The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [82]
“I don’t mind doing it.”
“I want you to stay on Mary, in case phone calls are no longer enough. Oh, and here’s a new name for you. Larry Tanz. He supposedly owns the restaurant where Mary Olsen used to work, and where Amanda Quincy worked up until the time of her death. I’d be curious to know if he suddenly paid his former employee a personal visit.”
“Frightened women can be consoled long distance for only so long. . . .”
“Absolutely.” Rainie hesitated. “You carry, right? All the time? Heavily?”
De Beers gave her a look. “Uh oh. Now is when I get that not-so-fresh feeling anymore.”
“We have evidence that my client’s daughter didn’t die in an automobile accident as originally reported,” Rainie told him. “It was murder. Then last night in Philadelphia . . . Most likely the same man murdered my client’s ex-wife. Brutally.”
De Beers arched a brow. He got up. He found a folded newspaper on the side bookshelf. He tossed it on top of the desk so Rainie could see the headline. “High Society House of Horrors.” Some enterprising photographer had managed to snag a crime-scene photo of the hallway and its endless rows of bloody handprints.
“I’d call this brutal,” de Beers said.
“That would be the one.”
“Says here she was the former wife of an FBI agent. Which would make your client—”
“I can see how you’ve succeeded as a private investigator.”
De Beers sat down again and studied her face. “Let me recap, darlin’. You want me to tail a woman who will hopefully meet a man whose current hobby is taking on the Federal Bureau of Intimidation and murdering the ones they love?”
“Just one man’s loved ones. It’s personal.”
“Personal?” His gaze strayed to the gruesome newspaper photo. “Hell, you’re talking a psychopath with balls of steel.”
“Before you kick him, make sure you put on combat boots.”
De Beers sighed. “I wished you would’ve told me yesterday that I should be carrying around kryptonite.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”
De Beers sighed again. “Okay. Looks like I’m breaking out my TEC-DC9 and leaving my thirty-eight Special for backup. Anything else you can tell me about the biggest badass in town? Name, age, description?”
Rainie got out her notebook. “We have record of two aliases. Tristan Shandling, used recently in Philadephia to approach Elizabeth Quincy. Then the name Ben Zikka, used approximately twenty months ago here in Virginia, to approach Amanda Quincy. I haven’t gotten to run down Ben Zikka yet, but the name Tristan Shandling wasn’t backed up. We knew it was an alias the minute we tried to run it through the system.”
“You’d think a man taking on a Feebie would be more careful.”
“He uses the aliases to approach women outside of law enforcement. What normal woman bothers with something like a routine security check?”
De Beers nodded his agreement. “Makes my life easier. I’ll get a list of names from the phone records and find out which ones stand up to scrutiny. Then you sic your state trooper on the ones that don’t.”
Rainie was struck by another thought. “Actually, to get an account with the phone company, the man will have to document the name, and we do know one ID that’s fleshed out.”
“That name?”
“FBI agent, Pierce Quincy.”
De Beers gave her a look. She smiled tightly. “He stole my client’s identity. No one realized it until two days ago. The Bureau has a whole case team on it now, but given the murder in Philadelphia . . . The fraud investigation is probably slipping through the cracks at the moment.”
“Balls of steel,” de Beers muttered. “Balls of steel. Well, let’s return to what we do know. Subject’s description?”
“I have two. They don’t match.”
“Of course.”
“As Ben Zikka, recovering drunk twenty months ago, our guy was described as being five ten, overweight, balding, and frumpy. According to members of AA, Zikka claimed to have some sort of tie with law enforcement. This information is only two hours old, so I haven’t gotten very far with it.”
“Other descript?”
“In Philly, he used the name Tristan Shandling. According to a witness, he’s tall, well-built, and