Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Intelligence, he takes his job seriously.”
    Conway had been watching Gabriel, reading his reactions. “I can see you’re having problems with this terrorism angle.”
    “I think it’s too simple,” said Gabriel.
    “And what’s your explanation? What are these people after?” asked Silver. He had settled back in his chair, long legs crossed, hands relaxed on the armrests. Not a sign of tension in his lanky frame. He’s not really interested in my opinion, thought Gabriel; he’s already made up his mind.
    “I don’t have an answer yet,” said Gabriel. “What I do have are a number of puzzling details that I can’t explain. That’s why I called Senator Conway.”
    “What details?”
    “I just attended the postmortem on that hospital guard. The man our Jane Doe shot to death. It turns out he wasn’t a hospital employee at all. We don’t know who he was.”
    “They ran fingerprints on him?”
    “He doesn’t turn up on AFIS.”
    “So he has no criminal record.”
    “No. His fingerprints don’t turn up on
any
databases we’ve checked.”
    “Not everyone has fingerprints on file.”
    “This man walked into that hospital carrying a weapon loaded with duplex rounds.”
    “That’s a surprise,” said Conway.
    “What’s a duplex round?” said Silver. “I’m just a lawyer so you’ll have to explain it to me. I’m afraid I’m illiterate when it comes to guns.”
    “It’s ammunition in which more than one bullet is loaded into a single cartridge case,” said Conway. “Designed for greater lethality.”
    “I just spoke to Boston PD’s ballistics lab,” said Gabriel. “They recovered a cartridge from the hospital room. It’s an M-198.”
    Conway stared at him. “US Army military issue. That’s not what you’d expect a security guard to carry.”
    “A
fake
hospital guard.” Gabriel reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He smoothed it flat on the coffee table. “And here’s the next detail that concerns me.”
    “What’s this?” asked Silver.
    “This is the sketch I made at the postmortem. It’s a tattoo on the dead man’s back.”
    Silver rotated the paper to face him. “A scorpion?”
    “Yes.”
    “So are you going to explain to me why this is significant? Because I’m willing to bet there are more than a few men walking around with scorpion tattoos.”
    Conway reached for the sketch. “You said this was on his back? And we don’t have
any
ID on this dead man?”
    “Nothing came back on his fingerprints.”
    “I’m surprised he doesn’t have prints on file.”
    “Why?” asked Silver.
    Gabriel looked at him. “Because there’s a good chance this man is military.”
    “You can tell that just by looking at his tattoo?”
    “It’s not just any tattoo.”
    “What’s so special about this one?”
    “It’s not on his arm, it’s on his back. In the marines, we call them ‘torso meat tags’ because they’re useful for identifying your corpse. In a blast, there’s a good chance you’d lose your extremities. So a lot of soldiers choose to get their tattoos on their chest or back.”
    Silver grimaced. “A morbid reason.”
    “But practical.”
    “And the scorpion? Is that supposed to be significant?”
    “It’s the number thirteen that catches my eye,” said Gabriel. “You see it here, circled by the stinger. I think it refers to the Fighting Thirteenth.”
    “That’s a military unit?”
    “Marine Expeditionary. Special ops capable.”
    “You’re saying this dead man was an ex-marine?”
    “You’re never an
ex
-marine,” Conway pointed out.
    “Oh. Of course,” Silver corrected himself. “He’s a
dead
marine.”
    “And that leads us to the detail that bothers me most,” said Gabriel. “The fact his fingerprints aren’t in any database. This man has no military record.”
    “Then maybe you’re wrong about the significance of this tattoo. And the duplex ammo.”
    “Or I’m right. And his fingerprints were specifically purged from the system to make him invisible to law enforcement.”
    There was a long silence.
    Silver’s eyes suddenly widened as he realized what Gabriel was implying. “Are you saying one of
our
intelligence agencies purged his prints?”
    “To conceal any black ops missions within our borders.”
    “Whom are you accusing? CIA? Military Intelligence? If he was one of ours, I sure wasn’t told about it.”
    “Whoever this man was, whoever he was working for, it’s now obvious he