The Kill Room (10 page)

I
MAGINATION OR NOT?

No.

Cruising back into Manhattan, in the Torino Cobra, Sachs was sure she was being followed.

Glances into the rearview mirror as she exited the Midtown Tunnel suggested that a car—a light-colored vehicle whose make and model she couldn’t nail down—was following. Nondescript. Gray, white, silver. Here and on the streets leaving Farada’s house.

But how was this possible? The Overseer had assured them that NIOS, Metzger and the sniper didn’t know about the investigation.

And even if they did find out, how could they identify her personal car and locate it?

Yet Sachs had learned from a case she and Rhyme had run a few years ago that anyone with a rudimentary datamining system could track someone’s location pretty easily. Video images of tag numbers, facial recognition, phone calls and credit cards, GPS, E-ZPass transponders, RFID chips—and NIOS was sure to have much more than a basic setup. She’d been careful but perhaps not careful enough.

That was easily remedied.

Smiling, she executed a series of complicated, fast and extremely fun turns, most of which involved smoking tires and cracking sixty mph in second gear.

By the time she performed the last one and stabilized the marvelous Cobra, offering a sweet smile of apology to the Sikh driver she’d skidded around, she was convinced that she’d lost whatever tail might have been after her.

At least until datamining caught up with her again.

And even if this
was
surveillance did the tailer represent a true threat?

NIOS might want information about her and might try to derail or slow down the case but she could hardly see the government physically hurting an NYPD officer.

Unless the threat wasn’t from the government itself but an anger-driven psychotic who happened to be
working for
the government, using his position to play out some delusional dream of eliminating those who weren’t as patriotic as he liked.

Then too this threat might have nothing to do with Moreno. Amelia Sachs had helped put a lot of people in jail and none of them, presumably, was very pleased about that.

Sachs actually felt a shiver down her spine.

She parked just off Central Park West, on a cross street, and tossed the NYPD placard on the dash. Climbing out, Sachs tapped her Glock grip to orient herself as to its exact position. Every nearby car, it seemed, was light-colored and nondescript and contained a shadowy driver looking her way. Every antenna, water tower and pipe atop every building in this stretch of the Upper West Side was a sniper, training the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on her back.

Sachs walked quickly to the town house and let herself in. Bypassing the parlor, where Nance Laurel was still typing away, exactly as the detective had left her hours ago, she walked into Rhyme’s rehab room—one of the bedrooms on the first floor—where he was working out.

With Thom nearby as a spotter, Rhyme was in a sitting position, strapped into an elaborate stationary bicycle, a functional electrical stimulation model. The unit sent electrical impulses into his muscles via wires to mimic brain signals and made his legs operate the pedals. He was presently pumping away like a Tour de France competitor.

She smiled and kissed him.

“I’m sweaty,” he announced.

He was.

She kissed him again, longer this time.

Although the FES workout would not cure his quadriplegia it kept the muscles and vascular system in shape and improved the condition of his skin, which was important to avoid sores that were common among those with severe disabilities. As Rhyme often announced, sometimes for pure shock value, “Gimps spend a lot of time on their asses.”

The exercise had also enhanced nerve functioning.

This was the aerobic portion of his exercise. The other part involved building up the muscles in his neck and shoulders; it was these elements of his body that would largely control the movement of his left hand and arm, as they now did his right, after his surgery in several weeks, if all went well.

Sachs wished she hadn’t thought that last clause.

“Anything?” he called, breathing heavily.

She gave him a rundown of the chauffeur trip, explaining about Moreno’s close childhood friend dying at the hands of the American invaders in Panama.

“Grudges can run deep.” But he wasn’t interested in what he would consider the mumbo-jumbo of the man’s psyche; Rhyme never was. More interesting was what she’d learned about Lydia, the closed bank accounts, the mysterious meeting, Moreno’s planned self-imposed exile from the United States—his vanishing into “thin air”—and some possible connection with explosions in Mexico City on May 13.

“Fred’s going to keep digging. Any luck in the Bahamas?”

“Crap all,” he snapped, panting. “I don’t know whether it’s incompetence or politics—probably both—but I’ve called back three times and ended up on hold again until I hang up. That’s seven times today. I truly resent hold. I was going to call our embassy there or consulate or whatever they have to intervene. But Nance didn’t think that was a good idea.”

“Why? Word would get back to NIOS?”

“Yeah. I can’t disagree, I suppose. She’s sure evidence is going to start disappearing the minute they find out. The problem is…” He drew a deep breath and with his functioning right hand turned the speed of the bike up a bit higher. “…there
is
no goddamn evidence.”

Thom said, “Slow down a bit there.”

“What, my diatribe, or my exercise? That’s rather poetic, don’t you think?”

“Lincoln.”

The criminalist gave it a defiant thirty seconds more and lowered the speed. “Three miles,” he announced. “Somewhat uphill.”

Sachs took a cloth and wiped a bit of sweat that ran down his temple. “I think somebody might’ve already found out about the investigation.”

He turned those dark, radar eyes her way.

She told him about the car she thought might have been tailing her.

“So our sniper has found out about us already? Any ID?”

“No. Either he was real good, or my imagination was working overtime.”

“I don’t think we can be too paranoid in this case, Sachs. You should tell our friend in the parlor. And have you told her that Saint Moreno might not be so saintly?”

“Not yet.”

She found Rhyme looking at her with a particular expression.

“And that means what?” she asked.

“Why don’t you like her?”

“Oil and water.”

Rhyme chuckled. “The hydrophobia myth! They
do
mix, Sachs. Simply remove gases from the water and it will blend perfectly well with the oil.”

“I should know not to offer a cliché to a scientist.”

“Especially when it doesn’t answer his question.”

It was a thick five seconds before she answered. “I don’t know why I don’t like her. I’m no good with being micromanaged, for one thing. She leaves
you
alone. Maybe it’s a woman thing.”

“I have no opinion on the subject.”

Digging into her scalp, she sighed. “I’ll go tell her now.”

She walked to the door and paused, looking back at Rhyme hard at work on the bicycle.

Sachs had mixed feelings about his plans for the forthcoming surgery. The operation was risky. Quads start with a hampered physiological system to begin with; an operation could lead to severe complications that wouldn’t be an issue with the non-disabled.

Yes, she certainly wanted her partner to feel good about himself. But didn’t he know the truth—that he, like everyone else, was mind and heart first, before he was body? That our physical incarnations always disappoint in one way or another? So he got stared at on the street. He wasn’t the only one; when
she
was perused, it was usually by an observer who was a lot creepier than in his case.

She thought now of those days as a fashion model, marginalized because of her good looks and height and flowing red hair. She’d grown angry—even hurt—at being treated like nothing more than a pricey collectible. She’d risked the wrath of her mother to leave the profession and join the NYPD, following in her father’s footsteps.

What you believed, what you knew, how you made choices, when you stood your ground…those were the qualities that defined you as a cop. Not what you looked like.

Of course, Lincoln Rhyme was severely disabled. Who in his condition wouldn’t want to be better, to grasp with both hands, to walk? But she sometimes wondered if he was undergoing the risky surgery not for himself but for her. This was a topic that had rarely come up and when it did, their words glanced off the subject like bullets on flat rock. But the understood meaning was clear: What the hell are you hanging around with a crip for, Sachs? You can do better than me.

For one thing, “doing better” suggested she was in the market for Mr. Perfect, which was simply not the case and never had been. She’d been in only one other serious relationship—with another cop—and it had ended disastrously (though Nick was finally out of prison). She’d dated some, usually to fill time, until she realized that the boredom of being with someone is exponentially worse than the boredom of solitude.

She was content with her independence and, if Rhyme weren’t in the picture, she’d be comfortable on her own—forever, if no one else came along.

Do what you want, she thought. Have the surgery or not. But do it for yourself. Whatever the decision, I’ll be there.

She watched him for a few moments more, a faint smile on her face. Then the smile faded and she walked to the parlor to meet the Overseer and deliver the news.

Saint Moreno might not be so saintly…

A
S SACHS JOTTED ON THE WHITEBOARDS
the information she’d learned on the drive with Tash Farada, Nance Laurel turned her chair toward the detective.

She’d been digesting what Sachs had told her. “An escort?” the prosecutor asked. “You’re sure?”

“No. It’s a possibility, though. I’ve called Lon. He’s got some of Myers’s portables canvassing to see if they can find her.”

“A call girl.” Laurel sounded perplexed.

Sachs would have thought she’d be more dismayed. Learning that a hooker had accompanied your married victim around New York wasn’t going to win the jury’s sympathy.

She was even more surprised when the ADA said offhandedly, “Well, men stray. It can be finessed.”

Maybe by “finesse” she meant she’d try for a largely male jury, who would presumably be less critical of Moreno’s infidelity.

If you’re asking if I pick cases I think I can win, Detective Sachs, then the answer’s yes…

Sachs continued, “In any case, it’s good for us: They might not have spent the entire time in bed. Maybe he took her to meet a friend, maybe she saw somebody from NIOS tailing them. And if she is a pro we’ll have leverage to get her to talk. She won’t want her life looked into too closely.” She added, “And it might be that she’s not an escort but is involved in something else, maybe something criminal.”

“Because of the money.” Laurel nodded at the whiteboard.

“Exactly. I was thinking possibly a terrorist connection.”

“Moreno wasn’t a terrorist. We’ve established that.”

Sachs thought,
You’ve
established that. The facts haven’t. “But still…” She nodded at the board too. “Never coming back to the U.S., the bank transfers, vanishing into thin air…A reference to ‘blowing up’ something in Mexico City.”

“It could mean a lot of things. Construction work, demolition, for one of his Local Empowerment Movement companies, for instance.” Still, the implications of the discoveries seemed to bother her. “Did the driver notice any surveillance?”

Sachs explained what Farada had said about Moreno’s looking around, uneasy.

Laurel asked, “Does he know if Moreno saw anything specific?”

“No.”

Nance Laurel scooted her chair forward and stared at the evidence board, her pose oddly parallel to Rhyme’s when he parked his Storm Arrow in front of the charts.

“And nothing about Moreno’s charitable work, anything that cast him in a favorable light?”

“The driver said he was a gentleman. And he tipped well.”

This didn’t seem to be exactly what Laurel was looking for. “I see.” She glanced at her watch. The time was getting close to 11 p.m. She frowned as if she expected the time to be hours earlier. For a moment Sachs actually believed that the woman was considering camping out for the night. But she began to organize all the piles of papers on her table, saying, “I’m going home now.” A glance at Sachs. “I know it’s late but if you could just write up your notes and what Agent Dellray found, then send them—”

“To you, on the secure server.”

“If you could.”

WHEELING BACK AND FORTH
in front of the sparse whiteboards and listening to the staccato, insistent typing of Amelia Sachs at the keyboard of her computer.

She didn’t seem happy.

Lincoln Rhyme certainly wasn’t. He scanned the boards again. The goddamn boards…

The case was nothing but hearsay, ambiguous and speculative.

Soft.

Not a single bit of evidence collected, evidence analyzed, evidence rendered into deduction. Rhyme sighed in frustration.

A hundred years ago the French criminalist Edmond Locard said that at every crime scene a transfer occurs between the perpetrator and the scene or the perp and the victim. It might be virtually impossible to see, but it was absolutely there to find…if you knew how to look and if you were patient and diligent.

Nowhere was Locard’s Principle more true than in a homicide like Moreno’s. A shooting always leaves a wealth of clues: slugs, spent cartridges, friction ridge prints, gunshot residue, footprints, trace materials at the sniper’s nest…

He
knew
clues existed—but they remained out of reach. Infuriating. And with every passing day, hell, every
hour
, they grew less valuable as they degraded, were contaminated and possibly were stolen.

Rhyme had been looking forward to analyzing the recovered evidence himself with his own hand, probing, examining…
touching
. An intense pleasure that had been denied him for so many hard years.

But that possibility was looking more and more unlikely, as time passed with no word from the Bahamas.

An officer from Information Services called and reported that while there were many database hits for “Don Bruns” or “Donald Bruns,” none was ranked as significant by IS’s Obscure Relationship Algorithm system. ORA takes disparate information, like names, addresses, organizations and activities, and uses supercomputers to find connections that traditional investigation might not. Rhyme was only mildly disappointed with the negative results. He hadn’t expected much; government agents at that level—especially snipers—surely would swap out their covers frequently, use cash for most purchases and stay off the grid as much as possible.

He now glanced toward Sachs, her eyes fixed on her notebook as she typed a memo for Laurel. She was fast and accurate. Whatever afflicted her hip and knee had spared her fingers. She never seemed to hit backspace for corrections. He recalled when he started in policing, years ago, women officers never admitted they could type, for fear of being marginalized and treated like administrative assistants. Now that had changed; those who keyboarded faster could get information faster and were therefore more efficient investigators.

Sachs’s expression, however, suggested that of a put-upon secretary.

Thom’s voice: “Can I get you—?”

“No,” Rhyme snapped.

“Well, since the question was directed toward Amelia,” the aide fired back, “why don’t we let her answer? Can I get you anything to eat, drink?”

“No, thanks, Thom.”

Which gave Rhyme a certain sense of petty satisfaction. He declined Thom’s offer too. And he returned to brooding.

Sachs took a phone call. Rhyme heard music tinning from her phone and knew who the caller was. She hit speaker.

“What do you have for us, Rodney?” Rhyme called.

“Lincoln, hi. Moving slowly but I’ve traced the whistleblower’s email from Romania to Sweden.”

Rhyme looked at the time. The hour was early morning in Stockholm. He supposed the body clock of geeks operated on its own time.

The Computer Crimes Unit cop said, “I actually know the guy operating the proxy service. We had a running argument about
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
a year or so ago and we played hack against each other for a while. He’s good. Not as good as me, though. Anyway, I charmed him into helping us, as long as he doesn’t have to testify.”

Despite his sour mood at the moment Rhyme had to laugh. “The good old boy network is alive and well—literally, a
network
.”

Szarnek may have laughed too, though it was hard to tell because of the music that filled in the gaps between his words.

“Now, he knows for sure that the email originated in the New York area and that no government servers were involved in any of the routing. They were sent from a commercial Wi-Fi. The whistleblower might’ve bootlegged somebody’s account or used free Wi-Fi at some coffee shop or hotel.”

“How many locations?” Sachs asked.

“There are about seven million unprotected accounts in the New York area. Give or take.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, but I’ve managed to eliminate one.”

“Only one? Which?”

“Mine.” He laughed at his own joke. “But don’t worry, we can shrink the number down pretty fast. There’s some code we have to break but I’m borrowing supercomputer time at Columbia. I’ll let you know ASAP if I find something.”

They thanked the cop. He returned to his awful music and beloved boxes, Sachs to her angry keyboarding and Rhyme to the anemic whiteboards.

His own mobile rang and he gripped the unit, noting that the area code was 242.

Well, this is interesting, he thought and answered the call.