Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 2

"Any thoughts at all about the shooter?" Sachs asked.

"No. He-or she-could be military, which would be a problem. If we're lucky he'll be civilian."

"Lucky?" From Sachs.

Rhyme a.s.sumed Laurel meant because the military justice system would complicate matters. But she elaborated, "A soldier's more sympathetic to a jury than a mercenary or civilian contractor."

Sellitto said, "You mentioned two conspirators, along with the shooter. Who else aside from Metzger?"

"Oh," Laurel continued in a faintly dismissive tone, "the president."

"Of what?" Sellitto asked.

Whether or not this required a thoughtful hesitation Laurel paused anyway. "Of the United States, of course. I'm sure that every targeted killing requires the president's okay. But I'm not pursuing him."

"Jesus, I hope not," Lon Sellitto said with a laugh that sounded like a stifled sneeze. "That's more than a political land mine; it's a f.u.c.king nuke."

Laurel frowned, as if she'd had to translate his comment from Icelandic. "Politics aren't the issue, Detective. Even if the president acted outside the scope of his authority in ordering a targeted killing, the criminal procedure in his case would be impeachment. But obviously that's out of my jurisdiction."

CHAPTER 4.

HE WAS DISTRACTED MOMENTARILY by the smell of grilling fish, with lime and plantain, he believed. Something else, a spice. He couldn't quite place it.

Sniffing the air again. What could it be?

Compact, with crew-cut brown hair, he resumed his casual stroll along the broken sidewalk-and dirt path, where the concrete slabs were missing altogether. He billowed out his dark suit jacket to vent the heat and reflected he was glad he hadn't worn a tie. He paused again beside a weed-filled lot. The street of low shops and pastel houses in need of more pastel paint was deserted now, late morning. No people, though two lazy potcake dogs were lounging in the shade.

Then she emerged.

She was leaving the Deep Fun Dive Shop and walking in the direction of West Bay, a Gabriel Mrquez novel in her hand.

Tan and sun-blond, the young woman had a tangle of hair, with a single narrow beaded braid from temple to breast. Her figure was an hourgla.s.s but a slim hourgla.s.s. She wore a yellow-and-red bikini and a translucent orange wrap around her waist, teasing. It fell to her ankles. She was limber and energetic and her smile could be mischievous.

As it now was.

"Well, look who it is," she said and stopped beside him.

This was a quiet area some distance away from downtown Na.s.sau. Sleepily commercial. The dogs watched lethargically, ears flopped downward like place-marked pages in a book.

"Hey there." Jacob Swann removed his Maui Jims and wiped his face. Put the sungla.s.ses back on. Wished he'd brought sunscreen. This trip to the Bahamas hadn't been planned.

"Hm. Maybe my phone's not working," Annette said wryly.

"Probably is," Swann offered with a grimace. "I know. I said I'd call. Guilty."

But the offense was a misdemeanor at worst; Annette was a woman whose companions.h.i.+p he'd paid for, so her coy remark wasn't as cutting as it might have been under different circ.u.mstances.

On the other hand, that night last week had been more than johnescort. She'd charged him for only two hours but had given him the entire night. The evening hadn't been Pretty Woman, of course, but they'd each enjoyed the time.

The hours of their transaction had fled quickly, the soft humid breeze drifting in and out of the window, the sound of the ocean metrically intruding on the stillness. He'd asked if she'd stay and Annette had agreed. His motel room had a kitchenette and Jacob Swann had cooked a late supper. After arriving in Na.s.sau he'd bought groceries, including goat, onion, coconut milk, oil, rice, hot sauce and local spices. He'd expertly separated meat from bone, sliced it into bite-sized pieces and marinated the flesh in b.u.t.termilk. By 11 p.m., the stew had simmered over a low flame for six hours and was ready. They'd eaten the food and drunk a substantial red Rhne wine.

Then they'd returned to bed.

"How's business?" he now asked, nodding back to the shop to make clear which business he was talking about, though the part-time job at Deep Fun was also a feeder for clients who paid her a lot more than for snorkel rental. (The irony of the shop's name was not lost on either of them.) Annette shrugged her gorgeous shoulders. "Not bad. Economy's taken its toll. But rich people still want to bond with coral and fish."

The overgrown lot was decorated with bald tires and discarded concrete blocks, a few dented and rusted appliance sh.e.l.ls, the guts long scavenged. The day was growing hotter by the second. Everywhere was glare and dust, empty cans, bushes in need of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, rampant gra.s.s. The smells: grilling fish, lime, plantains and trash fire smoke.

And that spice. What was it?

"I didn't remember I'd told you where I work." A nod at the shop.

"Yes, you did." He rubbed his hair. His round skull, dotted with sweat. Lifted his jacket again. The air felt good.

"Aren't you hot?"

"Had a breakfast meeting. Needed to look official. I'm just back for the day. Don't know what your schedule is..."

"Tonight?" Annette suggested. And encouraged.

"Ah, I've got another meeting." Jacob Swann's face was not expressive. He simply looked into her eyes as he said this. No wince of regret, no boyish flirt. "I was hoping now." He imagined they were hungry eyes; that's how he felt.

"What was that wine?"

"That I served with dinner? Chteauneuf-du-Pape. I don't remember which vineyard."

"It was scrumptious."

Not a word Jacob Swann used much-well, ever-but he decided, yes, it was. And so was she. The ropey straps of the bikini bottoms dangled down, ready to be tugged. Her flip-flops revealed blue nails and she wore gold rings on both her big toes. They matched the hoops in her ears. A complicated a.s.sembly of gold bracelets as well.

Annette sized him up too and would be recalling his naked physique, muscular, thin waist, powerful chest and arms. Rippled. He worked hard at that.

She said, "I had plans but..."

The sentence ended in a new smile.

As they walked to his car she took his arm. He escorted her to the pa.s.senger side. Once inside she gave him directions to her apartment. He started the engine but before he put the car in gear he stopped. "Oh, I forgot. Maybe I didn't call but I brought you a present."

"No!" She keened with pleasure. "What?"

He extracted a box from the backpack he used as an attache case, sitting in the backseat. "You like jewelry, don't you?"

"What girl doesn't?" Annette asked.

As she opened it he said, "It's not instead of your fee, you know. It's in addition."

"Oh, please," she said with a dismissing smile. Then concentrated on opening the small narrow box. Swann looked around the street. Empty still. He judged angles, drew back his left hand-open, thumb and index finger wide and stiff-and struck her hard in the throat in a very particular way.

She gasped, eyes wide. Rearing back and gripping her damaged neck.

"Uhn, uhn, uhn..."

The blow was a tricky one to deliver. You had to hit gently enough so you didn't crush the windpipe completely-he needed her to be able to speak-but hard enough to make it impossible to scream.

Her eyes stared at him. Maybe she was trying to say his name-well, the cover name he'd given her last week. Swann had three U.S. pa.s.sports and two Canadian, and credit cards in five different names. He frankly couldn't recall the last time he'd used "Jacob Swann" with somebody he hadn't known well.

He looked back evenly at her and then turned to pull the duct tape from his backpack.

Swann put on flesh-toned latex gloves and ripped a strip of tape off the roll. He paused. That was it. The spice the nearby cook had added to the fish.

Coriander.

How had he missed it?

CHAPTER 5.

THE VICTIM WAS ROBERT MORENO," Laurel told them. "Thirty-eight years old."

"Moreno-sounds familiar," Sachs said.

"Made the news, Detective," Captain Bill Myers offered. "Front page."

Sellitto asked, "Wait, the Anti-American American? What some headline called him, I think."

"Right," the captain said. Then editorialized bitterly: "p.r.i.c.k."

No jargon there.

Rhyme noted that Laurel didn't seem to like this comment. Also, she seemed impatient, as if she had no time for deflective banter. He remembered that she wanted to move quickly-and the reason was now clear: Presumably once NIOS found out about the investigation they'd take steps to stop the case in its tracks-legally and, perhaps, otherwise.

Well, Rhyme was impatient too. He wanted intriguing.

Laurel displayed a picture of a handsome man in a white s.h.i.+rt, sitting before a radio microphone. He had round features, thinning hair. The ADA told them, "A recent picture in his radio studio in Caracas. He held a U.S. pa.s.sport but was an expatriate, living in Venezuela. On May ninth, he was in the Bahamas on business when the sniper shot him in his hotel room. Two others were killed, as well-Moreno's guard and a reporter interviewing him. The bodyguard was Brazilian, living in Venezuela. The reporter was Puerto Rican, living in Argentina."

Rhyme pointed out, "There wasn't much of a splash in the press. If the government'd been caught with their finger on the trigger, so to speak, it would've been bigger news. Who was supposedly responsible?"

"Drug cartels," Laurel told him. "Moreno had created an organization called the Local Empowerment Movement to work with indigenous and impoverished people in Latin America. He was critical of drug trafficking. That ruffled some feathers in Bogot and some Central American countries. But I couldn't find facts to support that any cartel in particular wanted him dead. I'm convinced Metzger and NIOS planted those stories about the cartels to deflect attention from them. Besides, there's something I haven't mentioned. I know for a fact that a NIOS sniper killed him. I have proof."

"Proof?" Sellitto asked.

Laurel's body language, though not her facial features, explained that she was pleased to tell them the details. "We have a whistleblower-within or connected to NIOS. They leaked the order authorizing Moreno to be killed."

"Like WikiLeaks?" Sellitto asked. Then shook his head. "But no, it wouldn't have been."

"Right," Rhyme said. "Or the story would've been all over the news. The DA's Office got it directly. And quietly."

Myers: "That's right. The whistleblower capillaried the kill order."

Rhyme ignored the captain and his bizarre language. He said to Laurel: "Tell us about Moreno."

She did, and from memory. Natives to New Jersey, his family had left the country when the boy was twelve and moved to Central America because of his father's job; he was a geologist with a U.S. oil company. At first, Moreno was enrolled in American schools down there, but after his mother's suicide he changed to local schools, where he did well.

"Suicide?" Sachs asked.

"Apparently she'd had difficulty with the move...and her husband's job kept him traveling to drilling and exploration sites throughout the area. He wasn't home very much."

Laurel continued her portrait of the victim: Even at a young age Moreno had grown to hate the exploitation of the native Central and South Americans by U.S. government and corporate interests. After college, in Mexico City, he became a radio host and activist, writing and broadcasting vicious attacks on America and what he called its twenty-first-century imperialism.

"He settled in Caracas and formed the Local Empowerment Movement as an alternative to workers to develop self-reliance and not have to look to American and European companies for jobs and U.S. aid for help. There are a half dozen branches throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean."

Rhyme was confused. "It's hardly the bio of a terrorist."

Laurel said, "Exactly. But I have to tell you that Moreno spoke favorably about some terrorist groups: al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang, China. And he formed some alliances with several extremist groups in Latin America: the Colombian ELN-the National Liberation Army-and FARC, as well as the United Self-Defense Forces. He had strong sympathy for the Sendero Luminoso in Peru."

"s.h.i.+ning Path?" Sachs asked.

"Yes."

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Rhyme reflected. Even if they blow up children. "But still?" he asked. "A targeted killing? For that?"

Laurel explained, "Recently Moreno's blogs and broadcasts were growing more and more virulently anti-American. He called himself 'the Messenger of Truth.' And some of his messages were truly vicious. He really hated this country. Now, there were rumors that people had been inspired by him to shoot American tourists or servicemen or lob bombs at U.S. emba.s.sies or businesses overseas. But I couldn't find one incident in which he actually said a single word ordering or even suggesting that a specific attack be carried out. Inspiring isn't the same as plotting."

Though he'd known her only minutes Rhyme suspected that Ms. Nance Laurel had looked very, very hard for any such words.

"But NIOS claimed there was intelligence that Moreno was planning an actual attack: a bombing of an oil company headquarters in Miami. They picked up a phone conversation, in Spanish, and the voiceprint was confirmed to be Moreno's."

She now rifled through her battered briefcase and consulted notes. "This is Moreno: He said, 'I want to go after American Petroleum Drilling and Refining, Florida. On Wednesday.' The other party, unknown: 'The tenth. May tenth?' Moreno: 'Yes, noon, when employees are leaving for lunch.' Then the other party: 'How're you going to, you know, get them there?' Moreno: 'Trucks.' Then there was some garbled conversation. And Moreno again: 'And this's just the start. I have a lot more messages like this one planned.'"

She put the transcript back in her case. "Now, the company-APDR-has two facilities in or near Florida: its southeastern headquarters in Miami and an oil rig off the coast. It couldn't be the rig since Moreno mentioned trucks. So NIOS was sure the headquarters, on Brickell Avenue, was going to be the target.

"At the same time, intelligence a.n.a.lysts found that companies with a connection to Moreno had been s.h.i.+pping diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane to the Bahamas in the last month."

Three popular ingredients in IEDs. Those substances were what had obliterated the federal building in Oklahoma City. Where they also had been delivered by truck.

Laurel continued, "It's clear that Metzger believed if Moreno was killed before the bomb was smuggled into the United States his underlings wouldn't go through with the plan. He was shot the day before the incident in Miami. On May ninth."

So far it sounded like, whether you supported a.s.sa.s.sinations or not, Metzger's solution had saved a number of lives.