Fastened tightly around his neck like a tourniquet, like some kinky fashion statement, was the legal attaché’s burgundy silk necktie. It was only slightly darker than the bruising on his throat above and below the ligature.
“He’s probably still in the building,” Diana said. “On his way out.”
“Check the tie,” I said. “I doubt it’s from Brooks Brothers.”
46.
I raced down the five flights of stairs to Cambridge Street, hoping I’d catch the Brazilian on his way out, but by the time I reached the street, there was no sign of him. There were at least a dozen ways he could have gone. I circled back to the lobby, hoping that he’d taken one of the glacially slow elevators, but he didn’t appear. I took the stairs down to the parking garage underneath One Center Plaza, but once I got down there I saw it was hopeless, far too big and mazelike. And since he’d obviously come here to kill a man in FBI custody, he must have planned his getaway in advance.
I’d failed at catching the man who’d just snuffed out my only lead to Alexa Marcus.
Diana greeted me in the sixth-floor lobby and didn’t even ask. “You never had a chance,” she said.
A loud, blatting alarm was sounding throughout the floor, clogging the aisles with a lot of confused FBI agents and clerical staff who didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Outside the interview room where Perreira had been detained, a small crowd had gathered. FBI crime-scene techs were already at work inside, gathering prints and hair and fiber. They’d probably never had to travel such a short distance to do a job. A couple of important-looking men and women in business suits stood outside the threshold of the room in tense conversation.
“You were wrong,” she said.
“About what?”
“The tie. It was Brooks Brothers.”
“My bad.”
“Only it had something like fishing line stitched inside.”
“Probably eighty-pound high-tensile-strength, braided line. It makes a very effective garrote. Works like a cheese slicer. He could easily have decapitated Perreira if he chose to, only he probably didn’t want to get arterial blood all over his expensive suit.”
She looked horrified, said nothing.
“Who cleared him in?” I said.
“See, that’s the problem. There is no clearance procedure. Everyone assumed someone else had vetted him. He presented ID at the desk, claiming to be Cláudio Barboza from the Brazilian consulate, and who’s going to question him?”
“Someone should call the consulate to check whether there’s anyone there with that name.”
“I just did.”
“And?”
“They don’t even have a legal attaché in Boston.”
I just groaned. “It’s probably too much to expect that the guy left any prints.”
“Didn’t you notice those very expensive-looking black lambskin gloves he wore?”
“No,” I admitted. “But at least you guys have surveillance video.”
“That we do,” she said. “Cameras all over the place.”
“Except in the interview room, where it might have done us some good.”
“The video’s not going to tell us anything we don’t know.”
“Well,” I said, “I hope you have better facial recognition than the Pentagon had when I was there. Which was crap.” People sometimes forgot that facial recognition isn’t the same as facial identification. It works by matching a face with a photo of someone who’s already been identified. Unless you had a good high-resolution image to match it against, the software couldn’t tell the difference between Lillian Hellman and Scarlett Johansson.
“No better. The guy’s obviously a pro. He wouldn’t have been sloppy enough to show his face here unless he felt secure we wouldn’t catch him.”
“Right,” I said. “He knew he’d have no problem getting in-or out. So why was that?”
She shrugged. “Way above my pay grade.”
“Have you ever heard of anyone being killed in FBI custody before-inside an FBI field office?”
“Never.”
“A couple of guys break into my loft to put a local intercept on my Internet. The SWAT team shows up in Medford just minutes after I do. They grab a key witness, who’s later murdered in a secure interview room within FBI headquarters. Obviously someone didn’t want me talking to Perreira.”
“Don’t tell me you’re accusing Gordon Snyder.”
“I’d happily blame Gordon Snyder for the BP oil spill, cancer, and global warming if I could. But not this. He’s too obsessed with bringing Marshall Marcus down.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
“But it’s someone in the government. Someone at a high level. Someone who doesn’t want me finding out who kidnapped Alexa.”
“Come on, Nico. That’s conspiracy theory stuff.”
“As the saying goes, not every conspiracy is a theory.”
“I guess that means you don’t trust me either.”
“I trust you absolutely. Totally. Without reservation. I just need to keep in mind that anything I tell you might end up in Gordon Snyder’s in-box.”
She looked wounded. “So you don’t trust me?”
“Put it this way: If you learned something germane to your investigation and you didn’t pass it along to him, you wouldn’t be doing your job, would you?”
After a moment, she nodded slowly. “True.”
“So you see, I’d never lie to you, but I can’t tell you everything.”
“Okay. Fair enough. So if someone’s really trying to stop you from finding Alexa, what’s the reason?”
I shrugged. “No idea. But I feel like they’re sending me a message.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m on the right track.”
47.
My old friend George Devlin-Romeo, as we called him in the Special Forces-was the handsomest man you ever saw.
Not only was he the best-looking, most popular guy in his high school class, as well as the class president, but he was also the star of the school’s hockey team. In a hockey-crazed town like Grand Rapids, Michigan, that was saying something. He had a great voice too and starred in his high school musical senior year. He was a whiz at computers and an avid gamer.
He could have done anything, but the Devlins had no money to send him to college, so he enlisted in the army. There he qualified for the Special Forces, of course, because he was just that kind of guy. After some specialized computer training he was made a communications sergeant. That’s how I first got to know George: He was the comms sergeant in my detachment. I don’t know who first came up with the nickname “Romeo,” but it stuck.
After he was wounded in Afghanistan, and his VA therapy ended, however, he told us to stop calling him Romeo and start calling him George.
I MET him in the enormous white RV, bristling with antennas, that served as his combination home and mobile office. He’d parked it in an underground garage in a Holiday Inn in Dedham. That was typical for him. He preferred to meet in out-of-the-way locations. He seemed to live his life on the lam. As if someone were out to get him.
I opened the van door and entered the dimly lit interior.
“Heller.” His voice came out of the darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I could see him sitting on a stool, his back to me, before a bank of computer monitors and such.
“Hey, George. Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”
“I take it the GPS tracker was successful.”
“Absolutely. It was brilliant. Thank you.”
“Next time please remember to check your e-mail.”
I nodded, held out the Nokia cell phone I’d taken from Mauricio’s apartment. He swiveled and turned his face toward me.
What was left of his face.
I’d never gotten used to seeing it, so each time it gave me a jolt. It was a horrible welter of ropy scar tissue, some strands paste-white, others an inflamed red. He had nostrils and a slash of a mouth, and eyelids the army surgeons had crafted from patches of skin taken from his inner thigh. The stitch marks were still prominent.