said immediately. “I’ll never forget his face.”
Cheney nodded, and used the study’s landline to punch in Savich’s number.
“That him?” Savich said.
Cheney pressed speakerphone on. “Savich, this is Julia Ransom. Julia, this is Agent Dillon Savich. He ran the sketch through a special FBI facial recognition program, picked this one as the most likely.”
Julia said without hesitation, “Yes, that’s him, Agent Savich. Please tell me you’ve caught him.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Ransom, we’re not the ones to catch him, that’s the SFPD. I’ll be sending his photo out to Captain Paulette, telling him you’ve confirmed his identity. The SFPD will have this photo plastered all over the Bay Area in no time. You are certain, Mrs. Ransom?”
“Yes, Agent Savich, I’m very sure.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Cheney asked.
“His name is Xavier Makepeace. His mother’s Jamaican, his father a Brit. He’s thirty-seven years old, very successful in his chosen career, which, as you may have already guessed, is assassin.
“I would have to say that as a professional assassin, it wasn’t bright of him to try for you a second time, Mrs. Ransom, since it turns out your initial police sketch was right on and there was already an APB out on him. If he moves again at all, this picture should nail him.”
“The problem,” Sherlock said, “is that this man’s got a good deal of pride in his work, doesn’t accept failure easily. Oh yes, I’m Agent Sherlock, Dillon’s wife. That’s Agent Dillon Savich.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes, we are,” Savich said. “Cheney, what have you got?”
“There haven’t been any alerts yet from local doctors or hospitals and no sighting of Makepeace as of yet. I agree with Sherlock. This guy may not be ready to give up. Being bested by an amateur and a woman—that sure wouldn’t look good on his resume. And Julia actually shot him.”
Sherlock said, “Steve in Behavioral Sciences believes what he did is out of character. He should have left the city by now. He thinks Makepeace might be taking this personally now, seeing her as his nemesis, that he’s not about to turn tail and head out of town. He’s got to see her die. Sorry you had to hear that, Mrs. Ransom.”
“But I shot him,” Julia said. “I had to shoot him. Shouldn’t he be as afraid as I am?” She paused a minute, sighed. “Well, isn’t that a stupid thing to say? He’s about as afraid of me as he is an ant. Sorry, I feel like I’m on Mars here. Do you have any idea who hired him?”
Savich said, “Captain Paulette is the man to keep you posted on that. Maybe if they can catch Makepeace, they can find out.” But Savich didn’t believe that for a minute and neither did Cheney or Sherlock. Xavier Makepeace was a professional. Even if the cops managed to capture him, he wouldn’t talk.
Cheney said, “You said Makepeace’s dad is a Brit. Does the son have an English accent?”
Savich said, “We don’t know. But he’s worked all over the world. He could probably manage whatever accent he wants. And he seems to have no particular loyalties. We think he’s worked for the Israelis, for the mullahs, even for MI6 on one occasion. He has no standard M.O.—well, he does prefer to garrote when he can, using wire—but he uses what’s expedient to him in the given situation, he’s very thorough in his planning, at times even bizarrely complex, and he’s been at it for nearly fourteen years. Very few have gotten close to him, and no one close enough to catch him.”
Julia said, “August was garroted.”
“Yes, we know; soon so will the SFPD,” Savich said.
Julia said in a small voice, “He’s very scary.”
“Yes, he is,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly. “But you’ve got Cheney with you. He’s a rottweiler.”
Savich said, “Mrs. Ransom—”
“Please, call me Julia.”
“Julia, do you remember your husband having a client by the name of Thomas Pallack?”