Potatoes and maple and truffles. Who would have thought?
Okay, he was getting hungry.
When Jacob was in his early twenties, his father died of what could be called gastric problems, though not ulcers or tumors. Four 9mm rounds to the belly.
The young soldier had vowed revenge but nothing ever came of that. A lot of people might have killed the man — Andrew, it turned out, had been up to all kinds of double crosses he should have known were not a good idea in Atlantic City. Finding the killers would have taken ages. Besides, truth be told, Jacob wasn’t all that upset. In fact, when he hosted a reception after the funeral, the murderer might very well have been among the business associates who’d attended. There was, however, some subtle vengeance played out at the event. The main course was penne alla puttanesca, the spicy tomato-based dish whose name in Italian means “in the style of a whore.” He’d made it in honor of his father’s present girlfriend, who wasn’t Cindi but could easily have been.
Tonight, Jacob Swann’s third course, the main course, would be special. The Moreno assignment had been difficult and he wanted to pamper himself.
The entrée would be Veronique-style, which he prepared with grapes sliced into disks and shallots, equally thin, in a beurre blanc sauce — made with slightly less wine (he never used vinegar) because of the presence of the grapes.
He would slice the very special meat into nearly translucent ovals, dredge them in type 45 French pastry flour then quickly sauté them in a blend of olive oil and butter (always the two, of course; butter alone burns faster than an overturned tanker).
He offered Carol more water. She wasn’t interested. She’d given up.
“Relax,” he whispered.
The liquid was boiling in the asparagus steamer, the potatoes browning nicely under the broiler, the oil and butter slowly heating, off-gassing their lovely perfume.
Swann wiped down the cutting board he’d use to slice the meat for the main course.
But before getting to work, the wine. He opened and poured a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a Cloudy Bay, one of the best on the planet. He’d debated about the vineyard’s fine sparkling wine, the Pelorus, but he didn’t think he could finish a whole bottle alone, and bubbles, of course, don’t keep.
V
THE MILLION-DOLLAR BULLET
THURSDAY, MAY 18
CHAPTER 56
You’ve got a tan,” Sellitto said.
“I don’t have a tan.”
“You do. You oughta wear sunscreen, Linc.”
“I don’t have a goddamn tan,” he muttered.
“I think you do,” Thom added.
It was nearly 8 a.m. Thom, Pulaski and Rhyme had arrived from LaGuardia airport late, nearly eleven last night, and the aide had insisted that Rhyme get some sleep immediately. The case could wait till this morning.
There’d been no argument; the criminalist had been exhausted. The dunk in the water had taken its toll. The whole trip had, for that matter. But that didn’t stop Rhyme from summoning Thom the moment he’d awakened at six thirty with the push-button call switch beside the bed. (The aide had called the device very Downton Abbey, a reference Rhyme did not get.)
The parlor was humming now, with Sellitto, Cooper and Sachs present. And Ron Pulaski — who did seem to have a tan — was just walking through the door. Nance Laurel had a court appearance on one of her other cases and would arrive later.
Rhyme was in a new wheelchair, a Merits Vision Select. Gray with red fenders. It had been delivered and assembled yesterday, before Rhyme’s return from the Bahamas. Thom had called their insurance company from Nassau and negotiated a speedy purchase. (“They didn’t know what to say,” the aide reported, “when I gave the reason for the loss as ‘immersion in ten feet of water.’”)
Rhyme had picked this particular model because it was known for off-road navigation. His old reticence to be in public had disappeared — largely because of his trip to the Bahamas. He wanted more travel and he wanted to work scenes himself again. That required a chair that would get him to as many places as possible.
The Merits had been pimped out a bit to make allowances for Rhyme’s particular condition — such as the strap for his immobile left arm, a touchpad under his working left ring finger and, of course, a cup holder, big enough for both whiskey tumbler and coffee mug. He was now enjoying the latter beverage through a thick straw. He looked over Sellitto, Sachs and Pulaski, then studied the whiteboard, which contained Sachs’s notations of the investigation in his absence.
“Time’s a-wasting.” He nodded at the STO order. “Mr. Rashid is going to meet his maker in a day or two if we don’t do something about it. Let’s see what we have.” He now wheeled back and forth in front of the whiteboards containing the analysis of the evidence Sachs had collected at the IED scene at Java Hut and Lydia Foster’s apartment.
“A blue airplane?” he asked, regarding that notation.
Sachs explained about what Henry Cross had told her. The private jet that seemed to be dogging Moreno around the United States and Central and South America.
“I’ve got one of Captain Myers’s Special Services officers searching but they aren’t having much luck. There’s no database of aircraft by color. If it was sold recently, though, brokers might have sales literature with pictures. He’s still checking.”
“All right. Now, let’s look at what we found in the Bahamas. Number one, the Kill Room.”
Rhyme explained to Sachs and Cooper how unsub 516 or Barry Shales had ruined the scene at the inn, but he had some things, including the preliminary report that the local police had done, along with the photos, which Sachs now taped up on a separate whiteboard, along with the paltry crime scene report that the RBPF had originally prepared.
For the next half hour, Sachs and Cooper carefully unpacked and analyzed the shoes and clothing of the three victims who’d been in suite 1200 on the morning of May 9. Each plastic bag was opened over a large sheet of sterile newsprint, and each item of clothing and the shoes were picked over and scraped for trace.
The shoes of Moreno, his guard and de la Rua produced fibers identical to those in the hotel carpet and dirt that matched samples taken from the sidewalk and grounds in front of the inn. Their clothing contained similar trace as well as elements of recent meals, presumably breakfast; they died before lunch. Cooper found pastry flakes, jam and bits of bacon in the case of Moreno and his guard, and allspice and some indeterminate type of pepper sauce on the reporter’s jacket. Moreno and his guard also had traces of crude oil on their shoes, cuffs and sleeves, probably from their meeting on Monday out of the hotel; there weren’t many refineries in New Providence so maybe they had eaten dinner by the docks. The guard had some trace of cigarette ash on his shirt.
This information went up on the board and Rhyme noted but didn’t dwell on any of it; after all, their killer had been a mile away when he’d fired the bullet. Unsub 516 had been in the hotel but even if he’d snuck into the Kill Room itself, none of that trace remained.
He said, “Now. The autopsy report.”
No surprises here either. Moreno had been killed by a massive gunshot trauma to the chest, and the others by blood loss due to multiple lacerations from the flying glass, of varying sizes, mostly three or four millimeters wide, two to three centimeters long.