The Kill Room

keyboard. A printer began to exhale.
    When the document was disgorged, Laurel slipped it from the tray and added it to her files.
    Sachs’s phone buzzed. “It’s Fred again,” she announced. She hit speaker.
    Rhyme called, “Fred. Don’t insult anybody.”
    “I can hear. Well, well, you all have yourself quite a case here. Good luck on this one. Hey, see any funny-lookin’ airplanes hovering outside your windows? Might wanta think about closing the blinds.”
    This was not as funny as Dellray intended, Rhyme decided, given Barry Shales’s skill at firing million-dollar bullets.
    “Hokay, the radar situation. Sentcha screenshots. What we put together is the morning of May nine a small aircraft, no transponder, was tracked heading east over the Atlantic, south of Miami.”
    “Where Homestead air base is,” Sellitto pointed out.
    “Right you are. Now, the craft was on visual flight rules, no flight plan. Speed was very slow—about a hundred ten miles an hour. Which is typical drone speed. We all together on that?”
    “With you, Fred. Keep going.”
    “Well, it’s about a hundred eighty miles to Nassau from Miami. Exactly one hour and fifty-two minutes later, ATC in Nassau tracked a small aircraft, no transponder, ascend into radar range, about six hundred feet.” Dellray paused. “And then it stopped.”
    “Stopped?”
    “They thought it stalled. But it didn’t drop off the screen.”
    “It was hovering,” Rhyme said.
    “My guess. They figured that with no transponder the plane was an ultralight—one of those homemade gizmos that sometimes just sit like birds in headwinds? It wasn’t in controlled airspace so they didn’t pay any more mind. The time was eleven oh four a.m.”
    “Moreno was shot at eleven sixteen,” Sachs said.
    “And at eleven eighteen it turned around and descended outta radar. Two hours and five minutes later, a small aircraft, no transponder, crossed into U.S. airspace and headed toward South Miami.”
    “That’s our boy,” Rhyme said. “Thanks, Fred.”
    “Gooood luck. And forget you ever knew me.”
    Click.
    Wasn’t conclusive but like all elements in a case it was a solid brick in the wall of establishing a suspect’s guilt.
    Nance Laurel got a call. While someone else might have nodded or offered some facial clues as to the content she listened without expression; her powdered face was a mask. She disconnected. “There’s an issue with another case of mine. I have to go interview a prisoner in detention. It shouldn’t be long. I’d like to stay but I have to take care of this.”
    The prosecutor gathered up her purse and headed out the door.
    Sachs too received a call. She listened and jotted a few notes.
    Rhyme turned from her and was regarding the charts once again. “But I want more,” he griped. “Something to prove that Shales was at the controls of the drone.”
    “Ask and ye shall receive.” This, from Amelia Sachs.
    Rhyme lifted an eyebrow.
    She said, “We have a lead to the whistleblower. If anybody can place Barry Shales in the Kill Room on May ninth, it’s him.”
    * * *
    SACHS WAS PLEASED to report that Captain Myers’s officers who’d been canvassing the patrons of Java Hut when the whistleblower uploaded the STO had found some witnesses.
    Her computer gave a bleat and she looked toward the screen. “Incoming,” she said.
    Sellitto gave a harsh laugh. “Not a good choice of words in this case, you don’t mind.”
    She opened the attachment. “People buy a lot more with credit or debit cards nowadays. Even if the bill’s only three, four dollars. Sure helps us, though. The canvassers talked to everybody who charged something around one p.m. on the eleventh. Mostly a bust but one of them got a picture.” She printed out the photo attachments. Not terrible, she decided, but hardly high-def mug shots. “Has to be our man.”
    She read the officer’s memo. “‘The photographer was a tourist from Ohio. Shooting pictures of his wife sitting across from him. You can see in the background a man, blurred—because he’s turning away fast and raising his hand to cover his face. Asked the tourists if they got a better look at him. They didn’t and other patrons and the baristas didn’t pay any attention to him.’”
    Rhyme looked at the picture. Two tables behind the smiling woman was the presumed whistleblower. White. Solidly built, in a blue suit, an odd color, just shy of navy. He wore a baseball cap—suspicious, given the