I shrugged. “As a great man once said, in certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law.”
“Martin Luther King?”
“Close. The Punisher.”
She looked confused.
“I guess you don’t read comic books,” I said.
67.
Dragomir drove out to the main road, relieved to pass only a lumber truck. Not someone from the town who might notice a police squad car coming out of the Alderson property and gossip about it later, maybe ask questions.
He knew where to go. Earlier, he’d driven around the area, scouting escape routes in case it came to that, until he’d discovered a deserted stretch of narrow road that would do well. A place where the road curved sharply on the lip of a ravine.
Of course there was a guardrail. But not on the long straight stretch leading into it, where the plunge was just as steep.
He pulled over at a point where he could see the traffic in both directions. There wasn’t any. Then he drove a bit farther down the road until he was about twenty feet or so from an edge where there was no guardrail.
Glancing around again, he opened the trunk of the police cruiser, lifted Officer Kent’s body out, and quickly carried it around to the open driver’s door. There he carefully positioned the body. Then he lifted the black plastic trash bags from the floor of the trunk.
An autopsy wasn’t likely. Mostly likely they’d see a police officer killed in a tragic car crash and it would end there. Anyway, by the time any autopsy was done, he’d be long gone. He only cared about what might be found in the next twenty-four hours.
Before he pushed the car into the ravine he put it in drive. If the gear selector were in neutral when the crash was discovered, any skilled investigator would immediately figure out what had really happened.
He didn’t make that kind of mistake.
68.
At a few minutes after nine at night, the John Hancock Tower, the tallest building in Boston, was an obsidian monolith. A few lighted windows scattered here and there like a corncob with not many kernels remaining. Some of the building’s tenants were open round the clock.
But not the law offices of Batten Schechter, on the forty-eighth floor. No paralegals toiling frantically through the night to meet a filing deadline or a court date. Batten Schechter’s attorneys rarely soiled their hands with anything so vulgar as a public trial. This was a sedate, dignified firm that specialized in trusts and estates and the occasional litigation, always resolved in quietly vicious backroom negotiations, perhaps a word whispered in the ear of the right judge or official. It was like growing mushrooms: They preferred to work out of the light of day.
I drove the white Ford panel truck down Trinity Place along the back of the Hancock Tower, and up to the loading dock. A row of five steel pylons blocked my way. I got out, saw the warning signs-DO NOT SOUND HORN FOR ENTRY and PUSH BUTTON & USE INTERCOM FOR ACCESS WHEN DOOR IS CLOSED-and I hit the big black button.
The steel overhead door rolled up, and a little fireplug of a man stood there, looking annoyed at the interruption. It was 9:16 P.M. Stitched in script on his blue shirt, above the name of his company, was CARLOS. He glanced at the logo on the side of the van-DERDERIANFINEORIENTALRUGS-nodded, hit a switch, and the steel columns sank into the pavement. He pointed to a space inside the loading dock where a few other service vehicles were parked.
He insisted on guiding me in as if I couldn’t park by myself, waving me in closer and closer to the dock until the van’s front end nudged the black rubber bumpers.
“You here for Batten Schechter?” Carlos said.
I nodded, striking a balance between cordial and aloof.
All he knew was that the law firm of Batten Schechter had called the Hancock’s property management office and told them that a carpet cleaner would be working in their offices some time after nine o’clock. He didn’t need to know that the “facilities manager” of Batten Schechter was actually Dorothy.
Couldn’t have been easier. All I had to do was promise Mr. Derderian I’d buy one of his overpriced, though elegant, rugs for my office. In exchange he was happy to lend me one of his vans. None of them were in use at night anyway.
“How’s it going there, Carlos?”
He gave the standard Boston answer: “Doin’ good, doin’ good.” A Boston accent with a Latin flavor. “Got a lotta carpets to clean, up there?”
“Just one.”
He grunted.
I pulled open the van’s rear doors and wrestled with the big bulky commercial carpet extractor/shampooer. He helped me lower it to the floor, even though it wasn’t his job, then pointed a thumb toward a bank of freight elevators.
The elevator was slow to arrive. It had scuffed steel walls and aluminum diamond-tread-plate floors. I hit the button for forty-eight. As it rose, I adjusted Mauricio’s STI pistol in my waistband. I’d been storing it in the Defender’s glove box ever since I’d grabbed it from his apartment.
I didn’t see any security cameras inside the elevator, but I couldn’t be sure, so I didn’t take it out.
A moment later, the steel doors opened slowly on a small fluorescent-lit service lobby on the forty-eighth floor. Obviously not where the firm’s clients or partners entered. I wheeled out the rug shampooer and saw four doors. Each was the service entrance to a different firm, each labeled with a black embossed plastic nameplate.
The one for Batten Schechter had an electronic digital keypad mounted next to it. David Schechter’s firm probably had reason to take extra security measures.
From my duffel bag I drew a long flexible metal rod, bent at a ninety-degree angle, a hook at one end. This was a special tool called a Leverlock, sold only to security professionals and government agencies.
I knelt down and pushed the rod underneath the door and twisted it around and up until it caught the lever handle on the inside, then yanked it down. Thirteen seconds later I was in.
So much for the fancy digital keypad.
Now I found myself in some back corridor where the firm stored office supplies and cleaning equipment and such. I pushed the rug shampooer against a wall and made my way by the dim emergency lighting.
It was like going from steerage to a stateroom on the Queen Mary. Soft carpeting, mahogany doors with brass nameplates, antique furnishings.
David Schechter, as a name partner, got the corner office. In an alcove before the mahogany double doors to his inner sanctum was a secretary’s desk and a small couch with coffee table. The double doors were locked.
Then I saw another digital keypad, mounted unobtrusively by the doorframe at eye level. Strange. It meant that Schechter’s office probably wasn’t cleaned by the crew that did the rest of the building.
It also meant there was something inside worth protecting.
The odds were, the combination to the digital lock was scrawled on some Post-it pad in his secretary’s desk drawer. But faster than looking for it would be to use the Leverlock.
The whole thing felt almost too easy.
From the duffel bag I removed a black carrying case. Inside, a flexible fiberscope lay coiled in the form-fitted foam padding like a metallic snake. A tungsten-braided sheath encased a fiber-optic cable two meters long and less than six millimeters in diameter. Bomb-disposal teams used these in Iraq to look for concealed explosives.
I bent the scope into an angle, screwed on the eyepiece, and attached an external metal-halide light source, then fished it under the door. A lever on the handle allowed me to move the probe around like an elephant’s trunk. Now I could see what was on the other side of the door. Angling it upward, I inspected the wall on the far side of the doorframe. Nothing appeared to be mounted there.
When I swiveled the scope over to the other side of the door frame, I saw a red pinpoint light, steady and unblinking.