Early on, he had tried to explain his reasoning. If unproven equipment somehow tainted a crime scene or was found inadmissible in court, it could put a killer back out on the streets and cripple the Bureau’s relationship with local law enforcement. Eventually, he began stopping her midpitch and telling her to come back when she had work to discuss.
Brady hoisted himself off the bed, retrieved his holstered pistol from the nightstand, and clipped it to his belt. He snatched up the television remote and switched off the news program he wasn’t really watching. He pulled his jacket off the back of the room’s single chair, slipped into it, and picked up the satchel that contained his case binder. On the way to the door, he grabbed the telescoping handle of the wheeled suitcase he hadn’t yet opened. Brady had not been in the room long enough to spread out.
Agents were required to keep their equipment, case files, and luggage in their hotel rooms when they were there and in their rental cars when they weren’t. Being called away at a moment’s notice—to a new crime scene, a lead, or a new assignment—was as much a part of the job as stale coffee and mountains of paperwork; a delay in responding, whether to retrieve belongings from a hotel room or finish a meal, was unacceptable.
Alicia’s door was propped open with a case he recognized as the one for the CSD’s helmet, the one the uninitiated mistook for a bowling ball bag. He stopped at the threshold. Alicia was nowhere in sight. Even without the aid of her personal belongings (which she had certainly packed up by now), the room looked as though a hurricane had blown through it. Bedding was strewn everywhere but on the bed. Dresser and nightstand drawers stood open. For a reason known only to Alicia, a pillow was perched on top of a lampshade.
If Brady were forced to make a list of Alicia’s virtues, tidiness wouldn’t be anywhere on it. Her work area in the Evidence Response Team R&D unit was an eight-foot-long table piled high with reports, memoranda, newspaper clippings, technical journals, and gadgets, along with the typical desk paraphernalia. File boxes under the table caught the overflow. Her chair fronted a clean semicircle on the table. Her bosses and colleagues tolerated the mess only because she gave 200 percent to the job, evidenced not only by long hours but by consistently impressive results; her projects garnered the most ooohs and aaahs in the R&D division and progressed from idea to prototype to assimilation into field investigations faster than anyone else’s.
“Hello?” he called.
“Just a sec!” Her voice came from around a corner that blocked a small portion of the room from his view. He heard the bbbbrrrrriiipppp of a heavy zipper. When she appeared, charging for the door, two bulky cases hung from her shoulders, and she was pulling a wheeled suitcase similar to his own.
“Whoa,” he said, taking a step back. “Let me help.”
She stopped and let out a long sigh. When she was ready to do something, she wanted to just do it.
He took her in. Dressed in a coffee-colored mock turtleneck and cinnamon pantsuit, she made Brady think of a latte. She wore dark brown heelless leather shoes. She had once complained about their price but explained they were as comfortable as sneakers and she wouldn’t have to kick them off to chase down a suspect. So far, the most evasive things she’d chased in those shoes were her own ambitions. In truth, her ensemble was conservative and right, considering her penchant for flouting protocol. She’d managed to tame her hair as well; it now traced the curve of her face, appearing at once schoolgirlish and mature. If she wore makeup, it was so subtly applied, Brady couldn’t tell.
“Hey,” he said, “you fix up real nice.”
That seemed to catch her off guard. She paused, maybe searching for a snappy comeback. In the end, she simply smiled. “Yeah, you too.” She nodded toward the bowling ball bag. “Could you get that?”
He secured his satchel on the extended handle of his suitcase and picked up the other bag, using his foot to keep the door open for her.
As she passed, she said, “Such a gentleman.”
In the elevator, neither set down the cases they held. Ignoring the orchestral mutilation of a Billy Joel song pouring from an unseen speaker, Brady said, “Tell me about last night’s victim.”
“Cynthia Loeb,” she said.
Female, he thought and began fitting that fact into the case analysis he’d started on the plane. Second female.
“Age forty-two,” Alicia continued. “Caucasian.”
Jessica Hampton was forty, also white.
“Was she a mother?” he asked.
“Two sons in college.” She turned to him. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing yet.” Mother-hate didn’t jibe with the killer’s three male victims.
“She was recently divorced.”
He made a quick calculation. One victim had been single, two married, two divorced. Nothing there to latch on to.
With a ping! more pleasant than the infernal Muzak, a green floor indicator changed from L to P, and the elevator doors slid open. A young woman holding the hand of a little girl waited to board. Alicia and Brady trudged out, laden with bags. A single entrance and exit portal in a far corner and dim sodium-vapor lamps kept the underground parking garage in twilight. Cement walls and pillars, mottled with water stains, seemed to absorb light while throwing back amplified noise. The slamming of a car door reverberated from deep within the array of vehicles.
“Yours or mine?” asked Brady.
“Mine.” She was heading for an aisle nearer than the one in which he’d parked. “You need to view the walk-through before we get to the crime scene.”
As they passed into and out of the glow of overhead lights, their dim shadows rotated around them like dual sundials.
“Cynthia Loeb,” he said. “What else can you tell me?”
She walked without answering. Then in a low voice, she said, “I’m trying to remember the pictures of her on the hallway wall.” She shook her head. “What keeps coming up in my mind is the gruesome head we found on the kitchen counter.”
“Take your time.”
They stopped behind an aquamarine Taurus, and Alicia produced a key and opened the trunk. The dark compartment appeared to hold her attention, and she stood there, both hands on the raised lid.
“She seemed like someone I would have liked,” she said finally. “She painted plastic wastebaskets and sold them on eBay.” She laughed as she said this. “One of the techs found invoices and packing slips in this makeshift office with stacks and stacks of trash cans, as high as my head. Wasn’t getting rich, but dang if she wasn’t trying to make a go of it.” Alicia turned her face to Brady. “The place was kinda rustic, cozy. I can just see her sitting in a chair made of raw tree limbs, sheepskin slippers on her feet, sipping a big mug of hot chocolate, maybe spiced a bit with Bailey’s, telling a friend who had stopped by how she was going to make it on her own selling wastebaskets or picking up dog poop or peddling cider at mountain festivals—anything to prove to her cheating ex that she could make it on her own.”
“Her husband had been unfaithful?”
She hoisted her wheeled suitcase and the larger of the two CSD cases into the trunk.
“That’s what a few of the neighbors who were milling around last night said. Who knows?”
She moved aside to let him stow his suitcase. The last thing she put in was the bowling ball bag. Then she unzipped it and spread it open. The quantity of components stored in the bag and the sophistication of their organization surprised Brady. The helmet was upside down. In the bowl it created were a laptop computer and two smaller devices. As Alicia pulled these things out, he could tell they had been held firmly in place by some molding in the helmet. Evidently the designers placed as much importance on secure storage and transportation as they did on performance. If only all engineers were so thorough.
Indicating the hardware in her hands, she said, “This is what you need. Let’s go.”
18
Seeing Hüber seated in the gloom, Pip almost took a step back. Meeting any of the Watc
hers outside preappointed venues, away from Luco, was stupid . . . taboo . . . imprudent. Meeting this particular director was treasonous.
Turn and go, he thought. Just walk away.
Instead, he came fully into the room and selected the chair opposite Hüber. He heard a click and saw the door was closed, the waiter gone. He observed the other man’s cordial expression and felt the muscles in his jaw tighten.
“You told me to meet you here . . . or else.”
Hüber shrugged. “I’m sorry for the melodramatics, Pip. I was only trying to stress the importance of this meeting. I’m sure you understand.”
What he understood were people like Hüber. To them, anything they thought was important must be important to everyone else. They were masters at cajoling, threatening, and manipulating people into seeing things their way. Luco had long been such a master. And Pip had been the guinea pig upon whom Luco had perfected his craft.
He realized he was poised on the edge of the seat, betraying his fear. He slid back, letting the chair engulf him. At five feet eight and 130 pounds, he was a small man, made seemingly smaller by his handicap and baby face. Not helping matters was his subservient demeanor, a source of constant internal struggle. He crossed his shorter leg over the other and nervously fingered the edge of the gaffer’s tape that held the books to the bottom of his shoe. He raised his gaze.
Hüber was staring at him with calculating eyes, sizing him up. The older man’s lips creased into a tight smile, suggesting satisfaction. It was as though he believed he had won a battle that had not yet begun; it only had to unfold the way he knew it would.
Pip wanted to say something witty and stunning, something that would smack that smile right off the man’s face and inform him that he had underestimated Pippino Farago. But nothing came to mind. Before he could ask what it was Hüber wanted, two sharp raps came from the door. If it had been kicked open by a SWAT team, Pip would not have jumped higher.
Hüber’s smile broadened. “Come,” he called.
The waiter entered with a tray, set it on the table, and left. On the tray were the components of a nargila, a water pipe for smoking a mixture of tobacco and dried fruit. Luco had owned one, but he called it a bong and had used it to smoke substances more potent than cherry tobacco. That was before his current health kick.
Hüber leaned forward and began assembling the pipe. He poured springwater into its amber glass base, then sealed it with a brass manifold. Protruding from the manifold was a gummi pipe, which ended in a flexible cloth-covered tube and plastic mouthpiece. Most people associated smoking tubes like this with the opium dens of the Orient.
“I think we can help each other, Pip.” Hüber didn’t look up from his work. He placed what looked like a brass sink strainer on top of the manifold, and a ceramic cup on top of that. “I know you think you and I are on opposing sides. I can assure you that is not the case.”
He leaned back to push a hand into a front pocket of his pants. It reappeared, clenching a leather pouch. He opened it and shook a portion of its contents into the ceramic cup. The tang of tobacco with a hint of apples reached Pip’s nostrils.
Hüber looked at Pip. “Your boss is a cruel man.”
“He’s my friend.”
“Yes, yes, you say that. But, Pip . . .” He lowered his eyes to Pip’s fidgeting fingers, which had worked the edge of the gaffer’s tape into an inch-long flap. “Was it not Luco Scaramuzzi who made you a cripple?”
Pip’s stomach cramped.
How could he know that?
He felt perspiration form on his scalp, making it itch. He raised his hand to scratch, thought better of it, and returned his fingers to the flap of tape, flicking it, flicking it.
Hüber let the question hang in the air. He picked up a square of aluminum foil, withdrew a pen from a breast pocket, and used it to punch holes in the foil. He shaped the foil over the ceramic cup, forming a small bowl out of the foil.
Pip’s eyes were aimed at this activity, but what he saw was a thirty-year-old memory.
Four boys, playing hooky from their fifth-grade class in tiny Raddusa, Sicily. Skinny-dipping in the cobalt water of Lake di Ogliastro. The sun hot on their skin. The rope Enzo lashed to a branch over the surface giving them hours of fun, sailing out, flying off, flipping through the air. Who can make the biggest splash? Who can go the farthest? Who can somersault in the air the most times? The lake is rimmed by a rising and falling ribbon of pine-topped cliffs.
Luco, growing bored, points to one of the nearby bluffs. “Let’s jump from up there!” he says.
The other boys look, laugh, shake their heads.
Luco disappears into the trees, reappears through a gap a quarter of the way to the top. “Come on!” he calls. “Babies!”
“We’ll watch!” Enzo replies.
“Yeah, we’ll watch you break your neck, Luco! Go on!” says Raffi.
“Pip, come here!”
Pip shakes his head. “I like the rope!”
“Pip, come here! Now!”
Pip’s heart sinks. Luco has just started to be nice to him, and the boys who picked on him for being small and not athletic have noticed; they have even allowed him to hang out with them, smoking behind Saint Giuseppe’s, shop-lifting from Papa Uzo’s market, harassing smaller boys. Six months ago, he would have been looking at their empty seats in class, wishing he had the guts to cut school and wishing he had the kind of friends who did. Now he does, thanks to Luco. He isn’t going to let him down.
But why does he always want to do the most dangerous, scariest thing?
“Coming!” Pip yells. He hopes the false bravado rings true to the other boys’ ears. “Babies,” he calls them for good measure.
When Pip catches up at the top, Luco is leaning over the edge, holding on to a branch.
“No problem,” Luco says. “Look.”
Pip edges forward, realizing how much greater the height appears from up here. It’s dizzying. But there’s water below, so how awful could a plunge be?
Luco moves out of his way.
Pip grabs the branch and leans. Immediately, he sees there is a boulder a meter under the surface, directly below them.
“Luco,” he says, “there’s a—”
He feels the blow to his lower back, a sharp kick. He’s falling and spinning, thinking he can grab hold of the branch once again, but he’s miles from it now. Luco’s face is leaning out over the edge, smiling, receding. There’s a millisecond of wet coolness, then searing white-hot pain, and then nothing.
He wakes in a hospital bed. His leg is hoisted two feet off the mattress in a sling attached to wires, pulleys, a metal stanchion. A plaster cast extends from his toes to his groin. Metal pins as thick as his finger protrude from a dozen places. The pain is so great, he can’t tell where it’s coming from: the leg, his hips, his internal organs—they all hurt unbearably.
The room’s walls are stone with sloppily applied grout, like many of the buildings in the one-thousand-year-old town. A coat of whitewash tries vainly to give the room a semblance of sterility and modernity. Pale sunlight pushes through a grungy window set high in one wall. Beeping and clicking monitors watch him from stainless-steel carts. A fat fly buzzes over to greet him. It circles his face. A hand snatches it. Pip jerks his head and sees Luco standing there, holding the fly in his fist, looking squarely at him. He’s bearing the same grin Pip saw as he fell, and Pip believes it has never left his face.
“You’re awake,” Luco says. “About time.”
“You pushed me,” Pip says. His words come out weak and dry, as if filtered through sand. They hurt his throat.
A fierce hardness, fiery anger, flashes across Luco’s face, instantly replaced by jovial patience, the kind reserved for a retarded brother.
“You jumped, silly,” he says. “Enzo and Raffi saw you. Bravest thing they ever saw. You’re a hero at school. Swan dive from space.” He raises his palm and slowly brings it down, illustrating a graceful aerial maneuver.
“You—”
“Yes, I saw it too. It was spectacular.”
The hardness comes back to his expression. He extends his fist to Pip’s face, squeezing until the knuckles turn white. He opens his hand on to Pip’s chest and wipes the fly across his hospital gown.
He whispers, “You’re a hero,” and walks out.
So that’s what happened—he jumped and became a minor hero for a time. When the other kids inspect the site of his gallantry and ask, “Why didn’t you look first?” he says, “Where’s the adventure in that?” Just as Luco instructed him. And instead of appearing stupid, he is praised as being braver still.
The upper growth plates of his tibia and fibula are shattered. As his right leg’s growth outpaces that of his left, he increases the height of the spacer on the bottom of his left foot. He adjusts, and he never wanders far from Luco’s side.
“Pip!”
He is startled to see Niklas Hüber eyeing him curiously. No one in Raddusa had known the truth of his accident. Except Enzo and Raffi, and they had never hinted at anything other than the official story of his heroic leap, even when they were alone together. Pip figured Luco had warned them, as he had warned Pip, probably with a punctuation more substantial than a smashed fly. It didn’t surprise him that this nemesis of Luco’s had dispatched investigators to dig up every detail of Luco’s life, but his unearthing that private truth was genuinely unnerving. What else had he turned up?
“Are you with us?” Hüber said with a smile. A piece of charcoal was smoldering on top of the perforated foil on the nargila. He drew on the mouthpiece as though kissing a snake. He held in the smoke for a few seconds, then let it drift out of his nostrils and a slit between his lips.
Pip watched. Quietly, he said, “Just thinking.”
“Think about this: Scaramuzzi is defrauding the wrong people this time. I know about the petty scams in Italy and Greece, bilking widows out of their grocery money. And the bogus arms deal with . . . who was it, Syria?”