The Kill Room

by Jeffery Deaver

  "I've got the location where he sent the email from. I won't bore you with nodes and networks but suffice it to say that your whistleblower sent the email and the STO attachment from Java Hut near Mott and Hester. Think about it: A Portland, Oregon, coffee chain setting up shop in the heart of Little Italy. What would the Godfather say?"

  She glanced at the header on the copy of the whistleblower's messages taped to the board. "Is the date on the email accurate? Could he have faked it?"

  "No, that's when it was sent. He could write whatever date he wanted in the email itself but routers don't lie."

  So their man was in the coffee shop at 1:02 p.m., May 11.

  The cybercrimes detective continued, "I've checked. You can log onto Wi-Fi there without any identifying information. All you have to do is agree to the three-page terms of service. Which everybody does and not a single soul in the history of the world has ever read."

  Sachs thanked the tech cop and disconnected. She called the coffee shop and got the manager, explaining that she was trying to identify someone who had sent important documents via the Wi-Fi on May 11 and she wanted to come in and talk to him about that. She added, "You have a security camera?"

  "We do, yeah. They're in all the Java franchises. In case we get stuck up, you know."

  Without expecting much, she asked, "How often does the video loop?" She was sure new footage would overwrite the old every few hours.

  "Oh, we've got a five-terabyte drive. It's got about three weeks of video on it. The quality's pretty crappy and it's black and white. But you can make out a face if you need to."

  A ping of excitement. "I'll be there in a half hour."

  Sachs pulled on a black linen jacket and rubber-banded her hair back in a ponytail. She took her holstered Glock from the cabinet, checked it as she always did, a matter of routine, and clipped it to her jeans belt. The double-mag holster went on her left hip. She was slinging her large purse over her shoulder when her mobile buzzed. She wondered if the caller was Rhyme. She knew he'd landed safely in the Bahamas but she was concerned that the trip might have taken a toll on his health.

  But, no, the caller was Lon Sellitto.

  "Hey."

  "Amelia. The Special Services canvass team is about halfway through the building where Moreno and the driver picked up Lydia. Nothing yet. They're running into a lot of Lydias--who'da thought?--but none of 'em are the one. You know, how hard is it to name your kid Tiara or Estanzia? They'd be a fuck of a lot easier to track down."

  She told him about the lead to the coffee shop and that she was on her way there now.

  "Good. A security cam, excellent. Hey, Linc's really down in the Caribbean?"

  "Yep, landed safe. I don't know how he's going to be treated. Interloper, you know."

  "Bet he can handle it."

  There was silence.

  Something's up. Lon Sellitto brooded some but it was usually noisy brooding.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Okay, you didn't hear this."

  "Go on."

  The senior detective said, "Bill came by my office."

  "Bill Myers, the captain?"

  So how does it feel to be repurposed into a granular-level player...

  "Yeah."

  "And?"

  Sellitto said, "He asked about you. Wanted to know if you were okay. Physically."

  Shit.

  "Because I was limping?"

  "Maybe, I don't know. Anyway, s'what he said. Listen, a fat old fart like me, you can get away with some bad days, hobbling around. But you're a kid, Amelia. And skinny. He checked your reports and the ten-seventeens. Saw you volunteered for a lot of tactical work, first through the door on the lead teams sometimes. He just asked if you'd had any problems in the field or if anybody'd said they weren't comfortable with you on take-downs or rescues. I told him no, absolutely not. You were prime."

  "Thanks, Lon," she whispered. "Is he thinking of ordering a physical?"

  "The subject didn't come up. But that doesn't mean no."

  To become an NYPD officer an applicant has to take a medical exam but once on the force--unlike firefighters or emergency medical techs--he or she never has to again, unless a supervisor orders one in specific cases or the officers want to earn promotion credit. Aside from that first checkup, years ago, Sachs had never had a department physical. The only record of her arthritis was on file with her private orthopedists. Myers wouldn't have access to that but if he ordered a physical, the extent of her condition would be revealed.

  And that would be a disaster.

  "Thanks, Lon."

  They disconnected and she stood motionless for a moment, reflecting: Why was it that only part of this case seemed to involve worrying about the perps? Just as critical, you had to guard against your allies too, it seemed.

  Sachs checked her weapon once more and walked toward the door, defiantly refusing to give in to the nearly overwhelming urge to limp.

  CHAPTER 28

  AMELIA SACHS HAD A 3G MOBILE PHONE, Jacob Swann had discovered.

  And this was good news. Cracking the encryption and listening to her conversations were harder than with phones running GPRS--general packet radio service, or 2G--but, at least, it was feasible because 3G featured good old-fashioned A5/1 voice encryption.

  Not that his tech department was allowed to do such a thing, of course.

  Yet there must have been a screwup somewhere, because just ten minutes after discussing the matter casually--and, of course, purely theoretically--with the director of Technical Services and Support, Swann found himself enraptured by Sachs's low, and rather sexy, voice, coming to him over the airwaves.

  He already had a lot of interesting facts. Some specific to the Moreno investigation. Some more general, though equally helpful: for instance, that this Detective Amelia Sachs had some physical problems. He'd filed that away for future reference.

  He'd also learned some troubling information: that the other investigator on the case, Lincoln Rhyme, was in the Bahamas. Now, this was potentially a real problem. Upon learning it, Swann had immediately called contacts down there--a few of the Sands and Kalik drinkers on the dock--and made arrangements.

  But he couldn't concentrate on that at the moment. He was occupied. Crouching in an unpleasantly aromatic alleyway, picking the lock of the service door to a Starbucks wannabe. A place called Java Hut. He was wearing thin latex gloves--flesh-colored so that at fast glance his hands would appear unclad.

  The morning was warm and the gloves and concealing windbreaker made him warmer yet. He was sweating. Not as bad as with Annette in the Bahamas. But still...

  And that god-awful stench. New York City alleys. Couldn't somebody blast them with bleach from time to time?

  Finally the lock clicked. Swann cracked the door a bit and looked inside. From here he could see an office, which was empty, a kitchen in which a skinny Latino labored away with dishes and, beyond that, part of the restaurant itself. The place wasn't very crowded and he guessed that since this was a tourist area--what was left of Little Italy--most of the business would be on weekends.

  He now slipped inside, eased the door mostly closed and stepped into the office, pulling aside his jacket and making sure his knife was easily accessible.

  Ah, there was the computer monitor, showing what the security camera was seeing on the restaurant floor at the moment. The camera scanned slowly back and forth, in hypnotic black and white. He'd have a good image of the leaker, the whistleblower, when he scrolled back to May 11, the date the prick had uploaded the STO kill order to the District Attorney's Office.

  He then noticed a switch on the side of the monitor: 1-2-3-4.

  He clicked the last and the screen divided into quadrants.

  Oh, hell...

  The store had four cameras. And one was presently recording Swann himself, crouching down in front of the machine. Only his back was being shot but this in itself was still very troubling.

  He quickly studied the computer and
was even more troubled to see that dismantling it and stealing the hard drive, as he'd planned, was impossible. The large computer was fixed to the floor with straps of metal and large bolts.

  Right, as if somebody would steal a five-year-old piece of crap, with Windows XP as the operating system. He equated a machine like this to a plastic Sears hand mixer, versus what he had: a six-hundred-dollar KitchenAid, with a bread kneading hook and fresh pasta maker.

  Then Swann froze. He heard voices, a giddy young woman's and then a Latino man's. He reached for the Kai Shun.

  Their words faded, though, and the hallway remained empty. He turned back to his task. He tested the bolts and straps. They weren't giving way. And he didn't have the right tools to undo them. Of course he could hardly blame himself for that. He had a basic tool set with him but this would require an electric hacksaw.

  A sigh.

  The next best thing, he decided, was to make sure that the police didn't get the drive either.

  Too bad, it wasn't his first choice, but he had no other options.

  Now voices from the front of the restaurant again. He believed a woman was saying, "I'm looking for Jerry, please?"

  Could it be? Yes. The tone was familiar.

  Good old-fashioned A5/1 voice encryption...

  "I'm Jerry. Are you the detective who called?"

  "That's right. I'm Amelia Sachs."

  She'd gotten here faster than Swann had expected.

  Hunching forward to hide what he was doing from the camera, he reached into his backpack and removed an improvised explosive device, an anti-personnel model that would not only destroy the computer but send a hundred bits of jagged shrapnel throughout the back half of the coffee shop. He debated a moment. He could have set the timer for a minute. But Swann decided it would be best to set the detonator for a bit longer. That would give Ms. Sachs enough time to come into the office and start scrolling through the tapes before it blew.

  Hitting the arm button and then the trigger, Swann slipped the box behind the computer itself.

  He then rose slowly and backed out of the office, careful not to display his face to the camera.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE AIR IN JAVA HUT WAS RICH with a dozen different scents--vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, berry, chamomile, nutmeg...and even coffee.

  Jerry, the manager, was a lanky young man with more extensive tats on his arms than a manager for a national franchise coffee shop probably should have. Even one headquartered in Portland. He shook her hand firmly, snuck a glance toward her hips. Men often did this--not checking out the body; he wanted a glimpse of her gun.

  The dozen people here were all busy--typing on or examining some electronic device or another. A few were reading from paper. Only one, an elderly woman, was sitting quietly, looking out the window and doing nothing but leisurely enjoying a cup of coffee.

  Jerry asked, "Would you like something? On the house?"

  She declined. She wanted to get to the one lead in the case that had the potential to pay off.

  "Just like to check out the security videos."

  "Sure," he said, trying for another look at her weapon. She was glad she'd kept the jacket buttoned. She knew he'd want to ask her if she'd used it recently. And talk calibers.

  Men. Sex or guns.

  "Now, we've got one camera there." He pointed above the cash register. "Everybody who comes in'll get photographed at least once, pretty up close. What did this guy upload? Like insider information?"

  "Like that, yes."

  "Bankers. Man, don't you just hate 'em? And two other cameras." Pointing.

  One was mounted on a side wall and it scanned back and forth slowly like a lawn sprinkler. The tables were arranged perpendicularly to the camera, which meant that while patrons might not be visible head-on, it was likely she would get a clear profile shot of the whistleblower.

  Good.

  The other camera scanned a small alcove to the left of the main door, with only four tables inside. This too would get good side images of the patrons and was closer to those tables than the first camera was to those in the main room.

  "Let's see the video," she said.

  "It's in the office. After you." He extended his arm, covered with a multicolored tattoo of some Chinese writing, hundreds of characters long.

  Sachs couldn't help but think, What could it possibly say that was worth the pain?

  Not to mention how he's going to explain it to his grandkids.

  CHAPTER 30

  MAN, THE ALLEY ON A WARM AFTERNOON.

  Gross.

  New York City alleys had a kind of charm, you looked at it one way: They were sort of like history moved into the present day, like in a museum. The fronts of the apartments and--here in Little Italy--the shops changed every generation but the alleys were pretty much what they would've been a century ago. Decorated with faded metal and wooden signs giving delivery directions and warnings. Use Chocks for Your WAGON! The walls, brick and stone, were unpainted, unwashed, shabby. Uneven, improvised doors, loading docks, pipes that led nowhere and wires that you didn't dare touch.

  And the air stank.

  On hot days like this the kitchen helper hated taking the trash down to the Dumpster, shared with a couple of other restaurants, because the sushi place next door had dumped their garbage last night. No need to guess what this afternoon's atmosphere was like.

  Fish.

  Still, one thing he liked about the alley: the building above Java Hut. It had apparently been the home of somebody famous. The waiter Sanchez had told him it was some American writer. Mark Twin, he thought. The helper could read English okay and had told Sanchez he was going to find something that this Twin had written but he never got around to it.

  He now made the drop, holding his breath, of course, and then turned back toward his deli. He noticed a car parked in the alley here, close to Java Hut, in fact. A reddish Ford Torino Cobra.

  Sweet.

  But gonna get towed.

  The kitchen helper realized he was holding his breath still. He exhaled and then inhaled, wrinkling his nose. The smell actually stung.

  Old fish. Warm fish.

  He wondered if he was going to puke. But he headed to the car to check it out. He liked cars. His brother-in-law had been arrested for stealing a very nice BMW M3, one of the new ones. That took some doing. Anybody could steal an Accord. But only a man with balls could boost an M3. Not necessarily brains, however. Ramon was arrested exactly two hours and twenty minutes later. But you had to give him credit.

  Oh, hey, check it out! This one had an NYPD placard on the dash. What kinda cop'd drive a car like this? Maybe--

  At that moment a ball of flame and smoke erupted from the back door of Java Hut and the helper found himself flying backward. He tumbled into a stack of cardboard cartons outside the back of the Hair Cuttery. The helper rolled off the boxes and lay stunned on the oily, wet cobbles.

  Jesus...

  Smoke and fire flowed from the coffee shop.

  The helper unholstered his mobile and forcibly pinched tears away.

  He squinted to make out the keypad. But then he realized what would happen if he called, even anonymously.

  Sir, what's your name, address, phone number and by the way do you have a driver's license or passport?

  Or maybe a birth certificate? A green card?

  Sir, we have your mobile number here...

  He put the phone away.

  Didn't matter anyway, he decided. Other people would have called by now. Besides, the explosion was so strong, there was no doubt there'd be no survivors inside and Mr. Mark Twin's town house would be a pile of smoldering rubble in a matter of minutes.

  CHAPTER 31

  THE VAN DROVE ALONG BAY STREET, then through downtown Nassau, past wood-clad stores and residences painted soft pink, yellow and green, the shades of the mint candy disks Lincoln Rhyme remembered from the Christmases of his youth.

  The city was mostly flat; what dominated the skyline
were the ocean liners, docked or easing through the water to their left. Rhyme had never seen one up close. They were massive, soaring hundreds of feet into the air. Downtown was clean and ordered, much more so than the areas around the airport. Unlike in New York City, trees were everywhere, blossoming heavily, roots buckling sidewalks and streets. This area was a mix of serious business--lawyers and accountants and insurance agents--and stores that sold any object whatsoever that might conceivably separate cruise ship tourists from their money.

  Pirate gear was a popular way to do this. Every other child on the sidewalk carried a plastic saber and wore a black skull-and-crossbones hat.

  They drove past some houses of government. Parliament Square, Rhyme noted. In front was a statue of seated and sceptered Queen Victoria, gazing off into the distance as if her mind was on more important, or perhaps more troublesome, colonies.

  The accessible van fit right in here; much of the transportation was via similar vehicles and mini buses, different only in the absence of a motorized ramp. As earlier, the pace of traffic here was leisurely, irritating. Rhyme decided that this was not lazy driving. There were simply too many wheels on too few streets and roads.

  Scooters too. They were everywhere.

  "Is this the best route?" he muttered.

  "Yes," his aide replied, turning right onto East Street.

  "It's taking a longer time than I would have thought."

  Thom didn't reply. The area grew scruffier as they headed south. More hurricane damage, more shacks, more goats and chickens.

  They passed a sign:

  Protect Ya Things!

  Use a Rubber EVERYTIME

  Rhyme had had to make several calls to find exactly where Mychal Poitier was located--naturally without calling the corporal himself. Nassau had a separate Central Detective Unit, not attached to headquarters. Poitier had implied he was working with the CDU but the receptionist there said that while she believed he was assigned to the unit he wasn't based there. She wasn't sure where his office was.

  Finally he'd called the main number and learned Poitier was at the RBPF headquarters on East Street.

  When they arrived Rhyme looked around the facility through the spattered glass of the van's windows. Headquarters was a complex of mismatched structures--with the main building modern and light-colored, in the shape of a cross laid flat. Ancillary buildings were scattered randomly around the grounds. One seemed to be a lockup (a nearby side street was named Prison Lane). The grounds were a mix of grass--some patches trim, some shaggy--and parking lots dusted with pebbles and sand.