“I didn’t hear you,” said the Mudir, walking toward the man who had raised his hand. “Can you repeat what you said?”
No, he couldn’t. All the man could do was stare at the MP-443 Grach in the Mudir’s hand before literally pissing himself in his folding chair. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“I’m not,” said the Mudir.
Raising his arm, he pumped a single round from the semiautomatic pistol right between the man’s eyes. The shot was so clean the man barely moved as blood poured out the back of his head like water from a spigot.
The Mudir returned to his large duffel on the table, looking around at the twelve remaining men who would carry out the attack on the train station on July 4th.
“Does anyone else have a question?” he asked.
CHAPTER 25
TRACY SHOOK his head with a chuckle as he dipped a spring roll into some hot mustard. “You’ve gotta admit, this is pretty funny,” he said.
“What is?” I asked.
“This,” he said, looking around our living room. “Us.”
“What about us?” asked Elizabeth.
“A straight girl shacking up with two gay white guys who have a black South African baby,” he said. “And we’re all eating Chinese food. This is either a Benetton ad or the pilot for a sitcom that’s trying way too hard.”
Tracy had no idea where I’d been that afternoon, but after paying my last respects to Ahmed, I was in desperate need of a laugh.
Elizabeth laughed, too. She was in the middle of slurping a lo mein noodle, and that only made her laugh harder. She was still banged up, still in some pain, but it was good to see. By the looks of her when she first walked in, her day had been as much of a bummer as mine. It certainly didn’t help that reporters were continuing to stake out her apartment building.
We’d just put Annabelle down for the night and were sitting around on the floor of the den eating takeout from Han Dynasty and watching the news. It was twenty-four seven about the bombings—the victims, the survivors, and now the search for the terrorists responsible. Naturally, the blame game had begun. The police? The FBI? The CIA? The NSA? Homeland Security? Who dropped the ball?
“Do you want me to change the channel?” I asked Elizabeth.
“I would love you to,” she said, “but don’t. I need to watch, like it or not.”
She was right. It was part of her job now.
The only thing she’d shared with us—the only thing she was permitted to share with us—was that she’d been assigned to the Times Square investigation. Tracy and I didn’t ask her for any inside scoop, and she knew enough not to offer one. I was wondering, though. Had she been briefed about Ahmed and his being embedded with the terrorist cell? Would she ever be?
There was something else, too. Elizabeth had gotten what she wanted. She’d been taken off the Professor Darvish case. But somehow she hadn’t seemed all that pleased about it when she told us. What was bothering her?
Hold that thought.
The sound of Annabelle crying suddenly filtered to us from down the hall. “I’ve got her,” I said, starting to get up.
“No, let me,” said Tracy, beating me to it. “It’s my turn.”
Parenting is life’s biggest learning curve, but Tracy and I at least had the balancing act part of it down pat. We didn’t actually take turns tending to Annabelle. It’s not like either of us kept count of who did what for her. It was more instinctual. We both just had a sense of when one of us should step in for the other. Can you really be good parents without that?
“I’m calling that last dumpling, though,” said Tracy, pointing at the box in front of me as he headed for Annabelle’s room.
No sooner had he gotten there than Elizabeth turned to me. “I need to ask you something,” she said.
“Anything,” I answered, although I immediately regretted it.
“Before Pritchard reassigned me this morning I showed him the video of Darvish and his mystery woman,” she said.
“And?”
“And Pritchard pretended to have no idea about the white glow obscuring her face.”
“How did you know he was pretending?”
“It was a look he had,” she said. “It was super quick, came and went in an instant, but I saw it. I know I did.”
“What kind of look?”
“The same kind you gave me last night when I showed you the video,” she said. “You already know what’s causing that glow.”
“You’re that sure, huh? All based on a look?”
“Actually, I wasn’t sure until after I walked into your apartment tonight. That was the clincher.”
The second she said that, I knew she had me. I hated it when Elizabeth reminded me of how smart she was. But I loved it even more.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“You haven’t once tonight mentioned the video. You haven’t asked about my meeting with Pritchard, what he thought about the glow, anything …”
“You’re right, I haven’t,” I said.
“Because you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Or maybe I can’t talk about it.”
“Too late,” she said. “What are you not telling me, Dylan Reinhart?”
CHAPTER 26
I GLANCED down the hall, listening to the faint sound of Tracy singing softly to Annabelle.
When we first brought her home, we discovered she was basically lullaby-proof. None of the staples like “Hush, Little Baby” seemed to calm her down. Desperate one night, Tracy and I riffled through his iTunes playlist like a couple of possessed Casey Kasems. Much to our relief—and delight—we discovered that our baby girl was a Beatles fan. Tracy was now in the middle of one of her favorites, “Penny Lane.”
“Tracy really has a nice voice,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
“You’re stalling,” said Elizabeth. “That’s what I think.”
She’d intentionally waited until we were alone before asking me about the glow, and that only made me feel worse. She knew my darkest secret and Tracy didn’t.
I’d become all too adept at concealing from Tracy anything having to do with my CIA days. But my decision not to tell him—made so many years ago and done, I was convinced, for his protection—had always hung over me. At that moment it felt as if there were a giant boulder perched on a ledge in the middle of an earthquake, and I was standing directly below it wearing a pair of lead shoes.
Still, Elizabeth wasn’t about to take No comment for an answer.
“It’s called Halo,” I said. “That’s what’s causing the glow.”
“Halo? I don’t know what to ask first,” she said. “How does it work or who created it?”
“It was developed by a CIA lab back when I was stationed in London,” I said. “As for how it works, I’ll be damned if I understand all the science behind it.”
Elizabeth blinked in disbelief. “Did you just admit to ignorance?”
“Bite your tongue. I said I didn’t know all the science. The device, sometimes disguised as a necklace, reflects infrared waves, along with some visible light, and distorts any CCTV image. The effect is that blur of white you saw.”
“With a simple necklace?” she said.
“That’s the gee-whiz part. They’ve been able to produce the effect with what look like ordinary beads.”
Wait for it, Dylan. In five seconds, she’ll forget all about the science and realize the implications. Five, four, three, two …
“Jesus,” said Elizabeth. “So this woman with Darvish is CIA?”
“It’s possible.”
“Could she have killed the professor and made it look like an accident?”
“Also possible,” I said.
“Would Pritchard know something like that?”
“It’s highly unlikely anyone in your unit would know, including your boss.”
“But he could know about Halo, right?” she asked.
“We’re back to it’s possible,” I said. “But you can�
��t ask Pritchard because—”
“You and I never had this conversation. I get it. Besides, I’m not even assigned to the case anymore.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” I said.
“Can you blame me? We need to find out who this woman is.”
“We?”
“You want to know, too, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily. If she’s an operative, I’ll take it on faith that she was acting on good intelligence—information that no one inside the Agency is about to share with me.”
“What if she’s not, though?”
“Acting on good intel?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “What if she’s not CIA?”
It was a fair point. Halo’s technology had been around nearly a decade, albeit in the hands of a very select group. That didn’t mean, though, that someone else hadn’t gotten hold of it. The wrong hands.
“What time does Bergdorf’s close?” I asked.
There wasn’t a more out-of-left-field question I could’ve thrown at Elizabeth in that moment. Her face confirmed it. “Bergdorf’s?” she asked. “Why?”
I reached for my phone, quickly googling the store’s hours. It was already past seven. “We need to do some shopping,” I said. “Then we need a huge favor.”
CHAPTER 27
“I’M REALLY going to hate returning these,” said Elizabeth, gazing down at the shoebox in her lap as we pulled away in the cab from Bergdorf’s. We caught a break. The store stays open until eight during the week.
I turned to her. “Who said anything about returning them?”
“Yeah, right,” she said with a laugh. Then she realized I was serious. “Dylan, that’s crazy. I can’t keep these.”
“Why not?”
“For starters, they cost over nine hundred dollars.”
“Yeah, what is it with women’s shoes? You girls know you’re getting scammed, and yet you still buy them like drugs,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not a good enough reason not to keep them.”
Elizabeth opened the box, taking out one of the Christian Louboutins and staring at it, transfixed. She was clearly in love. Still, as if snapping out of it, she shook her head.
“I’ll give you a better reason why to return them,” she said. “They’re just going to sit in my closet.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” I said.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Please don’t. My sister already gives me the you-need-to-get-a-boyfriend speech about once a month.”
“She isn’t very persuasive, is she?”
“No, I’m just that pathetic.”
I didn’t say anything. Apparently I was supposed to.
“For the record,” said Elizabeth, shooting an elbow into my ribs, “this is the part where you tell me that I’m not actually pathetic and I simply work too hard.”
“Oh, you mean the old married-to-your-job cliché?”
“If the shoe fits.”
“Okay, here you go,” I said, clearing my throat. “You’re not actually pathetic. You simply work too hard.”
“That wasn’t very persuasive.”
“You don’t believe it so why should I?”
“Do you really think I use my career as an excuse to avoid dating?” she asked.
“Actually, no. I think the excuse you use is your father cheating on your mother.”
“Wow, you went there, didn’t you?”
“Hey, you asked.”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” she said. “You don’t try to psychoanalyze me, and I won’t make the joke about gay men knowing more about women’s shoes than most women.”
“That’s an even bigger cliché than being married to your job.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “It is, isn’t it?” She turned the shoe upside down, staring at the signature red sole of all Christian Louboutins. “So is this idea of yours going to work?” she asked.
“It’s worth a try,” I said.
A few blocks later, we pulled up in front of a converted warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen near the corner of West 44th Street and Tenth Avenue. SILVER KEY STUDIOS read the sign over the entrance.
Tracy’s friend, Doug Chadwick, was waiting for us in the lobby. I shook his hand and introduced him to Elizabeth.
“Thanks again for doing this,” I said.
“I haven’t done anything yet,” he answered, “but Tracy said the magic word.”
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to remember what I’d heard Tracy tell Doug over the phone back at our apartment. I assumed he didn’t mean please.
“Tracy said what you were hoping to do was practically impossible.” Doug smiled wide. “I live for impossible.”
CHAPTER 28
TAKE AWAY Doug’s thick lumberjack beard, pierced eyebrow, rimless glasses, and Woodstock revival wardrobe and replace them with a permanent glass of single-barrel whiskey, a British accent, and the “screw you with a capital F” attitude of a devilishly unparalleled hacker, and you’d basically be looking at Julian Byrd’s separated-at-birth brother.
Or, in other words, he was nothing like Julian.
Except for one thing.
Like Julian, Doug Chadwick clearly didn’t appreciate being on the surrender side of a challenge. Especially one involving a computer.
“Follow me,” he said.
Once again, life was just as much about who you know as what you know. Tracy had been introduced to Doug through an actress he’d met on the set of a shampoo commercial. Almost a year later to the day, Doug hired Tracy for his 3-D motion-capture shoot.
And tonight, Doug was about to help us identify a woman based solely on the way she walked in a very particular pair of high heels. At least that was the plan.
Elizabeth and I had Tracy to thank for setting this all up. He was also being a mensch for staying home with Annabelle. It was a double favor. But it was Doug who was doing us the huge favor.
“Just let me know what the hourly rate is,” I said as we entered one of the studios at the end of a long hallway.
“Zilch,” he said. “The booking agent felt bad for holding me to my session the day after the bombings, so this one’s a freebie.”
“What about your time, though?” I asked. “I need to pay you something.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. To be honest, making Tracy jump around for hours in that ridiculous green leotard makes me feel a bit guilty for not paying him more,” he said. He turned to Elizabeth. “Speaking of that leotard, I assume you have the honors?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Elizabeth. “And green is so not my color.”
Doug’s involvement required a delicate dance for us in terms of what we could and couldn’t tell him. We’d already emailed him the hotel surveillance footage of Darvish the night of his death. As far as Doug knew, he was helping the police identify the woman on the professor’s arm. We obviously couldn’t share why we wanted to know who she was or the real reason her face was obscured. If he asked about the glow, I was going to tell him it was the result of the footage being tampered with, but I had the feeling he wasn’t going to ask.
“Okay, walk me through what you’re thinking,” he said, eyeing the shoebox in Elizabeth’s hands. “So to speak.”
“It’s simple,” I said. “While we can’t see the woman’s face, we can see her walk, and everyone has their own unique way of walking. Almost like a fingerprint.”
“Almost, but not exactly,” said Doug.
“Right, but close enough that we might be able to model this woman’s precise gait. Of course, to do that—”
“You’d have to have her precise shoes. Lucky for you, she was wearing Christian Louboutins,” he said.
I nudged Elizabeth. “See? He knows women’s shoes and there’s no way he’s gay.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Just ignore him, Doug. That’s what I do.” She took the shoes out of their box and handed them over.
“Yeah, I once dated a girl who was addicted to Louboutins,” sa
id Doug, giving them a look. “She couldn’t afford them and I couldn’t afford her. Are you sure these are the right ones, though? The difference of even a few millimeters in the heel height would throw off every calculation.”
“They’re the right ones,” said Elizabeth, “and the heel is exactly a hundred millimeters. It’s the only way they come.”
Scam or no scam, you don’t get to sell shoes for close to a thousand bucks a pop by making a gazillion different styles. The cross straps and open-toe design with a vamp heel narrowed the field down to just one, and there was no escaping the irony.
Louboutin made shoes with names like Fifi, Bibibop, and Doracandy.
This particular shoe, however, was called the Malefissima.
Latin root word mal, meaning bad.
Or evil.
CHAPTER 29
ELIZABETH RETURNED from the bathroom after changing into the skintight green leotard that gave new meaning to the word unflattering, even on her.
“You’re right, Doug,” she said, cringing, and not just from her cuts and bruises. “You’re probably not paying Tracy enough.”
Doug quickly lined her legs with the reflective markers otherwise known as “those tiny ping-pong balls.” Her job now was to walk the world’s shortest catwalk, back and forth in front of an elaborate station of cameras, behind which was an even more elaborate console of screens.
“Work it, girl!” I said.
Doug was multitasking at the keyboard, modeling the movement of the woman with Darvish in addition to the measurements he was getting from Elizabeth. The only fixed element was the shoes, so everything else—stride differential, for instance—had to be accounted for and adjusted using multiple algorithms that also took into account things like skin tone and body mass. And that was only for starters. The real math hadn’t even begun.
So much for my having a statistics PhD from MIT. My head was spinning just thinking about it.
“Doug, any sign of the file?” asked Elizabeth.
All the computing in the world couldn’t help us unless we had something to apply it to. That was the file we were waiting on—additional surveillance footage from the hotel covering the days leading up to Darvish’s death. The detectives assigned to the case had acquired it, as per protocol for their investigation, and had even checked to see if there was any sign of Darvish’s mystery woman. But they were searching for someone with the same glow. We weren’t.
Killer Instinct Page 7
