The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  Above all, planning meticulously. To ensure he could go on enjoying his hobby for a long, long time.

  All of which almost certainly meant Livia was dealing with someone who had arrived in Seattle recently, after deciding it was too dangerous to continue his hobby in some other place. In theory, ViCAP—the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database—would be a good way to zero in on crimes outside Seattle similar to the two park attacks. In practice, overburdened local cops weren’t nearly as diligent as they might be in entering information into the database. And even when they made the time to enter it, they didn’t always include the relevant details.

  Both attacks had taken place in the rain, for example. In Seattle, that could easily be coincidence. On the other hand, rain muffled sound and ruined evidence. It would also reduce the number of joggers to a more desirable victim-to-witness ratio. And it would provide a congruent setting for a man to go out in his own top-to-bottom nylon or Gore-Tex running clothes, clothes that themselves would hinder DNA collection while making witness identification more difficult as well. The problem was, would a cop entering data into ViCAP think to mention the weather?

  But she was in luck, and ViCAP offered a solid lead: an attack in Bridgeport, Connecticut, eight months earlier. The same victim profile: a morning jogger. The same MO: the blitzkrieg attack from behind, the knife, the zip tie, the practiced efficiency. No mention of the likely implement used to cut away the clothes, but it had been raining, confirming for Livia that the weather the man was operating in was choice, not coincidence. And the setting was similar, too—a place called Seaside Park, another spot popular with joggers and situated on the water, this time Long Island Sound. There had been other attacks in the past, she was certain of it—as certain as she was that there would be more in the future, unless this man was stopped.

  She put Child’s Play out of her mind, knowing that for the moment, at least, Trahan was on it, and that whatever arrests she might make in connection with the site were months away regardless. She stayed at her desk, working every local database she could access, calling police departments up and down the Connecticut coast. But she turned up nothing.

  Two attacks already. She was guessing one more—probably the next time it rained, which in Seattle would almost certainly be soon—before this rapist moved on to new hunting grounds, where she might lose track of him forever.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen. One way or the other, she was going to stop him here.

  chapter

  five

  RAIN

  I called the number Horton gave me. The voice that answered was male and spoke in undifferentiated American-accented English. It said, “That took a while. We now have one day fewer than we otherwise would have.”

  The grammatically correct fewer, I noted, not the more common less. And the delivery was crisp, the tone a mild rebuke. An officer, maybe, accustomed to addressing subordinates. When I was younger and something of a hothead, that kind of peremptory treatment would have gotten my back up. But if you live long enough, you gain perspective, and maybe some self-control. So instead of getting irritated, I responded as though bored.

  “Is that the royal ‘we’? Because your time constraints have nothing to do with me.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  Maybe because Horton had challenged me with something similar, and maybe because the question wasn’t completely without merit, I felt myself getting annoyed.

  “To hear you out,” I said. “And for someone purporting to be concerned about time, you sure take a lot of it getting to the point.”

  I congratulated myself on demonstrating wisdom and tactical restraint by not finishing the sentence with asshole.

  There was a pause, probably while he recalibrated his approach. Then he said, “Three jobs, all requiring immediate attention, all needing to look natural. If my information is correct, the kind of work at which you excel.”

  First was the fewer, not less. Now it was the care in avoiding a preposition at the end of a sentence. An educated man, presumably. Precise. Apparently fussy about small-minded rules, perhaps to compensate for a willingness to ignore large ones.

  I placed the observation in the mental file I was building and considered. He would tell me who. Probably where. Certainly how much.

  All critical topics, obviously. But after a long string of manipulations and betrayals, I’d learned that nothing was more important to my own protection than why. And maybe the question had become important for other reasons, reasons of conscience or clarity or other areas I tried to obscure with a more practical focus on my own survival.

  Of course, why was the one question the people handing out the jobs least wanted to answer. Which meant it had to be approached obliquely, the truth discerned like a shadow cast by the lies surrounding it.

  So I started with the easy part—the part he’d be expecting, and that would most suggest I was interested. “Who are we talking about?”

  “Are you in?”

  “Are you high?”

  “What?”

  “You expect me to say yes to a job—no, three jobs—I don’t know anything about? What kind of amateur outfit am I dealing with?”

  The insult was calculated. Whether this guy was an amateur or a professional, he would perceive himself as the latter, and would now be invested in proving it to me. Interrogators call the technique ego down.

  “I assure you,” the guy said, a touch of indignation creeping into his tone, “you’ve heard of me.”

  “Government?”

  “I was government. I left because the amateurs were impeding my efforts. Now I get things done.”

  “Then who are the three jobs?”

  There was a pause. Then, “Three people in law enforcement—a Fed, a local, a consultant. Is that a problem?”

  I didn’t need the money. I didn’t like the guy. And anyway, I was retired.

  But it couldn’t hurt to learn a little more.

  “Not so far.”

  “Let’s start with the local. A Seattle cop. A woman. You okay with that?”

  “If you know the guy who brokered this introduction, you know I’m not. No women. No children. No acts against non-principals. And no B-teams.”

  I didn’t like the way it came out. Like a parameter instead of a protest.

  “Yes, he mentioned you’re squeamish that way, but I didn’t believe it. Aren’t we all special snowflakes? You’ll melt some snowflakes, but not others?”

  I was beginning to dislike the guy sufficiently to have some fun with him. I said, “Some snowflakes are more expensive than others.”

  “We’ll get to that. Now, as I said, the time frame is tight. Maybe three days, given that we’ve lost one already—but the intel is extensive, and we can help you control the environment as much as you need to make it look natural.”

  “That’s good of you, but I work alone.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  I didn’t know if Horton would have mentioned the detachment. It didn’t matter. Either way, I didn’t like the comment. Not because it was false. But because it had become true. Yes, I was alone now. Aloof, like once upon a time. But even before the detachment, there had been Dox. And Delilah, and a couple of her Mossad colleagues. And Kanezaki at CIA. And Larison, and Treven, the guy Larison had brought with him. Hell, the last time I could honestly say I only worked alone . . . it was longer ago than I cared to think about.

  I wondered if that was why I had talked to Larison. And then Horton. And now this guy. Maybe being alone didn’t suit me the way it once had. Maybe I wanted a connection, even if the connection in question was to this shitty world I’d told myself I was trying to get clear of.

  “I’m not responsible for what you’ve heard,” I said, the evenness in my tone now slightly more of an effort. “And if you think that speculating about me while revealing nothing about yourself is the right approach here, you’re not just ignorant. You’re incompetent,
too.”

  There was a pause, maybe while the guy digested the truth of that, maybe while he struggled not to respond with an insult of his own.

  “You don’t need to know who I am,” the guy said. “And maybe more importantly from your perspective, you don’t want to.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “No, you don’t. All you need to know is that my money is green, and there’s plenty of it. If you don’t know more than that, you can’t be a threat to me. If you’re no threat to me, I’m not one to you.”

  The suggested symmetry was glib, but I let it go. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Enough. The fee is one million US. Half up front, half upon completion. Don’t pretend it’s too little—we both know it’s too much. Are you in? Or do you want to waste the rest of your life in Tokyo pretending you’re retired?”

  I’d been careful to lay down some clues before leaving Tokyo. An apartment I continued to pay for through a cutout. Jazz clubs I’d drop in on from time to time. That kind of thing. The measures all subtle enough to seem genuine, and all designed to be pieced together only with difficulty. That this guy had spotted the head-fake suggested he had resources. That he’d gone for the fake suggested those resources weren’t quite as good as he might have believed.

  Beyond which, the low-key I know where to find you threat suggested his ego was driving him more than sound tactics. Otherwise, he would have seen that what he’d said earlier—about not being a threat to me as long as I was no threat to him—went both ways. An officer, I thought again. Or former officer, more accustomed to issuing orders to subordinates than to negotiating with freelancers.

  What he didn’t know was, I like threats. Threats clarify. And with clarity comes calm. So it required no effort at all to take a moment before responding, the pause intended to suggest the quality of his information had me off-balance, even worried.

  “Good luck with those jobs,” I said. “I can’t help with the staffing.”

  I clicked off, powered down the phone and removed the battery, and placed a fresh log on the irori. The seasoned wood crackled and ignited almost instantly. Then I sat on the cushions in front of the fire, watching the flames slowly dying, the wood turning to glowing coals, the warmth good against the soles of my feet.

  The guy had told me little. More likely a blowhard than a threat.

  More likely. But how much was I willing to bet on that?

  Beyond the perimeter of the irori, the minka tended to be chilly. Which made the warmth of the cushions before the hearth even more welcome by contrast.

  I placed another log on the coals. I watched it burn, wondering what it was that made fire so hypnotic.

  Life is full of paradoxes, I decided. Certainly I hadn’t foreseen how much work retirement might involve. I put the battery back in the phone and called Larison.

  chapter

  six

  LIVIA

  Livia knew she’d been neglecting Child’s Play, but that operation depended more on Trahan’s hacking skills than on her detective work. Still, she needed to check in. Maybe in the intervening days, Trahan had made progress on that “anomaly,” as he called it—the use of the encryption app he had designed for the Secret Service.

  She picked up a cappuccino at Uptown Espresso and headed over to the loft, holding the paper cup under her fleece to keep it out of the morning drizzle. She reminded herself that even with the rain, it was too soon—the park rapist would still be in his lair, waiting.

  But he wouldn’t wait forever.

  Stepping out of the elevator on the loft level, she noted a wet umbrella propped outside Trahan’s door. She hadn’t seen him use one before, and Seattleites tended to eschew them in favor of hooded jackets. Was someone else in there? She let herself in and immediately heard a voice alongside Trahan’s—female, with an authoritative tone. It sounded like they were arguing, but they stopped at the sound of the door closing.

  She walked down the corridor. Trahan was standing behind the table, a tall brunette in a gray pantsuit and a lightweight down jacket across from him. FBI, Livia decided. The lightweight down looked like something that would pack up well for traveling. A male agent would have lost the suit jacket, but women dressing that casually risked being taken less seriously than their male counterparts. Beyond which, something in her stance, her posture, suggested authority over Trahan, though to his credit it had sounded as though he’d been arguing gamely before Livia came in.

  Trahan’s laptop was closed—the first time Livia had ever seen that. She didn’t like it.

  They both looked at her, their expressions grim. “Livia,” Trahan said. He gestured to the woman. “This is Special Agent Smith, head of VCAC.”

  VCAC was the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children program, part of the Criminal Investigative Division. Livia knew of Smith but had never dealt with her. Counterpart interactions with heads of federal divisions typically happened at higher pay grades. She said nothing, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Smith nodded an acknowledgment. “Detective Lone. I wish I were meeting you with better news. I’m afraid this operation has been terminated.”

  Livia walked over to the end of the table, creating a moment to collect herself before responding, knowing the pause would come across as confidence, though in fact it was the product of confusion. She set down the cappuccino and looked at Trahan. Aware of the potential for political pushback, she had told him to keep the encryption app between the two of them until they’d had a chance to investigate further. He’d told her he would. She’d thought it was understood their agreement would hold until they had a chance to discuss it again. Now she realized that not checking in with him sooner had been a mistake.

  She looked at Trahan. “You told them, didn’t you?”

  He could barely look at her. “I had to.”

  “Trahan reports to me,” Agent Smith said. “He has a duty—”

  “He has a contract.”

  “Whatever you want to call it. He’s required to keep me in the loop about all important operational developments.”

  “You’re telling me the Secret Service is shutting down a child-pornography investigation.”

  Smith’s eyes narrowed. “That is not what I’m telling you. I’m telling you the FBI is shutting down this investigation.”

  “Why?”

  “It has been determined that the images being posted on the site as bona fides—”

  Livia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Posted by the FBI!”

  “—could themselves be construed to be child pornography. And as you know, in the United States, posting such images is illegal even for a law-enforcement agency in the course of an investigation.”

  Livia took a deep breath, knowing she was running too hot. Still, it was maddening. Presumably because of the rules Smith had just mentioned, Child’s Play required that all members post new video of child porn at least once a month. The requirement was canny, as it tended to prevent law enforcement from infiltrating the site. But the FBI had gotten around it by hiring a Hollywood green-screen specialist to doctor existing videos to make them look like new ones.

  “Those images aren’t real,” Livia said, knowing she’d already lost, but determined to try to salvage what she could.

  Smith nodded. “Parts of them are real, as I understand it. Look, we should both acknowledge that this was a legal call. And I don’t think either of us is in a good position to second-guess the lawyers at the Justice Department.”

  Livia leaned forward, her palms on the table to either side of the laptop she used while working in the loft. She wasn’t going to leave without it—it was her only way of logging in to Child’s Play, and her only record of the members they’d managed to uncover so far.

  “Agent Smith. Do me a favor. Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining. This is about the Secret Service. Terry knows it. I know it. And you know it.”

  Smith glanced at the laptop. “If you’re thi
nking about walking off with that laptop, I can guarantee you’d be prosecuted for theft of Bureau property.”

  Strangely, Smith looked almost sad when she said it. Less issuing a dire threat than describing an unfortunate fact.

  Livia looked in her eyes, trying to find an opening. “We’ve uncovered five members—identified them by name—already. We can at least make those arrests. All we need is—”

  “The suspects you’ve identified won’t be arrested. Or prosecuted. At least not in connection with this operation.”

  Livia realized she should have seen that coming. Still, it shocked her. “We’ve made a case—a fucking good case—against five degenerates trafficking in child porn—in child torture—and you’re going to let them go on preying on children?”

  “This is not my decision.”

  “Do you know what hurtcore is, Agent Smith?”

  Smith didn’t respond.

  “It’s a pedophile subculture. The point isn’t just to cause pain. It’s to cause damage. Not just to break a child’s body, but to destroy the child’s soul. Terry couldn’t watch it. Most people can’t. Do you want me to show you some? Just so you’ll understand what you’re enabling by shutting down this operation.”

  Trahan said nothing. He was looking down as though ashamed.

  “I’m not ‘enabling’ anything,” Smith said. “I’m following the rules. As for the ‘hurtcore’ itself . . . I can imagine.”

  “I doubt it. If you could, you wouldn’t shut us down.”

  Smith said nothing.

  “Do you have children, Agent Smith?”

  A little color crept into Smith’s cheeks. “My personal life has nothing to do with this. Beyond which—”

  “Nieces? Nephews? Were you ever even a child yourself?”

  “—it’s none of your business. As I said, this is not my decision.”

  “It is your decision, if you make yourself complicit in it.”

  “It is a Bureau decision. It is above my pay grade. And yours. And it is final.”