Lincoln Rhyme 10 - The Kill Room

by Jeffery Deaver

And the coffee vendor. No, just ram the stand, scald him, kill him, forget the consequences. The satisfaction would be sublime.

  Help me, Dr. Fischer.

  But there was no Smoke now. He was in an ecstatic high. Intelligence and surveillance experts were feeding him information about the Rashid operation.

  The terrorist—the next task in the queue—was presently meeting with the Matamoros Cartel bomb supplier. Metzger would have given anything to modify the STO to include him as well but the man was a Mexican citizen and getting permission to vaporize him would have meant elaborate discussions with higher-ups in Mexico City and Washington. And heaven knew he had to be careful with them.

  Budgetary meetings proceeding apace. Much back-and-forth. Resolution tomorrow. Can’t tell which way the wind is blowing…

  He received another call about the progress of the UAV, under the command of Barry Shales in the GCS, the trailer outside Metzger’s window. The craft had launched not from Homestead, as in the Moreno operation, but from the NIOS facility near Fort Hood, Texas. It had crossed into Mexican airspace, with the Federales’ blessing, unlike with Moreno in the Bahamas, and was heading through clear weather toward the target.

  His phone rang again. Seeing the caller ID he stiffened and glanced at his open door. He could see Ruth’s hands through the sliver of view into the ante office. She was typing. She had a small window too and sunlight glinted off her modest engagement and impressive wedding rings.

  He rose and slid the door closed, then answered. “Yes.”

  “Found her,” the man’s voice reported.

  No names or code names…

  Her.

  Nance Laurel.

  “Where?”

  “Detention center, interviewing a suspect. Not on this case, something else. I’ve confirmed it’s her. She’s there now, pretty much alone. Should I?”

  No ending verb to that sentence.

  Metzger debated, added pluses and negatives. “Yes.”

  He disconnected.

  Maybe, just maybe this would all go away.

  And he turned his attention back to Mexico, where an enemy of the country was about to die. Shreve Metzger felt swollen with joy.

  CHAPTER 66

  WHERE’S NANCE LAUREL?” Sachs asked the rotund African American woman on the fifth floor of the New York detention center.

  The Department of Corrections officer stiffened and glanced at Sachs’s badge with disdain. Sachs supposed her voice was a bit strident, the greeting rude. It hadn’t been intentional; Nance Laurel simply did this to her.

  “Room Five. Box yo weapon.” Back to a People magazine. A scandal was breaking among some quasi-celebrities. Or maybe they were honest-to-God celebs. Sachs had never heard of them.

  She wanted to apologize to the woman for her bluntness but couldn’t figure out how. Then her anger at Laurel returned and she slipped the Glock into a locker and slammed the door, drawing a criticizing breath from the lockup mistress. With a buzz the door opened and she stepped through into the grim corridor. It was deserted at the moment. This was the area where high-level prisoners—accused of serious felonies—discussed their cases with their lawyers and cut deals with the prosecutors.

  The perfume here was disinfectant and paint and pee.

  Sachs strode past the first several rooms, all of which were empty. At Interview #5, she looked through smeared glass and saw a shackled man in an orange jumpsuit sitting across from Laurel at a table bolted to the floor. In the corner was another D of C guard, a huge man whose nearly white shaved head glistened with sweat. His arms were crossed and he looked at the prisoner like a biologist examining yet another specimen of toxic but dead bug.

  The doors were self-locking; you needed a key to open them from either side so Sachs banged on the door with her palm.

  This must have been strident too, since everybody in the room jumped and swiveled. The guard had no gun but his hand dipped toward the pepper spray on his belt. He saw Sachs, apparently recognized her as a cop and relaxed. The prisoner gazed narrowly at Sachs and the look morphed from startled to hungry.

  Sex crime, Sachs deduced.

  Laurel’s lips tightened slightly.

  She rose. The guard unlocked the door and let the ADA out, then he locked it again and returned to his watchful state.

  The women walked to the end of the corridor, away from the door. Laurel asked, “Have you got something on Metzger or Shales?”

  “Why ask me?” Sachs countered. “Since I’m not really in the equation.”

  “Detective,” Laurel said evenly, “what are you talking about?”

  She didn’t start with the news Sellitto had just informed her of, the suspension. She went chronologically. “You took my name off all the memos, all the emails. You replaced my name with yours.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Anything to help you get elected, right, Assemblywoman Laurel?”

  Sachs withdrew the copy she’d made from Laurel’s secret files and thrust the sheet forward. It was a petition to put Laurel on the ballot to run for the office of assemblywoman in her district. The assembly was the lower house of the legislature in New York.

  The woman’s eyes dipped. “Ah.”

  Busted.

  But an instant later she was gazing coolly back into Sachs’s face.

  Sachs snapped, “You took me off the documents to take credit for yourself. Is that what this case is all about, Nance? ‘Your’ case, by the way. Not ‘our case’ or ‘the case.’ Because you wanted big media defendants to make a big splash. Forget Unsub Five Sixteen’s torturing innocent women. You don’t want him. You want the highest government official you can bag.

  “And to make sure that happens you had me running around town digging up all the good things about Moreno I could find. Anything substantive on the case, you co-opted, put your name on it and took credit.”

  The assistant DA, though, didn’t seem the least fazed. “Did you happen to look up my application to go on the ballot?”

  “No, I didn’t need to. I had this, the petition with the signatures.” She lifted the photocopy.

  Laurel said, “Those support the ballot application. You still need to submit one.”

  Sachs was pinged by that feeling she sometimes got, a nagging concern, that she might have missed something at a crime scene. Something fundamental. She was silent.

  “I’m not running for office.”

  “The petition…”

  “The petition was filed, yes. But I changed my mind. I never filed the application to run.”

  More silence.

  Laurel continued, “Yes, I’d wanted to run in the Democratic primary but the party felt I was a little too opinionated for them. I filed a petition to run as an independent. But as time went by I decided not to.”

  Ping…

  Now, curiously, Laurel’s eyes were averted. She, not Sachs, seemed the more uneasy. And her shoulders, usually completely upright, sagged. “Last winter I went through a very hard breakup. He was…Well, I thought we’d get married. I understand that those things don’t always work out. Fine. But it just wouldn’t go away, the pain.” Her jaw was set, her thin lips trembling. “It was exhausting.”

  Sachs recalled her observation from earlier, when Laurel had gotten the phone call in the town house.

  She’s vulnerable, even defenseless…

  “I thought I needed to try something different. I’d run for office, devote myself to politics. I’d always wanted to. I have very strong ideas about this country and government’s role. I was class president in high school and college. That was a happy time for me and I guess I wanted to re-create it. But I decided I was a better DA than I would be a politician. This is where I belong.”

  A nod toward the interview room. “The perp in there? History of sexual assault. He’s in here because he groped three high school students. The original prosecutor didn’t have time for the case and was going to charge him with forcible touching. Misdemeanor. He couldn’t
be bothered. I know about people like this suspect, though. Next it’ll be raping an eleven-year-old and the time after that he’ll kill the girl once he’s finished. I took over and I’m going for first-degree sexual act.”

  “Class B felony,” Sachs said.

  “Exactly. And I’m going to get it. Running cases like this’s my talent, not politics. Stopping rapists and people like Shreve Metzger, who’re hiding behind the government and doing whatever the fuck they want, to hell with the Constitution.”

  An obscenity. She was angry. Sachs suspected this was the real Nance Laurel, rarely visible beneath the buttoned-up suits, the spray-painted makeup, the if-you-don’t-mind verbiage.

  “Amelia, yes, I took your name off the memos and emails. But that was purely for your sake and the sake of your career. It never occurred to me that you’d want credit. Who would?” She gave a shrug. “You know how dangerous this prosecution is? It’s a career-ender, if the slightest thing goes wrong. Washington might cut Metzger and Barry Shales loose and let them swing in the wind. But they might also make this their Gettysburg, take a stand against me. And if they do and I lose on the immunity issue, then I’m history. The feds’ll pressure Albany to get rid of me, and the attorney general will. In a heartbeat. That’ll happen to everybody involved in the case, Amelia.”

  My case…

  “I wanted to shelter you and the others as much as I could. Lon Sellitto’s not mentioned in any of the memos. Ron Pulaski, the same.”

  Sachs pointed out, “But one of us’ll have to testify in court as experts—to the evidence.” Then she understood. “Lincoln.”

  Laurel said, “He’s a consultant. He can’t be fired.”

  “I didn’t understand any of this,” Sachs said. She apologized for her outburst.

  “No, no. I should’ve shared the strategy with you.”

  Sachs felt her phone vibrate and she glanced at the screen. A text from Lon Sellitto.

  A—

  Just learned. The suspension came from downtown. Capt. Myers. Thinks you’re not up front on health issues. He got your medical records from your private doctor. I bought you a week to stay on Moreno case. But need full medical by May 28th.

  So that was it. Laurel had had nothing to do with getting her sidelined. Thank God she hadn’t blurted what she’d been thinking earlier. But then: How the hell had Myers gotten her private records? She never made insurance claims through the department. She herself paid for the appointments with her orthopedist—for this very reason: so no one in the Big Building would find out.

  “Everything okay?” Laurel asked, nodding at the phone.

  “Sure, fine.”

  At that moment a buzz sounded from the end of the corridor. The door swung open and a man stepped inside, in his thirties, athletic, wearing a dark suit. He blinked in surprise, seeing the women at the end of the hall. Then he started forward, eyes taking in the rest of the hallway and the empty rooms.

  Sachs spent a lot of time here. She knew many of the officers and guards. The detectives, of course. But she’d never seen this man before.

  Maybe he was the sex pervert’s lawyer. But the expression on Laurel’s face said that she didn’t recognize him either.

  Sachs turned back to Laurel. “I do have some news. Before I left we got a lead to the whistleblower.”

  “Really?” Laurel lifted an eyebrow.

  Sachs explained about the tourist’s photos of the tea-drinker who liked Splenda and had a bum stomach. His inexpensive, odd-colored suit. His possible connection to the military.

  Laurel asked a question but by then Sachs’s instinct had kicked in and she wasn’t paying attention.

  The man who’d been buzzed in was ignoring the interrogation rooms. He seemed purposefully, but warily, making his way toward the women.

  “You know that guy?” Sachs whispered.

  “No.” Laurel seemed troubled by the detective’s concern.

  A scenario played itself out in Sachs’s imagination, honed by instinct: This wasn’t Barry Shales—they’d seen his picture—but could it be Unsub 516? Sachs had been careful with the cell phones but who knew what NIOS was capable of. The man could have tracked her here—or followed Laurel. Maybe he’d just killed the guard out front and buzzed himself in.

  Sachs looked for options. She had her switchblade but if this was the unsub he’d be armed. She recalled the terrible knife wounds on Lydia Foster’s body. And he could easily have a gun. She’d have to get him in close before she could use the blade.

  But as he approached he slowed and stopped, well out of knife range. She couldn’t possibly draw the knife and attack before he opened fire. His smooth face, and cautious eyes, looked from one to the other. “Nance Laurel?”

  “That’s me. Who are you?”

  The man had no interest in answering her question.

  With a fast, assessing look at Sachs, he reached into his jacket.

  Sachs prepared to launch herself into him, muscles tensing, fingers folding into fists.

  Can I get to him in time to grab his hand when it appears, pull my knife out, flick it open?

  She crouched and felt a stab of pain. Then got ready to surge forward.

  Wondering too if, as before in the alley, her knee would give out again and send her sprawling to the floor, in helpless agony, giving the man all the time he needed to shoot or slash them both to death.

  CHAPTER 67

  THE MOMENT BEFORE SHE LEAPT, though, Sachs saw that an envelope, not a Glock or a blade, was emerging.

  The man noted Sachs’s curious pose with a frown then stepped closer and handed the envelope to Laurel.

  “Who are you?” Laurel persisted.

  Still no response to her query. Instead he said, “I’ve been asked to give this to you. Before you go any further, you should know.”

  “‘Go any further’?”

  He didn’t elaborate but simply nodded at the envelope.

  The prosecutor extracted a single sheet of paper. She read methodically, word by word, to judge from her slow eye movements. Her teeth seemed to clench.

  She looked up at the man. “You work for the State Department?”

  Sachs’s impression was that, though he said nothing, the answer was yes. What was this all about?

  A glance at the document. “Is it authentic?” Laurel asked, eyeing the State Department minion closely.

  The man answered, “I was asked to deliver a document to Assistant District Attorney Laurel. I have no interest in or knowledge of the contents.”

  Good use of prepositions, Sachs reflected cynically. Lincoln Rhyme would have approved.

  “Shreve Metzger had you do this, didn’t he?” Laurel said. “Did he fake it? Answer the question. Is it real?”

  No knowledge of, no interest in…

  The man said nothing more. He turned away, as if the women no longer existed, and left them. He paused at the end of the corridor and was buzzed out.

  “What is it?” Sachs asked.

  “Didn’t some of the intelligence we got from Fred Dellray report that Moreno was seen in or around U.S. embassies or consulates just before he was shot?”

  “Right,” she confirmed. “Mexico City and Costa Rica. After he left New York on May second.”

  Sachs’s concerns were further allayed when she glanced back and saw the round, dark face of the guard at the door peering in, unharmed and unconcerned about the visitor. She returned to her station and her celebrities.

  With a sigh Laurel said to Sachs, “If anybody was thinking that Moreno was going to attack an embassy they were wrong.” She nodded toward the letter in her hand. “He was looking for an embassy, but one where he could fast-track his renunciation of U.S. citizenship. He did it on May fourth in San José, Costa Rica. The renunciation was effective immediately but the paperwork didn’t make it into the State Department database until this morning.” She sighed. “When he died Robert Moreno was a Venezuelan citizen, not U.S.”

  Sachs said, “That’s
why he told the limo driver in New York he couldn’t come back to America. Wasn’t because of any terrorist plot but because he’d be non grata and wouldn’t be allowed in on a foreign passport.”

  A phone appeared in Laurel’s hand. She looked down at it. Her face had never seemed so wan. Why all the makeup? Sachs wondered yet again. Laurel hit a speed-dial button. Sachs couldn’t see which priority but of course it didn’t much matter. A 9 is as easy to hit as a 1.

  Laurel stepped to the side and had a conversation. Finally she put the phone away and remained for a full minute with her back to Sachs. Her phone rang. Another conversation, briefer.

  When she’d ended that call she returned to Sachs. “My boss just talked to the attorney general in Albany. However much Shreve Metzger and his shooter overstepped their authority, there’s no interest in pursuing a charge against him when the victim’s not a U.S. citizen. I’ve been ordered to drop the case.” She looked at the floor. “So. That’s it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sachs offered. She meant it.

  CHAPTER 68

  IN THE COOL, DIM SAFE HOUSE in Reynosa, Mexico, al-Barani Rashid completed the list of bomb components and pushed it toward the Fat Man.

  That was how he’d thought of the cartel’s chief IED expert when the man had first waddled inside a half hour ago, dusty and with unwashed hair. Rashid had given him the name contemptuously, though accurately—he really was quite heavy. Then he regretted the unkind thought about his physique and personal grooming habits; the cartel’s man proved to be not only very cooperative but extremely talented. It turned out he was responsible for some of the more sophisticated explosive devices deployed in the Western Hemisphere over the past few years.

  The man pocketed the shopping list he and Rashid had come up with and in Spanish said he’d be back by evening with all the parts and tools.

  Rashid was satisfied that this weapon would do the job very efficiently, killing DEA regional director Barbara Summers and anyone at the church picnic within a thirty-foot circle, possibly wider, depending on how many people were waiting in line at the ice cream station, where the device would be planted.