by Brad Thor
The man in the mask gestured for her to do it again.
She did and with more confidence. “Lucy Lockett lost her pocket, Sally Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, just a ribbon ’round it.”
The man in the mask tucked the digital recorder into the pocket of his coveralls, brought his gloved hands together, and politely clapped. The muffled sound echoed in the hard, cold space.
He stood there looking at her, almost appraising her. Then, he slowly extended his left hand and placed it gently on her shoulder.
No sooner had her mind formed the words He’s trying to reassure me, they’re going to let me go, than his hand drew back with an explosion of force that took her blouse with it.
CHAPTER 55
Without access to the books in his home library, Harvath had to make do with what was available on the Internet. Hanging a map of Boston on the wall in Cordero’s office, they used colored pushpins and thumbtacks to mark every location of interest to them. Seeing everything displayed on the wall helped them take in the big picture.
The only outlier was the murder of Claire Marcourt on Jekyll Island, Georgia. A photo of Jekyll Island was printed out on an 8.5x11 piece of paper and taped to the wall next to the lower right-hand corner of the Boston map. This way they had visual access to everything.
Not only was their map awash in pins marking the sites of historic events, they had no idea which direction in time the killer was going to move in next. On a whiteboard set up on an easel, Harvath drew a time line and walked Cordero through it as much for his own thought process as for hers.
“The first murder happened Sunday night on Jekyll Island and incorporated elements of the Pine Tree Riot, from New Hampshire in 1772,” he said, sticking a pin above the map to represent New Hampshire. Coming back to the easel, he continued. “The second murder then took place in Boston late Monday night, early Tuesday morning at the Liberty Tree site and mimicked the hanging of Andrew Oliver in effigy in 1765. So we moved backward in time.
“The third murder then took place in Boston’s North End last night, at the site where then–lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson had his house sacked and destroyed, also in 1765. Just shy of two weeks, in fact, after his brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, was hung in effigy.”
“Let’s assume for a moment,” said Cordero, studying everything, “that whoever the Sons of Liberty are, they wanted their first murder to be big, symbolic, and aimed unmistakably at the Fed. That’s why it happened on Jekyll. If they had wanted to kill Claire Marcourt in Boston, they could have brought her here the same way they did Peter Whalen from Chicago, right?”
Harvath nodded. “Sure.”
“So let’s assume Jekyll Island as a location, as well as the elements of the murder were all meant for shock and awe.”
“Okay.”
“If that’s the case, it’s the exception, and what we’ve seen in Boston becomes more of the rule. The Liberty Tree to the site of the Hutchinson mansion shows the killer moving chronologically.”
“You’re not wrong,” Harvath said, “it just isn’t enough to build a foundation on.”
“We have no choice. The absence of additional corroborative data doesn’t mean the data we have is incorrect. It’s like I told you, we’re building a watch. Right now, I have two gears that fit together. It’s illogical to sit here and not pair those gears up and try to go to the next step.”
It took a special mind to do this kind of work. As much as Harvath prided himself on his patience and self-control, he realized that Cordero had a unique talent for this kind of work. It was an area in which he was definitely at a deficit.
“All right,” he replied. “Let’s marry up our two gears. Let’s assume for a moment that our killer is now moving forward chronologically. What kind of thing are we looking for next? Is it a big historical headline, or still significant, but more nuanced?”
Now Cordero was out of her depth. “You’re asking me?” she said. “I thought we already established my less than stellar aptitude in all things historically Boston.”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“My underinformed gut?”
Harvath shook his head. “No, your homicide cop gut. Whoever is behind this, they’ve got two more potential victims. Do they go big symbolism-wise, or do they play small ball?”
“If we literally let history be our guide, what do they have available to them?”
It was a good question. Taking a different color dry-erase marker, Harvath referred back to the American history website he had pulled up and drew a new time line.
“In 1767,” he said, “the British Parliament passes the Townshend Acts, essentially a tax on tea, paper, glass, and lead in the colonies. It creates more cries of no taxation without representation in the colonies and the colonists boycott British goods. One of the real rubs, though, is that Townshend allows for the quartering of British troops in colonial homes and businesses, which brings us to 1768.
“In 1768, the Sons of Liberty issue a very serious threat of armed resistance if any British troops show up. Shortly thereafter two regiments appear in Boston to ‘help collect taxes.’ Many colonists see this as the beginning of the British occupation of Boston.”
“Do we know where they were housed?” Cordero asked.
Harvath had been working on her computer and had multiple windows open. It took him a minute or two to find the information he was looking for. “Here it is,” he said. “One regiment set up camp in Boston Common, the other at Faneuil Hall.”
“Which we passed last night after dinner.”
He remembered. It had been a marketplace and meeting hall where Sam Adams and others gave fiery speeches encouraging the colonies to break away from Great Britain.
“Seeing as how it has been called the ‘Cradle of Liberty’ by some,” said Harvath, “I can see where it might make an attractive backdrop for our killer.”
“Let’s put it on our list,” she replied. “What else do we have?”
Before Harvath could reply, Cordero’s commander hastily stuck his head in the office. “We just got word that we may have gotten a hit on the missing persons bulletin from this morning.”
“Someone spotted Renner and Mitchell?” said Harvath.
“Not specifically.”
“What do you mean?”
“We got a report of suspicious activity at an old warehouse near Cabot Yard.”
Harvath looked at Cordero. “Where’s that?”
“Southie,” she replied. “What kind of suspicious activity?”
“Two patrol officers pinched a metal thief. He’d been stripping abandoned buildings in the area. He’s got felonies on his sheet and they caught him in possession of a weapon. That means he’s looking at going away for a long time. No surprise, once they dragged him down to the station, he wanted to make a deal. They asked him what he had to trade and he offered up a lot of low-level bullshit. Mixed in there, though, was something interesting.
“He says he was casing an empty warehouse over the weekend and had planned to come back and hit it. The only problem was that when he did, it wasn’t empty anymore. This time it was occupied.”
“Occupied by whom?” asked Harvath.
“According to the metal thief, a handful of white guys with guns. But not just any guns, small automatic weapons that looked to the thief like submachine guns. He says there were also four metal boxes, like kennel crates. He thought maybe these guys were into dog fighting or smuggling exotic animals or something, but then he caught a glimpse of what was inside one of the boxes.”
“People,” said Harvath.
“Correct. We think this could be it. SWAT and FBI are already being scrambled. Where’s Sal?”
“He’s still at the Garden Court scene,” replied Cordero.
“Call him. I want you both at the warehouse when this goes down. It could end up being a real feather in our cap. I don’t want it screwed up. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
/> CHAPTER 56
Cordero’s partner arrived at the staging area about ten minutes after she and Harvath got there. The SWAT team already had surveillance on the warehouse and were putting together their entry plan in consultation with the FBI. A restaurant supply company had been kind enough to allow them to pull their vehicles inside its building in order to avoid detection.
Mixed in with the uniformed SWAT team members were a handful of plainclothes operatives. With their short haircuts and muscled builds, none of these guys looked like run-of-the-mill folks from the neighborhood. None of them would be able to walk up to the warehouse. They’d have to hit it fast and hard before anyone inside knew what was happening.
If the men inside were the caliber of professional that Harvath suspected they might be, they were going to put up one hell of a fight. The SWAT team needed to know what they were potentially going up against.
Harvath took advantage of a break in their briefing to pull the team commander aside and share his concerns. The man listened to what he had to say, thanked him, and then updated his officers.
As they continued with their planning, one of their spotters radioed in. So far, the warehouse was dead. They had even managed to get an operator up on the roof near the skylights where the metal thief had allegedly seen everything, and there was still no sign of activity inside. It was too quiet. Either the thief had lied, or somehow the men inside knew they were coming.
The SWAT team’s greatest concern was the safety of the hostages. Not knowing where they were being held made the officers’ job incredibly difficult. The moment the team made entry into the warehouse, if they didn’t move fast enough, it was a very real possibility that the kidnappers would kill the hostages. Balancing officer safety against the two innocent lives they believed might be inside was like dancing on a knife blade. There was only one good outcome and no shortage of bad ones.
The commander was meticulous and refused to rush anything. He called in additional assets and did everything he could to maximize their surveillance. Finally, he made the call. It was time to hit the warehouse.
After one last check of their radios, weapons, and equipment, the SWAT team mounted up.
The owner of the restaurant supply company offered the plainclothesmen use of one of his vans. The fact that it belonged to a local business so close by would hopefully divert any suspicion away from it. This of course was based on a dangerous assumption—that the men inside the warehouse hadn’t already noticed they were under surveillance and were not waiting to engage any threat, plainclothes or otherwise, foolish enough to enter the structure.
Harvath had been on enough building takedowns to know that while time would slow down for the men on the team, for everyone else things were going to happen very rapidly. He told Cordero and her partner to get ready to move.
They exited the restaurant supply company and decided to drive Sal’s Crown Victoria to the warehouse. He had two Rubbermaid bins on the backseat filled with gear, one of which he moved onto the floor to give Harvath a place to sit. Cordero climbed in front. As soon as the FBI agents were in place and the SWAT team had departed the restaurant supply company, they followed.
Sal turned up his radio so they could listen to the takedown in real time. When he was half a block away from the warehouse and had it in sight, he pulled to the curb. This was close enough. If bullets started flying, they’d be sitting ducks out front.
“Keep it running,” said Harvath, as he noticed the man reaching for his ignition.
Sal nodded and they stayed glued to the radio.
The team practiced excellent communications discipline. Messages were transmitted via predetermined brevity codes. Finally, the warehouse doors and windows were breached, flash-bangs were tossed inside, and the SWAT team members made their rapid entry.
Harvath’s entire body was keyed up. Was this it? Had they tracked down the Sons of Liberty?
He hated being outside in a car, half a block away. He wished he was on the entry team, hell, he wished he was leading the entry team into the warehouse.
After what seemed like an eternity, more thorough communications started crackling across the radio as room after room of the warehouse was searched and found to be empty.
With the raid and then the secondary sweep of the warehouse complete, the team leader relayed the message “The building is secure.”
Sal put his vehicle in gear and they drove up to the front of the warehouse as a handful of SWAT operatives came out the front door. The FBI agents on scene had already begun going in.
Harvath looked at one of the SWAT team members as he passed and the officer shook his head. “No HUTS,” he said, which Harvath knew stood for no hostages, no unknowns, no tangos, and no shooters. The raid had been a bust.
The team leader met them inside. “The crates are here,” he stated, “but that’s it.”
“Where are the crates?” Cordero asked. The man pointed the trio to the back of the building.
The crates had been collapsed and leaned against the wall, as if someone was considering taking them along but then had second thoughts. In another room, where a length of chain hung from the wall, one of the FBI agents had found a woman’s blouse. It smelled terrible and was spattered with blood.
“Do you have Betsy Mitchell’s blood type in your file?” the female detective asked.
“If it’s not,” said Harvath, “they should be able to get it pretty quickly.”
She turned to her partner. “Where’s your camera?”
“Out in the car.”
“I don’t want to wait for the CSTs to get here. I want to get pictures, I want to do our drawings, and then let’s start bagging things up for analysis. Okay?”
“Fine by me,” said Sal. “We’ll need to coordinate the Bureau folks and set up a canvass in case anyone else around here saw anything, plus we should see if we can get a better description of the men the metal thief says he saw.”
“What can I do?” asked Harvath.
“Do you have any forensics experience?”
He shook his head. “Not much.”
“Then I have the perfect job for you,” she replied. “Go out to the car and bring those two Rubbermaid bins in.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’re really going to prove your worth to this investigation.”
“How?” he asked.
“You’re going to find us coffee somewhere in this neighborhood.”
CHAPTER 57
To his credit, Harvath not only didn’t mind going out for coffee, he actually found some and it wasn’t half bad. He returned with three cups in a cardboard tray.
The evidence techs still hadn’t arrived yet, but Cordero had made a significant find.
“Check this out,” she said, holding up a clear plastic bag. Inside, there was a piece of black card stock the size of a business card. On one side, printed in blood red, was a skull and bones with a floating crown. On the other side were the words I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.
It was followed by the letters S.O.L.
“I think that’s a line from John Hancock,” said Harvath.
Sal held up his smartphone. “Correct. Part of the speech he gave on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.”
“Why is it printed on a card? And why leave it here?”
“Maybe it was left by accident,” said Cordero.
“Where’d you find it?”
“Behind where the crates were stacked up against the wall.”
She had a point. Maybe it had been left by accident. One thing was for certain, though: finding this warehouse was a huge breakthrough. At least he hoped it would be.
“What else have you been able to find?” he asked.
“Other than that card and the blouse,” replied the female detective, “nothing.”
“There’s got to be something more here. We just haven’t found it yet.”
“You’re welcome to look around,” said
the male detective. “If you find anything, just don’t touch it. Call one of us or one of the FBI agents.”
Harvath nodded and went to the other end of the warehouse. He was used to hitting terrorist safe houses where the kind of evidence he was expected to collect were things like thumb drives, CDs, and written documents, not hair and fiber samples.
Finding the card with the Hancock quote, though, had been huge. They were definitely in the right spot. The only question was, had any other clues been left behind?
Once the crime scene techs arrived, they would go through the laborious process of dusting for prints. Undoubtedly, they’d find a ton and he didn’t envy the person or persons who would be charged with having to run all of them down. Considering a building of this size with this many surfaces, the question wasn’t what to dust, but what not to?
He figured they’d do the obvious items like the crates, the chain attached to the wall near where the blouse was found, the door handles, the light switches, and any bathroom surfaces. Other than that, it was anybody’s guess, though he knew there was a strict procedure both the police and FBI followed.
What he was looking for as he walked through was something out of the ordinary, something that didn’t belong or something that was conspicuous because it wasn’t there.
Whoever had been using this location had probably been here since the early hours of Monday morning. That was only two days ago. If they were careless enough to leave one of those cards behind, where else had they screwed up? Was the blouse a mistake? Or was it left on purpose? Or did they simply not care about it?
The fact that the metal thief had seen multiple males in the warehouse backed up the theory that they were dealing with a team. The fact that they were carrying what looked like submachine guns bolstered the hypothesis that they were well trained, possibly even aligned with a military or intelligence organization. Add to that the way in which the victims had been killed, particularly the ear removal of Claire Marcourt and Kelly Davis, and it looked like Bill Wise’s Swim Club was a real potential factor in this entire thing.