Where the Evidence Lies (A Mulholland / Strand Magazine Short)

by Jeffery Deaver

  Rhyme extended his good hand and the men shook. Sachs, too, gripped Gillette’s palm. Rhyme said, “Let’s check in with New York, Sachs. Find out if there’s anything that needs our attention. And I wouldn’t mind a few more of those stone crabs.”

  But the case was not quite as closed as it seemed.

  The next morning, Gillette, Sachs, and Rhyme were reassembled on the tarmac once more, at Rhyme’s request. Thom was nearby. He’d occasionally wipe sweat from Rhyme’s forehead; today was much clearer, sunny and bright, and not a breath of wind, but the temperature was already soaring.

  Sachs was explaining to Gillette, “When I was canvassing yesterday at those buildings and the restaurants, where I got the video tape…?”

  “Remember.”

  “I gave my number to all the businesses there, told them if anybody remembered seeing anybody next to a jet parked on the tarmac by the Southern Flight Service’s office, to let me know. I got a call this morning. Seems a tourist and his family were sitting at that Burger King, outside around the time Nash’s plane was there.” She pointed. “They heard the story of the investigation on the news last night and got my number. The father has some pictures.”

  Rhyme squinted as he studied the fast food place. “He’d have had a perfect view of the engine.”

  Gillette asked, “Tourist? Where is he, still in the area?”

  “Blue Heron Inn.”

  “Sure, I know it. Five miles from here. Let’s go talk to him. You want to follow me?”

  “Will do,” said Thom.

  “I’ll call dispatch on the way. Have a forensic team meet us there—with those programs they have to enhance photos.”

  “Forensic,” Rhyme said, drawing a satisfied breath. “If I believed in clichés, I’d say the fish is back in the water.”

  Dade County East Patrolman Jim Cable pulled off the highway and nosed his car—his personal Buick—into a stand of magnolia. Pulling on latex gloves, he reached into the glove box and removed a cold gun, a .38 special Smittie. He’d taken it off Billy or Rodrigo or Juan sometime, someplace, over the past six months.

  And he’d told the kid to get lost. Because a collar for a little coke and firearms possession wasn’t as good as getting a gun that couldn’t be traced to Cable. A gun that could be used in a situation like this.

  Cable loaded it with bullets fresh from the box—rounds were always untraceable, if you touched them only with gloves. And then he slipped into the marshy field behind the Blue Heron Inn and made his way toward cabin 43, which was where the tourist was staying, the tourist who’d videoed Nash’s private jet the other day—and had very possibly gotten an image of him slipping the bomb into the right engine hydraulic access compartment.

  At thirty-two, Cable was too old to be a patrolman, looking through airport restrooms for illegals and chasing Billys and Rodrigos and Juans for little bags of drugs and big pistols. But he had a mouth on him and a temper and a problem with the bottle, so he hadn’t moved up the way he should have—the way he deserved to.

  But he wasn’t going to have to worry about that anymore. He’d just made a cool hundred thousand bucks by slipping a little package into the side of Nash’s plane, timed to blow up when the plane was over the deepest part of the Atlantic. Cable knew ordnance—he’d been a combat soldier until the fucking dishonorable—and he had set up the device just right.

  Things had seemed to go smoothly enough. But now the job had turned messy. This tourist and maybe his family would have to be killed. Still, the gun would be traced to the streets of Miami, and Cable would scatter enough coke around the room to make it look like a drug-related robbery and homicide.

  He hoped the tourist was in the room alone. On the other hand, if the guy was reluctant to tell him where the camera was, pointing a gun at his kid’s head would make him talk real fast.

  He didn’t want to kill anybody else. But you did what you had to.

  One hundred thousand…

  Boat or mortgage?

  Tough call.

  No, it’s not. Boat.

  Then he was at the door of the bungalow where the Johnson family from Nyack, New York, wherever the hell that was, was staying.

  He looked around. Nobody. This cabin was the last in a row near the field he’d just come through. Pulling back the hammer on the gun until it clicked, he leaned forward and put his head close to the door, listening. The TV was on. Cartoons. They were probably just finishing room service breakfast, before heading to the beach.

  So the kids were in the room. He grimaced.

  The good news, at least, was that if he wasn’t going to leave any witnesses he didn’t need to wear the ski mask. It itched like hell, and the day was already close to ninety degrees.

  Thom parked the van beside Gillette’s unmarked in the front parking lot of the Blue Heron Inn.

  The place was what Rhyme expected of a near-the-beach resort in this part of Florida. The rear-facing rooms got a view of trees and power lines, the front got the highway and strip mall. An anemic pool, sandy parking lot, breakfast room with plate glass two days past a half-hearted Windexing.

  Eggs Anyway

  Ask about Our specials.

  Rhyme thought about commenting to Sachs that the pronoun carried a certain theological connotation but refrained. Together they walked and wheeled toward the tourists’ cabin.

  “There’s nobody here from the department yet,” Sachs said.

  Gillette looked around. There were no other police cars in view. “I’ll gave ’em a call. Funny they’re not here by now. Well, let’s go talk to the folks inside.”

  They approached the front door of the cabin and Gillette knocked. “Dade County East Sheriff’s Office.”

  The door opened, though no one appeared at first. Gillette stepped in, saying, “Hello?”

  It was at that moment that a pistol, held by someone inside, appeared out of nowhere, and the muzzle touched the side of the detective’s head.

  Archie Crenshaw, the chief sheriff of Dade County East, read Paul Gillette his rights.

  The massive fellow, tanned and sweating through his beige uniform, had nearly deferred to Lincoln Rhyme for this task, so impressed was he that the New Yorker had broken the Nash homicide case.

  Rhyme pointed out, though, that he was no longer an official law enforcer. Amelia Sachs was active duty, of course, but not of this jurisdiction.

  The same was true for the third member of the Big Apple team: Ron Pulaski, the young, blond NYPD Patrol officer.

  Pulaski and Sachs and several local deputies were inside with Gillette’s partner in crime—Jim Cable, the deputy who’d actually planted the bomb in Nash’s aircraft. Rhyme was enduring the heat outside with Crenshaw, the handcuffed detective Gillette, and a half-dozen other officers from the sheriff’s department.

  Now Sachs and Pulaski emerged from the cabin, followed by Cable, also in cuffs, his arms gripped by two grim-faced deputies. He was led off to the back of an unmarked car.

  The two New Yorkers joined Rhyme, Crenshaw, and Gillette.

  Sachs nodded in the direction of Cable. “Gave us everything we needed.”

  “Good,” Rhyme said. “Won’t have to do any more interrogations.” A grin.

  “What?” Gillette raged. “He gave me up?”

  Crenshaw clicked his teeth and said, “You going to cooperate too, Paul? I’ll put in a good word with the DA.”

  Gillette debated. His lips drew together tightly. Then he muttered, glaring at Rhyme. “You! How did you know?”

  Rhyme, always pleased to explain—and to show off his reasoning—was happy to oblige. “What was the key to this case? Deception. Remember? I didn’t have any evidence, so I had to work with witnesses.” He said the word as if it left the taste of tainted food in his mouth. “Finding out who lied.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I lied about vouching for Cable.”

  “You did, yes, but I didn’t pick up on that. You were both law enforcers and you’d asked me to help. Why woul
dn’t I believe that? Naive of me, obviously, but sometimes we have to take things at face value, don’t we?”

  Now it was Crenshaw who persisted. “So how’d you figure it out, Lincoln?”

  “I was thinking too narrowly. That was my mistake. I assumed that if somebody told a lie, they’d be guilty. But we saw how that isn’t necessarily the case. The reflections, remember? The lie could turn out to be a mistake. And even if it was truly a lie, that might not mean the liar was guilty of the crime you were investigating—Joey Wilson, the refueler at the fixed base operator, for instance. He was lying, but because of drugs, not bombs.”

  “Then it occurred to me that guilt can also be revealed by telling the truth.”

  “What truth?” Crenshaw asked. Another tooth click.

  To Gillette, Rhyme said, “You mentioned which side of the plane the bomb was on. But there was no reference in the transcript of where the explosion was. How did you know it was on the right side?” He corrected, “Starboard.”

  Gillette began to speak then fell silent.

  Yesterday after Rhyme had become suspicious of Gillette, he’d discussed his thoughts with Sachs. Then they’d called Pulaski and had him fly down to Miami and play the role of a tourist who’d shot pictures at Burger King and possibly captured images of the bomb being planted.

  This morning Rhyme had Amelia tell Gillette about the witness and waited to see what would happen. The detective had told them he’d call the sheriff’s office and have a forensic team sent out to the Blue Heron Inn.

  But he hadn’t.

  Rhyme had called NYPD headquarters and had an officer from the crime scene unit call the Dade County East forensic team, and he’d learned that they knew nothing about an operation at the Blue Heron.

  Then Rhyme had asked to be patched through to the sheriff himself, and he explained to Crenshaw what he believed was going on. Crenshaw sent deputies to back up Pulaski in the hotel, and when Cable showed up, thinking he was going to steal the photo disk and kill the tourist and his family, he was immediately arrested.

  The officers went back into position inside the cabin for the takedown of Gillette.

  A perfect operation. Not a single gunshot fired, no injuries, sure, but more important, for Lincoln Rhyme, he had a case with trace evidence and tool marks and bank records and fingerprints. And all of it on the surface, not in Davy Jones’s locker.

  Rhyme then looked the blustering man over. “But I don’t understand, Paul. “Why did you ask me to help?”

  “Because you’re famous,” Gillette muttered. “And when you suggested that the plane crash was an accident—which I thought you’d do—everybody’d believe it.”

  “So. You going to help us, Paul?” Crenshaw asked.

  Gillette glanced toward Cable. He muttered, “Prick, selling me out ... Yeah, I’ll give you a statement.”

  “It’ll have to include who hired you.”

  “What can you give me?”

  Crenshaw clicked his teeth. He made a call and came back a moment later. “You give up whoever hired you and the state’ll waive capital murder.”

  Gillette was considering this.

  “Or you call a lawyer and take your chances.”

  “All right, all right.”

  A half hour later, Gillette signed the handwritten statement.

  The ultimate perp was Nash’s business partner. Former business partner, that is. The one Nash was in litigation with. There was a provision in the partnership agreement that if he died before a certain date the partner could buy out the shares at a very discounted rate.

  Money. The dullest of motives.

  Though certainly one of the most common.

  The partner, Gillette explained, knew Cable from the army and had raised the subject, knowing that Cable had been discharged for some shady business dealings. Cable suggested both he and Gillette—who’d together had put together various criminal activities in the Miami area—would take care of Nash for $200,000.

  “You did the right thing, talking to us,” Crenshaw said, pocketing the statement. “Come on. Let’s get you to the station.”

  As they walked past the squad car where Cable sat, Gillette glared at him.

  But the younger deputy said, “Don’t worry. We’ll beat ’em.”

  Gillette stopped, frowning.

  “Just don’t say a word and we’ll be okay. They don’t have anything. No evidence, remember?”

  Gillette blurted, “But didn’t you…? You gave me up!”

  “Hell, no. I didn’t say a word! What’re you talking about?”

  Gillette spun around and glared at Sachs. “You said he gave you everything you needed.”

  She replied, “He did. His address, phone number, and Social. That was all we wanted at this point.” She blinked in curiosity. “What did you think I meant?”

  “You lied, bitch.”

  Rhyme said icily, “It was hardly a lie. You misinterpreted what she said.”

  Crenshaw nodded toward the two officers beside Gillette. “Get ’em both downtown.”

  The sheriff thanked Rhyme and Sachs and walked back to his own car. Sachs and Rhyme returned to the van, where Thom was getting the accessible ramp ready. She said, “So what did you think, Rhyme? How was your first evidence-free case?”

  “No question, Sachs: as between dealing with witnesses on the one hand, and a crime scene five miles underwater on the other, I’ll take Davy Jones’s locker any day. People ... they’re way too much trouble. Say, Thom, is it cocktail hour yet?”

  About the Author

  Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling author of over thirty novels and three collections of short stories. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages. His first novel featuring Lincoln Rhyme, The Bone Collector, was made into a major motion picture starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He’s received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Where the Evidence Lies

  About the Author

  Mulholland and Strand Magazine ebook shorts

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2014 by Jeffery Deaver

  Cover design by Keith Hayes

  Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permis
sion of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First ebook edition: April 2016

  Originally published in The Strand Magazine, 2014

  Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-36117-0

  E3