The Kill Room - Страница 3

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Got it, Rhyme thought. He believed he knew her employer. And was all the more curious.

Sellitto said of the man, “Linc, this is Bill Myers.”

The visitor nodded. “Captain, an honor to meet you.” He used Rhyme’s last title with the NYPD, from when he’d retired on disability some years ago. This confirmed Myers’s job; Rhyme had been right, brass. And pretty senior.

Rhyme motored the electric wheelchair forward and thrust his hand out. The brass noted the jerky motion, hesitated then gripped it. Rhyme noticed something too: Sachs stiffen slightly. She didn’t like it when he used the limb and digits like this, unnecessarily, for social niceties. But Lincoln Rhyme couldn’t help himself. The past decade had been an effort to rectify what fate had done to him. He was proud of his few victories and exploited them.

Besides, what was the point of a toy if you never played with it?

Myers introduced the other mysterious “somebody.” Her name was Nance Laurel.

“Lincoln,” he said. Another handshake, seemingly firmer than Myers’s, though Rhyme, of course, couldn’t tell. Sensation did not accompany movement.

Laurel’s sharp gaze took in Rhyme’s thick brown hair, his fleshy nose, his keen dark eyes. She said nothing other than “Hello.”

“So,” he said. “You’re an ADA.”

Assistant district attorney.

She gave no physical reaction to his deduction, which was partly a guess. A hesitation, then: “Yes, I am.” Her voice was crisp, sibilant emphasized.

Sellitto then introduced Myers and Laurel to Sachs. The brass took in the policewoman as if he was very aware of her rep too. Rhyme noticed that Sachs winced a bit as she walked forward to shake hands. She corrected her gait as she returned to the chair. He alone, he believed, saw her subtly pop a couple of Advil into her mouth and swallow dry. However much the pain she never took anything stronger.

Myers too, it turned out, was a captain by rank and ran a branch of the department that Rhyme had not heard of, new apparently. The Special Services Division. His confident demeanor and cagey eyes suggested to Rhyme that he and his outfit were quite powerful within the NYPD. Possibly he was a player with an eye on a future in city government.

Rhyme himself had never had an interest in the gamesmanship of institutions like the NYPD, much less what lay beyond, Albany or Washington. All that interested him at the moment was the man’s presence. The appearance of a senior cop with mysterious departmental lineage alongside the focused terrier of an ADA suggested an assignment that would keep at bay the dreaded boredom that, since the accident, had become his worst enemy.

He felt the throbbing of anticipation, his heart, but via his temples, not his insensate chest.

Bill Myers deferred to Nance Laurel, saying, “I’ll let her unpack the situation.”

Rhyme tried to catch Sellitto’s eye with a wry glance but the man deflected it. “Unpack.” Rhyme disliked such stilted, coined terms, which bureaucrats and journalists seeded into their dialogue. “Game-changer” was another recent one. “Kabuki” too. They were like bright red streaks in the hair of middle-aged women or tattoos on cheeks.

Another pause and Laurel said, “Captain—”

“Lincoln. I’m decommissioned.”

Pause. “Lincoln, yes. I’m prosecuting a case and because of certain unusual issues it was suggested that you might be in a position to run the investigation. You and Detective Sachs. I understand you work together frequently.”

“That’s right.” He wondered if ADA Laurel ever loosened up. Doubted it.

“I’ll explain,” she continued. “Last Tuesday, May ninth, a U.S. citizen was murdered in a luxury hotel in the Bahamas. The local police there are investigating the crime but I have reason to believe that the shooter’s American and is back in this country. Probably the New York area.”

She paused before nearly every sentence. Was she picking thoroughbred words? Or assessing liabilities if the wrong one left the gate?

“Now, I’m not going with a murder charge against the perps. It’s difficult to make a case in state court for a crime that occurs in a different country. That could be done but it would take too long.” Now a denser hesitation. “And it’s important to move quickly.”

Why? Rhyme wondered.

Intriguing…

Laurel continued, “I’m seeking other, independent charges in New York.”

“Conspiracy,” Rhyme said, his instantaneous deduction. “Good, good. I like that. On the basis that the murder was planned here.”

“Exactly,” Laurel offered. “The killing was ordered by a New York resident in the city. That’s why I have jurisdiction.”

Like all cops, or former cops, Rhyme knew the law as well as most lawyers did. He recalled the relevant New York Penal Code provision: Somebody is guilty of conspiracy when — with intent that conduct constituting a crime be performed — he or she agrees with one or more persons to engage in or cause the performance of such conduct. He added, “And you can bring the case here even if the killing took place outside the state because the underlying conduct — murder — is a crime in New York.”

“Correct,” Laurel confirmed. She might have been pleased he got the analysis right. It was hard to tell.

Sachs said, “Ordered the killing, you said. What was it, an OC hit?”

Many of the worst organized crime bosses were never arrested and convicted for the extortion, murders and kidnappings they perpetrated; they could never be tied to the crime scene. But they often were sent to prison for conspiring to cause those events to happen.

Laurel, however, said, “No. This is something else.”

Rhyme’s mind danced. “But if we identify and collar the conspirators the Bahamians’ll want to extradite them. The shooter, at least.”

Laurel regarded him silently for a second. Her pauses were beginning to border on the unnerving. She finally said, “I’ll resist extradition. And my chances of success I put at over ninety percent.” For a woman in her thirties Laurel seemed young. There was a schoolgirl innocence about her. No, “innocence” was the wrong word, Rhyme decided. Single-mindedness.

Pigheaded was another cliché that fit.

Sellitto asked both Laurel and Myers, “You have any suspects?”

“Yes. I don’t have the identity of the shooter yet but I know the two people who ordered the killing.”

Rhyme gave a smile. Within him curiosity stirred, along with the sensation a wolf must feel catching a single molecule of a prey’s scent. He could tell Nance Laurel felt the same, even if the eagerness wasn’t quite visible through the L’Oréal façade. He believed he knew where this was going.

And the destination was far beyond intriguing.

Laurel said, “The murder was a targeted killing, an assassination, if you will, ordered by a U.S. government official — the head of NIOS, the National Intelligence and Operations Service, based here in Manhattan.”

This was, more or less, what Rhyme had deduced. He’d thought the CIA or Pentagon, though.

“Jesus,” Sellitto whispered. “You wanna bust a fed?” He looked at Myers, who gave no reaction whatsoever, then back to Laurel. “Can you do that?”

Her pause was two breaths’ duration. “How do you mean, Detective?” Perplexed.

Sellitto probably hadn’t meant anything other than what he’d said. “Just, isn’t he immune from prosecution?”

“The NIOS lawyers will try for immunity but it’s an area I’m familiar with. I wrote my law review article on immunity of government officials. I’ve assessed my chance of success at about ninety percent in the state courts, and eighty in the Second Circuit on appeal. We get to the Supreme Court, we’re home free.”

“What’s the law on immunity?” Sachs asked.

“It’s a Supremacy Clause issue,” Laurel explained. “That’s the constitutional provision that says, in effect, when it comes down to a conflict, federal law trumps state. New York can’t prosecute a federal employee for state crimes if the employee was acting within the scope of his authority. In our situation, I believe the head of NIOS has gone rogue — acting outside what he was authorized to do.”

Laurel glanced at Myers, who said, “We pivoted on the issue but there’re solid metrics leading us to believe that this man is manipulating the intelligence that formed the basis for the assassination, for his own agenda.”

Pivoted…metrics…

“And what is that agenda?” Rhyme asked.

“We’re not sure,” the captain continued. “He seems obsessed with protecting the country, eliminating anybody who’s a threat — even those who maybe aren’t threats, if he considers them unpatriotic. The man he ordered shot in Nassau wasn’t a terrorist. He was just—”

“Outspoken,” Laurel said.

Sachs asked, “One question: The attorney general’s okayed the case?”

Laurel’s hesitation this time might have covered up bristling at the reference to her boss and his permission to pursue the investigation. Hard to tell. She answered evenly, “The information about the killing came to our office in Manhattan, the jurisdiction where NIOS is located. The district attorney and I discussed it. I wanted the case because of my experience with immunity issues and because this type of crime bothers me a great deal — I personally feel that any targeted killings are unconstitutional because of due process issues. The DA asked me if I knew it was a land mine. I said yes. He went to the attorney general in Albany, who said I could go forward. So, yes, I have his blessing.” A steady gaze at Sachs, who looked back with eyes that were equally unwavering.