by Thomas Perry
But she hadn’t been stupid enough. She had started to cry harder, a little wail that elongated the words. “Please” was one of them. He’d had to shoot her, whether she was fooled and looking away, or on her knees begging. So she was dead.
He would have liked to leave Boston now that Kelly was dead. Her death had deprived him of a place to live where nobody knew him and where there was no record of his presence. Now that he had checked into a hotel, this advantage was gone. He had used a false name and credit card, but he had not been able to stay completely invisible.
He had to stay in Boston and finish his job, and he couldn’t rush things by even a minute. Salazar was going to arrive in town today, check into his hotel, and then appear at City Hall at three o’clock. He wasn’t going to stick his head out sooner just because Joey Moreland wanted him to.
Joey was anxious. There was a kind of cop or private detective hunting for him now, and that was a big worry. He had always been careful never to draw the attention of cops and people like them. He had thought of staying with the girls as leaving no trail, but apparently the girls were his trail.
He wished he could leave now, but if he didn’t kill Salazar here, he would have to go and get him in Mexico, and that was probably impossible. He spoke no Spanish and looked like an American. He would have to transport his own weapons across a border where the authorities were always looking for guns.
Moreland had to go through with his original plan. He would reassure himself by spending the rest of his time planning everything about the killing and the aftermath that he had not already planned and rehearsed. He turned on his laptop computer and checked for news of Salazar’s visit to Boston. The news blackout was still in effect.
He repacked everything he had taken from his suitcase, checked out of his hotel, and began to attend to the details. He stopped at a gas station and filled his tank. In the little store at the station he bought water, candy bars, nuts, soft drinks, and pretzels. If he should have to end the day driving hard and trying to stay on the road, the snacks would help. If he didn’t stop anywhere, then he was just another set of headlights approaching on the interstate and a pair of taillights disappearing around the next bend.
He drove to his office building and parked his car in the underground lot two floors down, even though the ground floor was nearly empty. During the remodeling there were very few tenants, so it didn’t matter to the building owners where he parked, and going lower kept people from driving past his car. He got into the elevator and rode it up to the tenth floor. The construction workers doing the remodeling were on other floors today. They always worked early in the day and left before the late afternoon rush, but they must still be somewhere in the building.
Joey Moreland listened for the construction noises, but up here the air was just a steady hum of engines far below in the street. Then, as he walked along the hallway, stepping around piles of two-by-fours and leaning sheets of plywood and drywall, he heard the thuds of nail guns on the floor above, and far below him, a jackhammer. He went into his office and locked the door.
He had to do this right, and he had no control over timing. There was no way to delay or hurry the action a mile away to suit his plan. As soon as Salazar’s car arrived at City Hall and Salazar got out, it was going to be time to pull the trigger. Moreland climbed onto the desk, moved an acoustic tile, and brought down the case where his M107A1 was stored.
He opened the case and set the heavy rifle on the desk. Just the gun and its scope weighed almost twenty-nine pounds. It was five feet long from the butt to the muzzle brake. He opened the legs of the bipod, then gazed along the top of the receiver, ignoring the scope while he turned the screw below the butt to raise it to the general level it would need to be. He loaded ten rounds into the box magazine. They were .50-caliber machine-gun rounds with a 660-grain bullet. They had a maximum range of 6,800 meters, but he would be nowhere near testing that figure. He pushed the heavy magazine up under the receiver until it clicked. He had a second magazine, so he loaded ten more rounds into it and set it to the right of the weapon on the desk where it would be out of his way. He supposed that if he needed the second magazine he would be fighting for his life, not completing a hit.
Firing a shot would be like starting a timer. He would have about two or three minutes to zero in on the target. The police would take a minute or two to realize what was happening. The first round would come roaring at them at 2,800 feet per second from a mile away, so it would hit about two seconds after the muzzle flash, and three more seconds would pass before the sound of the shot reached their ears. Even then they wouldn’t know where the shot had come from. It might take five shots before one of them happened to see a flash a mile away.
Then they’d have to pick themselves up, organize a response, and begin to move. Returning fire would be impossible: he was out of range of their best rifles, and they couldn’t just fire at a window in an office building. They’d realize they had to get into their cars and head toward the rifle. For a time Joey would be too far away for them to do anything, and he would still be able to reach out and hit whatever he could see. After his second three minutes were up, he would have to begin getting out of the building, because there would be cops heading toward it from all sides.
He went to the gun case and took out his ear protectors. They looked like a good set of earphones for a sound system. Like everything in his kit, they were of the highest quality, but they would succeed only in reducing the 180-decibel roar of the rifle to a loud noise. Because the M107A1 was based on a military weapon, the rifle’s daylight scope had a hinged cap on each end to protect it from dirt and rain. He opened both caps and sighted the rifle on the steps of City Hall on the plaza side. He turned the ring on the elevation adjustment so it was set at two thousand meters, then aimed at the American flag on the high pole on the City Hall plaza. The fabric was moving a bit in a wind he judged to be about seven miles an hour. He turned the windage adjustment to compensate. A crosswind like that could move his shot a few feet to the left at this distance. He closed both lens caps.
He went to the case again, took out a thick foam pad, fitted it to the place where his right shoulder met his torso, and fastened it there with a strip of duct tape. The instant when he pulled that trigger, 11,500 foot-pounds of energy would punch that bullet into the distance and kick the rifle backward into him. There was a recoil pad, but there was no sense in getting pounded worse than he had to be.
Moreland stepped close to the open window and looked down at the street ten stories below him. The traffic in front of the building was steady but smooth in both directions. A police car passed. He could see the black “85” on its white roof. He didn’t like staying in Boston after Kelly was dead. He liked to be long gone before a girlfriend was found. Maybe she wouldn’t be found right away, but he wasn’t going to count on it. Down below, people walked along the sidewalk, some of them having to swerve into a narrow remnant of the space by the curb to avoid the construction fence around the building. On the side where the crews were still working and might drop tools or materials, the pedestrians walked under a low scaffold with boards on top. Cars waited at intersections for the signals to turn; then other cars waited. It was a typical noisy, busy day here.
He looked up again. He was two thousand meters west of City Hall. He had a perfect view above the city and along the narrow corridor of the backs of buildings, all the way to City Hall. His building was on high ground near Beacon Hill, which was ninety-two feet above sea level. City Hall was only about fifteen feet above sea level. He sat down, closed his eyes, and mentally rehearsed everything he was going to do. Nothing would happen until Salazar’s limo arrived.
18
Till had wasted much of his night driving around Boston searching for the white Toyota Camry. He had stayed out until the news at seven a.m. announced that a young woman had been found dead in a field south of Boston. The descri
ption was clearly that of Kelly.
The only train of thought that seemed plausible was to return to the speculation that the Boyfriend was doing something else besides killing hookers. And judging from his behavior and talents, there was only one really likely thing he could be doing.
Till used his cell phone and dialed the number of Detective Alan Rafferty. He listened to the ringing sound for a few seconds, and then heard a sound like a door opening. “Vice, Rafferty.”
Till said, “Detective Rafferty, my name is Jack Till. Ted McCann in Los Angeles gave me your number.”
“Yeah, he called me and said you might be getting in touch.”
“Did he tell you anything about my case?”
“Some. He said you were trying to hunt down a guy who had been killing and robbing redhead escorts. Is that right?”
“Yes. The parents of the one who was killed in LA hired me. When I checked with Ted to find out if this was a onetime thing or a pattern, he had a list of five in other cities who fit our girl’s description and had been shot with a nine-millimeter pistol.”
“You’re calling about the one here last night. Joelle Moody.”
“Uh, I thought her name was Kelly Allen.”
“Yeah, that was her work name. Same girl. Long reddish hair, shot in the head with a nine-millimeter pistol.”
“The shooter was the man I’ve been following across the country. When I realized he was living with Kelly Allen in Woburn, I tried to warn her. I went to her apartment, and showed her the pictures of the seven murdered girls. They all looked a lot like her. They all had strawberry blond hair. Three of them had been wearing the same custom-made necklace in their online ads that she’d worn. I thought I’d persuaded her to run, but then he drove up, and she ran to join him. Now she’s dead.”
“If she ran to him and joined him, why kill her?”
“That’s part of what I’ve figured out. What the girl does or doesn’t do doesn’t matter. He always kills them, and then leaves town. I thought at first it was a compulsion, that he was one of those guys who get so disgusted with themselves for going to a prostitute that the girl has to be eliminated along with the sin. Then I thought he was so bat-shit crazy that he got off on killing them. But now I think it’s a policy. I think he kills them to keep them from talking about him.”
“What’s he doing that they could talk about?”
“I’ve tried looking at all the dates when girls were killed. I checked the papers in the cities where they died to see what else made the news in the next day or two. The only things I’ve found are high-profile murders, each one done right before the girl dies. I think he might be a contract killer.”
“If he’s a pro, and he knows from the start that he’s going to have to kill the girl before he leaves town, why does he want them to begin with?”
“At first I assumed his main interest in the girls was stealing their money. That’s got to be fairly profitable, since they’re all pretty enough to make a lot of money over time. And they’re not likely to put much of the money in a bank, where it would be reported to the IRS. So he takes the money. That makes it look to the police like the killing is a by-product of the robbery. It isn’t. He kills them because they know who he is, when he got to town, and how long he’s been around.”
“I’m not sure about this.”
“I’ve been tracking him. Whenever he comes into a new town, he almost immediately hooks up with one of these girls, and moves in with her. That means during the month or two it takes to prepare for his contract killing, he doesn’t need a hotel, has no need to use credit cards, no need to fill out a rental agreement. He’s got the cash he stole from the last girl, so he deals only in cash. If he wants to keep his car out of sight, he can leave it in a garage and use her car. Most escorts use false names and move from town to town, so not only does nobody know him, they don’t really even know her. If, when he leaves, the girl is dead, nobody in town knows he even exists. He cleans the apartment, and tries to remove all prints. If he left fingerprints, they’re in a room that’s been visited by a hundred other men a month.”
“Okay, suppose that’s all true,” Rafferty said. “What’s going on today? What’s he doing now—running?”
“If he killed Kelly prematurely, before he did his hit, then I’d say he’s getting ready to do it now,” said Till. “I want you to help me stop him.”
“How?”
“You must have people in the department you can talk to. Get any inside info you can on anybody that’s a good target for the next day or two. Some gangster in this part of the country is going on trial, or some company is about to enter a bidding war, or a rich family is having a wedding. Whatever. We’ve got to concentrate on anything that’s only going to happen once.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Can I give you my phone number?”
“McCann gave it to me already. Just keep your phone on.”
Till read newspapers, read local magazines, and signed onto Web sites that purported to have detailed calendars of events for the Boston area. He thought, We are looking for a victim who may be vulnerable for today only. Or a victim who is about to do something—perform or testify or abscond or deliver. If it’s a secret, or the person isn’t well-known, we won’t find it.
As Till searched, he found so many possibilities that the task seemed impossible. David Farraday was filming a modern version of Charley’s Aunt at Dunster House with exteriors in Harvard Yard. Apparently Farraday was an up-and-coming actor. Till saved the article. He could easily imagine a creep asking a movie company for a payoff or he’d kill some movie star, but he couldn’t imagine the creep hiring a professional hit man to kill the star if the company didn’t pay.
He saw an article about Nobel Prize winners who were or had been at MIT. He went online to see how many of them were living, and he was astounded. The answer was nine faculty members, nine former faculty members, five emeritus faculty members, one student, fourteen former staff members, and twenty alumni. He knew there was some remote possibility that somebody would want to kill a Nobelist. But if that was going on, the victim was as good as dead. Unless they were all going to be at a party today, Till couldn’t find a way to protect the intended target.
There were two well-known rock bands and a solo female singer appearing in Boston this evening. He noted the locations and kept searching.
The time was going by. He could see it always on the upper right of his computer screen as he searched. He wondered if he should be using the time to persuade some deputy chief in the Boston Police Department that a full-scale alert should be declared. Just having more cops on the street might not help, but it wouldn’t hurt, either.
He searched for the heads of various companies in the Boston area. A few of them had controversial histories or products. He saved the ones accused of some environmental crime. There were extremist groups who might raise hell, but so far none had ever hired a shooter. The executives who had ordered big layoffs or were flamboyant about their riches he saved too, but he didn’t have much confidence. The way to get to their money was kidnapping or extortion, not murder.
After a half hour he got to the one he had been expecting at the beginning. It was Joseph A. Peccorino, who was reputed to be the current head of the Mafia in Boston. He was a great candidate, but he had been under surveillance for years. On the days when he wasn’t being questioned, arrested, or brought to court, he was probably surrounded by FBI agents who were trying to eavesdrop on him. There wasn’t much Till could do that wasn’t already being done.
Till tried politicians, starting with the mayor because he was based in Boston rather than in Washington. He found that an announcement had been posted only five minutes ago. This afternoon Mayor William Meisterberg would be at a press conference to welcome a Mexican federal prosecutor, Luis Salazar, for a joint discussion of the
paths of drug trafficking into the northeastern United States.
He closed the laptop and headed out of the hotel room, reaching for his cell phone. The visit of the Mexican federal prosecutor might not be the right event, but it was the only one he’d found that included a man a lot of people would pay to see dead. Till figured he might as well wait at City Hall Plaza for whatever Rafferty found out.
19
By the time Till got to his rental car, he had begun to believe that the Mexican prosecutor Luis Salazar was the victim. Salazar was probably under much less protection in the United States than he would be in Mexico. There were plenty of homicidal men in Mexico who would love to see a man like him dead. Probably most of them would not be confident about doing a killing in Boston, but they would have plenty of money to pay an American contract killer to do it for them.
He began to drive, and he redialed Rafferty’s number.
“Rafferty.”
“This is Till. Have you heard about the Mexican prosecutor?”
“Just now. Apparently they were keeping it quiet until it would be too late for his enemies to get here and try anything. He’s just meeting with a few high-level cops here, and the security will be heavy. I was about to call and tell you.”
“Did you turn up anything that seemed as likely?” asked Till.
“I turned up nothing else that seemed at all likely.”
“Me either. I’m on my way there now. You might want to tell somebody in the department what we think is happening.”
“I just did. That’s what took me so long.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you soon.”
It was already after two-thirty. Till drove toward City Hall, slightly faster and more aggressively than the rest of the cars, like a taxi driver in a hurry. He weaved from lane to lane when the cars began to bunch up ahead of him. He had the car radio on to listen to the news, but what he was listening for was word that he was too late.