The Kill Room

military—retiring as a captain in the air force and decorated several times. The man was now working civilian as an “intelligence specialist” with NIOS. He and his wife—a teacher—had two children, boys in elementary school. Shales was active in his Presbyterian church and volunteered at the boys’ schools, a reading tutor.
    Learning this bio, Sachs was troubled. Most of the perps she and Rhyme pursued were hardened criminals, serial offenders, organized crime bosses, psychotics, terrorists. But this case was different. Shales was probably a devoted civil servant, probably a decent husband and father. Just doing his duty, even if it happened to involve shooting terrorists in cold blood. Upon his arrest and conviction, a family would be destroyed. Metzger might have been using NIOS for his own delusional approach in safeguarding the country and using a specialist for clean-up. But Shales? He might have been just following orders.
    Still, even if he hadn’t been the one who’d tortured and killed Lydia Foster, he was part of the organization that possibly had.
    Sachs called Lon Sellitto and told him of their discovery. Then she placed a call to Information Services, requesting every fact they could dig up on Barry Shales—most important where he’d been and what he was doing on May 9, the day of the shooting.
    The lab phone rang and Sachs, noting the caller ID, hit speaker. “Fred.”
    She wasn’t worried that Unsub 516 was tapping this particular phone line; Rodney Szarnek had sent over a device he called a “tap-trap,” which could detect anyone’s listening in. The monitor showed that the conversation was private.
    “Amelia. Is it true what I’m hearing? Your friend and mine is sunning himself in the Caribbean.”
    His astonishment was so exaggerated that Sachs had to smile. Cooper did too. Nance Laurel did not.
    “He sure is, Fred.”
    “Why oh why do my assignments take me to the prime vacation spots of the South Bronx and Newark? While Mr. Lincoln Rhyme’s on a beach, courtesy of the city of New York? Where’s the fairness in that? Is he enjoying those sissy drinks with umbrellas and plastic sea horses?”
    “I think he’s paying for it himself, Fred. And how do you know they serve drinks down there with plastic sea horses?”
    “Busted,” the agent admitted. “The coconut ones, they’re my personal favorites. Now, how’s the case goin’? That homicide on Third Avenue, that was related? Lydia Foster. Saw it on the wire.”
    “Afraid it was. We think it’s a clean-up op, probably that Metzger ordered.”
    “Fuck,” Dellray spat out. “Man’s gone rogue big time.”
    “He sure has.” Sachs told him too that they’d found there were two perps. “We still don’t know which of them set the bomb at the coffee shop.”
    “Well, I gotcha a few things you might be interested in.”
    “Go ahead. Anything.”
    “First off, the mobile your sniper was using—the one registered to Mr. Code Name Don Bruns, with that fake Social Security number and a Delaware corporation? The company’s buried way deep but I traced it to some shell outfits that NIOS’s used in the past. Probably why the phone’s still active. Lotta time the government thinks they’re too smart to get found out. Or too big. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
    “Good. Thanks, Fred.”
    “And turns out your friend the late and great Mr. Moreno was not planning to detonate a big bang of mass destruction and move into a cave.”
    He explained he was referring to Robert Moreno’s mysterious message about “vanishing into thin air, May twenty-fourth.”
    “What was it about?” Sachs asked.
    The FBI agent continued, “Was a play on words, seems. What it is: Some of our folk down in Venezuela found out that Moreno and his family were moving into a new house on the twenty-fourth.”
    He gave them the details: Robert Moreno had bought a four-bedroom home in the Venezuelan city of San Cristóbal, one of the more upscale locales in the country. It was on a mountaintop.
    Thin air…
    Laurel nodded at his words, obviously pleased. So Moreno might not be the Western Hemisphere’s answer to Bin Laden.
    Gotta keep the jury happy, Sachs thought cynically.
    The agent continued, “Oh, and the IED attack in Mexico City on May thirteen? Now, this one’s almost funny. The only thing with a Moreno connection on that date in Mexico City was a big fund-raiser for a charity he was involved with. Classrooms for the Americas.