The Kill Room

evenly, “And what’s Rashid’s crime—saying things about America you didn’t like? Asking people to question the values and the integrity of the country?…But isn’t being free to ask questions like that what America’s all about?”
    Metzger stopped fast, turned and snapped, “Spoken like the most simple-minded, cliché-ridden of bloggers.” He reseated himself in front of her. “What is it with you? Why do you resent what we do so much?”
    “Because what you do is wrong. The United States is a country of laws, not men.”
    “‘Government’ of laws,” he corrected. “John Adams. It’s a nice-sounding phrase. But parse it and things aren’t so simple. A government of laws. Okay. Think about that: Laws require interpretation and delegations of power, down and down the line. To people like me—who make decisions on how to implement those laws.”
    She fired back with: “Laws don’t include ignoring due process and executing citizens arbitrarily.”
    “There’s nothing arbitrary about what I do.”
    “No? You kill people you think are going to commit an offense.”
    “All right, Counselor. What about a policeman on the street? He sees a perp in a dark alley with what might be a gun. It seems that he’s about to shoot someone. The cop is authorized to kill, right? Where’s your due process there, where’s your reasonable search and seizure, where’s your right to confront your accuser?”
    “Ah, but Moreno didn’t have a gun.”
    “And sometimes the guy in the alley only has a cell phone. But he gets shot anyway because we’ve chosen to give the police the right to make judgments.” He gave a deep, chill laugh. “Tell me, aren’t you guilty of the same thing?”
    “What do you mean?” she snapped.
    “What about my due process? What about Barry Shales’s?”
    She frowned.
    He continued, “In making the case, did you datamine me? Or Barry? Did you get classified information from, say, the FBI? Did you somehow ‘accidentally’ happen to get your hands on NSA intercepts?”
    An awkward hesitation. Was she blushing beneath the white mask? “Every bit of evidence I present at trial can pass Fourth Amendment scrutiny.”
    Metzger smiled. “I’m not talking about trial. I’m talking about unwarranted gathering of information as part of an investigation.”
    Laurel blinked. She said nothing.
    He whispered, “You see? We both interpret, we judge, we make decisions. We live in a gray world.”
    “You want another quotation, Shreve? Blackstone: ‘Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.’ That’s what my system does, makes sure the innocent don’t end up as victims. Yours doesn’t.” She fished her keys from her battered purse. “I’m going to keep watching you.”
    “Then I’ll look forward to seeing you in court, Counselor.”
    He turned and walked back to his car. He sat, calming, in the front seat, not looking back. Breathing.
    Let it go.
    Five minutes later he started at his phone’s buzz. He noted Ruth’s number on caller ID.
    “Hi, there.”
    “Uhm, Shreve. I heard. Is it true about Spencer?”
    “Afraid it is. I’ll tell you more later. I don’t want to talk on an open line.”
    “Okay. But that’s not why I called. We heard from Washington.”
    The Wizard.
    “He wanted to schedule a call with you for tomorrow afternoon.”
    Didn’t firing squads gather at dawn ?
    “That’s fine,” he said. “Send me the details.” He stretched. A joint popped. “Say, Ruth?”
    “Yes?”
    “What did he sound like?”
    There was a pause. “He…It wasn’t so good, I don’t think, Shreve.”
    “Okay, Ruth. Thank you.”
    He disconnected and looked out over the busy crime scene at Spencer Boston’s house. The sour chemical vapors still lingered, surrounding the Colonial home and the grounds.
    Smoke…
    So that was it. Whether Moreno was guilty or not was irrelevant; Washington now had plenty of reason to disband NIOS. Metzger had picked for his administrations director a whistleblower, and for his defense contractor a corrupt CEO who’d ordered people tortured and killed.
    This was the end.
    Metzger sighed and put the car in gear, thinking: Sorry, America. I did the best I could.

CHAPTER 93
    A T NINE ON SATURDAY MORNING Lincoln Rhyme was maneuvering through the lab and dictating the evidence report to back up the Walker trial and the Swann plea agreement.
    He noted too his calendar, up on a big monitor.
    Surgery Friday, May 26.