Comes a Horseman (14 page)

16

O
utside the Old City walls, in the Hasidic neighborhood of Me'a She'arim, boys played in the streets, their hands continually rising to make sure their
kippots
had not slipped from their heads. Men mingled in small groups or sat on benches reading
saddur
prayer books. Their uniformly long beards could have made them Haight-Ashbury princes or ZZ Top fanatics. They appeared almost regal in crisp black suits—black to symbolize the sect's mourning of the destruction of King Solomon's temple in AD 70—but no neckties, because they believed the garment represented the cross of Christ. Women were dressed more contemporarily but also in dark tones, with long sleeves and scarves that shielded their hair from lustful eyes. Attesting to the busyness of their days, the women scurried from one vendor to the next, procuring fresh ingredients for the evening meal. They spoke only briefly to one another, snapped at children to “play nice,” and left their male counterparts alone to ponder God.

Through this idyllic streetscape clopped Pippino Farago, tugging on his left pant leg to move faster. He kept his head low and stayed close to the buildings. He pretended not to notice the frequent inhospitable glares—leveled at him, he knew, not because of his gimp leg, but because he was obviously not Hasidic. The residents here were fiercely protective of the garden of strict Judaic devotion they had managed to cultivate in the center of wild commercialism and tourism. They were like wolves, raising their hackles, growling at the sight of an intruder.

The address he'd been given was in the heart of Me'a She'arim. It was an odd place to meet for non-Hasidics. But perhaps that's what made it perfect for a clandestine meeting. The tranquillity and lack of outside encroachment, along with narrow, winding lanes, made spotting a tail especially easy in this district. Since parking his car in a hospital lot, Pip had taken the usual precautions: doubling back around entire blocks, crossing open spaces, frequently inspecting the area behind him. So far, he'd spotted no one suspicious.

Anywhere else in the city, he would have worried about people he knew sitting at an outdoor table or browsing the markets, looking up to see if the clopping rhythm they recognized was indeed poor ol' Pip. In Me'a She'arim, he knew no one and no one knew him.

Still, he was uneasy. He had no business meeting with the person who'd phoned him earlier in the morning. If Luco found out . . . Pip didn't want to think about the consequences. An image came unbidden to his mind, of Luco in a blind rage bludgeoning a head already so pulped that identification was impossible. He shook his head. Of course, that was no premonition—leave those to the nuts lurking around Luco these days. It was, rather, a memory, wicked and vivid.

Without pausing, he turned into the open doorway of a bakery. Just inside he stopped, waited. The baker was behind a glass counter, busy with the only customer. The yeasty aroma of fresh
hallah
reminded him that he'd missed lunch; his stomach was too upset to eat now anyway. From a breast pocket he pulled a scrap of paper and again read the directions. He nodded to himself and put the scrap away. Figuring he'd given anyone following him enough time to reveal himself, he clopped back onto the sidewalk, boldly facing the way he had come. No one suddenly stopped; no one turned away.

Pip turned and continued on. A few minutes later he was standing at the entrance of Yifhan Street. It was deserted but for an old woman, who sat in a chair on a second-story balcony, chewing on something—probably nothing more than her gums. She was stoically watching Pip. He pulled the paper from his pocket. Yifhan Street. Numbers on a metal plate over a nearby door indicated the address he wanted was on the right side, but he could see no other numbers. He had assumed the address would prove to be a café or some other public meeting place. Yifhan Street appeared completely residential. And all but deserted. He walked on cautiously. With each second step, he gently lowered to the ground the paperback books taped to the bottom of his left shoe.

A door creaked and he stopped. In a narrow alley thirty yards on the right, a shadow stirred, then moved into the sunlight and became a man. He wore black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. In front, a small white apron fell from his waist, making him look like a waiter from an upscale restaurant. He squinted at Pip.

“Mr. Farago?” the man said.

“Yes?”

“This way, please.” He sidestepped away from the mouth of the alley and held an arm toward it, bidding Pip to enter.

Pip hobbled slowly forward. At the mouth of the alley, he stopped. Too dark to see anything. He looked at the waiter, who smiled and nodded once. The man's cologne was subtle and expensive. Something Luco would wear. Pip's stomach twisted painfully. What if this was all a setup? A test of his loyalty? Was Luco waiting in the alley, knife in hand and a stinging indictment on his lips?

As if understanding his mind, the waiter assured him, “Your host is waiting, sir.”

Over his shoulder, the old woman gazed impassively from her perch.

Pip moved into the alley and immediately saw an open door on his left. In the room, a faint red light glowed. He stepped through. As his eyes adjusted, his olfactory nerves took in the hearty and somehow comforting aroma of coffee, spices, and tobacco. He could see now that he was in a wood-paneled antechamber. The only light came from three candles in red glass containers on three small tables. The door behind him closed, and the waiter stepped past.

“This way, sir,” he said. He led Pip into a long, wide hallway, lined on both sides with heavy wood doors. Wall sconces cast soft light at the copper ceiling.

He stopped at one of these doors and, without knocking, turned the knob and pushed it open. More candles flickered within. Pip could make out the muted walls of a room no larger than a coatroom. High-backed leather chairs faced a small, round table in the center. A teacup and saucer were set on the table. Steam rose from the cup. Just as Pip was beginning to believe the room was empty, a man leaned out of the darker shadows of one of the chairs.

“Come in, Pip,” Niklas Hüber said pleasantly. His German accent was heavy and sharp, a linguistic broadsword. “I'm glad you could join me.”

17

T
he phone rang, and Brady looked at his watch. As usual, Alicia was early, this time by three minutes. He answered on the second ring.

“The train's leaving the station,” Alicia said.

He heard the other phone clatter in its cradle, then disconnect. He nodded to himself. In a hurry and on the go. She had said they would review the CSD walk-through in her room; that's why she didn't want to meet in the restaurant. Now she sounded eager to split. She must figure they could view the walk-through in the car or at the crime scene.

Alicia was something of a crime scene junkie. As impassioned as she was over the gadgets coming out of their division, and as proficient as she was with them, she never lost sight of their raison d'être: to solve—and possibly prevent—crimes. At heart, she was a trench warrior.

Not a week went by that she didn't appeal to their division chief, John Gilbreath, to combine field testing with field investigations. The result would be Alicia's dream job: helping to develop cutting-edge investigative tools while being on the team charged with actually identifying and capturing the perps. With each appeal came Gilbreath's shaking head, like a stone guardian's refusal to grant admittance without the correct password.

Early on, he had tried to explain his reasoning. If unproven equipment somehow tainted a crime scene or was found inadmissible in court, it could put a killer back out on the streets and cripple the Bureau's relationship with local law enforcement. Eventually, he began stopping her midpitch and telling her to come back when she had work to discuss.

Brady hoisted himself off the bed, retrieved his holstered pistol from the nightstand, and clipped it to his belt. He snatched up the television remote and switched off the news program he wasn't really watching. He pulled his jacket off the back of the room's single chair, slipped into it, and picked up the satchel that contained his case binder. On the way to the door, he grabbed the telescoping handle of the wheeled suitcase he hadn't yet opened. Brady had not been in the room long enough to spread out.

Agents were required to keep their equipment, case files, and luggage in their hotel rooms when they were there and in their rental cars when they weren't. Being called away at a moment's notice—to a new crime scene, a lead, or a new assignment—was as much a part of the job as stale coffee and mountains of paperwork; a delay in responding, whether to retrieve belongings from a hotel room or finish a meal, was unacceptable.

Alicia's door was propped open with a case he recognized as the one for the CSD's helmet, the one the uninitiated mistook for a bowling ball bag. He stopped at the threshold. Alicia was nowhere in sight. Even without the aid of her personal belongings (which she had certainly packed up by now), the room looked as though a hurricane had blown through it. Bedding was strewn everywhere but on the bed. Dresser and nightstand drawers stood open. For a reason known only to Alicia, a pillow was perched on top of a lampshade.

If Brady were forced to make a list of Alicia's virtues, tidiness wouldn't be anywhere on it. Her work area in the Evidence Response Team R&D unit was an eight-foot-long table piled high with reports, memoranda, newspaper clippings, technical journals, and gadgets, along with the typical desk paraphernalia. File boxes under the table caught the overflow. Her chair fronted a clean semicircle on the table. Her bosses and colleagues tolerated the mess only because she gave 200 percent to the job, evidenced not only by long hours but by consistently impressive results; her projects garnered the most ooohs and aaahs in the R&D division and progressed from idea to prototype to assimilation into field investigations faster than anyone else's.

“Hello?” he called.

“Just a sec!” Her voice came from around a corner that blocked a small portion of the room from his view. He heard the
bbbbrrrrriiipppp
of a heavy zipper. When she appeared, charging for the door, two bulky cases hung from her shoulders, and she was pulling a wheeled suitcase similar to his own.

“Whoa,” he said, taking a step back. “Let me help.”

She stopped and let out a long sigh. When she was ready to do something, she wanted to just do it.

He took her in. Dressed in a coffee-colored mock turtleneck and cinnamon pantsuit, she made Brady think of a latte. She wore dark brown heelless leather shoes. She had once complained about their price but explained they were as comfortable as sneakers and she wouldn't have to kick them off to chase down a suspect. So far, the most evasive things she'd chased in those shoes were her own ambitions. In truth, her ensemble was conservative and
right
, considering her penchant for flouting protocol. She'd managed to tame her hair as well; it now traced the curve of her face, appearing at once schoolgirlish and mature. If she wore makeup, it was so subtly applied, Brady couldn't tell.

“Hey,” he said, “you fix up real nice.”

That seemed to catch her off guard. She paused, maybe searching for a snappy comeback. In the end, she simply smiled. “Yeah, you too.” She nodded toward the bowling ball bag. “Could you get that?”

He secured his satchel on the extended handle of his suitcase and picked up the other bag, using his foot to keep the door open for her.

As she passed, she said, “Such a gentleman.”

In the elevator, neither set down the cases they held. Ignoring the orchestral mutilation of a Billy Joel song pouring from an unseen speaker, Brady said, “Tell me about last night's victim.”

“Cynthia Loeb,” she said.

Female,
he thought and began fitting that fact into the case analysis he'd started on the plane.
Second female.

“Age forty-two,” Alicia continued. “Caucasian.”

Jessica Hampton was forty, also white.

“Was she a mother?” he asked.

“Two sons in college.” She turned to him. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing yet.” Mother-hate didn't jibe with the killer's three male victims.

“She was recently divorced.”

He made a quick calculation. One victim had been single, two married, two divorced. Nothing there to latch on to.

With a
ping!
more pleasant than the infernal Muzak, a green floor indicator changed from L to P, and the elevator doors slid open. A young woman holding the hand of a little girl waited to board. Alicia and Brady trudged out, laden with bags. A single entrance and exit portal in a far corner and dim sodium-vapor lamps kept the underground parking garage in twilight. Cement walls and pillars, mottled with water stains, seemed to absorb light while throwing back amplified noise. The slamming of a car door reverberated from deep within the array of vehicles.

“Yours or mine?” asked Brady.

“Mine.” She was heading for an aisle nearer than the one in which he'd parked. “You need to view the walk-through before we get to the crime scene.”

As they passed into and out of the glow of overhead lights, their dim shadows rotated around them like dual sundials.

“Cynthia Loeb,” he said. “What else can you tell me?”

She walked without answering. Then in a low voice, she said, “I'm trying to remember the pictures of her on the hallway wall.” She shook her head. “What keeps coming up in my mind is the gruesome head we found on the kitchen counter.”

“Take your time.”

They stopped behind an aquamarine Taurus, and Alicia produced a key and opened the trunk. The dark compartment appeared to hold her attention, and she stood there, both hands on the raised lid.

“She seemed like someone I would have liked,” she said finally. “She painted plastic wastebaskets and sold them on eBay.” She laughed as she said this. “One of the techs found invoices and packing slips in this makeshift office with stacks and stacks of trash cans, as high as my head. Wasn't getting rich, but dang if she wasn't trying to make a go of it.” Alicia turned her face to Brady. “The place was kinda rustic, cozy. I can just see her sitting in a chair made of raw tree limbs, sheepskin slippers on her feet, sipping a big mug of hot chocolate, maybe spiced a bit with Bailey's, telling a friend who had stopped by how she was going to make it on her own selling wastebaskets or picking up dog poop or peddling cider at mountain festivals—
anything
to prove to her cheating ex that she could make it on her own.”