My little butcher man…
Sachs backed away, crouching in a street-fighter knife-fight pose.
Swann assessed the damage. The blade had cut to bone between his thumb and index finger. It hurt like hell but the wound was essentially superficial. The tendons were intact.
He quickly drew the Kai Shun and went into a stance similar to hers. There was, however, no real contest. He had killed two dozen people with a blade. She was probably a great shot, but this wasn’t her primary weapon. Swann eased forward, his knife edge-up as if he were going to gut a hanging deer carcass.
Feeling comfort in the handle of the Kai Shun, the weight, the dull gleam, the hammered blade.
He started for her fast, aiming low, imagining the slice, belly to breastbone…
But she wasn’t leaping back or turning and fleeing, as he’d anticipated. She stood her ground. Her weapon too—Italian, he believed—was positioned edge-up. Her eyes flicked confidently among the blade, his eyes and various targets on his body.
He stopped, backed up a few feet and regrouped, flicking hot blood from his left hand. Then moving in fast once more, he feinted with a lunge but she anticipated that and easily avoided the Kai Shun, swinging the switchblade fast and nearly taking skin from his cheek. She knew what she was doing, and—more troubling—there wasn’t an iota of uncertainty in her eyes, though evidence of the pain was clear.
Make her work her leg. That’s her weakness.
He lunged again and again, not actually trying to stab or slash but driving her back, forcing her to shift her weight, wear down the joints.
And then she made a mistake.
Sachs stepped back a few yards, turned the knife around, gripping the blade. She prepared to throw it.
“Drop it,” she called, coughing frantically, wiping tears with her other hand. “Get down on the floor.”
Swann eyed her cautiously through the smoke, watching the weapon closely. Throwing knives is a very difficult skill to master and works only when there’s good visibility and you have a properly balanced weapon—and you’ve practiced hundreds of hours. And even striking the target directly usually results in a minor wound. Despite the movies, Jacob Swann doubted that anybody had ever died from being struck by a thrown knife. Blade killing works only by slashing important blood vessels, and even then death takes time.
“Do it now!” she shouted. “On the ground.”
Still, a flying blade can distract and a lucky hit can hurt like hell and possibly take out an eye. So, as she jockeyed to get the distance right, Jacob Swann kept moving side to side and crouching further to make himself a small, evasive target.
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
A pause. No flicker in her eyes.
She flung the switchblade.
He squinted and ducked.
But the throw was wide. The knife hit a china cabinet two feet from Swann and shattered a small pane. A plate inside, on a display rack, fell and broke. He was instantly back in stance, but—another mistake—she didn’t follow through.
He relaxed and turned back to face her, as she stood leaning forward, arms at her sides, breathing hard, coughing.
She was his now. He’d get the Glock, negotiate some kind of escape. They could use the chopper for a ride out, of course.
He whispered, “Okay, what you’re going to do is—”
He felt the muzzle of a pistol pressing against his temple. His eyes shifted to the side.
The young officer, Ron apparently, had returned. No, no…Swann understood. He’d never left at all. He’d been making his way through the smoke, carefully seeking a target.
She’d never been planning to skewer him with the switchblade at all. She was just buying time and talking, to guide the cop here through the smoke. She’d never intended Ron to leave. Her words earlier meant just the opposite and he’d understood completely.
“Now,” the young man said ominously. “Drop it.” Swann knew he was fully prepared to send a bullet into his brain.
He looked for a place where the Kai Shun wouldn’t get dented or chipped. He tossed it carefully onto the couch.
Sachs eased forward, still wincing, and retrieved it. She noted the blade with some appreciation. The young cop cuffed Swann, and Sachs strode forward, gripped the Nomex hood and yanked it off him.
CHAPTER 89
THE DISABLED-ACCESSIBLE VAN wove through the emergency vehicles and parked at the curb near Spencer Boston’s house. Lincoln Rhyme had been at the staging area a few blocks away. Given his inability to wield a weapon, as he’d learned in the Bahamas, Rhyme thought it best to remain clear of the potential battlefield.
Which, of course, Thom would have insisted on anyway.
Old mother hen.
In a few minutes he was freed from the vehicle and he wheeled his new chair, which he quite liked, up to Amelia Sachs.
Rhyme regarded her with some scrutiny. She was in pain, though trying to cover. But her discomfort was obvious to him.
“Where’s Ron?”
“Walking the grid in the house.”
Rhyme grimaced as he looked at the smoldering trees and boxwood and the smoke trickling out of the expensive Colonial. Fire department fans had largely exhausted the worst of the fumes. “Didn’t anticipate a diversionary charge, Sachs. Sorry.”
He was furious with himself for not considering it. He should have known Unsub 516 would try something like that.
Sachs said only, “Still, you came up with a good plan, Rhyme.”
“Well, had the desired result,” he conceded with some, but not too much, modesty.
The criminalist had never suspected Spencer Boston of anything more than leaking the STO order. True, as Sachs had pointed out, both Boston and Moreno had a Panama connection. But even if Boston had been involved in the invasion, Moreno was just a boy then. They couldn’t have known each other. No, Panama was just a coincidence.
But Rhyme had decided that Metzger’s administrations director would make excellent bait, because whoever was behind the plot—the unsub’s boss—would want to kill the whistleblower too.
This was the help he’d enlisted Shreve Metzger for. Ever since he’d learned of the investigation last weekend, Metzger had been contacting everyone involved in the STO drone project and telling them to stonewall and dump evidence. These encrypted texts, emails and phone calls were sent to people within NIOS but also to private contractors, military personnel and Washington officials. This was how Unsub 516’s boss had known so much about the case. Metzger had been feeding everyone virtually real-time intelligence about what was going on, so passionate was he about keeping the STO program going. The boss, in turn, briefed the unsub.
But who exactly was that person?
At Rhyme’s insistence, Metzger had called these same people an hour ago and told them the whistleblower had been identified as Spencer Boston and they should destroy any evidence linking them to the man.
Rhyme suspected that the mastermind behind the plot to kill Moreno’s guard would order Unsub 516 to show up in Glen Cove to eliminate Boston.
So the administrations director, along with Sachs and Pulaski, waited inside. NYPD and Nassau County tactical forces took up hidden positions nearby, a helicopter from Emergency Service included. The noisy wood chipper, to cover up the sound of the aircraft, had been Ron Pulaski’s idea.
The kid was on a roll.
Rhyme now looked over Unsub 516, sitting shackled and cuffed on the front lawn of Boston’s house, about thirty feet away. His hand was bandaged but the wound didn’t seem to be too serious. The compact man gazed back at the authorities placidly, then turned his full attention to what seemed to be an herb garden nearby.
Rhyme said to Sachs, “Wonder how much work it’ll be to find out who he’s working for. I don’t suppose he’ll be very cooperative in naming the mastermind.”
“He doesn’t need to be,” Sachs said. “I know who he works for.”
“You do?” Rhyme asked.
The criminalist laughed. “How do you know that?”
She nodded at the unsub. “When I went out to the company to look for the airstrip? He’s the one who came to get me in the waiting room and took me to see Walker. By the way, he was really a flirt.”
CHAPTER 90
HIS NAME WAS JACOB SWANN, the security director for Walker Defense Systems.
Swann was former military but had been drummed out—if that was what they still called it—for excessive interrogation of suspects in Iraq. Not waterboarding but removing skin from several insurgents. Some other body parts had been removed too. “Expertly and slowly,” the report said.
Further datamining revealed that he lived alone in Brooklyn, bought expensive kitchen items and took himself to fine restaurants frequently. He’d had two emergency room visits in the last year. One was for a gunshot wound, which he claimed was inflicted by an unseen hunter when he was out after some venison. The second was for a bad cut on his finger, which he attributed to a knife slipping off a Vidalia onion when he was preparing a dish.
The first would have been a lie, the second probably true, Rhyme guessed, considering what they now knew was Swann’s hobby.
Combine those ingredients with caviar and vanilla and you have a real expensive dish that’s served at the Patchwork Goose…
A car pulled up near the police tape, an older-model Honda in need of some bodywork.
Nance Laurel, in her white blouse and navy suit, cut the same as her gray one, climbed out. She was rubbing her cheek and Rhyme wondered if she’d just applied more makeup. The assistant district attorney approached and asked if Sachs was all right.
“Fine. Little tussle. But he got the worst of it.” A nod at Swann. “He’s been read his rights. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer but he’s not being cooperative.”
“We’ll see about that,” Laurel said. “Let’s talk to him. I may need your help, Lincoln. We’ll bring him over here.”
“Not necessary.” He glanced down at the Merits wheelchair. “They tell me it’s particularly good on rough terrain. Let’s find out.”
Without a hesitation the chair sped over the lawn straight to the perp.
Nance Laurel and Sachs joined him. The ADA looked down at Swann. “My name is—”
“I know who you are.”
One of her trademarked pauses. “Now, Jacob, we know Harry Walker’s behind this. He had you plant fake intelligence to trick NIOS into assassinating Robert Moreno as a cover so you could kill his guard, Simon Flores, who was blackmailing Walker. You were at the South Cove Inn when it happened, waiting for the drone strike. Just afterward, before the rescue workers got there, you broke into suite twelve hundred and stabbed Flores and Eduardo de la Rua to death. Then you went to Flores’s lawyer’s office in Nassau and tortured and killed him, stole the documents Flores had left for safekeeping—the documents Walker was worried would be made public.
“After my investigation started, Metzger gave Walker updates and names—to destroy evidence and be on guard against the police running the case. But Walker told you to do more than that—to eliminate witnesses and the investigators. You killed Annette Bodel, Lydia Foster and Moreno’s driver, Vlad Nikolov—” Laurel glanced toward Sachs and Rhyme. “Officers in Queens found his body in the basement of his house.”
Swann merely looked down at his bandaged hand and said nothing.
The prosecutor continued, “You also arranged with some associates in Nassau to kill Captain Rhyme and others working with him down there… And then there was this.” She offered a nod around the marred suburban landscape, resembling a combat zone.
The depth of this information, laid out so unemotionally by Nance Laurel, must have taken Swann by surprise but he hesitated only a moment then said in a calm voice, “First of all, as for this incident…” He nodded at Boston’s house. “Regarding the weapons, all three of us have Class Three federal firearms licenses and concealed-carry permits valid in the state of New York. Now, in my job at Walker Defense, I’m involved in national security. We came here on a tip that Spencer Boston represented a dangerous security leak. My associates and I were simply going to check that out and discuss the matter with him. Next thing I know, tactical troops were threatening us. They claimed they were NYPD but how was I supposed to know? Not a single person offered me their identification.”
Amelia Sachs actually laughed at this.
Laurel asked, “Do you expect me to believe that?”
“Ah, the important question, Ms. Laurel, is will a jury believe it? And I suspect they might. And as for those other crimes you mentioned? All speculation. I guarantee you don’t have anything on me.”
The prosecutor looked at Rhyme, who wheeled up closer. He realized that Swann was intensely studying his insensate legs and left arm. He was truly curious but Rhyme had no idea what he was thinking or what the purpose for the examination was.
The criminalist, in turn, looked the suspect up and down and smiled as he often did at the arrogance of perps. “Don’t have anything, don’t have anything.” Musing thoughtfully. “Oh, I think maybe we do, Jacob. Now, I don’t care much for motives, but we have a couple of good ones here, I have to admit. You killed Lydia Foster—and wanted to kill Moreno’s driver—because you thought the subject would come up of why Simon Flores wasn’t accompanying Moreno on the trip. And that would make us wonder why he wasn’t here too. And your motive for killing Annette Bodel was that she could place you at the scene in the Bahamas when the shooting happened.”
Swann gave a blink but recovered quickly and simply cocked his head in curiosity.
Rhyme paid him no mind and addressed the sky. “Now, for more objective evidence: We have a short brown hair from the Lydia Foster crime scene.” He glanced at Swann’s scalp. “We can do a mandatory DNA swab and I’m sure it will match. Oh, and we’re still working on tracing that silver necklace you bought Annette Bodel—to attract the barracuda to hide the fact you’d tortured and killed her. I’m sure somebody will have seen you buy it.”
This opened Swann’s mouth slightly. A tongue touched the corner of his lips.
“And we found some allspice and hot sauce on the clothing of Eduardo de la Rua. I thought that was from his breakfast the morning of May ninth. But knowing your affinity for the culinary arts, I wonder if you’d been cooking the night before you killed him. Maybe you made dinner for Annette. It’ll be interesting to examine your suitcase and clothing and see if there’s associated trace.
“And speaking of food: We found some trace in two locations in New York: combine them and apparently you end up with a very interesting dish involving artichoke, licorice, fish roe and vanilla. Did you happen to see the recent recipe in the New York Times? I understand the Patchwork Goose is quite the restaurant. And you should know that I have an expert witness to testify about the food.”
Rhyme knew Thom would love being thus described.
Swann was completely silent now. In fact, he seemed numb.
“Now, we’re looking into whether you had access to a particular type of military IED, which was used at the Java Hut. And saltwater-laced sand was found both there and at Annette Bodel’s apartment in Nassau. We’ll subpoena your clothes and shoes and see if you happen to have any grains left on them. Your washing machine too. Hm, do we have anything else?”
Sachs said, “The two-stroke oil trace.”
“Ah, yes, thank you, Sachs. You left some two-stroke oil trace at one of the scenes and I’m sure we’ll find the same fuel mixture in your office at Walker Defense or at Homestead Air Reserve Base, if you were there before or after the attack on May 9. Thanks particularly for that find, by the way—the oil; that’s how we figured out that NIOS was using drones, not flesh-and-blood snipers. Excuse me, UAVs.
“But, I digress. Now, that interesting blade of yours…” Rhyme had seen the evidence bag containing the Japanese chef’s knife. “We’ll match its tool mark profile wit
h wounds on the bodies of Lydia Foster, de la Rua, Flores and the lawyer in the Bahamas. Oh, and the limo driver too.
“More? Okay. We’re datamining your credit card, ATM withdrawals and mobile phone usage.” He took a breath. “And we’re subpoenaing the Walker Defense Technical Services and Support operation to see whom they’ve been datamining and spying on. Now, that pretty much wraps up my formal presentation. Prosecutor Laurel?”
A trademark pause, which by now Rhyme found rather charming. She then said in an at-attention tone, “Do you see where we’re going with this, Jacob? We need you to testify against Harry Walker. If you do that we’ll work something out.”
“What does that mean, ‘work something out’? How many years?”
“Obviously I can’t say for certain but probably we’re looking at thirty.”
“Not much in it for me, then, is there?” he asked, gazing back at her coolly.
She replied, “The alternative is I don’t fight extradition to the Bahamas. And you spend the rest of your life in one of their prisons.”
That seemed to bring Swann up short. Still he remained silent.
This wasn’t, technically, Rhyme’s concern. But he felt he should contribute. “And who knows, Jacob?” Rhyme said, an amused tone in his voice. “Maybe ADA Laurel here might see if you could get a spot in the kitchen in whatever facility you’re sent to.” He shrugged. “Just a thought.”
Laurel nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
Swann looked over the smoke-damaged house of Spencer Boston. Then turned back. “When do you want to talk?”
Nance’s response was to dig into her pocketbook and extract a battered tape recorder.
CHAPTER 91
BUSINESS ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE, the arms business, I mean,” Swann was telling them. “Walker Defense was having problems, bad problems, with the wars winding down.”
Sachs said to Rhyme, “That’s right. A lot of the factory facilities were shuttered when I was there.”
“Yes, ma’am. Lost sixty percent of our revenue and the company was in the red. Mr. Walker was used to a nice lifestyle. A couple of his ex-wives were too. Along with his present one and she was thirty years younger than him. Without a good income she might not’ve been too inclined to hang around.”
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