The Scent of Death Read online

  He grabbed a taxi outside of the museum and threw a dollar at the driver.

  "The State Department building, and step on it!"

  The driver picked up the buck and tucked it in his shirt. Putting the hack in gear, he eased into traffic.

  T.J. leaned forward in his seat. "Didn't you hear what I said? Give 'er some gas!"

  The cabbie glanced in the mirror. "For a buck, you get where you're going. You don't get a fire engine."

  T.J. fumed. "Listen, brother, I'm meeting a girl, and I'm late."

  The driver glanced in the mirror again. "How late? And is she pretty?"

  "Really late, really pretty, and she has three really big brothers."

  The cabbie downshifted hard. "Well, why didn't you say so, buddy? We fellas have to stick together!"

  T.J. spent the next few minutes flinging from side to side across the cab so hard he almost wished he were back in the Amazon. He heard sirens behind them, and was shocked to see they were fire trucks, not police cars. But then, had you told him the cab was on fire, he would not have been surprised.

  He managed to grab the back of the front seat and point. "There! There she is!" Ahead he saw Kate step to the curb.

  "You weren't kiddin', buddy. She is pretty."

  "Huh? Where's she going?" For Kate had ducked into a cab of her own and was off.

  "You want we should follow her?"

  "Heck, yeah! She's not supposed to be going anywhere without me!"

  "Pal, I think that ship has sailed. But if you wanna follow 'er, we can." The cab, however, was slowing down.

  "What's going on? I thought you said we could follow her!" The driver gave T.J. a blank look. "Oh, hell! Here!" T.J. threw another dollar on the front seat, and the cab began to move, but not quickly. "All right! Here!" Yet another buck floated down, and the taxi shot forward like a cannonball. "Not so fast! I want to find out where's she going!"

  Kate Reinhold would have given much right then to hear the answer to that same question. She had sat back on her seat, and although she could not say for certain, she believed that her driver was no longer keeping his gun on her. Would this have happened if she had brought T.J. along? Was this simply a kidnapping? Was this man working alone? Did he intend to drive her to a deserted spot and harm her?

  She was not innocent; she had seen many parts of the world less civilized that the United States, and she knew that even here such things occurred. Oddly, if that were the case, she would be much less concerned, because she was supremely confident in her ability to overpower a single assailant, armed or not. But the idea that she could be kidnapped in an entirely unrelated crime immediately after Undersecretary Monet had given her that mysterious note was unlikely in the extreme. That meant that whoever this man was, he was not working alone.

  And that meant that should he manage to convey her to his intended destination, there was very little chance she would ever see any of her family again.

  They were still driving through town; he seemed to want to be careful not to draw suspicion by speeding, and that meant that there were people around. Well, then, if he did not want to draw attention to himself, that was exactly what Kate wanted to do.

  Her kidnapper flicked frequent glances at her via the rear view mirror, and Kate was careful to maintain a frightened expression for his benefit. But also, between looks, she was sliding slowly toward his side of the car. When he looked again, his eyes narrowed, and as he shifted slightly to get a better view, Kate sprang.

  She reached forward, seized his chin with both hands, and pulled up and back as hard as she could. His back arched as he tried to ride with her grip, and his foot pressed hard on the accelerator. The cab jumped and suddenly there were honking horns and screaming pedestrians as everyone in the road tried to get out of the way of the careening vehicle.

  The driver couldn't keep a hand on the wheel and he couldn't bring his pistol to bear. He had to hold the gun in his left hand so he could shift gears, and he could not bring it to bear on Kate because she was directly behind him. Finally he managed to wrap his arm around his body to point the revolver at her; she let go of his chin with her right hand and grabbed the gun, holding the cylinder for dear life.

  The cabbie released the gear shift and managed to dislodge her left arm from his chin, so she seized his nose instead, twisting so hard she thought it might tear off. He screamed and lost any control of the car, skidding across the road. At the last moment he seemed to remember where they were and slammed down hard with both feet on the brake and the clutch. Kate was thrown forward and their heads collided with a hollow thunk that left her dizzy.

  Distantly she heard a car door slam. People were shouting, and the shouting was getting closer. Blinking away the blurriness, Kate jerked to awareness. The driver had a gun--!

  Sunlight invaded the car as the door next to her was yanked open. Strong hands grasped her arm and helped her out. Still blinking, Kate saw that a large crowd had gathered--as they often did when a car ended up athwart the sidewalk, nearly hitting a building.

  "Who was driving? Is he all right?" A man in blue appeared in her vision. A policeman! "Are you all right, ma'am? Do you need a doctor?"

  Before she could answer the cabbie ran up to the cop, pulling on his arm.

  "She tried to kill me! She got in the cab and tried to strangle me!"

  "Wait, hold on a minute," the cop ordered, maneuvering to keep his body between the cabbie and Kate. He gave her a glance to make sure she was staying put. "Are you saying this lady attacked you?"

  "He had a gun," Kate whispered, and cleared her throat. "He had a gun."

  "Hold on!" the cop gripped his own sidearm, pushing the cabbie back. "Are you armed? Turn around and put your hands on the car."

  "I don't have a gun!" the driver shouted, one hand on the cab, one waving in the air.

  The cop grabbed his other hand and slammed in down on the roof. "Don't move."

  "What's going on, Fisher?" demanded a new voice. More cops hove into view, one with stripes on his sleeve.

  "This cab ran up on the curb. Driver says this lady attacked her; she says he had a gun."

  The sergeant looked over little blonde Kate, then at the driver, who was a small man with an Asian cast to his features.

  "Take him in. We'll sweat the story out of him." As Fisher and another officer manhandled the little cabbie away, unmindful of his protests, the sergeant turned to Kate.

  "Would you like to tell me what happened here, miss?"

  And again, before she could answer, another man interrupted her.

  "Kate! Are you okay?"

  "T.J.! What are you doing here?"

  "My question exactly," cut in the sergeant. "This is a police matter. Are you her husband? No? Stand back." He tried to sweep T.J. backward with one arm. But T.J. Gillis had earned the name "Professor Death" on the gridiron by never letting himself be pushed aside, and he had no intention of starting now. The cop's arm met T.J.'s chest--and stopped. It was like trying to move the car off the sidewalk.

  "She's my sister," the ex-footballer said, which was close to the truth. "I'm staying."

  The sergeant sighed. "Fine. You can stay--as long as one of you can tell me what happened here."

  "I was following Kate in a cab. I saw it start to swerve and it almost cracked up. As soon as I could get through the crowd I came right over."

  "Okay, miss, why did the driver-- Wait." He turned back to T.J. "Why were you following her?"

  "Because I was supposed to meet her, but she left the State Department in this cab. So I followed her."

  The sergeant held up a hand. "Hold on. You ran out of the State Department building, miss? Who were you there to see?"

  Kate blew out a breath, glad that she was finally to be allowed to speak for herself.

  "I went there to see Assistant Undersecretary Klimpton Monet. He can vouch for me--"

  "Hey, Fisher!" Officer Fisher returned, and the sergeant gestured to Kate. "Take her in, too. For questio
ning."

  "Questioning?" Kate repeated as she was led away. "For what?"

  "For running out of the State and War Building right before Klimpton Monet's secretary found him dead in his office!"

  Chapter Six

  Ted Sees Red

  The sensation of being dangled in the air held by his collar was not one Professor Death was familiar with. Nor were there many men who could have done it. But as Ted Kane was proving at this very moment, he was at the top of that short list.

  "One simple task! All you had to do was keep Kate out of trouble for one day! If I'd had any concept of the magnitude with which you were capable of screwing that up, I would have quit the force so I could go with her myself!"

  T.J. Gillis' hands and feet were flailing and he couldn't catch a breath, but he made no move to save himself other than gasping and grunting a succession of impassioned but inarticulate pleas and explanations.

  Without warning, Ted dropped him, and T.J. all but collapsed onto the floor, wheezing. Someone was knocking frantically on the door. Ted opened it, crowding the doorway.

  "What?"

  The luckless clerk who had been sent to investigate the riot in Room 411 wilted. "Is everything all right … sir?"

  Ted took a moment to gather himself. "Yeah, everything's fine. We're war buddies, you know? We haven't seen each other in a long time." He dug into his pocked and pulled out some change. "Here. For your trouble." He closed the door. "You owe me six bits, Gillis."

  "She sent me to the museum," T.J. choked out. "She told me I didn't speak the same language as those State Department types and I'd just be in her way."

  Kane shook his head and swept the subject aside with a wave of his hand. "Forget it. Kate does what Kate wants. If you'd refused she'd've found a way to lose you."

  "You're not going to tell Eric about this, are you?"

  Ted was straightening his coat in the mirror. "Of course not. I don't snitch on my friends. Eric'll never find out; Kate's sure not going to tell him."

  T.J. joined him, shouldering in for a slice of mirror space. "So what's our next step?"

  "We don't have a next step. I'm going down to police headquarters and see if I can trade in on some professional courtesy."

  "So what am I supposed to do?"

  Ted shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't you go back to the museum and see if they want to catalog the rocks in your head?"

  Although Ted's LAPD badge got him a quick interview with a detective on duty, it did not net him the answer he sought.

  "Yeah, some dame. I can see coming all the way from California just to talk to her. Unfortunately, Hoover's boys came in and took her off our hands an hour ago."

  As helpful as the Washington city police had tried to be to a brother officer, the FBI was a different kettle of fish.

  "What did you say her name was?"

  Ted gave it.

  "And what did you say you think she was brought in here for?"

  Ted repeated what he had been told at police headquarters.

  "And why do you think we should let you talk to her?"

  "Professional courtesy?"

  The agent looked at Ted as though he were joking. And then he laughed, as though Ted were joking.

  I was wrong, Ted thought thirty seconds later. T.J. could not have screwed this up any more.

  He had not imagined that the FBI employed that many agents. Nor had he imagined that those agents owned that many guns. And he never, ever imagined that so many guns might be pointed his way again.

  "Now, fellas, I'm going to put your friend down. Then I'm going to reach into my coat--" all the guns jerked as one--"I am not going to reach into my coat, but if one of you will, you can pull out my badge. I am a Los Angeles police detective sergeant, and I am going to put your friend down--."

  "Now," a new voice instructed. "Put Special Agent Munroe down right now, Sergeant Kane, and stand very still." A tall, straight-backed man with grey-flecked hair had appeared from a hallway leading into the building. "Agents, lower your weapons." His command was obeyed immediately, although the G-men's expressions said they were not happy about it.

  Ted lowered Munroe, who had long ago stopped laughing, to his feet. The agent stumbled back to hide in the safety of numbers.

  "You're dismissed," the older man said. "Peterson, take the desk. Munroe, go get yourself in order. You're a mess." The agents around him disappeared like water down a drain, save the one man assigned now to the desk. "Kane. Follow me. And don't touch anybody."

  Ted followed the man who already knew his name past various offices to an elevator, which they took to the top floor. The older agent turned into an office without looking to see if Ted was still behind him.

  "Wilbur Matthews, Deputy Director," the man said, standing in front on a large desk. He held out a hand. "And you, Sergeant Kane, are an even more remarkable man that I had imagined. I never thought I'd actually get to meet you. In fact, were I a betting man, I wouldn't have laid down money you were even still alive." He rounded his desk. "Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about."

  "If you say so, Deputy Director."

  "I do say so. You're here to see Miss Reinhold, of course. Don't worry, she's fine. As soon as we realized who she was, we knew she didn’t have anything to do with Monet's death. That cab driver, now, him we want to talk to, but we've got a man watching while the city boys grill him. If he thinks he's just being held on a local beef, he might say something stupid."

  "I'm sorry," Kane said. "Who's Monet? What murder? I got a cable yesterday saying Kate was in jail and I hopped the next available plane. My friend who was here with her wasn't big on the details."

  "Ah. Well, then, you don’t know. Klimpton Monet, Assistant Undersecretary of State, was found dead yesterday afternoon in his office by his secretary. Looks like heart failure; the coroner couldn't find a mark on him. But it must have happened right after Miss Reinhold left his office, and when she was involved in the car accident and said she'd just left him, the cops who had heard the news on their radio thought it was suspicious and took her in. When we heard they had her, of course, we exerted jurisdiction and she's been here all night. But as I say, she is no longer under any suspicion. It looks like Monet did have a heart attack."

  "So why was Kate kidnapped right after she left him?"

  Matthews aimed down his finger at Ted. "That, sergeant, is why Miss Reinhold is still here. But she claims she hasn't the foggiest idea."

  Ted shrugged. "Well, I sure don't."

  Matthews sighed, settling back in his chair. "And I never thought you did. But when I saw you in the lobby, I put two and two together. LA's in the middle of a murder spree, a bunch of people get kidnapped, nobody's seen them since, and suddenly two of them show up at FBI headquarters? You can see where we'd be interested. You can take Miss Reinhold back to her hotel any time you like, sergeant, but you have to tell me something first."

  "What's that?"

  "Where in the name of all that's holy have you been?"

  "You met J. Edgar Hoover?"

  "Yep. After I told Matthews the story of our little trip to the Amazon--the same story I told Willoughby and the chief back in LA--he dragged me in to meet Hoover, and I had to repeat it. Apparently the Invisible Death had been driving the FBI boys in LA nuts…just like everybody else. Hoover was about to start sending in agents from Phoenix and San Francisco, and then we all disappeared, which apparently made headlines everywhere. But at the same time, the murders stopped, which made the public happy and the mayor happy, but the LAPD and the FBI were going crazy looking for us."

  "And then we show up on their doorstep," Kate finished. "No wonder they were stunned."

  "Given that on top of everything else, the assistant undersecretary of state dropped dead right after you visited him, yes, I would say 'stunned' is an apt description. It probably explains why they were so anxious that we pick up T.J. and get to the airport. I'm ready to get out of here myself. When the chief told me to take a vacation, I
didn't expect I'd spend it chasing after you."

  "But we can't go yet," Kate said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I still don't know why Monet gave me this." And she pulled out the dead man's note and handed it over.

  Chapter Seven

  Mystery at Sea

  "You have to admit, there's nothing like an ocean voyage." Damien took in a deep breath and let it out savoringly.

  "The last time I took a trip across the ocean, it was with 5,000 other guys who smelled like the Belgian front," Professor Death said.

  "I'll grant you, it's nicer when you aren't worrying about being sunk by a U-boat." The red-haired chemist glanced down the railing to where Kate stood alone. "She still mad at you?"

  T.J. followed his gaze. "Yep. But it could be worse. My name could be Ted Kane."

  Damien turned around and leaned against the railing, checking to see that the object of their conversation could not hear them. Since she was upwind, it seemed safe.

  "See, that's a woman for you. If I were going to be mad at somebody, it'd be you, because you messed up and she almost got killed. But Kate--she's madder at Ted than she is at you, because he wouldn't let her stay around where she almost got killed."

  "Yeah, what'd Ted do? I mean, if Eric had been there, he would have done the same thing, and she's not mad at him."

  Damien's eyes flicked in the girl's direction, but she had not moved. "Oh, I think she's mad at Eric, all right," he said softly. "I think she's always mad at Eric. But that, my friend, is an argument I will never interfere in."

  The wind coming off the water was cold, even through her gloves and scarf and hat, but Kate relished it. It suited her mood, that chill, matching the fury she was trying so hard to hold onto, even after a transcontinental plane ride, the preparations for this journey, and two days at sea. They all treated her so condescendingly! Klimpton Monet had told her she should go home and marry some boy he was sure was waiting for her--although Monet was dead, so it was hard to stay angry at him. But the men at the FBI were more interested in her legs than her story, but when Ted got there he got an audience with J. Edgar Hoover! And Ted--how dare he drag her out of Washington when she had a clue to her parents' fate literally in her hand?