Sachs frowned. “So he might’ve been the man in the South Cove Inn just before Moreno was shot. Would sand still cling after a week?”
“These were fine grains. Yes, it’s possible. They can be very adhesive.”
“What else did you catch, Mel?”
“Something I’ve never found at a crime scene—1,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid.”
“Which is?”
“Cynarine,” Cooper said, reading from a computer database of chemical substances. “Most commonly it’s the biologically active component of artichokes. It gives them the sweet flavor.”
“And our perp left traces of that?”
“Can’t say for sure but I found some on the doorstep of Java Hut, on the knob and on a fragment of the IED.”
Sachs nodded. Artichokes. Curious but that’s how crime scene work went. Many pieces to the puzzle.
“Nothing else.”
“That’s it for the Java Hut?”
“Yep.”
“So we still don’t know who planted the bomb.”
Then she and Cooper turned to the Lydia Foster scene.
“First,” the tech said, nodding at the photos of her body, “the knife wounds. They look unusual, very narrow. But there’s no database to let us know.”
The United States, home of the National Rifle Association, was the gunshot capital of the world. Death by knife was common in the United Kingdom and other countries with strict gun control laws but in America, with the ubiquity of guns, knives were relatively rare weapons in homicides. So no law enforcement agency had compiled a knife wound computer image database, at least none that Sachs and Rhyme knew about.
Even though she was sure he’d worn gloves, Sachs had still lifted prints from around—and on—Lydia Foster’s corpse. You never knew if a perp might have taken his gloves off at some point. But as with Java Hut, these came back from the automated database negative.
“Didn’t expect anything different,” she muttered. “But I found a hair that didn’t match the samplars. There, in the envelope.” Sachs handed it to the tech. “Brown and short. Might be the perp’s. Remember Corporal Poitier said the man checking out Moreno’s suite the day before the killing had short brown hair. Oh, the follicle’s attached.”
“Good. I’ll get it to CODIS.”
The nationwide DNA database was expanding at an exponential rate. Whoever the hair belonged to might be in the system; if so, they’d have his identity and, possibly, his present whereabouts soon.
Sachs began looking through the rest of the evidence. Though the killer had taken every single document, computer and media storage device that might have mentioned Robert Moreno, she had found something that might be relevant. A Starbucks receipt. The date and time printed at the top indicated the afternoon of May 1. Sachs recalled that this was probably when Moreno had his private meeting, the one Lydia had not attended. It might be possible to identify the office where the activist went.
Tomorrow she’d go to the location—a building on Chambers Street.
Sachs and Cooper went through the rest of the trace from Lydia’s apartment but weren’t able to isolate very much. Cooper ran a sample through the gas chromatograph and looked up toward the women. “Got something here. A plant. It’s Glycyrrhiza glabra—a legume, sort of like a bean or pea. Basically, it’s licorice.”
Sachs said, “Anise or fennel?”
“No, no relation, though the tastes are similar.”
Nance Laurel looked mystified. “You didn’t look anything up. Cynarine, Glycyrrhiza…I’m sorry, but how do you know all this?”
Cooper shoved his black glasses higher on his nose and said, as if it were obvious, “I work for Lincoln Rhyme.”
CHAPTER 45
FINALLY A BREAK: They caught the shooter’s real name.
Captain Myers’s Special Services surveillance team had followed the sniper from NIOS headquarters to his home. He’d gotten off in Carroll Gardens and walked to a house that was owned by Barry and Margaret Shales. A motor vehicle search had returned a picture of Shales. It was clearly the same man whom Sachs had been following that afternoon and taken a picture of with her mobile phone’s camera.
Barry Shales was thirty-nine. Former military—retiring as a captain in the air force and decorated several times. The man was now working civilian as an “intelligence specialist” with NIOS. He and his wife—a teacher—had two children, boys in elementary school. Shales was active in his Presbyterian church and volunteered at the boys’ schools, a reading tutor.
Learning this bio, Sachs was troubled. Most of the perps she and Rhyme pursued were hardened criminals, serial offenders, organized crime bosses, psychotics, terrorists. But this case was different. Shales was probably a devoted civil servant, probably a decent husband and father. Just doing his duty, even if it happened to involve shooting terrorists in cold blood. Upon his arrest and conviction, a family would be destroyed. Metzger might have been using NIOS for his own delusional approach in safeguarding the country and using a specialist for clean-up. But Shales? He might have been just following orders.
Still, even if he hadn’t been the one who’d tortured and killed Lydia Foster, he was part of the organization that possibly had.
Sachs called Lon Sellitto and told him of their discovery. Then she placed a call to Information Services, requesting every fact they could dig up on Barry Shales—most important where he’d been and what he was doing on May 9, the day of the shooting.
The lab phone rang and Sachs, noting the caller ID, hit speaker. “Fred.”
She wasn’t worried that Unsub 516 was tapping this particular phone line; Rodney Szarnek had sent over a device he called a “tap-trap,” which could detect anyone’s listening in. The monitor showed that the conversation was private.
“Amelia. Is it true what I’m hearing? Your friend and mine is sunning himself in the Caribbean.”
His astonishment was so exaggerated that Sachs had to smile. Cooper did too. Nance Laurel did not.
“He sure is, Fred.”
“Why oh why do my assignments take me to the prime vacation spots of the South Bronx and Newark? While Mr. Lincoln Rhyme’s on a beach, courtesy of the city of New York? Where’s the fairness in that? Is he enjoying those sissy drinks with umbrellas and plastic sea horses?”
“I think he’s paying for it himself, Fred. And how do you know they serve drinks down there with plastic sea horses?”
“Busted,” the agent admitted. “The coconut ones, they’re my personal favorites. Now, how’s the case goin’? That homicide on Third Avenue, that was related? Lydia Foster. Saw it on the wire.”
“Afraid it was. We think it’s a clean-up op, probably that Metzger ordered.”
“Fuck,” Dellray spat out. “Man’s gone rogue big time.”
“He sure has.” Sachs told him too that they’d found there were two perps. “We still don’t know which of them set the bomb at the coffee shop.”
“Well, I gotcha a few things you might be interested in.”
“Go ahead. Anything.”
“First off, the mobile your sniper was using—the one registered to Mr. Code Name Don Bruns, with that fake Social Security number and a Delaware corporation? The company’s buried way deep but I traced it to some shell outfits that NIOS’s used in the past. Probably why the phone’s still active. Lotta time the government thinks they’re too smart to get found out. Or too big. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Good. Thanks, Fred.”
“And turns out your friend the late and great Mr. Moreno was not planning to detonate a big bang of mass destruction and move into a cave.”
He explained he was referring to Robert Moreno’s mysterious message about “vanishing into thin air, May twenty-fourth.”
“What was it about?” Sachs asked.
The FBI agent continued, “Was a play on words, seems. What it is: Some of our folk down in Venezuela found out that Moreno and his family were moving into a new house on the twenty-fou
rth.”
He gave them the details: Robert Moreno had bought a four-bedroom home in the Venezuelan city of San Cristóbal, one of the more upscale locales in the country. It was on a mountaintop.
Thin air…
Laurel nodded at his words, obviously pleased. So Moreno might not be the Western Hemisphere’s answer to Bin Laden.
Gotta keep the jury happy, Sachs thought cynically.
The agent continued, “Oh, and the IED attack in Mexico City on May thirteen? Now, this one’s almost funny. The only thing with a Moreno connection on that date in Mexico City was a big fund-raiser for a charity he was involved with. Classrooms for the Americas. Called Balloon Day. Everbody bought a balloon for ten dollars then you popped it and got a prize inside. They had over a thousand balloons. I gotta say, my lungs aren’t up to a task like that.”
Sachs slumped, closing her eyes. Jesus.
Can we find somebody to blow them up?…
“Thanks, Fred.” She disconnected.
Upon hearing these revelations, Laurel said, “Interesting how first impressions can be so completely wrong. Isn’t it?” She didn’t seem to be gloating but Sachs couldn’t tell.
If you don’t mind…
I’m just curious…
Sachs fished out her phone and called Lincoln Rhyme.
His answering words: “I’m thinking we should get a chameleon.”
Not “Hello” or “Sachs.”
“A…lizard?”
“They’re quite interesting. I haven’t seen one change color yet. Do you know how they do it, Sachs? Metachrosis is what it’s called, you know. They use hormonal cell signaling to trigger changes in the chromatophore cells in their skin. I find it truly fascinating. So how’s the case going up there?”
She ran through the developments.
Rhyme considered this. “I suppose that makes sense, two different perps. Metzger isn’t going to use his star sniper in New York to clean up. I should have thought of that.”
I should have too, she reflected sadly. Picturing Lydia Foster’s body.
“Upload a picture of Shales, DMV or military.”
“Sure. I’ll do it when we hang up.” Then in a somber voice she told him in detail about the death of Moreno’s interpreter, Lydia.
“Torture?”
She described the knife work.
“Distinctive technique,” he assessed. “That might be helpful.”
He’d be referring to the fact that perps who use knives or other mechanical weapons, like clubs, tended to leave wounds that were consistent from one victim to another, which can often identify them. She noted too that this detached, clinical comment was his only reaction to the horrific attack.
But this was just Lincoln Rhyme. She knew it; she accepted it. And wondered in passing why the same attitude in Nance Laurel set her so on edge.
She asked, “How’s it going down in the balmy Caribbean?”
“Not making much headway, Sachs. We’re under house arrest.”
“What?”
“One way or the other, it’ll be resolved tomorrow.” He clearly wasn’t going to say any more, maybe concerned that his line was tapped. “I should go. Thom’s making something for dinner. I think it’s ready. And you really should try dark rum sometime. It’s quite good. Made from sugar, you know.”
“I may pass on the rum. There are some unpleasant memories. Though I guess they’re not memories if you can’t remember them.”
“What do you think of the case now, Sachs? You still in the policy and politics camp? Leaving it all to Congress?”
“Nope. Not anymore. One look at the crime scene at Lydia Foster’s convinced me. There’re some real bad sons of bitches involved in this. And they’re going down. Oh, and Rhyme, by the way: If you hear something about an IED blast up here, don’t worry, I’m fine.” She explained about the explosion that took out the computer at the coffee shop, without going into the details of the near miss.
He then said, “It’s rather pleasant down here, Sachs. I’m thinking we might want to come back some time—unofficially.”
“A vacation. Yeah, Rhyme, let’s do it.”
“You couldn’t drive very fast. Traffic’s terrible.”
She said, “I’ve always wanted to try a Jet Ski. And you could go to a beach.”
“I’ve already been in the water,” he told her.
“Seriously?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ll tell you about it later.”
She said, “Miss you.” She disconnected before he had a chance to say the same.
Or not.
Nance Laurel received a call on her own mobile. Sachs was aware of her reacting stiffly as she glanced at caller ID. When she answered, the tone in the ADA’s voice told Sachs immediately that this was a private matter, unrelated to the case. “Well, hi…How are you?”
The woman turned away from Sachs and Cooper, turned as far as she could. But Sachs could still hear. “You need them? I didn’t think you did. I packed them up.”
Odd. Sachs had not thought of the prosecutor as having a personal life. She wore no wedding or engagement ring—very little jewelry at all. Sachs could imagine her vacationing with her mother or sister; Nance Laurel as a wife or lover was hard to picture.
Still coddling her conversation, Laurel said into the phone, “No, no. I know where they are.”
What was that tone?
Sachs realized: She’s vulnerable, defenseless. Whoever she was talking to had some kind of personal power over her. A breakup that isn’t completely broken yet? Probably.
Laurel disconnected, sat for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. And then she rose, picked up her purse. “There’s something I have to take care of.”
Odd to see her so shaken.
Sachs found herself asking, “Anything I can do?”
“No. I’ll see you in the morning. I…I’ll be back in the morning.”
Clutching her briefcase, the prosecutor walked from the parlor and out the front door of the town house. Sachs noted that her workstation remained cluttered, documents shuffled and scattered about—completely the opposite of how she’d left things last night.
As Sachs gazed toward the table, one piece of paper stood out. She walked over and picked it up. She read:
From: Assistant District Attorney Nance Laurel
To: District Attorney Franklin Levine (Manhattan County)
Re: People v. Metzger, et al. Update, Tuesday May 16
In researching leads to the case, I identified the chauffeur with Elite Limousines who drove Robert Moreno throughout the city on May 1. The driver’s name is Atash Farada. There are several things to consider from my research, relevant to this case.
Robert Moreno was accompanied by a woman in her thirties, possibly an escort or prostitute. He might have paid her a “significant” sum of cash. Her given name was “Lydia.”
He and this individual left the driver in his limo at a downtown location for a period of several hours. Farada’s impression was that Moreno did not want him to know where he was going.
The driver offered a motive for Moreno’s anti-American sentiments. A good friend was killed by U.S. troops in the Panama invasion, December 1989.
Sachs was taken aback. The memo was nearly identical to the email she had sent to Laurel earlier, as instructed by the Overseer. Except for a few variations.
From: Detective Amelia Sachs, NYPD
To: Assistant District Attorney Nance Laurel
Re: Moreno Homicide, Update, Tuesday May 16
In researching leads to the case I identified the driver (Atash Farada) with Elite Limo, who drove Robert Moreno throughout the city on May 1. My discussions with him revealed several things of importance to the investigation:
Moreno was accompanied by a woman in her thirties possibly an escort or prostitute. I considered too whether or not she was a terrorist or other operative. He might have paid her a “significant” sum of cash. Her first name was Lydia.
He and the
woman left the driver in a downtown location for a period of time. Driver’s impression was that Moreno did not want him to know where he and Lydia were going.
Driver suggested motive for anti-American activity. Good friend was killed in Panama invasion.
Laurel stole my work.
And not only that but she had to fucking edit it too.
Sachs went through the half dozen other memos that she’d dutifully written and sent to the ADA.
If you don’t mind…
Well, Sachs did mind—because they were all doctored to make it sound like Laurel had done the research. In fact, Sachs’s name didn’t appear on a single piece of paper. Rhyme’s was prominently featured but Sachs was virtually cut out of the investigation altogether.
Goddamn it. What was this about?
Looking for answers, she dug through the stacks. Many of the documents were copies of court opinions and legal briefs.
But one at the bottom was different.
And it explained a great deal.
Sachs glanced at Mel Cooper, who was hunched over a microscope. He hadn’t seen her pilfering Laurel’s paperwork. Sachs took the document she’d just uncovered and photocopied it, slipping the sheet into her purse. She returned the original to Laurel’s workstation and was very careful to put it back exactly where she’d found it. Even though the space seemed cluttered, Sachs wouldn’t have been surprised if the prosecutor had memorized the position of every paper—and paper clip—before leaving.
Sachs wanted to be sure the woman had no idea she’d been busted.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 17
IV
SLICE
CHAPTER 46
CAPTAIN RHYME, YOU ARE FEELING BETTER?”
After a suitable pause: “I am,” he told Royal Bahamas Police Force assistant commissioner McPherson. “Thank you for asking. We’re packed and will be en route to the airport shortly.” Rhyme’s mobile was on speaker.
Lincoln Rhyme 10 - The Kill Room Page 22
