The Kill Room

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