The Devil's Teardrop (21 page)

“You wanted maps,” he said, looking excitedly at all the equipment the way only a born hacker would do, “and this’s the most comprehensive physical database of any area in the world. Lincoln Rhyme was saying we needed to know the area. Well,
we
may not. But they do.” He nodded affectionately toward a long row of six-foot-high computer towers.

Lukas said, “They’re letting us use the facility, under protest, provided we don’t take any printouts or downloads with us.”

“We get searched on the way out,” Geller said.

“How come you know so much about it?” Parker asked Geller.

“Oh, I sort of helped set it up.”

Lukas added, “Oh, by the way, Parker, you’ve never heard of this place.”

“Not a problem,” said Parker, eyeing the two machine-gun-armed guards by the elevator door.

Lukas said, “Now, what’re the materials Rhyme found?”

Parker looked at the notes he’d taken. He read, “Granite, sulfur, soot, ash, clay and brick.”

Tobe Geller sat down at a monitor, turned it on, typed madly on a keyboard. An image of the Washington, D.C., area came on the screen. The resolution was astonishing. It looked three-dimensional. Parker thought, absurdly, how Robby and Stephie would love to play Mario Bros. on a monitor like this.

Lukas said to Parker, “Where do we start?”

“One clue at a time,” he responded. “Then start narrowing down possibilities. The way you solve puzzles.”

Three hawks have been killing a farmer’s chickens. . . .

“First, granite, brick dust and clay,” he mused. “They point to demolition sites, construction . . .” He turned to Geller. “Would they be on this database?”

“No,” the young agent responded. “But we can track down somebody at Building Permits.”

“Do it,” Parker ordered.

Geller made the call on a landline—no cell phone would work this far underground and, besides, like all secure facilities in Washington, Parker supposed, the walls were shielded.

“What next?” Parker wondered. “Sulfur and soot . . . That tells us it’s industrial. Tobe, can you highlight areas based on air pollutants?”

“Sure. There’s an EPA file.” He added cheerfully, “It’s to calculate penetration levels of nerve gas and bioagent weapons.”

More buttons.

The business of the District of Columbia is government, not industry, and the commercial neighborhoods were devoted mostly to product warehousing and distribution. But on the screen portions of the city began to be highlighted—in, appropriately, pollution-tinted yellow. The majority were in the Southeast part of town.

“He’s probably
living
near there,” Lukas reminded. “What industrial sites are adjacent to areas of houses and apartments?”

Geller continued to type, cross-referencing the industrial neighborhoods with residential. This eliminated some but not many of the manufacturing areas; most of them were ringed with residential pockets.

“Still too many,” Lukas said.

“Let’s add another clue. The ash,” Parker said. “Basically burnt animal flesh.”

Geller’s hands paused above the keyboard. He mused, “What could
that
be?”

Lukas shook her head. Then asked, “Are there any meat-processing plants in any of those areas?”

This was a good suggestion, one Parker himself had been about to make.

Geller responded, “None listed.”

“Restaurants?” Cage suggested.

“Probably too many of them,” Parker said.

“Hundreds,” Geller confirmed.

“Where else would there be burnt meat?” Lukas asked no one in particular.

Puzzles . . .

“Veterinarians,” Parker wondered. “Do they dispose of the remains of animals?”

“Probably,” Cage said.

Geller typed then read the screen. “There are dozens. All over the place.”

Then Lukas looked up at Parker and he saw that the chill from earlier was gone, replaced by something else. It might have been excitement. Her blue eyes were stones still, perhaps, but now they were radiant gems. She said, “How about
human
remains?”

“A crematorium!” Parker said. “Yes! And the polished granite—that could be from tombstones. Let’s look for a cemetery.”

Cage gazed at the map. He pointed. “Arlington?”

The National Cemetery took up a huge area on the west side of the Potomac. The area around it must be saturated with granite dust.

But Parker pointed out: “It’s not near any industrial sites. Nothing with significant pollution.”

Then Lukas saw it. “There!” She pointed a finger, tipped with an unpolished but perfectly filed nail. “Gravesend.”

Tobe Geller highlighted the area on the map, enlarged it.

Gravesend . . .

The neighborhood was a part of the District of Columbia’s Southeast quadrant. Parker had a vague knowledge of the place. It was a decrepit crescent of tenements, factories and vacant lots around Memorial Cemetery, which had been a slave graveyard dating back to the early 1800s. Parker pointed to another part of Gravesend. “Metro stop right here. The unsub could’ve taken the train directly to Judiciary Square—City Hall. There’s a bus route nearby too.”

Lukas considered it. “I know the neighborhood—I’ve collared perps there. There’s a lot of demolition and construction going on. It’s anonymous too. Nobody asks any questions about anybody else. And a lot of people pay cash for rent without raising suspicion. It’d be the perfect place for a safe house.”

A young technician near them took a phone call and handed the receiver to Tobe Geller. As the agent listened to the caller his young face broke into an enthusiastic smile. “Good,” he said into the phone. “Get it to the document lab ASAP.” He hung up. “Get this . . . Somebody got a videotape from the Mason Theater shooting.”

“A tape of the Digger?” Cage asked enthusiastically.

“They don’t know
what
it’s of exactly. Sounds like the quality’s pretty bad. I want to start the analysis right away. Are you going to Gravesend?”

“Yep,” Parker said. Looked at his watch. Two and a half hours until the next attack.

“MCP?” Geller asked Lukas.

“Yeah. Order one.”

Parker recalled: a mobile command post. A camper outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance equipment. He’d worked in one several times, analyzing documents at crime scenes.

“I’ll have a video data analyzer installed,” Geller said, “and get going on the tape. Where will you be?”

Lukas and Parker said simultaneously, “There.” They found they were pointing at the same vacant lot near the cemetery.

“Not many apartments around there,” Cage pointed out.

Parker said, “But it’s close to the stores and restaurants.”

Lukas glanced at him and nodded. “We should narrow down the search by canvassing those places first. They’ll have the most contact with locals. Tobe, pick up C. P. and Hardy and bring ’em with you in the command post.”

The agent hesitated, a dubious look on his face. “Hardy? We really need him?”

Parker had been wondering the same thing. Hardy seemed like a nice enough guy, a pretty good cop. But he was way out of his depth in this case and that meant he, or somebody else, might get hurt.

But Lukas said, “If it’s not him the District’ll just put somebody else on board. At least we can control Hardy. He doesn’t seem to mind sitting in the back seat.”

“Politics suck,” Cage muttered.

As Geller pulled on his jacket Lukas said, “And that shrink? The guy from Georgetown? If he’s not at headquarters yet have somebody drive him over to Gravesend.”

“Will do.” Geller ran for the elevator, where he was, as he’d predicted, thoroughly searched.

Lukas stared at the map of Gravesend. “It’s so damn big.”

“I’ve got another thought,” Parker said. He was thinking back to what he’d learned about the unsub from the note. He said, “We think he probably spent time on a computer, remember?”

“Right,” Lukas said.

“Let’s get a list of everybody in Gravesend who subscribes to an online service.”

Cage protested, “There could be thousands of ’em.”

But Lukas pointed out, “No, I doubt it. It’s one of the poorest parts of the city. Computers’d be the last thing people’d spend money on.”

Cage said, “True. Okay, I’ll have Com-Tech get us a list.”

“There’ll still be a lot of territory to cover,” Lukas muttered.

“I’ve got a few other ideas,” Parker said. And walked to the elevator door, where he too was diligently searched like a suspected shoplifter by the humorless guards.

* * *

Kennedy paced in a slow circle around the dark green carpet in his office.

Jefferies was on his cell phone. He clicked it off.

“Slade’s got a few ideas but nothing’s going to happen fast.”

Kennedy gestured toward the radio. “Well, they were damn fast to report that I’ve been sitting on my butt while the city’s getting the hell shot out of it. They were fast to report that I didn’t lift the hiring freeze at the police department so we’d have more money for Project 2000.
Jesus, the media’s making it sound like
I’m
an accomplice.”

Kennedy had just been to three hospitals to see the people wounded in the Digger’s attacks and their families. But none of them seemed to care about his visit. All anyone asked was why wasn’t he doing more to catch the killer?

“Why aren’t you at FBI headquarters?” one woman had demanded tearfully.

Because they haven’t fucking invited me, Kennedy thought furiously. Though his answer was a gentle “I’m letting the experts do their job.”

“But they’re
not
doing their job. And you’re not either.”

When he left her bedside Kennedy didn’t offer to shake hands; her right arm had been so badly shot up it had been amputated.

“Slade’ll come up with something,” Jefferies now said.

“Too little, too late. Now,
that
man is too damn pretty,” Kennedy spat out. “Pretty people . . . I never trust them.” Then he heard the paranoid words and he laughed. Jefferies did too. The mayor asked, “Am I turning into a crank, Wendy?”

“Yessir. It’s my duty to tell you your brains’ve gone to grits.”

The mayor sat down in his chair. He looked at his desk calendar. If it weren’t for the Digger he would have been attending four parties tonight. One at the French embassy, one at his alma mater, Georgetown University, one at the city workers’ union hall, and—the most important, where he’d actually ring in the New Year—the African-American Teachers’ Association in the heart of Southeast. This was the group that was lobbying hard to get his Project 2000 accepted among rank-and-file teachers throughout the District. He and Claire needed to be there tonight, as a show of support. And yet it would be impossible for him to
attend any parties, do any celebrating, with that madman stalking the citizens of his city.

A wave of anger passed through him and he grabbed the phone.

“What,” Jefferies asked cautiously, “are you going to do?”

“Something,”
he answered. “I’m going to goddamn do something.” He began dialing a number from a card on his Rolodex.

“What?” asked Jefferies, now even more uneasy.

But by then the call to FBI headquarters had been connected and Kennedy didn’t respond to his aide.

He was patched through several locations. A man’s voice answered. “Yes.”

“This’s Mayor Jerry Kennedy. Who’m I speaking to?”

A pause. Kennedy, who often made his own phone calls, was used to the silence that greeted his salutation. “Special Agent C. P. Ardell. What can I do for you?”

“That Agent Lukas, she’s still in charge of the METSHOOT operation?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I speak to her?”

“She’s not here, sir, no. I can patch you through to her cell phone.”

“That’s all right. I’m actually trying to reach the District liaison officer, Detective Hardy.”

Agent Ardell said, “Hold on. He’s right here.”

A moment later a voice said tentatively, “Hello?”

“This Hardy?”

“Len Hardy, that’s right.”

“This’s your mayor again.”

“Oh. Well. How are you, sir?” Caution now mixed with the youth in the man’s voice.

“Can you update me on the case? I haven’t heard a word from Agents Lukas or Cage. You have any idea where the Digger’s going to hit next?”

Another pause. “Nosir.”

The pause was too long. Hardy was lying about something.

“No idea at all?”

“They aren’t exactly keeping me in the loop.”

“Well, your job’s liaison, right?”

“My orders are just to write a report on the operation. Agent Lukas said she’d contact Chief Williams directly.”

“A report? That’s ass covering. Listen to me. I have a lot of confidence in the FBI. They do this shoot-’em-up stuff all the time. But how close are they to stopping this killer? Bottom line. No bullshit.”

Hardy sounded uneasy. “They have a few leads. They think they know the neighborhood where the unsub’s safe house is—the guy who was killed by the truck.”

“Where?”

Another pause. He pictured poor Hardy twisting in the wind, feds on one side, his boss on the other. Well, too fucking bad.

“I’m not supposed to give out tactical information to anyone, sir. I’m sorry.”

“It’s
my
city that’s under attack and
my
citizens who’re being slaughtered. I want answers.”

More silence. Kennedy looked up at Wendell Jefferies, who shook his head.

Kennedy forced his anger down. He tried to sound reasonable as he said, “Let me tell you what I have in mind. The whole point of this scheme was for those men to make money. It’s not to kill.”

“I think that’s true, sir.”

“If I can just have a chance to talk to the killer—at this safe house or where he’s going to hit at eight—I think I can convince him to give up. I’ll negotiate with him. I can do that.”

Kennedy did believe this. Because one of his talents (in this respect
like
his namesake from the sixties) was his ability to persuade. Hell, he’d sweet-talked two dozen of the toughest presidents and CEOs in the District into accepting the tax that would fund Project 2000. He’d talked poor Gary Moss into naming names in the Board of Education scandal.