The Kill Room lr-10

by Jeffery Deaver

  The federal Constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments…

  There was nothing as marvelous as the machine of justice and she wanted so badly to be a part of it, to make her own imprint on American law.

  Her proudest day was law school graduation. She remembered looking out over the audience. Her father had been alone. This was because her mother was arguing a case before the Court of Appeals in Albany — the highest state appellate court — trying to get a homeless man’s murder conviction reversed.

  Laurel couldn’t describe how honored she was that the woman wasn’t present that day.

  The Moreno case was to be her way of validating sacrifices like those. Okay, and of making a name for herself too. Amelia had nailed it right when she’d sussed out the political career track. The ambition remained even if her name ultimately decorated no ballot.

  Yet even a loss at the Metzger trial would have succeeded in a way. NIOS’s Kill Room would have been exposed. That might have been enough to sink the assassination program forever. The hungry media and more-starved congressmen would have been all over NIOS like flies.

  She’d have been sacrificed — her career would have ended — but at least she would have made sure the truth of Metzger’s crimes came out.

  But now, this? Her boss pulling the case? No, there was nothing good to come of that.

  She supposed the whistleblower had vanished and there would be no more identification of other victims in the queue. Sorry, Mr. Rashid.

  What was in her future? Laurel laughed at the question. Returned to the kitchen and this time actually brewed a cup of tea. Adding two sugars on the grounds that rose hips were tart. The future, right: an unemployment period she’d spend with Seinfeld reruns and dining on one then what the hell a second Lean Cuisine. One glass of Kendall-Jackson too many. Computer chess. Then interviews. Then a job at a big Wall Street firm.

  Her heart sank.

  She now thought of David, as she often did. Always did. “The thing is, look, you’re pushing me for an answer, Nance. Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s you’re kind of a schoolmarm. You know what I mean? I can’t live up to that. You want everything perfect, everything right. You correct, you find fault. There, sorry. I didn’t want to say it. You made me.”

  Forget him.

  You’ve got your career.

  Except you don’t.

  On her bookshelf — half law books, half novels, one cookbook — was a picture of her and David. Both smiling.

  Below that was a boxed chess set, wood, not plastic.

  Throw it out, she told herself.

  I will.

  Not yet.

  All right. Enough of that. Self-pity was what she saw in the most depraved of sex perverts and murderers and she wasn’t going to allow it to seep into her soul. You’ve still got your caseload. Get to work. She—

  A noise in the hallway.

  A tap, a click, a faint thud.

  Then nothing.

  Mrs. Parsons dropping her shopping bag. Mr. Lefkowitz juggling toy poodle and cane.

  She stared at the TV, then at the microwave, then at the bedroom.

  Get out the fucking brief in State v. Gonzalez and start editing.

  Laurel jumped when the doorbell rang.

  She walked to the door. “Who is it?”

  “Detective Flaherty, NYPD.”

  Never heard of him but Manhattan boasted a cop population in the thousands. Laurel peered through the peephole. A white guy, thirties, slim, a suit. He was holding his ID open, though all she could see was a glint of badge.

  “How’d you get inside?” she called.

  “Somebody was leaving. I rang your buzzer but nobody answered. I was going to leave a note but thought I’d try anyway.”

  So the bell was out again.

  “Okay, just a minute.” She opened the chain and the dead-bolt latch, pulling open the door.

  And only then did Nance Laurel think, as the man stepped forward, that she probably should have had him slip his ID under the door so she could read it.

  But why worry? The case is over with. I’m no threat to anyone.

  CHAPTER 75

  Barry Shales wasn’t a large man.

  “Compact” was how he was often described.

  And his job was sedentary, sitting before flat-screen panels, hands on the joysticks of UAVs, the computer keyboard before him.

  But he lifted free weights — because he enjoyed working out.

  He jogged — because he enjoyed jogging.

  And the former air force captain held the opinion, wholly unsupported, that the more you liked working out the better your muscles responded.

  So when he pushed past an alarmed Ruth, the guard dog of a personal assistant, into Shreve Metzger’s office and drew back an arm and slugged his boss, the skinny man stumbled and went down hard.

  The head of NIOS dropped to one knee, arms flailing. Files slid off the desk from trying to catch himself.

  Shales strode forward, arm drawn back again, but hesitated. The one blow was enough to deflate the anger that had been growing since he’d seen the impromptu soccer match between the task he’d been ordered to blast into molecules and a teenage boy in the courtyard of the safe house in a dingy Mexican suburb.

  He lowered his fist, stepped back. But he felt no inclination to help Metzger up and he crossed his arms and watched coldly as the shaken man pressed a hand to his cheek and clumsily rose, collecting the files that had fallen. Shales noted that several manila binders sported a classified stamp that he was not familiar with despite his stratospheric security clearance.

  He noted too that Metzger’s first concern at the moment wasn’t the injury but securing the secret files.

  “Barry…Barry.” He looked behind Shales and shook his head. Ruth, shocked, hovered, not unlike a drone herself. Metzger smiled at her and pointed to the door. She hesitated then stepped out, closing it.

  The man’s smile vanished.

  Shales walked to the window, breathing deeply. He glanced down to see the fake Maersk container in NIOS’s parking lot. A look at the Ground Control Station from which he’d very nearly killed at least three innocent civilians minutes ago re-ignited his anger.

  He turned back to Metzger. But the director didn’t cower or beg. He gave no response, physical or verbal, except to touch his cheek again and peruse the smear of red on his finger and thumb.

  “Did you know?” Shales asked.

  “About the collateral in Reynosa? No.” As NIOS head, he would have followed the attack in real time. “Of course not.”

  “I’d launched, Shreve. The Hellfire was in the air! What do you think about that? We were ten seconds away from murdering a young boy and girl and a woman who was probably their mother. And who the hell else was inside, as well?”

  “You saw the documentation with the STO. The surveillance program we put in place for Rashid was totally robust. We had DEA and Mexican federal surveillance reports — twenty-four/seven. Nobody had gone inside or come out for a week. Who holes up for seven days, Barry? You ever hear of that? I never have.” Metzger sat down. “Hell, Barry, we’re not God. We do what we can. My ass was on the line too, you know. If anybody else’d died, it would have been the end of my career. Probably NIOS too.”

  The airman had shallow jowls around his taut lips and his cold smile deepened them now. “You’re mad, aren’t you, Shreve?”

  He’d meant the word in its sense of “angry” but the way Metzger reacted, eyes narrowing, apparently the NIOS head took it to mean psychotic.

  “Mad?”

  “That I didn’t follow Rashid’s car. That I stayed with the missile, guided it down.”

  A pause. “That scenario wasn’t authorized, targeting Rashid’s vehicle.”

  “Fuck authorized. You’re thinking I should’ve let the Hellfire land where it would, while I locked on and fired my second bird at the car.”

  His eyes revealed that, yes, that’s exactly what Metzger had wanted.r />
  “Barry, this is a messy business we’re in. There’s collateral, there’s friendly fire, there’re suicides and just plain fucking mistakes. People die because we program in One Hundred West Main Street and the task is actually at One Hundred East.”

  “Interesting choice of word for a human being, isn’t it? ‘Task.’”

  “Oh, come on. It’s easy to make fun of government-speak. But it’s the government that keeps us safe from people like Rashid.”

  “That’ll be a nice line for the Congressional hearings, Shreve.” Shales then raged, “You fucked with the evidence for the Moreno STO to take out an asshole you didn’t like. Who wasn’t patriotic enough for you.”

  “That’s not how it was!” Metzger nearly screamed, spittle flew.

  Startled by the uncontrolled outburst, Shales stared at his boss for a moment. Then dug into his pocket and tossed his lanyard and ID card onto the desk. “Kids, Shreve. I nearly blew up two children today. I’ve had it. I’m quitting.”

  “No.” Metzger leaned forward. “You can’t quit.”

  “Why not?”

  Shales was expecting his boss to raise issues of contracts, security.

  But the man said, “Because you’re the best, Barry. Nobody can handle a bird like you. Nobody can shoot like you. I knew you were the man for the STO program when I conceived it, Barry.”

  Shales recalled a grinning car salesman who’d used his first name repeatedly because, apparently, he’d been taught at grinning-car-salesman school that this wore down the potential buyer, made him less resistant.

  Shales had left the lot without the car he’d very much wanted.

  He now shouted, “The project was all about eliminating collateral damage!”

  “We didn’t run a scenario of firing through picture windows! We should have. It didn’t occur to anyone. Did it occur to you? We got it wrong. What more do you want me to say? I apologize.”

  “To me? Maybe you should apologize to Robert Moreno’s wife and children or the family of de la Rua, the reporter, or his bodyguard. They need an apology more than I do, don’t you think, Shreve?”

  Metzger pushed the ID back toward Shales. “This’s been tough for you. Take some time off.”

  Leaving the badge untouched, Shales turned and opened the door, walking out of the office. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Ruth.”

  She only stared.

  In five minutes he was outside the front gate of NIOS and walking through the alley to the main north — south street nearby.

  Then he was on the sidewalk, feeling suddenly light of step and aglow with ambiguous satisfaction.

  He’d call the sitter, take Margaret to dinner that night. He’d break the news to her that he was now unemployed. He could—

  A dark sedan squealed to a stop beside him. Two men flung doors open and were outside in an instant, moving toward him.

  For a moment Shales wondered if Shreve Metzger had called in specialists — had arranged for an STO with the name Barry Shales as the task, to eliminate him as a threat to his precious assassination program.

  But the men moving toward him didn’t pull out suppressed Berettas or SIGs. The palms of their hands glinted with metal, yes — but they were gold. New York City Police Department shields.

  “Barry Shales?” the older of the two asked.

  “I…yes, I’m Shales.”

  “I’m Detective Brickard. This is Detective Samuels.” The badges and IDs disappeared. “You’re under arrest, sir.”

  Shales gave a brief, surprised laugh. A mistake. Word hadn’t filtered down to them that the investigation was over.

  “No, there’s some mistake.”

  “Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  “But what’s the charge?”

  “Murder.”

  “No, no — the Moreno case…it’s been dropped.”

  The detectives looked at each other. Brickard said, “I don’t know anything about any Moreno, sir. Please. Your hands. Now.”

  CHAPTER 76

  “It may be a tough sell to the jury,” Lincoln Rhyme said, speaking of the theory behind a new case against Metzger and Shales.

  Amelia Sachs’s theory, not his. And one he was quite enamored of — and proud of her for formulating. Rhyme secretly loved it when people—some people — outthought him.

  Sachs glanced at her humming phone. “A text.”

  “Nance?”

  “No.” She looked from the querying eyes of Mel Cooper to Ron Pulaski to, finally, Rhyme. “Barry Shales’s in custody. No resistance.”

  So, they were proceeding now according to Sachs’s theory, which she’d come up with from a simple entry in the evidence charts.

  Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua.

  COD: Loss of blood. Lacerations from flying glass from gunshot, measuring 3–4mm wide, 2–3cm long.

  Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.

  Camera, tape recorder, gold pen, notebooks missing.

  Shoes contained fibers associated with carpet in hotel corridor, dirt from hotel entryway.

  Clothing contained traces of breakfast: allspice and pepper sauce.

  Her thinking was all the more brilliant because of its simplicity: People born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens.

  Therefore Barry Shales had killed an American in the attack on May 9 in the South Cove Inn.

  Nance’s boss, the DA, had decided not to pursue the case only because Moreno wasn’t a citizen. But de la Rua was. Even an unintended death under some circumstances can subject the killer to murder charges.

  Sachs continued, “But at the very least, I’d think we could get manslaughter. Shales inadvertently killed de la Rua as part of the intentional act of killing Moreno. He should have known that someone else in the room could have been fatally wounded when he fired the shot.”

  A woman’s voice filled the room. “Good analysis, Amelia. Have you ever thought of going to law school?”

  Rhyme turned to see Nance Laurel striding into the parlor, lugging her briefcase and litigation bag once again. Behind her was the detective they’d asked to collect her, a friend of Sachs’s. Bill Flaherty. Rhyme had thought it safer for her to have an escort. He was still uneasy that Unsub 516 was at large, especially now that there was a chance of reviving the Moreno case.

  Laurel thanked the detective, who nodded and — with a smile toward Sachs and Rhyme — left the town house.

  Rhyme asked the ADA, “So? Our case? What do you think? Legally?”

  “Well,” she said, sitting down at her desk and extracting her files once more, organizing them, “we probably can get Barry Shales on murder two. The penal code provision covers us there.” She paraphrased, “A person is guilty of murder in the second degree when he intends to cause the death of someone and he causes the death of a third person. But Amelia’s right, manslaughter’s definitely a possibility. We’ll make it a lesser-included offense, though I’m confident I can make murder stick.”

  “Thanks for coming back,” Sachs said.

  “No, thanks to you all for saving our case.” She was looking around the room.

  Our case…

  “Amelia came up with the idea,” Lon Sellitto said.

  Rhyme added, “I missed the option entirely.”

  Sellitto added that he’d been in touch with Captain Myers and the man had — with some reluctance — agreed they should proceed with the new charges. The attorney general had given his tentative approval too.

  “Now we have to consider how to proceed,” Laurel said, surprising Rhyme by not only unbuttoning but slipping off her jacket. She could smile, she could sip whiskey, she could relax. “First, I’d like some background. Who was he, this reporter?”

  Ron Pulaski had been researching. He said, “Eduardo de la Rua, fifty-six. Married. Freelance journalist and blogger. Born in Puerto Rico, U.S. passport. But he’s been living in Buenos Aires for the past ten years. Last year he won the
Premio a la Excelencia en el Periodismo. That’s ‘Award for Excellence in Journalism.’”

  “You speak Spanish too, rookie?” Rhyme interrupted. “You never fail to astound. Good accent too.”

  “Nada.”

  “Ha,” Sellitto offered.

  The young officer: “Lately de la Rua’s been writing for Diario Seminal Negocio de Argentina.”

  “The Weekly Journal of Argentina,” Rhyme tried.

  “Almost. Weekly Business Journal.”

  “Of course.”

  “He was doing a series on American businesses and banks starting up in Latin America. He’d been after Moreno for months to do an interview about that — the alternative view, why U.S. companies shouldn’t be encouraged to open operations down there. Finally he agreed and de la Rua flew to Nassau. And we know what happened next.”

  Sachs told Laurel, “Shales is in custody.”

  “Good,” the prosecutor said. “Now, where are we with the evidence?”

  “Ah, the evidence,” Rhyme mused. “The evidence. All we need to prove is that the bullet caused the flying glass, and the glass was the cause of the reporter’s death. We’re close. We’ve got the trace of glass splinters on the bullet and on de la Rua’s clothes. I’d just really like some of the shards that actually caused the laceration and bleeding.” He looked to Laurel. “Juries love the weapons, don’t they?”

  “They sure do, Lincoln.”

  “The morgue in the Bahamas?” Sachs asked. “The examiner would still have the glass, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Let’s hope. People may steal Rolexes and Oakleys down there but I imagine broken glass is safe from sticky fingers. I’ll call Mychal and see what he can find. He can ship some up here with an affidavit that states the shards were recovered from the body and were the cause of death. Or, hell, maybe he could come up himself to testify.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Thom said. “He could stay with us for a while, hang out.”

  Rhyme exhaled in exasperation. “Oh, sure. We’ve got so much time for socializing. I could take him on a tour of the Big Apple. You know, haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty in…ever. And I intend to keep it that way.”