The Kill Room (32 page)

I
T MAY BE A TOUGH SELL TO THE JURY,
” Lincoln Rhyme said, speaking of the theory behind a new case against Metzger and Shales.

Amelia Sachs’s theory, not his. And one he was quite enamored of—and proud of her for formulating. Rhyme secretly loved it when people—
some
people—outthought him.

Sachs glanced at her humming phone. “A text.”

“Nance?”

“No.” She looked from the querying eyes of Mel Cooper to Ron Pulaski to, finally, Rhyme. “Barry Shales’s in custody. No resistance.”

So, they were proceeding now according to Sachs’s theory, which she’d come up with from a simple entry in the evidence charts.

• Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua.
  
  • COD: Loss of blood. Lacerations from flying glass from gunshot, measuring 3–4mm wide, 2–3cm long.
    
  • Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.
    
  • Camera, tape recorder, gold pen, notebooks missing.
    
  • Shoes contained fibers associated with carpet in hotel corridor, dirt from hotel entryway.
    
  • Clothing contained traces of breakfast: allspice and pepper sauce.
    

Her thinking was all the more brilliant because of its simplicity: People born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens.

Therefore Barry Shales
had
killed an American in the attack on May 9 in the South Cove Inn.

Nance’s boss, the DA, had decided not to pursue the case only because Moreno wasn’t a citizen. But de la Rua was. Even an unintended death under some circumstances can subject the killer to murder charges.

Sachs continued, “But at the very least, I’d think we could get manslaughter. Shales inadvertently killed de la Rua as part of the intentional act of killing Moreno. He should have known that someone else in the room could have been fatally wounded when he fired the shot.”

A woman’s voice filled the room. “Good analysis, Amelia. Have you ever thought of going to law school?”

Rhyme turned to see Nance Laurel striding into the parlor, lugging her briefcase and litigation bag once again. Behind her was the detective they’d asked to collect her, a friend of Sachs’s. Bill Flaherty. Rhyme had thought it safer for her to have an escort. He was still uneasy that Unsub 516 was at large, especially now that there was a chance of reviving the Moreno case.

Laurel thanked the detective, who nodded and—with a smile toward Sachs and Rhyme—left the town house.

Rhyme asked the ADA, “So? Our case? What do you think? Legally?”

“Well,” she said, sitting down at her desk and extracting her files once more, organizing them, “we probably can get Barry Shales on murder two. The penal code provision covers us there.” She paraphrased, “A person is guilty of murder in the second degree when he intends to cause the death of someone and he causes the death of a third person. But Amelia’s right, manslaughter’s definitely a possibility. We’ll make it a lesser-included offense, though I’m confident I can make murder stick.”

“Thanks for coming back,” Sachs said.

“No, thanks to you all for saving our case.” She was looking around the room.

Our
case…

“Amelia came up with the idea,” Lon Sellitto said.

Rhyme added, “
I
missed the option entirely.”

Sellitto added that he’d been in touch with Captain Myers and the man had—with some reluctance—agreed they should proceed with the new charges. The attorney general had given his tentative approval too.

“Now we have to consider how to proceed,” Laurel said, surprising Rhyme by not only unbuttoning but slipping off her jacket. She could smile, she could sip whiskey, she could relax. “First, I’d like some background. Who was he, this reporter?”

Ron Pulaski had been researching. He said, “Eduardo de la Rua, fifty-six. Married. Freelance journalist and blogger. Born in Puerto Rico, U.S. passport. But he’s been living in Buenos Aires for the past ten years. Last year he won the Premio a la Excelencia en el Periodismo. That’s ‘Award for Excellence in Journalism.’”

“You speak Spanish too, rookie?” Rhyme interrupted. “You never fail to astound. Good accent too.”

“
Nada.
”

“Ha,” Sellitto offered.

The young officer: “Lately de la Rua’s been writing for
Diario Seminal Negocio de Argentina
.”

“
The Weekly Journal of Argentina
,” Rhyme tried.

“Almost.
Weekly
Business
Journal
.”

“Of course.”

“He was doing a series on American businesses and banks starting up in Latin America. He’d been after Moreno for months to do an interview about that—the alternative view, why U.S. companies
shouldn’t
be encouraged to open operations down there. Finally he agreed and de la Rua flew to Nassau. And we know what happened next.”

Sachs told Laurel, “Shales is in custody.”

“Good,” the prosecutor said. “Now, where are we with the evidence?”

“Ah, the evidence,” Rhyme mused. “The evidence. All we need to prove is that the bullet caused the flying glass, and the glass was the cause of the reporter’s death. We’re close. We’ve got the trace of glass splinters on the bullet and on de la Rua’s clothes. I’d just really like some of the shards that actually caused the laceration and bleeding.” He looked to Laurel. “Juries love the weapons, don’t they?”

“They sure do, Lincoln.”

“The morgue in the Bahamas?” Sachs asked. “The examiner would still have the glass, wouldn’t you think?”

“Let’s hope. People may steal Rolexes and Oakleys down there but I imagine broken glass is safe from sticky fingers. I’ll call Mychal and see what he can find. He can ship some up here with an affidavit that states the shards were recovered from the body and were the cause of death. Or, hell, maybe he could come up himself to testify.”

“That’s a great idea,” Thom said. “He could stay with us for a while, hang out.”

Rhyme exhaled in exasperation. “Oh, sure. We’ve got
so
much time for socializing. I could take him on a tour of the Big Apple. You know, haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty in…
ever
. And I intend to keep it that way.”

Thom laughed, irritating Rhyme all the more.

The criminalist called up the autopsy pictures and scrolled through them. “A shard from the jugular, carotid or femoral would be best,” he mused. “Those would be the fatal ones.” But an initial review didn’t show any obvious splinters of glass jutting from the pale corpse of Eduardo de la Rua.

“I’ll give Mychal a call in the morning. It’s late now. Don’t want to interfere with his moonlighting job.”

Rhyme could have called now but he wanted to speak to the corporal in private. The fact was that he
had
been considering inviting Poitier to New York at some point in the near future and this would be a good excuse to do so.

And, he reflected with some irony, yes, he
did
intend to show Poitier around town. The Statue of Liberty, however, would not be on the tour.

J
ACOB SWANN WONDERED
what had happened.

His plans for Nance Laurel had been interrupted by the arrival of an unmarked police car in front of her apartment in Brooklyn—just as Swann had been about to rise and go visit the ADA, to play out his revenge scenario.

The plainclothes detective had whisked her out quickly—so fast that it was clear something significant was going on. Did it relate to the Moreno case, which supposedly was a case no longer? Or something else?

He was now in his Nissan, headed back home. The answer to the mystery arrived in the form of a text from headquarters. Shit. Shreve Metzger had reported that the case was back on but with a curious variation: Barry Shales had been arrested for the killing not of Robert Moreno but of Eduardo de la Rua, the reporter who’d been interviewing him at the time the bullet had blown the hotel window into a million little shards of glass.

Because de la Rua was a U.S. citizen—
¡Hola, Puerto Rico!
—Ms. Nance Laurel had been reinstated on the case.

Metzger had not been charged but it was possible that he would be soon, accused of at least one or two felony counts; the point of Shales’s arrest, of course, was to pressure the drone pilot to give up his boss.

How easy was it to kill someone in detention? Swann wondered. Not that easy, he suspected, at least not without some inside help, which would be extremely expensive.

Swann was told additional services would be needed. He was to await instructions. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day but since the hour was late he doubted any of those directives would involve his going out again tonight.

This was good.

The little butcher man was hungry and had a taste for some wine. A glass or two of Spanish Albariño beckoned, as did some of the Veronique from last night, carefully wrapped up and tucked into the fridge. There wasn’t a chef in the world—even those whose eateries boasted three Michelin stars—who didn’t appreciate leftovers, whatever they said in public.

C
APTAIN SHALES—”

“I’ve left the military. I’m civilian now.”

The hour was early, Friday morning. Nance Laurel and the drone pilot were in an interview room at the detention center. The same floor, as a matter of fact, where she’d been talking to Amelia Sachs when the State Department delivery boy had so successfully derailed the Moreno homicide case.

“All right, Mr. Shales, you’ve been read your rights, correct?” Laurel put a tape recorder on the scabby table in front of them. She wondered how many invectives, lies, excuses and pleas for mercy this battered rectangle of electronics had heard. Too many to count.

He looked at the device without emotion. “Yes.”

She wasn’t sure how to read him, and reading defendants was a very important part of her job. Would they cave, would they stonewall, would they offer a modicum of helpful comment, would they look for the right moment to leap from the chair and throttle her?

All of those had happened on occasion.

“And you understand you can terminate this conversation at any point?”

“Yes.”

And yet he wasn’t terminating and he wasn’t crying for his lawyer. She sensed that part of him, a small part, wanted to tell her everything, wanted to confess—though some very thick walls surrounded that portion of his heart still.

She noted something else: Yes, Shales was a trained killer, no different, in theory, from Jimmy Bonittollo, who’d put a bullet into the head of Frank Carson because Carson had moved into Bonittollo’s liquor distribution territory. But, practically, there
did
seem to be a difference. Unlike Bonittollo, Shales had a patina of regret in his blue eyes. And not regret because he’d been caught, which was always there, but regret because he understood that Robert Moreno’s death was wrong.

“I want to explain why I’m here.” Laurel spoke calmly.

“I thought…the case was dropped.”

“The case for the death of Robert Moreno is not going forward. We’re bringing a case for the death of Eduardo de la Rua.”

“The reporter.”

“That’s right.”

His head rose and fell slowly. He said nothing.

“You were ordered by Shreve Metzger to kill Robert Moreno as part of a Special Task Order issued by the National Intelligence and Operations Service.”

“I’m choosing not to answer that question.”

I didn’t ask a question, she reflected. Then continued, “Because you intended to kill Moreno and you did kill him, any deaths that resulted—even if you hoped to avoid them—are murder.”

His head turned and it seemed that he took in a pattern of scuff on the wall. It looked like a lightning bolt to Laurel.

And then she realized: Lord, he looks like David! She’d had the same thought when she’d seen Lincoln Rhyme’s aide, Thom. But Shales’s glance just now had been like an electric shock; the airman was much, much closer in appearance and expression.

Schoolmarm…

Said in the heat of the moment.

Still…

David, her only real boyfriend. Ever.

A deep breath and Laurel, steadied, continued, “Are you aware that Robert Moreno was not, in fact, engaged in a plot to attack the American Petroleum building in Miami? And that the chemicals he imported into the Bahamas were for legitimate agricultural and commercial purposes, to aid his Local Empowerment Movement?”

“I’m choosing not to answer that question, either.”

“We’ve datamined your phone calls, determined your whereabouts, have air traffic control information about the drone, photos of the Ground Control Station in the NIOS parking lot—”

“I’m choosing—” his voice caught. “I’m choosing not to respond.” His eyes could not hold hers.

Like David’s.

There, sorry. I didn’t want to say it. You made me…

Instinct told her to back off now. Immediately. Softer voice. “I want to work with you, Mr. Shales. Can I call you Barry?”

“I guess.”

“I’m Nance. I want to work something out. We believe that you were a victim in this too. That you weren’t given all the information about Robert Moreno that you probably should have been when the STO was issued.”

Now a flicker in his eyes.

Which, fuck it all, are just as blue as David’s.

“In fact, it’s possible,” she continued, “that some of the intelligence was intentionally manipulated to make a stronger case for assassinating Moreno. What do you think about that?”

“Intelligence is hard to analyze. It’s a tricky business.”

Ah, no more name, rank and serial number. No doubt: Shales knows that Metzger fudged the intel and it’s been eating at him.

“I’m sure it is. But it presumably is also easy to manipulate. Isn’t that the case?”

“I guess it can be.” Shales’s face was flushed. She believed that veins in his jaw and temple were more prominent than earlier.

Excellent.

Fear was a good tool for persuasion.

Hope was better.

“Let’s see if we can work something out.”

But his shoulders rose slightly and she measured the level of resistance. Still pretty high.

Laurel had played chess with David. This was one of their Sunday-morning things to do, after breakfast and after, well, what often came after breakfast.

She loved those games. He was slightly better than she. That added to the excitement.

Now, she thought. Now’s the time.

“Barry, the stakes are high here. The death of Moreno and the others in the Bahamas are one thing. But the bomb in the coffee shop, the murder of Lydia Foster, that’s—”

“
What?
”

“The bomb, the murder of the witnesses.” Laurel appeared perplexed.

“Wait. What are you talking about?”

She paused. Then, surveying his face closely, said, “The individual trying to stop our case, the specialist, they’re called, aren’t they? He killed a witness in the Bahamas and one here in New York. He detonated an IED to destroy a computer holding evidence, nearly killed a half dozen people, including an NYPD police detective. You’re not familiar with these?”

“No…”

Bishop to queen’s knight three. Check.

She whispered, “Yes. Oh, yes.”

He looked away whispering, “Minimal steps…”

She didn’t know what that meant.

But Laurel did know that this wasn’t an act. Shales, of the pink flesh and eyes impossibly old and achingly blue, hadn’t known anything of Unsub 516. Not a single thing. Shreve Metzger had thoroughly deceived him.

Work it…

“Well, Barry, we have proof positive that this man was in the Bahamas around the time of your drone strike. We thought he was your partner.”

“No, I work alone. NIOS sometimes has assets on the ground for intel…” His voice faded.

“Who are sent there by Shreve Metzger.”

Not a question.

“Sometimes.”

“So he’s the one who manipulated the evidence in the first place. And has been trying to stop the investigation.”

“You have a name?” Shales asked.

“No, he’s an unknown subject at this point.”

Shales whispered, “Tell me, who’s this Lydia Foster you mentioned?”

“Moreno’s interpreter here in New York. This unsub killed her. He was eliminating witnesses.”

“And the bomb, was that the gas main explosion in the news the other day?”

“Yes, that was the cover story. But it was a bomb. The point was to kill investigators and destroy evidence.”

The pilot looked off.

“And two people died?”

“And they were both tortured first.”

He said nothing. His eyes focused on a dime-sized ding in the table.

“Barry, you called the South Cove Inn two days before the Moreno assignment. You called from your operational phone, registered to Don Bruns.”

If he was surprised at this he gave no reaction.

“I know why you called,” Laurel said softly. “It wasn’t to confirm Moreno’s reservation. The CIA or NIOS’s own assets could verify he was going to be there. You wanted to be sure that he was going to be there
alone
. That his wife and children wouldn’t be coming with him. You wanted to be sure. So that there was no collateral damage.”

The airman’s lip trembled for an instant. He looked away.

Laurel whispered, “That tells me you had doubts about the assignment from the beginning. You didn’t want it to end up the way it did.” She held his eye, whispered, “Work with us, Barry.”

There’s a moment in chess, David had told her, of alarming clarity. You understand that the strategy you’ve been confidently following is completely wrong, that your opponent has been playing an entirely different game—one of insight and brilliance, outstripping yours. Your loss might not be in the next move or the next ten but defeat is inevitable.

“He’ll see it in your eyes,” David had explained. “Something changes. You know you’ve lost and your eyes tell your opponent you understand that.”

This is what she observed now with Barry Shales.

He’s going to cave, she understood. He’s going to give me Shreve Metzger! The murderer who uses national intelligence to kill whomever the hell he wants to kill.

Checkmate…

His breathing was rapid. “All right. Tell me…Tell me how this could work?”

“What we can do is—”

A pounding on the door.

Laurel jumped.

A man in a close-fitting gray suit stood at the window, looking matter-of-factly from her to Shales and back again.

No, no, no…

Laurel knew him. He was one of the most tenacious—and vicious—defense lawyers in the city. That is, one of the best. But he primarily appeared in federal court in New York at the behest of associated firms based in Washington, DC. Curious that he was here, rather than an attorney who knew his way around the rough-and-tumble state trial court, which in New York was called the Supreme Court.

The guard opened the door.

“Hello, Counselor Laurel,” the lawyer said pleasantly.

She knew him by reputation. How did he know her?

Something wasn’t right here.

“Who—?” Shales began.

“I’m Artie Rothstein. I’ve been retained to defend you.”

“By Shreve?”

“Don’t say anything more, Barry. Were you advised you have the right to an attorney and you don’t need to say anything?”

“I…Yes. But I want to—”

“No, you don’t, Barry. You don’t want to do anything at the moment.”

“But, look, I just found out that Shreve—”

“Barry,” Rothstein said in a low voice. “I’m advising you to be quiet. It’s very important.” He waited a moment then added, “We want to make sure you and your family get the best counsel you can have.”

“My
family
?”

Hell. That’s his game. Laurel said firmly, “The state has no case against your family, Barry. We have no interest in them at all.”

Rothstein turned to her and his round, creased face offered a perplexed look. “We’ve hardly scratched the surface of the case, Nance.” He looked at Shales. “You never know the direction a prosecution will take. My theory is to provide for every eventuality. And I’ll make sure you and anyone else involved in this prosecution…” His voice grew indignant. “…this
misguided
prosecution is looked after. Now, Barry?”

The pilot’s jaw quivered. He looked at Nance quickly then lowered his eyes and nodded.

Rothstein said, “This interview is now terminated.”