by Marc Rainer
Judge Dean started to step down from the bench, but then he turned back. “One more thing, Mr. Santos.”
The defendant’s sneer was gone. He looked weakly up at the bench while a deputy marshal was locking his wrists in handcuffs.
“They say in the law that sometimes truth is a defense,” the judge said. He smiled. “Not this time.”
The judge nodded to the deputy, who turned his prisoner back toward the door.
Trask headed for the FBI field office.
August 23, 10:30 a.m.
“The body, our latest one,” Doroz explained, “was dropped on the corner on the front of this building—the field office of the FBI in Washington, DC, for God’s sake—just before dawn this morning. An 18er. Three sixes tattooed on his face. One bullet hole in a thigh, about a hundred knife tracks in his chest, and his severed privates stuffed in his mouth. Throat cut to finish him off. Surveillance cameras only saw a dark pickup stop, and someone threw him over the bed wall. No plates on the car. Retaliation both for the hits at the car wash and for our arrests of their compadres. In my opinion, clearly the work of a very pissed-off MS-13 crew. The body’s on the way to the ME now.”
“This, on the other hand, was professional.” Trask flipped the file on the Regan murder across the table to Doroz. “No prints anywhere in the guy’s house that weren’t his own. No signs of forced entry or a struggle. None of the neighbors heard anything, so a silencer was probably used. One small-caliber shot to the back of the head. Victim seated in a chair with his hands tied behind his back. And,” he continued, looking at Carter and then back again at Doroz, “no gang graffiti or machetes. Any ideas?”
“He was a defense attorney. You talk for the scumbags long enough, sooner or later they talk back when they don’t like the results,” Carter said matter-of-factly.
“That’s kind of cold, Dix.” Doroz thumbed through the case file. “Any recent significant losses in court for Mr. Regan?”
“Just the usual bottom-feeders,” Carter said. “I got his calendar for the past few months from his secretary. The guy didn’t take on many power players. Hookers, shoplifters, low-level pushers. Mostly in superior court.”
“He didn’t do much federal court work,” Doroz agreed. “I wonder how he ended up with one of our MS-13 guys.”
“He was still on the federal appointment list,” Trask said. “I saw him in district court from time to time, usually when the bigger defense attorneys had a conflict and the court needed somebody to represent an indigent. He actually wasn’t a bad guy, knew how to get the best deals for his clients.”
“Meaning he would have suggested to his new client that he cooperate with us?” Doroz asked.
“Yes. Especially when it looked like a certain conviction,” Trask said.
“So maybe one of the Mara bosses didn’t like that suggestion. They didn’t want any extra heat, so they changed their murder method,” Carter offered.
Trask leaned back in his chair and looked at Carter for long seconds before he spoke again. “Dix, from the get-go on this thing you’ve been saying that you didn’t think it was the Maras who were pulling all this off. Wrong guns, wrong ammo, no tattoos on the visitors to my house. Why do you think that they’re good for this hit?”
“I don’t know that they are,” Carter said. “Just a theory. The murder seems connected to the arrests of that shooting team we interrupted.”
“Then why this one defense counsel? Any of the rest of them threatened or attacked? Has anybody asked them?”
“I’ll get on that now.” Carter stood up and left the room.
Trask looked at Doroz, who shrugged.
“Bear, did Murphy ever get us that personnel roster we asked for? The one for the embassy?” Trask asked.
“Not yet. Want me to call him?”
“Yeah. But tell him—ask him nicely—to bring it over here. I’d like him to think we’ve just been checking our notes and it’s a simple loose end.
“It’s not?”
“No,” Trask said. “It’s not.”
August 23, 2:49 p.m.
The man with the eye patch climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment in the aging apartment building. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the odor. The place reeked of refuse and neglect. He found the number and knocked on the door.
“One hundred thousand, as agreed,” he said when the door opened. He handed the briefcase to a shorter, thicker, and younger man with the number “18” tattooed into the left side of his neck. “Also as agreed, your brother has been released from La Esperanza, and will join you and your wife in Ecuador. Your plane ticket is inside the case. If I ever see you in this country or in El Salvador again, I will kill you. I will also hunt your family down and exterminate them. Comprende?”
The younger man nodded, and then closed the door.
The man with the eye patch returned to his car and motioned his driver out of the vehicle. “Hugo, see that he does not make his flight and that the case is returned to me. I’ll circle the block and return for you. Make it quick. We’ve been busy today, and I’m hungry.”
He watched as Hugo entered the building, then he spat on the sidewalk. Fucking Mara scum. He opened the driver’s door to the limo and slid behind the wheel. The light at the first corner was turning red as he reached the intersection. Seeing no other vehicles approaching, he ignored the signal and turned left. Three more left turns later, he pulled to the curb in front of the building. Hugo was there, carrying the briefcase. He got into the passenger’s seat, and the car pulled away from the curb.
4:10 p.m.
Frank Wilkes waited for the officers to stand aside and give him room to work. The apartment, a small one-bedroom in the Northeast project facing Rhode Island Avenue, was in order except for the corpse lying on the floor in the center of the room, just inside the doorway. There was a small-caliber bullet wound in the center of the dead man’s forehead. Wilkes took dozens of digital photographs of the scene, and then returned the camera to his bag.
Cause of death is not a mystery in this case, he thought.
He nevertheless dutifully took a swab and ran it through the pool of blood beside the dead man’s head, placed the swab in an evidence bag, and repeated the procedure with a swab he scraped along the inside of the corpse’s mouth.
“Jeez, Frank, any doubt that’s his blood?” asked one of the patrolmen standing in the doorway.
“Probably not. No doubt at all that we won’t know unless I check it.” Wilkes glanced at the cop with a look that ensured he would not be interrupted again. “Turn that light off, will you?”
The room darkened, Wilkes took a can of luminol spray from his bag and stepped around the corpse. He sprayed the floor, a small table, and a wooden armless chair that were several feet away from the corpse. He looked back at the cop in the doorway. More questions were written on the man’s face, but he was not asking them.
Wilkes waited a few seconds, and then noticed a faint blue glow on the chair at the joints where the vertical bars forming the rear legs and sides of the back passed through the seat. He took more swabs, wiped them along the blue lines, and placed the swabs in evidence bags. He walked past the cop in the doorway.
“It may mean nothing, may mean everything,” he said as he left.
4:45 p.m.
Murphy was smiling as he knocked on Doroz’ office door. He had a manila folder in his left hand while he extended his right to Trask.
Another song flashed through Trask’s memory. “The Backstabbers” by the O’Jays.
“How’s my new favorite prosecutor?” Murphy sank into one of the chairs facing Doroz’ desk.
“I’ll let you know in a minute, Agent Murphy, as soon as I see what is, or isn’t, in that folder,” Trask said. He was standing, and not smiling.
“The personnel roster for the embassy of El Salvador, just as you asked.”
“Just a lot later than I expected it,” Trask said, thumbing through the papers. “And regarding one offi
cial, pure bullshit.” He handed three pages back to Murphy. The first page bore the photograph of the man with the eye patch. “I do not believe for a microsecond that this apparently non-English-speaking deputy chief of mission is a career diplomat, or for that matter, that his name is José Rios-García. I would like to know, Agent Murphy, who the hell he really is, why he lied to us about not recognizing one of the photographs we showed him, and what his purpose is in this country.”
Murphy stopped smiling and leaned backward in his chair. “Hypothetically speaking,” he said, “what do you think would happen to a junior Assistant United States Attorney if he attempted to press an investigation, unsupported by anything other than speculation, into a high-ranking official of a foreign government who enjoys full diplomatic immunity? I’m trying to help you out as best I can, Jeff, and I’d hate to see you put yourself in a no-win situation.”
Trask nodded, pacing about the room before turning back toward Murphy. He felt his blood start to boil, and he waited until he could speak with some control.
“I appreciate your concern, Murph. I really do, and I assure you that I have no intention of starting some international incident without just cause. But hypothetically speaking, let’s say that a junior Assistant United States Attorney—and his wife—had to fight off a couple of hired goons with machetes who attempted to decapitate this attorney and his wife with the said machetes. Do you wonder just how pissed off that guy might be? Do you wonder if that guy would hesitate at all to charge anyone on this planet, anyone, with obstruction of justice if he could show that this anyone—being an American citizen and maybe even another government employee and therefore not enjoying diplomatic immunity—was concealing evidence in a related homicide investigation?”
“I gave you what we have on file.”
“And I’m telling you that it’s bullshit. And I’m also telling you that if the time comes when I can prove it’s bullshit, and that you knew it was bullshit when you gave it to me, you can expect to spend about half a year’s salary paying some defense mouthpiece to wait outside a grand jury room while you’re inside explaining yourself. Or do you think that your friends at State are actually going to stand behind you and provide counsel for you in that situation?”
Trask saw Murphy’s eyes look away for a split second.
“That’s what I thought. You know as well as I do they’ll promise you full support and then cut you free like a kite caught on a power line. Come back when you can tell me who this pirate really is.”
Murphy stormed out the door.
“Wheeew,” Doroz whistled. “Thanks for inviting me to that little party. Here I was thinking I had a shot at retirement in a year or two.”
“It’s all on me, Bear,” Trask said. “I just needed a witness. Let’s see if Murphy still knows which country he works for.”
Doroz was suddenly looking past him. Trask turned and saw Dixon Carter and Tim Wisniewski standing in the doorway.
“We have another dead defense counsel,” Carter said.
6:20 p.m.
Sivella’s homicide team and the crime scene crew were still at it when they arrived. The law office of William T. Boydston looked undisturbed, a sharp contrast to the body seated in the chair behind the desk. The office had the usual impress-the-clients collection of treatises and published law reporters perfectly arranged in a rosewood shelf directly behind the matching desk. The file cabinets to the side of the bookcase remained closed.
Trask’s eyes scanned the titles for a moment: Black’s Law Dictionary, Corbin on Contracts, Prosser on Torts.
The usual collection of law school texts. Books he hasn’t opened since law school. The same for the Atlantic and Federal Reporters. All for show, for the clients. We all use the web now. The computer search engines are ten times faster than thumbing through the books.
He stepped around to the side of the desk, seeing that the crime scene guys were working behind it.
The obese body of Boydston sat tilted back in a leather swivel chair, his hands tied behind him. A large wad of paper had been stuffed in his mouth, and blood trails fell from two small holes in his head, one at the base of his skull in the rear, one between the eyes. The body of a woman in her fifties lay at his feet. There was a single hole in the back of her head.
“His secretary, Lynette Morris,” Sivella said. “Was this guy on the list for our MS-13 crew?”
“He represented one of the shooters in the back of the van,” Trask answered.
“Would he have told his client to cooperate, like the last one?” Doroz asked.
“No, not Big Pink,” Trask said. He saw the question on Doroz’ face. “We called him that because he was big, and when he had blood in his head he had a very pink complexion. Not the pale gray you see now. He was a meter-runner: he’d rather tell a client to go to trial just to pad his bill. He really didn’t give a shit if the guy lost and served more time, as long as he could get paid for going to court.”
“What’s our best guess on the time of death, Cap?” Carter asked Sivella.
“Lunch hour, probably. He had a one-thirty appointment, and the client came in and found the bodies. We checked the secretary’s appointment book and called the last client he’d seen before lunch. Divorce case. The gal said she left at 11:45 and all was well. She said no other clients were waiting.”
Trask walked out while the CSI troops were shooting the rest of their digital photos. Boydston’s office opened onto a short hallway that led to the waiting room.
Shooter comes in before Big Pink and Lynette can leave for lunch, waiting until the future Mrs. Ex-whatever clears the area. He orders the secretary into the back with her boss and then does the dirty work. Nothing’s ransacked, no filing cabinets open. Her purse, his wallet are still where they should be. Not a robbery. Just like with Regan. A hit, pure and simple.
He opened the front door from the lobby, looking out onto K Street, NW.
Parking lane, parking meters. Four lanes of traffic. Another parking lane on the opposite side of the street. Clothing stores, a Starbucks of course, and a bank. A BANK, with an ATM directly across the street.
Trask walked hurriedly back into the office and grabbed Doroz, who followed him outside. Trask pointed toward the bank. “Think it would be worthwhile getting the camera tape from the money machine?”
Doroz looked at him and shook his head. “For a lawyer, you don’t miss much.”
“I read a lot. That’s how you guys got McVeigh in Oklahoma City, wasn’t it?”
“Yep. The ATM camera caught the truck and survived the blast, too. I’ll go pull the tape.”
Trask went back inside and found Sivella. “I think we need to call the other defense attorneys and give ’em a heads-up.”
“Agreed.”
“Bear’s pulling the camera tape from an ATM across the street. Probably had the office entry in its frame of view.”
“Good. Let’s all sit down to look at that. The FBI gang squad room in an hour?”
“Sure. How long before we can see if there’s a ballistics match with the rounds from the Regan shooting?”
“If Kathy can get to the autopsy tonight, we could have a preliminary tomorrow. I’ll ask Frank Wilkes to expedite the ballistics.”
Lynn had set up the squad briefing room so that a machine fed the ATM camera tape into some computer software, which in turn fed the running images onto the drop-down movie screen.
“This way, I don’t have twelve guys looking over my shoulder at my computer monitor,” she said.
“Start it at 11:40, please,” Trask said.
The film was the usual grainy, black-and-white product of a device designed only to identify the faces of those who would attempt to defraud or make off with the ATM machine. The time counter marched past 11:44 a.m.
“We should see our divorcee any time now, if she was telling us the truth,” Sivella said.
At 11:46 a.m., the head of a woman exiting the law office was visible over the tops of the
passing cars. Then the screen went black.
“What the hell?!” Doroz exclaimed.
“The timer’s still running,” Trask pointed out, “which means the camera’s still rolling. Let it run, Lynn. Better yet, fast-forward please.”
At 11:58 a.m., the camera resumed its surveillance of K Street NW, unobstructed.
“Somebody else apparently reads a lot—enough to know to block off an ATM camera when they’re about to commit a homicide or two,” Doroz said, looking at Trask.
Trask looked at Sivella. “Commander, does that look like the degree of planning one would expect from a bunch of street-gang thugs?”
“Hell, no. It smells more like a damned spook operation.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say all along, Cap,” Carter said. “I don’t know what we’re into here, but it isn’t simple gang warfare.”
“I agree,” Wisniewski said.
“What a surprise.” Sivella snorted, shaking his head. Wisniewski was playing the junior partner role with an eye on an Oscar.
“What’s our next step, Jeff?” Sivella asked Trask.
“Bear, please set up another meeting with the ambassador. Don’t bother going through Murphy. Tell the ambassador that we just want to give him an update on our progress, such as it is. Then get somebody in the know over here from CIA and DEA. Somebody who’s been on the ground in El Salvador, if possible. In the same room and at the same time. And again, don’t invite Murphy.”
“You want to see the ambassador before or after this meeting?”
“After, if we can get CIA and DEA together any time soon.”
“What’s my police department’s role in this for now?” Sivella asked.
“In my career-suicidal opinion,” Trask said, “it should probably be playing dumb, and being very ready to throw a rash and impetuous prosecutor under the bus. In other words, you don’t know what the hell I’m doing or why. If we catch anything on this fishing expedition, we’ll let you know.”