“I’m only here because of the jurisdiction thing,” he said.
“Bullshit,” she grunted. “Anaka, Devial, Mortalo and Lorenzo.”
“What about it?”
“They have political contacts. Kiss a lot of important asses.”
“I’m here to help. I can shortcut certain areas for you. I’m already helping with Berlin. If this is a snatch case, then time is critical here. Do you want the media to be showing the world a dead family on your watch?”
She looked at Salovitz. “Is it a kidnapping?”
“No way. Only one person got out of that goddamn abattoir: a genuine axe murderer.”
Her umpire’s gaze came back to Alik.
“Then where are they?” he asked. “We need to find out.”
“I’ll take your help,” the Deacon said grudgingly. “But this is the twentieth precinct’s case. Don’t try claiming anything else, especially not to your media buddies.”
“I have no buddies in the media, and I’m officially requesting that my name and involvement be kept off the record. If it is a kidnapping, we don’t want to alert them to any Bureau involvement at this stage.”
“Sure, I believe that. So if it’s not a kidnapping, what else could it be?”
“There was an attempted bust into Lorenzo’s secure company network,” Salovitz said.
“What were they looking for?”
“I don’t know yet; forensic has the systems in their digital lab. You know what it’s like getting any sense out of those nerds.”
“So one crew breaks in and starts a digital bust, then another crew shows up and the shit hits the fan,” the Deacon said. “Any chance crew two were a black countermeasures crew contracted by Anaka, Devial, Mortalo and Lorenzo when they realized what was happening?”
“That’s a stretch, chief,” Salovitz said.
Her gaze flicked to Alik like a first-grade teacher’s laser pointer highlighting the obvious. “But possible. Right, Agent Monday?”
“At this stage the Bureau is not ruling out anything. We want the surviving killer detained as swiftly as possible. However—”
“Here we go,” the Deacon muttered with antipathy.
“If crew one was a digital bust operation, crew two got there remarkably quickly for countermeasures. Not impossible, but unusual. They also don’t seem that professional. None of them were in the same clothes, and only two weapons were the same.”
“So how do you read it?”
“The Lorenzos are away, for whatever reason. Somebody knew that, and two high-end burglary crews targeted the portalhome. There was a lot of wealth in there. Naturally one team came armed with an i-head; data is as valuable as jewelry, and more so if you have the right files.”
“Coincidence? Seriously?”
“It doesn’t read like one crew was there to defend the Lorenzos. If the family was out for one night only, then it’s not quite coincidence that we have two teams showing up.”
Alik could see how much she wanted to argue. Instead she had to reluctantly concede. “Okay. Priority one, find and secure the Lorenzo family. Call his colleagues and her friends; somebody has to know where they were going.”
“Yes, chief,” Salovitz said.
“And let me know if anyone slows you down.” Again the laser pointer stab between Alik’s eyes.
Salovitz grinned as they trooped downstairs to the first floor. “You’re still alive. Impressive.”
“Yeah,” Alik grunted. “She’s secretly got the hots for me; you can tell.”
“You really think it’s a coincidence?”
“It’s a working theory that works. To get a handle on this, we need to know where the Lorenzos are. That’s when we start to understand what the fuck actually happened.”
“Yeah.”
The office that the Deacon had assigned the case team was at the back of the building, with frosted glass windows, ten desks, and a hemispherical virtual stage at the far end, three meters in diameter.
Bietzk was already there when Alik arrived, along with a couple of sergeants he recognized from the portalhome. The precinct’s senior forensic technician, Rowan El-Alosaimi, had claimed one desk, assembling data coming in from the sensors the Forensics Agency team had deployed.
Alik had barely got through the door when the stage lit up with a 3-D layout of the portalhome. They couldn’t do it to scale; the rooms beyond the hubhall would have overlapped. The corpses started to materialize.
“Anything on the Lorenzos?” Salovitz asked.
“Not yet,” Bietzk said. “I’m on to Connexion Security. They’re going to send us their metrohub logs. Meanwhile, I’m running a continuing global ping on their altmes. No response yet. They’re still off grid.”
“We’re getting the DNA results in,” Rowan said. “There are some matches from the general medisure database and three already in the Justice Department POI list.”
“Splash them,” Alik told her.
Tags flipped up over the corpses. Shango interfaced with the stage, and his tarsus lenses magnified the data.
The scalped New York broad was Lisha Khan. According to Bureau records she was a midlevel soldier for a New York syndicate run by one Javid-Lee Boshburg, who’d carved himself a territory from South Brooklyn all the way down to Sheepshead Bay, thanks to an income from narcotics fabrication and distribution, along with a half dozen clubs and plenty of protection. He trafficked girls in from across North and South America, with Lisha Khan helping to keep them in order.
Mr. Shotgun on the Moon: Otto Samule. A lieutenant for Rayner Grogan, whose territory was a tumor bruising the citizens of western Queens, with ties to technology unions across the city, as well as standard-issue interests in clubs and land development enterprises. According to the NYPD gang task force, he also ran a couple of crash crews who went through high-end apartments like a locust swarm when the owner was out. Alik nodded in satisfaction at how that fitted with what they’d found in the Lorenzo portalhome.
That left—
The Cold Martian: Duane Nordon. Another known associate of Javid-Lee.
Hacked Off: Perigine Lexi. Senior lieutenant for Javid-Lee.
Paris Dawn: Koushick Flaviu, on Rayner Grogan’s payroll, an inseparable buddy of Otto Samule; the two of them were known to work together most of the time.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Alik decided. “Grogan versus Boshburg.”Except…Otto Samule and Perigine Lexi are on opposing teams, so why the hell did they have the same type of custom-built shotgun?”
“We don’t know the shotgun next to Lexi’s body was his,” Salovitz said. “Maybe he grabbed it off one of Grogan’s people?”
“Hmm.” Alik wasn’t convinced.
Forensic files started to splash across his lenses. Koushick Flaviu and Otto Samule both had sand on their shoes, matching the Maldives island beach. Equally, Lisha Khan, Duane Nordon, and Perigine Lexi all had trace water on their soles indicating they had invaded the portalhome via the Central Park West balcony.
Salovitz stood with hands on hips, watching the data points rising across the stage as Rowan fed in more and more results. The deaths had all occurred within five minutes of each other, approximately eleven o’clock at night. “And at least one of the Rayner crew escaped,” Salovitz beefed. He turned to Bietzk. “We need a full list of associates for both crews.”
A secure file from Kristjánsson splashed across Alik’s lens. He cleared it for the case office, and it splashed into the stage.
“Koushick was performing the secure network hack,” Bietzk said, reading the new data. “His residuals were all over the node we pulled out of the Central Park West utility room.”
Salovitz turned to Alik. “Do you think that’s why Mr. Shotgun took his head off?”
“None of this was a wa
rning, it was straight-out slaughter. They all knew there was no way out other than over the other team’s bodies.”
“Find out what kind of grudge match Javid-Lee and Rayner have going on,” Salovitz told Bietzk. “If there’s nothing on record, get the gang task force out of bed and see what whispers there are. I need some traction here.”
Shango reported that the Lorenzo diaries had been accessed. “Got something for you,” Alik said, and sent the files across the police case link. Both Kravis and Rose’s diaries had the same entry for the previous day: Palm Beach with Niall and Belvina Kanoto, on their yacht.
Shango called Niall Kanoto.
It took a while to get a response. Niall’s altme was set for zero-interruption, which Alik’s Bureau authority overrode. He eventually answered, audio only.
“Yes?” It was a puzzled voice coming out of the office speakers.
“Niall Kanoto?”
“Who is this?”
“Special Agent Monday, FBI. Please access your altme call data certificate for authentication.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. You’re FBI. What the hell do you want? Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m trying to locate Kravis Lorenzo and his family. Are they with you?”
“What is this? Is Krav in trouble?”
“Answer the question please, sir. Where is Kravis Lorenzo?”
“Back home, I guess.”
“They were scheduled to visit you today.”
“Sure, man. We were going to spend the weekend together, both families. But we had to cancel, you know?”
“I do not know, sir. Why was the visit canceled?”
“The goddamn yacht, Sea Star III. My marina service company called me this afternoon. They prep her for me every time before I take her out: food, power charge, general maintenance, that kind of shit. This time the engine diagnostics showed a fault. They had to take the old girl out of the water to fix her. So we canceled. It’s a twenty-four-carat buttpain. Bel and Rose had been planning this for months; we were going to take Sea Star all the way down to the Keys.”
“So you spoke to Kravis this afternoon?”
“Sure. He was disappointed. Our kids all get on, you know? It was a big family event.”
“You spoke with him? It wasn’t just an altme message?”
“Yeah. He was still in the office, at his desk.”
“Did he say where he would go instead?”
“No. What is this? What’s happened to Kravis?”
“We can’t locate him. Did he indicate if he would go somewhere else for the weekend?”
“No. He was kind of pissed he’d have to spend the weekend at home, you know? Me too. Why, what’s happened?”
“We don’t know what’s happened.”
“Jesus, is he all right?”
Alik put that particular stupidity down to the time of night. “I need the name of your marina service company; please send it to my altme. And if any of the Lorenzo family contact you, you’re to inform me at once. Understand?”
“Yeah. But come on, man, what’s happened to them?”
“We don’t know.” Alik ended the call and told Shango to load an observation routine on Niall Kanoto’s access codes, then put another on his immediate family as well. If Kravis did attempt to get in touch with his yachting buddy, the precinct G7Turing would know before him.
“Confirming this,” Bietzk said. “Connexion logged the Lorenzo family entering the metrohub loop in the Village at nine seventeen in the evening and coming out at the Central Park West hub next to their block three minutes later. That’s their last recorded usage.”
A big wallscreen started showing the Central Park West metrohub’s video surveillance log. Everyone in the case office watched as the Lorenzo family came out of the loop portal. The scene was exceptional in how ordinary it was. Alik could so easily believe it was some kind of ideal family ad. Mom: beautiful, young, smiling; dad: older and measured; the kids with smiles and laughter showing off great dentistry as they joked and teased each other.
Shango connected to the National Citizenship Records Agency and ran characteristics recognition. It was them.
Bietzk switched from the Central Park West hub to the street’s civic surveillance video log. The Lorenzos left the metrohub behind and walked twenty-five meters down the sidewalk, until they turned in to the entrance of their apartment block. Metadata time stamp: nine twenty-one.
“Get the precinct Turing to run a sweep on that video file for the rest of the night,” Salovitz said. “I want to know if they come out again after that. And who else went into the apartment block.”
“Got it,” Bietzk said.
While they were processing that, Alik called the Bureau office in Palm Beach, while Shango rode the precinct’s G7Turing into the network of the marina service company Kanoto used. It pulled the file for Sea Star III, which to his inexpert eye looked like a slightly smaller version of the Jörmungand Celeste.
One of the service company’s engineers had been on board that morning running a final seaworthiness inspection when the yacht’s diagnostic had flagged up the engine problem, some kind of contaminant particles in the gear system. If the engine was switched on, there was a high risk the entire gearing mechanism would seize up. The service company logged a call to Niall Kanoto, informing him the whole thing had to be dismantled and cleaned.
The engineer was called Ali Renzi. An infiltration ping to his altme revealed his location in central Miami. Three agents from the Bureau’s Miami Central office were dispatched to pick him up.
“The Central Park West civic surveillance log has been compromised,” Bietzk said. “Someone’s run a sophisticated non-space edit, cutting human-sized areas out and replacing them with looped background. I’m guessing that’s Javid-Lee’s crew entering the apartment block.”
“Can you track the infiltration?” Salovitz asked.
“Our department can’t.” Bietzk glanced at Alik. “I can contract a major digital audit outfit?”
“Do it,” Salovitz said.
“What about the apartment block’s internal security surveillance?” Alik asked.
“Deactivated. They infiltrated and shut it down without triggering any alarms. Whoever their i-head was, they knew what they were doing.”
“All right,” Alik said. “Let’s take a step back here. They won’t have come in through the nearest hub. That would give any investigation too much data. But…they weren’t expecting this to be a major homicide investigation, either. So, have your Turing work all the surveillance around the apartment, see if you can backtrack the Javid-Lee crew through their edits. Find out where they came from. Somewhere along the line they’ll leave their image on a log.”
Bietzk gave the agent a quick nod and started instructing his altme.
“Connexion hasn’t logged the Lorenzos in any hub since they exited Central Park West,” Salovitz said. “So where the fuck are they?”
Alik stared at the holographic display on the stage, mentally reviewing the number of ways out of that portalhome. “We’re overthinking this,” he decided. “Let’s stop relying on Turings and forensics, and go back to basics.”
“Like what?” Salovitz asked skeptically.
“We’ve been looking for a technical solution, and I’m not sure it’s applicable. Think about this: Half a dozen fuckheads break into your apartment armed with some heavy-duty shit. You don’t have time to get smart. You have to get yourself and your kids out, and fast. So, this apartment block is what? Twenty stories high? Three or four apartments on each floor? Have we physically searched the whole building?”
“Not yet,” Salovitz admitted. “Just the seventeenth floor.”
“You need to get it done.”
“I’ll call in some more people,” he said reluctantly.
Alik cl
aimed a desk and sat down. Coffee was brought in. Out of a vending machine, but he didn’t complain out loud; he needed the cops on his side. Shango splashed a whole load of data on his lenses. He was examining family and known associates for each of the corpses.
And he was pretty certain he wouldn’t be the only one looking at those lists. Word of the police arriving at the apartment would be spreading. The survivor who took the Antarctic plunge would have spoken to Rayner. Javid-Lee would be wanting to know why his people hadn’t come back; probably sending someone to take a look along Central Park West, who would have seen the cops establishing a crime scene perimeter. He knew he didn’t have much time. It wasn’t as if the gangs still practiced omertà, but even the dumbest street soldier knew the one thing you didn’t do was go shouting your mouth off to the cops—or worse, the feds.
But Alik was a firm believer in the truism that every chain was only as strong as its weakest link. He just had to make the right choice of link.
Twenty minutes later two agents from the FBI Miami office escorted Ali Renzi into the twentieth precinct. To keep the Deacon sweet, Alik suggested that Salovitz should lead the interview, leaving him and Bietzk to watch it on the stage, with a link open to the detective in case they wanted to put any extra questions to him.
The stage hologram was detailed, showing Renzi as a chill guy, an attitude fine-tuned to show everyone what an innocent he was, how this must be some big mistake. It was a dick move, Alik thought; the genuinely innocent get very nervous being waltzed into a precinct house at two o’clock in the morning.
Ali Renzi was still in his Miami clubbing clothes: a short-sleeved shirt with a weird fantasy alien lion embroidered on and tight black pants. A quick march through a New York January night had left him shivering as he stood under the interview room’s air-con vent, trying to get warm.
Bietzk gave Shango access to the body scan. Renzi’s heart rate was high, as was his blood toxicology. Neural activity showed his brain was cranked up. Alik suppressed a smile at the tell of nervous energy.
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