Power Play (An FBI Thriller) by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page A

now. He’s gone.”
    Between bursts of sobs and moans, she said, “He was going to shoot me, kill me.” She shook. “I know who it was—” Her voice firmed up, became fierce. “It was that bastard husband of mine, Lou. He told me he would kill me if I left him, but I didn’t think he meant it. I mean, he hit me once and I punched him back hard in the face. Boy, did that feel good. I left him last week, and would you look, he did mean it, he tried to kill me.” Her voice was rising—not good. Sherlock rubbed her arms, said over and over, “No, Lou didn’t do this. Lou didn’t try to kill you. The man on the motorcycle, he was shooting at me.”
    “If you weren’t here right at this minute, right at this spot—” Her breath hitched and she grew perfectly still.
    Sherlock tried again. “Listen to me now, Mrs.—”
    “Glory, my name is Glory Cudlow, and that jerkface—”
    “No, Glory,” she repeated very slowly, spacing out her words tobreak through, “the bastard wasn’t your ex-husband. Lou wasn’t after you. Whoever it was, he was after me.”
    Glory looked at her, slack-jawed. Was that disappointment she saw? Surely not. Sherlock lightly touched her flushed cold face. “Believe me. Okay, tell me, Mrs. Cudlow, did you recognize that motorcycle?”
    “No, I’ve never seen it before.”
    “So it doesn’t belong to Lou?”
    “He could have gotten a new motorcycle, to celebrate me being gone. It’d be just like him.”
    A half-dozen people were crowding around now, asking questions, others looking at the Kawasaki. Thank God no one had been hurt in that rain of bullets. Sherlock dialed 911 and gave the very calm female dispatcher the particulars. When she punched off her cell, she asked everyone to stick around to talk to the police. She remembered Davis telling how Natalie Black done the very same thing yesterday morning.
    There was grumbling, but four people stayed, bless them. Sherlock got Mrs. Cudlow’s cell number and her address. It was only two blocks away. Sherlock sent her home with an order to calm herself with a water glass full of merlot, assured her for a third time it wasn’t Lou who’d shot at her.
    She waved at the older couple across the street, who were still staring at the crumpled motorcycle when two Metro cop cars screeched around the corner. Two and a half minutes, good time. Sherlock showed them her creds, asked one of the officers to go over immediately to the couple before they left, since they’d seen the man closer than anyone. “Tell them to describe him as exactly as they can while he’s still fresh in their minds. I’ll come see them as soon as I can.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” one young officer said. “Glad to be reminded how to do the job.”
    Two veteran cops arrived in a second Crown Vic. She introduced herself and showed them her creds. While Officer Newberg interviewed the witnesses, Sherlock walked to the motorcycle beside Officer Clooney. It was wrapped around the fire hydrant, a double helix of black smoke curling out of the smashed engine, and the smell of burned rubber was thick and nasty in the cold air. Thankfully, the fire hydrant hadn’t burst and flooded the area with a gusher of freezing water.
    “And that’s the problem trying to do nasty deeds from a motorcycle,” Officer Clooney said. “Not enough control, and if a tire goes, the sucker’s down and out. The guy was lucky to be able to run off. Could you tell what kind of gun he was using?”
    “Probably a revolver since he fired off six shots, then shoved the gun back in his coat,” she said, “so no shells.
    “As to the make—this is an impression, since it happened so fast, but what my brain picked up was that it wasn’t new, it looked big and worn, like one of those Colt New Service revolvers, you know, the kind your great-granddaddy brought back from the Great War? Maybe a Colt M1917 you’d find mounted on the wall or a Colt official police revolver. Maybe the guy bought it at an