More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

by Jeffery Deaver

  “No, we just went right to bed.”

  Sachs asked, “How could the killer have found out you’d be there last night?”

  “It was in the papers. We were here for several fund-raisers and to meet with the heads of other philanthropic foundations. The Times had an article on it, I think.”

  Sellitto asked, “You have any thoughts about why he might’ve been killed?”

  Her hands were knotted together. Rhyme wondered if she was going to break down. She took a breath and said, “I know he had enemies. When he was in Africa or the Far East he had a security detail. But here… I don’t know. It was all so new to me…. You might want to talk to his brother. I spoke to him this morning. He’s flying back from Kenya with his wife now. They’ll be here tonight. Or if you want to talk to somebody now, you could call Bob Kelsey. He was Ron’s right-hand man in the foundation. He’s pretty upset but he’d want to help.”

  And with that her voice stopped working. She choked and began to sob.

  Sachs looked at Rhyme, who nodded.

  She said, “That’s all, Kitty. We don’t want to keep you any longer.”

  Finally she controlled herself.

  Thom walked into the room and gave her a Kleenex. She thanked him and wiped her face.

  “Now,” Lon Sellitto said, “we’re going to have someone keep an eye on you.”

  Kitty shook her head and gave a faint laugh. “I know I’m a little shaky. But I’ll be okay. I just… It’s all so overwhelming. I’ll stay with Ron’s brother when they get back. And I have family in the area too. Oh, and Ron’s son and his wife are flying back from China.” A deep breath. “That was the hardest call. His son.”

  “Well, Mrs. Larkin, I’m talking about a bodyguard.”

  “A… guard? Why?”

  Sachs said, “You’re a material witness. He tried to kill you too. There’s a chance he might try again.”

  “But I didn’t see anything, really.”

  Rhyme pointed out, “He doesn’t know that.”

  The policewoman said, “And there’s more to being a material witness than identifying the perp. You could testify as to the time the incident occurred, the sound of the shots, where he was standing, how he stood, how he held the gun. All those things can help convict him.”

  “Well, we have security people in the company.”

  Sellitto said, “Probably better to stick with a police officer, you know.”

  “I guess… Sure. I just can’t imagine anybody’d go to the trouble to hurt me. “

  Rhyme noticed Lon Sellitto trying to put a good front on. “Hey,” the rumpled detective said, “the odds’re a thousand to one against it. But, you know, why not be on the safe side?”

  * * *

  A burly man stood at the window of the little-used kitchen in his house in New Jersey. His back was to the view — not a bad one: skyline of Manhattan — and he was watching a small, flat-screen TV in the living room.

  “I’m watching it right now, Captain.”

  It had been some years since Carter had been a soldier — he was now a “security consultant,” which was as good a job description as any — but after all the military training he felt most comfortable addressing people by rank. He himself was simply Carter. To the people who hired him, to the people he worked with. Carter.

  On the TV a commentator was mentioning that Ronald Larkin’s wife had survived the attack. She was described as a material witness.

  “Hmm.” Carter grunted.

  When Carter was overseas on his “security” assignments, he often relied on journalists for information. He was amazed at how much sensitive material they gave away, in exchange for what he told them — which was usually just a bunch of crap.

  A second newscaster came on and the story turned into one about all the good done by the Larkin Foundation, how much money it gave away.

  Carter had been involved with a lot of really rich people. Only a couple of sheiks in the Mideast had as much money as Ronald Larkin, he believed.

  Oh, there was that French businessman…

  But, like Larkin, he wasn’t rich anymore. He was dead.

  “Larkin had come to town to meet with executives from other nonprofits about merging their organizations into a super-charity to consolidate their efforts in Africa, where famine and illness are rampant. And now let’s go to our correspondent in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, where…”

  Yadda, yadda, yadda. Carter shut the set off, the remote a tiny thing in his massive hand.

  Carter was then listening carefully to the captain, who was pretty troubled.

  After a moment of silence, Carter said, “I’ll take care of it, Captain. I’ll make sure it gets done right.”

  After he hung up, Carter walked into his bedroom and looked through the closet, where he found a business suit. He started to pull on the navy-blue trousers but then stopped. He replaced the suit in the closet and picked one that was a size 48. It was much easier to carry a gun inconspicuously when you wore a suit that was one size too large.

  Ten minutes later he was in his forest-green Jeep Cherokee, heading toward Manhattan.

  * * *

  Robert Kelsey, a balding, fit businessman, was the operations director for the Larkin Foundation, which meant his job was to give away about three billion dollars a year.

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  Rhyme agreed, after the man explained: government regulations, tax laws, Washington politics, Third World politics and, perhaps the most daunting of all, fielding requests from the thousands of people and organizations who came to you, needing money for their heartbreaking causes — people you had to send away empty-handed.

  The man was on the same couch as Kitty Larkin an hour before. He too had that distracted, disheveled air of someone wakened early with tragic news and was as yet unable to fully absorb it.

  “We’ve got some evidence, a few leads,” Lon Sellitto said, “but we don’t have a clear motive yet. You have any ideas who’d want him dead? Mrs. Larkin didn’t have any thoughts on that.”

  Lincoln Rhyme was rarely interested in a suspect’s motives — he considered them to be the weakest leg of a case. (Evidence was, of course, to him strongest.) Still, obvious motives can point you in the direction of good evidence that will get a conviction.

  “Who’d want him dead?” Kelsey repeated with a grim smile. “For a man who gave away billions to kids who were starving or sick, you’d be amazed at how many enemies he had. But I’ll try to give you an idea. Our big drives for the past couple of years have been getting food and HIV drugs to Africa and funding for education in Asia and Latin America. The hardest place to work has been Africa. Darfur, Rwanda, the Congo, Somalia…. Ron refused to give money directly to the government. It’d just disappear into the pockets of the local officials. So what we do is buy the food here or in Europe and ship it to where it’s needed. Same with the medicine. Not that that cuts out corruption. The minute a ship docks, there’ll be somebody with a gun helping himself to your rice or wheat. The baby formula’s stolen and either sold or used to cut drugs. And the HIV medicine’s transferred into new bottles and sold across the borders to people with money to pay the going rate. The sick ones it was intended for get watered-down versions. Or sometimes just water.”

  “That bad?” Sellitto asked. “Jesus.”

  “Oh, yeah. We lose fifteen, twenty percent a year of our African donations to theft and hijacking. Tens of millions. And we’re luckier than most charities over there…. That’s why Ron was so unpopular. He insists that we control the distribution of the food and medicine over there. We cut deals with the best local organizations who’d get the job done. Sometimes those groups, like Liberian Relief, are allied with the opposition political parties. So, right there, that means he’s a threat to the government in power.

  “Then there’re other regions where the government’s legit and he distributes through them. Which makes him a threat to the opposition party. Then ther
e’re the warlords. And the fundamentalist Islamic groups who don’t want any Western aid at all. And the armies and militias who want people famished because they use hunger as a tool… Oh, it’s a nightmare.”

  Kelsey gave a bitter laugh. “Then anti-U.S. countries around the world: the Arab bloc, Iran and Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia in the Far East…. The foundation’s private, of course, but over there they see us as an arm of Washington. And, in a way, we are. Oh, and that’s just overseas. Now, let’s talk about America.”

  “Here?” Sachs asked. “He had enemies here?”

  “Oh, yeah. You think the business of charity is filled with saints? Guess again. My background was corporate accounting, and I’ll tell you that the most ruthless corporate raiders are nothing compared to the CEO’s of a charity. Ron bought the food from a half-dozen suppliers here and in Europe. I can’t tell you how many tons of rotten rice and corn they tried to sell us. Ron reported a half-dozen of them to the FDA.

  “Then some executives seem to think charity begins at home. One organization wanted to work with us and Ron found out that the head was getting a salary of five hundred thousand a year and flew around the country in a private jet that was paid for by the endowment.

  “Ron dropped them cold, called up the Times and gave them the story. The CEO was fired the next day.”

  Kelsey realized he was getting worked up. “Sorry. It’s hard to do good nowadays. And, now, with him gone? It’s going to be that much harder.”

  “What about Larkin’s personal life?”

  “His first wife died ten years ago,” Kelsey said. “He has a grown son who’s involved in energy joint ventures in China. They had a very good relationship. He’ll be devastated by this.”

  “What about his new wife?”

  “Oh, Kitty? She was good for him, and she loved him too. See, she’s got money of her own — her father had a textile business or something. Ron’d meet a lot of women who were just after one thing, you can imagine. It was hard for him. But she was genuine.”

  “His brother?” Sellitto asked.

  “Peter? What about…? Oh, you mean, could he have been involved in his death?” A laugh. “No, no, impossible. They were very close. He’s successful too. Has his own company. Not as rich as Ron, but I’m talking thirty billion instead of a hundred. He didn’t need any money. Besides, they had the same values, worked hard for the foundation. It was Ron’s full-time job, but Peter still put in twenty, thirty hours a week, on top of his full schedule as CEO of his own company.”

  Sellitto then asked for a specific list of people who might have a grudge against Ron Larkin — from all of the categories Kelsey had mentioned. He wrote for some time.

  Kelsey handed Sellitto the sheet and said he’d try to think of anyone else. The man, looking dazed, said good-bye and left.

  Mel Cooper came out of the lab flexing his hands.

  “How’s the mission?” Rhyme asked.

  “Do you know how many knots there were?”

  “Twenty-four,” Rhyme said. “And I noted the tense of the verb. You’re finished.”

  “I think I have carpal tunnel. But we were successful.”

  “You find his business card?”

  “Maybe something just as good. A husk. A very small husk.”

  “Of what?”

  “Rice.”

  Rhyme nodded, pursing his lips. And Sachs said exactly what he was thinking: “Shipments of food that the foundation sent to Africa? So the shooter might’ve been recruited there.”

  “Or by somebody who owns a farm. Or sells rice. The one who sold the rotten shipments maybe.”

  “And the marine diesel oil,” Mel Cooper said, nodding at the chart. “Cargo ships.”

  Sachs added the entry to their chart.

  “Let’s look over the list that Kelsey made for us.”

  Sachs taped the page on a whiteboard.

  “The usual suspects?” Rhyme snorted a cold laugh. “Typical homicides have, what? Four or five tops? And what pond are we fishing in here?” A nod at the list. “Most of the Third World, half of the Middle East and Europe and a good chunk of the Fortune Five Hundred corporations.”

  “And all he was doing,” Sachs said, “was giving away money to people who needed it.”

  “Don’t you know that expression?” Sellitto muttered. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  RONALD LARKIN HOMICIDE

  • Coir fiber.

  • Dirt from garden below the balcony.

  • Dark hairs, curly. No bulb attached.

  • Bit of rubber, black, possibly from sole of shoe.

  • Dirt and sand with traces of marine diesel fuel, saltwater.

  • No friction ridges, tread marks, tool marks.

  • Lint containing traces of Dianabol steroid. Athlete?

  • .32 caliber automatic, sound suppressor, fragmentation bullets.

  • CMI grappling hook, wrapped in strips of old flannel shirt.

  • Mil-Spec 550 rope, knotted. Black.

  • Rice husk, trapped in knot.

  Suspect:

  • U.S. citizen, other passports?

  • trained in Europe.

  • mercenary with African, Middle East connections.

  • no motive.

  • high fee.

  • employer unknown.

  The young officer wasn’t comfortable.

  He was a newly appointed detective, still awaiting rank, and had been given the thankless job of escorting the poor widow back to her town house to collect some clothes, then hand her over to a bodyguard.

  Not that she was beating up on him or anything. No, it was just the opposite. She seemed so distant and upset and weepy that he didn’t know what to say to her, how to act. He wished his wife were here; she’d calm the woman down pretty fast. But the detective himself? Nope, wasn’t his strength. He was sympathetic, sure, but he didn’t know how to express it. He’d been on the force only five years, mostly in Patrol, and he’d had very few opportunities to meet grieving relatives. Once, a garbage truck plowed into the side of a parked SUV, killing the woman driver. He’d had to tell the husband what had happened, and it had taken him weeks to get over the look of horror and sorrow in the man’s face.

  Now, he was working as a detective in Narcotics. Occasional bodies, occasional widows. None of them grieving like this. A lot didn’t seem to care their husbands were dead.

  He watched Kitty Larkin standing in the front doorway of her town house, paralyzed, it seemed.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, then mentally kicked himself.

  Duh…

  He meant, of course, was there something out of the ordinary about the house, something he should be looking into, calling Lieutenant Sellitto about. His hand strayed to his Glock, which he’d drawn a half dozen times in his career, but never fired.

  Kitty shook her head. “No,” she whispered, and seemed to realize that she’d stopped walking. “Sorry.” She continued into the house. “I’ll just be a few minutes. I’ll pack a bag.”

  The detective was making a circuit from the front to the back of the house when he saw a black sedan pull up in the street.

  An African American woman in a dark suit climbed out and walked up to him. She flashed a badge.

  U.S. Department of State.

  “I’m taking over security for Mrs. Larkin,” she said with a faint accent the man couldn’t place.

  “You’re—”

  “Taking over security for Mrs. Larkin,” the woman repeated slowly.

  Good, the officer thought, relieved that he wouldn’t have to sit around and watch the woman cry. But then he thought: Hold on.

  “Just a second.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The cop pulled out his phone and called Lieutenant Sellitto.

  “Yeah?” the gruff Major Cases cop asked.

  “Detective, just wanted to let you know that the bodyguard got here, for the Larkin woman. She’s from the State Department, t
hough, not us.”

  “The what?”

  “State Department.”

  “Yeah? What’s her name?”

  The detective asked to see her ID again and she showed it to him. “Norma Sedgwick.”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  He said to Norma. “Just have to check.”

  She didn’t seem mad but her face registered a bit of “whatever.” It seemed like a rookie putdown. Okay, you feddie bitch, you ever get shot at by a crank-crazed eighteen-year-old armed with a SIG-Sauer and a knife? Which is how he’d spent last Monday evening.

  He just smiled at her.

  On the other end of the line Sellitto’s hand was over the receiver and he was talking with someone else. The detective wondered if it was the legendary Lincoln Rhyme. He knew Sellitto worked with him from time to time. He’d never met Rhyme. There were rumors that he didn’t really exist.

  A few minutes later — it seemed like forever — Sellitto came back on the line.

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  Thank you, the detective thought. He could leave Mrs. Larkin and her grief and flee back to the place where he was a lot more comfortable: the drug world of East New York and the South Bronx.

  * * *

  “Norma, where’re we going?” Kitty, in the backseat, asked the stocky, attractive State Department agent, driving the Lincoln Town Car.

  “A hotel near our office in Midtown. We basically own one of the upper floors, so the staff doesn’t put any guests there without our okay. Right now it’s empty. You’ll be the only one there. I’ll be staying in the room across the hall, and another agent’ll be there through the night. It’s not the best hotel in the world, probably not what you’re used to, but not bad. In any case, it’s safer than you staying in your town house.”

  “Maybe,” the widow said softly. “But I’m going back there as soon as I can.” She looked up and, in the rearview mirror, saw the agent’s dark face studying her. “Let’s hope everything’s resolved soon.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Norma asked, “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s nothing, really.” The widow touched the bandage. Her wound still stung badly but she’d stopped taking the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for her.