The Kill Room

from the assignments she’d had with Mr. Moreno over the past few months. She’d saved everything. As an interpreter, she worked with the police and court system from time to time. She had gotten into the habit of being very conscientious about retaining all her files in such cases because a mistaken phrasing of a detective’s question or a suspect’s answer could easily result in an innocent man being convicted or a guilty one going free. This diligence carried over into her commercial interpreting assignments too.
    The police would get nearly a thousand pages of translated material by and about the late Mr. Moreno.
    The intercom buzzer rang and she answered. “Yes?”
    “Ms. Foster, I’m with the NYPD,” a male voice said. “Detective Sachs spoke to you earlier? She’s been delayed and asked me to come by and ask you a few questions about Robert Moreno.”
    “Sure, come on up. Twelve B.”
    “Thank you.”
    A few minutes later a knock on the door. She looked out through the peephole, to see a pleasant-looking man in his thirties, wearing a suit. He was holding up a leather wallet containing a gold badge.
    “Come on in,” she said, unbolting and unchaining.
    He nodded a greeting and stepped inside.
    As soon as she closed the door she noted that there was something wrong with his hands. They were wrinkled. No, he was wearing flesh-c olored gloves.
    She frowned. “Wait—”
    Before she could scream he struck her hard in the throat with an open hand.
    Gurgling, crying, she dropped to the floor.

CHAPTER 40
    H E SOMETIMES WONDERED ABOUT PEOPLE , Jacob Swann did.
    Either you were conscientious or you weren’t. Either you scrubbed every bit of scorch off your copper-bottomed, stainless-steel sauté pan or you didn’t. Either you went the distance with the soufflé, and saw it rise five inches over the top of the ramekin, or you said to hell with it and for dessert served Häagen-Dazs, spelled in faux Scandinavian but made in the U.S. of A.
    Standing over a crumpled, gasping Lydia Foster, he was thinking of Amelia Sachs.
    She’d been smart enough to destroy her cell phone (and it was destroyed, not simply castrated, his tech people had learned). But then she’d made the mistake of calling Detective Sellitto back from a pay phone only about twenty-five feet from Java Hut. By the time she called, those same tech gurus at headquarters had rammed a tap on this phone—and several others nearby.
    (While of course officially claiming they didn’t know how to do it and, even if they had known, never would.)
    Sometimes your Miele oven conks out—just before you’re ready to slip the lamb roast in, natch—and you have to improvise.
    Sure enough, Sachs had delivered to Lon Sellitto—and inadvertently to Jacob Swann—the vitals about Lydia Foster.
    He now moved through the apartment quietly, verifying that they were alone. He probably didn’t have a lot of time. Sachs had said she’d be delayed but presumably she’d call or arrive soon. Should he wait for her? He’d have to consider that. She might not show up alone, of course. There was that and while he did have a pistol, shooting, as opposed to cutting, was the sloppiest (and least enjoyable) way of solving problems.
    But if Sachs was alone? Several options presented themselves.
    Slipping the knife away, he now returned to the interpreter, grabbed her by the hair and collar of her blouse and dumped her in a heavy dining room chair. He tied her to this with lamp wire, cut with a cheap utility knife he carried— not the Kai Shun, of course. He never even used the blade to slice string for tying beef roulade, one of his favorite recipes.
    Tears streamed down her face and, gasping from the throat-punch, Lydia Foster shivered and kicked.
    Jacob Swann reached into his breast pocket and removed his Kai Shun from the wooden scabbard. Her reaction, the terror, didn’t deepen. We are dismayed only by the unexpected. She would have seen this coming.
    My little butcher man…
    He crouched beside her as she sat making ungodly sounds and shaking madly.
    “Be still,” he whispered into her ear.
    He thought of the Bahamas, yesterday, of Annette uhn-uhn-uhn ing in a clearing near the beach, surrounded by silver palm and buttonwood trees strangling to death from orange love vines.
    The interpreter didn’t comply exactly but she calmed enough.
    “I have a few questions. I’m going to need all the material about your assignments for Robert Moreno. What you talked