Finally, the knife was ready and he turned back to the steak, slowly slicing the piece into quarter-inch cubes.
He could have made them bigger and he could have worked faster.
But why rush something you enjoy?
When he was done he dusted the cubes in a mixture of sage and flour (his contribution to the classic recipe) and sauteed them in a cast-iron skillet, scooping them aside while still internally pink. He then diced two red potatoes and half a Vidalia onion. These vegetables he cooked in oil in the skillet and returned the meat. He mixed in a bit of veal stock and chopped Italian parsley and set the pan under the broiler to crisp the top.
A minute or two later, the dish was finished. He added salt and pepper to the hash and sat down to eat the meal, along with a rosemary scone, at a very expensive teak table in the bay window of his kitchen. He'd baked the scone several days ago. Better with age, he reflected, as the herbs had bonded well with the hand-milled flour.
Swann ate slowly, as he always did. He had nothing but pity bordering on contempt for people who ate fast, who inhaled their food.
He had just finished when he received an email. It seemed that Shreve Metzger's great national security intelligence machine was grinding away as efficiently as ever.
Received your text. Good to hear success today.
Liabilities you need to minimize/eliminate:
Witnesses and allied individuals with knowledge base of the STO operation. Suggest searching Moreno's trip to NY,
April 30-May 2.
Identified Nance Laurel as lead prosecutor. IDs of the NYPD investigators to follow soon.
Individual who leaked STO. Someone is searching for identity now. You may have thoughts on how to learn ID. Proceed at your own discretion.
Swann called the Tech Services people and requested some datamining. Then he pulled on thick yellow rubber gloves. To clean the skillet, he scrubbed it with salt and treated the surface with hot oil; cast-iron should never meet soap and water, of course. He then began to wash the dishes and utensils in very, very hot water. He enjoyed the process and found that he did much of his best thinking standing here, looking out at a dogged ginkgo in a small garden in front of the building. The nuts from that plant were curious. They're used in Asian cuisine--the centerpiece of the delicious custard chawanmushi in Japan. They can also be toxic, when consumed in large quantities. But dining can be dangerous, of course; when we sit down to a meal who doesn't occasionally wonder if we've been dealt the salmonella or E. coli card? Jacob Swann had eaten fugu--the infamous puffer fish with toxic organs--in Japan. He faulted the dish not for its potential for lethality (training of chefs makes poisoning virtually impossible) but for a flavor too mild for his liking.
Scrubbing, scrubbing, removing every trace of food from metal and glass and porcelain.
And thinking hard.
To eliminate witnesses would cast suspicion on NIOS and its affiliates, of course, since the kill order was now public. That was unfortunate and under other circumstances he would have tried to arrange accidents or construct some fictional players to take the blame for the murders that were about to happen: the cartels Metzger had claimed were really responsible for Moreno's death, or perps the police and prosecutor had put in jail, out for revenge.
But that wouldn't work here. Jacob Swann would simply have to do what he did best; while Shreve Metzger would deny that kill orders even existed, Swann would make absolutely certain that no evidence of or witnesses to his clean-up operation could possibly tie NIOS or anyone connected with it to the killing.
He could do that. Jacob Swann was a very meticulous man.
Besides, he had no choice but to eliminate these threats. There was no way he'd let anybody jeopardize his organization; its work was too important.
Swann dried the dishes, silver and coffee cup, using thick linen, with the diligence of a surgeon completing the stitches after a successful procedure.
CHAPTER 13
Robert Moreno Homicide
Crime Scene 1. Suite 1200, South Cove Inn, New Providence Island, Bahamas (the "Kill Room").
May 9.
Victim 1: Robert Moreno. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.
Supplemental information: Moreno, 38, U.S. citizen, expatriate, living in Venezuela. Vehemently anti-American. Nickname: "the Messenger of Truth."
Spent three days in NYC, April 30-May 2. Purpose?
Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.
Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.
Victim 3: Simon Flores. COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.
Supplemental information: Moreno's bodyguard. Brazilian national, living in Venezuela.
Suspect 1: Shreve Metzger. Director, National Intelligence and Operations Service.
Mentally unstable? Anger issues.
Manipulated evidence to illegally authorize Special Task Order?
Divorced. Law degree, Yale.
Suspect 2: Sniper. Code name: Don Bruns.
Information Services datamining Bruns.
Voiceprint obtained.
Crime scene report, autopsy report, other details to come.
Rumors of drug cartels behind the killings. Considered unlikely.
Crime Scene 2. Sniper nest of Don Bruns, 2000 yards from Kill Room, New Providence Island, Bahamas.
May 9.
Crime scene report to come.
Supplemental Investigation. Determine identity of Whistleblower. Unknown subject who leaked the Special Task Order.
Sent via anonymous email.
Contacted NYPD Computer Crimes Unit to trace; awaiting results.
Hands on her hips, Amelia Sachs studied the whiteboard.
She noted Rhyme glance without interest at her flowing script. He wouldn't pay much attention to what she'd written until hard facts--evidence, mostly, in his case--began to appear.
It was just the three of them at the moment, Sachs, Laurel and Rhyme. Lon Sellitto had gone downtown to recruit a specially picked canvass-and-surveillance team from Captain Bill Myers's Special Services operation; with secrecy a priority, Laurel didn't want to use regular Patrol Division officers.
Sachs returned to her desk. She didn't do well sitting still and that was largely what she'd been doing for the past two hours. Confined here, the bad habits returned: She'd dig one nail into another, scratch her scalp to bleeding. Fidgety by nature, she felt a compulsion to walk, to be outside, to drive. Her father had coined an expression that was her anthem:
When you move they can't getcha...
The line had meant several things to Herman Sachs. Certainly it could refer to his job, their job--he too had been a cop, a portable, walking his beat in the Deuce, Times Square, at a time when the murder rate in the city was at an all-time high. Fast of foot, fast of thought, fast of eye could keep you alive.
Life in general too. Moving... The briefer you were a target for any harm, the better, whether from lovers, bosses, rivals. He'd recited those words a lot, up until he died (some things, your own failing body, for instance, you can't outrun).
But all cases require backgrounding and paperwork and that was particularly true in this one, where facts were hard to come by and the crime scene inaccessible. So Sachs was in desk job prison at the moment, plowing through documents and canvassing--discreetly--via phone. She turned from the board and sat once more as she absently dug a thumbnail into the quick of a finger. Pain spread. She ignored it. A faint swirl of red appeared on a piece of intelligence she was reading and she ignored this too.
Some of the tension was due to the Overseer, which was how Sachs had come to think of Nance Laurel. She wasn't used to anyone looking over her shoulder, even her superiors--and as a detective third, Amelia Sachs had a lot of those. Laurel had fully moved in now--with two impressive laptops up and running--and had had even more thick files delivered.
Was she going to have a folding cot brought in next?
Sachs rose, walked to the whiteboards again and then returned to the dreaded chair, trying to learn what she could about Moreno's trip to New York on April 30 through May 2. She'd been canvassing hotels and car services. She was getting through to human beings about two-thirds of the time, leaving messages the rest.
She glanced across the room toward Rhyme; he was on the phone, trying to get the Bahamian police to cooperate. His expression explained that he wasn't having any more luck than she was.
Then Sachs's phone buzzed. The call was from Rodney Szarnek, with the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit, an elite group of thirty or so detectives and support staff. Although Rhyme was a traditional forensic scientist, he and Sachs had worked more and more closely with CCU in recent years; computers and cell phones--and the wonderful evidence they retained, seemingly forever--were crucial to running successful investigations nowadays. Szarnek was in his forties, Sachs estimated, but his age was hard to determine for sure. Szarnek projected youth--from his shaggy hair to his uniform of wrinkled jeans and T-shirt to his passionate love of "boxes," as he called computers.
Not to mention his addiction to loud and usually bad rock music.
Which now blared in the background.
"Hey, Rodney," Sachs now said, "could we de-volume that a bit. You mind?"
"Sorry."
Szarnek was key to finding the whistleblower who'd leaked the STO. He was tracing the anonymous email with its STO kill order attachment, working backward from the destination, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and trying to find where the leaker had been when he sent it.
"It's taking some time," the man reported, over a faint 4/4 rock beat of bass and drum. "The email was routed through proxies halfway around the world. Well, actually all the way around the world. So far I've traced it back from the DA's Office to a remailer in Taiwan and from there to Romania. And I'll tell you, the Romanians are not in a cooperating mode. But I got some information on the box he was using. He tried to be smart but he tripped up."
"You mean you found the brand of his computer?"
"Possibly. His agent user string...Uhm, do you know what that is?"
Sachs confessed she didn't.
"It's information your computer sends out to routers and servers and other computers when you're online. Anybody can see it and find out exactly what your operating system and browser are. Now, your whistleblower's box was running Apple's OS Nine two two and Internet Explorer Five for Mac. That goes back a long time. It really narrows the field. I'm guessing he had an iBook laptop. That was the first portable Mac to have an antenna built in so he could've logged into Wi-Fi for the upload without any separate modem or server."
An iBook? Sachs had never heard of it. "How old, Rodney?"
"Over ten years. Probably one he bought secondhand and paid cash for it, so it couldn't be traced back to him. That's where he tried to be smart. But he didn't figure that we could find out the brand."
"What would it look like?"
"If we're lucky it'll be a clamshell model--they came two-toned, white and some bright colors, like green or tangerine. They're shaped just what they sound like."
"Clams."
"Well, rounded. There's a standard rectangular model too, solid graphite, square. But it'd be big. Twice as thick as today's laptops. That's how you could recognize it."
"Good, Rodney. Thanks."
"I'll stay on the router. The Romanians'll cave. I just need to negotiate."
Up with the music, and the line went dead.
Sachs glanced around and found Nance Laurel looking at her, the expression on the ADA's face both blank and inquisitive. How did she manage that? Sachs told the woman and Rhyme about the cybercrime cop's response. Rhyme nodded, unimpressed, and returned to the phone. He said nothing. Sachs supposed he was on hold.
Laurel nodded approvingly, it seemed. "If you could document that and send it to me."
"What?"
A pause. "What you just told me about the tracing and the type of computer."
Sachs said, "I was just going to write it up on the board." A nod toward the whiteboard.
"I'd actually like everything documented in as close to real time as possible." The ADA's nod was toward her own stacks of files. "If you wouldn't mind."
The prosecutor wielded the words "if you..." like a bludgeon.
Sachs did mind but wasn't inclined to fight this battle. She pounded out the brief memo on her keyboard.
Laurel added, "Thank you. Just send it to me in an email and I'll print it out myself. The secure server, of course."
"Of course." Sachs fired off the document, noting that the prosecutor's micromanagement didn't seem to extend to Lincoln Rhyme.
Her phone buzzed and she lifted a surprised eyebrow, noting caller ID.
At last. A solid lead. The caller was a secretary at Elite Limousines, one of dozens of livery operations Sachs had canvassed earlier, inquiring if Robert Moreno had used their services on May 1. In fact, he had. The woman said the man had hired a car and driver for an as-directed assignment, meaning that Moreno had given the driver the locations he wished to go to after being picked up. The company had no record of those stops but the woman gave Sachs the driver's name and number.
She then called the driver, identified herself and asked if she could come interview him in connection with a case.
In a heavily accented voice, hard to understand, he said he supposed so and he gave her his address. She disconnected and rose, pulling on her jacket.
"Got Moreno's driver for his visit here on May first," she said to Rhyme. "I'm going to interview him."
Laurel said quickly, "Any chance you could write up your notes on Agent Dellray's news before you go?"
"First thing I'm back."
She noted Laurel stiffen but it seemed that this was a battle the prosecutor wasn't willing to fight.
CHAPTER 14
AT THIS POINT IN A STANDARD INVESTIGATION Lincoln Rhyme would have enlisted the aid of perhaps the best forensics lab man in the city, NYPD detective Mel Cooper.
But the presence of the slim, unflappable Cooper was pointless in the absence of physical evidence and all he'd done was alert the man to be on call--which to Lincoln Rhyme meant being prepared to drop everything, short of open-heart surgery, and get your ass to the lab. Stat.
But that possibility didn't seem very likely at the moment. Rhyme was now back to the task that had taken all morning: trying to actually get possession of some of the physical evidence in the Moreno shooting.
He was on hold for the fourth time with an official in the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau. A voice, at last: "Yes, hello. Can I help you?" a woman asked in a melodious alto.
About time. But he reined in the impatience even though he had to explain all over again. "This is Captain Rhyme. I'm with the New York City Police Department." He'd given up on "consulting with" or "working with." That was too complicated and seemed to arouse suspicion. He'd get Lon Sellitto to informally deputize him if anyone called his bluff. (He wished somebody would, in fact; bluff-callers are people who can get things done.)
"New York, yes."
"I'd like to speak to someone in your forensics department."
"Crime Scene, yes."
"That's right." Rhyme pictured the woman he was speaking to as a lazy, not particularly bright civil servant sitting in a dusty un-air-conditioned office, beneath a slowly revolving fan.
Possibly an unfair image.
"I'm sorry, you wanted which department?"
Possibly not.
"Forensics. A supervisor.
This is about the Robert Moreno killing."
"Please hold."
"No, please...Wait!"
Click.
Fuck.
Five minutes later he found himself talking to the woman officer he was sure had taken his first call, though she didn't seem to remember him. Or was pretending not to. He repeated his request and this time--after a burst of inspiration--added, "I'm sorry for the urgency. It's just that the reporters keep calling. I'll have to send them directly to your office if I can't give them information myself."
He had no idea what threat this was meant to convey exactly; he was improvising.
"Reporters?" she asked dubiously.
"CNN, ABC, CBS. Fox. All of them."
"I see. Yes, sir."
But the ploy had its effect, because the next hold was for three seconds, tops.
"Poitier speaking." Deep, melodious, with a British accent and a Caribbean inflection; Rhyme knew the lilt not from having been to the islands himself but owing to his role in putting a few people from that part of the world in New York jails. The Jamaican gangs outstripped the Mafia for violence, hands down.
"Hello. This is Lincoln Rhyme with the New York Police Department." He wanted to add, Do not, under any fucking circumstances, put me on hold. But refrained.
The Bahamian cop: "Ah, yes." Cautious.
"Who'm I speaking to? Officer Poitier, did I hear?"
"Corporal Mychal Poitier."
"And you're with Crime Scene?"
"No. I'm the lead investigator in the Moreno shooting...Wait, you said you're Lincoln Rhyme. Captain Rhyme. Well."
"You've heard of me?"
"We have one of your forensics books in our library. I've read it."
Maybe this would earn him a modicum of cooperation. On the other hand, the corporal had not said whether he'd liked the book or found it helpful. The latest edition's bio page reported that Rhyme was retired, a fact that Poitier, fortunately, didn't seem to know.
Rhyme now made his pitch. Without naming Metzger or NIOS, he explained that the NYPD believed there was an American connection in the Moreno killing. "I have some questions about the shooting, about the evidence. Do you have some time now? Can we talk?"
The Kill Room Page 7