Sundays Are for Murder

She managed to knock on the A.D.’s door while standing behind him. When a deep voice from within ordered, “Come in,” Alice turned the doorknob, then stepped back in order to allow Nick access to the inner office. She gave the impression of fading into the background.

In contrast to his secretary, Assistant Director George Kelly was larger than life. His face was florid and when he rose from behind his desk, he was on eye level with Nick’s six-foot-three-inch frame. But while Nick was athletic, Kelly’s days in that department were long over. Broad shouldered and heavyset, Kelly carried his mass strictly thanks to his wife’s extraordinary cooking.

The man’s handshake was firm, hardy. He looked at Nick from head to foot, his eyes passing over him evenly like a giant scanner.

“Get yourself squared away downstairs, Special Agent Brannigan?” were his first words of greeting.

“Just finished.”

The nod of approval was short, as if the assistant director were stifling a sneeze that hadn’t dared to come out. “Good. Then we can get right to it.”

Nick hadn’t been briefed by anyone from his old office as to the reason for his transfer other than someone had taken early retirement in the field office.

“‘It,’ sir?”

“You’re part of the task force,” Kelly announced without preamble, then realized that he’d gotten ahead of himself. “You’ve probably heard that we have ourselves a serial killer on the loose.”

Nick inclined his head. He thought of the newspaper he’d read on the flight over. The story had been buried on page twenty-three of the first section, but it had caught his attention.

“I heard something about it,” he said vaguely. Seven years with the Bureau had taught him never to give away anything unless pinned down and asked.

Kelly merely nodded his head. His thinning red hair was fading, evolving into the color of unripened strawberries. The florescent lighting managed to find all the sparser areas and reflect off them. Nick tried not to notice and kept his eyes on the A.D.’s flushed round face.

His new superior made no effort at more of an explanation. Instead, he rounded his desk and headed for the door.

“Come with me. You need to meet the others.”

BILL CHAN WIPED AWAY traces of the raspberry jelly that had oozed out of his doughnut. His latest conquest worked at a bakery three blocks away from the building and he made a point of stopping there each morning for a double sugar hit. Abby’s lips were almost as sweet as the jelly was. He tossed the napkin into his basket just as Charley hurried in.

Turning, he gave her an appreciative look. Her navy skirt hugged curves he was the first to appreciate. “Hey Charley, you got legs this morning.”

Charley dropped her purse into her bottom desk drawer, then shoved it closed with her foot. “I’ve got legs every morning.”

Bill leaned back in his chair, deliberately eyeing her. “Yeah, but they’re not usually out in plain view.”

Not to be left out, Sam Daniels, Bill’s partner and the other man in the room, added his two cents. “And a very nice view it is, too.”

The relationship Charley had with the two partners was one deeply rooted in friendship and mutual respect. Which was why the hazing was generally good-natured, and at times relentless.

She grinned, leaning her face in close to the older man’s. “Behave. Especially you, Daniels, or I’ll call your wife and tell her you’re trying to kick up your heels where you shouldn’t.”

In reply, Sam drained the last of his coffee and set down his less-than-sanitary mug.

“Seriously Charley, how come you’ve never gotten married, or at least heavily involved?” Sam asked.

She shrugged, deadpanning. “Just lucky, I guess.”

Placing himself in her path as she went to get her own mug of coffee, Bill raised and lowered his dark eyebrows. “I’m just the man you’ve been waiting for.”

She laughed shortly, moving around him. “In your dreams, Billy-boy.”

Bill sighed, covering his heart.

Charley poured inky-black coffee into a mug whose interior was only slightly lighter. “Anyone got any details yet?”

Sam shook his head. “We’re all sitting tight, waiting on the A.D.”

She sighed. The nature of the game. Hurry up and wait. “Might as well get some paperwork done,” she murmured half to herself.

At the coffeemaker for her second hit of caffeine in less than ten minutes, Charley felt her attention divert to the noise in the doorway. She turned around as the A.D. entered with someone she didn’t recognize. A very tall, good-looking someone.

A witness, she wondered hopefully.

THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR brought Nick into a room that was not much larger than Kelly’s had been. The main difference was that four desks had been crammed into the room. Lining the walls were bulletin boards perched above aging file cabinets. Photographs of the Sunday Killer’s victims ran across the boards. Each bright, young face had a column of facts directly beneath it.

Nick felt the energy in the room mingled with a sense of futility.

There were three people in front of him, two men and a woman. One less than the number of desks. Nick wondered who the fourth desk belonged to.

And had a feeling he knew.

“That’s Special Agent Bill Chan,” Kelly said as he nodded toward the young Asian in a designer suit. In response, Bill smiled broadly at him. Not standing on ceremony, he crossed the room and extended his hand in welcome.

“Over there’s Special Agent Sam Daniels,” Kelly continued.

Prematurely middle-aged, Sam looked as comfortable as Bill was dapper. His clothes gave the appearance of being chosen for ease rather than for style. They might have even been slept in.

The man nodded in his direction, choosing to look him over from a distance. Sam’s body language was deceptively lax. Nick had a feeling that was how the man operated and that not much got by the older veteran. Sam’s thick mustache effectively covered his lips, hiding his expression.

Nick moved over toward him and shook his hand.

“And this,” Kelly said, nodding at the remaining person in the room, “is Special Agent Charlotte Dow.”

The woman moved toward him like fog encroaching the moors, telegraphing an inherent sexuality with every step. Her eyes washed over him. Nick felt something stir in his gut. He would have had to be dead not to have felt it.

“I’d say it was nice to meet you,” she said in a voice that made him think of whiskey being poured into a glass, neat, “but the assistant director hasn’t given us your name yet.”

Her eyes were an intense Florida ocean blue. “I can give my own name,” he said.

She cocked her head. “And that is?”

“Nick Brannigan.”

Kelly stepped into the arena. “Your new partner, Charley.”

It took everything Charley had not to let her mouth drop open.

CHAPTER FOUR