by Donn Cortez
The limb he was currently out on had to do with his conversation with Samuel Lucent. Horatio had told him he wasn’t interested in prosecuting him or getting him to roll over on his supplier, but that had simply been to get Lucent to talk. In fact, Horatio was very much interested in where the pot Lucent was turning into hash was coming from, and who was bringing it to him; there was obviously a lot of money involved in an operation like this, and you never ignored money when investigating a murder.
Still, he thought he had played it right. He could always turn the heat up on Lucent later.
He went down to the lab to see Calleigh, who was processing the equipment they’d pulled out of Lucent’s place. She was dusting the handle of one of the blenders for prints when he walked in.
“How’s it going?” he asked her.
“Oh, a woman’s work is never done,” she said. “From power tools to kitchen appliances—you trying to tell me something, H?”
“I was hoping you could tell me instead.”
“Well, so far Lucent seems to be telling the truth—the only prints I’ve gotten have been his. I haven’t done the drum machine yet, though.”
Horatio took a good look at the blender she was working on. “Is this the same model that we pulled out of the Dumpster?”
“I don’t know. Let me check…. Hmmm. Not exactly. Same brand, different model.”
Horatio moved farther down the table and examined a hand-mixer. “Which is the same as these—maybe there’s a connection here. Find out which restaurant supply company The Earthly Garden gets their equipment from and check them out.”
“I’m on it.”
“Where’s Eric? I thought he was going to help out with all this.”
“He’s in the computer lab—said he was going to work up a simulation.”
Which is exactly what Horatio found Delko doing, sitting back and staring at a screen with his arms crossed. “Eric? What’s up?”
“Oh, hi, H. I thought I’d try to reconstruct the scene from start to finish, give us a clearer picture of what happened.”
“Good thinking. How far are you?”
“Let me show you.” Delko reached forward and tapped a key. The screen lit up with a simple wirework graphic, showing the restaurant in a gridded outline. The bathroom was represented inside the frame in blue, the kitchen in red. There was a small digital time readout at the bottom of the screen.
“Okay, the action starts at approximately two o’clock.” The counter showed 2:00. “Shanique Cooperville, trying to show Phil Mulrooney the error of his ways, serves him a helping of meat-laced chili. At two-fifteen, Albert Humboldt takes his lunch break. By two-thirty, Mulrooney starts to feel a little queasy. At two-forty, he makes a dash for the bathroom.”
Delko hit another key. A little wireframe rocket appeared on the roof. “At two forty-three, Doctor Sinhurma calls Phil Mulrooney’s cell phone.”
“But how does he know Mulrooney is in the bathroom?” Horatio mused.
“Somebody could have phoned and tipped him off,” Delko suggested. “I’ll check the phone records for the restaurant and the clinic, see what I can find.”
“Good idea. So at this point, we know where Sinhurma is—miles from the crime scene, giving him an alibi.”
“Right. At approximately two forty-four, someone hits the igniter switch, launching the rocket from the roof.”
Horatio was no longer watching the screen. He was seeing it in his mind’s eye: the spark of electricity traveling down the length of wire to the rocket, the flare of heat and light as the motor ignited.
“The rocket launches. It pulls a thin, Kevlar-coated wire with it—”
The spool, attached to some kind of base, spinning wildly as it feeds a thin copper line into the heavens…
“—going two thousand feet, straight up, and trailing a charged leader of electrical particles behind it. A stepped leader heading toward the ground hits the rocket. The bolt travels down the wire, vaporizing it at the same time—”
The bolt smashes into the rocket and roars earthward, consuming the copper and Kevlar like an angry shark devouring a fishing line….
“It travels down the copper pipe in the wall, through the steel toilet bowl and into Phil Mulrooney. From the position of the body, it probably entered through his left hand—his right was holding his cell phone. It went down the arm, down the torso and legs and out through his knees—”
The charge skates across the skin like mercury on glass, too fast to burn but turning sweat to steam in an instant. Some of it makes it through the barrier and races down nerves, veins, bones. It slams through the muscle of the heart, shocking it into silence….
“The bolt hits the puddle of water on the floor, follows it down to the metal drain, and grounds out. Except—”
“Except somewhere along the way, it intersects with a wall outlet, burning out a blender,” Horatio finished.
“Yeah. Via whatever was wedged between the wall and that plug.”
Horatio rubbed his forehead. “But there’s another problem. According to the autopsy, Mulrooney displayed signs of being hit by lightning and being electrocuted by house current.”
“So—more than one method, more than one killer?”
“Maybe…or maybe just a belt-and-suspenders approach. From what I’ve found out, lightning doesn’t seem to be the most reliable of weapons; it’s frequently nonlethal, and even using a rocket to trigger it only has a fifty percent success rate.”
Delko nodded. “So somebody was trying to hedge their bets. Take out a little thunderstorm insurance.”
“Possibly…we’re missing two pieces of physical evidence here. One, the ignition system and launch pad for the rocket. Two, whatever connected the wall outlet to Phil Mulrooney.”
“There’s also the rocket fuel—if it was a custom blend, it had to be cooked up somewhere.”
“Wolfe’s following up on that right now,” Horatio said.
“How about the Carrell murder? Any luck with the arrow?”
“I’m afraid not. We can prove the arrows we found were fired by the bow they were stored with, but that’s it.”
“So what’s next, H?”
Horatio’s cell phone rang. He held up one finger while he answered it.
“Horatio Caine.” He listened intently, said, “Really. Good job, Mister Wolfe. I’ll have him brought in.”
He snapped the phone shut and said to Delko, “Well, it seems as if we have somebody we can talk to after all….”
8
DETECTIVE SALAS STARED across the table. Light threw six-sided shadows across her subject’s face. “Caesar,” she said. “That’s an unusual first name. Your parents have high ambitions for you?”
Sinhurma’s second-in-command stared back stonily. “Mister Kim is fine, thank you. I don’t really feel we’re on a first-name basis.”
Horatio, sitting at Salas’s right hand, favored Kim with a smile. “Certainly, Mister Kim…we appreciate you coming in. Your name popped up in connection with part of our investigation and I was wondering if you could clear up a few things.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Kim’s back was straight as a board, his voice inflectionless.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Mister Kim.”
“Can you be more specific?’
“When the mood strikes me.” Horatio waited. He enjoyed it when a suspect tried to outwait him; it was a contest he always won. He’d sat and stared at a man once for thirty-seven minutes without saying a word—the man finally broke when Horatio got up, left for two minutes to use the bathroom, then came back and sat down again with a smile.
Salas’s face was as impassive as stone. She hated waiting, but if that was how Horatio wanted to play it, she’d sit there like a statue until he indicated otherwise…then chew him out for it later.
Kim apparently didn’t need that long to figure the situation out. “What,” he said frostily, “would you like to know?”
“Oh, you know, the
usual things: your favorite color, what kind of food you like to eat—wait, I already know that—any hobbies you might have?”
“I prefer the color green. And as for hobbies, I have none.” He smiled, ever so slightly. “Not even archery.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of archery. I mean, someone as repressed as you evidently are would choose something phallic to express himself, and archery does have that whole penetrating shaft aspect to it…but somehow it seems a little too hands-on for you. No, you’d go for something grander, I think. I see you…”
Here Horatio leaned forward, his hands steepled together, and said, “…as a rocket man.”
Kim blinked, very slowly and deliberately. “Rocketry is a science, not a hobby,” he said.
“Ah. Then you do count it among your interests?”
“I suppose I do,” Kim said.
“Hmmm. Which would explain your name on a membership list for the Florida Model Rocketry Association, I assume?”
“That seems self-evident.”
Horatio leaned back, picking up a folder from the table as he did so. He flipped it open and pretended to study it. “Mmm-hm. A number of things are becoming self-evident, Mister Kim. For instance, these financial disclosure statements my staff dug up. You’re quite heavily invested in The Earthly Garden restaurant chain, aren’t you?”
“It’s a matter of public record,” Kim answered calmly.
“Indeed it is. It also means that you have a rather vested interest in the Vitality Method as an entity continuing to do well.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“Funny thing about public records,” Salas said. “Some records are more public than others. For instance, phone records show that a call was placed just minutes before Phillip Mulrooney died, from The Earthly Garden to Doctor Sinhurma’s private line.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Of course not,” Horatio said. “Your area of expertise is rocketry, not telephonics.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert—”
“Just someone with an interest,” Salas said.
“That’s right.”
Horatio studied the man for a moment. He thought he had Kim pegged now; the less emotional affect the man showed, the more likely it was he was hiding something. Horatio thought he knew what it was.
“Tell me, Mister Kim—what’s the basic unit of measurement for a rocket’s thrust?”
The blink, this time, was noticeably faster. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“Humor me.”
Kim stared at him impassively—but the blankness of his gaze was that of a turtle retreating into its shell. Horatio paused just long enough for it to get uncomfortable, then said, “Or what about the recommended minimum launch speed to keep a model rocket stable in flight?”
“I—I don’t recall at the moment—”
“No? How about a really, really easy one? Something even a grade-school kid would know after his first launch. Like…what’s the most powerful rocket motor you can buy without certification?”
Silence.
“The answers—of course—are: Newton-seconds, forty-four feet per second, and ‘G’,” Horatio said. “Very cagey of you to deny knowing any of this. Unless…it couldn’t be that you’re actually unaware of these facts, could it?”
“I suppose,” Kim said, giving him the barest trace of a smile, “that I’m a bit rusty. Hardly a crime.”
“Hardly,” Horatio agreed. “But it does mean that you’re not exactly being truthful with us, Mister Kim. I also notice that you don’t seem to find a discussion of model rocketry in the context of a homicide investigation at all unusual.”
“I simply assumed you were building to some sort of metaphor.”
“I prefer the real thing to symbolism, Mister Kim. And the rocket that I’m talking about, as I’m sure you’re aware, is very much an actual object…an object in the possession of the Miami-Dade crime lab. We know it was launched from the roof of The Earthly Garden and used to trigger a lightning strike, and we know that strike was intended to kill Phillip Mulrooney.”
“That sounds rather bizarre,” Kim said. “As I’m sure any jury would agree.”
Horatio smiled. “You know how you make the bizarre commonplace, Mister Kim? With evidence. You explain it, step by step, fact by fact. And in my experience, sooner or later the jury does agree….”
There was an antechamber outside the Miami-Dade crime lab, an oddly shaped foyer of sorts. It had a long, low, padded bench against one black wall, facing a window that slanted up from the floor to the roof at a forty-five-degree angle. It always made Horatio feel as if he were inside some pyramidal tomb, a waiting room for the dead.
Right now it was empty. He sat by himself, looking at the angled window but not really seeing it. He was seeing something else: a face with a startling pair of green eyes.
Ruth Carrell.
She’d come down from Tampa, she’d told him. Just another overweight girl who wanted the dream: to be thin, to be pretty, to be popular. To be accepted.
And Doctor Kirpal Sinhurma had seen her potential through the baby fat and decided she was worth recruiting. She didn’t have much money, but she was young and insecure and willing, and that was perfect material for a foot soldier. Before you could bilk the headliners for endorsements and fat donations you had to have your success stories all lined up and ready for inspection; you had to fill the front lines with taut bodies and gleaming smiles, all charged up with unswerving dedication and fervor. You basked in the glow of their admiration, and that reflected light made you seem even larger and more impressive than ever.
And when that loyalty flickered, even for a second, you threw the cause away like a bad bulb in a string of Christmas lights. Because doubt was one luxury you could not afford…and young, insecure girls were as cheap and plentiful as citrus fruit.
That insecurity had let Sinhurma shape the direction of Ruth’s thoughts, let him guide her into thinking that what he wanted her to do was actually her own idea. And what he’d wanted, obviously, was to bring someone else into the fold—someone who would be vulnerable to the attention of a young, attractive girl. But who? And why did Sinhurma want them?
He’d misjudged the doctor. He’d been thinking Sinhurma was only a sociopath—devoid of any real compassion or human connection, but no worse than many businessmen or politicians Horatio had dealt with.
But he might be wrong. If Sinhurma was responsible, then he was a delusional sociopath—a psychopath. Which meant that killing two or twenty people meant much the same to him.
If he was responsible.
Any cop on the street would tell you to trust your gut first. Any scientist would tell you to ignore personal bias and let the evidence speak for itself. Horatio was both, which meant he was continually trying to find the balance between the two. Right now, his gut told him that Sinhurma was about as far from the straight and narrow as a monk was from a crack den…but the evidence was strictly circumstantial.
Which was why Horatio was out in the waiting room, all by himself, doing some hard thinking. He was, unfortunately, not convinced that Sinhurma was guilty of murder. Manipulation, yes—but if that was illegal, there’d be a lot of salesmen behind bars. Any of the members of his organization might have become unhinged enough to kill in his name, under the impression they were protecting his great endeavor; that didn’t mean Sinhurma was directly responsible.
But even indirect responsibility had its price. In Horatio’s case, it was the nagging memory of the last words he’d said to a girl with only hours left of her life.
Prostituting yourself. That was what he’d said. He’d meant to shock her into seeing what she’d done, how she’d been used, but maybe he’d gone too far. Maybe Ruth Carrell had died thinking of him as a hard-assed, judgmental cop, one who didn’t care about her or her feelings. It was possible…but he’d never know.
Some cops would have shrugged and said it didn’
t matter; she was dead and it was Horatio’s job to catch the killer. Others would have obsessed over it and let it eat away at them until the day they died. But Horatio wasn’t either of those sorts of cop. He didn’t run from guilt, nor did he wallow in it. He embraced it, analyzed it, learned from it. He accepted emotional pain the way an athlete accepted the physical kind, and used it to make himself stronger.
Who needs steroids, he thought, when you have death?
Which brought him back to the case, and the drug angle. If someone at the Vitality Method was involved in trafficking, Ruth Carrell or Phillip Mulrooney might have been killed because they learned something they shouldn’t. Again, Sinhurma might be involved, or he might not.
Calleigh walked around the corner. “Horatio? Got a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I could ask you the same.” She arched an eyebrow. “You want to be alone?”
Horatio smiled. “No, that’s all right. Just going over the case in my mind.”
She came over and sat down beside him. “Yeah, it’s a strange one. Still, this is Florida—figures that sooner or later somebody would try to kill someone using a rocket or a thunderstorm. But at the same time?”
“I’m sure being shot with an arrow wasn’t high on Ruth Carrell’s list of possible endings, either.”
She sighed. “Arrows, lightning—haven’t these people ever heard of guns?”
It was Horatio’s turn to lift an eyebrow.
She colored slightly. “Sorry, H. I’m just venting. Not being able to positively match that arrow to the bow is really bugging me. Give me a plain old shell casing any day.”
“On the bright side, at least no bystanders got shot.”
“That’s true. One thing about bows and launch pads—they both have notoriously low rates of fire.”
“Maybe we should try to convince people to switch.”
“Well, concealed weapons would become a thing of the past. And visiting Cape Canaveral would take on an entirely different flavor.” She gave him a patented Calleigh Duquesne wide-eyed smile, and he chuckled despite himself.