27
THE DECAPITATION MURDERS INVESTIGATION HAD TAKEN AN alarming twist that began when Karp received a visit from three men, all of whom seemed to have been struck from the same mold of clean-cut, square-jawed athletic types, an impression they added to by wearing the same dark glasses and nearly identical dark suits. He recognized the oldest of them, the one with the gray crew cut, as Agent in Charge S. P. Jaxon, Espey to his friends.
“Espey, my man,” Karp said, breaking from his conversation with Mrs. Milquetost in the outer office. “What brings the FBI to my neck of the judicial jungle?”
“Good to see you, too, Butch,” Jaxon said. He gestured toward Karp’s inner office. “Got a minute?”
“Sure,” Karp said, the radar going up. Jaxon, an old friend who now headed up the FBI’s New York office, was a man of few words, but he wasn’t abrupt unless time was of the essence. “Mrs. Milquetost, see that we’re not disturbed.”
“Milquetost?” Jaxon said under his breath as he and the other two men preceded Karp into the room.
“Don’t ask,” Karp said just as quietly, closing the door behind them. He walked around his desk and sat down, indicating that they should do the same. “Okay, Espey, where’s the fire?”
“I’m afraid that’s the million dollar question,” Jaxon replied.
The way he said it sent a chill down Karp’s spine. Something serious is about to go down, Karp, my man, he thought.
Jaxon introduced the other two men as Kris Kluge of the CIA and Gary Albert of National Homeland Security. “We may have a very serious situation on our hands,” the FBI agent said.
Karp spread his hands. “Go ahead. Whatever I can do to help.”
Jaxon smiled and then gave him the rundown. “Thanks, I knew you’d say that. We’ve identified two of the three heads found recently in Manhattan,” he said. “Two of them are on just about everybody’s terrorist watch lists. Both Al Qaeda, and we expect the third was, too; he was with one of the other guys, just another one we haven’t seen before.”
It already didn’t sound good, but Karp could tell from the way Jaxon was laying his story out that the worst was yet to come. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he said.
Jaxon looked at him steadily for a moment with his deep-set, coffee-colored eyes, then turned to Albert. “Here it is,” Albert said with a slight Texas twang. “When we X-rayed the heads at Quantico to help with the ID, the film came out overexposed. They were hot as charcoal briquettes at a barbecue.”
“Radiation?” Karp asked.
“Yep. Probably would have killed them sooner than later if our friend with the knife wasn’t around.”
“You know it was a knife?”
“Yeah, probably a big hunting knife, judging by the length of the slash marks and the nicks on the vertebrae.”
“What about the radiation?”
“Isotopes from the heads of the three stooges indicate a below-weapons-grade plutonium. They’d been around it for quite a while.”
It dawned on Karp what they were driving at. “You think they brought a dirty bomb into New York City,” he said.
Jaxon nodded his head. “They’ll use a conventional bomb and essentially put the radioactive materials on top of it. When the real bomb blows up, the nasty stuff gets thrown into the air, sucked into lungs, sipped in water…you get the picture.”
“Most of the casualties, especially at first, would probably be from the initial blast,” Kluge said. “Maybe thousands of lives. But they’re almost secondary to the terrorists. The real thing is to, well, cause terror. Panic the population. Destabilize the economy.”
“Make us afraid,” Karp finished for him. “So who killed these guys?”
Jaxon shrugged. “We don’t know. The Mossad says they didn’t do it—not that they’d necessarily tell us the truth, though in this case I believe them. Could even have been a splinter group that wants to get credit. But I doubt the current story that it was a bunch of redneck good old boys. The two guys we know were no slouches; they were trained, effective, cold-blooded killers. Bubba wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“Say you don’t catch the rest of these assholes,” Karp said. “When and where with the bomb?”
Kluge looked out the window. Albert stared at his feet. Jaxon twisted his mouth, then said, “If I was a betting man, tomorrow night, Times Square.”
Karp rubbed his face with a hand. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“We’ve intercepted a lot of radio and Internet traffic in the last few days,” Kluge said. “It’s jumped threefold and it seems clear that an Iraqi by the name of Hussan is coordinating the event. He also goes by several aliases—Ibn Abdul, Mustafa, Al-Sistani—and if we’re correct about him being here we’re in big trouble.”
“We think he was on the ground in Manhattan on 9/11, coordinating and maybe checking out how the city reacted to a big disaster,” Jaxon said. “He likes going for big spectacular splashes…airlines, embassy bombings, car bombs in crowded marketplaces, and, ironically, made-for-TV beheadings on Al Jazeera.”
“Maybe we should shut it down,” Karp said. “New Year’s Eve on Times Square. Shut it down. Call it off.”
The other three men glanced at each other. “Can’t,” Albert said.
“What do you mean ‘can’t’?”
“Comes from the top,” Jaxon said. “The man in the Oval Office. And to be honest, he’s got a point. Can you imagine what will happen if we suddenly go on high alert and someone finds out it’s because terrorists have atomic weapons in this country and are preparing to use them? The media would go apeshit. It’s one thing to screen airline passengers and make everybody feel safer again. But what if the public suddenly has to confront the fact that these guys can just load up a truck with ammonium nitrate, toss in a suitcase full of plutonium, drive it into the middle of their city, light a match, and turn it into a dead zone for the next hundred years?”
The room was quiet, as thoughts about the potential consequences settled around them like dust. “What do you need from me?” Karp replied.
“Just that if the NYPD or your own investigators turn up anything on who might have committed these three homicides, give us a shot at them,” Jaxon said. “Obviously, whoever did these killings knew what they were doing and what’s more, knew where to find the bad guys. We’ve been looking for the two dead ones for three years, and they turn up without their heads right under our noses.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Karp said, “which doesn’t seem like much given the circumstances. Does the NYPD know?”
“They know that they need to button down the place as tight as possible,” Jaxon said. “They’re keeping unauthorized vehicles away from the crowd; have plainclothes and uniforms all over the subways; and have swept the tunnels beneath Times Square. Airspace will be kept clear by armed Apache helicopters and F-16 fighters. But you can’t account for everything or everyone. If we want to be sure, we need to find the bad guys and their bomb, but we don’t have much time. I’ve got a SWAT team—the best of the best—ready to move; the problem is where.”
Jaxon and the other two didn’t linger. “I know that I don’t need to tell you, but this has to stay strictly between us,” the agent said as he opened the door. “And hey, maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe whoever killed these guys has already dumped the shit in the ocean.”
“Yeah, and maybe tomorrow night’s not New Year’s Eve.”
After the agents had left his office and he’d wrapped up the day, he went home where Marlene was waiting to fill him in on the Michalik case. By the time she finished, his stomach was in a knot. He immediately got on the telephone and told Kipman and Rachman they’d be meeting the next morning to discuss the case. Rachman, who thought it was to discuss bringing charges against Michalik, insisted that Ryder and her attorney, Schmellmann, be allowed to sit in. He didn’t tell her that Marlene would be there, too.
The next day, as the others entered the conference room
and sat down, Rachel Rachman pointedly remained standing with a hand on the shoulder of Sarah Ryder, who sat between her and Harvey Schmellmann. When everyone was settled—Karp turned from his conversation with Harry Kipman and Marlene, who sat on the opposite side of the table, and Schmellmann stopped trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the window—Rachman cleared her throat.
“I want it on record that I am opposed to the presence of Marlene Ciampi at this meeting,” she said stiffly. “She is not only the attorney of record for the defendant—and this meeting was called to discuss filing formal charges—she is also your wife, which smacks of a conflict of interest.” She didn’t look at Marlene as she spoke but kept her eyes on Karp.
“Duly noted,” he replied, at the same time wondering, Whatever happened to Rachman? When Marlene had recommended her to head the Sex Crimes Bureau, she’d been one of the best attorneys on the staff, dedicated and aggressive but not a zealot. Maybe it’s my fault, he thought. Maybe I should have recognized the psychological toll of handling those kinds of cases all the time and reassigned her to something less…emotionally draining…white collar crime maybe, though I doubt she would have gone willingly.
Karp looked over at Clay Fulton, who lounged against a wall, lost in his own thoughts. Clay still walked with a bit of a limp, courtesy of a bullet he caught in the leg that past summer, but refused to take it easy on himself.
The night before Karp couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned and finally got out of bed and went to the living room and stood looking out the window at the empty sidewalks. He wanted to wake Marlene, tell her to get up, grab the boys, Lucy, Ned, and Gilgamesh and get the hell out of the city.
“Why?” she’d ask.
“Oh, because terrorists are planning on blowing up Times Square with atomic weapons,” he’d reply.
But he couldn’t tell her. It wasn’t just that Jaxon had sworn him to secrecy—for all he knew, Jaxon, Kluge, and Albert had already put their families on planes for some place like Wisconsin. However, there was something about having insider information that the people who would gather to celebrate on Times Square didn’t have. No, once again, New Yorkers would face the future together. But he was glad that it had been years since anyone in his family had wanted to go watch the ball drop.
“You okay?”
Karp turned and saw Marlene. She looked beautiful standing in the moonlight that poured in from the skylights. He thought about what he was going to have to do that day—bomb or no bomb. The only answer to terrorism was to continue living out their lives as best they could.
“I will be as soon as I tuck you back into bed,” he said.
“You sure you meant to say tuck?” She laughed and turned back for their bedroom. He followed like a hound after the fox.
“Having noted your exceptions,” he continued, “I’ll explain why I asked for this meeting. First, and you know this full well, it is not unusual for this office to agree to meet with defense attorneys who request the opportunity to present reasons why their clients should not be charged with crimes. You will remember that it is this office’s policy to seek justice, and if information is volunteered that might help us decide what is just, then we should listen. This is an informal meeting, which, by the way, is also why I agreed to allow Ms. Ryder and Mr. Schmellmann to attend.”
“And we appreciate that, Mr. Karp,” Schmellmann said. “We are confident that after we’ve heard this ‘new information’ you will feel comfortable going ahead with formal charges.”
“Thank you, Mr. Schmellmann, for the vote of confidence,” Karp said and turned back to Rachman. “Now, except for your duly noted objections, is there anything else or can we proceed?”
As an answer, Rachman sat down and whispered something to Ryder, whose eyes never left Marlene. Karp saw the look, turned to his wife, and said, “Okay, Marlene, go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Marlene replied. “I’ve gone over the evidence and along with some things we’ve turned up in our own investigation, I believe it is not in the best interests of justice for this office to pursue charges against my client. In fact”—she hesitated and looked pointedly at both Rachman and then Ryder—“not only is my client not guilty of sexual assault, I believe there is good reason to charge the complainant in this case with crimes.”
Schmellmann and Rachman both jumped to their feet. “This is an outrage,” Schmellmann roared.
“As I suspected,” Rachman added, “you’re just going to let your wife put the victim on trial and…”
Karp rapped his fingers on the table. “Mr. Schmellmann and Ms. Rachman, have a seat. This isn’t Perry Mason and we’re not in a courtroom, so save the theatrics. Let her finish and you’ll get your opportunity to respond.”
“Our new information comes from a police detective who interviewed one Marcus Cook, a custodian at the building who was working on the night Ms. Ryder claims she was attacked. For some reason, the detective’s DD5 report didn’t make it into the file, though I believe any judge in New York county would determine that it is exculpatory evidence.”
Karp glanced at Rachman, who sat forward at the mention of Cook’s name and now flushed angrily. “How did you get that report?” she demanded.
Karp ignored her and turned back to Marlene. “Go on.”
“According to the report filed at the beginning of this case by Detective Scott Richardson, Mr. Cook contends that he was outside the building smoking a cigarette when he saw a young woman he later identified from a photograph as Ms. Ryder exit the building. He described her as neither distraught nor crying as reported by another witness, Mr. Ted Vanders. As a matter of fact, and get a load of this, Cook said that Ms. Ryder did a ‘little dance’ at the bottom of the stairs.”
Rachman snorted. “Maybe I should point out that the reason why that report file is still on my desk is that we have serious questions about Mr. Cook’s reliability as a witness.”
“In what regard?” Karp asked.
“The man has two misdemeanor arrest records for possession of marijuana. He’s also an alcoholic who’s been suspended twice already from the university for drinking on the job and is essentially working on his third strike.”
“So why not turn the evidence over to the defense—as is clearly required—and then impeach him at trial?” Karp said. “When did you get the DD5?”
Rachman shrugged. “A couple of days ago. We were preparing to turn it over, but before the defense could get to him and try to confuse the issue, we wanted to interview him again and see if his story didn’t change, as might be expected from a drug addict and alcoholic. For all we know, he didn’t have the right night or see the right woman.”
Karp looked over at Fulton and nodded his head. “Just a moment,” he said as the big detective left the room. A few seconds later, Fulton returned with another man.
“Good morning,” Karp said. “Everybody, this is Detective Scott Richardson, who I believe is the detective who filed the DD5 regarding Mr. Marcus Cook. Is that correct, detective?”
Richardson, a compact, balding man with dark intense eyes, nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Karp looked at Rachman, whose face had drained of color. “When did you file that report, detective?”
“I’d have to look at it for the exact day,” the detective said. “But months ago…about a week after the alleged incident.”
“Do you have any reason to believe one way or the other that Mr. Cook might have confused which night he was talking about, or the identity of the woman he saw?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Richardson replied. “But I doubt it. Mr. Cook was quite clear about the night—it was the last night he worked that week and he has the time cards to prove it. And while he was sitting on a bench in the dark, he had an unobstructed view of the steps and door. I know because I went and sat there myself. He distinctly remembers seeing Ms. Ryder emerge but…”
“Yes, detective, you were about to say something?” Karp asked.
“He says he never
saw Ted Vanders or anybody else that night strike up a conversation at the front door with Ms. Ryder.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Sarah Ryder scoffed. “It may not have been quite at the front door, I was too upset to remember all of the details. It could have been inside the doors where this guy, Cook, might not have been able to see us.”
“Again, anything’s possible,” Richardson said. “However, the evidence indicates that no one other than you and Professor Michalik entered the building that evening.”
“How do you know that?” Rachman asked.
“The after-hours sign-in book,” Richardson said. “Ms. Ryder’s name is on it, and so is Professor Michalik’s. But no Ted Vanders.”
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Rachman said. “Lots of people would walk right by a sign-in book, especially if the janitor’s not around to see that they do.”
“Well, that might be true,” the detective agreed, “but Mr. Vanders couldn’t have entered the building and met up with Ms. Ryder further down the hall.”
“Why not?” asked Schmellmann, who was beginning to look a little pale himself.
“Because you need a key to get in that door,” Richardson replied. “Only the custodial team has them. Not even the professors have those keys. After hours, you have to be let inside by someone else.”
Karp interrupted the next question. “Thank you, detective. If you wouldn’t mind remaining. We may have more questions. But let’s move on. Marlene?”
Marlene stood and turned off the lights. She then pressed the button on the slide projector set up on the table. The first slide appeared on the screen. “These are the photographs taken of Ms. Ryder’s wrists the day after the crime occurred,” she said. “Ms. Ryder, if I may ask you a question, you struggled even though you were bound, am I correct?”
“I object to this,” Schmellmann said. “My client is not the one on trial here.”
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 43
