Perfect suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham! The latest book in her New York Confidential series.
Someone is murdering beautiful young women in the New York area and displaying them in mausoleums and underground tombs. The FBI is handling the case, with Special Agent Craig Frasier as lead.
Kieran Finnegan, forensic psychologist and part owner of Finnegans, her familys pub, is consulting on the case. Craig and Kieran are a couple whove worked together on more than one occasion. On this occasion, though, Craig fears for the safety of the woman he loves. Because the killer is too close. The body of a young model is found in a catacomb under a two-hundred-year-old church, now deconsecrated and turned into a nightclub. A church directly behind Finnegans in lower Manhattan.
As more women are murdered, their bodies discovered in underground locations in New York, its clear that the police and the FBI are dealing with a serial killer. Craig and Kieran are desperate to track down the murderer, a man obsessed with female perfection. Obsessed enough to want to preserve that beauty by destroying the women who embody it...
Praise for New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham
Graham is the queen of romantic suspense.
RT Book Reviews on Flawless
With an astonishing ease and facility, this talented and hard-working writer can cast her stories in any genre.
Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels
An incredible storyteller.
Los Angeles Daily News
Graham stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.
Publishers Weekly
[A] unique story with an equal balance of action, mystery, suspense and romance.
Goodreads on Flawless
This chilling novel has everything: suspense, romance, intrigue and an ending that takes your breath away.
Suspense Magazine on The Betrayed
Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life, using exceptionally vivid details to add depth to all the people and places.
RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Waking the Dead
[Waking the Dead is] not to be missed.
BookTalk
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM has written more than a hundred novels, many of which have been featured by the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. An avid scuba diver, ballroom dancer and mother of five, she still enjoys her South Florida home, but loves to travel as well, from locations such as Cairo, Egypt, to her own backyard, the Florida Keys. Reading, however, is the pastime she loves best, and she is a member of many writing groups. Shes the winner of a Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award and an International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Award. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America, and also the founder of The Slush Pile Players, an author band and theatrical group. Heather hosts the annual Writers for New Orleans conference to benefit both the city, which is near and dear to her heart, and various other causes, and she hosts a ball each year at the RT Booklovers Convention to benefit pediatric AIDS foundations.
For more information, check out her website, www.theoriginalheathergraham.com. You can also find Heather on Facebook.
A Perfect Obsession
Heather Graham
www.mirabooks.co.uk
To Bryee-Annon Pozzessere and Joseph Hunton, with congratulations on their marriage.
And to Ellysse and Zohe Hunton, beautiful additions to our family.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Praise
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Extract
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
HORRIBLE! OH, GOD, HORRIBLE! Tragic! John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegans pub.
Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.
Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.
It wasnt just any body.
It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.
Finding the old graves wasnt much of a shocknot in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Le Club Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The churchs congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Churchwhose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old building had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, lifeand businesswent on.
They were expanding the wine cellar, and so work on the foundations went on, too.
It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased bodymoments before it hit the newsthat Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family pub, Finnegans on Broadway. Like the old church-nightclub behind it, Finnegans dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. Theyd barely opened; it was still morning and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. Shed just been down in the basement, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.
I cant tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that, the professor told Kieran. They both wanted me! By they, I mean Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve Our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies...but then, opening a decaying coffin and finding Jeannette Gilbert! He paused for a quick breath. And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at the site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students there. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was...
John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man whod seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archaeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.
Kieran realized that hed been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing hed ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys and heterosexual males of all agesa woman who was going to be deeply mourned.
Jeannette Gilbertmedia princess, supermodel and actresshad disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging what he assumed were kidnappers for her safe return.
At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter had speculated that shed disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release.
Kieran hadnt really paid much attention; shed assumed that the young womanwhod been made famous by the same Oswald Martinhad just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move, and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilberts latest lovera gold digger, as Martin referred to any young man she datedflying out the door.
In the past few weeks the celebrity magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor, struggling his way into TV, movies and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was reading between the lines, and that being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actorseven good onesout there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge, Kevin said.
While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldnt help wondering if Jeannettes secret lover had killed heror if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.
Orsince this was New York City with a population in the millionsit was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasnt clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, shed be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.
It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.
Now Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it was evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.
Not that she knew any of the findings. In fact, she knew only one: Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb. But she knew it was unlikely that the woman had crawled into a historic coffin in a lost crypt to die of natural causes.
It was so horrible! John Shaw repeated woefully. When we found her, we just stared. One of my young grad students screamed, and she wasnt the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasnt open then, of courseexcept to those of us who were working. I was there for hours while the police grilled me. And now...now, I need this! His hand shook as he picked up his double shot of single malt scotch and swallowed it in a gulp.
He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.
It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized hed be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.
After all, hed been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.
The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was around the block from Le Club Vampyre.
The whole situation was interesting to Kieran. In her real job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family from the mid-nineteenth century, dating back to her distant great-great-uncle. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her baby brother, Daniel.
As manager, Declan was the only one who made the pub his lifework. Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the citys best tour guide. Yet they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegans.
The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage at Le Club Vampyre. Theyd been talking about the place for the past six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club like that in an old church!
The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown grave sites had been foundand Professor John Shaw had been called in.
Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.
Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about the earthly remains of the long dead.
Not the newly deceased.
At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. That was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archaeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegans one night a month as long as she could remember.