Her cell phone rang in her pocket.
“He never said a word,” Graham said.
“Where’d you find this?” Ramos asked.
Lawton covered her opposite ear and answered her phone, “Lawton.”
“Near the front of the second cab, embedded in a seat covered with broken and melted glass.”
“We found two brokerages that sold in mass quantities over the last three days. We’re talking bailout quantities here. Tens of thousands of shares and options on prime movers, Lawton.”
“Did you see his shirt?” Ramos asked. “Morbid fuck. That proof enough for you, Renee?”
Lawton nodded to Ramos and spoke into the phone, “Give me the names.”
“Looks like one of those airbrushed shirts you can have made at Coney Island or pick up from a stand off Sixth,” Graham said. “You think there’s any connection or figure he was just a wannabe made good?”
“One more time. I didn’t catch that.” Lawton pressed her hand harder against her ear and walked away from the others to better hear. “Now tell me again.”
“Prestige Equities and Global Capital Management.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Seven
Billington Residence
27 Cohawney Road
Scarsdale, New York
September 29th
10:42 a.m.
One hundred and two minutes post-event.
“You didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary prior to this morning? No changes in his habits or alterations in his mood or behavior?”
The woman across from Lawton could generously be described as a total wreck. Black tears she’d given up trying to wipe away were smeared all over her cheeks. Her eyes were red and her eye shadow climbed her temples nearly to her hairline. Her lipstick looked like it had been applied on a washboard road in a car with no suspension and her bleach-blond hair grew wilder with each passing minute as more and more locks slipped out of her scrunchie. She wore skintight black yoga pants with a thick blue flowered waistband and a matching top that showcased her cleavage. The wrinkles on her hands were the only true indicator of her age. She wrung them in her lap as she spoke. Her acrylic nails made clicking sounds that reminded Lawton of the scuttling of beetles.
“No. Nothing. There weren’t any signs, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her accent was pure Joisey run through the class grinder and spit out somewhere in Connecticut. “He spent a lot of time in his room. Like all kids his age do. Got good enough grades. Never really complained about much of anything. That was just his way, you know? Took what life offered and made the best of it.”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
She looked up briefly, a weak smile on her face, then back down to her lap.
Lawton remained silent and waited for her to elaborate. There was something she wanted to say, but couldn’t quite find the right way to do so. Lawton had to temper her impatience and hide her growing annoyance. After all, they were talking about this woman’s only child, whom less than two hours ago she had watched transform into every parent’s worst nightmare and then die the worst possible death on a very public live broadcast. The reality of the situation was probably only beginning to sink in.
She discreetly checked her watch. One hundred and three minutes post-event. With each passing second, their odds of catching the man in the bear mask plummeted. If he’d left any tracks, he was going back and covering them up while she danced around the feelings of Suburban Barbie.
“He…he didn’t bring home many girls, you know? And those he did…there just wasn’t that connection. The boys he hung out with? They were…they were nice enough and all. They came from good homes and knew just how to dress and act, but…”
“Are you telling me you thought your son might be homosexual?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think…I don’t think he was sexually active. He was…I’m not sure there are even words to describe it…he was just maybe…he just wasn’t all that interested in the whole dating scene one way or the other. Not like most kids, anyway. It wasn’t something his father and I were overly concerned about. We just…we just worry sometimes. That’s our job, right? We do our very best to give them the tools they need to make the right decisions and hope for the best, but sometimes…sometimes we just…just…”
Lawton had to reel her back in before she lost her. She recognized the distant look of shock in her eyes and needed to change the subject. That line of questioning led to speculation of a counterproductive nature, anyway. She’d already validated Badgett’s hunch, which, at this moment, provided their only real lead. What the hell was taking them so long with the IP address and the voiceprint?
“Where is the boy’s father now, Mrs. Billington?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“Los Angeles. He’s an entertainment copyright lawyer. He said he’d be on the first flight…first flight…” Her lips quivered. She wiped the mucus from her nose, then unconsciously onto the seat of the dining room chair. “He splits his time between coasts.”
A quick peek. One hundred and four minutes post-event.
“Are you familiar with a type of lizard known as a basilisk?”
“Is that what that was?”
“What what was?”
“You know. How he—” She made a sweeping gesture across her face. “—how he did himself up.”
“We believe so. Did it have any sort of special significance to your son?”
“If it did, he never mentioned it. I can’t recall him ever talking about any kind of lizard.”
“No pets?”
“My husband is allergic to dander. We had a fish tank for a while, but I’m not very good at taking care of living things.” She winced after she said it. “Things in addition to my family.”
“You kept a close eye on your family, though?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“I’m not in the mood to be judged. Not right now. And most certainly not by you.” There was fire in her eyes when she looked up. “Whatever may come. He was my son and I loved him more than anything on this earth. I don’t have to justify that to anyone. I made sure he had everything he could ever want. More than I ever had, for sure. And I was here for him. Whenever he needed me. I was here. I was physically and emotionally available to him whenever he needed me. How many other mothers can say the same?”
“Sounds like you kept pretty close tabs on him.”
“I did everything within my power.”
“Can you explain where he came up with the money to purchase the precursor chemicals and how he managed to buy them, have them shipped, and find the time to construct a small chemistry lab inside your crawlspace?”
She opened her mouth…then closed it again.
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
One hundred and five minutes post-event.
“I think it would be best if I waited for my husband before answering any more questions.”
“Mrs. Billington. While that’s well within your rights, there’s a man out there—right this very second—who we believe manipulated your son into doing what he did today. We think he took advantage of your son’s friendship and his feelings for him in order to convince him to make and disburse the sarin. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. What your son did was unjustifiable and unforgivable, but I’ll leave his—and your—ultimate judgment for history to decide. I want the man who used your son as a weapon to kill all of those people. And while we’re sitting here talking, he’s getting away with it. He’s sitting there with a big smile on his face, congratulating himself for being so brilliant. For winding up a confused teenager and turning him loose on an unsuspecting world. And do you want to know why?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“He did it for the money. Pure and simple. He used and threw away your only child for money.”
“You�
�re just trying to hurt me. Trying to make me mad enough to let some little detail you think I’m keeping from you slip out. Well, guess what?” She stood so quickly she knocked her chair to the ground. “There’s nothing to let slip! Maybe I’m not the best mother in the world. But I tried. I tried! I love…loved…my son. And there’s not a damn thing I wouldn’t do to change what happened. To keep him from walking out that door for the last time. He was my son. My son! And no one…no one…!”
She was overcome by tears and stormed out of the dining room.
“Then help me, Mrs. Billington. Help me find the man who did this to Logan.”
She stopped and stood with her back to Lawton. Her shoulders rose as if she were about to say something. Then she walked away.
One hundred and six minutes post-event.
Lawton waited for a moment before rising from the table. She nearly collided with the boy’s mother when she turned the corner from the dining room.
“He had his own credit card.” She thrust a stack of unopened envelopes into Lawton’s hand. “I was supposed to be going through these. I just…never found the time. I had it set up to draw out of our account every month so I didn’t have to worry about it.”
She walked away without another word, leaving Lawton holding five envelopes with a return address of somewhere in North Carolina. She found the one with the most recent postmark and tore it open. It was from the current billing cycle, which ended two weeks ago. The bill was three pages long. Most of the individual charges were small and billed by convenience stores and restaurants, mainly fast food. There were other, much larger charges from companies with names like Industrial Chemical Suppliers and National Scientific Wholesale and Institutional Resources Direct with amounts in the hundreds. That the boy’s mother could potentially have caught the expenditures in time to prevent the tragedy was heartbreaking, but ultimately irrelevant. It changed nothing. What was relevant were the charges that followed during the subsequent weeks.
Lawton studied them. Furrowed her brow. Walked through the living room. She found the boy’s mother at the dinette in the kitchen with a mug of coffee—Irish, by the smell of it—staring out across the manicured lawn at the prematurely skeletal oak and elm trees.
“Where is your husband’s office, Mrs. Billington?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“Lower Manhattan. Off Rector.”
“Can you think of any reason why Logan would have taken the Metro-North Harlem Line to Grand Central Station and then the Lexington Avenue Local to 51st?”
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
“Isn’t that where the Waldorf Astoria is?” Lawton asked.
She closed her eyes and said nothing.
“It wasn’t him, was it? You were using a card drawn on his account for your own personal reasons.”
Lawton could see the woman’s reflection on the inside of the window. Her expression was one of guilt and the depths of despair.
“Mother of the year. So tell me, did you have any idea what your son was doing while you were off having your affair?”
Lawton dropped the bills on the table beside her. The woman flinched at the sound, but didn’t turn to look. There was nothing to be accomplished here. This woman wouldn’t be able to give her any useful information or insights, outside of the fact that when her son had needed her most, she’d been miles away in the arms of a man who wasn’t the boy’s father.
And that roughly two days a week the kid had the house all to himself.
“He knew what you were doing,” Lawton said. “You know that, right? Your son knew you were having an affair.”
One hundred and nine minutes post-event.
She left the boy’s mother to her misery and hurried back down the stairs.
“Someone get a hold of the kid’s school. I want to know every day over the last three months when the kid wasn’t at school. I want dates and the means by which he was excused for each and every one of them. Compare those dates with any calls both to and from his cell phone, his FaceTime account, and the home line. I’m betting just about every call he made during those times was to our guy. Get the phone company to give us the GPS records off his cell. Sometime on those dates and in the windows between calls, I’ll bet he met with this monster and I want to know where.”
“Lawton!” Badgett ran across the rec room with his computer under his arm. “We’ve got a bead on that IP address. It’s right there in the Financial District.”
“I’m driving. You! The officer back there! Get on the radio! Have the NYPD clear the way for us. Lights and sirens. I don’t care if they have to tow every car off of Park. Get them out there now! We’ll be coming in fast!”
Eight
Global Capital Management
300 Park Avenue
12th Floor
New York, New York
September 28th
Three Years Ago
Stepping from the elevator was a positively surreal experience. The last time she had done so into a place like this, she had left by ambulance in a shock-induced fugue, covered with the blood of her partner, the man who shot him, and a hostage, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her heart pounded so hard she could positively see its influence in the corners of her vision. Her blood made whooshing sounds in her ears. The firm’s lobby looked nothing like it had before, presumably as a consequence of the fortune the company had made two years ago and the necessity to publicly distance itself from the fallout of the shootings. The reception desk was marble, as were all of the walls, the flooring, and the columns down which thin streams of water trickled. The potted plants qualified as trees and cast legitimate shade thanks to the bank of windows that admitted the midday sun without the nuisance sounds of a city coming to life in the wake of tragedy, or perhaps a city still holding its collective breath. The receptionists both wore headsets and answered phone calls with the rapidity of switchboard operators back in the day. They appeared to have been selected from a Victoria’s Secret catalogue rather than a clerical pool. Lawton didn’t recognize either of them from before, which fit the overall motif. Global Capital Management had gone to great lengths and even greater expense to make its clients forget all about its humble roots as Webster & Lloyd, or, more importantly, from the scandal caused by Anthony Hargrove, whose very public breakdown had resulted in the kind of publicity that tainted the image of its former incarnation, but attracted a slew of clients to its new.
The back area remained fairly similar in a generic brokerage kind of way. The receptionist who escorted her through the inner sanctum gave her a topical tour she had learned by rote, but Lawton wasn’t listening. She watched the faces of the brokers in the glass-walled offices, paying close attention to their eyes and their mannerisms, hoping to see some sort of tell that might serve as the subtle warning they had all missed with Hargrove, that one furtive glance or gasp of recognition or stiffening of the shoulders that might be just enough of a tipoff to prevent another hostage situation or the prospect of people leaving this building by ambulance.
Instead, all she saw were the kind of cocky men and women who wore suits so expensive they didn’t need labels, who had their own stylists to sculpt their eyebrows and perfect their hair, who saw the world as a kingdom that existed for no other reason than to be conquered and its population as an uneducated serfdom whose daily struggles facilitated the funneling of money into a global machine that spit it back out into the hands of those with enough courage to reach out and take it. Men and women for whom the world revolved around the business of making money, gambling on a level that even Vegas odds-makers wouldn’t touch on a dare. While she sensed a more subdued vibe, presumably as a consequence of the catastrophe beneath the streets of Queens, mere miles away, she didn’t see anyone or anything that stood out.
The clicking of the receptionist’s heels echoed through the corridor. Her hips swished and her skirt crept northward. By the time they reached the office of the P
resident and Chief Financial Officer, Daniel Lloyd, Lawson felt as though she’d walked an entire city block. His secretary, who Lawton thought looked vaguely familiar, turned away at their approach and spoke into her headset. A heartbeat later, a man emerged from the closed door to her right. Lloyd’s assistant, a young man named Parker Heatherton, was the first person she actually recognized. In fact, he looked exactly the same, with his slim-cut charcoal suit, scarlet silk tie, and trademark red suspenders, the kind worn by every frat boy at every business school in the country. He was a diminutive man in his twenties who struck her as a whole lot more ambitious and self-important than his station afforded.
Heatherton greeted her with a handshake and gestured for her to take a seat in the posh anteroom, which served as the cue for the receptionist and the secretary to take their leave. The walls were lined with the portraits of the founders and the partners through the years. From the days of Walter, Schreiber, & Webster to Schreiber & Webster Brokers to Webster & Warren Investments to Webster & Sons Financiers to Webster & Lloyd. The last of the Websters—Walter, great-great grandson of the founder, Amos—had seen what happened two years ago as a sign that it was time to move on from the business that had been in his family for nearly sixty years and sold his stake to Lloyd, who made the move from private brokerage to global wealth management, changed the name and the location to reflect the new focus, acquired London Capital Group and Deutsche Gesellschafthaus AG, and took the operation public in a coup that made him one of the most powerful and influential men on Wall Street.
He emerged from his grand office with a practiced smile on his face and his arm already in the process of extending a handshake for which he probably owned the patent. The power he radiated was a physical force that preceded him into a room. He was charming in a polished way she attributed to significant wealth and a healthy measure of elitism and undoubtedly had his choice of any woman he could ever want, despite his advancing age. The silver had been incorporated nicely into his dark hair at the temples and it was impossible to tell how much work he’d had done on his face until he was close enough to disarm you with his soulful blue eyes.
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