The Kill Room (34 page)

T
HE SKINNY FIFTY-YEAR-OLD
was a lifer in the Department of Corrections.

He was not, however, a prisoner but a guard and had been all his professional days. He actually liked the job, shepherding people through the Tombs.

The nickname of the venue—technically the Manhattan Detention Complex—suggested a place that was worse than the truth. The word went back to the 1800s and was appropriate for a prison modeled after an Egyptian mausoleum, built on an incompetently filled swamp (adding to the aroma and illness that pervaded the place) and situated in the notorious Five Points district of Manhattan—described as “the most dangerous place on earth” at that time.

In fact, the Tombs nowadays was just another lockup, although a damn big one.

Calling into intercoms, using the code word for the day to open doors, the guard now strode down the hallway to a segregated set of cells reserved for special prisoners.

Like the man he was now going to see. Barry Shales.

Over his twenty-eight years as a guard here he had trained himself to have no opinion about his charges. Child killers and white-collar criminals who’d embezzled from people who probably should be embezzled from…it made no difference to him. His job was to keep order and make sure the system ran smoothly. And also to ease the difficult time these people were going through.

After all, this was not prison but temporary detention, where individuals stayed until bail or transfer to Rikers or, in more than a few cases, freedom forever. Everybody here was presumably innocent. That was how the country worked.

But the man whose cell he was now walking toward was different and the guard
did
have an opinion about him. It was an absolute tragedy that he’d been incarcerated here.

The guard didn’t know a lot about Barry Shales’s background. But he did know that he was a former air force flier who’d fought in the war in Iraq. And that he worked for the government now, the federal government.

And yet he’d been arrested for murder. But not for killing his wife or his wife’s lover or anything like that. For killing some asshole terrorist.

Arrested, even though he was a soldier, even though he was a hero.

And the guard knew why he was here: because of politics. He’d been arrested because the party that wasn’t in power had to fuck over the one that was, by making an example of this poor guy.

The guard came to the cell and looked through the window.

Funny.

There was another prisoner in the cell, which the guard hadn’t known about. It didn’t make sense for him to be here. There was a second empty cell that the man should have been put into. The new prisoner was sitting off to the side, staring ahead blankly. The gaze made the guard feel uneasy. The eyes told you everything about the people here, much more than the crap they said.

And what was with Shales? He was lying on his side on the bench, back to the door. He wasn’t moving.

The guard punched in the code and with a buzz the door opened.

“Hey, Shales?”

No movement.

The second prisoner continued to stare at the wall. Scary fucker, the guard thought, and he was a man who didn’t use that phrase lightly.

“Shales?” The guard stepped closer.

Suddenly the flier stirred and sat up. He turned slowly. The guard saw that Shales was holding his hands to his eyes. He’d been crying.

No shame in that. Happened here all the time.

Shales wiped his face.

“On your feet, Shales. Got some news I think you’re gonna like.”

A
T HIS DESK SHREVE METZGER HEARD
the siren but thought nothing of it.

This was, after all, Manhattan. You always heard sirens. The same way you heard shouts, horns, the occasional scream, the caw of seagulls. Backfires…Well, staccato reports that were
probably
backfires.

Just the background tapestry of the city.

He hardly paid any mind, especially now, when he was trying to put out the raging forest fire that the Robert Moreno task order had become.

The chaos swirled around him, the tornado of flame: Barry Shales and the goddamn whistleblower and that bitch of a prosecutor and the people inside and outside the government who had put together the Special Task Order program.

Soon there’d be more tinder adding to the smolder: the press.

Then of course, hovering over it all, was the Wizard.

He wondered what the “budget conference” was deciding right at the moment.

Metzger realized the sirens had stopped.

And they’d stopped right outside his office.

He rose and looked down. At the gated parking lot, where the Ground Control Station sat.

All over with…

It sure was.

One unmarked car punctuated with flashing blue lights, one NYPD squad car, one van—maybe SWAT. The doors were open. The police were nowhere to be seen.

Shreve Metzger knew where they were, though. No doubt of that, of course.

A detail that was confirmed a moment later when the guard from downstairs called him on the security line and asked in an uncertain voice, “Director?” He cleared his throat and continued, “There are some police officers here to see you.”

L
INCOLN RHYME COULD TELL THAT SHREVE METZGER
, looking the criminalist up and down, was surprised to see him.

Maybe the fact that he was in a wheelchair had jarred him. But the man would have known that. The master of intelligence surely had been compiling files on everyone involved in the Moreno investigation.

Maybe the surprise, ironically, was due to Rhyme’s being in better shape than the NIOS head. Rhyme noted how benign Metzger looked: thin hair, scrawny physique, thick beige-framed glasses with a smudge on each lens. Rhyme would have thought a man who occasionally killed people for a living would be more grisly and sinister. Metzger had taken in Rhyme’s muscular form, thick hair, square face. He’d blinked, a cryptic expression worthy of Nance Laurel.

The man sat down at his desk and turned a gaze—this one
unsurprised
—toward Sachs and Sellitto. Only they were here; Laurel wasn’t. This was, Rhyme had explained, a police matter, not prosecutorial. And there was a chance, though slight, it could be dangerous.

He looked around. The office was pretty bland. Few decorations, some books that seemed unread—their spines uncracked—sat on untidy shelves. Some file cabinets with very large combination locks and iris scanners. Functional, mismatched furniture. On the ceiling a red light flashed silently, which meant, Rhyme knew, that visitors without security clearances were on the premises and all classified material should be put away or turned facedown.

Which Metzger had dutifully done.

In a soft voice, a controlled voice, the NIOS director said, “You understand I’m not saying anything to you.”

Lon Sellitto—the senior law enforcer here—started to reply but Rhyme interrupted with a wry: “Invoking the Supremacy Clause, are we?”

“I don’t owe you any answers.”

Breaking his own vow of silence.

Suddenly Metzger’s hands began shaking. His eyes narrowed and his breathing seemed to come more quickly. This happened in an instant. The transformation was alarming. Fast and certain as a snake leaping from quiescence to fang a mouse.

“You think you can goddamn come in here…” He had to stop speaking. His jaw clenched too stridently.

He’s had emotional issues. Anger primarily…

“Hey, chill a bit, all right?” Sellitto said. “If we wanted to arrest you,
Metzge
r, you’d be arrested. Listen to the man. Jesus.”

Rhyme recalled, with affection, the days when they had been partnered—Sellitto’s, not his own, artificial verb. Their technique wasn’t good cop/bad cop. But rather smooth cop/rough cop.

Metzger calmed. “Then what…?” He reached into his drawer.

Rhyme noted Sachs stiffen slightly, hand dipping toward her weapon. But the NIOS head withdrew only nail clippers. Then he set them down without clipping.

Sellitto deferred to Rhyme with a nod.

“Now, we have a situation that needs to be…resolved. Your organization issued a Special Task Order.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please.” Rhyme lifted an impatient hand. “An STO against a man who appears to have been innocent. But that’s between you, your conscience and—presumably—some rather difficult congressional hearings. That’s not our business.
We’re
here because we need to find somebody who’s been killing witnesses involved in the Moreno situation. And—”

“If you’re suggesting that NIOS—”

“Called in a specialist?” Sachs said.

Metzger flickered again. He’d have to be wondering, How did they know that term? How did they know
any
of this? He sputtered, “I did not and never have ordered anyone to do that.”

Spoken in bureaucratic euphemism.

To do that…

Sellitto barked, “Look at your wrists, Metzger. Look. You in cuffs? I don’t see any cuffs. You see any cuffs?”

Rhyme continued, “We know it was somebody else. And that’s why we’re here. We need you to help us find him.”

“Help you?” Metzger replied with a momentary smile. “And why on earth should I help people who are trying to bring down an important department of the government? A department that does vital work keeping citizens safe from our enemies?”

Rhyme offered a sardonic gaze and even the NIOS director seemed to realize the rhetoric was over the top.

“Why should you help?” Rhyme echoed. “Two reasons leap into my mind. First, so you don’t go down for obstruction of justice. You mounted a campaign to stop the investigation. You tracked down Moreno’s citizenship renunciation, presumably pulling strings at the State Department. It’d be interesting to see if you followed proper channels for that. We’re sure you had Barry Shales, NIOS staff and contractors that you do business with destroy evidence of the STO drone program, you dug up dirt on the investigators. You hacked phones, intercepted emails, borrowed signal information from your friends in Langley and Fort Meade.”

Sachs said in a gritty voice, “You stole personal medical records.”

She and Rhyme had discussed how Captain Bill Myers had gotten from her orthopedist the files about her condition. They concluded that somebody at NIOS had hacked the records and sent them to Sachs’s superiors.

Metzger looked down. A silent confirmation.

“And the second reason to help us? You and NIOS got set up—to murder somebody. And we’re the only ones who can help you nail the perp.”

Rhyme had Metzger’s full attention now.

“What are you saying happened?”

Rhyme replied, “I’ve heard some people suggest that you’re using this job to kill whoever you think is unpatriotic or anti-American. I don’t think so. I think you really believed Moreno was a threat—because somebody
wanted
you to think that and leaked phony intelligence to you. So you’d issue an STO and take him out. And that would give the real perp a chance to murder the real intended victim.”

Metzger looked off for a moment. “Sure! Moreno gets shot, the others in the room are stunned, scared. The perp slips inside and kills the man he’s really after. De la Rua, the reporter. He was writing an exposé, corruption or something, and somebody wanted him dead.”

“No, no, no,” Rhyme said, though he then conceded, “All right. I
thought
the same thing at first. But then I realized that was wrong.” This was delivered as a confession. In fact, he was still irritated he’d jumped to the conclusion about the reporter without considering all the facts.

“Then who…?” Metzger lifted his hands, confused.

Amelia Sachs provided the answer. “Simon Flores, Moreno’s bodyguard. He was the target all along.”

D
E LA RUA WAS A FEATURE WRITER
for a business publication,” Rhyme explained. “We looked over all his recent articles and found out what he was working on. Human-interest stories, business analysis, economics, investment. No investigative reporting, no exposés. Nothing controversial.”

As for the reporter’s personal life, well, Pulaski had found nothing that might motivate a killer to take him out. He wasn’t involved in shady business dealings or criminal activities, had no enemies and hadn’t engaged in any personal moral lapses—there was no controversy about
whom
he was sleeping with (apparently only his wife of twenty-three years).

“So when I didn’t find a motive,” Rhyme continued, “I had to ask what was curious? I went back to the evidence. And a few minutes later something jumped out. Or, I should say, the
absence
of something jumped out. The bodyguard’s missing watch, which was stolen after the shooting. It was a Rolex. The fact of the theft was unremarkable. But why would a bodyguard be wearing a five-thousand-dollar watch?”

Metzger looked blank.

“His boss, Robert Moreno, wasn’t rich; he was an activist and journalist. He was probably pretty generous with his workers but paying enough of a salary for any of them to buy a Rolex? I didn’t think so. A half hour ago I had our FBI contact profile the guard. Flores had accounts worth six million dollars in banks around the Caribbean. Every month he got fifty thousand cash from an anonymous numbered account in the Caymans.”

Metzger’s eyes flashed. “The guard was blackmailing someone.”

You didn’t get to be head of a group like NIOS without being sharp but this was a particularly good deduction.

Rhyme nodded, with a smile. “I think that’s right. I remembered that the day of the attack at the South Cove Inn, there was another murder in the Nassau. A lawyer. My Bahamian police contact gave me the lawyer’s client list.”

Metzger said, “The guard was one of the lawyer’s clients, of course. The guard—Flores—left the incriminating information with the attorney for safekeeping. But the man being blackmailed got tired of paying or ran out of money and called up a hit man—this specialist—to kill the guard, kill the lawyer and steal the information, destroy it.”

“Exactly. The lawyer’s office was ransacked and looted after he died.”

Sellitto cast a wry glance at Metzger. “He’s good, Linc. He oughta be a spy.”

The director regarded the detective coolly, then continued, “Any ideas on how to find out who was being blackmailed?”

Sachs asked, “Who sent you the fake intel about Moreno, that he was planning the attack on American Petroleum Drilling and Refining?”

Metzger leaned back, eyes sweeping the ceiling. “I can’t tell you specifically. It’s classified. Only that they were intelligence assets in Latin America—ours and another U.S. security organization. Trusted assets.”

Rhyme suggested, “Could somebody have leaked bad intel to
them
and they sent it to you?”

The doubtful look faded. “Yes, somebody who knew how the intelligence community worked, somebody with contacts.” Metzger’s jaw trembled alarmingly again. How fast he switched from calm to enraged. It was unsettling. “But how do we find him?”

“I’ve been considering that,” Rhyme said. “And I think the key is the whistleblower, the person who leaked the STO.”

Metzger grimaced. “The traitor.”

“What have you been doing to find him?”

“Searching for him day and night,” the man said ruefully. “But no luck. We’ve cleared everybody here with access to the STO. My personal assistant had the last polygraph appointment. She has…” He hesitated. “…reason to be unhappy with the government. But she passed. There are still a few people in Washington we have to check out. Has to have come from there, we’re thinking. Maybe a military base.”

“Homestead?”

A pause. “I can’t say.”

Rhyme asked, “Who was in charge of the internal investigation?”

“My administrations director, Spencer Boston.” A pause, as he regarded Rhyme’s piercing gaze, then looked down briefly. “He’s not a suspect. How could he be? What does he have to gain? Besides, he passed the test.”

Sachs: “Who is he exactly? What’s his background?”

“Spencer’s former military, decorated, former CIA—mostly active in Central America. They called him the ‘regime change expert.’”

Sellitto looked at Rhyme. “Remember why Robert Moreno turned anti-American? The U.S. invasion of Panama. His best friend was killed.”

Rhyme didn’t respond but, his mind’s eye scanning the evidence charts, asked the NIOS director, “So this Boston would have training in beating polygraphs.”

“I suppose technically. But—“

“Does he drink tea? And use Splenda? Oh, and does he have a cheap blue suit that’s a shade lighter than tasteful?”

Metzger stared. After a moment: “He drinks herbal tea because of his ulcers—”

“Ah, stomach problems.” Rhyme glanced at Sachs. She nodded in return.

“With some kind of sweetener, never sugar.”

“And his suits?”

Metzger sighed. “He shops at Sears. And, yes, for some reason he likes this weird shade of blue. I never understood that.”