The 13th Target

by Mark de Castrique

  “I’ve sealed everything in a Ziploc. You can probably get fingerprints off the Koran, the insulin pens, and photograph. Maybe the envelope. If Khoury wasn’t in the system, then the prints won’t be of much use unless his body’s found. I doubt if whoever mailed the letter left prints, but you might get lucky. Be sure and have them check out the name Khoury mentioned. Asu.”

  “Yes, sir.” Amanda took the bag and tucked it under her arm. “Are we safe to get together Friday night? Doesn’t matter how late. I’d like to bring you up to speed.”

  “Where?”

  “My place.”

  “Will your husband mind?”

  “He’s in Paris. But don’t get any ideas. I know twenty-one ways to kill you with my bare hands.”

  “It only takes one.”

  She smiled. “Believe me. I’m not worth dying for.” She spun on her heel and walked away.

  Mullins admired the view. She’d spoken the truth. As alluring as her movements were, Amanda wasn’t worth dying for. Too much was at stake. For now, she was on her own.

  Mullins had his game to play without her.

  ***

  An ocean away, an old man sat in a wheelchair, a landline phone pressed tightly to his ear. He stared through split drapes at the clearing skies of evening. Rain left the streets of London shiny, reflecting the glow of the cosmopolitan capital of the United Kingdom.

  “Remember Occam’s Razor,” he said. “Just like the simplest explanation will be the most plausible, the simplest plan will be the most effective.”

  He listened in silence a few minutes, the wrinkles on his brow furrowed deeper with concentration.

  “Italy and Greece are teetering,” he said. “The stability of the United States has never been more crucial. Be damn sure the conclusion leaves no doubt as to responsibility. We’ll take it from there.”

  He hung up and continued staring out the window.

  Dusk dissolved into darkness.

  Part Two: The Execution

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Detective Robert Sullivan smiled as Sidney Levine took the chair opposite his desk. The smile put Sidney at ease, which was its purpose. Sullivan wanted to establish a baseline of comfort that he could suddenly disrupt. Sometimes only a few seconds were needed to expose the truth beneath a pretense of lies.

  “So, there’s been a break, huh?” Sidney scooted to the edge of his seat. He opened his journal on his lap and gripped his pencil as if preparing to chisel The Ten Commandments in stone.

  “I prefer to call it a development.”

  “A significant development?” Sidney wrote the words, not bothering to wait for confirmation.

  The two men sat at the detective’s desk where Sullivan thought Sidney would feel he was getting the inside scoop rather than a standard briefing in an interview room. Sullivan’s partner was still on sick leave, although Sullivan suspected the illness could be diagnosed as flu in a bottle. Just as well because Sullivan wanted to play Sidney alone.

  He took a closer look at the reporter. The late afternoon sun threw shadowed bars from the window blinds across Sidney’s face. The faded jeans were the same ones Sidney wore the previous time but the untucked dress shirt had been replaced by an untucked, red and green Hawaiian shirt. Sullivan looked over the edge of his desk to Sidney’s feet, expecting flip-flops. Black Nikes and white socks. Comfort and practicality.

  Sullivan loosened his tie. The room grew warmer.

  “Well?” Sidney squinted against the sun. “Significant how?”

  “Significant in whether it ties into a crime committed last Monday in Roanoke.”

  “What kind of crime?”

  “The murder of a bank president.”

  Sidney’s eyes widened. “Murder?”

  Sullivan interpreted the response for what it was, the forced reaction of a grade-B actor. “Yes. I checked the police reports after you said Mullins went to Roanoke.”

  “You think Mullins killed this guy?”

  This time Sullivan believed Sidney’s surprise. “A very interesting connection came to light.” Sullivan stood, walked to the window and closed the blinds. “I want you to see what I saw courtesy of the Roanoke Police Department.” He bent over his desk and swiveled his computer monitor around. Then he tapped the keyboard’s spacebar. The video from the teller camera filled the screen.

  Sidney recognized the bank lobby and immediately thought Mullins was about to appear. Sullivan had connected him to Archer’s workplace. One sickening split-second too late, Sidney understood the true reason he sat at Detective Sullivan’s desk. Transfixed, he watched his own image step to the teller window and play the ingratiating role of confused friend with all the sincerity of a door-to-door salesman.

  Sullivan tapped the keyboard and the video froze.

  Sidney closed his journal. “I can explain.”

  Sullivan picked up his notepad, sat on the edge of his desk and waited.

  “I followed Mullins to Roanoke. I borrowed a car so he wouldn’t recognize me, but I guess he did.”

  “The man’s a trained Secret Service agent.”

  “Yeah. I was stupid. And I was stupid not to tell you.”

  “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said.”

  “I told you Mullins went to Roanoke. That was the truth.”

  “Then why wasn’t he on the security cameras?”

  Sidney’s eyes widened again, this time in unmistakable astonishment. “But I saw him enter the front door of the bank.”

  “When?”

  “Before it opened. I’m not sure of the exact time. Eight-forty. A quarter to nine. Someone had to unlock the door.”

  “Did you see who?”

  “I was a block away, but I saw a man wearing a dark suit. He could have been Archer.”

  Sullivan hopped off the desk and took a step closer to the reporter. Even his short height was enough to force Sidney to look up. “Oh? How would you know what Archer looked like?”

  Sidney wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t know when he’d been out-foxed. He threw up his hands. “Okay. I saw the story and his picture on the Internet. I knew Mullins had an appointment with him.”

  Sullivan shook his head. “Archer had an appointment with a Walter Thomson.”

  Sidney stood and leaned into Sullivan’s face. “I saw him walk into the damn bank. Either Walter Thomson was another meeting or Mullins gave a fake name.”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then Sullivan asked, “Why did you lie to me?”

  Sidney stepped around Sullivan and walked to the window. He took a deep breath. “Mullins struck me as a man who looked for answers in the field, not from behind a desk. He was on to something, and I thought following him would be the best way to discover what it was.”

  “Then why even tell me he went to Roanoke?”

  “Because I was at a dead-end. Mullins disappeared.” Sidney pointed to the computer monitor with the freeze-frame of him and the teller. “She told me Walter Thomson had been with Craig Archer that morning. Yet Mullins used his own name when he registered at the Hampton Inn. That didn’t make sense. When I learned Archer had been killed, I didn’t want to believe Mullins did it. But I pointed you to Roanoke figuring you had the contacts, and if Mullins was guilty, then he needed to be caught.”

  “Why not go to the Roanoke police?”

  “Because Mullins might be playing some angle as a tactic of his investigation. If he is, then the last thing I want to do is screw him up. I tried to have it both ways. Let you discover Mullins’ Roanoke activities on your own while giving Mullins room to operate. I’ve been trying to reach him. I even left a voicemail on his home phone saying I knew about Walter Thomson.”

  Sullivan smiled. “You told a potential killer you knew he’d be
en with the victim?”

  Sidney laughed. “I was on a roll of stupidity all right. At the time, I didn’t know Archer had been killed. Since then, I’ve been looking over my shoulder.”

  Sullivan thought for a moment. The room was quiet with only the rush of the air conditioner filling the silence. Then the detective pointed to Sidney’s empty chair. “Sit down. At this point, I’ve got no choice but to believe you. But if you jerk me around again, I’ll arrest you for impeding an investigation.”

  “What about the video? Why doesn’t Mullins show up at the bank?”

  “The lobby cameras don’t run twenty-four-seven. Only the one over the ATM outside. The head teller activates the internal cameras during working hours, and on Monday she was flustered because Archer was hanging around the lobby waiting for someone. She didn’t turn them on till nine.”

  “After Mullins entered.”

  “Yes. Then if he exited through the back door at the base of the stairs from Archer’s office, he could have avoided both internal and external cameras.”

  “Have you given Mullins’ name to the Roanoke police?”

  “No. I only had your word he’d gone there. That wasn’t good enough to risk immersing Mullins in an interrogation. Like you, I don’t want to blow whatever he’s working on.”

  Sidney returned to the chair. “How about my name?”

  Sullivan sat behind his desk. “Not yet. Have you got an alibi for the time of Archer’s death?”

  “No. I left the voicemail for Mullins, but it was from my mobile. The police will say I could have placed it from anywhere.”

  “Why leave it if you killed Archer?”

  Sidney nodded appreciatively. “Thank you. Good point and I won’t hesitate to raise it. And what would be my motive?”

  “The motive for most murders. Cover up another crime. Some tie-in to Luguire and the Federal Reserve. Remember, you came to me. You could be working a story and sniffing out how much I’m uncovering.”

  “And the reason for my voicemail to Mullins?”

  Sullivan leaned over his desk. “Simple. Give the impression that you thought Mullins was alive, when you’d already killed him.”

  Sidney paled. His mouth dropped open as the accusation left him speechless.

  “It’s a possibility I can’t discount. Mullins disappeared from a town where only you knew he was present. From a hotel only you knew he booked.”

  Sidney’s voice returned in staccato bursts of denial. “No. No way. I simply followed him. Then there was this bomb scare. He had to call it in to give me the slip. I swear.”

  Sullivan ignored his protests. “You also deal in information. Archer’s executive assistant told the Roanoke police that Archer received a phone call from a Mr. Brown shortly after you left the bank. She saw her boss write several pages on a legal pad that she assumed she’d need to type in a word processor. When she asked Archer about them toward the end of the day, he said that wouldn’t be necessary. A manila envelope lay on the corner of his desk. The woman was skilled at reading upside down. Archer had written the name Nathaniel Brown across it.”

  “I don’t know a Nathaniel Brown.”

  “Neither does anyone else in Roanoke. But whatever was in that envelope could have been the motive for Archer’s death. You see, the blood splatter from the head wound made quite a mess in Archer’s car. Except for one spot on the passenger’s seat where something had been on the upholstery. Something that had the dimensions of a nine-by-twelve manila envelope.

  “I think Archer drove to that abandoned depot to meet someone. Someone he could have thought was going to pay him for information. Or he could have been a whistleblower thinking he was turning over evidence of some kind of banking irregularities. The kind of evidence that an enterprising reporter would like to get his hands on.”

  Sullivan pointed his finger at Sidney’s chest. “An enterprising reporter like you.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Zaina Khoury understood there were degrees of misery. As distraught as she’d been with the forced move from her home and confinement to an apartment somewhere in Miami, the arrival of the man called Asu had created fear for her and Jamila’s safety. The vision of him holding a clump of Jamila’s hair still haunted her. He was a man incapable of compassion. Maybe incapable of passion period. He never eyed her lustfully but only as an object to be despised, like she and Jamila were unclean animals, better housed in cages than shared living quarters.

  At times of daily prayer, Asu would send them to the back bedroom. He never prayed himself and their obedience to the Islamic observance drew no sign the man either respected or practiced the teachings of the Koran.

  He ordered them about as if his own words came from Allah, to be obeyed without question or delay. Zaina wanted to stand up to him, and if she had only herself to care for, she would have challenged him. But Jamila undercut her courage. Any act of defiance would be taken out on her child. Zaina knew that as well as she knew Fares’ plan to keep their home had been hijacked as coldly and deliberately as the airplanes on 9-11.

  Then came a glimmer of light. Asu had to leave, and in his place, Chuchi returned. Chuchi, the Hispanic man, who showed them courtesy and respect. The guard who Asu claimed wouldn’t be returning. Something had changed. Zaina saw that Asu wasn’t the infallible mastermind he pretended to be. One call to his cellphone Saturday night had altered things. Someone had ordered Asu elsewhere, and Zaina’s degree of misery had lifted a notch.

  She stood in the doorway to the bedroom, watching her daughter sleep. Jamila sprawled out diagonally across the mattress, the legs of her Little Mermaid pajamas bunched up to her knees. When Zaina joined her, she’d have to scoot Jamila to one side without waking her. To Fares’ side of the bed. Her breath caught in her chest and she sobbed silently, not wanting Chuchi to hear her crying.

  His cellphone rang. She heard him mute the television before answering with his name. A pause, and then he spoke softly.

  “Yes. We are fine.”

  English, Zaina thought. On other calls, Chuchi talked in rapid-fire Spanish. Asu didn’t speak Spanish. The first day, she’d asked him a question in Syrian Arabic, and he answered without thinking. At first, he’d been angry, like she’d tricked him. Then he gave a cold smile and told her his name was Asu and that he’d been born in Damascus.

  “They will be ready,” was Chuchi’s second and final sentence. The sound of the television returned.

  Zaina returned from the bedroom. “Was that Asu?”

  Chuchi paled. “He told you his name?”

  “Yes.” Zaina picked up Chuchi’s unease. “Just his first name.”

  Chuchi looked away. “He is coming to take you to your husband.”

  “Really?”

  Chuchi only nodded, and still didn’t look her in the eyes. He wasn’t a good liar. He changed the channel till he found a soccer match.

  “Would you like something else to eat?” Zaina asked. “There’s some ice cream left.”

  “Will you have some?”

  “Yes. There’s enough for both of us.”

  Chuchi got up from the chair. “I’ll fix it.” He pulled the phone from his belt and stared at it, as if debating whether to turn it off for the evening now that he’d received his instructions. He went to the end of the sofa, retrieved his overnight bag, and found his charger. “Battery’s low.” He took it with him to the kitchen.

  Zaina heard him open the freezer and then pull two bowls from the cabinet. Her glimmer of light grew a little brighter.

  Chapter Thirty

  Curtis Jordan found the toughest part of creating a story to be controlling the characters. Well-rounded, strong-willed people were a writer’s greatest asset, but they could also be a royal pain. Too many times a character exerted his or her own personality with such force that i
t changed the course of the narrative.

  This phenomenon wasn’t unique to Jordan. He’d discussed it with other authors who experienced the same dilemma. Most commonly, a minor character took over. Created for some specific purpose, they refused to leave the stage. A quirk or trait designed to make them suitable for a single story task led to unexpected directions and consequences. A minor motive became a major obsession, rippling out into aspects of the narrative it was never intended to influence. The majority of Jordan’s colleagues attributed a character’s unpredictable behavior to the author’s subconscious where possibilities and connections constantly churned.

  Jordan agreed with that theory, although the very nature of the subconscious meant the process was out of conscious control. He was an author who meticulously plotted events. Errant characters shook up his plans, but many times their impact made the story stronger. Jordan stayed alert for the opportunities these rogues, as he thought of them, presented. A skillful writer turned them to his advantage, particularly in the thriller genre, where the unexpected propelled the story.

  Like real life, most of these character-generated events could only be shaped after the fact. Jordan’s ability to manipulate them to achieve his original goal marked the genius of his writing and the power of the collaborative fusion of the conscious and subconscious dimensions of his mind.

  But this Wednesday night, as he sat at the writing desk in his Parisian hotel room, his characters lay lifeless on the page. He suspected his subconscious refused to let go of the complex situation facing his wife. When his cellphone rang, he wondered if a third dimension of the mind existed that controlled mental telepathy.

  “Hello, dear. I was just thinking of you.” He got up from the desk and lay back on the bed.

  “You’re such a liar,” Amanda said.

  “No. It’s true. I can’t get a word to stick to paper, worrying about you and Mullins.”