The Kill Room (18 page)

H
E SOMETIMES WONDERED ABOUT PEOPLE
, Jacob Swann did.

Either you were conscientious or you weren’t. Either you scrubbed every bit of scorch off your copper-bottomed, stainless-steel sauté pan or you didn’t. Either you went the distance with the soufflé, and saw it rise five inches over the top of the ramekin, or you said to hell with it and for dessert served Häagen-Dazs, spelled in faux Scandinavian but made in the U.S. of A.

Standing over a crumpled, gasping Lydia Foster, he was thinking of Amelia Sachs.

She’d been smart enough to destroy her cell phone (and it
was
destroyed, not simply castrated, his tech people had learned). But then she’d made the mistake of calling Detective Sellitto back from a pay phone only about twenty-five feet from Java Hut. By the time she called, those same tech gurus at headquarters had rammed a tap on this phone—and several others nearby.

(While of course officially claiming they didn’t know how to do it and, even if they had known, never would.)

Sometimes your Miele oven conks out—just before you’re ready to slip the lamb roast in, natch—and you have to improvise.

Sure enough, Sachs had delivered to Lon Sellitto—and inadvertently to Jacob Swann—the vitals about Lydia Foster.

He now moved through the apartment quietly, verifying that they were alone. He probably didn’t have a lot of time. Sachs had said she’d be delayed but presumably she’d call or arrive soon. Should he wait for her? He’d have to consider that. She might not show up alone, of course. There was that and while he did have a pistol, shooting, as opposed to cutting, was the sloppiest (and least enjoyable) way of solving problems.

But if Sachs
was
alone? Several options presented themselves.

Slipping the knife away, he now returned to the interpreter, grabbed her by the hair and collar of her blouse and dumped her in a heavy dining room chair. He tied her to this with lamp wire, cut with a cheap utility knife he carried—
not
the Kai Shun, of course. He never even used the blade to slice string for tying beef roulade, one of his favorite recipes.

Tears streamed down her face and, gasping from the throat-punch, Lydia Foster shivered and kicked.

Jacob Swann reached into his breast pocket and removed his Kai Shun from the wooden scabbard. Her reaction, the terror, didn’t deepen. We are dismayed only by the unexpected. She would have seen this coming.

My little butcher man…

He crouched beside her as she sat making ungodly sounds and shaking madly.

“Be still,” he whispered into her ear.

He thought of the Bahamas, yesterday, of Annette
uhn-uhn-uhn
ing in a clearing near the beach, surrounded by silver palm and buttonwood trees strangling to death from orange love vines.

The interpreter didn’t comply exactly but she calmed enough.

“I have a few questions. I’m going to need all the material about your assignments for Robert Moreno. What you talked about. And who you met. But first of all, how many officers have you talked to about Robert Moreno?” He was concerned that somebody had called her after Amelia Sachs.

She shook her head.

Jacob Swann rested his left hand on the back of hers, tied tightly down. “That’s not a number. How many officers?”

She made more bizarre sounds and then, when he brushed the knife against her fingers, she whispered, “No one.”

She glanced toward the door. It meant she believed she could save herself if she stalled, to give the police time to arrive.

Jacob Swann curled the fingers of his left hand and rested the side of the Kai Shun blade, pounded with indentations, against his knuckles. The razor edge lowered to her middle and ring fingers. This was the way all serious chefs wielded their knives when they sliced food, fingertips of the guide hand curved below and away from the dangerous blade. You had to be very careful when you cut. He’d sliced through his own fingertips on several occasions. The pain was indescribable; fingers contain more nerve endings than any other part of the body.

He whispered, “Now, I’m going to ask you once more.”

T
HE DRIVE TO THE SNIPER’S NEST
on the outcropping of land near the South Cove Inn took considerably longer than it otherwise might have.

Mychal Poitier gave Thom a complicated route to get to the main highway that led them to their destination—SW Road. The point of this evasion was to see if the gold Mercury was following them. Poitier assured him that the car did not contain officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force conducting surveillance. The tail might have to do with Moreno or something else entirely. A well-dressed and vulnerable American in a wheelchair might simply have aroused the interest of thieves.

Rhyme called Pulaski, who was still at the inn, and told him where they’d be. The young officer continued to wait for the maid who might have more information about the sniper’s intelligence gathering at the inn the day before the shooting.

Once past the airport the traffic thinned and Thom sped up, piloting the van along SW Road and its gentle arc around the island, past manicured gated communities, past shacks decorated with laundry on lines and goats in pens, past swamps and then an endless mass of forest and greenery—Clifton Heritage Park.

“Here, turn here,” Poitier said.

They had arrived at a dirt road, which veered right and led through a wide, rusting gate, which was open. The road followed a narrow outcropping of land that extended a half mile into Clifton Bay. The spit was a few feet above sea level, dotted with trees and brush and scruffy bare spots, lined with a shore that was rocky in some places, sandy in others. The road was bordered with
Do Not Swim
signs. No explanation was given but the water was noxious, sickly green and singularly unappealing.

Thom followed the road, which skirted the north edge of the spit, past the several commercial facilities Poitier had alluded to in the restaurant earlier. The first they passed, at the intersection of the unnamed drive and SW Road, was the public trash yard where several fires burned and a dozen people wandered about, picking for anything of value. Next was the tire recycling operation and finally the metal fabricating plant composed of several low shacks so unsubstantial that it looked as if a gentle breeze, forget a hurricane, could have blown them down. The businesses were identified by hand-painted signs. Fences were topped with barbed wire and tense dogs prowled the grounds, squat and broad-chested—very different from the potcake they’d shared lunch with.

Clouds of smoke, yellow and gray, lingered defiantly, as if too heavy to be moved by the breezes.

As Thom picked his way along the pitted road, the view to the right suddenly opened up and they were looking at the bay of azure water beneath a stunning blue sky and white clouds dense as wads of cotton. About a mile away was the low beige line of land and buildings that was the South Cove Inn and surrounding grounds. Somewhere along this north edge of the spit from here to the end, about a hundred yards away, the sniper would have set up his nest.

“Anywhere here,” Rhyme said. Thom drove a short distance to a pull-off and parked. He shut the engine off and two sounds filled the van—some harsh rhythmic pounding from the metal factory and the faint crash of waves on the rocks that lined the shore.

“One thing first,” Poitier said. He reached into his backpack and extracted something then offered it to Rhyme. “Do you want this?”

It was a pistol. A Glock. Very much like Amelia Sachs’s. Poitier verified it was loaded and pulled the slide to chamber a round. With a Glock there is no safety catch, you simply have to pull the trigger to fire it.

Rhyme stared at the pistol, glanced at Thom and then took the weapon in his right hand. He had never cared for firearms. The opportunity to use them—in his specialty of forensics, at least—was next to never, and he was always worried that he’d have to draw and use his gun. The reluctance stemmed not from fear of killing an attacker but from what even a single shot could do to contaminate a crime scene. Smoke, blast pressure, gunshot residue, vapors…

That was no less true here but curiously he was now struck by the sense of power the weapon gave him.

In contrast with the utter helplessness that had enwrapped his life since the accident.

“Yes,” he said.

Though he couldn’t feel it in his fingers, the Glock seemed to burn its way into his skin, to become a part of his new arm. He aimed it carefully out the window at the water, recalling his firearms training. Assume every weapon is loaded and ready to fire, never point a weapon at anything you aren’t prepared to send a bullet into, never shoot unless you see exactly what is behind your target, never put your finger on the trigger until you’re prepared to shoot.

A scientist, Rhyme was actually a pretty good shot, using physics in calculating how to get the bullet to its desired destination.

“Yes,” he said again and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket.

They got out of the van and surveyed the area: pipes and gutters directing runoff into the ocean, dozens of piles of sludge rising like huge ant hills and cinder blocks and car parts and appliances and rusted industrial machinery littering the ground.

No Swimming…

No kidding.

Thom said, “The haze is bad and the inn’s so far away. How could he see well enough to get a clear target?”

Poitier said, “A special scope, I decided. Adaptive optics, lasers.”

Rhyme was amused. Apparently the corporal had done more research about the case than he’d let on—or than Assistant Commissioner McPherson would have been happy with.

“Could have been a clearer day too.”

“Never very clear here,” Poitier said, waving his arm at a low chimney rising above the tire plant. It spewed bile-green and beige smoke.

Then, surrounded by the nauseating smell of rotten eggs and hot rubber from the pollution, they made their way closer to the shore. Rhyme studied the ground for the best place to set up a sniper’s nest—good cover and an indentation that would allow support on which to rest the rifle. A half dozen sites would have worked.

No one interfered with the search; they were largely alone. A pickup eased up and parked just across the road. The driver, in a sweat-stained gray shirt, speaking into his cell phone, walked to the back of his truck and began tossing trash bags into a ditch beside the road. The concept of littering as a crime seemed not to exist in the Bahamas. Rhyme could also hear some laughing and shouts from the other side of the fence surrounding the metal fabrication plant but otherwise they had the place to themselves.

Looking for the nest, Thom, Poitier and Rhyme walked, and wheeled, through the weeds and patches of dirt and sand, the Storm Arrow doing a fair job of finding purchase in the uneven terrain. Poitier and Thom could get closer to the edge and he told them what to look for: cut-back brush, indentations, foot or boot prints leading to a flat area. “And look at the patches of sand.” Even a spent cartridge leaves a distinctive mark.

“He’s got to be a pro,” Rhyme explained. “He’d’ve had a tripod or sandbags to rest the gun on but he might’ve used rocks too and left them set up. Look for stones out of place, maybe one balanced on another. At that distance, the rifle would have to be absolutely steady.”

Rhyme squinted—the pollution and the wind stung his eyes. “I would love some brass,” he said. But he doubted the sniper would have left any empty cartridges behind; pros always collected them because they contained a wealth of information about the weapon and the shooter. He peered into the water, though, wondering if a spent shell had been ejected there. The sea was black and he assumed very deep.

“A diver’d be good.”

“Our official divers wouldn’t be available, Captain,” Poitier said regretfully. “Since this, of course, isn’t even an investigation.”

“Just an island tour.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Rhyme wheeled close to the edge and looked down.

“Careful there,” Thom called.

“But,” Poitier said, “I dive. I could come back and see if there is anything down there. Borrow some of the underwater lights from our waterside station.”

“You would do that, Corporal?”

He too peered into the water. “Yes. Tomorrow, I—”

What happened next happened fast.

Finger-snap fast.

At the sound of clattering suspension and a hissing, badly firing engine, Rhyme, Thom and Poitier turned to look at the dirt road they’d just driven down. They saw the gold Mercury bounding directly toward them, now with only two occupants in it.

And Rhyme understood. He glanced back, seeing the man in the gray
T-shirt
, the litterer from the pickup truck, race across the narrow road and tackle Poitier as he was drawing his gun. The weapon went flying. The assailant rose fast and kicked the gasping corporal in the side and head, hard.

“No!” Rhyme cried.

The Mercury squealed to a stop and two of the men they’d seen following earlier leapt out—the one with the dreads in the sleeveless yellow shirt and his partner, shorter, wearing the green T. The man in green ripped Thom’s phone from his hand and doubled him over with a blow to the belly.

“Don’t!” Rhyme shouted—a cry as involuntary as it was pointless.

The man in the gray T-shirt said to his partners, “Okay, you see anyone else?”

“No.”

Of course, that’s why he was on the phone. He hadn’t come here to pitch out trash at all. He’d followed them and used the phone to let the others know their victims had arrived at the killing site.

Poitier gasped for breath, clutching his side.

Rhyme said firmly, “We’re police officers from the United States. We work with the FBI. Don’t make this worse on yourself. Just leave now.”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken.

The man in gray walked toward Poitier’s pistol, lying in the dust ten feet away.

“Stop,” Rhyme commanded.

The man did. He blinked at the criminalist. The other attackers froze. They were looking at the Glock in Rhyme’s hand. The pistol was unsteady, for sure, but from this distance he could easily send a bullet into the torso of the assailant.

The man lifted his hands slightly, rising. Eyes on the pistol. Back to Rhyme. “Okay, okay, mister. Don’t do with that.”

“All of you, step back and lie down on the ground, facedown.”

The two who’d been in the car turned their eyes on the man in gray.

Nobody moved.

“I’m not going to tell you again.” Rhyme wondered what the recoil would do to his hand. He supposed there might be some damage to the tendons. But all he needed after the shot was to keep the weapon in his grip. The others would flee after he’d killed their leader.

Thinking of the Special Task Order. No due process, no trial. Self-defense. Taking a life before your enemy did.

“You gonna shoot me, sir?” The man was studying him, suddenly defiant.

Rhyme rarely had a chance to meet adversaries face-to-face. They were usually long gone from the crime scene by the time he saw them, which was usually in court where he was an expert witness for the prosecution. Still, he had no trouble staring down the man in gray.

His partner, the one in yellow, the one with the impressive muscles, stepped forward but stopped fast when Rhyme spun the gun toward him.

“Hokay, easy, mon, easy.” Hands raised.

Rhyme aimed again at the leader, whose eyes were fixed on the weapon, his hands up. He smiled. “Are you? Are you going to shoot me, sir? I’m not so sure you are.” He stepped forward a few feet. Paused. And then walked directly toward Rhyme.

There was nothing more to say.

Rhyme tensed, hoping the recoil wouldn’t damage the results of the delicate surgery, hoping he could keep the weapon in his hand. He sent the command to close his index finger.

But nothing happened.

Glocks—dependable, Austrian-made pistols—have a trigger pull of only a few pounds pressure.

Yet Rhyme couldn’t muster that, couldn’t deliver enough strength to save the life of his aide and the police officer who’d risked his job to help him.

The man in gray continued forward, perhaps assuming Rhyme lacked the fortitude to shoot, even as he tried desperately to pull the trigger. Even more insulting, the man didn’t approach from the side, he kept on a steady path toward the muzzle that hovered in his direction.

The man closed his muscular hand around the gun and easily yanked it from Rhyme’s.

“You know, you a freak, mon.” He braced himself, put his foot in the middle of Rhyme’s chest and pushed hard.

The Storm Arrow rolled back two feet and went off the rocky edge. With a huge splash, Rhyme and the chair tumbled into the water. He took a deep breath and went under.

The water was not as deep as he’d thought, the darkness was due to the pollution, the chemicals and waste. The chair dropped ten feet or so and came to rest on the bottom.

Head throbbing, lungs in agony as his breath depleted, Rhyme twisted his head as far as he could and with his mouth gripped the strap of the canvas bag hanging from the back of the chair. He tugged this forward and it floated to just within his reach. He managed to wrap his arm around it for stability and undid the zipper with his teeth, then lowered his head and fished for the portable ventilator’s mouthpiece. He gripped it hard and worked it between his lips.

His eyes were on fire, stinging from the pollutants in the water, and he squinted but kept them open as he searched for the switch to the ventilator.

Finally, there. That’s it.

He clicked it on.

Lights glowed. The machine hummed and he inhaled a bit of wonderful, sweet oxygen.

Another.

But there was no third. Apparently the water had worked its way through the housing and short-circuited the unit.

The ventilator went dark. The air stopped.

At that moment he heard another sound, muffled through the water, but distinct: Two sounds, actually.

Gunshots.

Spelling the deaths of his friends: one he’d known seemingly forever and one he’d grown close to in just the past few hours.

Rhyme’s next breath was of water.

He thought of Amelia Sachs and his body relaxed.