More Twisted

phone and walked toward them.
    “No!” Kitty cried.
    “Captain,” the man said, nodding at Rhyme. The criminalist was amused that Jed Carter insisted on using Rhyme’s rank when he was with the NYPD.
    Carter was a freelance security consultant for companies doing business in Africa and the Middle East. Rhyme had met him on that Brooklyn illegal arms case a few months ago, when the former mercenary soldier had helped the FBI and the NYPD take down the principal gunrunner. Carter was humorless and stiff—and surely had a past Rhyme didn’t want to know too much about—but he’d proved invaluable in nailing the perp. (He also seemed eager to make amends for some of his own past missions in Third World countries.)
    Carter shook Sellitto’s hand, then the tactical officer’s. He nodded respectfully to Amelia Sachs.
    “What is this?” Kitty gasped.
    Sachs said, “Like Lincoln was saying, we suspected you but we ran your prints and you weren’t on file anywhere.”
    “Will be soon, though,” Sellitto pointed out cheerfully.
    “So we didn’t have enough proof to get a search warrant.”
    “Not on the basis of one fiber. So I enlisted the help of Mr. Carter here—and Agent Sedgwick.”
    Norma, from State Department security, worked regularly with Fred Dellray. He’d contacted her and explained that they’d needed someone to play bodyguard and to help them fake an assault. She’d agreed. They’d arranged the undercover set for Madison Square Park, along with an officer from Patrol, in hopes that they’d find some more of the trace that Rhyme suspected was planted. If so, it had to come from Kitty and would place her on the balcony, justifying a search warrant.
    But his idea didn’t work. Sachs searched Madison Square Park around where Kitty had lain, as well as the Lincoln, inside and out, but she could find none of the planted evidence or any trace linking her to the weapon.
    So they’d tried once more. Rhyme decided that they needed to search her suitcases. Sachs called Norma about a tracking device that the supposed killer had planted. While Norma pretended to find one under the car—it was her Olay skin cream jar—Kitty had dumped the contents of her suitcases out into the backseat to look for the device.
    After Sachs dropped them off at the hotel, she returned immediately to the sedan and searched the hell out of it. She found traces of the steroid, a bit more of the diesel-laden sand and dirt and another grain of rice. Ironically, it turned out the rice husk in the rope and the grain of rice in the State Department sedan weren’t from any shipments of food to Africa. Their source was a spoonfulof dried rice in a lace ball tied with a silver ribbon, a souvenir from Kitty’s and Ron’s wedding. The woman had neglected to take it out of her suitcase.
    Rhyme added, “Detective Sellitto went to the courthouse, got a warrant and a wiretap.”
    “A tap?” Kitty whispered.
    “Yep. On your cell.”
    “Shit.” Kitty closed her eyes, a bitter grimace on her face.
    “Oh, yeah,” Sellitto muttered. “We got the asshole who hired you.”
    It wasn’t a warlord, vengeful employee, Third World dictator or corrupt CEO who wanted Ron and his brother dead. And it wasn’t the Reverend John Markel—briefly a suspect because of the fleck of leather at the Madison Square scene, possibly shed by a Bible.
    No, Robert Kelsey, the operations director of the foundation, was whom she’d called an hour ago. When he’d learned that Ron Larkin was thinking of merging with several other foundations, Kelsey knew there’d be a complete audit of the operation and it would be discovered that he’d been taking money from warlords and corrupt government officials in Africa in exchange for information about where the ship containing food and drugs would be docking.
    Oh, yeah. We lose fifteen, twenty percent a year of our African donations to theft and hijacking. Tens of millions . . . .
    He had to kill them, he reasoned, to stop any mergers.
    Kelsey had confessed, in exchange for an agreement not to seek the death penalty. But he swore he didn’tknow Kitty’s real identity. Sachs and Sellitto believed him; Kitty wasn’t a stupid woman, and she’d have to operate through a number of anonymous identities.
    That’s why Rhyme had called Carter not long ago, to see if the former mercenary could learn more about her. The man now said, “I’ve been speaking to some of my associates in Marseilles, Bahrain and