The Kill Room

with a bread kneading hook and fresh pasta maker.
    Then Swann froze. He heard voices, a giddy young woman’s and then a Latino man’s. He reached for the Kai Shun.
    Their words faded, though, and the hallway remained empty. He turned back to his task. He tested the bolts and straps. They weren’t giving way. And he didn’t have the right tools to undo them. Of course he could hardly blame himself for that. He had a basic tool set with him but this would require an electric hacksaw.
    A sigh.
    The next best thing, he decided, was to make sure that the police didn’t get the drive either.
    Too bad, it wasn’t his first choice, but he had no other options.
    Now voices from the front of the restaurant again. He believed a woman was saying, “I’m looking for Jerry, please?”
    Could it be? Yes. The tone was familiar.
    Good old-fashioned A5/1 voice encryption…
    “I’m Jerry. Are you the detective who called?”
    “That’s right. I’m Amelia Sachs.”
    She’d gotten here faster than Swann had expected.
    Hunching forward to hide what he was doing from the camera, he reached into his backpack and removed an improvised explosive device, an anti-p ersonnel model that would not only destroy the computer but send a hundred bits of jagged shrapnel throughout the back half of the coffee shop. He debated a moment. He could have set the timer for a minute. But Swann decided it would be best to set the detonator for a bit longer. That would give Ms. Sachs enough time to come into the office and start scrolling through the tapes before it blew.
    Hitting the arm button and then the trigger, Swann slipped the box behind the computer itself.
    He then rose slowly and backed out of the office, careful not to display his face to the camera.

CHAPTER 29
    T HE AIR IN JAVA HUT WAS RICH with a dozen different scents—vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, berry, chamomile, nutmeg…and even coffee.
    Jerry, the manager, was a lanky young man with more extensive tats on his arms than a manager for a national franchise coffee shop probably should have. Even one headquartered in Portland. He shook her hand firmly, snuck a glance toward her hips. Men often did this—not checking out the body; he wanted a glimpse of her gun.
    The dozen people here were all busy—typing on or examining some electronic device or another. A few were reading from paper. Only one, an elderly woman, was sitting quietly, looking out the window and doing nothing but leisurely enjoying a cup of coffee.
    Jerry asked, “Would you like something? On the house?”
    She declined. She wanted to get to the one lead in the case that had the potential to pay off.
    “Just like to check out the security videos.”
    “Sure,” he said, trying for another look at her weapon. She was glad she’d kept the jacket buttoned. She knew he’d want to ask her if she’d used it recently. And talk calibers.
    Men. Sex or guns.
    “Now, we’ve got one camera there.” He pointed above the cash register. “Everybody who comes in’ll get photographed at least once, pretty up close. What did this guy upload? Like insider information?”
    “Like that, yes.”
    “Bankers. Man, don’t you just hate ’em? And two other cameras.” Pointing.
    One was mounted on a side wall and it scanned back and forth slowly like a lawn sprinkler. The tables were arranged perpendicularly to the camera, which meant that while patrons might not be visible head-on, it was likely she would get a clear profile shot of the whistleblower.
    Good.
    The other camera scanned a small alcove to the left of the main door, with only four tables inside. This too would get good side images of the patrons and was closer to those tables than the first camera was to those in the main room.
    “Let’s see the video,” she said.
    “It’s in the office. After you.” He extended his arm, covered with a multicolored tattoo of some Chinese writing, hundreds of characters long.
    Sachs couldn’t help but think, What could it possibly say that was worth the pain?
    Not to mention how he’s going to explain it to his grandkids.

CHAPTER 30
    M AN, THE ALLEY ON A WARM AFTERNOON.
    Gross.
    New York City alleys had a kind of charm, you looked at it one way: They were sort of like history moved into the present day, like in a museum. The fronts of the apartments and—here in Little Italy—the shops changed every generation but the alleys were pretty much what they would’ve been a century ago. Decorated with faded metal and