The Kill Room (26 page)

A
HALF HOUR LATER NANCE LAUREL
was in Rhyme’s town house.

“Impossible,” she whispered.

Sachs said, “He’s not the sniper. Look for yourself.”

And she tossed a number of documents on the table in front of Laurel with a bit more force than Rhyme supposed was necessary under the circumstances. On the other hand, clearly these two women were never destined to be friends. He’d been expecting a knock-down-drag-out between them the way a storm chaser eyes a pea-green overcast and thinks: Tornado’s brewing.

What the Information Services operation of the NYPD had discovered was that Barry Shales had
not
been in the Bahamas on the day Moreno was shot. He was in New York City all day—in fact, he hadn’t been out of the country in months.

“They ran a dozen searches, cross-referenced everything. I asked them to double-check. They
triple
-checked. Radio frequency ID chip scans of him going into the NIOS office at nine and leaving for lunch, I’d guess—about two. During that time he went to Bennigan’s, paid with a credit card. Handwriting scan is his, and then went to an ATM—the scan by the cash machine camera is positive. Sixty-point facial recognition. Returned to the office at three. Left at six thirty.”

“May nine. You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

An odd sound, a snake’s hiss. The breath easing from Nance Laurel’s mouth.

“Where’s that leave us?” Sachs asked.

“With Unsub Five Sixteen,” Pulaski said.

Sellitto added, “We have nothing to suggest he’s the sniper—he seems more like backup, or clean-up. But we have charges against him.”

Rhyme said, “Here’s an alternative case. We forget the Moreno homicide altogether. We prove Metzger had Unsub Five Sixteen kill Lydia Foster and set the IED. At the least there’s your conspiracy charge. It’s probably likely to get Metzger murder two.”

But Laurel looked doubtful. “That’s not the case I want.”

“You want?” Sachs asked, as if she’d decided the ADA sounded like a spoiled little girl.

“Right. My case is against Metzger and his sniper for conspiring to commit an illegal targeted assassination.” Her voice rose, the first edge Rhyme had heard in it. “The kill order was the whole basis for that.” She stared at the copy on the whiteboard as if it had betrayed her.

“We can still nail Metzger,” Sachs countered petulantly. “Does it matter how?”

Ignoring her, the ADA turned and walked to the window in the front of the parlor. She was staring out at Central Park.

Amelia Sachs gazed after her. Rhyme knew exactly what she was thinking.

I
want…

My
case…

Rhyme’s eyes swiveled to Laurel. The tree she was looking at was a swamp white oak,
Quercus bicolor
, a thick and not particularly tall tree that did well in Manhattan. Rhyme knew about it not because of a personal interest in arboriculture but because he’d discovered a minuscule fragment of a swamp white oak leaf in the car of one Reggie “Sump” Kelleher, a particularly unpleasant Hell’s Kitchen thug. The sliver, along with a bit of limy soil, had placed Kelleher at a clearing in Prospect Park, where the body of a Jamaican drug kingpin had been found, though the head had not.

Rhyme was focusing on the tree when the idea occurred to him.

He turned quickly to the evidence charts and stared for a long moment. He was vaguely aware that people were saying things to him. He paid no attention, muttering to himself.

Then he called over his shoulder, “Sachs, Sachs! Fast! I need you to take a drive.”

T
HE BUSINESS OF WAR WAS
winding down around the world and some of the buildings in the New Jersey headquarters of Walker Defense Systems were shuttered.

But Sachs observed that there must be
some
market left for weapons of mass—and personal—destruction; dozens of high-end Mercedeses and Audis and BMWs dotted the parking lot.

And an Aston Martin.

Man, Sachs thought. I would love to take that Vanquish for a spin—and she fantasized about letting the horses loose on the company’s private drive.

Inside the fifties-style building, she checked with reception and was led to a waiting area.

“Sterile” was the word that came to mind and that was true in two senses: The decor was minimal and austere, a few gray and black paintings, some ads for products whose purpose she couldn’t quite figure out. And sterile in another sense: She felt she was a virus that researchers didn’t quite trust and were keeping isolated until they knew more.

Rather than a
People
or a
Wall Street Journal
with last week’s news, for waiting-room reading she chose a glossy company brochure, detailing its divisions, including missile guidance, gyroscopic navigation, armor, ammunition…all sorts of items.

Yes, maybe the company was downsizing but the literature showed impressive facilities in Florida, Texas and California, in addition to the headquarters. Overseas, they had operations in Abu Dhabi, São Paulo, Singapore, Munich and Mumbai. She walked to the window and studied the expansive grounds.

Soon a thirtyish man in a suit stepped into the lobby and greeted her. He was clearly surprised to see that an NYPD detective came in such a package and couldn’t quite restrain the flirt as he led her through the labyrinthine and equally sterile halls to the CEO’s office. He charmi
ngly
asked her about her job—what it was like to be a cop in New York, what were her most interesting cases, did she watch
CSI
or
The Mentalist
, what kind of gun did she have?

Which reminded her of the inked manager of Java Hut.

Men…

When it was clear that this theme of conversation wasn’t working, he took to telling her about the company’s achievements. She nodded politely and immediately forgot all of the factoids. With a frown he glanced at her leg; she realized she’d been limping and instantly forced herself into a normal gait.

After a trek they came to a corner office in the one-story building, Mr. Walker’s. A spray-haired brunette at an impressive desk looked up, defensive, probably because her boss was being visited by the NYPD. Sachs noticed that many of the shelves here were occupied by a collection of plastic and lead soldiers. Whole armies. Sachs’s first thought: Dusting would be a bitch.

The flirter who’d escorted her seemed to try to think of some way to ask her out on a date but nothing occurred to him. He turned and left.

“He’ll see you now,” the PA said.

As Sachs stepped into Harry Walker’s office, she couldn’t help but smile.

A weapons manufacturer had to be narrow of face, unsmiling and suspicious, if not sadistic, right? Plotting ways to sell ammunition to Russia while simultaneously shipping to Chechnyan separatists. The head of Walker Defense, however, was a pudgy and cherubic sixty-five-year-old, who happened to be sitting cross-legged on the floor, putting together a pink tricycle.

Walker wore a white shirt, which bulged at the belly over tan dress slacks. His tie was striped, red and blue. He offered a casual smile and rose—with some difficulty; a screwdriver was clutched in one hand and a set of assembly instructions in the other. “Detective Sachs. Amanda?”

“Amelia.”

“I’m Harry.”

She nodded.

“My granddaughter.” He glanced at the bike. “I have a degree from MIT. I have two hundred patents for advanced weapons systems. But can I put together a Hello Kitty trike? Apparently only with great difficulty.”

Every part was carefully laid out on the floor, labeled by Post-it Notes.

Sachs said, “I work on cars. I always end up with an extra bolt or nut or strut. But things seem to run fine without them.”

He set the tool and instructions on his desk and sat behind it. Sachs took the chair he gestured at.

“So, now, what can I do for you?” He was smiling still—just like the middle manager who’d escorted her from the lobby but in Walker’s case the expression wasn’t a flirt. His grin hid both curiosity and caution.

“You’re one of the oldest manufacturers of bullets and weapons systems in the country.”

“Well, thanks to Wikipedia, why deny it?”

Sachs settled back into the comfortable chair, also leather, beige. She glanced at the pictures on the wall, some men at a rifle range, probably around the time of the First World War.

He told her, “We were founded by my great-granddad. Quite an amazing man. I say that like I knew him. But he died before I was born. He invented the recoil system of automatic weapons loading. Of course, there were a half dozen other inventors who did the same and he didn’t get to the patent office first. But he made the best, the most efficient models.”

Sachs hadn’t known about Walker Senior’s contribution but was impressed. There were several ways to get a weapon to fire repeatedly but the recoil system had won out as the most popular. A talented shooter can get off a bullet every few seconds with a bolt-action rifle. A modern automatic weapon can spit nine hundred rounds a minute, some esoteric types even more.

“You’re familiar with firearms?” he asked.

“I shoot as a hobby.”

He eyed her carefully. “How do you feel about the Second Amendment?” A provocative question wearing a gown of mere curiosity.

She didn’t hesitate. “Open to interpretation—the militia versus personal rights.”

The brief Second Amendment of the Constitution guaranteed the right of
militias
to keep and bear arms. It didn’t specifically say that all citizens had that right.

Sachs continued, “I’ve read George Mason’s notes, and personally I think his intent was that he was referring exclusively to militias.” She held up a hand as Walker was about to interrupt. “But then he added, ‘Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.’ That means the right applies to everybody—back then every citizen was potentially militia.”

“I’m with you!” Walker beamed. “That’s nearly a direct quote, by the way. So, don’t trammel our rights.” He nodded.

“Not quite so fast,” Sachs added coyly. “It’s not the end of the argument.”

“No?”

“The Constitution gives us a lot of rights but it also lets Congress regulate us in a thousand different ways. You need a license to drive a car or fly a plane or sell liquor. You can’t vote until you’re eighteen. Why shouldn’t you have a license to own or shoot a gun? I have no problem with that. And it doesn’t conflict with the Second Amendment at all.”

Walker responded happily, enjoying their argument, “Ah, but of course if we get licenses, then Washington knows where the guns are and they’ll come in the middle of the night and take them away. Don’t we need our weapons to stop them from doing that?”

Sachs riposted, “Washington has nukes. If they want our guns they’ll take our guns.”

Walker nodded. “True, there is that. Now, we’ve been digressing. How can I help you?”

“We recovered a bullet at a crime scene.”

“One of ours, I assume.”

“You’re the only company making a four twenty spitzer boattail, aren’t you?”

“Oh, our new sniper round. And a very fine cartridge it is. Better than the four sixteen, if you ask me. Fast. Oh, fast as a demon.” Then he frowned in apparent confusion. “And the round was involved in a crime?”

“That’s right.”

“We don’t sell to the public. Only government, the army and police SWAT teams. I don’t know how a criminal could have gotten his hands on one—unless he, or she, fell into those categories. Where exactly was the scene?”

“I can’t say at this point.”

“I see. And what do you want to know?”

“Just some information. We’re trying to find the rifle this slug was fired from but not having any luck. We’re assuming they’re custom-made.”

“That’s right. The loads are too big to fire in retooled commercial rifles. Most of the shooters find somebody to make their weapons for them. A few do it themselves.”

“Do you know anyone who does that work?”

He smiled coyly. “I can’t say at this point.”

She laughed. “And that goes for information about customers you’ve sold these bullets to?”

Walker grew serious now. “If somebody had broken into one of our own warehouses—” A nod out the window toward nearby buildings. “—and the rounds were used in a crime, then I’d be happy to help you out. But I can’t give you customer information. We have gag clauses in all our contracts, and in most cases there’re additional national security requirements. To give you information like that would be a crime.” His face grew troubled. “Can you tell me
anything
about what happened, though? Was it a homicide?”

Sachs debated. “Yes.”

Walker’s face was still. “I’m sorry about that. I truly am. It doesn’t do us any good when somebody misuses our products and something tragic happens.”

But that didn’t mean he was going to help. Walker rose and extended his hand.

She stood too. “Thanks for your time.”

Walker picked up the instructions and screwdriver and walked back to the trike.

Then he smiled and picked up a bolt. “You buy a Harley-Davidson, you know, it comes already assembled.”

“Good luck with that, Mr. Walker. Call me if you can think of anything, please.” She handed him one of her cards—which, she suspected, he’d pitch out before she was halfway to the lobby.

Didn’t matter.

Sachs had everything she needed.

I
N RHYME’S DARK PARLOR,
redolent of trace materials burned into incriminating evidence by the gas chromatograph, Sachs pulled her jacket off and held up the brochure from Walker Defense.

Ron Pulaski taped it up on a whiteboard. The glitzy piece sat next to the kill order.

“So,” Rhyme said, “what did it look like?”

“Pretty short and hidden between two buildings but I caught a glimpse from Walker’s office. There was a windsock at one end and what looked like a small hangar at the other.”

Sachs’s mission had nothing to do with getting customer information or the names of people fabricating long-range rifles, which Rhyme knew Walker wouldn’t divulge anyway. Her job was to find out as much about the company’s products as she could—more than its preening and ambiguous website offered. And—most important—to find out if it had a length of asphalt or concrete that could be used as an airstrip; Google Earth had not been helpful in that regard.

“Excellent,” Rhyme said.

As for the other products, they too were just what he’d hoped: instruments and devices for guidance, navigation and control systems, in addition to ammunition. “Gyroscopes, GPS sighting systems, synthetic aperture radar, things like that,” Sachs explained.

The criminalist read through the brochure.

He said slowly, “Okay, we have our answer. The case is back on. Barry Shales
did
kill Robert Moreno. He was just a little farther away from the target than two thousand feet. In fact, he was here in New York when he pulled the trigger.”

Sellitto shook his head. “We should’ve thought better. Shales wasn’t infantry or special forces. He was air force.”

Rhyme’s theory, now supported by Sachs’s legwork, was that Barry Shales was a drone pilot.

“We know his code name is Don Bruns and Bruns was the one who killed Moreno. The data show he was in the NIOS office downtown on the day the man died. He’d have been piloting a drone from some control facility there.” He paused, frowned. “Oh, hell, that’s the ‘Kill Room’ the STO refers to. It’s not the hotel suite where Moreno was shot; it’s the drone cockpit or whatever you call it, where the pilot sits.”

Sachs nodded at the brochure. “Walker makes those bullets, they make gun sights and stabilization and radar and navigation systems. They’ve built or armed a specialized drone that uses a rifle as a weapon.”

Rhyme spat out, “Look at the STO—there’s a period after ‘Kill Room,’ not a comma! ‘Suite twelve hundred’ doesn’t modify it. They’re separate places.” He continued, “Okay, this is all making sense now. What’s the one problem with drone strikes?”

“Collateral damage,” Sachs said.

“Exactly. A missile takes out terrorists but it also kills innocent people. Very bad for America’s image. NIOS contracted with Walker Defense to come up with a drone that minimizes collateral. Using a precision rifle with a very big bullet.”

Sellitto said, “But they fucked up. There
was
collateral.”

“The Moreno assassination was a fluke,” Rhyme said. “Who could’ve anticipated broken glass would be lethal?”

Sellitto gave a laugh. “You know, Amelia, you were right. This
was
a million-dollar bullet. Literally. Hell, given what drones cost, it’s probably a ten-million-dollar bullet.”

“How’d you guess?” Nance Laurel asked.

“Guess?” Sachs offered acerbically.

But Rhyme didn’t need any defense. He was delighted with his deduction and was happy to explain:

“Trees. I was thinking of trees. There was poisonwood leaf trace on the bullet. I saw the tree outside the window of the suite. All the branches up to about twenty-five feet or so were cut back—because the hotel didn’t want anyone touching the leaves. That meant the bullet struck Moreno at a very steep downward angle—probably forty-five degrees. That was too acute even for a shooter on the spit to aim high to correct for gravity. It meant the bullet came from the air.

“If Shales fired through the trees, that means he was using some kind of infrared or radar sighting system to quote see Moreno through the leaves. I was also curious why there was no pollution on the slug—from the fumes and crap in the air over the spit. A hot bullet would have picked up plenty of trace. But it didn’t.”

Pulaski said, “By the way, Lincoln, they’re UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles. Not drones.”

“Thank you for the correction. Accuracy is everything. You’re a wealth of knowledge.”

“Discovery Channel.”

Rhyme laughed and continued, “It also reconciles why Mychal Poitier’s divers didn’t find any spent brass. It’s out to sea. Or maybe the drone retains the spent shells. Good, good. We’re moving ahead.”

Cooper said, “And he was a lot closer than two thousand yards. That’s why the high velocity of the bullet.”

Rhyme said, “I’d guess the UAV couldn’t’ve been any more than two or three hundred yards out, to make an accurate shot like that. It’d be easy for people on the ground to miss it. There would have been camouflage—just like with our chameleons. And the engine would’ve been small—two-stroke, remember. With a muffler you’d never hear it.”

“It launched from Walker’s airstrip in New Jersey?” Pulaski asked.

Rhyme shook his head. “The airstrip’s just for testing the drones, I’m sure. NIOS would launch from a military base and as close to the Bahamas as possible.”

Laurel dug through her notes. “There’s a NIOS office near Miami.” She looked up. “Next to Homestead Air Reserve Base.”

Sachs tapped the brochure. “Walker has an office near there. Probably for service and support.”

Laurel’s crisp voice then added, “And you recall what Lincoln said earlier?” She was speaking to them all.

“Yep,” Sellitto said, compulsively stirring his coffee, as if that would make it sweeter; he’d added only half a packet of sugar. “We don’t need conspiracy anymore. Barry Shales was in New York City when he pulled the trigger. That means the crime’s now murder two. And Metzger’s an accessory.”

“Very good, Detective, that’s correct,” Laurel said as if she were a fifth-grade teacher praising a student in class.