Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

CHAPTER 28

AMELIA SACHS HAD A 3G MOBILE PHONE, Jacob Swann had discovered.

And this was good news. Cracking the encryption and listening to her conversations were harder than with phones running GPRS—general packet radio service, or 2G—but, at least, it was feasible because 3G featured good old-fashioned A5/1 voice encryption.

Not that his tech department was allowed to do such a thing, of course.

Yet there must have been a screwup somewhere, because just ten minutes after discussing the matter casually—and, of course, purely theoretically—with the director of Technical Services and Support, Swann found himself enraptured by Sachs’s low, and rather sexy, voice, coming to him over the airwaves.

He already had a lot of interesting facts. Some specific to the Moreno investigation. Some more general, though equally helpful: for instance, that this Detective Amelia Sachs had some physical problems. He’d filed that away for future reference.

He’d also learned some troubling information: that the other investigator on the case, Lincoln Rhyme, was in the Bahamas. Now, this was potentially a real problem. Upon learning it, Swann had immediately called contacts down there—a few of the Sands and Kalik drinkers on the dock—and made arrangements.

But he couldn’t concentrate on that at the moment. He was occupied. Crouching in an unpleasantly aromatic alleyway, picking the lock of the service door to a Starbucks wannabe. A place called Java Hut. He was wearing thin latex gloves—flesh-colored so that at fast glance his hands would appear unclad.

The morning was warm and the gloves and concealing windbreaker made him warmer yet. He was sweating. Not as bad as with Annette in the Bahamas. But still…

And that god-awful stench. New York City alleys. Couldn’t somebody blast them with bleach from time to time?

Finally the lock clicked. Swann cracked the door a bit and looked inside. From here he could see an office, which was empty, a kitchen in which a skinny Latino labored away with dishes and, beyond that, part of the restaurant itself. The place wasn’t very crowded and he guessed that since this was a tourist area—what was left of Little Italy—most of the business would be on weekends.

He now slipped inside, eased the door mostly closed and stepped into the office, pulling aside his jacket and making sure his knife was easily accessible.

Ah, there was the computer monitor, showing what the security camera was seeing on the restaurant floor at the moment. The camera scanned slowly back and forth, in hypnotic black and white. He’d have a good image of the leaker, the whistleblower, when he scrolled back to May 11, the date the prick had uploaded the STO kill order to the District Attorney’s Office.

He then noticed a switch on the side of the monitor: 1–2–3–4.

He clicked the last and the screen divided into quadrants.

Oh, hell…

The store had four cameras. And one was presently recording Swann himself, crouching down in front of the machine. Only his back was being shot but this in itself was still very troubling.

He quickly studied the computer and was even more troubled to see that dismantling it and stealing the hard drive, as he’d planned, was impossible. The large computer was fixed to the floor with straps of metal and large bolts.

Right, as if somebody would steal a five-year-old piece of crap, with Windows XP as the operating system. He equated a machine like this to a plastic Sears hand mixer, versus what he had: a six-hundred-dollar KitchenAid, with a bread kneading hook and fresh pasta maker.

Then Swann froze. He heard voices, a giddy young woman’s and then a Latino man’s. He reached for the Kai Shun.

Their words faded, though, and the hallway remained empty. He turned back to his task. He tested the bolts and straps. They weren’t giving way. And he didn’t have the right tools to undo them. Of course he could hardly blame himself for that. He had a basic tool set with him but this would require an electric hacksaw.

A sigh.

The next best thing, he decided, was to make sure that the police didn’t get the drive either.

Too bad, it wasn’t his first choice, but he had no other options.

Now voices from the front of the restaurant again. He believed a woman was saying, “I’m looking for Jerry, please?”

Could it be? Yes. The tone was familiar.

Good old-fashioned A5/1 voice encryption…

“I’m Jerry. Are you the detective who called?”

“That’s right. I’m Amelia Sachs.”

She’d gotten here faster than Swann had expected.

Hunching forward to hide what he was doing from the camera, he reached into his backpack and removed an improvised explosive device, an anti-personnel model that would not only destroy the computer but send a hundred bits of jagged shrapnel throughout the back half of the coffee shop. He debated a moment. He could have set the timer for a minute. But Swann decided it would be best to set the detonator for a bit longer. That would give Ms. Sachs enough time to come into the office and start scrolling through the tapes before it blew.

Hitting the arm button and then the trigger, Swann slipped the box behind the computer itself.

He then rose slowly and backed out of the office, careful not to display his face to the camera.

CHAPTER 29

THE AIR IN JAVA HUT WAS RICH with a dozen different scents—vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, berry, chamomile, nutmeg…and even coffee.

Jerry, the manager, was a lanky young man with more extensive tats on his arms than a manager for a national franchise coffee shop probably should have. Even one headquartered in Portland. He shook her hand firmly, snuck a glance toward her hips. Men often did this—not checking out the body; he wanted a glimpse of her gun.

The dozen people here were all busy—typing on or examining some electronic device or another. A few were reading from paper. Only one, an elderly woman, was sitting quietly, looking out the window and doing nothing but leisurely enjoying a cup of coffee.

Jerry asked, “Would you like something? On the house?”

She declined. She wanted to get to the one lead in the case that had the potential to pay off.

“Just like to check out the security videos.”

“Sure,” he said, trying for another look at her weapon. She was glad she’d kept the jacket buttoned. She knew he’d want to ask her if she’d used it recently. And talk calibers.

Men. Sex or guns.

“Now, we’ve got one camera there.” He pointed above the cash register. “Everybody who comes in’ll get photographed at least once, pretty up close. What did this guy upload? Like insider information?”

“Like that, yes.”

“Bankers. Man, don’t you just hate ’em? And two other cameras.” Pointing.

One was mounted on a side wall and it scanned back and forth slowly like a lawn sprinkler. The tables were arranged perpendicularly to the camera, which meant that while patrons might not be visible head-on, it was likely she would get a clear profile shot of the whistleblower.

Good.

The other camera scanned a small alcove to the left of the main door, with only four tables inside. This too would get good side images of the patrons and was closer to those tables than the first camera was to those in the main room.

“Let’s see the video,” she said.

“It’s in the office. After you.” He extended his arm, covered with a multicolored tattoo of some Chinese writing, hundreds of characters long.

Sachs couldn’t help but think, What could it possibly say that was worth the pain?

Not to mention how he’s going to explain it to his grandkids.

CHAPTER 30

MAN, THE ALLEY ON A WARM AFTERNOON.

Gross.