Robert Bidinotto - Hunter

“He’s sure not dressed for the weather,” Cronin added.

“Nope,” Abrams said. “And notice his mouth.”

They leaned forward. “Is that food?” Erskine asked.

“Uh huh. That, plus how he’s dressed, makes me think they caught him right in the middle of supper last night. Probably at his place. I’m betting that when we find out where he lives, we’ll find the rest of his brains on the floor around his front door. You know: ‘Ding-dong, Avon calling.’ He opens up. Boom.”

“So what’s the rest of this staging all about?”

“See, this is a private elevator, key-card-operated.” Abrams pointed to the elevator buttons. A panel around the card reader had been unscrewed and removed, exposing a tangle of wires. “It only goes up to the law firm here-Ellis, Lehman, and Rogers.”

“ Those bastards,” Cronin said, looking over at the distraught faces in the conference room.

“Yeah. Those bastards. So today they’re throwing this small luncheon for the partners, their biggest clients, and their wives. They tell us that this elevator has an ‘out of order’ sign on it when they get here this morning, around eleven. So everybody takes the freight elevator up here. The party starts about noon. Then, about twelve-twenty, they hear the elevator alarm go off. All of a sudden, this door opens up. The alarm is real loud, now, so some of them go to check it out, and this is what they find.”

Erskine smiled. “This could cost them a few of those big clients.”

“I think that was the idea, Paul,” Cronin said. “So how did this go down?”

The older veteran ran his palm over his bare scalp, like he was smoothing hair that wasn’t there anymore.

“This building has private underground parking. No guard in the booth late nights and weekends, just an electronic card reader to raise the gate. This being Saturday, almost nobody is going in and out, except for the people coming to the party.

“So I’m figuring they drive in there with the stiff sometime before the party. Then they stick ‘out of service’ signs on the elevator doors, down there in the garage and in the first-floor lobby. Then they go back to their vehicle and wait. After noon, when everybody’s here and the coast is clear, they rig up our gang-banger in his chair. Then they fiddle with the electronics in the elevator, as you can see, to bypass the card reader. They press the alarm and push the number-twenty button. The door opens up here. ‘Surprise, everybody!’”

“Yeah,” Erskine said. “Having a naked broad jump out of a cake is so yesterday.”

Abrams ignored it. “They needed a key card to get into the garage, but I can’t imagine they had somebody on the inside working with them.”

“They wouldn’t need that,” Erskine said. “They could’ve used one of those electronic ‘skimmer’ things. It’s a hacker device. They sneak in here late one night, after the guard leaves, and attach it inside the card reader on the gate, then leave it in place. It records the codes whenever anybody swipes his card. Sometime later, they come back, stick a different gizmo into the card slot, and the skimmer transmits the stored card data right into that. Then they remove the skimmer from the gate, leaving no trace. Now they have the data to program their own key card.”

“Great. Maybe the security-camera video will show something.”

“Security cams haven’t helped us so far,” Cronin said. He pointed at the body. “So what’s with the news clipping? Another article by Hunter?”

Abrams shook his head. “It’s several years old, and it’s from the Post. Just like the one on the stiff in Fairfax last week. Forensics don’t want us to touch it yet, but from what I could read of it, this guy Wallace jacked a car four years back, killed the owner.” He indicated a tall, thin man in the conference room, wearing an expensive suit and a look of shock. “Dwight Rogers over there, one of the partners, represented him. He got most of the evidence tossed on a Miranda. So Wallace walked.”

“Prick lawyer.”

“That’s redundant, Paul,” Cronin said. “Well, then, the pattern hasn’t changed. These guys, whoever the hell they are, have hard-ons for defense attorneys, liberal judges, lefty legal-aid groups. And prosecutors who do plea deals.”

“Don’t forget politicians,” Abrams reminded him.

“Oh, right. That child molester last week, Smith, they dumped him on that state rep’s lawn in Fairfax-what was that guy’s name?”

“Dinsmore,” Erskine answered. “The jerk-off who blocked the bill about enhanced sentences for baby-rapers.”

“Which let Smith get out after just six months of some bullshit therapy,” Abrams said. “I gotta say, I liked how they crammed Smith’s pockets full of the kiddie porn they took from his apartment. Wind blew it all over Dinsmore’s yard and into the neighbor’s. And the feds checked Smith’s email. You know that dirt bag was grooming two other young boys from his town?”

“Say what you will about these shooters,” Erskine said, “but they’re sure as hell taking out the garbage.”

Abrams nodded. “Feeb profilers figure them as super-conservative, super-pissed-off at ‘leniency in the legal system.’ Their words. They think one or more of them lost a person they loved because some punk went through the revolving door. So this is payback time.”

Cronin shook his head. “Maybe that’s part of it. But I have a feeling this is more than personal revenge.”

“Why?”

“If it was only revenge, then they would’ve hit only the perps responsible for their own losses, and maybe those judges or defense attorneys, but that would be all. I think they would’ve stopped by now. But they haven’t. Besides, we’ve been looking hard at all the victim families in every case, and drawing blanks. None of them are good for this stuff.”

“So if it’s not personal revenge, where does that leave us?”

“Well, look at what they’re doing, even here. These guys are getting back not just at specific perps, but at the people who turned them loose. And they seem to be operating by some sort of code. They whack only the killers and sex predators. But they don’t kill anybody in the legal system or in any of those criminal-sympathizer groups.”

“At least they haven’t so far,” Erskine said. “They just embarrass the hell out of them.”

“Exactly. They’re doing what the system should’ve done to the perps. But then they bring the criminals right back to the doorsteps of the people who freed them. Literally. Plus the records of their crimes. These newspaper clippings, starting with the Hunter columns: It’s like they’re prosecutors building an indictment-only they’re indicting the whole system. They’re holding everybody accountable.”

“Justice for all,” Erskine said.

“There you go. So I don’t see this as being about private revenge. It’s bigger than that. It’s about retribution. These guys don’t think the legal system is a justice system anymore.”

“Well, they got that right,” Abrams said. He paused, lowering his voice. “So, you still suspect this could be a team of cops or ex-cops, Ed?”

“It fits. The shooter at Prince George’s Mall badged the two guards and drove a Crown Vic-”

“But he was a fake cop. There’s no ‘Detective Lex Talionis.’ The name’s a joke-Latin for ‘eye for an eye.’ The badge number didn’t check out legit, the car’s plate was phony, and the security camera down the road showed the Crown Vic was civilian, not a P71. Come on, Ed, all that proves is that these people are good at masquerading and flashing fake IDs. We already knew that, from the Alexandria courthouse.”

“That’s not my point, Marty. I’m only saying the guy knew enough police procedure to convince the guards he was the real deal. Besides that, they know how to pick locks, bypass alarms and security gates, rig electronics, keep a crime scene clean. And they get in and out of places without arousing suspicion. Especially that. If they’re police, that would explain it. Who stops a cop from going anywhere?”