The Time to Kill

by Mason Cross

  Faraday said nothing for a moment, scanned the seated men with her stare. She looked as though she was daring someone to speak before she began. Nobody took her up on it.

  “A couple of you in this room know who this is. For the rest of you, he’s from before your time. We knew him under a different name, but he is currently calling himself Carter Blake.”

  5

  NEW YORK CITY

  Stark watched Faraday as she paused to study the faces of the men in front of her. They were all listening intently, eyes focused either on her or on the screen. Stark saw Murphy and Ortega exchange the briefest of glances. So Ortega knew about this, too. It made sense. He was one of the longest-serving men in the room. Perhaps he, too, had worked alongside Blake. Ortega was about five seven, of stocky build, and with a white scar down the right side of his face. Stark had yet to work with Ortega, but his initial impressions left him wary. He was always quick with a joke, but Stark sensed a faint air of desperation beneath the quips. One of those men who seemed to obsess about making sure nobody put one over on them.

  After a minute Faraday continued. “Blake was with us from 2003 to 2010, involved in actions in the Middle East, Central America, the Horn of Africa, and some more places we don’t talk about. He was your classic triple threat—he came in on signals intelligence, but quickly proved even more adept on hum-int, and he could more than handle himself in combat. He preferred small teams.” Faraday paused, corrected herself. “Actually, that’s something of an understatement. His optimum size of team was one. It seems that’s still the case.”

  She turned back to the screen and clicked the pointer to activate the next series of images, flashing up one by one on the screen. Headshots of people Stark did not recognize. News headlines referring to missing people. And then headlines from the LAPD’s Samaritan investigation.

  “Since leaving under … difficult circumstances, it appears he’s set himself up as a private contractor. Doing similar work to what he was doing with us and offering his services on the open market.”

  The blond-haired man in the front row cleared his throat. He was more powerfully built than any of the others, his black T-shirt straining over his wide arms. Stark had not worked with him before and couldn’t remember his name. Something Polish, Kaminsky perhaps?

  “Similar work, ma’am?”

  Faraday nodded at the blond. She didn’t mind being interrupted for a question, as long as it was a serious one. “That’s right, Kowalski. He’s a locator. He makes himself available to those who need somebody found, people who have exhausted the traditional channels or are prevented from using them. He’s exclusive, tends to be expensive, and he works through personal recommendations. He’s been reasonably smart. That’s one of the reasons he’s managed to stay off our radar for the past few years.”

  “Until now,” Murphy said.

  Faraday nodded and clicked on to the next slide. There was no one in the room who didn’t recognize this one. The tall, slim man pictured on the screen had caused this secret unit a lot of trouble the previous year.

  “I assume I don’t need to give you Dean Crozier’s résumé,” Faraday said, her gaze dropping to Usher in the front row. She looked from him to Stark, who made sure to meet her gaze with an expression that said she sure as hell didn’t.

  Crozier had also been a member of the unit. Whereas the man now called Carter Blake had specialized in locating people, Crozier had specialized in ending them. He had been a little too zealous in the pursuit of that task, so much so that Faraday’s predecessor had reserved him for deployment in parts of the world where his brutality would go unnoticed. But still, stories had circulated about him among the other men. That he hadn’t confined his killings to designated targets. That he had taken enhanced interrogation to a level that made the Russian FSB look like bleeding-heart vegan hippies. There was even a story that he’d killed his own parents as a kid and had gotten away with it due to lack of evidence.

  Suffice to say, nobody was overly saddened when Dean Crozier departed the unit for parts unknown. There was an unspoken suspicion that he had been dealt with permanently, on the orders of Faraday’s predecessor. Unfortunately for a lot of innocent people, that hadn’t been the case.

  “As most of you know,” Faraday continued, “last year the LAPD and the FBI uncovered evidence of a serial killer who had been operating nationwide for a time span that happened to coincide exactly with the time since Crozier left us. There were things about the killer’s MO that raised some flags: the military experience, the use of tracking devices and booby traps, and most of all, the use of this weapon in the murders.”

  The screen changed to show a long, curved dagger.

  “Crozier’s signature,” Faraday added. “We couldn’t stand still on this. He was out of control, and that was unacceptable.”

  Not for the first time, Stark wondered what was most unacceptable: the dozens of murders Crozier had committed across the country, or the fact that it was clear they could not rely on him to keep his mouth shut about his past when he was inevitably caught. Given the parameters of their mission, he had a pretty good idea.

  “We sent three men to Los Angeles,” she said, briefly glancing at Stark and the other two she was talking about: Abrams and Usher. “They completed the job.”

  Reflexively, Stark looked back to Usher. This time he didn’t move, his eyes staring dead ahead at Faraday. The truth was, only Usher knew exactly what had happened out at the abandoned film set in the mountains where Crozier had been found dead, along with his half sister and apparent partner in murder.

  “During the Crozier operation, we hit a complication,” Faraday continued. “The morning before we finally caught up with him, the LAPD managed to come up with a suspect all on their own. Needless to say, they got it completely wrong.”

  Carter Blake’s image flashed up on-screen. It was the driver’s license picture again, only this time it was part of a screen grab from an LA news channel. Blake’s picture was on one side, a blond newsreader on the other, mouth open, brow furrowed. The ticker along the bottom read, LAPD IDENTIFIES SUSPECT IN SAMARITAN SLAYINGS.

  “The officers concerned at the LAPD have been singularly uncommunicative on this, but we managed to piece things together. It seems we weren’t the only ones who worked out it had to be Crozier. Blake did, too, and he volunteered his services to catch him.”

  “But it was a dumb move,” Murphy said, stepping forward again. “He had the inside track, but he had to know there was a possibility this could happen. He stayed under the radar for four years and then this.”

  Stark raised a hand, his eyes meeting Faraday’s.

  “So why are we going after Blake?”

  “For the same reasons Crozier had to be put down. One, he knows too much. Two, he’s a danger to society.”

  “All due respect,” Stark said after a moment’s thought, “from what you’ve told me, that doesn’t sound like the case. He was helping the cops. He’s not a killer like Crozier.”

  Murphy smiled knowingly and glanced at Faraday, as though to say, Do you want to tell him, or shall I?

  Faraday didn’t return the glance. She just clicked to the next slide. It showed a good-looking couple. The man was in good shape, in his midforties. He had brown hair, was wearing a dark suit and a smile as wide as the Mississippi. He had his arm around a woman: a brunette with big, expressive brown eyes and a smile that was even more dazzling than her companion’s. They were pictured in front of a sea of smiling faces. In the background, you could make out red, white, and blue balloons suspended in the air.

  “Do you recognize this man, Stark?” The tone in Faraday’s voice was subtly mocking, and well it might be. Because there would be few people in the country who wouldn’t recognize the man and woman in the picture. Their faces had been on the front page of every newspaper in the Western world five years ago.

  “Of course I do. Are you saying Blake knows something about the assassination of Senator Carlson?
”

  Faraday took her time answering.

  “I’m saying he pulled the trigger.”

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  NEW YORK CITY

  “Excuse me. Are you looking for somebody?”

  I turned my head at the sound of the light female voice and saw its owner approaching me across the tiled floor of the lobby with speed and purpose. The first thought that popped into my head was, Here comes trouble. Although the question and the tone in which she’d asked it were polite, her expression said differently. It seemed to say she had a hundred and one things on her to-do list and she didn’t have time to be dealing with some nobody who had wandered into the wrong Midtown office building.

  She had light blond hair and was probably about five -five—though it was hard to be certain since she was wearing heels. She had blue eyes and wore subtle pink lip gloss. She had on a smart charcoal pencil skirt and a matching jacket over a cream blouse. There was a laminated identification pass clipped to the lapel of the jacket. She was carrying an iPad that I guessed had a list of those hundred and one tasks arranged in strict order of priority. She stopped two steps in front of me and looked up at me expectantly.

  “Yes, I am.” I smiled. “My name’s—”

  “Who?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who are you here to see?”

  I glanced down at the pass on her lapel. In contrast to the way she was looking at me right now, the picture showed her smiling warmly. There was a barcode and a string of letters and numbers, and a name and a position: Carol Langford, Director of Operations.

  “You work for John Carlson?”

  Carol Langford sighed, as though resigning herself to wasting a couple more minutes on me than she’d budgeted for. “I work for Senator Carlson, yes. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means you have a lot to do today?”

  “Correct. Today and every other day. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to state your business, I can either pass you along to the correct person or help you find your way out.”

  “I have a meeting with him.”

  “With whom?”

  “Senator Carlson.”

  She blinked. “No, you don’t.”

  “How do you know that? I haven’t even told you who I am yet.”

  “I don’t need to know who you are.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head. “Because I do know that you’re not the executive director of the Lake George Association, with whom Senator Carlson is meeting in twenty minutes, and you’re definitely not Elizabeth Carlson, who’s meeting the senator for lunch directly after that.”

  “How can you be certain of that?” I said, unable to resist the urge to provoke her a little more.

  It failed. Rather than get more irritated, she loosened up, giving me a sarcastic smile. “Because Mrs. Carlson is never early for any appointment.”

  I nodded. “Inside knowledge.”

  “No substitute for it.”

  Before we could circle back to the question of who I was and why I thought I had a meeting with her boss, we were interrupted by her cell phone ringing. Carol raised her eyebrows to excuse herself from the conversation and retrieved the phone, glancing at the display before she picked up.

  “Senator? I’m good, thank you. I was—”

  She paused, and her blue eyes flicked back in my direction. “Yes, there is a man in reception, but he …” Her gaze took on a more focused edge, and I could tell she was checking description. It felt a little uncomfortable, like being scanned.

  “Yes, that’s him. Okay. Now? Okay.”

  She hung up and composed a polite smile that perfectly matched the one on her badge. “My mistake. It appears you do have a meeting with the senator.”

  “Not a problem.” I smiled. “I guess somebody screwed up on the scheduling.”

  The smile vanished at about the precise moment the realization hit me that the person responsible for the scheduling was standing right in front of me.

  “Unlikely,” she said coldly.

  The reception desk was set between two rows of electronic turnstiles that guarded access to the rest of the building. Carol Langford asked for a visitor pass for me and we passed through the turnstiles and into one of the three waiting elevators. She hit the button for the twenty-sixth floor and the doors closed silently.

  “How long have you worked for the senator?” I asked to break the ice as the elevator began its ascent.

  “Almost three years, now.”

  “Must keep you busy.”

  She looked at me for the first time since the lobby and nodded slowly. Neutral expression, but I could tell from her eyes that she was amused at my efforts to work myself back into her good graces through small talk.

  The floors on the display clicked past: nine, ten, eleven. A weird thought occurred to me. The ascending floors were like a clock ticking down to the last time I would ever be alone with this woman, in all likelihood. And for some reason I didn’t quite understand, I didn’t want that time to be over just yet.

  “You know,” I said, as though having given it careful thought, “if you give me your number, I could call ahead next time. Make sure there are no surprises.”

  She looked up at me and blinked, then shook her head in amusement. “Really?”

  “Not smooth enough, huh?”

  “I’ve heard smoother.”

  “Cut me some slack. I’m rusty. I’ve been out of the country for a while.”

  “You have, huh?”

  The floors clicked up. Twenty-two, twenty-three. I felt the elevator begin to slow.

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “Who’s offended?” she said, which I figured could mean anything.

  The digits hit twenty-six. The elevator chimed softly and the doors slid open on a stretch of hallway, opposite floor-to-ceiling windows facing east. The sun shone out of a clear blue sky over the East River, flooding the carpeted floor with light.

  Carol turned left and marched down the hallway without waiting for me. I followed. Without looking back, she spoke, all business once again.

  “Care to tell me what you’re meeting the senator about?”

  “I would if I could,” I said.

  “Classified?”

  “Even to me,” I said.

  It was the truth. I wasn’t sure how or why the senator had found me, but I was intrigued enough to want to find out. We passed several offices before we got to one at the end of the hall with a name plate that read SENATOR JOHN CARLSON.

  She paused at the door and turned back to face me. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “There’s a restaurant in Little Italy I like. It’s called Terradici’s. Think you can you find it?”

  I smiled, caught off guard. “Sure. I’m good at finding things.”

  She nodded. “Eight o’clock, then. But only if you’re confident of my ability to not screw up the scheduling.”

  Before I could open my mouth to respond, she turned away from me, knocked on the door, and opened it. She showed me into a big office with more floor-to-ceiling windows and a view to the south this time. Books lined the two side walls, and the carpet felt deeper and plusher underfoot than the one in the corridor. There was a big desk in front of the window and a big man behind it, already getting up to greet us.

  John Carlson was young and in good shape, especially for an elected official. He wore a striped shirt. His jacket was off, draped over the back of his chair. I was unaccustomed to meeting public figures in person, and there was an odd feeling of disconnect. He looked like he had stepped out of the television screen, or off the cover of Newsweek—the same build, features, the same brown hair, brown eyes, tanned complexion I’d seen so often at one remove. It took me a second to figure out what was missing: the five-hundred-megawatt smile. In its place was a look of grim focus, like he’d been preparing for this moment over and over in his head all morning. I think I knew at that moment why I’d been
called in.

  I held my hand out and he took it, gripping it firmly and doubling up with his left hand as his eyes held mine. A real politician’s shake. We said each other’s names, even though we both knew them already.

  “Thank you, Carol,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. I glanced at her and saw her quickly recompose her features from a frown. I got the impression she wasn’t used to being dismissed quite so abruptly.

  She nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  The door closed behind her, and Carlson stepped back a couple of paces, perching on the edge of his desk. He indicated the twin upholstered chairs facing the desk. I pulled one of them toward me and sat. He looked down at me, his eyes still sizing me up. I wondered if this was some kind of business manual technique to reinforce power relationships in a meeting or something.

  “Thank you for coming in. I appreciate it.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “Have to say I’m curious.”

  “You want to know why I wanted to speak to you.”

  I took my eyes off him and looked out at the city for a few seconds before answering.

  “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. “I’m curious about who told you I was someone you needed to speak to. I’m even more curious to find out how you found me—my apartment in the city isn’t held under my name, and I’m out of the country for work a lot. That’s all very curious. But the thing I’m most curious about is why you don’t want anyone to know you’re meeting with me, to the extent that one of your closest aides didn’t know about it until the last minute.”

  He watched me, unblinking, while I said all this. After I’d finished, he nodded slowly.

  “Fair enough. I think I can answer your questions with one word.”