Russell Blake - Silver Justice

The more she looked at the images, the less certain of anything she was. It was defeating the purpose.

She switched to her prior evening’s research, and then stopped cold.

The address on the license. It looked familiar.

She flipped back and then ran out to the front room, where the papers were still strewn around the dining room table.

Midway into the pile she found what she was looking for. She approached the screen and held up the photocopy of a three-year-old article about a man who had been decapitated in a horrific car crash; the victim of his own reckless behavior. His blood alcohol had been almost triple the legal limit when he’d plowed into the back of a parked semi-rig, its lift gate acting as a guillotine and severing his head like a hot knife through butter.

Parker Rose. Age fifty-nine.

Parker Rose’s address was two numbers different than Howard Jarvis’ before the fire had taken his wife and daughter from him. Same street.

They had been neighbors.

And possibly friends?

The coincidence was too large to ignore. Although it hardly constituted proof of anything, it was a thread. A substantial one. And she had solved other crimes with slimmer threads than this.

She quickly pulled up the interrogation file on Howard from earlier in the week and jotted down his information before calling Sam’s office. His phone went to voicemail. She left a brief message, then hung up in frustration. His cell went to voicemail too. She left the same message:

“Sam, this is Silver. I think I may have discovered something of significance on the ‘Regulator’ suspect in Brooklyn. It’s convoluted, but a search for decapitations turned up an article on his neighbor being killed in a freak accident…I think there’s something there. Call me as soon as you get this.”

Even as she hung up, she realized how odd her call sounded. She could imagine Sam’s derisive response, “ Wow, Silver, his neighbor drove into a truck and killed himself while wasted, and his wife was a psycho and burned their house down? Cuff him! ”

She tried Brett’s number, but his secretary reminded her that he was in Washington, out of phone contact until the evenings.

Her frustration mounted. If she was still running the taskforce, she could have put a dozen men on scouring the records for more background, looking for the links she was now sure would be there. It was only a theory, but it was a powerful one — of course it was personal . The significance was now clear. He’d lost friends and loved ones in the same manner as he was now killing his victims.

Silver caught another glimpse of the driver’s license photo with the beard and was again struck by the feeling of unease. Why? What was she sensing unconsciously that she wasn’t picking up when she studied it?

She flipped to the un-doctored photo and downloaded it, then opened it in Photoshop. Using the clone stamp function, she eliminated the mustache. No, that wasn’t it. Although…

The hair. Something about the hair.

She next erased first the top, then the sides, mimicking a very short cut.

Silver froze.

That face.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, straining to recall the brief glimpse she’d gotten. Her eyes popped open, and she gasped.

It was him.

The man in black from yesterday.

She was sure of it.

Or almost sure.

That was the problem with post-traumatic stress disorder , a small voice inside of her cautioned. After killing a man and then having her daughter kidnapped, black could seem like it was really white, and she could talk herself into believing that the laundry man across the street was really the Pope, or Hitler, or a trained assassin. Lots of crazies went round the bend on killing sprees because they saw the devil in the faces of others, clear as day. It puzzled them why nobody else saw what was obvious to them.

Am I losing it?

She considered the question dispassionately. No, you’re not losing it. You might be tired and distraught, but you’re not crazy as a shithouse rat. Yet .

Although you have been eating dinner with a loaded Glock as your companion . Not everyone had a forty-caliber dining guest.

The doubts faded the more she stared at the photo she’d modified. It was him. And he had been across the street. Which meant he knew where she lived.

Like the kidnappers, who had never bothered to call, knew where she lived.

The final piece fell into place. If she was right, he could not only be the killer but also could have her daughter. A serial killer imprisoning her ten-year-old.

The thought catalyzed her, and she sprang into action. Everyone else might be too busy to take her calls but that didn’t mean she was helpless. She had over a decade of field experience and was one of the best.

Silver glanced at the time as she strode purposefully into the bedroom.

She pulled her hair into a ponytail and briefly considered calling Art and telling him about her breakthrough, but then hesitated. Put simply, it sounded crazy, or at least highly implausible. He would probably be polite and listen patiently, and maybe send a team over to chat with the nice old man again, but that wouldn’t be the same as him coming face to face with Silver. They would have to follow a host of rules of engagement and would be deeply skeptical of her intuition, which could tip him off in a number of ways. He was obviously extremely smart, and he’d already been through one round of questioning with nothing to show for it.

No, that wouldn’t do any good.

She would need to handle this herself.

Five minutes later, she was taking the stairs to the street, two at a time, anxious to get to Brooklyn as quickly as possible.

The bar was technically open at ten a.m., but there were no customers yet. When the front door swung wide, the harsh rays of the late morning sun shot through the gloom, bringing with it the shadow of a huge man in worn jeans and a leather jacket. He looked around and spotted his objective — a bald man sipping a cognac in one of the red-upholstered booths.

The sound of his heavy motorcycle boots on the polished concrete floor echoed through the lounge as he approached the drinker, who motioned to him to sit.

“What would you like, my friend? Anything. Say the word.” The bald man’s Slavic accent was thick, but understandable.

“What’s that you’re drinking?” the tall American grunted.

“Hennessy. I like a little eye-opener with my coffee. I highly recommend it.”

“Fine. But skip the coffee part.”

The bald man snapped his fingers and pointed to his miniature snifter, and within twenty seconds another glass appeared alongside it before the bartender scuttled away to the farthest corner in the room.

The two men toasted, and the new arrival downed the drink in a single gulp, then exhaled noisily with a burp.

“What happened? I have some very pissed-off people who want the woman dead, and these are not people you want angry.”

“It was a regrettable oversight. The contractor was careless. You probably read in the papers that he paid the ultimate price for his sloppiness.”

“I saw that. But that doesn’t get our fifty grand back, does it?”

“Do you want your money back? Or do you want us to take care of the woman? I’m still prepared to do this job if that’s your wish. Of course, now that we know she is an FBI agent who has advance warning of danger, it won’t be as simple a matter.”

“I don’t want the money back. I want her snuffed, preferably yesterday. Same deal, only this time you don’t screw it up.”

“I think if you want a better caliber of contractor, you should consider paying a little more.”