The Kill Room (3 page)

T
HE 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: “Prick.”

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 shirt, 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. passport 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 Bogotá 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.”

“Shining 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. embassies 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 analysts found that companies with a connection to Moreno had been shipping 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 assassinations or not, Metzger’s solution had saved a number of lives.

Rhyme was about to mention this but Laurel got there first. She said, “It wasn’t an
attack
Moreno was talking about, though. It was a peaceful protest. On the tenth of May, at noon, a half dozen trucks showed up in front of the APDR headquarters. They weren’t delivering bombs; they were delivering people for a demonstration.

“And the bomb ingredients? They were for Moreno’s Local Empowerment Movement branch in the Bahamas. The diesel fuel was for a transportation company. The fertilizer was for agricultural co-ops and the nitromethane was for use in soil fumigants. All legitimate. Those were the only materials cited in the order approving Moreno’s killing but there were also tons of seed, rice, truck parts, bottled water and other innocent items in the same shipment. NIOS conveniently forgot to mention those.”

“Not intelligence failure?” Rhyme offered.

The pause that followed was longer than most and Laurel finally said, “No. I think intelligence
manipulation
. Metzger didn’t like Moreno, didn’t like his rhetoric. He was on record as calling him a despicable traitor. I think he didn’t share with the chain of command all of the information he found. So the higher-ups in Washington approved the mission, thinking a bomb was involved, while Metzger knew otherwise.”

Sellitto said, “So NIOS killed an innocent man.”

“Yes,” Laurel said with a flick of animation in her voice. “But that’s good.”

“What?” Sachs blurted, brows furrowed.

A heartbeat pause. Laurel clearly didn’t understand Sachs’s apparent dismay, echoing the detective’s reaction to Laurel’s earlier comment that they’d be “lucky” if the shooter was a civilian, not military.

Rhyme explained, “The jurors again, Sachs. They’re more likely to convict a defendant who’s killed an activist who was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech—rather than a hard-core terrorist.”

Laurel added, “To me there’s no moral difference between the two; you don’t execute anybody without due process.
Anybody
. But Lincoln’s right, I have to take the jury into account.”

“So, Captain,” Myers said to Rhyme, “if the case is going to gain traction, we need somebody like you with your feet on the ground.”

Poor choice of jargon in this instance, given the criminalist’s main means of transportation.

Rhyme’s immediate reaction was to say yes. The case was intriguing and challenging in all sorts of ways. But Sachs, he noted, was looking down, rubbing her scalp with a finger, a habit. He wondered what was troubling her.

She said to the prosecutor, “You didn’t go after the CIA for al-Awlaki.”

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was a radical Muslim imam and advocate of jihad, as well as a major player within al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. An expatriate like Moreno, he’d been dubbed the Bin Laden of the Internet and enthusiastically encouraged attacks on Americans through his blog posts. Among those inspired by him were the shooter at Fort Hood, the underwear airplane bomber, both in 2009, and the Times Square bomber in 2010.

Al-Awlaki and another U.S. citizen, his online editor, were killed in a drone strike under the direction of the CIA.

Laurel seemed confused. “How could I bring that case? I’m a New York district attorney. There was no state nexus in al-Awlaki’s assassination. But if you’re asking if I pick cases I think I can win, Detective Sachs, then the answer’s yes. Charging Metzger for assassinating a known and dangerous terrorist is probably unwinnable. So is a case for assassinating a non–U.S.-citizen. But the Moreno shooting I can sell to a jury. When I get a conviction against Metzger and his sniper, then I’ll be able to look at other cases that are more gray.” She paused. “Or maybe the government’ll simply reassess its policies and stick to following the Constitution…and get out of the murder-for-hire business.”

With a glance at Rhyme, Sachs spoke to both Laurel and Myers. “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Feel right?” Laurel asked, seemingly perplexed by the phrase.

Two fingers rubbed together hard as Sachs said, “I don’t know, I’m not sure this’s our job.”

“You and Lincoln?” Laurel inquired.

“Any of us. It’s a political issue, not a criminal one. You want to stop NIOS from assassinating people, that’s fine. But shouldn’t it be a matter for Congress, not the police?”

Laurel underhanded a glance at Rhyme. Sachs certainly had a point—one that hadn’t even occurred to him. He cared very little about the broader questions of right and wrong when it came to the law. It was enough for him that Albany or Washington or the city council had defined an answerable offense. His job was then simple: tracking down and building a case against the offender.

Just like with chess. Did it matter that the creators of that arcane board game had decreed that the queen was all-powerful and that the knight made right-angle turns? No. But once those rules were established, you played by them.

He ignored Laurel and kept his eyes on Sachs.

Then the assistant DA’s posture changed, subtly but clearly. Rhyme thought at first she was defensive but that wasn’t it, he realized. She was going into advocate mode. As if she’d stood up from counsel table in court and had walked to the front of the jury—a jury as yet unconvinced of the suspect’s guilt.

“Amelia, I think justice is in the details,” Laurel began. “In the small things. I don’t prosecute a rape case because society becomes less stable when sexual violence is perpetrated against women. I prosecute rape because one human being behaves according to the prohibited acts in New York Penal Code section one thirty point three five. That’s what I do, that’s what we all do.”

After a pause, she said, “Please, Amelia. I know your track record. I’d like you on board.”

Ambition or ideology? Rhyme wondered, looking over the compact package of Nance Laurel, with her stiff hair, blunt fingers and nails free of polish, small feet in sensible pumps, on which the liquid cover-up had been applied as carefully as the makeup on her face. He honestly couldn’t say which of the two motivated her but one thing he observed: He was actually chilled to see the absence of passion in her black eyes. And it took a great deal to chill Lincoln Rhyme.

In the silence that followed, Sachs’s eyes met Rhyme’s. She seemed to sense how much he wanted the case. And this was the tipping factor. A nod. “I’m on board,” she said.

“I am too.” Rhyme was looking, though, not at Myers or Laurel but at Sachs. His expression said, Thanks.

“And even though nobody asked me,” Sellitto said with a grumble, “I’m also happy to fuck up my career by busting a senior federal official.”

Rhyme then said, “I assume a priority is discretion.”

“We have to keep it quiet,” Laurel replied. “Otherwise evidence will start disappearing. But I don’t think we have to worry at this point. In my office we’ve done everything we can to keep a lid on the case. I really doubt NIOS knows anything about the investigation.”

A
S HE DROVE THE BORROWED CAR
to a cay on the southwest shore of New Providence Island, near the huge Clifton Heritage Park, Jacob Swann heard his phone buzz with a text. The message was an update about the police investigation in New York into Robert Moreno’s death, the conspiracy charges. Swann would be receiving details in the next few hours, including the names of the parties involved.

Moving quickly. Much more quickly than he’d expected.

He heard a thump from the trunk of the car, where Annette Bodel, the unfortunate hooker, was crumpled in a ball. But it was a soft thump and there was no one else around to hear, no clusters of roadside scavengers or hangers-out like you often saw in the Bahamas, sipping Sands or Kalik, joking and gossiping and complaining about women and bosses.

No vehicles either, or boaters in the turquoise water.

The Caribbean was such a contradiction, Swann reflected as he gazed about: a glitzy playground for the tourists, a threadbare platform for the locals’ lives. The focus was on the fulcrum where dollars and euros met service and entertainment, and much of the rest of the nation just felt exhausted. Like this hot, weedy, trash-strewn patch of sandy earth, near the beach.

He climbed out and blew into his gloves to cool his sweaty hands. Damn, it was
hot
. He’d been to this spot before, last week. After a particularly challenging but accurate rifle shot had torn apart the heart of the traitorous Mr. Robert Moreno, Swann had driven here and buried some clothes and other evidence. He’d intended to let them stay forever interred. But having received the odd and troubling word that prosecutors in New York were looking into Moreno’s death, he’d decided it best to retrieve them and dispose of them more efficiently.

But first, another chore…another
task.

Swann walked to the trunk, opened it and glanced down at Annette, teary, sweaty, in pain.

Trying to breathe.

He then stepped to the rear seat, opened his suitcase and removed one of his treasures, his favorite chef’s knife, a Kai Shun Premier slicing model. It was about nine inches long and had the company’s distinctive hammered tsuchime finish, pounded by metalsmiths in the Japanese town of Seki. The blade had a VG-10 steel core with thirty-two layers of Damascus steel. The handle was walnut. This knife cost $250. He had models by the same manufacturer in various shapes and sizes, for different kitchen techniques, but this was his favorite. He loved it like a child. He used it to fillet fish, to slice beef translucent for carpaccio and to motivate human beings.

Swann traveled with this and other knives in a well-worn Messermeister knife roll, along with two battered cookbooks—one by James Beard and one by the French chef Michel Guérard, the
cuisine minceur
guru. Customs officials thought very little about a set of professional knives, however deadly, packed in checked luggage beside a cookbook. Besides, on a job away from home, the knives were useful; Jacob Swann would often cook, rather than hang out in bars or go to movies alone.

Removing the goat meat from the bones last week, for instance, and cubing it for the stew.

My little butcher man, my dear little butcher…

He heard another noise, a thud. Annette was starting to kick.

Swann returned to the trunk and dragged the woman from the car by her hair.

“Uhn, uhn, uhn…”

This was probably her version of “no, no, no.”

He found an indentation in the sand, surrounded by reedy plants and decorated with crushed Kalik cans and Red Stripe bottles, used condoms and decaying cigarette butts. He rolled her over onto her back and sat on her chest.

A look around. No one. The screams would be much softer, thanks to the blow to the throat, but they wouldn’t be silent.

“Now. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to have to form the words. I need answers and I need them quickly. Can you form words?”

“Uhn.”

“Say, ‘yes.’”

“Ye…ye…yessssss.”

“Good.” He fished a Kleenex from his pocket, then pinched her nose with his other hand and when she opened her mouth he grabbed her tongue with the tissue, tugged the tip an inch beyond her lips. Her head shook violently until she realized that was more painful than his pinch.

She forced herself to calm.

Jacob Swann eased the Kai Shun forward—admiring the blade and handle. Cooking implements are often among the most stylishly designed of any object. The sunlight reflected off the upper half of the blade, pounded into indentations, as if flickering on waves. He carefully stroked the tip of her tongue with the point, drawing a streak in deeper pink but no blood.

Some sound. “Please” maybe.

Little butcher man…

He recalled scoring a duck breast just a few weeks ago, with this same knife, slicing three shallow slits to help render the fat under the broiler. He leaned forward. “Now, listen carefully,” he whispered. Swann’s mouth was close to her ear and he felt her hot skin against his cheek.

Just like last week.

Well,
somewhat
like last week.