140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  That seemed to get some wheels turning. “You have any idea who your source was?”

  “He never showed. The way things are going, he might be dead too. But the guy he talked about, I’m thinking he could be an ex-cop, maybe a private investigator.”

  She put down her fork and started tapping away at her laptop’s keyboard.

  “Let’s see . . . died, fire, news, in the last—what, month maybe?”

  I nodded.

  She went back to work. “Limit results to US news sites . . . OK.” Her eyes were scrolling down the screen, totally fixated. “Greensboro woman dies saving her three kids in a house fire, guy dies jumping into a fire at Burning Man . . .”

  This went on for about a minute, then her face lit up. “OK, try this one on for size. Kyle Rossetti. Writes these big investigative pieces for The New York Times, HuffPo, Vanity Fair—quite the action man. Embedded with the troops in Afghanistan, did a big piece on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that earned him a Polk award. Hot, too. The good kind, I mean. Check him out.” She flipped the screen around so I could see his head shot. Yes, I had to concur: the man had a rugged face and a gaze that pretty much conveyed the extremes of human behavior he must have witnessed.

  “And?”

  She flipped the screen back, and the edges of her lips turned south. “Electrical fire in his apartment, a condo at 113th and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard. He burnt to death. About two weeks ago. Wife’s a nurse. She was on night shift.” She stabbed a strawberry half with her fork and looked over at me. “These guys really don’t like reporters.”

  “Can you find the coroner’s report?”

  She chortled. “Please.” A few clicks later, she was there, her eyes scrutinizing the screen like laser scanners. “‘Accidental Death.’” Her fingers were soon away again, rapid fire, stopping only long enough for her to fast-read something, then she was off again. I was awed by the coordination between her fingers, eyes and mind, her ability to assimilate and filter through information at warp speed. “Of course there’s several blogs claiming he was murdered for something he was writing about. CIA, Mossad, Putin. The usual suspects.”

  I gulped down some coffee, thinking about what to do next. “Who was the fire investigator?”

  “Dan Walsh. A fire marshal out of Battalion Twelve. That’s with Engine Thirty-five on Third Avenue.”

  “Can you get me his home address?”

  Gigi gave me a mocking stare. “You really need to get with the program, G-boy.”

  I smiled. “Duly noted. Again.” I finished my last mouthful of pancake and set my fork down. “OK. Will you see what else you can dig up about Rossetti? I need to shower. I have a fire marshal to visit.”

  “On a Sunday? Is nothing sacred to a rogue FBI agent?”

  I had to smile at that. Then I remembered Lendowski’s phone. “Can you get into a locked BlackBerry?” Before she gave me a look that could wipe the data off a terabyte array, I added, “An FBI BlackBerry.”

  A beatific expression lit up her face. Clearly I was about to make this a Sunday worth remembering.

  35

  Mamaroneck, New York

  The scene outside Tess’s house was markedly busier. Two local patrol cars had joined a second FBI sedan now parked along her street. The Stingray van was still close by, of course, but they’d moved it an extra block away to try and attract less attention. Gallo and Henriksson had at least managed to agree on that single point: the need to keep the story quiet and avoid letting the press and the blogs get hold of it. Because of the controversy over the rampant eavesdropping and the failures in recent foreign policy, the intelligence community was already trying to live down a constant barrage of criticism. The negative publicity of an FBI agent murdering a CIA agent was something they were both keen to avoid.

  Annie Deutsch was back outside the house, leant against her car, oblivious to the cold. After the big meeting earlier that morning she’d had a private sit-down with Gallo in his office and, after thanking him for his support, she’d lobbied hard to be reassigned to keep tabs on Tess, despite the fact that she and Lendowski had already failed at that task once. Gallo had initially resisted but he’d ended up relenting, willing to accord her a chance to redeem herself and find out what happened to her missing partner.

  Four agents, assisted by members of the local police force, were canvassing the area around where Lendowski’s car was found. They’d yet to yield anything useful.

  Deutsch had yet to confront Tess. Even though she knew Tess had lied to her after she’d come home last night, she needed to get through to her. She needed Tess to feel Deutsch could be trusted. She didn’t know what was going on, but she was sure that Reilly would need help, and she had to do everything she could to make sure she was there to offer it if—or rather, when—that time came.

  She was thinking about how best to approach Tess when a number she didn’t recognize lit up the screen on her phone. It had a Virginia area code.

  She took the call with her customary, “Annie Deutsch.”

  “Agent Deutsch? Alejandro Fernandez. Virginia DFS, Manassas. I was told you’re taking Agent Aparo’s calls?”

  It took her a couple of seconds to process what he was referring to: Virginia’s Department of Forensic Science. Aparo’s work cell had been rerouted to the switchboard at Federal Plaza, as had Reilly’s. She didn’t know where Manassas was.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’m calling with the lab results on the second bullet. Agent Aparo had asked me to keep him in the loop.”

  “I’m sorry—the second bullet?”

  “From the shooting in Arlington?”

  Deutsch straightened up. “I wasn’t aware of this.”

  “The bullet from the body, that one’s conclusive. It matches up to the Glock we found at the scene, the one registered to Sean Reilly. We recovered a second bullet, though. It was embedded in the wall of the garage. You weren’t told?”

  “No.”

  “OK. I assumed you’d want to know.”

  Deutsch felt her pulse race. “Of course. What did you find out?”

  “It’s fresh. Recent. Could easily have been fired around the time the shooting took place.”

  “What else?”

  “Not much. We don’t have a casing, and the bullet was too badly damaged by its impact to give us anything we can run through the database. One thing, though. It wasn’t from the same gun.”

  A burst of adrenaline flooded through her. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. Reilly’s gun was a Glock. This slug's a forty-five. I’ve sent it over to the CFL in DC, but I doubt they’ll find anything we couldn’t.”

  Deutsch thanked him and told him to keep her appraised of any further developments. She hung up and was still thinking about how much a second bullet could help Reilly’s case when a passing car distracted her momentarily.

  She turned instinctively as her eyes were drawn to it. It was a white Toyota Prius with a single occupant, a man with a shaved head and thick, black-rimmed glasses. She couldn’t see him clearly, but the impression she got was of a rather effete man. He slowed a bit as he passed—basic human curiosity, she assumed—glancing at the house and the uniforms outside before driving on.

  Sandman’s eyes registered every detail as he took in the scene outside Tess Chaykin’s house.

  His mind working like a 3D scanner he mapped out the house’s relative location to its neighbors, its entrance and driveway, the positions of the law enforcement vehicles watching it. He was even sure he glimpsed Tess Chaykin at her window, looking down at her new reality.

  He noted the FBI agent he’d read about in the most recent report Tomblin had sent him, Annie Deutsch. They had her phone on special watch now in case the CIA liaison’s read was correct and she had more vested in the case than she’d admitted.

  He thought of ways to apply more pressure on Reilly. Chaykin was the obvious soft target, of course. So were Reilly’s son and Chaykin’s dau
ghter. He already knew where they went to school, knew the ideal spots on the likely route they would be taking every morning. School would soon be out for the Christmas holidays, but for the time being, he had that option if he needed it.

  He wondered about Deutsch. Was she a potential pressure point too? Not as powerful, to be sure. But it was a possibility.

  He turned the corner and drove away, headed for the café where he’d slipped Aparo his final condiment. The omelet baguettes looked to die for, he mused, enjoying his little joke, and he was famished.

  It was there that he received an email alerting him to two new assignments, there that he first started imagining how he would kill the highly talented Marcus Siddle and the slightly creepy Ralph Orford.

  36

  Queens, New York

  I drove out to Queens in Gigi’s BMW 4 Series convertible, which she’d offered to me without even blinking.

  I checked my face in the mirror—exhausted but presentable—before climbing out of the BMW and walking across the street.

  The fire marshal who signed-off on the coroner’s report on Kyle Rossetti lived in a 20s Astoria semi, from where it would take no more than thirty minutes to drive across the East River to the Twelfth Battalion building on Third Avenue.

  A couple of traditional wooden sleds lay on the postage-stamp front yard. The noise of joyfully shrieking children mixed with the slap of snowballs finding their target drifted from the rear of the house. They sounded happy. I hoped I wouldn’t have to apply too much pressure to get the information I needed.

  The doorbell chimed as I pushed the button. I looked around the inside of the porch where several sets of ice skates were neatly arranged. From the number, colors and sizes I guessed they had three kids: two girls under ten and a teenage boy.

  I was still gazing at the skates—wondering whether my entire family would ever go skating together again—when the door opened and a slim woman with freckles and warm brown eyes looked at me inquiringly. I figured she was in her mid-thirties. She was dressed in lazy-day sweats and wore her straightened mousy-blond hair in a loose ponytail.

  She scrutinized me for a couple of seconds before asking, “Can I help you?”

  “I hope you can. I need to find your husband. It’s important.”

  “He’s at the basketball court.” She gestured. “Three blocks east.”

  I must have looked skeptical.

  She shook her head. “I know. In this weather. It’s nuts. But he shoots hoops every day, no exception. Says it keeps him sharp, so I’m not going to argue with him. Because in his line of work, if you’re not sharp, you’re dead.”

  I nodded in recognition, which she immediately read. “You a cop?”

  “FBI.”

  “I hope he can help you.” She turned to go back inside but turned back again. “Wait a second . . .”

  She reappeared a minute later with a large thermos flask and a couple of mugs. “I made him some soup. You can share it with him.”

  I took them from her, thanked her, and left.

  The basketball court was an unfussy concrete square boxed in by a twelve-foot wall of chicken wire. It backed up against a thicket of bare trees. Although some of the court was still under three inches of snow, the area inside the three-point line had been cleared. Dressed in baggy sweats, a tall African-American guy was playing one-on-one with an imaginary opponent, his breath misting in the freezing air.

  He danced clear of the phantom defense, bounced the ball and released a shot. The ball dropped through the hoop without touching the rim.

  I flashed my badge, hoping that my assured technique would preclude closer analysis of my ID. “Nat Lendowski, FBI. Just need five minutes of your time.”

  “On a Sunday? Would you have pulled me out of church?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He gestured to the court. “Well, this is my church. Come by Third Avenue tomorrow, I’ll be happy to help.”

  I held up the thermos flask. “Your wife said I should bring this.”

  Taking a step toward me, he studied me for a moment, then shook his head and smiled. “OK, tell you what. If Janette wants you here, that’s good enough for me.”

  He gestured to a wooden bench on a patch of snow-covered grass beside the court. The snow had been cleared from the bench; a thick winter coat slung over the back.

  I passed the flask to its owner. “You investigated a fire. A condo at 113th and Adam Clayton.”

  He handed me a mug of steaming soup then poured one for himself. “Sure. Journalist by the name of Kyle Rossetti. Poor guy burnt to death. What’s your interest?”

  “We think he was working on a piece about Maxiplenty.”

  “The crime Internet thing?”

  “That’s the one. We have the founder in custody, but he’s lawyered up and locked down.” I took another sip of the soup. “It’s good.”

  “Yeah, who needs more, right? A wife you still want to live with, kids you can be proud of, a job to come home from and food in your stomach.”

  I nodded, agreeing with everything he said, but still knowing I’d never be able to enjoy any of that till I dealt with my white whales.

  Both of them.

  The next part was a gamble. I knew it would sound plausible—and I suspected Walsh had better things to do than check it out for himself.

  “We know Rossetti wrote about Maxiplenty. We’re thinking maybe he uncovered more than he published. And maybe that made him a target.”

  Walsh screwed the top back on the flask. “Everything burned. Files, laptop, everything. Unless he had cloud backups or documents stashed away in a safety deposit box, you’re not going to find anything.”

  “You’re sure it was an accident?”

  “Absolutely. No evidence of foul play.” He read my expression, cause he then said, “You seem disappointed.”

  Which I was. I didn’t see the point in hiding it. “Kind of. It sends me back to square one.”

  He thought about it for a second. “Look, everything about the case is consistent with an accidental death: Melted insulation and carbon build up from arcing inside the light switch—that’s a spark crossing the air from one piece of metal to another. It was only a matter of time before it got hot enough to start a fire. Stacks of books and papers close by. Flat battery in the smoke alarm. We think he was probably asleep on the sofa when it started. Maybe he got up and tried to deal with it, but his clothes caught fire. Guys from Engine Fifty-eight found him on the floor, maybe he tried to roll himself out.”

  I mulled over his words, then asked, “Say you wanted to burn someone to death, make it look like an accident. How would you go about it?”

  He nodded, his eyes lingering on the distance. In his line of work, this was the case far more than it should be. “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  He shrugged. “First, you’d need an apartment building which didn’t have an AFCI—an arc fault circuit interrupter—in place of the standard circuit breaker.”

  “And Rossetti’s building didn’t have that?”

  “No. We advocate everyone uses them, but there’s no law to enforce their use. It’s also easier with people who think they’re too busy to stay on top of their smoke alarm.”

  I shook my head. Strike two.

  “Then all you’d need to do is swap a switch somewhere in the house for one you’ve already messed with. Would take no more than a couple of minutes. Then, to be one hundred percent sure the fire takes hold, you’d use an ignition agent. Someone who knows what they’re doing would know which one—maybe ethanol—where to place it and how much to use. Too little and the fire may not catch. Too much and you leave an ILR—ignitable liquid residue—then we’d know it was arson.”

  At the level at which Corrigan operated, I figured all of this was perfectly possible to accomplish—and all without leaving a trace. Another thought hit me.

  “Did you see the tox report?” I asked. “Anything in his body that could have slowed
him down? Something to make him unaware of the fire till it was too late?”

  “No. Nothing. Not even alcohol. If there was something, that didn’t leave a trace either.”

  I had nothing more to ask. “Thanks for your time.”

  Walsh stood. “Good luck and sorry I couldn’t be more help. I’m gonna head home. Promised the kids we’d make a snowman.”

  He took my empty mug and added it to his own on top of the flask, stooped to pick up his basketball and left me sitting on the bench, feeling more and more certain that Rossetti was murdered—wondering how many more people Corrigan had killed in “accidents.”

  As I stood, my burner rang. It was Gigi.

  “Rossetti’s editor died two days after him.” Before I could ask, she added, “Heart attack.”

  The two words just speared right through me and nailed me to the ground, right in that spot, as Nick’s face—not breathing, but lifeless, still belted into his seat, as I pictured he was when the car was finally at rest—came storming back into my consciousness.

  37

  Chelsea, New York City

  Gigi rolled her eyes. “Come on. Not every premature death is part of a conspiracy.”

  We were back in her loft, seated around the kitchen block—Gigi, he-who-must-not-be-named, and me. Gigi’s fingers were dancing flittingly across her keyboard as she talked, while Kurt’s were scrolling through pages on an Android tablet.

  “Right now, I’d be more surprised if he did die naturally,” I said.

  “I called up the newspaper while you were on your way back. Said I’d met him at a TED talk I saw online that he’d been to and that he’d asked me to give him a ring when I was next in town. Anyway, long story short, the guy was a heart attack waiting to happen. Not exactly slim, never did any exercise beyond walking to the office and back from his apartment in Murray Hill and taking the elevator down not once but twice an hour to have a smoke—yep, like a chimney, since he was in high school. Also, beaucoup coffee. Throw deadlines and dwindling circulation and ad numbers all newspapers are facing these days . . .” She let her words trail off and gave me a knowing look.