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."
CHAPTER 79
MORNING SUNLIGHT FILLED Rhyme's town house.
The windows faced east and bands of direct light, filtered through many leaves, fired into the parlor in flickering streams.
The team was gathered here, Cooper, Sellitto, Pulaski. Sachs too. And Nance Laurel, who'd just returned from detention with the disappointing news that Shales had been about to confess and give up Metzger when a lawyer that NIOS or someone in DC had hired arrived and scared him into silence.
But she said, "I can still make the case work. Nothing's going to stop me this time."
Rhyme happened to be glancing at his phone when it rang and he was pleased. He answered. "Corporal, how are you?"
Poitier's melodic voice replied, "Good, Captain. Good. I was happy to get your message this morning. We miss the chaos you brought with you. You must come back. Come back for holiday. And I appreciate your invitation too. I will most certainly come to New York but that will have to be as a holiday as well. I'm afraid I don't have any evidence for you. There was no luck at the morgue. I don't have anything to deliver to you in person."
"No glass shards from de la Rua's body?"
"I'm afraid not. I spoke to the doctor who conducted the autopsy and there were no splinters left in the bodies of either de la Rua or the guard when they were brought in. Apparently they had been removed by the medical technicians trying to save the men."
But
Rhyme recalled the crime scene pictures. The wounds had been numerous, the blood loss massive. Some shards must have remained. He now eased close to the whiteboards and examined the autopsy pictures of the victims, the crude incisions, the skull cap placed back after the saw work, the Y incision decorating the chest.
Something was wrong.
Rhyme turned to the room and shouted, to no one in particular, "The autopsy report. I want de la Rua's autopsy report, now!" He couldn't juggle the phone and work the computer at the same time.
Mel Cooper complied and in a moment the scanned document was on a flat-screen monitor next to Rhyme.
This victim exhibited approximately 35 lacerations in various sites of the chest, abdomen, arms, face and thighs, primarily anterior, presumably caused by shards of glass from a window that was shot out at the crime scene. These lacerations varied in size but the majority were approximately 3-4mm in width and 2 to 3 centimeters in length. Six of said lacerations were in this victim's carotid and jugular vessels and femoral artery, resulting in severe hemorrhaging.
Rhyme was aware of faint breathing on the other end of the line. Then: "Captain Rhyme, is everything all right?"
"I have to go."
"Is there anything more you need me to do?"
Rhyme's eyes were on Nance Laurel, who was scanning quizzically, looking from the autopsy report to the photos to Rhyme himself. He said to Poitier, "No, thank you, Corporal. I'll call you back." He disconnected and wheeled closer to the screen, studying it more closely. Then he turned his attention to the whiteboards.
"What is it, Rhyme?" Sachs asked.
He sighed. When he spun around he looked to Laurel. "I'm sorry. I was wrong."
"What do you mean, Linc?" Sellitto asked.
"De la Rua wasn't collateral damage at all. He was the target."
Laurel said, "But, still, Lincoln, we know Shales intended to shoot Moreno. It was the glass shards from the bullet Shales fired that killed de la Rua."
"That's the point," Rhyme said softly. "No, it wasn't."
CHAPTER 80
UAV EIGHT NINE TWO TO FLORIDA CENTER. Target identified and acquired. Infrared and SAR."
"Roger, Eight Nine Two...Use of LRR is authorized."
"Copy. Eight Nine Two."
And six seconds later Robert Moreno was no more.
Barry Shales was in the holding cell, alone, hands together, sitting hunched forward. The bench was hard, the air stifling and sour-human smelling.
Recalling the Moreno task, thinking particularly of the disembodied voices from Florida Center. People he'd never met.
Just like he'd never actually seen the UAV he'd flown on that mission, never run his hand over its fuselage the way he had his F-16. He never saw any of the UAVs in person.
Remote.
Soldier and weapon.
Soldier and target.
Remote.
Remote.
"There seem to be two, no, three people in the room."
"Can you positively identify Moreno?"
"It's...there's some glare. Okay, that's better. Yes. I can identify the task. I can see him."
Shales's thoughts were in turmoil. Like an aircraft in a spin: The horror of learning that he'd killed three innocent men, then being arrested for the murder of one. And then finding that Shreve Metzger had brought in a specialist to clean up after the operation, killing witnesses, setting that bomb.
Which all brought home to him that fundamentally what he was doing for NIOS was wrong.
Barry Shales had flown combat missions in Iraq. He'd dropped bombs and launched missiles and had some confirmed kills, supporting ground operations. When you were in live combat, even if the odds were in your favor, as with most U.S. military ops, there was still the chance that somebody could bring you down--Stingers, AK-47 fire. Even a single bullet from a Kurdish muzzle loader could do it.
This was combat. That was how war worked.
And it was fair. Because you knew the enemy. They were easy to identify: They were the ones who wanted to fucking kill you right back.
But sitting in a Kill Room, thousands of miles away, padded by layers of intel that might or might not be accurate (or manipulated), it was different. How did you know the supposed enemy really was just that? How could you ever know?
And then you'd go back home, forty minutes away, surrounding yourself with people who might be just as innocent as the ones you'd just killed in a tenth of a second.
Oh, and, honey, get some kids' Nyquil. Sammy's got the sniffles. I forgot to pick some up.
Shales closed his eyes, rocked on the bench.
He knew that there was something off about Shreve Metzger--the temper, those moments when control left him, the intel reports that just didn't seem right, the lectures about the sanctity of America. Hell, when he started a pro-U.S. tirade he sounded an awful lot like the flip side of Robert Moreno.
Only nobody pumped a .420 boattail into the NIOS director.
And to order in a specialist for clean-up, to set IEDs and kill witnesses.
Torture ...
Suddenly, sitting in this grim place, wafting of urine and disinfectant, Barry Shales realized he was overwhelmed. Years of hidden guilt were flooding in to drown him, the ghosts of the men and women in the infamous queue, people he'd killed, were swimming toward him now, to drag him under the surface of the inky blood tide. Years of being someone else--Don Bruns, Samuel McCoy, Billy Dodd...Occasionally, at the store or in a movie theater lobby, when Marg called his real name, he hesitated, not sure who she was talking to.
Just give up Metzger, he told himself. There was plenty of information on his Don Bruns phone to put the NIOS head away for a long time--if it turned out he'd played with the evidence and hired a specialist to eliminate witnesses here. He could give Laurel the encryption code and the backup keyfile and the other phones and documents he'd kept.
A memory of the lawyer came back. He didn't like the man one bit. Rothstein had been retained by a firm in Washington, it seemed. But he wouldn't say which one. When they'd met after Laurel had left, the attorney had suddenly grown distracted, taking and sending several text messages as he explained to Shales how the case was going to proceed. It seemed that his attitude had changed: as if whatever he said or did, Shales was fucked.
It was odd that the man hadn't known much about Shreve Metzger, though he was very familiar with NIOS. Rothstein seemed to spend more time in Washington than here. His advice at this point had been simple: Don't say a word to anybody about anything. They would try to make him cave, Nance Laurel was a duplicitous bitch, you know duplicitous, you know what I mean, Barry. Oh, don't trust a thing she says.
Shales had explained that Metzger may have done some pretty bad things in trying to cover up the case. "Like, I think he might have killed somebody."
"That's not our issue."
"Well, it is," Shales said. "It's exactly our issue."
The lawyer had received another text. He regarded the screen for a long moment. He said he had to go. He'd be in touch soon.
Rothstein had left.
And Barry Shales was brought down here and deposited, alone in the silent, pungent room.
Moments passed, a thousand heartbeats, an eternity, when he heard the door at the far end of the corridor buzz open. Footsteps approached.
Maybe it was a guard to summon him to another meeting. With whom? Rothstein? Or Nance Laurel, who would offer him a solid plea bargain.
In exchange for giving up Shreve Metzger.
Everything told him he should do it. His brain, his heart, his conscience. And think of the torture of living this way: seeing Marg and the boys through a greasy glass window. He'd never see the kids learn sports, never see them on holiday mornings. And they'd grow up enduring the torment and taunting of having a father in prison.
The hopelessness of the situation bore down on him, surrounded him and strangled. He wanted to scream. But the consequences were his own fault. He'd made the decision to join NIOS, to
kill people by pushbutton from half a world away.
But ultimately it came down to this: You didn't give up your fellow soldiers. Right or wrong. Barry Shales sighed. Metzger was safe, at least from him. Cells like this one would be his home for the next twenty or thirty years.
He was preparing to give Nance Laurel the news she didn't want to hear when the footsteps outside stopped and the door clanked open.
He gave a brief humorless laugh. The visit was not, it seemed, about him at all. A solid African American guard was delivering another prisoner, who was even larger than the turnkey, a huge man, unclean, hair slicked back. Even from across the room the man's body odor spread out like ripples on a calm pond.
The man looked Shales over with a narrow gaze and then turned to watch the guard glance at them both, close the cell door and walk off down the hall. The new prisoner hawked and spit on the floor.
The drone pilot rose and moved to the far corner of the cell.
The other prisoner remained where he was, head turned away. Yet the airman had the sense that he was aware of every move of Shales's hands or feet, every shift on the bench, every breath that he took.
My new home...
CHAPTER 81
YOU'RE SURE?" LAUREL ASKED.
"Yes," Rhyme said, "Barry Shales is innocent. He and Metzger weren't responsible for de la Rua's death."
Laurel was frowning.
The criminalist said, "I...there was something I didn't see."
"Rhyme, what?" Sachs asked.
He was watching Nance Laurel's face grow still once more; this was how she responded to pain. Her prized case was again dissolving before her eyes.
Nothing's going to stop me now...
Sellitto said, "Talk to me, Linc. The fuck's going on?"
Mel Cooper remained silent and curious.
Rhyme explained, "Look at the wounds." He expanded the autopsy picture, focusing in on the lacerations on the journalist's face and neck.
He then moved another photo next to it: the crime scene itself. De la Rua lay on his back, blood streaming from the same cuts. He was covered with shards of glass. But none of them was actually sticking into a wound.
"Why wasn't I thinking?" Rhyme muttered. "Look at the measurements of the lacerations on the autopsy report. Look at them! The wounds're just a few millimeters wide. A glass shard would be much thicker than that. And how could they all be so uniform? I saw them but I didn't see them."
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