Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

In the information monitor in the upper left-hand corner, Firefox popped up. This was completely against procedure. You couldn’t go online with a commercial browser in a GCS while a drone was operational. But Shales could think of no other option. In an instant he’d called up Google Maps and clicked on satellite view. A photo image of the ground around Reynosa popped up, houses, foliage, roads, stores.

Looking back and forth from the radar panel to the map, lining up roads and other landmarks, he estimated the Hellfire’s location.

Christ! The missile was right over another residential subdivision northwest of Reynosa. But according to Google, to the west was a large empty area of beige-and-yellow desert.

“UAV Three—”

Shales ripped off his headset and flung it away.

Right hand back to the trackball.

Gently, gently—man, it was easy to oversteer.

Looking from radar to Google, he saw the Hellfire’s path veering away from the houses. Soon the direction was due west, toward what the satellite map promised was nothingness. The nose camera in the missile still showed only haze.

Then the altitude and speed began to drop fast. The propellant was gone. There was nothing more Shales could do; he’d lost control of the missile. He sat back, wiped his hands on his slacks. Staring at the monitor of the view from the Hellfire’s nose camera. He could see only overcast.

The altitude indicator showed: 1500 feet.

670.

590…

What would he see as the Hellfire crashed to earth? Empty desert? Or a school bus on a field trip? Farmworkers staring in horror at what was falling toward them?

Then the haze broke and Shales had a clear view of the missile’s destination directly ahead.

However loud and spectacular the impact eighteen hundred miles away was, it registered in the NIOS Kill Room as a simple, silent change of image: from a barren plain of dirt and brush to a screen filled with flickering black and white, like a TV when a storm takes out the cable.

Shales spun back to the drone controls, disengaged the autopilot. He looked at the camera’s monitor, still focused on the courtyard of the safe house. The children were still there, the boy, presumably the brother, gently kicking the ball to the girl, who chased after it like a driven terrier. A woman stood in the doorway watching them both, unsmiling.

Jesus Lord, he repeated, not wondering or caring who they were or how they came to be in a safe house that the “impeccable” intelligence had assured was occupied only by a terrorist.

He zoomed out with the camera.

The garage door was open. Rashid was gone. Of course, he would be. The wary eyes earlier had told Shales that the terrorist suspected what was happening.

He scooped up the headsets and placed them on his head. Replugged the jack.

“—opy, Three Nine Seven?”

“Three Nine Seven to Texas Center,” he snapped. “Mission aborted at operator’s discretion. Returning to base.”

CHAPTER 71

DO YOU WANT SOME SCOTCH?” Rhyme asked, from the center of his parlor, near a comparison microscope. “I think you need some.”

Looking up from her desk in the corner of the room, where she was packing up files, Nance Laurel swiveled toward Rhyme with furrowed brow, wrinkling a crease into her makeup. He suspected a lecture on the unprofessionalism of drinking on the job would be forthcoming.

Laurel asked, “What distillery?”

Rhyme replied, “Glenmorangie. Twelve or eighteen years.”

“Anything peatier?” she wondered aloud, to his additional surprise. Sachs’s too, and amusement, to tell from the faint smile on his partner’s face.

“No. Try it, you’ll like it.”

“Okay. The eighteen. Naturally. Drop of water.”

Rhyme gripped the bottle and clumsily poured. She did the water herself. His bionic arm lacked sufficient subtlety. He asked, “Sachs?”

“No, thanks. I’ll get something else.” She was organizing evidence bags and boxes, which—even in cases that were falling apart—had to be meticulously cataloged and stored.

“Thom and Mel?”

The tech said he was fine with coffee. Thom too declined. He’d grown fond of bourbon Manhattans lately but had explained to Rhyme that drinks that involved a recipe should only be enjoyed on weekends, when no business was likely to intrude.

Thom pulled a bottle of French Chardonnay from the refrigerator in which blood and tissue samples were often stored. He lifted it toward Sachs. She said, “You read my mind.”

He opened and poured.

Rhyme sipped some of the fragrant whiskey. “Good, no?”

“It is,” Laurel agreed.

Rhyme reread the letter about Moreno’s renunciation of his U.S. citizenship. He was as angry as Laurel that this technicality had derailed the case.

“He hated the country that much,” Pulaski asked, “that he’d give up his citizenship?”

“Apparently so,” Laurel said.

“Come on, boys and girls,” Rhyme chided, then sipped some more whiskey. “They won round one. Or the first inning. Whatever clichéd figure of speech and mixed metaphor you like. But we still have a perp, you know. Unsub Five Sixteen, responsible for an IED in a coffee shop and the Lydia Foster homicide. Those are Major Cases. Lon Sellitto’ll assign us to work them.”

“It won’t be my case, though,” Nance Laurel said. “I’ve been told to get back to my regular caseload.”

“This’s bullshit,” Ron Pulaski spat out, surprising Rhyme with his vehemence. “Moreno’s the same person he was when he got shot—an innocent victim. So what if he wasn’t a citizen?”

“Bullshit it is, Ron,” Laurel said, her voice more resigned than angry. “That’s exactly right.”

She finished her whiskey and walked over to Rhyme. She shook his hand. “It’s been a privilege working with you.”

“I’m sure we will again.”

A faint smile. But something about the exquisite sadness in the expression told him that she believed her life as a prosecutor was over.

Sachs said to her, “Hey, you want to have dinner sometime? We can dish on the government.” She added in a whisper that Rhyme could hear, “And dish on men too?”

“I’d like that. Yes.”

They exchanged phone numbers, Sachs having to check to find out what her new one was. She’d bought a half dozen prepaids in the past few days.

Then the ADA carefully assembled her files, using paper clips and Post-it Notes to mark relevant categories. “I’ll have copies sent to you for the unsub case.”

The short woman hefted the briefcase in one hand, the litigation bag in the other and with one last look around the room—and no other words—walked out, her solid heels thudding on the wood, then the marble of the hallway. And she was gone.

CHAPTER 72

JACOB SWANN DECIDED, WITH SOME REGRET, that he couldn’t rape Nance Laurel before he killed her.

Well, he could . And part of him wanted to. But it wouldn’t be wise—that was what he meant. A sexual assault left far too much evidence. Minimizing the clues in any murder was hard enough—trying to make sure sweat, tears, saliva, hairs and those hundred thousand skin cells we slough off daily weren’t available to be picked up by some diligent crime scene tech.

Not to mention fingerprints inside the latex gloves or on skin.

He’d need another option.

Swann was presently in a restaurant on Henry Street across from the prosecutor’s apartment in Brooklyn, a four-floor walk-up. He was nursing a very bittersweet Cuban coffee.

Scanning Laurel’s abode. Not a doorman building, he noticed. Good.

Swann had decided that now he could use a cover crime for the murder: In addition to prosecuting patriotic Americans for taking out vile traitors, Laurel had sent plenty of rapists to jail. He’d looked up her conviction record—extremely impressive—and learned that among those she’d put away were dozens of serial rapists and molesters. One of these suspects could easily decide to get his revenge following his release. Or a relative of a prisoner might do just that.