The Kill Room

Moreno’s citizenship renunciation, presumably pulling strings at the State Department. It’d be interesting to see if you followed proper channels for that. We’re sure you had Barry Shales, NIOS staff and contractors that you do business with destroy evidence of the STO drone program, you dug up dirt on the investigators. You hacked phones, intercepted emails, borrowed signal information from your friends in Langley and Fort Meade.”
    Sachs said in a gritty voice, “You stole personal medical records.”
    She and Rhyme had discussed how Captain Bill Myers had gotten from her orthopedist the files about her condition. They concluded that somebody at NIOS had hacked the records and sent them to Sachs’s superiors.
    Metzger looked down. A silent confirmation.
    “And the second reason to help us? You and NIOS got set up—to murder somebody. And we’re the only ones who can help you nail the perp.”
    Rhyme had Metzger’s full attention now.
    “What are you saying happened?”
    Rhyme replied, “I’ve heard some people suggest that you’re using this job to kill whoever you think is unpatriotic or anti-American. I don’t think so. I think you really believed Moreno was a threat—because somebody wanted you to think that and leaked phony intelligence to you. So you’d issue an STO and take him out. And that would give the real perp a chance to murder the real intended victim.”
    Metzger looked off for a moment. “Sure! Moreno gets shot, the others in the room are stunned, scared. The perp slips inside and kills the man he’s really after. De la Rua, the reporter. He was writing an exposé, corruption or something, and somebody wanted him dead.”
    “No, no, no,” Rhyme said, though he then conceded, “All right. I thought the same thing at first. But then I realized that was wrong.” This was delivered as a confession. In fact, he was still irritated he’d jumped to the conclusion about the reporter without considering all the facts.
    “Then who…?” Metzger lifted his hands, confused.
    Amelia Sachs provided the answer. “Simon Flores, Moreno’s bodyguard. He was the target all along.”

CHAPTER 85
    D E LA RUA WAS A FEATURE WRITER for a business publication,” Rhyme explained. “We looked over all his recent articles and found out what he was working on. Human-interest stories, business analysis, economics, investment. No investigative reporting, no exposés. Nothing controversial.”
    As for the reporter’s personal life, well, Pulaski had found nothing that might motivate a killer to take him out. He wasn’t involved in shady business dealings or criminal activities, had no enemies and hadn’t engaged in any personal moral lapses—there was no controversy about whom he was sleeping with (apparently only his wife of twenty-three years).
    “So when I didn’t find a motive,” Rhyme continued, “I had to ask what was curious? I went back to the evidence. And a few minutes later something jumped out. Or, I should say, the absence of something jumped out. The bodyguard’s missing watch, which was stolen after the shooting. It was a Rolex. The fact of the theft was unremarkable. But why would a bodyguard be wearing a five-thousand-dollar watch?”
    Metzger looked blank.
    “His boss, Robert Moreno, wasn’t rich; he was an activist and journalist. He was probably pretty generous with his workers but paying enough of a salary for any of them to buy a Rolex? I didn’t think so. A half hour ago I had our FBI contact profile the guard. Flores had accounts worth six million dollars in banks around the Caribbean. Every month he got fifty thousand cash from an anonymous numbered account in the Caymans.”
    Metzger’s eyes flashed. “The guard was blackmailing someone.”
    You didn’t get to be head of a group like NIOS without being sharp but this was a particularly good deduction.
    Rhyme nodded, with a smile. “I think that’s right. I remembered that the day of the attack at the South Cove Inn, there was another murder in the Nassau. A lawyer. My Bahamian police contact gave me the lawyer’s client list.”
    Metzger said, “The guard was one of the lawyer’s clients, of course. The guard—Flores—left the incriminating information with the attorney for safekeeping. But the man being blackmailed got tired of paying or ran out of money and called up a hit man—this specialist—to kill the guard, kill the lawyer and steal the information, destroy it.”
    “Exactly. The lawyer’s