Buch lesen: «Colorado Crime Scene»

Chapter One

Luke Renfro never forgot a face. The blessing and the curse of this peculiar talent defined his days and haunted his nights. The faces of people he knew well and those he had merely passed on the street crowded his mind.

He sorted through this portrait gallery of strangers and friends as he studied the people who hurried past him on a warm, sunny morning on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, searching for anyone familiar, while at the very back of his mind whispered the question that plagued him most: What if he’d overlooked the one person he most needed to find?

He shoved aside that familiar anxiety and reviewed the details of his assignment today: young Caucasian male, probably early to midtwenties, slight, athletic build, five-eight or five-nine. He’d been clean shaven in the surveillance photos Scotland Yard had forwarded from London, his brown hair cropped very short. But even if he’d grown out his beard or dyed his hair, Luke would recognize him. It was what he did. It was why the FBI had recruited him and others like him, copying an idea implemented by the Brits—to assemble a group of “super-recognizers” to look for known criminals and stop crime before it happened.

Also on the list of people he hoped to spot was a fortysomething man with a swarthy complexion and iron-gray curls, and a stocky Asian man with a shaved head and a scar beside one eye. If he spotted any of these people, he was to bring them into headquarters for questioning.

He crossed the street and strolled past a row of restaurants starting to fill up with the early lunch crowd. A strong breeze made the banners strung overhead pop and snap. Welcome, Racers! declared one. Colorado Cycling Challenge! proclaimed another. The man Luke was searching for wouldn’t miss the race, though Luke hoped to find him before he ever had a chance to attend.

A flash of honey-blond hair in his peripheral vision sent a jolt of recognition through him, a physical shock, like finding something important he hadn’t even realized he’d lost. He whirled around in time to see the woman step onto one of the shuttle buses that ran up and down the length of the pedestrian mall. Heart pounding, he took off down the sidewalk after the bus, ignoring the annoyed looks from the hipster couple he jostled in his haste.

He hadn’t expected to see her here today, though logically he shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d been in some of those Scotland Yard videos also, and the image of her heart-shaped face framed by a stylish short haircut, her wide hazel eyes staring into the camera from beneath a fringe of honey-colored bangs, had stayed with him, standing out from the sea of anonymous faces filed away in his memory.

She stepped off the shuttle four blocks down, in front of a chain drugstore, the breeze blowing her swept-aside bangs into her eyes. She stopped and brushed the stray locks off her face, allowing him time to take in her skinny jeans, athletic shoes, pale green tank top, and a scarf of mingled blue and green knotted at her throat. Then she started walking again, long, confident strides covering ground quickly. Staying back half a block, he followed her as she headed to a boutique hotel and entered the lobby. Luke hurried to catch up, weaving his way through a family unloading luggage at the front door and two men consulting a street map just inside the entrance.

Soft classical music filled the lobby, which was decorated in Victorian red velvet and gold brocade. Luke scanned the crowd of tourists and businessmen, but the woman wasn’t among them. A check of the elevators showed both were stopped on upper floors. Had she opted for the stairs, or passed through to the hotel bar? He hesitated. Did he enter the bar and search for her, or return to the mall and his original quarry?

“Excuse me.”

He turned and stared into the angry eyes of the woman he’d been following. Hazel eyes of mingled green and gold, fringed with gold lashes. Eyes that had disturbed his dreams, though in those fantasies, they’d been considerably friendlier than they were right now. “Who are you, and why are you following me?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bluffing was as important a skill for an agent as it was for a poker player.

“I’m not stupid. I saw you following me.” She folded her arms under her breasts; he wondered if she was aware how that emphasized her cleavage. If he pointed this out, she’d no doubt add “sexist pig” to whatever other unflattering descriptions she’d ascribed to him. “I want to know why.”

She was calling his bluff. Time to fold. But that would mean leaving and walking away, and he hadn’t gone to all this trouble to do that. Maybe a better answer was to show her his cards—or at least some of them. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the folder with his credentials. “Special Agent Luke Renfro. FBI.”

Her eyes widened, and some of the color left her cheeks. “What is this about?” The words came out as a whisper, and all her bravado vanished. In fact, she looked ready to faint, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants.

Her reaction—more fear and guilt than an innocent citizen ought to exhibit—had all his instincts sounding alarms, his senses on high alert. He touched her arm lightly, though he was prepared to hang on if she made a run for it. “Why don’t we go into the bar and talk?” He nodded toward the hotel bar, which at this time of day was almost deserted.

“All right.” She allowed him to usher her into the bar, to a red leatherette booth. The lighting was subdued, the music almost inaudible. Luke sat across from the blonde, and the waitress, who’d been seated at one end of the bar, hurried over to them. “I’ll have a glass of iced tea,” Luke told her. He looked to the woman across from him. “Would you like something stronger?”

“Just water.” She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and settled her hands flat on the table in front of her. Her nails were short, polished a deep blue. She wore silver earrings that glinted in the bar light when she turned her head to look at him. Her hair, thick and shiny and sexy, curled around her ears and the nape of her neck.

It bothered him that this woman had stuck in his head when so many others didn’t. Maybe that’s why he’d followed her, to see if up close he could identify the reason he’d become so fixated on her. But maybe it wasn’t simple attraction at work here. Maybe his cop instincts recognized some guilt in her he couldn’t yet put into words. He didn’t want to think of her as a suspect, but he had to if he was going to do his job correctly.

“Why is the FBI following me?” she asked, reminding him they were alone again.

“First, tell me your name, since you already know mine.”

She hesitated, then said, “Morgan Westfield.”

The name itself didn’t set off any alarm bells. Though his photographic memory for faces didn’t carry over to names or facts and figures, he’d learned the names of key suspects in his current investigation—at least, the names they knew. A series of terrorist bombings had rocked the cycling world in the past two years, with bombs killing and injuring racers and spectators alike at key races around the world. The Bureau hoped that by sending members of the team they’d code-named Search Team Seven to Denver they could prevent another attack. Was Morgan somehow involved and Luke hadn’t realized it?

“You were following me and you don’t know my name?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You were at the Tour de France last month,” he said. “And the Tour of Britain before that.” But not at the Paris-Roubaix the year before. Or maybe she’d managed to stay out of range of the security cameras for that event.

“You’ve been following me all this time?” Her voice rose, and anger returned the color to her cheeks.

He hadn’t been following her, but maybe fate or instinct or blind luck had led him to her. The waitress brought their drinks and glanced at them curiously. “Will there be anything else?”

“No, thank you.” He handed her a ten. “Keep the change.”

She stuffed the bill into her apron and retreated to the bar once more. Morgan leaned over the table toward him. “Why is the FBI following me?” she demanded again, tension straining her face.

“I’m not following you,” he said. “I’m actually looking for someone else. But I remembered you and was curious.”

“You remembered me?” She sat back, frowning. “But we’ve never met.”

“No. But I’ve studied surveillance videos of both races.” And many others. “I remembered seeing your face.”

“That’s crazy,” she said. She didn’t seem as nervous now, but more annoyed, as she had been when she’d first challenged him in the lobby. “There were thousands of people at those races. Hundreds of thousands. Why would you remember me?”

“It’s what I do. It’s my job, actually. I’m paid to remember faces, and to recognize them when I see them again.”

She took a long drink of water, her eyes never leaving his. “I’m not sure that explanation makes sense.”

“You know how some people have photographic memories, right?”

“You mean they can read a phone book or encyclopedia and remember everything on the pages? I thought that was just something in movies.”

“No, it’s a real phenomenon. My brother is like that. Once he reads something, it’s committed to memory.” A familiar ache squeezed his chest at the mention of his twin brother. He’d give anything to know where Mark was now. To be assured he was safe.

“But it’s different for you?” Morgan prompted.

He nodded. “With me, it works a little differently. I never forget a face. Not if I’ve spent even a few seconds focusing on it.”

“I thought they had computers that could do that—scan video for familiar faces and stuff.”

“Facial-recognition software can’t compete with the human brain,” he said. “After riots in London in 2011, Scotland Yard’s team of super-recognizers identified 1200 suspects from video surveillance. Computer software identified only one person.”

“So I shouldn’t be flattered that you remembered me—it’s just something you do.”

“Some faces are more pleasant to remember than others.” He smiled, but she continued to regard him with suspicion.

Fine. He needed to be more suspicious of her, as well. “What were you doing at the races?” he asked.

“I’m a writer. I was covering the races for Road Bike Magazine.”

“So you work for the magazine?”

“No, I’m a freelancer. I write for a lot of different publications, though my specialty is bicycle racing.”

“Are you in Denver to cover the Colorado Cycling Challenge?”

“What if I am?”

And what if she was here to do more than write about the races? “I’m here for the race, too,” he said. “We’ll probably see each other again.”

“I never saw you at those other races.”

“I wasn’t there.” Before she could ask the obvious question, he said, “I saw you on surveillance video.”

She closed her eyes. Maybe she was counting to ten before she went off on him. When she opened them again, her voice was calm but chilly. “Why don’t we stop this game of twenty questions right now and you give me some straight answers. What is this about? Why were you looking at surveillance videos of me? Why were you following me just now?”

“You want the truth?”

“Of course I want the truth.”

“I wasn’t looking for you on those videos, but you stuck in my head. I remember a lot of people, but most of them don’t make any strong impression on me. But you did. I wanted to meet you and try to figure out why.” That was the truth in its simplest form. Basic attraction leads to impulsive action. His bosses would not approve.

“Seriously?” She stared at him.

He nodded. “You said you wanted the truth, and that’s it.”

“I can’t decide if that’s the worst pickup line I ever heard, or the best.” Some of the tension went out of her and she sat back, studying him.

“You have to give me points for originality,” he said.

This coaxed the beginnings of a smile from her. She had full lips, highlighted with a pink gloss. He wondered what it would feel like kissing those lips, then he pushed the thought away.

“So how does this memory thing of yours work?” she asked. “Do you just automatically remember everyone you’ve ever seen?”

“I have to focus on them for a few seconds, but yes, after that I’ll recognize them again.” As a small child, he thought everyone related to the world that way. Once he’d learned a face, he never forgot it. He remembered not only that he’d seen a person before, but where and what they’d been doing. Most of the time, it wasn’t a particularly useful talent, not like Mark’s memory for facts and written information. That talent had allowed him to breeze through school. He’d earned his PhD in physics before his twenty-fifth birthday, while Luke had been only an average student.

Then the FBI had come calling and he’d found his niche, the one place where his particular skill could make a difference.

Two men entered the bar, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, engrossed in conversation. He’d seen the older one earlier on the street, buying coffee from a food cart. The other one was the wrong race for any of his suspects, though he filed the man’s face away for future reference, as was his habit.

“You’re doing it now, aren’t you?” Morgan asked. “Memorizing people.”

“It’s my job,” he repeated.

“Is that why you’re here—to memorize people at the bike race?”

“Let’s just say I’m here for work, and leave it at that.”

But he knew before he said the words that she wasn’t the type to leave it. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you? Someone else you saw on those surveillance videos.” She went very still; he wondered if she was holding her breath, waiting for his answer.

“I really can’t talk about my assignment with a civilian. It’s confidential.” Maybe he’d already said too much.

“But I’m free to make an educated guess. And since you are a federal agent, I’d guess that you’re here because of the terrorist who’s been targeting bike races.”

“Let’s just say that after the bombings in Paris and London, there’s a big law enforcement presence at this race.” But only one small group was there with his assignment—to look for people who had been present when the other bombings occurred and bring them in for questioning. Only a handful of people had shown up at both the races where bombs had detonated, all of them men. Which didn’t mean others weren’t involved. That Morgan wasn’t involved.

“There was serious discussion about canceling this race,” she said. “The organization was just getting back on its feet after the doping scandals of several years ago, and now some nut job is setting off bombs at some of the biggest races.” She leaned toward him again, her voice low. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re looking for the bomber. Do you know who he is?”

Was she asking the question as a journalist or out of idle curiosity—or because she had a more personal interest in the answer? “I can’t say.”

“Of course, you know who he is. You said before you were here searching for someone who wasn’t me. You’re looking for the bomber.” She stared into his eyes, as if she could see into his head and decipher the image of the bomber there. “Why can’t you tell me who it is? I attend a lot of these races. Maybe I can help you find him.”

“Or maybe he’s a friend of yours and you’ll run right to him and tell him the FBI is looking for him.”

She gasped. “You don’t really think that, do you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you but what you’ve told me.”

She tried to look wounded, but mostly she looked afraid. Because he’d hit too close to the truth? “Why does it matter so much to you?” he asked.

She stood, bumping the table and sending water from her glass sloshing onto the surface. “I have to go,” she said.

“What did I say to upset you?” He stood, but she had already brushed past him, hurrying out of the bar and into the lobby.

He started after her but stopped in the door of the bar. What would he do when he caught up to her? Clearly, she was done talking to him. And he had no reason to keep her, only a gnawing uneasiness that something wasn’t right.

Moving cautiously, keeping objects and other people between himself and Morgan, he followed her across the lobby. She stopped in front of the elevators and pulled out her phone, punching in a number. The anxiety on her face increased as she listened for a few seconds, then ended the call. She hadn’t said anything, and he had the impression whoever she’d been trying to reach hadn’t answered.

Had she been calling the bomber to warn him? His stomach knotted with a mixture of anger and disappointment. He didn’t want her to be guilty, but he couldn’t discard all the evidence that told him something wasn’t right.

The elevator doors slid open and she stepped inside. He moved from behind the pillar that had shielded him and her eyes met his. Beautiful eyes, filled with an aching sadness. The sense of loss hit him like a punch. He recognized that grief because he’d felt it himself. Who had she lost, and what had he done to cause her such fresh pain?