The Kill Room

by Jeffery Deaver

  "No," the driver said. "I thought he might. I thought possibly he wanted to gloat, after all he had said. I would have asked him out of the car at that point. But he didn't. He'd grown quiet."

  "Where did you take him down here?"

  "I just dropped them at this place." He'd pulled over on Fulton Street, near Broadway. "Which I thought was odd. Just on this street corner. They got out and he said they would be several hours. If I couldn't wait here they would call me. I gave him my card."

  "What did you think was odd about that?"

  "In this area of the city we limo drivers can get almost anywhere if there's no construction. But it was as if he didn't want me to see where they were going. I assumed to one of the hotels, the Millenium or one of the others. That's the direction they walked in."

  For a tryst with his voluptuous friend? But then why not just stay at the hotel uptown?

  "Did he call you?" Sachs was hoping to get Moreno's phone number, which might still be in the driver's log.

  But the man said, "No. I just waited here. And they returned."

  She climbed out of the Lincoln, then walked in the direction that the driver had indicated. She canvassed the three hotels within walking distance but none had a record of a guest under Moreno's name on May 1. If they had checked in, Lydia might have used her name though that lead wasn't going anywhere without more information about her. Sachs also displayed a picture of Moreno but no one recognized him.

  Had the activist paid her to have sex with somebody else? she wondered. Had they met with someone in one of the hotels or an office here? As a bribe or to blackmail him? Sachs walked back outside into the congested street from the last hotel, looking around her at the hundreds of buildings--offices, stores, apartments. A team of NYPD canvassers could have spent a month inquiring about Robert Moreno and his companion and still not scratched the surface.

  She wondered too if Lydia might have received her cash for another reason. Was she part of a cell, a terrorist organization that Moreno was working with? Did they meet with a group that wanted to send another violent message in this financial hub of the city?

  This conjecture too, while reasonable to Sachs, was surely something that Nance Laurel would not want to hear.

  You mean, you can't keep an open mind...

  Sachs turned around and walked back to the limo. Dropping into the front seat again, she stretched, winced at a burst of arthritic pain and dug one nail into another. Stop it, she told herself. Dug a bit harder and wiped the blood on her black jeans.

  "And after this?"

  Farada told her, "I drove them back to the hotel. The woman got out with him but they went different ways. He went inside and she walked east."

  "Did they hug?"

  "Not really. They brushed cheeks. That was all. He tipped me and he tipped well, even though it's included."

  "All right, let's head back to Queens."

  He put the car in gear and made his way east through the dense rush-hour traffic. The time was around 7 p.m. As they plodded along she asked Farada, "Did you get any sense that he was being followed or watched? Did he feel uneasy? Did he act suspicious or paranoid?"

  "Hm. Ah. I can say he was cautious. He looked around frequently. But there were never any specific concerns. Not like he said, 'That red car is following me.' He seemed like somebody who tried to be aware of his surroundings. I see that much. Businesspeople are that way. I think they must be nowadays."

  Sachs was frustrated. She'd learned nothing conclusive about the man's sojourn in New York. Even more questions than answers now floated. And yet she couldn't shake the sense of urgency, thinking of the STO naming Rashid as the next target.

  We do know that NIOS's going to kill him before Friday. And who'll be the collateral damage then? His wife and children? Some passerby?...

  They were on the Williamsburg Bridge when her phone rang.

  "Fred, hi."

  "Hey, Amelia. Listen, gotta coupla things. Had our people look through SIGINT down in Venezuela. Snagged one of Moreno's voice from 'bout a month ago. Might be relevant. He was saying, 'Yes, May twenty-fourth, that's right...disappearing into thin air. After that, it'll be heaven.'"

  The 24th was less than two weeks away. Did he mean he was planning some attack and he'd have to vanish, like Bin Laden?

  "Any ideas about that?" Sachs asked.

  "No, but we're still checkin'."

  She told the agent what Farada had explained about this being Moreno's last trip to New York and his mysterious meeting in the vicinity of ground zero.

  "That'd fit," Dellray said. "Yeah, yeah, could be he's got something nasty in mind and is going to ground. Makes sense--'specially when you hear the other thing I'm about to tell you."

  "Go on." Her notebook was on her lap, pen poised.

  The agent said, " 'Nother voice-call trap. Ten days before he died. Moreno was saying, 'Can we find somebody to blow them up?'"

  Sachs's gut clenched.

  Dellray continued, "The tech geeks think he mentioned the date May thirteen, along with Mexico."

  This was two days ago. She didn't remember any incident but Mexico was largely a war zone, with so many drug-related attacks and killings that they often didn't rate a mention on U.S. TV news. "I'm checking t'see if something happened then. Now, lastly--I said coupla things; I meant three. We got Moreno's travel records. Ready?"

  "Go ahead."

  The agent explained. "On May second Moreno flew from New York to Mexico City, maybe to plan for the bombing. Then the next day on to Nicaragua. The day after that to San Jose, Costa Rica. He stayed there for a few days and then flew to the Bahamas on the seventh, where--coupla days later--he had his run-in with the fine marksmanship of Mr. Don Bruns."

  Dellray added, "Some casual surveillance was conducted on him in Mexico City and Costa Rica, where he was spotted outside the U.S. embassies. But there was no evidence that he was lookin' like any kinda threat, so your boy was never detained."

  "Thanks, Fred. That's helpful."

  "I'll keep at it, Amelia. But gotta tell you, I ain't got oodles of time."

  "Why, you have something big going down?"

  "Yup. I'm changing my name and moving to Canada. Joining the Mounted Police."

  Click.

  She didn't laugh. His comment had struck too close to home; this case was like unstable explosives.

  A half hour later Tash Farada parked in his driveway and they got out. He struck a certain pose, unmistakable.

  "How much do I owe you?" Sachs asked.

  "Well, normally we charge from garage to garage, which isn't fair for you. Since the car was here. So it will be from the time we left to the time we arrived." A look at his watch. "We left at four twelve and we've now returned now at seven thirty-eight."

  Well, that's some precision.

  "For you, I will round downward. Four fifteen to seven thirty. That's three hours and fifteen minutes."

  And that's some speedy calculation.

  "What's the hourly rate?"

  "That would be ninety dollars."

  "An hour?" she asked before remembering she'd added the qualifier with her prior question.

  A smile. "That's three hundred and eighty-two dollars and fifty cents."

  Shit, Sachs thought, she'd assumed it would be about a quarter of that. So, one more reason not to be a limo girl.

  He added, "And of course..."

  "I agreed to double it."

  "That is a grand total of seven hundred and sixty-five dollars."

  A sigh. "Will you give me one more ride?" Sachs asked.

  "Well, if it won't take too much time." A nod toward the house. "Supper, you know."

  "Just to the nearest ATM."

  "Ah, yes, yes...And I won't charge you for that trip at all!"

  CHAPTER 20

  IMAGINATION OR NOT?

  No.

  Cruising back into Manhattan, in the Torino Cobra, Sachs was sure she was being followed.

  Glances into
the rearview mirror as she exited the Midtown Tunnel suggested that a car--a light-colored vehicle whose make and model she couldn't nail down--was following. Nondescript. Gray, white, silver. Here and on the streets leaving Farada's house.

  But how was this possible? The Overseer had assured them that NIOS, Metzger and the sniper didn't know about the investigation.

  And even if they did find out, how could they identify her personal car and locate it?

  Yet Sachs had learned from a case she and Rhyme had run a few years ago that anyone with a rudimentary datamining system could track someone's location pretty easily. Video images of tag numbers, facial recognition, phone calls and credit cards, GPS, E-ZPass transponders, RFID chips--and NIOS was sure to have much more than a basic setup. She'd been careful but perhaps not careful enough.

  That was easily remedied.

  Smiling, she executed a series of complicated, fast and extremely fun turns, most of which involved smoking tires and cracking sixty mph in second gear.

  By the time she performed the last one and stabilized the marvelous Cobra, offering a sweet smile of apology to the Sikh driver she'd skidded around, she was convinced that she'd lost whatever tail might have been after her.

  At least until datamining caught up with her again.

  And even if this was surveillance did the tailer represent a true threat?

  NIOS might want information about her and might try to derail or slow down the case but she could hardly see the government physically hurting an NYPD officer.

  Unless the threat wasn't from the government itself but an anger-driven psychotic who happened to be working for the government, using his position to play out some delusional dream of eliminating those who weren't as patriotic as he liked.

  Then too this threat might have nothing to do with Moreno. Amelia Sachs had helped put a lot of people in jail and none of them, presumably, was very pleased about that.

  Sachs actually felt a shiver down her spine.

  She parked just off Central Park West, on a cross street, and tossed the NYPD placard on the dash. Climbing out, Sachs tapped her Glock grip to orient herself as to its exact position. Every nearby car, it seemed, was light-colored and nondescript and contained a shadowy driver looking her way. Every antenna, water tower and pipe atop every building in this stretch of the Upper West Side was a sniper, training the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on her back.

  Sachs walked quickly to the town house and let herself in. Bypassing the parlor, where Nance Laurel was still typing away, exactly as the detective had left her hours ago, she walked into Rhyme's rehab room--one of the bedrooms on the first floor--where he was working out.

  With Thom nearby as a spotter, Rhyme was in a sitting position, strapped into an elaborate stationary bicycle, a functional electrical stimulation model. The unit sent electrical impulses into his muscles via wires to mimic brain signals and made his legs operate the pedals. He was presently pumping away like a Tour de France competitor.

  She smiled and kissed him.

  "I'm sweaty," he announced.

  He was.

  She kissed him again, longer this time.

  Although the FES workout would not cure his quadriplegia it kept the muscles and vascular system in shape and improved the condition of his skin, which was important to avoid sores that were common among those with severe disabilities. As Rhyme often announced, sometimes for pure shock value, "Gimps spend a lot of time on their asses."

  The exercise had also enhanced nerve functioning.

  This was the aerobic portion of his exercise. The other part involved building up the muscles in his neck and shoulders; it was these elements of his body that would largely control the movement of his left hand and arm, as they now did his right, after his surgery in several weeks, if all went well.

  Sachs wished she hadn't thought that last clause.

  "Anything?" he called, breathing heavily.

  She gave him a rundown of the chauffeur trip, explaining about Moreno's close childhood friend dying at the hands of the American invaders in Panama.

  "Grudges can run deep." But he wasn't interested in what he would consider the mumbo-jumbo of the man's psyche; Rhyme never was. More interesting was what she'd learned about Lydia, the closed bank accounts, the mysterious meeting, Moreno's planned self-imposed exile from the United States--his vanishing into "thin air"--and some possible connection with explosions in Mexico City on May 13.

  "Fred's going to keep digging. Any luck in the Bahamas?"

  "Crap all," he snapped, panting. "I don't know whether it's incompetence or politics--probably both--but I've called back three times and ended up on hold again until I hang up. That's seven times today. I truly resent hold. I was going to call our embassy there or consulate or whatever they have to intervene. But Nance didn't think that was a good idea."

  "Why? Word would get back to NIOS?"

  "Yeah. I can't disagree, I suppose. She's sure evidence is going to start disappearing the minute they find out. The problem is..." He drew a deep breath and with his functioning right hand turned the speed of the bike up a bit higher. "...there is no goddamn evidence."

  Thom said, "Slow down a bit there."

  "What, my diatribe, or my exercise? That's rather poetic, don't you think?"

  "Lincoln."

  The criminalist gave it a defiant thirty seconds more and lowered the speed. "Three miles," he announced. "Somewhat uphill."

  Sachs took a cloth and wiped a bit of sweat that ran down his temple. "I think somebody might've already found out about the investigation."

  He turned those dark, radar eyes her way.

  She told him about the car she thought might have been tailing her.

  "So our sniper has found out about us already? Any ID?"

  "No. Either he was real good, or my imagination was working overtime."

  "I don't think we can be too paranoid in this case, Sachs. You should tell our friend in the parlor. And have you told her that Saint Moreno might not be so saintly?"

  "Not yet."

  She found Rhyme looking at her with a particular expression.

  "And that means what?" she asked.

  "Why don't you like her?"

  "Oil and water."

  Rhyme chuckled. "The hydrophobia myth! They do mix, Sachs. Simply remove gases from the water and it will blend perfectly well with the oil."

  "I should know not to offer a cliche to a scientist."

  "Especially when it doesn't answer his question."

  It was a thick five seconds before she answered. "I don't know why I don't like her. I'm no good with being micromanaged, for one thing. She leaves you alone. Maybe it's a woman thing."

  "I have no opinion on the subject."

  Digging into her scalp, she sighed. "I'll go tell her now."

  She walked to the door and paused, looking back at Rhyme hard at work on the bicycle.

  Sachs had mixed feelings about his plans for the forthcoming surgery. The operation was risky. Quads start with a hampered physiological system to begin with; an operation could lead to severe complications that wouldn't be an issue with the non-disabled.

  Yes, she certainly wanted her partner to feel good about himself. But didn't he know the truth--that he, like everyone else, was mind and heart first, before he was body? That our physical incarnations always disappoint in one way or another? So he got stared at on the street. He wasn't the only one; when she was perused, it was usually by an observer who was a lot creepier than in his case.

  She thought now of those days as a fashion model, marginalized because of her good looks and height and flowing red hair. She'd grown angry--even hurt--at being treated like nothing more than a pricey collectible. She'd risked the wrath of her mother to leave the profession and join the NYPD, following in her father's footsteps.

  What you believed, what you knew, how you made choices, when you stood your ground...those were the qualities that defined you as a cop. Not what you looked like.

>   Of course, Lincoln Rhyme was severely disabled. Who in his condition wouldn't want to be better, to grasp with both hands, to walk? But she sometimes wondered if he was undergoing the risky surgery not for himself but for her. This was a topic that had rarely come up and when it did, their words glanced off the subject like bullets on flat rock. But the understood meaning was clear: What the hell are you hanging around with a crip for, Sachs? You can do better than me.

  For one thing, "doing better" suggested she was in the market for Mr. Perfect, which was simply not the case and never had been. She'd been in only one other serious relationship--with another cop--and it had ended disastrously (though Nick was finally out of prison). She'd dated some, usually to fill time, until she realized that the boredom of being with someone is exponentially worse than the boredom of solitude.

  She was content with her independence and, if Rhyme weren't in the picture, she'd be comfortable on her own--forever, if no one else came along.

  Do what you want, she thought. Have the surgery or not. But do it for yourself. Whatever the decision, I'll be there.

  She watched him for a few moments more, a faint smile on her face. Then the smile faded and she walked to the parlor to meet the Overseer and deliver the news.

  Saint Moreno might not be so saintly...

  CHAPTER 21

  AS SACHS JOTTED ON THE WHITEBOARDS the information she'd learned on the drive with Tash Farada, Nance Laurel turned her chair toward the detective.

  She'd been digesting what Sachs had told her. "An escort?" the prosecutor asked. "You're sure?"

  "No. It's a possibility, though. I've called Lon. He's got some of Myers's portables canvassing to see if they can find her."

  "A call girl." Laurel sounded perplexed.

  Sachs would have thought she'd be more dismayed. Learning that a hooker had accompanied your married victim around New York wasn't going to win the jury's sympathy.

  She was even more surprised when the ADA said offhandedly, "Well, men stray. It can be finessed."

  Maybe by "finesse" she meant she'd try for a largely male jury, who would presumably be less critical of Moreno's infidelity.

  If you're asking if I pick cases I think I can win, Detective Sachs, then the answer's yes...

  Sachs continued, "In any case, it's good for us: They might not have spent the entire time in bed. Maybe he took her to meet a friend, maybe she saw somebody from NIOS tailing them. And if she is a pro we'll have leverage to get her to talk. She won't want her life looked into too closely." She added, "And it might be that she's not an escort but is involved in something else, maybe something criminal."