Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

Once past the airport the traffic thinned and Thom sped up, piloting the van along SW Road and its gentle arc around the island, past manicured gated communities, past shacks decorated with laundry on lines and goats in pens, past swamps and then an endless mass of forest and greenery—Clifton Heritage Park.

“Here, turn here,” Poitier said.

They had arrived at a dirt road, which veered right and led through a wide, rusting gate, which was open. The road followed a narrow outcropping of land that extended a half mile into Clifton Bay. The spit was a few feet above sea level, dotted with trees and brush and scruffy bare spots, lined with a shore that was rocky in some places, sandy in others. The road was bordered with Do Not Swim signs. No explanation was given but the water was noxious, sickly green and singularly unappealing.

Thom followed the road, which skirted the north edge of the spit, past the several commercial facilities Poitier had alluded to in the restaurant earlier. The first they passed, at the intersection of the unnamed drive and SW Road, was the public trash yard where several fires burned and a dozen people wandered about, picking for anything of value. Next was the tire recycling operation and finally the metal fabricating plant composed of several low shacks so unsubstantial that it looked as if a gentle breeze, forget a hurricane, could have blown them down. The businesses were identified by hand-painted signs. Fences were topped with barbed wire and tense dogs prowled the grounds, squat and broad-chested—very different from the potcake they’d shared lunch with.

Clouds of smoke, yellow and gray, lingered defiantly, as if too heavy to be moved by the breezes.

As Thom picked his way along the pitted road, the view to the right suddenly opened up and they were looking at the bay of azure water beneath a stunning blue sky and white clouds dense as wads of cotton. About a mile away was the low beige line of land and buildings that was the South Cove Inn and surrounding grounds. Somewhere along this north edge of the spit from here to the end, about a hundred yards away, the sniper would have set up his nest.

“Anywhere here,” Rhyme said. Thom drove a short distance to a pull-off and parked. He shut the engine off and two sounds filled the van—some harsh rhythmic pounding from the metal factory and the faint crash of waves on the rocks that lined the shore.

“One thing first,” Poitier said. He reached into his backpack and extracted something then offered it to Rhyme. “Do you want this?”

It was a pistol. A Glock. Very much like Amelia Sachs’s. Poitier verified it was loaded and pulled the slide to chamber a round. With a Glock there is no safety catch, you simply have to pull the trigger to fire it.

Rhyme stared at the pistol, glanced at Thom and then took the weapon in his right hand. He had never cared for firearms. The opportunity to use them—in his specialty of forensics, at least—was next to never, and he was always worried that he’d have to draw and use his gun. The reluctance stemmed not from fear of killing an attacker but from what even a single shot could do to contaminate a crime scene. Smoke, blast pressure, gunshot residue, vapors…

That was no less true here but curiously he was now struck by the sense of power the weapon gave him.

In contrast with the utter helplessness that had enwrapped his life since the accident.

“Yes,” he said.

Though he couldn’t feel it in his fingers, the Glock seemed to burn its way into his skin, to become a part of his new arm. He aimed it carefully out the window at the water, recalling his firearms training. Assume every weapon is loaded and ready to fire, never point a weapon at anything you aren’t prepared to send a bullet into, never shoot unless you see exactly what is behind your target, never put your finger on the trigger until you’re prepared to shoot.

A scientist, Rhyme was actually a pretty good shot, using physics in calculating how to get the bullet to its desired destination.

“Yes,” he said again and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket.

They got out of the van and surveyed the area: pipes and gutters directing runoff into the ocean, dozens of piles of sludge rising like huge ant hills and cinder blocks and car parts and appliances and rusted industrial machinery littering the ground.

No Swimming…

No kidding.

Thom said, “The haze is bad and the inn’s so far away. How could he see well enough to get a clear target?”

Poitier said, “A special scope, I decided. Adaptive optics, lasers.”

Rhyme was amused. Apparently the corporal had done more research about the case than he’d let on—or than Assistant Commissioner McPherson would have been happy with.

“Could have been a clearer day too.”

“Never very clear here,” Poitier said, waving his arm at a low chimney rising above the tire plant. It spewed bile-green and beige smoke.

Then, surrounded by the nauseating smell of rotten eggs and hot rubber from the pollution, they made their way closer to the shore. Rhyme studied the ground for the best place to set up a sniper’s nest—good cover and an indentation that would allow support on which to rest the rifle. A half dozen sites would have worked.

No one interfered with the search; they were largely alone. A pickup eased up and parked just across the road. The driver, in a sweat-stained gray shirt, speaking into his cell phone, walked to the back of his truck and began tossing trash bags into a ditch beside the road. The concept of littering as a crime seemed not to exist in the Bahamas. Rhyme could also hear some laughing and shouts from the other side of the fence surrounding the metal fabrication plant but otherwise they had the place to themselves.

Looking for the nest, Thom, Poitier and Rhyme walked, and wheeled, through the weeds and patches of dirt and sand, the Storm Arrow doing a fair job of finding purchase in the uneven terrain. Poitier and Thom could get closer to the edge and he told them what to look for: cut-back brush, indentations, foot or boot prints leading to a flat area. “And look at the patches of sand.” Even a spent cartridge leaves a distinctive mark.

“He’s got to be a pro,” Rhyme explained. “He’d’ve had a tripod or sandbags to rest the gun on but he might’ve used rocks too and left them set up. Look for stones out of place, maybe one balanced on another. At that distance, the rifle would have to be absolutely steady.”

Rhyme squinted—the pollution and the wind stung his eyes. “I would love some brass,” he said. But he doubted the sniper would have left any empty cartridges behind; pros always collected them because they contained a wealth of information about the weapon and the shooter. He peered into the water, though, wondering if a spent shell had been ejected there. The sea was black and he assumed very deep.

“A diver’d be good.”

“Our official divers wouldn’t be available, Captain,” Poitier said regretfully. “Since this, of course, isn’t even an investigation.”

“Just an island tour.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Rhyme wheeled close to the edge and looked down.

“Careful there,” Thom called.

“But,” Poitier said, “I dive. I could come back and see if there is anything down there. Borrow some of the underwater lights from our waterside station.”

“You would do that, Corporal?”

He too peered into the water. “Yes. Tomorrow, I—”

What happened next happened fast.

Finger-snap fast.

At the sound of clattering suspension and a hissing, badly firing engine, Rhyme, Thom and Poitier turned to look at the dirt road they’d just driven down. They saw the gold Mercury bounding directly toward them, now with only two occupants in it.