Eleventh Hour Read Free Page B

stay in the city. Not at the rectory, either, not there.”
    “Okay, a hotel downtown, then. It’ll be FBI approved, so you can count on it to be basic. You’ll call if there’s anything I can do.”
    “Yes, thank you, Savich. About my cases—”
    “I’ll see that they’re covered. Go.”
    The two men shook hands. Savich watched Dane make his way through the large room with workstations for nine special agents, only six of them occupied at the moment. His wife, Special Agent Lacey Sherlock Savich, was in a meeting with Jerry Hollister in the third-floor DNA analysis unit, comparing a DNA sample taken from a Boston rape-and-murder victim with a DNA sample from the major suspect. If they got a match, the guy was toast.
    Ollie Hamish, his second in command, was in Wisconsin consulting with the Madison police on a particularly vicious series of murders, all connected to a local radio station that played golden oldies. Go figure, Ollie had said, and started humming “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”
    Savich hated crazies. He hated unsolved craziness even more. It amazed and terrified him what the human mind could conjure up. And now Dane’s brother, a priest.
    He dialed Millie’s extension, told her to make arrangements. Then he walked over and flipped on his electric kettle to make a cup of strong Earl Grey tea. He poured his tea into an oversized FBI mug and went back to MAX, his lap-top, and booted up.
    He started with an e-mail to Chief Dexter Kreider.

    SAN FRANCISCO
    At three-thirty on Monday afternoon, San Francisco time, after a five-hour-and-ten-minute flight from Dulles, Dane Carver threaded his way through the large open room toward Inspector Delion’s overloaded desk. He paused a moment, studying him. The older man, with his bald, shiny head and thick handlebar mustache, was hunched over a computer keyboard, typing furiously. Dane sat down in the chair beside his desk and said nothing, just looked at the man at his work. It was like every other large cop shop he’d ever been in. Cops with their suit jackets hung over the backs of their chairs, their ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, a young Hispanic guy in handcuffs lounging in the side chairs, trying on sneers, a couple of lawyers in three-piece suits doing their best to intimidate—nothing at all unusual for a Monday afternoon. A decimated box of jelly donuts lay on a battered table in the small kitchen, a coffee machine that looked to be from the last century beside it, along with stacks of paper cups, packets of sugar, and a carton of milk Dane wouldn’t touch in a million years.
    “Who’re you?”
    Dane came to his feet and extended his hand. “I’m Dane Carver. You called me last night about my brother.”
    “Oh yeah, right.” He rose, shook Dane’s hand. “I’m Vincent Delion.” He sat again, waved Dane to do the same. “Hey, I’m real sorry about your brother. I called you because I knew you’d want to hear what was going on.”
    The brothers had been close, Delion knew from Carver’s sister, Eloise DeMarks. And Delion wasn’t blind. The man was hurting, bad. He was also a Fed. All the Feds Delion had ever met hadn’t seemed to feel much of anything. They all just wanted to press their wing tips down hard on his neck. Of course, he’d never seen a Fed in this situation before. Murder of a family member—something very personal, something over which he had no control at all. It couldn’t get tougher than this.
    Dane said, his voice effortlessly calm and compelling—it was a very good interview voice, Delion thought—“Yes, I appreciate that. Tell me what you have.”
    “I’m really sorry about this, but the first thing we need to do is go over to the morgue and you need to identify the body, not that there’s any doubt, just procedure, you know the drill. Or maybe you don’t. You ever been a local cop?”
    Dane shook his head. “I always wanted to be an FBI agent. But yes, I know the drill.”
    “Yeah, I hear that’s