by David Stone
Cowboy-style.
Dalton recalled Jack Stallworth’s words:
“Sally says she’s been pretty silent. Not a call for four days, and she’s not answering her voice mail.”
Four days.
Naumann had gone dark in Venice on the third of October, stopped filing reports, never picked up his e-mail, shut off his Treo. Typically, Langley hadn’t sent Dalton out to try to track him down until the seventh. And sometime between Saturday night and Sunday, the seventh of October, Naumann died in Cortona. In the courtyard of San Nicolò. From unknown causes. Could Naumann have done this?
Yes.
It could have been Naumann.
An agency pro like Porter Naumann could get from Venice to London and back without leaving an obvious trail, and the European Union had made doing that sort of thing even easier in the last two years. But why would Naumann do something like ...this?
This atrocity.
This wasn’t even remotely like him. Naumann had done some very cruel things in the field, but that was combat, even if it was covert combat, and he’d done it to legitimate if undeclared enemies of the country. But what had been done here—this was... savored.
You could see the time that had been taken, the way in which the
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killing had been drawn out. Prolonged. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Porter Naumann would do something like this; it just wasn’t in him. This inner certainty wasn’t anything he could have supported in a court of law, or even justified to his boss if he had been a homicide cop. But this wasn’t a court, and he wasn’t a homicide cop, and on-the-fly operational judgments were being made—had to be made—all the time.
There was no point tying up limited Agency resources doing due diligence and chasing down everyone in London and the continent with Opportunity and Means when your professional gut was taking you straight to the heart of the matter. Unlike the homicide cop and the DA in a civilian case, Dalton knew Porter Naumann, and Porter Naumann would not have been capable of this kind of killing, especially not with his wife and children.
Hell. Not any woman, anywhere.
He just wasn’t made that way.
If not Naumann, then who?
Who do you really like for this, Micah?
He knew damn well. On Monday night, the eighth of October, Sweetwater was having dinner in Carovita, because Dalton saw him there. Carovita was Naumann’s favorite restaurant—he ate there almost every night he was in Venice. It was reasonable to infer that Naumann and Sweetwater could have been in Carovita at the same time. It certainly put them in the same territory. Then Dalton sees Sweetwater at the same restaurant, and immediately afterward he slams into The Night of the Emerald Green Spider.
Next, on Tuesday afternoon, Dalton locates—no, he’s led to— Cora Vasari’s house on Calle dei Morti, and Cora says Sweetwater left her rental flat the day before, on the Monday, a timely and convenient departure, by the way.
Working it backward, it all could have started here, in London.
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Dalton had spoken with Stallworth on the Monday, and Stall-worth said it had been four days since anyone had heard from Joanne. Four days from Monday meant last Thursday, the fourth of October. Yes. Sweetwater could have been in London on the fourth.
If Naumann could have done it, then it could have been done by anyone, including Sweetwater. There was no reason to attribute this slaughter to Naumann just because he had gone dark around the time it was done. But other than Dalton’s gut instincts, there was even less reason to hang this on Sweetwater, other than tenuous circumstantial connections, such as the presence of morning glories in Naumann’s suite and later in Cora’s flat, and the fact that Naumann and Sweetwater had both been in Venice around the same time. And in Cortona: the grocery bag they found in the trash can, that put Sweetwater in Cortona as well.
So what?
Lots of people were in Venice and Cortona all the time. It didn’t prove a damn thing. All Dalton really had was what amounted to a strange gut-level obsession with a weird old man in lizard-skin cowboy boots. But it would not go away.
He sat down on the toilet seat lid and concentrated on the bodies, taking in the scene, trying to put himself in the mind of a man who was capable of doing something like this. What could a reasonable man—a sane man—infer from this kind of butchery?
First of all, the guy was a sadist all the way to his bone marrow, a true aficionado of human suffering. It was one thing to kill three people. Hit them and split. That was what a killer would do.
A professional killer.
So this guy, whatever else he was, was no professional.
He had spent far too long in the house, possibly all night. The cleanup. The wipe-down. Getting his prints and stray DNA, his skin
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cells and hairs and leavings off the surfaces, would have required at least a couple of hours.
No real professional would put himself into that kind of situation: you got in, wore protection, made the hit, got your ass out. You didn’t hang around to... enjoy yourself; that kind of indulgence would get a pro caught and killed in a very short time.
So definitely not a professional hit.
But a hit that could have been carried out by a professional who, in this one instance, was not behaving like a pro.
And it was a good, highly skilled hit, in the sense that the entry and execution, although elaborate and prolonged, had been successful. The killer had gotten into the town house, disabled the security.
Spent his party time with the victims.
And gotten clean away without leaving a trace. A pro at entry, at stealth, at not being caught. Perhaps, in addition, someone with access to an electronic cloaking device, a magnetic field radiator capable of burning out the sensors of digital cameras.
Dalton had heard some vague rumors about gear like that; it was all high-level gear. Government gear.
Not necessarily our government.
The Brits could have gear like that. So might the Mossad, and some of the Pakistani counterintelligence outfits.
Also the Germans.
Another good question: Was this guy military. Or a spook?
If so, whose spook was he?
And we come back around to the chaos of the killing itself.
No reliable, well-trained spook would kill like that, at least not for any reason you could attribute to a recognizable intelligence goal. Neither Joanne Naumann nor the girls were very plausible targets.
If the idea was to destabilize London Station, to disrupt Burke and Single, then it made more sense to take out Naumann himself.
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Or Mandy.
Or you, Micah.
If it wasn’t a tactical hit, then it was ...what?
Done for the sheer pleasure?
Certainly that element was here.
But why these targets? What made the killer pick these three women, out of a city of seven million people?
No, it wasn’t random; they were chosen.
But chosen for what?
Only one reason was workable, in the sense that only one reason gave Dalton an operational handle on the killings.
Their connection to Porter Naumann.
So we have a possible spook killer who’s in this for the joy of it, but he’s not picking his targets at random.
There’s an overarching strategy here: somebody’s being punished. Was that somebody Porter Naumann?
Why him? And how did the killer know who Porter Naumann was in the first place?
No idea.
And what did this killer have against Naumann?
Again, no idea.
The longer Dalton looked at the three brutalized corpses, the more convinced he became that all of this had something to do with Sweetwater. For reasons known only to him, Sweetwater came to London, found the house in Belgravia, made an entry, killed the women.
Then he
went to Venice.
He must have gone to Venice next, if he was acting alone—which Dalton had no reason to believe—because that was where Naumann was, and where he died.
But why go to Venice?
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To show Naumann what he had done? That would fit the pattern of a sadistic killer. Fit the idea of the killings as punishment. Which means the killer
knew that Naumann was in Venice. How did he know that?
He looked at Joanne’s body. She would have known. And she would have told her tormentor. By the end, she would have told him everything she knew about Porter Naumann.
Mandy was at the door again, her eyes fixed on Dalton’s face. “The Removals van will be here in ten minutes.” “Mandy, did Forensics get any of Porter’s DNA off the bodies?” She shook her head, keeping her attention fixed on him. “No. There was no mitochondrial DNA of any kind on them.
Forensics figured they’d been hosed down with the showerhead.” “What about the drains?” “Forensics pulled them; they’d been cleaned recently. There were
traces of chlorine, a few hairs that were identified as Joanne’s.” “Nothing else? No sign of Porter at all?” “Not in the scene. His DNA and prints are all over the house,
along with Joanne’s and the girls’. But none at the scene.” “Mandy, do you know if Porter had a spike?” “One of those GPS thingies, the little silver ones they stick under
your skin?” “Yes.” “No. He thought the idea of having a spike implanted was a se
curity risk. Even if the locator output was encrypted, the very fact that you had one in your body was a tip-off to any foreign agency that you were definitely not just some kind of banker. Why?”
“I’m trying to eliminate Porter as a suspect—” “I thought he wasn’t!” “He’s not. But if I could prove he wasn’t in London—” “Prove it! To whom?”
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“Mandy, he went dark on the third. We didn’t find his body until the seventh.”
“And you found it in fucking Cortona, Micah. If you’re looking for suspects, how about me?”
“You?”
“Why not. I loved Porter. If his wife is dead...”
“Fine. And did you do this?”
“Would I admit it? If I had?”
“Yes. I think so. Have you ever killed anyone, Mandy?”
“Not yet, Micah. But if you keep on trying to lay this on Por-ter’s grave, I could find some murder in my heart. It wasn’t Porter, Micah!”
“I know, I know.”
“You want to prove he wasn’t here. What about his cell? His Treo? His laptop—if he used a Bluetooth it would show a location.”
“Nothing. When Porter goes dark he doesn’t screw around.”
“Micah, you know Porter didn’t do ...this. Don’t waste your time. Go find out who did. Find out who did, and then you kill him and anyone who helped, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
There was a strained silence. After a while Mandy looked at the bodies hanging from the shower railing.
“What do you want to do with...” She made a half-formed gesture in the direction of the bodies, the blood, the entire scene.
“This can’t get out, Mandy.”
“I’ve been giving it some thought. May I make a suggestion?”
“Please.”
“We close up the house and put it about that Joanne and the girls are traveling.”
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“Won’t their friends wonder? What about all this wireless stuff ? Text messaging? Cell phones? E-mails? Chat rooms? If the girls just drop off the grid, won’t their friends start to worry about them?”
Mandy gave him a look, raised her eyebrow. “Do ticks miss the dog? No. They move on and find another host. Mila and Brooke didn’t have ‘friends.’ They had minions. Unindicted coconspirators. And Joanne’s London crowd was always on the move. It would be months before any of them started to wonder where Joanne had gone off to. Then only in an idle, feckless way.”
“What about her relatives?” “Micah, all we can do is delay this. It’ll have to come out eventu
ally. How much time do you think you’ll need?” “God. How much can you give me?” “Three weeks, maybe four. I still think this is the way to go.” She was right. “Okay. It’s a good idea. Try to make it four, if you possibly can.
And Porter died ‘in the line of,’ so there wouldn’t be a ceremony
anyway. Another nameless star on the wall. We’ll do it your way.” There was a soft call from the stairwell, Barney’s voice. “Sir, Removals is here.” “Are you up to this, Mandy?” “Aren’t you going to stay?” “Yes. Of course. I wouldn’t ask you to do this alone.” “Thank you.” Mandy was silent then, but Dalton knew what she was thinking.
Dalton reached out to take her almost skeletal hand. Her face went
through several emotions, her eyes welling up. “I thought for a while that Porter might have gone mad.” “Did you have any reason to think so?” Mandy went inward for a time, thinking about Dalton’s question. “No. There was nothing ...but...I mean, look at the mirror.” They both turned to look at the mirror, at the ugly scrawl there,
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done in some sort of thick black crayon, a vicious obscenity that had been scraped over the glass by a strong, angry hand.
“You actually thought Porter did this?”
“No. Perhaps. I don’t know. I was . . . afraid,” said Mandy. “For his mind.”
They looked at the drawing for a time in silence. Something about the drawing resonated in Dalton’s memory. He struggled for it, but it was too elusive, a trace only, now a fading wisp.
“Have you ever seen anything like this in Porter’s papers?”
“No. Never.”
“Have you looked?”
She hesitated. “Well . . . not thoroughly. I’d need clearance from Jack. I wasn’t cleared for everything Porter was doing. Were you?”
“No. Jack says he was monitoring investment and trading patterns, looking for terror money on the move.”
“Yes. That’s what he was doing. I was his collector.”
“I want you to go through his papers, Mandy—no, I want you
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to ransack his papers. Turn his entire life upside down and dump it out on the desk. I want every e-mail, every coded file, personal papers, Agency stuff. I want to know who he saw and when he saw him, who he called and who called back, from where, when—the whole package. And I need it done by you, and you alone. Can you do that?”
“Do I need clearance?”
“You have clearance. I’m the cleaner here, and I’m giving you clearance, okay? Can you do it?”
“Should I talk to Jack?”
“I’ll talk to Jack. You talk to nobody but me, here on in.”
She nodded her head and said nothing. Dalton pulled in a ragged breath and immediately regretted it. He looked around the bathroom, half-hoping for Naumann’s ghost to materialize in the room.
Where are you, Porter? Why aren’t you here?
You were everywhere. Now you’re the absentee.
Silence, then, as they stood there, looking uneasily at themselves in the mirror—both of them burning with the mortal shame of the survivor—and at the angry scrawl across the glass. The room smelled of toothpaste and lemons and perfume, as well as dried blood and spoiled meat.
“Do you want this . . . scrawl . . . left?” asked Mandy, after a time, and in a whisper, as if they were in the presence of something unholy.
“Forensics got a digital shot?”
“Yes. I was here when they took it. The camera’s in the case by the door, along with everything else.”
“Erase everything. Make it look as if this had never happened.”
“But it did, Micah, didn’t it?”
“Yes, sweetheart. It did.”
>
His cell phone rang then, making them both jump.
“Dalton here.”
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“Micah, it’s Sally Fordyce. I’m at Langley.”
“Jesus, Sally. What time is it in D.C.?”
“Early, Micah. I came in to head off a tragedy.”
“Tragedy? What kind of tragedy”
“The tragedy of Jack ripping your privates off with his bare hands, you utter dork. Were you using a Consular ID in Venice?”
“Venice?”
“Oh no! Don’t you go all vague and loopy on me, Micah. Some-body’s been trying to reach you through the Venice Consulate. The caller says you’re attached to the CID branch there. The Venice station chief fielded the call and handed it right off to Langley. Duty desk at Langley tried to find Jack but he’s off the grid right now—”
“Where is he?”
“Micah, Jack runs the Cleaners. He’s always flying off somewhere lately, and he doesn’t give me an itinerary, does he? And you’re damn lucky he was out of touch, because I was next on the call list. So tell me. Did you use a Consular cover or not?”
Dalton stared at the wall, thinking fast. He had used a Venice jacket with Cora Vasari.
Christ, was she trying to reach him?
“Micah!”
“Yes, I did, Sally. Who was—”
“You’re a complete and utter mutt, you know that?”
“Who was trying to reach me? Was it a woman?”
“Woman! My God, Micah. Have you been using Consular ID’s to pick up chicks? What are you using for—”
“I know. We both know I’m pond scum. Who was calling, Sally? Was it a woman named Cora Vasari?”
“Vasari? Cora Vasari? No. It was . . . let’s see . . . Zitti. Domenico. A guy. He was very upset. Probably her poor bloody husband, right? Said it was an emergency, something about an ambulance—”
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“Ambulance? Where?”
“In some place called the Dorsoduro. There were people shouting in the background. Micah? Micah, hello? Hello? Micah Dalton, you rat bag scum sack son of a—”