by Tom Clancy
When the e-mail arrived, she was at her office computer making an immense effort to focus on a contractor’s bid for the expansion of an UpLink optics and photonics R&D facility outside Seattle. On any other morning, she almost certainly would not have noticed the new inbox item for quite a while. Though she had never bothered to disable the sound notification option on her messaging program — default settings tended to remain in place on her machine out of casual apathy — Megan considered its bell tone an annoying nuisance given the large volume of electronic correspondence she received, and for the most part left her desktop’s speakers switched off. Typically, she would check for messages at semiregular intervals throughout the course of her workday — while having her morning coffee, before and after her lunch break, then again perhaps an hour or so before heading home.
Today, however, was not normal. Not typical, no. Not regular or routine by any stretch of the imagination. Today Megan had turned on the speaker volume control thinking she wanted to leave every line of communication open, and it was for this reason that she heard the chime that signaled a message had jumped into her queue. It was the tenth she’d opened in under an hour. Eight of the previous messages were work related. The last had been a nasty bit of junk mail that managed to squeeze through her software filters and, because she was distracted, trick her into opening it with a moderately devious subject line that would have been otherwise identified for what it was by her mental antispammers to prompt a quick delete. All nine were long-term or short-term ignorable.
Until this one.
This turned out to be the message Megan had sought and dreaded, and nothing could stop the cold slide of ice that began to work through her intestines the instant she read its subject, causing her to break into visible shudders as she opened it with a hurried click of the mouse.
Much as she’d tried prepare herself, nothing.
* * *
“Don’t think I have to reconstruct what happened back here,” Erickson was saying. “You can see for yourselves.”
Ricci and Thibodeau stood with him outside the rescue center’s back door, studying its demolished lock plate and frame.
“Somebody fired a lot of rounds,” Ricci said. “Wanted past the door in a rush, didn’t care about surprising anyone with the noise.”
“Right,” Erickson said. “We can thank this rain for making the ground damp enough to give us some decent shoe impressions to photo and cast. There were four attackers from the looks of things, came around from either side of the main building in pairs. Your boss’s daughter must have left those kennels out behind us, seen them closing in, and hurried through this entrance to try and get away from them.”
Ricci had closed his umbrella and crouched to examine the door frame.
“You must’ve pulled a lot of slugs out of this,” he said, running a latex-gloved finger over the pocked, splintered wood. “What caliber?”
“Nine mil Parabellum,” Erickson said. “The ammunition was fragged, but the spent cartridge casings we recovered told us right off.”
Ricci glanced over his shoulder at Erickson.
“Big, deep punch for nines, even fired up close,” he said. “There a brand name on those casings?”
Erickson gave a nod. “Federal Hydrashok.”
“Premium make.”
“That’s right.”
“Expensive.”
“Right.”
“You able to tell anything about the guns from the ejection pattern?”
“Not definitively.”
Ricci responded to the cop’s knee-jerk hedge with a look of overt impatience.
Erickson hesitated a moment, exhaled.
“Off the record,” he said, “I believe the weapons used outside this door were subs.”
Ricci considered that.
“Outside,” he repeated.
Erickson nodded.
“Were shots fired inside?” Ricci asked.
“The shop seems a different story.” A pause. “Put on those booties from my kit and I’ll show you.”
Erickson led the Sword ops through the entrance and back rooms to the area behind the sales counter.
“Be careful where you step.” He motioned to several dark brown splatters on the linoleum that had been bordered with tape. “The stains were partially dry when I arrived yesterday morning. Maybe a couple of hours old. It was clear on sight they were blood, but I swabbed and did a Hemodent test to confirm.”
Thibodeau studied them a moment, then raised his eyes to Erickson.
“You know whose blood?” he said.
The detective appraised his grave features, the cheeks pale above the dark beard.
“Julia Gordian’s purse was left on the countertop,” he said. “She carried one of those Red Cross donor cards, and her type matches.”
Perspiration glistened on Thibodeau’s forehead in the chill dampness of the room.
“Une zireté,” he muttered under his breath.
It is something atrocious.
Erickson was still looking at him. If the literal meaning of the words eluded him, their underlying emotions were easy to translate.
“I’m not saying anything for sure, but it doesn’t appear she was shot.” The cop knelt, pointed to the rust-colored stains. “The bleeding wasn’t that heavy—”
“No spray patterns like you’d expect from a bullet wound, either,” Ricci said.
Erickson glanced up at him.
“Right,” he said. “From the way the drops struck the floor and their cast off angles… you see these streaky lines trailing toward the wall… I’d guess she fell back against it in a struggle and got cut or something.”
As he spoke Ricci shifted his eyes to a much larger stain crusting the floor of the shop.
“Must’ve been a more serious wound left that one over there,” he said, gesturing across the counter top. “You have a theory to explain it, too?”
Erickson straightened and turned to him.
“The main thing you need to know is that our tests fixed the blood group as different from Julia Gordian’s,” he said.
Ricci regarded him curiously.
“Any bullets or casings picked up in the storefront?”
“No.”
“Ideas how the blood got there?”
“We’re still narrowing down the possibilities.”
Ricci tipped his chin toward the front entrance without taking his eyes off Erickson’s face.
“I can see from here that door got kicked in,” he said.
Erickson nodded.
“Wouldn’t have been hard for a strong man,” Ricci said. “It seems pretty lightweight.”
Erickson nodded again.
“Means there was probably a fifth perp,” Ricci said. “At least a fifth.”
“Right.”
“So maybe the blood stain was left by whoever came crashing through the door.”
“I told you we’re looking at the possibles.”
“You going to have more for us on them soon?”
Erickson took a moment to answer.
“We’ll see what develops,” he said. “Meanwhile, it would help if you could come up with the names of anybody who might have grudges against your employer, knowledge of his family… whatever you think is relevant.”
Ricci’s gaze remained fixed on the detective.
“Share and share alike,” he said. “I want to take another quick swing around the grounds before we leave. Got any problem with that?”
Again Erickson was quiet.
“I doubt you’ll find much that can add to what you know evidence-wise, but can’t see why not… with some stipulations,” he said. “The residence downhill is still being processed, and we’re considering whether to extend the crime scene to the woods. That puts them off limits.”
“Howell off-limits, too?” Ricci probed.
“Couldn’t stop you from talking to him if he were here, but he’s staying with family.”
Ricci grunted.
>
“Okay, what else?”
“I stay with you,” Erickson said. “Acceptable?”
Ricci nodded.
“Come on,” Erickson said. “We’ll start out back, work our way down to your car. So I can do you two fellas the final favor of seeing you off.”
The Sword ops showed no hint of amusement in their expressions.
A moment later they all went out into the rain.
* * *
“That e-mail, Pete. Did you get it yet?” Megan asked over his radio headset.
In the bird chopping west from the hospital at Lambaréné, Nimec could hear a distinct tremor in her voice.
“Hold on,” he said. “These goddamn gadgets… the co-pilot had to reset the display mode for me. Okay, it’s coming through now… I need a second to check it out.”
Nimec stared at the helicopter console’s multifunctional readout panel. The message on its GMSS comlink display left no question about what had left Megan so badly shaken and stretched his own control to the limit. He felt a sick, lancing anger.
Delivered to Megan’s computer from an anonymous proxy server, the e-mail now bouncing across uncounted miles of world to Nimec via satellite bore the subject line:
Aria D’entrata — For the Life of Julia Gordian
Nimec had opened it immediately and read the text:
She wears freedom on her shoulder. A combination of ideographs discreetly tattooed on the upper left side. When she goes for a jog with her dogs, alternate mornings, the body art can be seen on her sleeveless arm, as green as her eyes and lovely against her white skin.
The father’s dream on her shoulder.
What we have taken we can return. The father is to make an announcement tomorrow on the Sedco oil platform. Its nature will be revealed to him in advance of the designated time. The words are to be honored or the daughter will be killed.
Shi is the Japanese word for death.
Its ideograph is
The tattoo needle will apply it to her dead face twice, a black kanji symbol below each dead green eye. The arm that carries the dream will be cut off and discarded before her dead body is tossed into the waste.
Defy us and the father will see all this and worse.
Nimec finished reading it and took a deep breath.
“Those first couple of words in the subject, Meg. You know what they mean?”
“Aria d’entrata. Italian. I think it’s an operatic term for a vocal passage sung when a performer makes an entrance.”
Nimec felt that white-hot spike in his gut again. They were being taunted.
“The tattoo…”
“Julia told me she was going to have it done,” Megan said. “It must have been the last time she stopped by the office. A month ago. Maybe more. I’m not even sure Gord knows about it yet. She made me promise to stay mum, wanted to spring it on him in person. You know how she likes to get a rise out of him, Pete—”
“Meg—”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me,” he said. “The description’s to confirm this e-mail isn’t a hoax from somebody who might’ve found out what’s happened through a leak. Something of that nature.”
“There’s a lot of information,” Megan said. “The reference to the color of Julia’s eyes. Also that part about the jogging. Her greyhounds. Even her schedule.”
“She’s been watched.”
“Yes.” Megan took an audible breath. “Pete, what do you think whoever’s behind this is after? If she’s being held for a ransom, what sort of announcement can they want?”
“Wish I could give you an answer. All I know is somebody likes playing games. You can feel the spite here.”
“Yes.”
Nimec thought aloud. “The boss might have some ideas. He has to see the e-mail. I’ve got to show it to him right away.”
“I don’t know how he’ll manage to handle everything. It’s so much at once.”
Nimec was quiet. He felt the vast spread of distance between them.
“Ricci up to snuff?” he asked after a moment.
“He’s at the rescue center now. With Rollie. I haven’t contacted him about the message.”
“Better do it in a hurry,” Nimec said. He thought some more. “We need to rely on him, Meg.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“You’ve got no choice. If there are any solid leads, Ricci’s the one to find them. He’s the one, Meg.”
Silence.
“I know,” she said. “But knowing it doesn’t give me much comfort.”
Nimec stared out the chopper’s canopy into the rushing blackness of night.
“Sometimes,” he said, “we can only go with what we have.”
* * *
As far as his statement to Ricci went, Erickson had been candid: There wasn’t much of anything helpful to be found outside in the way of evidence.
Not on the grounds per se.
Accompanied by the detective, Ricci and Thibodeau had again walked back to the greyhound exercise pen and kennel, both empty now with the dogs taken into temporary care by the ASPCA. They had reinspected the sides and rear of the shop, then strode along the periphery of the bordering woods. Finally they went out front to the parking area to take a look at Julia Gordian’s Honda Passport, and the muddy vestiges of tire prints the cops had already lifted the previous day.
They were standing over by the Honda in the rain when Ricci noticed a car parked among a group of police cruisers a yard or two farther down the lot — a Ford Cutlass, standard-issue plainclothes unmarked in precinct requisition lots. Its window was open slightly more than a crack, a man in a navy blue suit working on a laptop computer in the front passenger seat.
Ricci looked more closely and saw something on the armrest beside the man. It raised a thought.
He broke away from Erickson and Thibodeau and hastened over to the car.
“Got a minute?” Ricci said, crouched under his umbrella. He motioned his head back toward the Passport. “I’m with Erickson.”
Surprised by the sudden interruption, Navy Blue glanced out at him, pushing the computer screen down out of his angle of sight.
“You one of those guys from UpLink?” he said.
Ricci nodded, came up close to the window, and shot a look inside at what he’d recognized as a pad of graph paper on the armrest. But he had no chance to catch more than the briefest glimpse of the sketch on its top page before Navy Blue reached over and turned it facedown where it lay.
“This is a crime scene,” he said. “I’ve got important things to do.”
“Like I said,” Ricci said. “Not more than a minute.”
Navy Blue continued to regard him from inside the Cutlass, his expression at once standoffish and warily curious.
A grunt. “Something I can call you besides Man From UpLink?”
“Name’s Tom Ricci.”
Navy Blue sat a moment, pushed the button to lower the window about halfway.
Ricci figured that was all he would need.
“I’m Detective Brewer,” the cop said. He still sounded suspicious. “Go ahead and make it quick.”
Ricci did, but not in the way Brewer expected. Before the other man could react, he thrust his free hand through the window, turned Brewer’s laptop toward him, and raised the lid so he could see it.
Brewer flinched in his seat.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” He pulled the computer back around, snapped it shut.
Ricci’s face was calm.
“Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “Might be none of my business, but I thought I saw you using that crime scene diagramming software. Figured I’d check for sure. Maybe offer some advice.”
Brewer glared at him. “You want advice, keep your fucking hands to yourself—”
“No harm intended.” Ricci held a low, level tone. “I was on the job once upon a time. Boston. Found out the hard way these computer sketches aren’t worth jack on the witness stand. You want to impress a
jury, don’t lose your original hand sketch on that pad. Accurate’s good. Sometimes giving them a feel for what you saw can be better.”
Brewer stared at him in angry confusion. Ricci knew he wouldn’t believe his excuse for the grab. It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that he’d incidentally happened to be telling the truth about the testifying part. He’d gotten his look at the screen image. Not a long one. But long enough.
“There a problem here?”
The voice was Erickson’s. Ricci half-turned and saw the detective standing behind him. He and Thibodeau had come over from the Honda.
Ricci left the explanation to Brewer. He doubted the cop would mention anything about the laptop, embarrass himself by admitting he’d been caught off guard.
As expected, pride won the day.
“No,” Brewer said. He was trying not to seem abashed. “The two of us were having some shop talk.”
Erickson gave his partner a long look, hands in the pockets of his raincoat, water dripping from his hair.
“Shop talk,” he repeated.
Brewer nodded inside the car.
“Ricci used to be a cop,” he said. “We were comparing notes about procedures. How they’ve changed and so forth.”
Erickson’s gaze dissected him another moment and then swung onto Ricci.
“Didn’t do much comparing with me before,” he said.
Ricci shrugged under his umbrella.
“We had other things to talk about,” he said.
Erickson was silent. Thibodeau was silent. Both of them were looking at Ricci and had separate reasons for being skeptical and displeased.
“Okay,” Erickson said at last. He gestured the Sword ops toward the road. “I think maybe it’s time I walk you two back to your car.”
Thibodeau hadn’t taken his eyes off Ricci.
“Guess it would be,” he said, and started traipsing down the gravel and mud drive in the rain.