Sellitto said, “So NIOS killed an innocent man.”
“Yes,” Laurel said with a flick of animation in her voice. “But that’s good.”
“What?” Sachs blurted, brows furrowed.
A heartbeat pause. Laurel clearly didn’t understand Sachs’s apparent dismay, echoing the detective’s reaction to Laurel’s earlier comment that they’d be “lucky” if the shooter was a civilian, not military.
Rhyme explained, “The jurors again, Sachs. They’re more likely to convict a defendant who’s killed an activist who was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech — rather than a hard-core terrorist.”
Laurel added, “To me there’s no moral difference between the two; you don’t execute anybody without due process. Anybody. But Lincoln’s right, I have to take the jury into account.”
“So, Captain,” Myers said to Rhyme, “if the case is going to gain traction, we need somebody like you with your feet on the ground.”
Poor choice of jargon in this instance, given the criminalist’s main means of transportation.
Rhyme’s immediate reaction was to say yes. The case was intriguing and challenging in all sorts of ways. But Sachs, he noted, was looking down, rubbing her scalp with a finger, a habit. He wondered what was troubling her.
She said to the prosecutor, “You didn’t go after the CIA for al-Awlaki.”
Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was a radical Muslim imam and advocate of jihad, as well as a major player within al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. An expatriate like Moreno, he’d been dubbed the Bin Laden of the Internet and enthusiastically encouraged attacks on Americans through his blog posts. Among those inspired by him were the shooter at Fort Hood, the underwear airplane bomber, both in 2009, and the Times Square bomber in 2010.
Al-Awlaki and another U.S. citizen, his online editor, were killed in a drone strike under the direction of the CIA.
Laurel seemed confused. “How could I bring that case? I’m a New York district attorney. There was no state nexus in al-Awlaki’s assassination. But if you’re asking if I pick cases I think I can win, Detective Sachs, then the answer’s yes. Charging Metzger for assassinating a known and dangerous terrorist is probably unwinnable. So is a case for assassinating a non — U.S.-citizen. But the Moreno shooting I can sell to a jury. When I get a conviction against Metzger and his sniper, then I’ll be able to look at other cases that are more gray.” She paused. “Or maybe the government’ll simply reassess its policies and stick to following the Constitution…and get out of the murder-for-hire business.”
With a glance at Rhyme, Sachs spoke to both Laurel and Myers. “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Feel right?” Laurel asked, seemingly perplexed by the phrase.
Two fingers rubbed together hard as Sachs said, “I don’t know, I’m not sure this’s our job.”
“You and Lincoln?” Laurel inquired.
“Any of us. It’s a political issue, not a criminal one. You want to stop NIOS from assassinating people, that’s fine. But shouldn’t it be a matter for Congress, not the police?”
Laurel underhanded a glance at Rhyme. Sachs certainly had a point — one that hadn’t even occurred to him. He cared very little about the broader questions of right and wrong when it came to the law. It was enough for him that Albany or Washington or the city council had defined an answerable offense. His job was then simple: tracking down and building a case against the offender.
Just like with chess. Did it matter that the creators of that arcane board game had decreed that the queen was all-powerful and that the knight made right-angle turns? No. But once those rules were established, you played by them.
He ignored Laurel and kept his eyes on Sachs.
Then the assistant DA’s posture changed, subtly but clearly. Rhyme thought at first she was defensive but that wasn’t it, he realized. She was going into advocate mode. As if she’d stood up from counsel table in court and had walked to the front of the jury — a jury as yet unconvinced of the suspect’s guilt.
“Amelia, I think justice is in the details,” Laurel began. “In the small things. I don’t prosecute a rape case because society becomes less stable when sexual violence is perpetrated against women. I prosecute rape because one human being behaves according to the prohibited acts in New York Penal Code section one thirty point three five. That’s what I do, that’s what we all do.”
After a pause, she said, “Please, Amelia. I know your track record. I’d like you on board.”
Ambition or ideology? Rhyme wondered, looking over the compact package of Nance Laurel, with her stiff hair, blunt fingers and nails free of polish, small feet in sensible pumps, on which the liquid cover-up had been applied as carefully as the makeup on her face. He honestly couldn’t say which of the two motivated her but one thing he observed: He was actually chilled to see the absence of passion in her black eyes. And it took a great deal to chill Lincoln Rhyme.
In the silence that followed, Sachs’s eyes met Rhyme’s. She seemed to sense how much he wanted the case. And this was the tipping factor. A nod. “I’m on board,” she said.
“I am too.” Rhyme was looking, though, not at Myers or Laurel but at Sachs. His expression said, Thanks.
“And even though nobody asked me,” Sellitto said with a grumble, “I’m also happy to fuck up my career by busting a senior federal official.”
Rhyme then said, “I assume a priority is discretion.”
“We have to keep it quiet,” Laurel replied. “Otherwise evidence will start disappearing. But I don’t think we have to worry at this point. In my office we’ve done everything we can to keep a lid on the case. I really doubt NIOS knows anything about the investigation.”
CHAPTER 6
As he drove the borrowed car to a cay on the southwest shore of New Providence Island, near the huge Clifton Heritage Park, Jacob Swann heard his phone buzz with a text. The message was an update about the police investigation in New York into Robert Moreno’s death, the conspiracy charges. Swann would be receiving details in the next few hours, including the names of the parties involved.
Moving quickly. Much more quickly than he’d expected.
He heard a thump from the trunk of the car, where Annette Bodel, the unfortunate hooker, was crumpled in a ball. But it was a soft thump and there was no one else around to hear, no clusters of roadside scavengers or hangers-out like you often saw in the Bahamas, sipping Sands or Kalik, joking and gossiping and complaining about women and bosses.
No vehicles either, or boaters in the turquoise water.
The Caribbean was such a contradiction, Swann reflected as he gazed about: a glitzy playground for the tourists, a threadbare platform for the locals’ lives. The focus was on the fulcrum where dollars and euros met service and entertainment, and much of the rest of the nation just felt exhausted. Like this hot, weedy, trash-strewn patch of sandy earth, near the beach.
He climbed out and blew into his gloves to cool his sweaty hands. Damn, it was hot. He’d been to this spot before, last week. After a particularly challenging but accurate rifle shot had torn apart the heart of the traitorous Mr. Robert Moreno, Swann had driven here and buried some clothes and other evidence. He’d intended to let them stay forever interred. But having received the odd and troubling word that prosecutors in New York were looking into Moreno’s death, he’d decided it best to retrieve them and dispose of them more efficiently.