Hidden Order: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  “In most people the spasm recedes after they lose consciousness, at which point water pours into the lungs as the body struggles for air and tries to breathe. In layman’s terms that’s a wet drowning. In about ten to fifteen percent of cases, though, the spasm continues until the person dies from cardiac arrest and no further water gets in. That’s a dry drowning. Even if there’s no water in the lungs, a good ME will look for water in the stomach.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “A laryngospasm may prevent water from getting into a person’s lungs, but it doesn’t stop water from getting into the stomach. It goes down a different pipe that isn’t closed off as the drowning person sucks in water. Conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter. If you go in the water alive, you’re going to end up with water in your stomach.”

  Cordero was impressed. “Pretty good. Where’d you learn all that?”

  “It was part of my drownproofing as a SEAL.”

  Cordero’s partner, who was still holding the tarp up said, “Stick with the sailboat jokes.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They’re more believable than you being a SEAL.”

  “You know a lot about the military?”

  “I know enough,” the man said.

  Harvath shook his head and peeled off his gloves.

  Cordero didn’t know what to believe at this point, but whoever Harvath was, he was starting to grow on her. And the way he was growing on her was something she wasn’t comfortable with. Widowed with a two-year-old son, her life was complicated enough.

  She decided to chill what she was feeling by embarrassing him. If she could shake his confidence, maybe he’d seem a little less attractive. “Let’s have you move a little further south and examine the body for any signs of sexual assault.”

  Harvath held up his hands and smiled. “Already took my gloves off, sorry.”

  “We can get you another pair,” she said, waving one of the techs back over.

  Harvath took a step back from the body. “Gynecology isn’t really my strong suit.”

  Cordero’s partner lowered the tarp back down and as he did, Harvath heard him say beneath his breath, “Pussy.” The man had said it just loud enough for Harvath to hear.

  What was this guy, in fifth grade? “Hey, Sal,” he said, examining a cloth one of the evidence techs had been using and tossing it to the detective. “Does this smell like chloroform to you?”

  The man looked at Harvath like he was crazy.

  “Go ahead,” said Harvath. “Take a deep breath. It can be a tough odor to detect. Let’s just be one hundred percent sure before we rule it out.”

  The man threw it back at him. “Blow me.”

  “She can’t hear you,” Harvath said, pointing down at the tarp. “She has no ears. Plus, she’s kind of dead.”

  Cordero could see her partner’s blood pressure rising just by watching his face. He was overprotective and had a short fuse. She’d seen him get rough with suspects and even occasionally other officers. Harvath, on the other hand, seemed eerily patient and willing to goad his opponent into making an emotional mistake. Either way, she didn’t need these two bulls going at it, especially over her. It was becoming clear that if they couldn’t play nice, they’d need to be separated.

  She was just about to suggest a few minutes to cool off when one of the patrol officers came down the dock talking over his radio. A few feet from the tarp, he stopped. Cordero recognized him and waited until he was done speaking.

  “Officer Kaczynski, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s good to see you again, Detective.”

  Cordero turned to Harvath and said, “Officer Kaczynski was first on scene. When the dive team brought up the body, he made the tentative ID.” Looking at the patrolman, she stated, “Isn’t that correct?”

  “I’ve arrested her multiple times; twice last month. Her name is Kelly Davis.”

  “All for prostitution?” Harvath asked.

  “Prostitution, drugs, petty theft. It’s all tied together.”

  “Is there anyone who may have seen her with our potential killer last night?”

  The young officer nodded. “That’s the call I just took on the radio. Ms. Davis ran with a couple of other girls. They like to work the tourist areas downtown, but all three of them live in the Old Colony public houses on East Ninth Street. Southie.”

  “Southie?” said Harvath.

  “South Boston,” Cordero explained. “It’s a working-class neighborhood.”

  “These girls are meth heads, you know, tweakers. They stay up for days at a time,” Kaczynski continued. “When I saw that Kelly was the victim, I radioed a couple of guys on patrol and asked them to keep a lookout for her pals.”

  “And they found them?” Harvath asked.

  “Yes, sir. One admits she even saw Kelly with a john last night.”

  “How about the other one?”

  “That’s the thing. The other one was giving both officers a hard time. I know my rights. I don’t have to talk to you. She was a real piss-and-vinegar type—right up until her friend started describing the john that Kelly was last seen with. Suddenly, Ms. Piss and Vinegar was as quiet as a church mouse and as white as a sheet. The officers think she definitely knows the guy. I figured you detectives would want to hear this right away.”

  “He’s not a detective,” Cordero’s partner piped up, glaring at Harvath.

  “Leave it alone, Sal,” Cordero replied, and then asked the patrolman, “Are the two officers still with the ladies right now?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Kaczynski. “Over by Park Street Church near the Granary Burying Ground.”

  “Tell them to hold on to them until we get there.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Will do.”

  As the patrolman walked away, Cordero turned to her partner. But before she could say anything, he offered, “I’ll process the scene here. I want Popeye the Sailor out of my sight anyway. Take him with you to visit the Southie lasses.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Go,” he replied. “Before I change my mind.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “When we get there,” said Cordero as they approached Park Street Church, “let me do the talking. Unless, of course, you also have interrogation experience.”

  Harvath held up his thumb and forefinger close together. “One or two. But I’m lost without jumper cables and a bucket of water. Why don’t you do the talking when we get there.”

  She was starting to believe there might be more truth to the remarks he made than he let on.

  They parked in front of the Orpheum Theatre and played dodge-car crossing Tremont Street. Harvath had never seen a tweaker in person before. In fact, the only reason he was familiar with the term was because a buddy of his at Taser had told him about them. Before the company learned to lock their dumpsters up, local tweakers used to dumpster-dive behind their facility and scavenge parts.

  Twitching for days on end with tons of energy and fine-motor skills, they had figured out how to, sort of, rebuild Tasers from the broken and discarded parts they had found in order to resell them on the street for drug money.

  The Frankenstein devices they created were not only incredibly unreliable, but also incredibly dangerous. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating, albeit scary accomplishment.

  Harvath had seen pictures of the ravages meth could visit upon people. Some of the before-and-after photos of young women were particularly heartbreaking. Not only did the drug rob them of their good looks, but it rapidly aged them, with some looking like they were seniors when they were only in their twenties and thirties. It was described as a high so irresistible that it hooked nearly everyone on the first try.

  Despite being exposed to them all the time growing up in Southern California, Harvath had never been a drug guy. The only better-living-through-chemistry he allowed himself was from the three B’s—beer, bourbon, or the occasional Bordeaux. You always knew what came out of a bottle. Not many alco
hol companies got nailed for “stepping” on their product.

  Walking up to the two ladies from South Boston, Harvath immediately noticed their overabundance of nervous energy. It had been drilled into him to look at people’s hands and they were both doing oddball things. If he had been working a rope line as a Secret Service agent, he would have bounced both of these two. One was scratching her thighs raw while the other touched the tips of the fingers of her right hand to her thumb and then reversed the process and did it again.

  The closer he got, the more makeup he noticed they were wearing. Skin lesions were a nasty side effect of the drug and they were both covering up some big problems. You’d have to be out of your mind to pay either one of these women for sex. He could only imagine what their teeth looked like. “Meth mouth,” as it was known, was a rapid decay of tooth and gum and a hallmark of crystal meth abuse.

  Cordero introduced herself to the two officers and then to the two young women. They appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One was tall, but skinny as a rail, with stringy blond hair. Her name was Agnes. She looked like a local college girl who gone away on spring break, partied every night with no sleep, and was now home looking for the party to continue.

  The other girl, Brittany, was shorter and still had a little bit of meat on her. Now that Harvath could see her up close, he realized her skin wasn’t that bad. She just wore a lot of makeup because that was her style. She had hair blacker than Cordero’s—undoubtedly made possible only by some very serious dye. She complemented it with black nail polish, black lipstick, and lots of eyeliner and mascara. It was the full-on Goth look and she had a short black miniskirt, tight black top, and vintage flea market jewelry to match.

  Right away, it was obvious that Agnes was the talker. She was so loquacious Cordero almost couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Normally, standard procedure with witnesses was to split them up so they didn’t pollute each other’s stories. Agnes, though, was the only one who had seen the deceased with her customer last night. Brittany hadn’t seen anything and Harvath favored keeping them together. Cordero had explained what she was going to ask and he wanted to study how Ms. Piss and Vinegar reacted.

  Cordero was amazing. Not only was she an excellent interrogator, she was also a pro at understanding the Southie dialect, much of which was like a foreign language to Harvath’s ear—all except the F-word, which this young woman dropped with abandon. She used it as a verb, a noun, an adverb, and an adjective. Not even in the military had Harvath heard someone’s speech so peppered with it. Cordero was old-school and didn’t care for it and warned the young woman to clean it up. To her credit, she did, though it was obviously difficult for her and she still slipped up from time to time.

  Eventually, Cordero brought the conversation around to a description of the john.

  “He was average,” said Agnes. “Not too short, not too tall. You know. Average.”

  For her part during the interview, Brittany kept her mouth clamped tight as she ground her teeth back and forth. Harvath couldn’t tell if it was from nervousness or the meth. Considering her eyes were dilated, he figured she’d recently used, which only made her harder to read.

  He had been trained in the Secret Service to watch for micro-expressions: small, almost imperceptible facial cues that indicated when a person was lying or under a tremendous amount of stress because they were concealing the truth or intent upon doing harm. It was a great tool to use in interrogation, but considering the condition of their current subjects, it might just be a waste of time.

  That changed, though, when Cordero asked about the man’s hair. “He was wearing a skally,” Agnes replied, “but you could still see his whiffle.”

  Harvath had no idea what a skally or a whiffle was, but Brittany did, and even in the midst of her drug-induced fidgeting, he saw her shudder.

  “Hold on a second. What the hell is a whiffle and what does it have to do with whatever a skally is?” he asked the detective.

  “A skally is a type of cap,” she replied.

  “Like a baseball cap?”

  “No. More like a driving cap.”

  “And a whiffle?”

  “It’s a tight haircut with clippers. Kind of like a military crew cut.”

  The revelation took Harvath aback and his silence encouraged Cordero to continue the interview.

  He waited until Cordero was done and then suggested they speak with Brittany alone. Agnes, of course, was keen to keep on talking. The patrol officers humored her and moved her toward the street so Harvath and Cordero could talk with Brittany.

  Cordero went from good cop to bad cop so fast that Harvath almost got whiplash. She’d been downright congenial with Agnes, but then again Agnes was cooperative. The moment Brittany refused to engage, Cordero went nuclear and it scared the hell out of the young woman.

  “You want to see what he did to your friend Kelly?” she pushed. “Let’s go now. C’mon. They just fished her out of the Charles. She’s still lying on the dock under a plastic tarp. He’s got a special signature, this guy. You haven’t eaten breakfast, have you?”

  Brittany shook her head.

  “Good, ’cause I don’t want you puking all over your shoes. We’ll take my car. You’re okay with that, right? Kelly was your friend. You want to say goodbye, right? Even if somebody comes up with the money, it’s going to have to be a closed casket service. This’ll be more personal for you. Friends should say goodbye, right? Face-to-face, as it were.”

  Brittany continued to shake her head and Harvath saw her jaw tighten as she ground her teeth harder.

  Cordero moved closer, deeper into her personal space. “If you think Kelly’s going to be this guy’s only victim, you’re wrong, sweetheart. She’s not even his first. You want Agnes to be next? Better yet, how about if it’s you?”

  The young woman said nothing.

  “See this man next to me?” the detective asked, nodding at Harvath. “He came to Boston to stop this guy. But that’s not going to happen unless you cooperate.”

  Brittany’s gaze shifted to Harvath.

  “Nobody needs to know you told us anything,” he said. “You’re not in any trouble here. You’ve got a chance to do something right. You can help us catch the person who killed your friend.”

  “I don’t want you to catch him,” the young woman stated.

  Harvath tilted his head to hear her better. “You don’t?”

  “No. I want you to kill the motherfucker.”

  “What did I tell your friend about that language?” Cordero interjected.

  Brittany shot her daggers, while Harvath held up his hand for the detective to back off. “I understand how you feel,” he told Brittany. “There are quite a few people who’d agree with you, but we need to focus on finding this guy. Anything you can tell us, no matter how small, will help.”

  The woman shifted nervously from her left foot to her right, looking back and forth between Harvath and Cordero. Finally, she settled her eyes on him and began to tell her story about the man who had photographed her yesterday in the cemetery.

  Cordero took copious notes while Brittany recounted her tale. The F-bomb got dropped multiple times, but the detective was smart enough to let it go. Now that the young woman was cooperating, interrupting her narrative would have been a mistake.

  It was obvious that Brittany cared not only about what had happened to Kelly Davis, but about stopping Kelly’s killer. She hadn’t seen the john who picked her up that night, but the man described by Agnes sounded exactly like the man who had assaulted her. Neither Harvath nor Cordero had reason to doubt the young woman. She had been incredibly forthright, even admitting to having solicited the would-be killer.

  Cordero asked her several follow-up questions. When she was done, Brittany asked, “You’re not going to bag me for the solicitation, are you?”

  “No,” the detective replied. “I’m not. I appreciate your cooperation. Is there anything else you can think of, anything at all?”

 
; The young woman was quiet for a moment and then responded. “That’s pretty much it.”

  Cordero looked at Harvath. “Anything you want to add? Any questions I missed?”

  Harvath’s eyes had drifted down to Brittany’s hands again. “I do have one question.” Looking up at the young woman, he asked, “You’re right-handed, correct?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “So when you tried to slap him, you did it with your right hand, which is when he caught you by the wrist and twisted your right arm behind your back?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Harvath removed a wedge of cash from the pocket of his trousers and peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. Brittany’s eyes widened at the sight of the money. Pointing at the tarnished metal cuff on her right wrist, he said, “Detective Cordero could seize that as evidence, but I’d like to rent it from you. I only have one condition.”

  The young woman looked at the cuff and then back up at Harvath. “What is it?”

  He peeled off two more hundreds and held all four bills out for her. “You and Agnes stay off the street until Detective Cordero and I catch this guy. Deal?”

  The wheels were turning in the young woman’s head. She was undoubtedly doing some sort of calculation and it wasn’t about how many holy candles she and her pal could purchase with that kind of money. Finally, she replied, “Deal.”

  After tucking the money away, Brittany removed the cuff and placed it into the handkerchief Harvath had retrieved from his jacket.

  He then let her rejoin her friend, while Cordero phoned her department to make sure they had the young woman’s complete arrest record in the system.

  Satisfied, Cordero asked the ladies for a few more details, including contact information, and then gave each of them her business card along with her cell phone number on the back. With that, the patrol officers were asked to drive the women back to South Boston.