The Kill Room

by Jeffery Deaver

  "I'm sure we will again."

  A faint smile. But something about the exquisite sadness in the expression told him that she believed her life as a prosecutor was over.

  Sachs said to her, "Hey, you want to have dinner sometime? We can dish on the government." She added in a whisper that Rhyme could hear, "And dish on men too?"

  "I'd like that. Yes."

  They exchanged phone numbers, Sachs having to check to find out what her new one was. She'd bought a half dozen prepaids in the past few days.

  Then the ADA carefully assembled her files, using paper clips and Post-it Notes to mark relevant categories. "I'll have copies sent to you for the unsub case."

  The short woman hefted the briefcase in one hand, the litigation bag in the other and with one last look around the room--and no other words--walked out, her solid heels thudding on the wood, then the marble of the hallway. And she was gone.

  CHAPTER 72

  JACOB SWANN DECIDED, WITH SOME REGRET, that he couldn't rape Nance Laurel before he killed her.

  Well, he could. And part of him wanted to. But it wouldn't be wise--that was what he meant. A sexual assault left far too much evidence. Minimizing the clues in any murder was hard enough--trying to make sure sweat, tears, saliva, hairs and those hundred thousand skin cells we slough off daily weren't available to be picked up by some diligent crime scene tech.

  Not to mention fingerprints inside the latex gloves or on skin.

  He'd need another option.

  Swann was presently in a restaurant on Henry Street across from the prosecutor's apartment in Brooklyn, a four-floor walk-up. He was nursing a very bittersweet Cuban coffee.

  Scanning Laurel's abode. Not a doorman building, he noticed. Good.

  Swann had decided that now he could use a cover crime for the murder: In addition to prosecuting patriotic Americans for taking out vile traitors, Laurel had sent plenty of rapists to jail. He'd looked up her conviction record--extremely impressive--and learned that among those she'd put away were dozens of serial rapists and molesters. One of these suspects could easily decide to get his revenge following his release. Or a relative of a prisoner might do just that.

  Her own past would come back to get her.

  Yes, he'd gotten word from headquarters that the investigation into Moreno's death was over. But that didn't mean it might not surface again. Laurel was the sort who might leave government service and start writing letters or articles in the papers or online about what had happened, about NIOS, about the STO assassination program.

  Better if she just went away. And anyway, Swann had set off a bomb in Little Italy and stabbed an interpreter and limo driver to death. If nothing else, Laurel might be called on to help in the investigation of those crimes. He needed her dead and all her files destroyed.

  He fantasized. Not about the sex but about faking the attack, which he was looking at like a recipe. Planning, preparation, execution. He'd break into her apartment, stun her with a blow to the head (not the throat; there couldn't be a connection to Ms. Lydia Foster, of course), rip her clothes off, make sure her breasts and groin displayed severe striking hematoma (no biting, though he was tempted; that bothersome DNA). Then he'd beat her to death and penetrate her with a foreign object.

  He didn't have time to go to an adult bookstore with video booths or a porn theater and scoop up a bit of somebody's DNA to swab on her. But he had stolen some stained and torn underwear, teenager's size, from the trash behind a tenement not far away. Fibers from this garment he'd work under her fingernails and hope the teen had been masturbating at some point in the past few days. Likely.

  This would be enough evidence.

  He dipped his tongue into the coffee. Enjoyed the intense sensation throughout his mouth; it's a myth that different tastes are experienced in different parts of the tongue: salt, sour, sweet, bitter. Another sip. Swann cooked with coffee sometimes--he'd made a Mexican mole-type sauce for pork with 80 percent cacao and espresso. He'd been tempted to submit it for a contest then decided it wasn't a good idea for him to be too public.

  He was running through the plan for Nance Laurel again when he spotted her.

  Across the street the ADA had appeared from around the corner. She was in a navy-blue suit and white blouse. In her small pudgy hands were an old-fashioned attache case, brown and battered, and a large litigation bag. He wondered if either was a present from her father or mother, both of whom were attorneys too, Swann had learned. They were in the low-rent district of the profession. Her mother, public defender. Her father, poverty law.

  Doin' good deeds, helping society, Swann reflected. Just like their stocky little girl.

  Laurel was walking with eyes cast downward and laboring under the weight of the litigation bag. Though her face was a cryptic mask, she now gave off a slight hint of depression, the way Italian parsley in soup suggests but doesn't state. Unlike bold cilantro.

  The source of the somber mood was no doubt the foundering Moreno case. Swann nearly felt bad for her. The prosecution would have been the jewel in her crown but now she was back to a life of sending Jose, Shariq, Billy and Roy into the system for crack and rapes and guns.

  Wasn't me. No way. I don't know, man, I don't know where it came from, really...

  Except, of course, she wouldn't be handling any such cases.

  Wouldn't be doing anything at all after tonight. Would be cold and still as a slab of loin.

  Nance Laurel found her keys and unlocked the front door, stepped inside.

  Swann would give it ten, fifteen minutes. Time for her to let her guard down.

  He lifted the small, thick cup to his nose, inhaled and slipped his tongue into the warm liquid once more.

  CHAPTER 73

  WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT the last of our ten little Indians?" Lincoln Rhyme asked absently.

  The setback about Moreno's citizenship had defeated Nance Laurel but it had only stoked his hunt lust. "I don't care what Albany wants, Sachs, I want our unsub. Five Sixteen's too dangerous to stay free. What do we know?" He looked over the evidence whiteboards. "All right, we know Five Sixteen was in the Bahamas around the time of the shooting. We know that he killed the student-prostitute Annette Bodel. We know that he set the bomb to eliminate leads to the whistleblower. We know he killed Lydia Foster. We know he was following our Sachs around town. What can we make of that?...Sachs!"

  "What?"

  "The other driver, the one that Moreno usually used? Did you ever get in touch with him?"

  "No. Never called back."

  This happened frequently when the police phoned, asking for a return call.

  Usually this was out of reluctance to get involved.

  Sometimes there were other reasons.

  She tried the driver once more and shook her head. She placed another call--to Elite Limos, Rhyme deduced. She asked if they had heard from their employee. A brief conversation and she hung up.

  "Never called in after he went to see a sick relative."

  "Don't trust it. We may have a third victim of our unsub. Find out where he lives, Pulaski. Get a team from the closest precinct to his house and see what's there."

  The young officer pulled out his mobile and called Dispatch.

  Rhyme wheeled back and forth in front of the charts. He didn't believe he'd ever had a case like this, where the evidence was so fragmentary and sparse.

  Bits, scraps, observations, 180-degree changes in direction.

  Nothing else...

  Hell.

  Rhyme steered toward the shelf with the whiskey bottles. He lifted the Glenmorangie and awkwardly poured another hit, then seated the cap on his tumbler and sipped.

  "What're you doing?" Thom asked from the doorway.

  "What am I doing, what am I doing? Now, that's an odd question. Usually the interrogatory 'what' introduces a sentence in which the inquirer is unable to make any deductions about a situation." A substantial sip. "I think you've wasted a perfectly good sentence, Thom. It's pretty clear wha
t I'm doing."

  "You've already had too much."

  "That's a declarative sentence and it makes much more sense. It's valid. I disagree with it but it's logically valid."

  "Lincoln!" Thom strode forward.

  Rhyme glared. "Don't even think--"

  "Wait," Sachs said.

  Rhyme assumed she was taking Thom's side in the alcohol dispute but when he wheeled around he found her eyes were not on him or the aide but on the whiteboards. She walked forward and Rhyme noticed that she wasn't wincing or limping. She was spry and balanced. Her eyes narrowed. This was her predatory gaze. It made the tall woman frightening and, to Rhyme, appealing.

  He set the whiskey down. His eyes rose to the boards and scanned like radar. Were there some facts he'd missed? Had she made a deduction that had eluded him? "Do you see something about Five Sixteen?"

  "No, Rhyme," she whispered. "It's something else. Something else entirely."

  CHAPTER 74

  NANCYANN OLIVIA LAUREL was sitting on a couch in her Brooklyn Heights apartment, a brown JCPenney slipcover over blue upholstery that had been worn smooth by her family and their friends years and years ago.

  Hand-me-downs. A lot of those here. Laurel was tapped by a memory: Her father surreptitiously fishing in the sofa's crevices for coins that had fallen from the pockets of visitors. She'd been eight or so and he'd made a joke of it, a game, when she'd walked into the room unexpectedly.

  Except it wasn't a game, and she knew it. Even children can be ashamed of their parents.

  Still tasting the smoky scotch, she looked around this home. Her home. Hers alone. In a reflective mood. Despite, or maybe because of, the threadbare, recycled accoutrements, the sense of the place was comfort, even on a pitiful day like this one. She'd worked hard to make it that way. The walls, coated with dozens of layers of paint, going back to Teddy Roosevelt's era, were a cream shade. For decorations: a silk flower arrangement from a Chelsea crafts fair, an autumn wreath from the Union Square farmers' market, art too. She had paintings and sketches, some original and some prints, all of scenes that had resonated with her personally, horses, farms, rocky streams, still lifes. No idea why they appealed. But she'd known instantly that they did and she'd bought them if there was any way she could spare the cash. Some alpaca yarn hangings, colorful rectangles. Laurel had taken up knitting a few years ago but couldn't find the time or the inclination to complete the scarves for friends' nieces.

  What now? she thought.

  What now...

  The teakettle's whistle was blowing. Had been blowing. Shrill. She was suddenly aware of it. She went into the small space and put a rose hip bag in the mug--navy blue on the outside, white in, matching her outfit, she realized. She should change.

  Later.

  Laurel stared at the kettle for a full minute. Shut off the heat but did not pour the boiling liquid. She returned to the couch.

  What now?

  This was the worst of all possible outcomes. If she'd won the convictions of Metzger and Barry Shales, well, that would have made her world. It would have made her life. There was no way to describe the importance that this case had taken on for her. She remembered in law school being mesmerized by the stories of the greats of the legal system in America--the lawyers, prosecutors and judges. Clarence Darrow, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin Cardozo, Earl Warren...so many, many others. Louis D. Brandeis she thought of often.

  The federal Constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments...

  There was nothing as marvelous as the machine of justice and she wanted so badly to be a part of it, to make her own imprint on American law.

  Her proudest day was law school graduation. She remembered looking out over the audience. Her father had been alone. This was because her mother was arguing a case before the Court of Appeals in Albany--the highest state appellate court--trying to get a homeless man's murder conviction reversed.

  Laurel couldn't describe how honored she was that the woman wasn't present that day.

  The Moreno case was to be her way of validating sacrifices like those. Okay, and of making a name for herself too. Amelia had nailed it right when she'd sussed out the political career track. The ambition remained even if her name ultimately decorated no ballot.

  Yet even a loss at the Metzger trial would have succeeded in a way. NIOS's Kill Room would have been exposed. That might have been enough to sink the assassination program forever. The hungry media and more-starved congressmen would have been all over NIOS like flies.

  She'd have been sacrificed--her career would have ended--but at least she would have made sure the truth of Metzger's crimes came out.

  But now, this? Her boss pulling the case? No, there was nothing good to come of that.

  She supposed the whistleblower had vanished and there would be no more identification of other victims in the queue. Sorry, Mr. Rashid.

  What was in her future? Laurel laughed at the question. Returned to the kitchen and this time actually brewed a cup of tea. Adding two sugars on the grounds that rose hips were tart. The future, right: an unemployment period she'd spend with Seinfeld reruns and dining on one then what the hell a second Lean Cuisine. One glass of Kendall-Jackson too many. Computer chess. Then interviews. Then a job at a big Wall Street firm.

  Her heart sank.

  She now thought of David, as she often did. Always did. "The thing is, look, you're pushing me for an answer, Nance. Okay, I'll tell you. It's you're kind of a schoolmarm. You know what I mean? I can't live up to that. You want everything perfect, everything right. You correct, you find fault. There, sorry. I didn't want to say it. You made me."

  Forget him.

  You've got your career.

  Except you don't.

  On her bookshelf--half law books, half novels, one cookbook--was a picture of her and David. Both smiling.

  Below that was a boxed chess set, wood, not plastic.

  Throw it out, she told herself.

  I will.

  Not yet.

  All right. Enough of that. Self-pity was what she saw in the most depraved of sex perverts and murderers and she wasn't going to allow it to seep into her soul. You've still got your caseload. Get to work. She--

  A noise in the hallway.

  A tap, a click, a faint thud.

  Then nothing.

  Mrs. Parsons dropping her shopping bag. Mr. Lefkowitz juggling toy poodle and cane.

  She stared at the TV, then at the microwave, then at the bedroom.

  Get out the fucking brief in State v. Gonzalez and start editing.

  Laurel jumped when the doorbell rang.

  She walked to the door. "Who is it?"

  "Detective Flaherty, NYPD."

  Never heard of him but Manhattan boasted a cop population in the thousands. Laurel peered through the peephole. A white guy, thirties, slim, a suit. He was holding his ID open, though all she could see was a glint of badge.

  "How'd you get inside?" she called.

  "Somebody was leaving. I rang your buzzer but nobody answered. I was going to leave a note but thought I'd try anyway."

  So the bell was out again.

  "Okay, just a minute." She opened the chain and the dead-bolt latch, pulling open the door.

  And only then did Nance Laurel think, as the man stepped forward, that she probably should have had him slip his ID under the door so she could read it.

  But why worry? The case is over with. I'm no threat to anyone.

  CHAPTER 75

  BARRY SHALES WASN'T A LARGE MAN.

  "Compact" was how he was often described.

  And his job was sedentary, sitting before flat-screen panels, hands on the joysticks of UAVs, the computer keyboard before him.

  But he lifted free weights--because he enjoyed working out.

  He jogged--because he enjoyed jogging.

  And the former air force captain held the opinion, wholly unsupported, that the more you liked working out the better your muscles responded
.

  So when he pushed past an alarmed Ruth, the guard dog of a personal assistant, into Shreve Metzger's office and drew back an arm and slugged his boss, the skinny man stumbled and went down hard.

  The head of NIOS dropped to one knee, arms flailing. Files slid off the desk from trying to catch himself.

  Shales strode forward, arm drawn back again, but hesitated. The one blow was enough to deflate the anger that had been growing since he'd seen the impromptu soccer match between the task he'd been ordered to blast into molecules and a teenage boy in the courtyard of the safe house in a dingy Mexican suburb.

  He lowered his fist, stepped back. But he felt no inclination to help Metzger up and he crossed his arms and watched coldly as the shaken man pressed a hand to his cheek and clumsily rose, collecting the files that had fallen. Shales noted that several manila binders sported a classified stamp that he was not familiar with despite his stratospheric security clearance.

  He noted too that Metzger's first concern at the moment wasn't the injury but securing the secret files.

  "Barry...Barry." He looked behind Shales and shook his head. Ruth, shocked, hovered, not unlike a drone herself. Metzger smiled at her and pointed to the door. She hesitated then stepped out, closing it.

  The man's smile vanished.

  Shales walked to the window, breathing deeply. He glanced down to see the fake Maersk container in NIOS's parking lot. A look at the Ground Control Station from which he'd very nearly killed at least three innocent civilians minutes ago re-ignited his anger.

  He turned back to Metzger. But the director didn't cower or beg. He gave no response, physical or verbal, except to touch his cheek again and peruse the smear of red on his finger and thumb.

  "Did you know?" Shales asked.

  "About the collateral in Reynosa? No." As NIOS head, he would have followed the attack in real time. "Of course not."

  "I'd launched, Shreve. The Hellfire was in the air! What do you think about that? We were ten seconds away from murdering a young boy and girl and a woman who was probably their mother. And who the hell else was inside, as well?"

  "You saw the documentation with the STO. The surveillance program we put in place for Rashid was totally robust. We had DEA and Mexican federal surveillance reports--twenty-four/seven. Nobody had gone inside or come out for a week. Who holes up for seven days, Barry? You ever hear of that? I never have." Metzger sat down. "Hell, Barry, we're not God. We do what we can. My ass was on the line too, you know. If anybody else'd died, it would have been the end of my career. Probably NIOS too."