Cuts Through Bone (31 page)

“The Bowman murder matches your signature, right?” Guthrie said. “I got, or had, witnesses proving my client was framed—that's personal motive. While I'm looking, two witnesses in the Bowman murder get killed, and an investigator—”

“A police officer was killed?”

Guthrie shook his head. “A house detective for the lawyer. They were actually after us.” He gestured with a fingertip at Vasquez and himself.

“That's him!”

“
Them.
Russian mobsters.”

“A Russian. That explains the body count.”

“Here's the rest, Mr. Rackers. Althea Linney was killed in a Bronx robbery. She won't be on your list, but she should be.”

*   *   *

Guthrie and Vasquez parked on the grass at Easy Acres, a produce market existing in the blurry transition between suburban Arlington and the rural countryside of northern Virginia. A few dozen cars and trucks were scattered on the shoulders of the rural route and lined carelessly in the grassy farmyard beneath old oaks with thick, outstretched limbs. On one side of the barnyard, a farmhouse swirled more like a party in progress than a place of business. Pavilions shrouded the barnyard, covering produce stalls that overflowed from the barn. A second kitchen in the remodelled barn served as a cannery, pouring forth an aroma of apples and cinnamon that washed down to the road. A dozen people in hairnets peeled, sliced, sorted, and washed apples, while more stirred vats, loaded juicers, and scraped pans full of sauce, syrup, and diced apples.

The stall owners were friendly; the market was a cooperative. Inside the barn, dry goods were offered alongside cheese, fruit, and vegetables. Guthrie shopped, and Vasquez followed him back and forth to the rental car as he tucked away spices, jars of honey and preserves, and a sack of oats. She asked him if he was going to buy a pig, prompting him to wonder whether she thought the trunk was large enough to hold a small one. After a trip to carry a bag of shelled hickory nuts back to their car, Robert McCall whistled at them as they marched back through the barnyard.

“Kid, you haven't changed a bit,” McCall said. He studied the two cantaloupes he held in his oversized hands and gave them a sniff.

“Well, what're you doing here, then?”

“Not making an ant of myself,” the tall old man said, and grinned. “You aren't going to believe how lucky you are.”

“I don't feel lucky.”

“This might do it: One one two seven isn't a SOCOM operation—it belonged to CENTCOM. They wrapped up their own piece of the special-ops thunder, and they—well, that's Pentagon stuff. I doubt it's what you want, even if it's entertaining.” McCall grinned again, looking boyishly happy with the two melons in his hands. “SOCOM was getting all of the ribbons and gold stars, while CENTCOM was eating crap for all of the mistakes. See, CENTCOM has operational responsibility for every asset in the theater. Fuckups go directly up the chain of command. SOCOM borrowed assets when they needed them, but with zero accountability because they were liaising. Fuckups are on the actual commander, not the little bird riding his shoulder.”

“This is supposed to be good for me?”

“Absolutely,” McCall said. “SOCOM doesn't have a finger in the task force, and so I don't need to worry about the Activity calling me. One one two seven was a test unit for insurgent-control tactics. The big brains have been analyzing everything from the beginning. Everything you wanted was on a long pass-around list.”

“So Uncle Rob's ass is covered, you mean.”

“That's not good?” the old man asked. “You're hesitating, kid. Some kind of chickenshit is coming.”

“You said
was
a test unit?”

“Was,” McCall confirmed. “I checked out your Tenth Mountain officer, Olsen. Some of that's beyond my reach. The big brain word is
exemplary
. The task force was built around him, and didn't survive after him. The task force bulked up at a certain point, and after that a pissing contest went on between CENTCOM and SOCOM. The Activity tagged them as an asset, with the usual accountability issues.”

“Somebody outside the unit could be interested?” Guthrie asked. “Tell me something about that.”

Robert McCall shrugged, considered the melons again, and placed one back in the basket. “Jealousy, maybe. SOCOM continuously poaches personnel. If anyone was fragged, that would be in the field.” He frowned. “You like Olsen for a target? He never had any complaints filed by his men.”

“We're looking at it,” Guthrie said. “What about the Activity?”

“That's Intelligence Support Activity. They do something new—they make solutions. I told you before, there's authorization for anyone, anytime, anywhere. The Activity locates the time, the place, the person—and then they solve it.”

Vasquez crossed her arms and looked at Guthrie. “That's who Linney was talking about,” she said. “But I don't think that's who we're looking for.”

“You'd better hope so, kid. The Activity does things the CIA never dreamed about.” The tall old man pulled a disc from his pocket. “This's a cut and paste from about a dozen sets of files—names, addresses, photos, dates—but don't think it's not dangerous because it can't be sourced.”

Guthrie took the disc and slipped it into his pocket.

“You know you owe me now, right?”

The little detective nodded.

“Good. Tell Danny Rice he owes me a year of whiskey.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Guthrie and Vasquez flew back to New York City and landed at La Guardia late at night. After a night's sleep, they drove into the Garment District before it woke for business. Bleary-eyed teenagers idled outside the loading gates, nursing cups of coffee in the shadowless world before dawn. The detectives had their own form of wide awake: two computer discs. They opened the office with a flurry—starting coffee, devouring doughnuts, checking printers for paper and ink—then became almost silent. Movement was fingers on keyboards or eyes scanning monitors. The street noise rose slowly, with shouts and whistles before the blare of horns lifted, all competing with the quiet whir of printers.

“That's a lot of pictures,” Vasquez said after a pair of piles accumulated.

“An infantry company has a lot of soldiers,” the little detective said. “Then it was larger, for years. Add transfers, short-timers, casualties.… We have a lot of pictures.” He didn't seem happy.

“You're not sorting them?”

He shook his head. “It's gonna be easier just to do them all. Maybe one catches Jeannette's eye. Otherwise, we're in trouble.”

Vasquez frowned. “What you mean?”

“Last night, I kept waking up thinking about it. What if our guy wasn't in Alpha? We know he's out there, sure, but what if he's Activity? It's far-fetched—”

“You're gonna drive me crazy,
viejo,
” Vasquez said.

“You? That's why our first move is taking pictures to the Village. If he was in Alpha and she picks him out, we got him.”

Vasquez shook her head, then turned to look again at the map of the United States she had taped to the wall behind her desk. Dots of red from a marker indicated locations of murders from the list of signature victims Rackers had provided. During her study of each file, she turned and marked the murder on the map. Clusters were forming around Chicago, and in Southern California and the Northeast corridor. Other specks were haphazardly scattered on the map. She paused to study the map after each additional mark, like a diviner studying a Rorschach test.

By the time the printer finished, the neighborhood was in full swing. A steady traffic of clothes racks clogged the street, accompanied by the usual symphony of annoyed horns. Guthrie gathered his pictures and tossed Vasquez the keys to the Ford. Outside, the air was thick and humid. Lines of high clouds marched along in a battle with the open sky. Vasquez took Seventh Avenue south to the Village.

Jeannette Overton smiled when she saw the stack of pictures. Her husband, Phil, suggested it included pictures of every man in the city. With pauses to check the quiet street outside her window and encourage Vasquez as she was demolished in game after game of gin, the little old lady examined the stack of pictures. By lunchtime, she chose a photograph. Guthrie frowned when he read the caption on the photo, then handed it to Vasquez.

She read it, then asked, “You
sure
?”

“Even an old woman would never forget an ear like that, my dear,” Jeannette Overton said. “That is the deliveryman. I suppose I should have known he was in the military by the way he walked. He had such a smooth step. That reminded me of Philip when he came home from the war.”

The man in the photo wore a brush-top military haircut a bit shorter than Robert McCall's, but all of his hair was still dark. His eyes were green behind long dark lashes, and his skin was a wind-polished olive or tan. He might've been Italian, Puerto Rican, or Greek, but the faint smile stamped on his face suggested that he knew he would be admired. He was pretty, in the way a lean young wolf is pretty after some shampoo and a brushing, but merely wolfishly handsome with a toothy grin at any other time. Below the photo was a typescript caption: SFC Marc Lucas Gagneau.

*   *   *

The detectives drove to Rikers Island over the Queens causeway. Guthrie spent the time thinking, passing through excitement, relief, and anger, while Vasquez drove. The ritual of entering the jail calmed the little West Virginian until he seemed detached, but his hand kept visiting the printed photograph in the pocket of his suit coat, like a worried dog checking repeatedly a bone recently buried. The interview room was sterile, overly bright, gleaming with hard surfaces, and tainted with the exhaled breath of apathy and wasted resistance. Beyond the echoes of steel and concrete waited sullen silence.

A pair of burly guards escorted Greg Olsen into the interview room. The guards eyed Guthrie and Vasquez; added together, they weighed less than Olsen alone. Their warning to the big veteran was phrased in glares, arm-twisting while they removed the handcuffs, and a shove for assistance in finding his chair. Guthrie watched silently. After the door sealed with a steel click, he drew the picture of Gagneau from his pocket and laid it on the tabletop.

They argued, because Olsen believed Gagneau was dead. The big man turned red with the anger of denial and clenched his hands into heavy fists. Without raising his voice or standing, he still seemed to grow larger, but the detectives answered with grim reasoning. Guthrie rotated his fedora on the steel tabletop while he spoke, emphasizing with a jabbing forefinger. Vasquez folded her arms, making her hands disappear into the red of her jacket, and paced back and forth from her seat to the door. With her scowl, the fresh black eye over her faint, faded bruises seemed more like makeup than disfigurement. Olsen glared and argued, but he had only what he wished was true, while the detectives had facts.

Having identified the killer was a success tempered by Gagneau's being officially dead. The NYPD wouldn't look for him; officially, he didn't exist. Already, the police had simplified their accusations by removing the Barbie doll victims, leaving Olsen on the hook for one murder they felt sure of proving. A wild story about a faked death wouldn't change that position. Even Olsen didn't want to believe Gagneau's corpse, dismembered by an IED and unrecognizable except for tags, had been a fake. The big man would serve prison time for his fiancée's murder if they didn't unmask Gagneau completely.

“We'll catch him,” Guthrie insisted angrily. The hinted suggestion otherwise was an insult to the detective's pride. “He was in the city—he left footprints. Maybe he ran a red light, or used an ATM. Maybe we find his face in someone's Web page scrapbook. But we'll find him, because he's still in the city, watching what happens to you. We'll catch him.”

“I believe you, then,” Olsen said. “Just like I believe in Gagneau. He won't be easy to catch, especially when he sees you're looking. Then you're just like the sergeant, judging by the look on your face. His jaw was set that way for about half of each day. The other half of the day he was easy to get along with.”

Vasquez pulled out her chair and sat down. She dropped her Yankees cap onto the table beside Guthrie's fedora and let her shortened lock of hair swing free. She looked tired. “
El viejo
's right. He's out there watching right now,” she said. “He don't want to kill you,
chico.
I been thinking about that. He's a muchacho with a serious grudge. Killing ain't enough. You're lucky you ain't got no sisters. He could've killed you a long time ago. He wants you to stay in jail—killing your girl wasn't enough. He done killed more to keep you here. You see that?”

“So I can do something, then?” Olsen demanded.

“Sure,” Guthrie replied. He jabbed the picture with his finger. “Tell me how to catch Marc Lucas Gagneau. You know him, Greg. My first problem is his being dead. Worse, he ain't alone. Tell me how he's got the Russian mob in his pocket. They don't crew up with outsiders. Is that something you did over there?”

The big blond man snorted and rubbed at the tabletop with his good right hand. “I see you've been saving up questions for the last few days,” he said. “So I doubt I know him as well as I thought. The letter of condolence I sent his parents came back to me stamped ‘Return to sender.' His home address was a chicken-processing plant outside Baton Rouge, a lie from the beginning, before he ever met me. All along, he had something to hide then.”

“That's what you
don't
know,” Guthrie said. “Tell me what you
do
know.”

“A guy like Gagneau isn't common,” Olsen said. “He was pretty like a girl, and small, but vicious enough to balance that out. He said he lost a brother in New York, and volunteered after nine/eleven. I never thought about that, though, beside the fact he came from Louisiana and carried an accent that sounded like a man talking around a mouthful of loose thread. Gagneau was quick and quiet. No one noticed him unless he wanted them to pay him mind.