The Kill Room

Sellitto explained. “Started at the top floor of that office building where Moreno picked her up and worked their way down twenty-nine stories. Naturally, they didn’t get a hit till floor three, took ’em forever. She was working freelance, translating for a bank.”
    “I’m going to call her now.” She added, “How the hell did he tap our lines, Lon? It isn’t just anybody who can do that.”
    The older detective muttered, “This guy is too fucking connected.”
    “And he knows your number too now,” she pointed out. “Watch your back.”
    He gave a gruff laugh. “That’s a cliché Linc definitely wouldn’t approve of.”
    His words made her miss Rhyme all the more.
    “I’ll let you know what I find,” she said.
    A few minutes later Sachs was speaking with Lydia Foster, explaining the purpose for the call.
    “Ah, Mr. Moreno. Yes, I was very sad to hear that. I interpreted for him three times over the last year.”
    “Each time in New York?”
    “That’s right. The people he met with spoke pretty good English but he wanted to speak through me in their native languages. He thought he could get a better feel for them. I was supposed to tell him what I thought their attitudes were, in addition to the words.”
    “I talked to the driver who took you two around the city on May first. He said you had some general conversations with Mr. Moreno too.”
    “That’s right. He was very social.”
    Sachs found her heart pounding a bit faster. The woman could be a well of information.
    “You and he met how many people on the latest trip?”
    “Four, I think. Some nonprofit organizations, run by Russians and some people out of Dubai, and at the Brazilian consulate. He also met somebody by himself. That man he was meeting spoke English and Spanish. He didn’t need me so I waited at Starbucks downstairs in the office building.”
    Or maybe he didn’t want you to hear the substance of that meeting.
    “I’d like to come over and talk to you.”
    “Yes, anything I can do to help. I’m home for the day. I’ll find all my transcripts for the job and organize them.”
    “You keep copies of everything?”
    “Every word. You’d be surprised how many times clients lose what I send them or don’t back them up.”
    Even better.
    Just then her phone hummed with an incoming text, marked urgent. “Hold on a second, please,” she told Lydia Foster. And read the message.
    Bruns’s phone in use. Voiceprint checks—it’s him. Tracking in real time. He’s in Manhattan at moment. Call Rodney Szarnek.
    —Ron
    She said, “Ms. Foster, I’ve got to follow up on something but I’ll be there soon.”

CHAPTER 37
    R HYME HAD JUST FINISHED HIS KALIK BEER at Hurricane’s restaurant when he heard a voice behind him.
    “Hello.”
    Mychal Poitier.
    The corporal’s blue shirt was Rorschached with sweat and his dark slacks, with the regal red stripe, sandy and dotted with mud. He carried a backpack. He waved to the server and she smiled, surprised when he took a seat with the disabled man from America. She put in an order without asking him what he wanted and brought him a coconut soft drink.
    “I am late because, I’m sorry to say, we have found the student. She died in a swimming accident. Excuse me for a moment. I will upload my report.” He took an iPad in a battered leather case from the bag and booted it up. He typed some words and then hit the send button.
    “This will buy me a little time with you. I’ll tell them I’m following up on several other issues regarding the loss.” He nodded at the iPad. “Unfortunate situation,” he said and his face was grave. It occurred to Rhyme that Traffic, his first assignment, and then Business Inspections and Licensing had probably not provided much opportunity to experience firsthand the tragedies that fundamentally change law enforcement officers—that either temper or weaken them. “She drowned in an area of water that generally isn’t dangerous but she’d been drinking, it seems. We found rum and Coke in her car. Ah, students. They believe they are immortal.”
    “May I see?” Rhyme asked.
    Poitier turned the device and Rhyme studied the pictures that slowly slideshowed past. The body of the victim was starkly white from loss of blood, and water-wrinkled. Fish or other creatures had eaten away much of her face and neck. Hard to guess her age. Rhyme couldn’t recall from the poster. He asked.
    “Twenty-three.”
    “What was she