Free Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit by Alex Archer Page A

watching as Calapez calmly picked at the temporary cast. “I suppose since Calapez isn’t talking, neither is the other guy you have in custody.”
    “You’d think they were twins with a limited vocabulary from the way they shut down so quickly to lawyer up.”
    “What’s the other guy’s name?”
    Bart shook his head. “We don’t know. His prints aren’t on file anywhere. He’s young enough that he may not have been in trouble before now. After tonight, though, we’ll have his prints, so he’ll be in the books for anyone who needs to know.”
    “I don’t think either one of these two guys, or any of the other guys working with them, killed Maurice Benyovszky.” Annja pulled at her coat, her mind active and restless.
    “Neither do I.” Bart looked unhappy. “Doesn’t make sense for them to kill Benyovszky, grab the elephant, then hang around to shoot me and wreak havoc in a local diner.”
    “That means Benyovszky’s killer is still out there, and more than likely has the elephant.”
    “I know. We’re going to be working the murder scene, the shooting at the diner, and we caught another squeal about a murder in an apartment building across the street from Benyovszky’s building. One of the neighbors checked in on a guy named Felix Montgomery, found out he was dead. Other neighbors say they saw him in the building as late as eleven o’clock. So the time of death was sometime between eleven last night and this morning. Someone had rammed a blade into Montgomery’s neck at the base of his skull and killed him.” Bart touched the back of his neck to indicate where the blow had been delivered.
    “A knife kill like that means training.”
    Bart glanced at her in consternation with raised eyebrows.
    “Discovery Channel,” Annja replied, realizing she was entirely too knowledgeable and calm about the violence. Bart wasn’t privy to everything she had done since gaining possession of the sword.
    “You’re watching way too much television.” Bart swung his focus back to the prisoner. “And one of the things Calapez did before he’s been doing whatever he’s been doing for the past eight years is mercenary work. He signed on with the Portuguese Army when he was eighteen, served in special forces for a few years, then mustered out. So somewhere he would have gotten that kind of training.”
    “What are you going to do with him?”
    “Hang on to him as long as we can. Unless an attorney shows up here, I can lose Calapez in the system for seventy-two hours before I have to bring him before the judge. I will have to take him in for medical treatment, but I can finesse that, too. I don’t know if we’re going to be any closer to an answer by then, but we’ll keep working the case. That’s what we do.”
    Someone knocked on the door. Bart told them to enter.
    A young plainclothes cop stepped into the room. “Unis caught the Asian guy who was at the diner, Detective McGilley. The guy who approached you and her.” He nodded at Annja. “Sergeant Vogt wanted me to let you know.”
    “How did the unis find him?”
    The guy smiled mirthlessly. “They didn’t catch him. He walked up to them and turned himself in. There’s nothing to arrest him on, but we’re holding him as a material witness.”
    “Do we have a name for him?”
    The detective checked the folder he was holding. “Nguyen Rao. Says here he’s a professor in Cambodia.”
    “That’s the same name he gave us at the diner,” Annja said.
    Bart nodded. “Did Mr. Nguyen say what he’s doing in New York?”
    “He’s not really talkative. He asked to speak to you both.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Got him in an interview room.”
    Bart headed for the door and Annja followed at his heels. This was twice the man had reached out to them.
    * * *
    N GUYEN R AO SAT in the interview room and looked serene. His hands rested palms-down on the desk that looked like a twin to the one in Calapez’s room. His eyes were open and staring at the