Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

Any other week-old homicide investigation would find the lab in chaos. Mel Cooper, Pulaski, Rhyme and Sachs would be parsing the evidence, jotting facts and conclusions and speculations on the whiteboards, erasing and writing some more.

Now the sense of urgency was no less—the leaked kill order taped up in front of her reminded that Mr. Rashid, and scores of others, were soon to die—but the room was quiet as a mausoleum.

Bad figure of speech, she decided.

But it was apt. Nance Laurel was not here yet and Rhyme was taking his first trip out of the country since his accident. She smiled. Not many criminalists would go to that kind of trouble to search a crime scene, and she was happy he’d decided to, for all kinds of reasons.

But not having him here was disorienting.

Odd…

She hated this sensation, the chill emptiness.

I have a bad feeling about this one, Rhyme…

She passed one of the long evidence examination tables, on which sat racks of surgical instruments and tools, many of them in sterile wrappers, for analyzing the evidence they didn’t have.

At her improvised workstation Sachs sat down and got to work. She called Robert Moreno’s regular driver for Elite Limousines, Vladimir Nikolov. She hoped he might know who the mysterious Lydia, possible escort, possible terrorist, might be. But, according to the company, the driver was out of town on a family emergency. She’d left a message at Elite and one on his personal voice mail too.

She’d follow up later if she didn’t hear back.

She ran a search for suspected terrorist or criminal activities in the vicinity of where Tash Farada had dropped Moreno and Lydia off on May 1, via the consolidated law enforcement database of state and federal investigations. She discovered a few warrants for premises and surveillance in the area but they related, not surprisingly given the locale, to insider trading and investor fraud at banks and brokerage houses. They were all old cases and she could see no connection whatsoever to Robert A. Moreno.

Then, finally, a break.

Her phone rang and, noting the incoming number, she answered fast. “Rodney?” The cybercrimes expert, trying to trace the whistleblower.

Chunka, chunka, chunka, chunka…

Rock in the background. Did he always listen to music? And why couldn’t it be jazz or show tunes?

The volume diminished. Slightly.

Szarnek said, “Amelia, remember: Supercomputers are our friends.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. What do you have?” Her eyes were on the empty parlor, in which dust motes ambled through a shaft of morning sun like hot-air balloons seen from miles away. Again, she was painfully aware of Rhyme’s absence.

“I’ve got the location where he sent the email from. I won’t bore you with nodes and networks but suffice it to say that your whistleblower sent the email and the STO attachment from Java Hut near Mott and Hester. Think about it: A Portland, Oregon, coffee chain setting up shop in the heart of Little Italy. What would the Godfather say?”

She glanced at the header on the copy of the whistleblower’s messages taped to the board. “Is the date on the email accurate? Could he have faked it?”

“No, that’s when it was sent. He could write whatever date he wanted in the email itself but routers don’t lie.”

So their man was in the coffee shop at 1:02 p.m., May 11.

The cybercrimes detective continued, “I’ve checked. You can log onto Wi-Fi there without any identifying information. All you have to do is agree to the three-page terms of service. Which everybody does and not a single soul in the history of the world has ever read.”

Sachs thanked the tech cop and disconnected. She called the coffee shop and got the manager, explaining that she was trying to identify someone who had sent important documents via the Wi-Fi on May 11 and she wanted to come in and talk to him about that. She added, “You have a security camera?”

“We do, yeah. They’re in all the Java franchises. In case we get stuck up, you know.”

Without expecting much, she asked, “How often does the video loop?” She was sure new footage would overwrite the old every few hours.

“Oh, we’ve got a five-terabyte drive. It’s got about three weeks of video on it. The quality’s pretty crappy and it’s black and white. But you can make out a face if you need to.”

A ping of excitement. “I’ll be there in a half hour.”

Sachs pulled on a black linen jacket and rubber-banded her hair back in a ponytail. She took her holstered Glock from the cabinet, checked it as she always did, a matter of routine, and clipped it to her jeans belt. The double-mag holster went on her left hip. She was slinging her large purse over her shoulder when her mobile buzzed. She wondered if the caller was Rhyme. She knew he’d landed safely in the Bahamas but she was concerned that the trip might have taken a toll on his health.

But, no, the caller was Lon Sellitto.

“Hey.”

“Amelia. The Special Services canvass team is about halfway through the building where Moreno and the driver picked up Lydia. Nothing yet. They’re running into a lot of Lydias—who’da thought?—but none of ’em are the one. You know, how hard is it to name your kid Tiara or Estanzia? They’d be a fuck of a lot easier to track down.”

She told him about the lead to the coffee shop and that she was on her way there now.

“Good. A security cam, excellent. Hey, Linc’s really down in the Caribbean?”

“Yep, landed safe. I don’t know how he’s going to be treated. Interloper, you know.”

“Bet he can handle it.”

There was silence.

Something’s up. Lon Sellitto brooded some but it was usually noisy brooding.

“What?” she asked.

“Okay, you didn’t hear this.”

“Go on.”

The senior detective said, “Bill came by my office.”

“Bill Myers, the captain?”

So how does it feel to be repurposed into a granular-level player…

“Yeah.”

“And?”

Sellitto said, “He asked about you. Wanted to know if you were okay. Physically.”

Shit.

“Because I was limping?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, s’what he said. Listen, a fat old fart like me, you can get away with some bad days, hobbling around. But you’re a kid, Amelia. And skinny. He checked your reports and the ten-seventeens. Saw you volunteered for a lot of tactical work, first through the door on the lead teams sometimes. He just asked if you’d had any problems in the field or if anybody’d said they weren’t comfortable with you on take-downs or rescues. I told him no, absolutely not. You were prime.”

“Thanks, Lon,” she whispered. “Is he thinking of ordering a physical?”

“The subject didn’t come up. But that doesn’t mean no.”

To become an NYPD officer an applicant has to take a medical exam but once on the force—unlike firefighters or emergency medical techs—he or she never has to again, unless a supervisor orders one in specific cases or the officers want to earn promotion credit. Aside from that first checkup, years ago, Sachs had never had a department physical. The only record of her arthritis was on file with her private orthopedists. Myers wouldn’t have access to that but if he ordered a physical, the extent of her condition would be revealed.

And that would be a disaster.

“Thanks, Lon.”

They disconnected and she stood motionless for a moment, reflecting: Why was it that only part of this case seemed to involve worrying about the perps? Just as critical, you had to guard against your allies too, it seemed.

Sachs checked her weapon once more and walked toward the door, defiantly refusing to give in to the nearly overwhelming urge to limp.