“Turning green.”
“Right. And that leads to our final contact from The Serpent. This video. Again, no one was actually hurt. Think about it: If The Serpent really meant business, wouldn’t he beat your mother up a little first? Wouldn’t he cut off a body part or bruise her face or inflict some real pain? It would make the video a hundred percent more scary and therefore a thousand percent more effective. It would tell you, beyond a doubt, that The Serpent was a vicious guy ready to do vicious things. But he doesn’t do that. Because, on the inside, he’s still Dr. Bruce Banner, a mild-mannered, very decent human being.”
“Can you please put this in non-superhero terms for me?” Heat asked.
“Yes. This is a bluff. The Serpent is all hiss, no bite.”
“I don’t know, Rook. My mom doesn’t scare easily, and she looked pretty scared.”
“Actually, I’m not so sure that’s true. The video is really the ultimate confirmation that I’m right here.”
“How so?”
“I think it may have been scripted.”
“Scripted? But if it was scripted, that means my mother is . . . cooperating with her captor?”
Rook had started pacing back and forth on the small patch of hotel carpet in front of the bed. “Well, I’m not ready to go quite that far. But I do think their end goals are aligned. In a way, we knew that already. Before she was captured, she had written you that letter. So when the kidnapper is telling her to call you off the case, he’s really only reinforcing something she wants anyway.”
“But that doesn’t mean the video was scripted.”
“I’m not sure you’ll believe that after you have the chance to look at it more carefully, particularly when the sound is off,” Rook replied, slipping into his professorial lecture mode. “With the sound on, it’s too easy to get distracted by the creepiness of that voice, by the words being spoken. But when you mute it, all you have to look at is body language. That’s when you can really see what I’m talking about. Here, let me show you.”
He fiddled with her phone for a moment and got the video cued up to the part where Nikki’s name had just been mentioned, where Cynthia Heat welled up with tears. He hit PLAY and handed the still-muted phone to Nikki, then stood behind her so he could watch along.
To Nikki, it was just the same bad movie all over again, but silent this time. She didn’t know what Rook was possibly seeing on this small screen. Except she could practically feel his excitement rise just before Cynthia began talking.
“There,” he said, pointing. “Right there. See how she leans forward a little bit right before she speaks? It’s like she knows it’s going to be her turn to talk. Her body has this expectation it’s about to deliver a line. How would she know that unless it had been decided ahead of time?”
Nikki kept watching as Cynthia was now sitting still. Rook got excited again, just as Cynthia’s lips began moving.
“There it is again,” he said. “Don’t you see it?”
And, actually, she did. What’s more, she knew, from her theater training, that it was a trait that sometimes had to be drummed out of amateur actors who anticipated a fellow player’s lines ahead of time instead of reacting to them after they were delivered.
“Yeah, I do,” Heat said. “You’re right. It’s like she’s been tipped off.”
Rook, still the professor, was clearly pleased with his student. “So there’s that. There’s also the plane ticket. I mean, really, what kind of bad guy offers you a free trip to the Amalfi Coast? Don’t get me wrong, I like his style. And I know a great restaurant in Amalfi if you want to take him up on his offer. But it’s not exactly consistent with someone who really plans to put a bullet in your mother’s head. A true evildoer wouldn’t bother offering a carrot like that. All he’d worry about is the stick.”
The absurdity of the Hulk analogy aside, Heat realized she actually agreed with Rook.
“Okay, so let’s say this is a bluff,” she said. “How does that affect us moving forward?”
“It doesn’t,” Rook said. “The Serpent is going to keep making his threats. Just ignore him and continue with your investigation.”
“In other words, we call the bluff and pray it really is an empty threat.”
“Exactly.”
Heat took in a deep breath and held it. She had relied on Rook’s hunches many times in the past. Some panned out. Some didn’t.
The difference, this time, was the stakes of being wrong. This wasn’t a murder investigation, where going along with Rook would possibly take her down the wrong path for a little while before she got herself back on the right one.
This was her mother’s life.
And yet she knew Rook was right. There had been something off about The Serpent from the start. Heat still didn’t have an inkling who he was or what his real motivations were. But she ultimately didn’t believe he would kill her mother.
Heat let out the breath. “I hope you’re right about this,” she said.
Rook looked appropriately grim-faced. “So do I.”
TWENTY-SIX
STORM
It was with some regret that Derrick Storm left the Ford Expedition— and its attendant munitions—in short-term parking at Reagan National Airport.
He briefly thought about trying to smuggle the RPG launcher and a few grenades through security, reasonably certain the Transportation Security Administration would miss it if he was clever enough to redirect their attention toward something that would really set off alarm bells—like a 3.6-ounce bottle of shampoo.
But, ultimately, he had friends in the New York area who could outfit him with weapons if the need arose. Besides, he didn’t want to waste the shampoo.
Thus unencumbered, Derrick and Carl Storm managed to grab two seats on the 8 A.M. Delta Shuttle. Fifty-nine minutes later, it touched down at LaGuardia. Another twenty minutes after that, they were in a rental car, headed east on the Grand Central Parkway. Derrick was following GPS instructions for the Dartmouth Street address in Queens his father had furnished him.
“Okay, so who is this guy again?” Derrick asked.
“Albert Gorithem,” Carl said. “You can call him Al.”
“Paul Simon would surely approve.”
“I’m pretty sure Al doesn’t know Paul Simon exists. He’s not exactly hip to the latest fads.”
“Dad, Paul Simon hasn’t been the latest fad for thirty years.”
Carl Storm just grunted.
“Are you sure he’s going to want to see us?” Derrick asked. “You guys parted on good terms?”
“Yeah. The best. We were like this.”
Carl crossed his middle finger over his forefinger.
“And he’ll be able to tackle this CD,” Derrick said, trying to signal his confidence by making it a statement, not a question.
“If anyone can, it would be Al. Back in the day, he was the best there was.”
“So what happened to him?”
“Same thing that happened to all of us,” Carl said. “We got old, obsolete. Then some snot-nosed kid came along and convinced people he could do the job better. Plus Al had some, ah, eccentricities that got the best of him.”
“The no-phone thing?”
“That among other things, yes.”
“We’re not going to find him running around his house in a tinfoil hat, are we?”
Carl paused for what Derrick felt was a little too long before answering. “I don’t think so, but . . .”
“Oh, perfect.”
“Look, this guy is a virtuoso when it comes to cracking encryption, okay? But sometimes if you want to enjoy the art, you need to suffer the artist.”
Derrick was cutting through the heart of the western tip of Long Island with five lanes of barely controlled chaos. Derrick first drove eighty, then forty, then back to eighty. As he did so, he weaved in and out of lanes, cut off other cars, roared through gaps in traffic that appeared inadequate for any wheeled vehicle larger than a tricycle, then left
huge yawning gaps ahead of him.
To Derrick, this was prudent countersurveillance. To most New Yorkers, it was just driving.
As he passed Citi Field, home to New York’s forever second-best professional baseball team, he became aware that one car—a blue midsize sedan with a Mazda logo on its grille—seemed to be shadowing his movements, speeding up when he sped up, lagging back when he laid off the gas. It was staying a few cars back, never in the same lane, trying to be subtle about it. But Derrick’s sensitive nose had sniffed out a potential tail.
The exit for Al Gorithem’s house was coming up quickly. If the blue Mazda sedan was a tail, he didn’t want to lead his pursuers any closer to where he was going. At the same time, there was no better way to confirm that he was being followed than by taking the series of turns that the GPS was telling him came next.
“We might have company,” Derrick said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a blue sedan that seems to really like us.”
“Since when?”
“Since the airport.”
Carl chewed on this for a moment. “You think it’s possible your Shanghai Seven buddies found a way to put another tracking device in you?”
“No. The CIA bug check would have tripped on it. And it’s not like Jones would have told them to leave it in. He doesn’t want anyone, not even someone he’s working with, knowing about the Cubby. The better possibility is that the Shanghai Seven hacked into Delta’s computer system. I’ve seen the nerds do it. They worm their way in and download passenger manifests all the time.”
“So, in that scenario, they could have known what time we were landing and been able to get a few people in place to follow us coming out of LaGuardia.”
“And then, once they see where we’re going, that gives them time to assemble a larger team to take us down,” Derrick finished.
“Then I say lose the guy on surface streets. It shouldn’t be hard to do. You know what Queens is like. Whoever laid out the streets there either had a sense of humor or a bad case of vertigo.”
“Okay, then here goes nothing,” Derrick said.
He took the exit for Al’s place, staying along the Grand Central Parkway’s frontage road for a short time. The blue sedan did the same.
He took a right on 69th Road. So did the Mazda. But so did a lot of other traffic. It was the first main road after the exit.
“Still on us?” Carl asked.
“Still on us,” Derrick confirmed.
“Okay, pull into that drugstore,” Carl said. “Let’s get a look at this guy.”
Derrick complied. The sedan cruised past. It wasn’t a guy. It was a woman, wearing a hijab that covered her hair and neck.
“You think the Shanghai Seven has taken to hiring Muslim women to do their dirty work?” Derrick asked.
“Doubt it.”
“Okay, then let’s call that a false alarm,” Derrick said.
They pulled back out onto 69th Road. The blue Mazda did not reappear. Derrick thought for a while a Toyota 4Runner might have been lurking behind them. Then it fell off and maybe—maybe—a Chrysler 300 had taken up the shadow.
Then Derrick dismissed it all as paranoia. A three-car follow required training, timing, and discipline. It was difficult to pull off without a high-degree of coordination. Even seasoned CIA agents had been known to botch it. They were clear.
After a series of turns, they were soon cruising down Dartmouth Street, which was as tree-lined and pleasant as any street named after that great institution of higher learning ought to have been. Derrick found a spot midway up the block and parallel parked.
On the left side was a row of tidy, well-kept brick houses that had all been built around the same time—likely after World War II, with the generosity of the GI Bill—and had remained more or less identical.
Except for one. Its soffits were decorated by a trio of medieval-looking gargoyles. Its roof had coils of razor wire around the edges. A variety of NO TRESPASSING signs festooned the lawn, which had been xeriscaped to eliminate the need for mowing. There were bars on the doors and windows. The shades were all drawn.
“What makes me think we’ve found the place?” Derrick said.
“I see all that private-eye training hasn’t completely left you,” Carl said. “Now just hang back and let me take the lead. This might get weird.”
* * *
Carl headed up the short concrete walk, climbed a brief set of steps, then rang the doorbell.
Nothing happened. There was no chime, no buzz. Carl pressed the button again, harder this time. But no sound could be heard.
It stood to reason a man who wanted to be left alone would disable his doorbell. So Carl opened the screen door and rapped his knuckles on the narrow opening between the bars that overlaid the door.
Then he knocked again. And again.
“Maybe the guy isn’t home,” Derrick suggested from the sidewalk.
“No. He’s home.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Al is a bit of a shut-in.”
“A bit of a shut-in?”
“Okay, so last I heard he hadn’t left his house since 1998.”
“Oh, Dad . . .” Derrick said.
Carl knocked again. And again. “Al!” he yelled. “Al, it’s me. Carl Storm. From the Bureau.”
More knocking. Nothing.
“I’m just going to keep knocking until you answer,” Carl called out.
To make his point, he pounded on the door ten times in rapid succession.
Finally, from inside, there came a tense, high-pitched “Go away.”
Derrick Storm, meet Albert Gorithem.
“Al, I need your help with something,” Carl said. “Come on, open up.”
“You’re with them. I know you’re with them. Piss off.”
“Who’s them?” Carl asked.
“You know perfectly well. Now go away. You’re not fooling me into opening the door for you.”
Derrick looked at his father with a half grin on his face. “Dad, I know you said you were like this.” He overlapped his middle and pointer fingers. “But to me, that sounds more like this.” He rotated his hand until only his middle finger was protruding from it.
Carl ignored him. “Al, come on, buddy. This is really important. I need an old encryption cracked. You’re the only one who can help us.”
For a brief moment, one of the living room shades parted before immediately being returned to its place.
“It’s got the CIA stumped,” Carl continued, then made the important strategic switch from pleading to challenging. “I guess maybe it would stump you, too.”
Derrick could practically feel Gorithem stirring uncomfortably from the other side of the door.
“There’s a man who always tries to break into my house around this time,” Gorithem said. “He’s incredibly persistent. He comes every day except Sunday. How do I know you’re not working for him?”
“Al, that guy who tries to break into your house every day? That’s the mailman.”
“That’s just his cover. I’m not fooled.”
“Well, look, I’m not him, okay?” Carl said. “Look at me. I know I’ve gotten old, but I’m Carl Storm. Just look at me.”
The shade briefly parted again. “How do I know you’re not just someone who looks like Carl?”
“Oh, fer Chrissakes.”
“June 1996. Minnesota. What case were you working on?”
“Kiddie porn,” Carl said. “You had figured out some of those sickos were swapping images by embedding them in what seemed like innocent chunks of research data. They were trading them back and forth using file transfer protocol. I went to Duluth to bust the guy. He was living in his parents’ attic and doing it all on a server he had made himself. Uh . . . Willis was his name. Vernon Willis.”
For a short while, nothing came from inside. Then: “That case got a lot of publicity. You could have read news accounts about that.”
“A
l, stop being—”
“Seattle. 1986. What case did you close?”
Carl’s dark eyebrows furrowed. He put his hands on his hips. He looked up to the sky.
Finally, he said, “Trick question. I didn’t have a case in Seattle in 1986.”
“Liar! Fraud! Imposter!” Gorithem yelled. “I knew it! The real Carl Storm would have never forgotten the Bessinger kidnapping!”
“Oh, for the love of . . . The Bessinger kidnapping was in eighty-seven, you moron! Klaus Bessinger. His father was the principal violinist in the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and he had been loaned a Stradivarius that was valued at something like half a million bucks. The kidnappers wanted to swap the violin for the kid. We lured the kidnappers in with a violin we borrowed from a local Suzuki teacher named Jennifer Kovarovic. The decoy worked and the kidnapper we caught flipped on his coconspirators after I showed him footage of death by electrocution and promised him that’s what he’d get if he didn’t cooperate.”
Gorithem considered this for a moment. “How do I know you didn’t just study some of Carl Storm’s bigger cases so you’d have answers in case I asked you about them?”
“Oh, Al. Would you cut it out and—”
“My retirement party. What kind of cake did they serve?”
“Another trick question. You didn’t have a retirement party. You stopped leaving your house years before that. We had to mail you the cake. The rumor was you left it on your front porch because you were sure the SAC who sent it had poisoned it.”
“That cake was poisoned. One of the neighborhood dogs eventually got to it and I swear I never saw that dog again.”
Suddenly the front door to the house opened. Standing in the entryway was a thin man of about seventy. His skin was so pale it was practically translucent. His hair was matted on one side—from his pillow, perhaps—and wildly protuberant on the other. He wore black socks and no shoes, plaid shorts, and a blue checked shirt that was open to reveal scraggly chest hair.
“Now hurry!” he said. “That quote-unquote ‘mailman’ could be here any minute.”
Heat Storm (Castle) Page 25
