Jumping to her feet, Sam ran for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To try to play straight with him!" she called over her shoulder, racing toward the back hall and the stairwell there. She shoved past a startled Captain Holland and his group, who were still standing by the one-way mirror, talking about Valente's visit. Praying the elevators would be as crowded and slow as they usually were, she slammed against the heavy stairwell door and sprinted down two flights of stairs, her footsteps ringing loudly, her heartbeat almost matching them.

CHAPTER 56.

The first floor was crowded with the usual mix of uniformed police officers, ordinary citizens, and attorneys heading in different directions, but Valente and Buchanan were nowhere in sight. Sam sprinted to the main doors, shoved one open, and saw the two men walking swiftly down the steps toward a black Mercedes limousine gliding up to the curb. "Mr. Valente!" she shouted.

Both men turned and watched her run toward them, Buchanan with a frown of surprise, Valente with an expression of scathing disbelief.

Specks of snow were swirling in the wind as Sam wrapped her arms around herself and tried to take control of a situation for which she was neither prepared, nor even dressed. "Mr. Valente," Sam began, "there are some questions, I'd-"

Buchanan interrupted her, his tone as frigid as the wind flattening her thin shirt against her skin. "You had your chance to ask your questions upstairs, Detective. This is an inappropriate place for whatever you have in mind."

Sam ignored the irate lawyer and focused the full force of her appeal on his cynical client. Trying to "play it straight," she said sincerely, "Mr. Valente, I'm a minority of one, but I've never been convinced that either you or Mrs. Manning murdered her husband."

"If this is a good-cop, bad-cop routine," Valente said contemptuously, "you're lousy at it."

"Give me time, I'm still new at my job," Sam quipped, shivering, and she thought she witnessed a slight, momentary crack in his glacial expression.

Resorting to a tone of innocent sincerity that bordered embarra.s.singly on naivete, Sam tried to sidle through that crack in his resistance. "I've only been a detective for a few weeks, so maybe I'm doing this all wrong, but if you could just explain something to me, then maybe I could help-"

"I repeat, Detective-this sidewalk is not the place for you to question my client," Buchanan warned angrily. To Valente he added, "We're going to be late."

The chauffeur was standing at the rear of the limousine, and he opened the door as soon as Buchanan turned toward him.

The lawyer got into the car and Valente turned to follow him, but Sam stayed on his heels. "Mr. Valente, why did you and Mrs. Manning pretend not to know each other?"

"I've never pretended anything of the kind," Valente said curtly, sliding onto the backseat of his car.

That was true, Sam realized, recalling his behavior with Leigh Manning when Sam had seen them together. She leaned into the car so the chauffeur couldn't close the door, and, shivering convulsively, she tried to reason with Valente one last time. "That's right, you didn't-but Mrs. Manning did pretend, and that's what's creating our doubts and suspicion. If you really want us to look elsewhere for suspects, then you need to answer my question. Do you want us to look elsewhere-" She started to say "other than you and Mrs. Manning"; then she pressed his b.u.t.ton with Leigh Manning: "-elsewhere, other than Mrs.

Manning?"

He hesitated, and then to Sam's joyous surprise, he snapped, "Get into the car."

Sam climbed in, and the chauffeur closed the door. "Thank you," she said, rubbing her arms and trying to stop her teeth from chattering. She opened her mouth to ask a question, then stopped in shock as the limo pulled away from the curb.

"I'm late for an appointment in midtown," Valente said, his words clipped.

"Do you want to get out?" he challenged. "Or do you want to go along for the ride?"

Sam caught the veiled irony in that last question, and she discarded several glib replies that came to mind. Her instincts warned her against sparring with him on any level, because she had the feeling Michael Valente was a far more formidable opponent than even his reputation allowed. She hesitated, wondering if she dared reveal anything about the note he wrote Leigh Manning to accompany the pears: then she decided to risk it. If he had an alibi, that note wasn't going to do McCord a bit of good. Even if his alibi didn't hold up, Buchanan would learn of the note under the rules of discovery.

"I'm waiting, Detective," Valente said impatiently.

Sam decided to opt for absolute sincerity if he'd let her-and for a new career if she'd already made the wrong decisions. "When Mrs. Manning was still in the hospital," she explained, "Detective Shrader came across a phone message from you, and he asked her if she knew you. She lied and said she'd met you for the first time at her party, a few nights before. Do you know why she lied?"

"She wasn't lying," he retorted.

Sam began to lose faith in McCord's judgment about Valente being "ready to talk." She looked at him, searching his forbidding features. "How long have you known Mrs. Manning?"

"Fourteen years."

Sam breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. That at least was an honest answer, but she wasn't pleased with how she had to go about getting it. Carefully banishing all confrontational undertones from her voice, she said quietly, "If you will try to overcome your understandable resentment of having to answer my very personal questions-and answer them fully-I will try to ask as few of them as I can. And I'll even answer yours. Deal?"

Although he refused to make any such "deal" with her, he at least clarified his last answer. "She didn't recognize me when she met me at her party, because we hadn't seen each other in fourteen years. I had a beard when she knew me before."

"Are you saying she didn't even recognize your name?" Sam asked skeptically.

"She knew me by another name."

"Would that be 'Falco' or would it be 'Nipote'?" she prodded, watching for his reaction.

His reaction was a short, sardonic laugh. "You took the note I sent her with the pears," he said, shaking his head in disgust. "You people are unbelievable."

Reluctant to admit she had the note if she didn't need to, Sam said, "How would you reach a conclusion about a note from what I asked you?"

"You figure it out, Detective."

"No, that won't work," Sam said resignedly, but firmly. "Let's trade explanations instead?" She waited for him to agree in advance. Instead he lifted his brows and regarded her in noncommittal silence, so Sam took a major gamble and offered her explanation anyway. She explained why the basket of pears had originally concerned her and she told him exactly how she'd ended up finding and reading his note. When she finished, Sam paused deliberately, in order to lend greater significance to her next comment. "Mr. Valente, do you remember what you wrote in that note?"

He nodded impa.s.sively, but the implications of his written words-and what the police would naturally infer from them-registered on him, because his expression became fractionally less guarded and distant than she'd ever seen it.

Sam smiled a little without realizing it. "How did you conclude I'd found the note when I mentioned those two names?"

He hesitated a moment; then he reluctantly answered her. "I specifically wrote those names on my note because they were the only names Leigh knew me by in the old days. Now ask yourself a question," he instructed shortly. "Do you think I would have needed to further identify myself on my own letterhead if she already knew who Michael Valente was?"

Sam shook her head. "No," she said, and then she probed a little deeper.

"When did Mrs. Manning finally realize you were her old friend 'Falco Nipote'?"

A sudden, fleeting smile flickered in his golden eyes and touched the corners of his mouth, momentarily softening his features in a way that made Sam catch her breath at the transformation. "I evidently said something very funny just now?" she ventured, trying to maintain her calm, businesslike approach.

He inclined his head in a slow nod, traces of the smile still lingering in his eyes, but he remained frustratingly silent.

"Give me a break-" she joked before she could stop herself.

He thawed another degree at her joking plea and actually gave her that break.

" Falco is Italian for 'hawk,' which was my nickname in the old days. That's the name that Leigh heard me called."

"And Nipote?" Sam pressed. "That's Italian for-?"

"Nephew."

Sam's eyes widened in puzzlement. "That's what we were told when we checked with people who are fluent in Italian, but we thought it must have some other meaning between you and Mrs. Manning. Why would she know you as 'nephew'?" Sam realized the answer before she finished the question, but waited for him to confirm it.

"Leigh used to hear my aunt call me that, and she a.s.sumed it was my name."

"You didn't know each other well at all then?"

"We rarely spoke."

"I see." Sam remembered the important question that had started her down this surprising path, but which still remained unanswered. "When did Mrs.

Manning realize that you were her old friend from Great Jones Street?" she asked as the car pulled over to the curb just past the corner at Park Avenue and Forty-eighth Street.

"The same night she learned her husband was dead. I had gone to see her specifically to tell her who I was, and to see how she was doing."

"Were you still with her when we talked to her that night?" Sam asked as the chauffeur got out and opened the back door of the limo. Her fragile truce with him collapsed the instant she asked that question, because he realized she was no longer playing completely straight with him.

"You know d.a.m.ned well I was," he retorted, then he nodded curtly to the open car door and said brusquely, "This is where we get out."

With no choice except to get out, too, Sam did so, and both men followed her onto the sidewalk, leaving her there. Valente paused to say something to his driver and then strode off with Buchanan, both of them with briefcases in hand.

Sam walked to the rear of the limo, her arms clasped around her, craning her neck for a cab; then she turned around to see where Valente and Buchanan were headed. She had no coat and no purse, ergo, no money for a taxi, but she could pay for one when she got back to the precinct.

Valente and Buchanan walked into the huge building that took up the whole block, and, on an impulse, Sam decided to follow them. "Where are you going, miss?" Valente's chauffeur called out as she ran past him. "Mr. Valente told me to take you back to the precinct-"

"Wait here or circle the block," Sam called to him. "I forgot to ask him something," she lied.

She dashed into the building just as the elevator doors closed behind Valente and his attorney. Backing up, Sam watched the lights above the elevator flash as it pa.s.sed the floors, then glow a steady green on the sixteenth floor.

The building's directory was located between the elevators, and she scanned the names listed on it with suites on the sixteenth floor. There were only four names shown, which indicated they were very large suites. "Knightsbridge Obstetrics and Gynecology"; "Truman and Horn, Certified Public Accountants"; "Aldenberry, Smith, and Cromwell," a very well known law firm. Sam ruled out the obstetricians with an inner laugh. When Valente and McCord had been together in the interviewing room earlier, the atmosphere had been positively crackling with macho, killer-instinct, maleness. Definitely not the obstetricians.

Valente's cousin handled his financial matters, and Valente was already represented by one of the most prestigious law firms in New York, so she ruled the other two firms out. The fourth suite of offices on the sixteenth floor belonged to a company called Interquest Inc.

Sam went to the reception desk, pointed to the ID badge hanging from a chain around her neck, and spoke to the guard. "What can you tell me about Interquest?"

"Not a whole lot, Detective. About all I know is they're a private investigation firm on the sixteenth floor, and they must be expensive as h.e.l.l, because they've got a suite of offices up there you wouldn't believe."

"Thank you very much," she replied, glancing at his name tag, "Leon."

LOST in thought, Sam gazed out the window of Valente's limousine at the tide of pedestrians hurrying past on the sidewalk, their heads bent into the wind as they outpaced the snarl of lunchtime traffic.

Since Valente and Buchanan had requested a meeting at the precinct to discuss Manning's murder, and then gone directly to a private investigation firm, Sam had a strong hunch that Valente had hired his own investigators to try to find Logan Manning's murderer. A very odd thing for a man to do if he thought the woman he was in love with had done the deed. Either that, or Valente's lawyer was looking for viable, alternative suspects to throw at McCord like decoys now-or to bring up in court later in order to confuse a jury into believing there were other people besides Mrs. Manning with a motive and opportunity to kill Logan Manning.

That, of course, a.s.sumed that Valente's alibis checked out and removed him from the list of suspects. Even if they did check out, there was also the possibility that Valente had paid someone else to murder Manning.

Sam sighed. That was all perfectly possible and even believable. What wasn't believable was that Valente had actually bothered to send her back in his nice, warm limousine.

On the sixteenth floor, Michael stood at the window, idly watching his car inching through traffic with Sam Littleton in it. "Littleton followed us into the building," he remarked to Buchanan.

The founder of Interquest, Stephen Wallbrecht, walked into his office and heard Michael's remark. "Samantha K. Littleton-" he provided, "the youngest and most inexperienced member of the team investigating Manning's murder."

CHAPTER 57.

A subtly dynamic man, Wallbrecht was tall and slender, with thinning hair, keenly intelligent light gray eyes, and an aura of absolute competence and relentless energy.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Michael," he said, shaking hands with him and then Buchanan. He sat down behind his desk and removed some files from his bottom right-hand drawer. "As usual, I'd like to start by quickly evaluating our adversaries." While he spoke he handed both men a set of dossiers and laid the third set on his desk for reference if necessary. "You probably know already that the investigative team on the Manning case is made up of four members."

To Michael he said, "You mentioned Samantha Littleton, so we'll start with her first. She's thirty-three, and she only got her gold shield a little over a month ago. From what I can gather, whatever she lacks in experience, she evidently makes up for in raw intelligence and gut instinct. If you decide to p.i.s.s her off,"

he added humorously, "be sure you're under cover. She's a crack shot, and she got her black belt in karate when, she was still a teenager. Her father," he added meaningfully, "was Ethan Littleton."

"The football coach?" Buchanan asked. When Wallbrecht nodded, Buchanan said, "So that would make her Brian and Tom Littleton's sister?"

"Right again-two Heisman Trophy winners and a legendary coach in one family. Of the four remaining brothers, two are high school football coaches, one still plays minor league baseball, and the last one owns a gym here in New York. Samantha was the youngest of the seven kids, and according to some friends of the family, the boys got all the muscles, but she got most of the brains.

After her father died, her mother remarried."

He paused again for effect, and then dropped a small verbal bomb. "Detective Littleton's stepdaddy is Senator Hollenbeck."

"I wish I'd known that a little earlier," Buchanan said ruefully. "I might have been slightly less offensive. Hollenbeck and I sit on a committee together, and we have friends in common."

Wallbrecht's phone rang, and he reached across his desk and pressed a b.u.t.ton to silence it. Without commenting on Buchanan's remarks, he said, "When Samantha made detective and said she wanted Homicide, the senator pulled strings to get her into the safest precinct in Manhattan, which is the Eighteenth.

I'm told that particular little 'sweetheart deal' was made between the senator and Captain Holland and that Detective Littleton doesn't know about it. She's not particularly close to her stepfather, possibly because he's as domineering as her father and brothers were. That last is unconfirmed gossip I collected for you, by the way, not necessarily fact."

Buchanan had opened her dossier, and Wallbrecht waited politely until the attorney was finished perusing it; then he moved on to the next member of the investigative team. "Malcolm Shrader is an experienced detective with one of the best arrest-to-conviction ratios in the entire department. He's a h.e.l.l of a lot smarter than he looks, so don't ever underestimate him. Word has it that he was mad as h.e.l.l when he got stuck with Littleton as a temporary partner, but he's quite a supporter of hers now, so my advice to you both is-don't underestimate Littleton either."

Since neither man had opened Shrader's dossier, Wallbrecht moved on to Womack. "Detective Womack isn't as smart as Shrader, but he's good at his job.

He's a plodder, but he's thorough. That's about all you need to know of him for now."

He paused, waiting for questions, and when none were forthcoming, he said, "Now we've come to Mitch.e.l.l McCord, and therein, gentlemen, lies our most interesting challenge." Leaning back in his chair, he shifted his gaze to Michael and said bluntly, "According to my sources, Commissioner Trumanti handpicked McCord and gave him a single a.s.signment: That a.s.signment was to nail you on the Manning murder, or on anything else that might come to light during McCord's investigation of it."

"Trumanti should have chosen somebody who understood his a.s.signment better," Michael said angrily, "because the son of a b.i.t.c.h he picked isn't sticking with me; he's trying to go after Leigh Manning."

Wallbrecht rolled his pen between his fingers, studying Michael Valente's face curiously; then he gave his own a.s.sessment of McCord. "Mitch.e.l.l McCord is a human Sidewinder missile with a high-functioning intellect and a Ph.D. in criminal psychology," he argued. "If Mack decides you're guilty, he will lock on to you, and he will stay with you, and nothing you can do will shake him off or sidetrack him. He will keep closing the distance- and he will bring you down."