“You eat like a dog,” Hutchins said. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to chew?”
Starrett called up his worst redneck accent. “You callin’ my mama a bitch?”
Hutchins took a knife from his desk drawer, cut his Danish into slices, put butter on each and ate as slowly as if he had a toothache.
“I need to brief the Lieutenant in ten,” Starrett said, getting back in character. He pulled a six-foot length of nylon rope from his desk drawer and began to tie a complicated knot in it. “What am I going to tell him?”
Hutchins looked at the file. “Lang’s broken watch gives exact time of death at six-fifty-five. Seven-forty, someone reports a 1995 Jeep Cherokee stolen from Larkspur ferry terminal. Eight fifty-three, a patrol unit finds the damaged Cherokee a few blocks from San Rafael bus depot.”
“And we got a definite match between the Jeep and the broken glass left at the scene,” Starrett said, still concentrating on his knot.
“Coroner’s report said Lang died within minutes of impact, severe multiple hemorrhaging. Basically, drowned in his own blood.” Hutchins paused for a sip of coffee. “That’ll happen when you get your ribs driven through your lungs.”
“Tox scan?”
“Sober. Trace amounts of cannabis, recreational level, nothing else.”
“So our theory thus far is...?”
“...Some joyriding teenagers swiped the Jeep from the ferry terminal, accidentally struck Lang, panicked and fled the scene.”
Starrett tossed one end of the rope across Hutchins’ desk and held onto his own end. “Give us a pull there, mate.”
Hutchins grabbed the rope and pulled. The knot slipped apart. “It doesn’t hold.”
“Right,” Starrett said. “Neither does your theory.”
Hutchins ate another buttered slice of Danish. “Got a better one?”
“Skid marks do.”
“Yeah, how so? There were none.”
“Exactly.”
“So, the kid at the wheel was just driving too fast. You know kids, they’re always horsing around. Maybe the driver got distracted at the wrong moment. The Stephen King scenario.”
“Way over on the opposite shoulder like that?” Starrett worked on another knot.
“What’re you thinking?”
“Something more than a hit-and-run. Maybe it wasn’t an accident.”
“Intentional?” Hutchins paused mid-Danish. “Lang was a semi-retired computer nerd. Who’d hurt a guy like that?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Starrett swung a crude knot at the end of his short piece of rope – a hangman’s noose.
Chapter 22
Albuquerque
The FBI field office on Luecking Park Avenue was only five miles from the University of New Mexico. Driving at posted speeds on the I-25 and city streets, the ride took nine minutes. Special-Agent-in-Charge (SAIC) Liam Cobb was accompanied by three agents, all carrying standard issue side arms. In the back of their Ford Explorer, they had additional ordnance: shotgun, rifle with scope, sub-machinegun and tear gas launcher, all occasionally used in taking down some of New Mexico’s many meth labs, but weren’t expecting to deploy today.
SAIC Cobb was thirty-one years old, a tall and rugged blond who’d played three years of varsity football for University of Maryland. Before assuming leadership of the Albuquerque field office and thereby the senior FBI role in New Mexico, he’d served one year in the Albuquerque office working with the DEA. The previous two years had been in Las Cruces intercepting illegal immigrants from Mexico and fugitives from American justice en route to Mexico, in which post he’d distinguished himself.
Concerned about the illegal entry of potential terrorists, Cobb had developed a profiling checklist for distribution to every car rental agency within fifty miles of the Mexican border. Based on physical appearances and English accents, it was designed to help rental agency staff distinguish Middle Eastern from Hispanic immigrants. Among the distinguishing characteristics were hands.
Mexicans attempting illegal entry had typically done physical labor, whereas Middle Eastern illegals tended to have come from better-off backgrounds. Their hands were often well-tended and the nail of the pinkie finger worn long as a mark of pride to indicate its owner did no manual work. Pride goes before a fall, Cobb had reasoned, and this simple logic had helped identify and arrest four Saudi nationals.
The Arabs had been led across the Chihuahuan Desert by a ‘coyote’ whose lucrative trade consisted of guiding illegal immigrants across the border. The coyote’s state-side accomplice had then trucked the four from Columbus to Las Cruces where the Saudis rented a car to drive to Boulder City. There they had a vague but unrealistic plan to blow up the Hoover Dam. But at the National rental agency, a clerk had run through Cobb’s checklist in his mind, noted a long pinkie nail on the man filling out the rental form. As soon as the guy had driven away with his three friends, the clerk had called the FBI. An hour later, they were all in custody. Cobb had received a letter of commendation from the Director himself.
The Ford Explorer entered the south side of the campus via Yale Boulevard. On the university gates was a banner that read ‘Go, Lobos, Go,’ an exhortation to the UNM basketball team that was the pride of the state, and whose games drew capacity crowds. The FBI team’s destination was the Mechanical Engineering building. The campus police had been alerted, but there was little for them to do except ensure that no students got in the way of the FBI. The timing was such that they arrived on campus right in the middle of scheduled class periods.
The Explorer pulled into a faculty parking area. Cobb and his men got out. “Okay, guys, nice and cool.” He checked his gun. “Let’s not hurt any students.”
While one agent remained outside, Cobb and two others entered the building and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The halls were largely deserted. A few students hunkered in a small lounge, poring over class notes. Cobb found Room 206 and took a quick peek through the door’s window.
In the classroom a professor named Dr. Rashid Hassan diagrammed typical force vectors applying to a hydraulic turbine, the kind employed by hydroelectric generating plants. The adjacent whiteboard was a maze of formulae. Two dozen students in their twenties took notes.
Cobb glanced over his shoulder. One agent stood a few feet behind him, the other in position down the hall at the classroom’s rear door. Both had hands on the butts of their service pistols. Cobb opened the door and rapped on the window to get the professor’s attention.
“Excuse me, Dr. Hassan, I need to speak to you.”
Hassan paused in mid-diagram, capped his marker and came to the door. Cobb held it open. Hassan stepped into the hall, glancing from Cobb to his agent nearby.
“What is it, please?”
“I’m with the FBI.” Cobb showed his badge. “I’d like you to come with us.”
“But I’m in the middle of a class.”
Cobb grabbed Hassan’s arm and swung him against the wall. In a moment, his agent had cuffs on the professor.
“Am I being arrested?” Hassan demanded. “On what grounds?”
“On authority of the US Patriot Act.”
“What have I done?” Hassan said as he was led by one agent down the hall, the other agent going on ahead, checking doorways and stairwell.
Cobb stepped into the classroom. The students looked at him expectantly. “Class dismissed,” he said. They stared at him like he was joking. He didn’t bother to explain. He hurried down the hall to catch up with his agents.
~~~
The Explorer headed east on Central, passing through a neighborhood of bars and boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops. After a few minutes of noisy protest during his extraction from the Mechanical Engineering Building, Dr. Hassan was now silent. As they drove east, the storefronts became grungier, boutiques giving way to second-hand outlets, trendy restaurants surrendering to greasy spoons. They crossed San Mateo Boulevard and turned into the yard of a Speedy Muffl
er shop.
Cobb and two agents climbed out, one of them circling around to the back of the shop. Cobb walked into the nearest service bay. A man in blue coveralls stood beneath a hydraulic lift, bolting a muffler onto a Pontiac Grand Am. His profile revealed an aquiline nose and an olive complexion.
“Achmed Sharif,” Cobb called out.
The mechanic turned at the sound of his name. His polite smile faded abruptly when he saw two men standing there, one with badge in hand, the other with handcuffs.
Chapter 23
New York
Axel Crowe walked from Blaikie’s condo to Broadway. Late morning, the streets were dense with shoppers and workers. On Seventh Avenue, delivery trucks double-parked as men unloaded racks of clothes from the garment district and wheeled them into retail stores. People bustled along the crowded sidewalks, cell phones in one hand, coffee in the other, weaving around the panhandlers that bedeviled every unwary pedestrian. On 55th, four Hare Krishna devotees in orange robes trudged silently, absent the characteristic chanting, perhaps worn down after a morning of disregard from fellow Manhattanites.
At the corner of Broadway and 51st, Crowe looked around. In the immediate vicinity were an electronics store, a deli, a bookstore and several boutiques. Diagonally across the street a theatre marquee displayed the title of a current production: The Bermuda Love Triangle – a romantic comedy.
The title vaguely echoed what Crowe had suggested to Blaikie – that infidelity provided the backdrop for his sister’s death. No guarantee this line of reasoning would pan out, but years of observing subtle signs of the environment gave Crowe confidence to follow his intuition. He walked east on 51st, following the same route Janis Stockwell would have taken from Broadway last night.
Crowe crossed Seventh and entered the long block leading to Avenue of the Americas. On the other side of the street several sheets of plywood were nailed over a storefront renovation. He crossed the street to have a closer look at the graffiti scrawled on the plywood. The dominant visual was a bold graphic of three cartoon figures: two men and a woman in a three-way. Around the figures were dozens of signatures in undecipherable characters.
Crowe thought of the theatre marquee – the love triangle – and now this – another love triangle – and recalled what Guruji had often told him.
Signs are everywhere – in the horoscope, in the hand, in omens. To see one sign is interesting but means nothing. To see two signs is thought-provoking and suggests you might be onto something. But only after you’ve seen three signs do you know you’re being offered a message. And then the real work begins – to understand what it means.
Crowe continued up the street, eyes sweeping the sidewalk. Fifty feet further he saw it – the chalk outline of a body between two parked cars. The bright yellow chalk had been partially erased by overnight rain.
Crowe crouched at the curb. The pavement appeared swept clean of debris, perhaps by the CSU in gathering evidence. No way to know whether these same cars had been here last night, or new cars taken their place. The chalk outline showed a body on its side, legs partially bent, arm flung to one side. Someone on the CSU team had even outlined the hand, showing thumb separate from the grouped fingers.
Within the hand was a spider’s-web of fine cracks in the asphalt, seemingly random. But when Crowe squinted a little to create a visual filter, he saw three lines bolder than the rest. These formed a triangular pattern similar to that formed by three of the major palmistry lines – the life line, head line and fate line.
Guruji’s Rule of Three came to mind. Another triangle. Crowe was looking at a cryptic clue. But what did it mean?
He crouched to examine more closely the patch of asphalt outlined by the ghost hand. Inside the triangle was another figure defined by three short lines intersecting at a common point – an asterisk with six points. Although subtle, no reason to disregard it. Sub-atomic particles were subtle too, but once quantum physicists understood them, new theories had revealed a universe of subsequent applications.
Crowe stood and checked his watch. It was noon so the sun was due south. His shadow established the compass direction. He looked again at the chalk outline. The out-flung arm, whose hand held both a triangle and a six-pointed star, was pointed southwest.
Dr. Edmond Locard, a pioneer of forensic science who became known as the Sherlock Holmes of France, had stated that “every contact leaves a trace.” In other words, every criminal brought something to the crime scene, and took something from it. Of course, Locard had referred only to physical evidence.
This was the metaphysical equivalent of Locard’s exchange principle, more like a Zen koan than anything else. If the victim was walking east when attacked, but fell with one accusing hand pointed to the southwest, who was the killer? If the various signs at the crime scene, intangible as well as tangible, gave a clue to the criminal, what kind of person might that be?
Yellow chalk outline. Arm pointed southwest. Triangle in the hand. Asterisk inside the triangle. Crowe played word association, an exercise Guruji had drilled into him over many years in many contexts.
Yellow was the color of the sun, astrologically linked to government and people in power. The southwest was associated with rebels, foreigners and drug addicts. A triangle had three sides, the number of Jupiter, invoking priests, lawyers and publishers. The asterisk had six points, the number of Venus, suggesting models, artists, ladies of leisure…
Put it all together, what did he get? A renegade government agent? A crack whore? A corporate lawyer? A foreign journalist?
His phone rang. Blaikie had pulled strings with the Mayor. With any luck, the Police Commissioner would allow Crowe to speak to the detectives handling his sister’s case.
“Where’s the precinct office?”
“Forty-second and Tenth. Stay in the neighborhood and I’ll give you a call as soon as you get clearance.”
Crowe hung up. There was an Off Track Betting outlet on West 48th, a half-hour’s walk from here. He checked his watch. Almost noon. First race of the day at Aqueduct was 12:30 PM, and 1:00 PM at Belmont Park. Although he had no time to go to the track, the atmosphere of an OTB outlet, crowded with players smelling of hope and despair, was infinitely more stimulating than betting over the internet.
But the horses could be distracting. He was on the clock and Blaikie was paying the bill. He needed to stay focused on the job at hand. He reluctantly headed back toward Seventh Avenue. By coincidence, the precinct office was southwest of here, the same direction Janis Stockwell’s hand had pointed. He decided to head over to Ninth and then walk down to 42nd. There were a few musical instrument stores on Ninth. Along the way he’d look for omens.
Chapter 24
Denver
Carrie Cassidy had forty-five minutes to kill in Denver where her brother-in-law William lived. She debated calling him to break the news but thought better of it. They’d never got along, had in fact disliked each other from the moment Walt had introduced her as his fiancée. Besides, the National Laboratory would have William’s name on file as Walt’s nearest blood relative and they’d certainly have notified him by now, especially since they’d been unable to find her in the first hours after Walt’s death.
She decompressed with an over-priced martini in a bar and fended off the attentions of an inebriated high roller heading home from Vegas. Meanwhile she fretted about what had gone awry in Santa Fe. It pissed her off because she’d been very clear with everyone, once they had the plan they had to stick to it.
Carrie tried to sleep on the second leg of the flight but as soon as she closed her eyes her mother popped up like a demented jack-in-the-box. That was the funny thing, Carrie could go a year without seeing her, phoning once every two weeks, and it was all quite civil, but spend a few days with Frances and it brought back ugly memories. They’d been through too much together.
When her father died, Carrie was only thirteen, and it rocked her world in the worst way. While Frances drank to numb her p
ain, Carrie followed in her own way. Binge drinking with girlfriends in twisted arroyos. Smoking dope and sampling prescription pills from her mother’s medicine cabinet. One night, taking a trip to the hospital to get her stomach pumped.
Nobody thought of it as attempted suicide but it was like death from a thousand cuts, both for her and Frances. You nearly killed me giving birth to you, her mother used to scream at her, and now you’re killing me all over again.
On the flight to Albuquerque, Carrie looked down on the San Juan mountain range. Even at this altitude she could see little towns deep in the hills. You could hunker down and get a lot of writing done in places like that, assuming you didn’t go stir-crazy on Friday night. That was her problem. She needed solitude but she needed stimulation too, with a variety and frequency that was apparently unrealistic.
Her whole life she’d been searching for the elusive guy who could give it to her on a regular basis. In high school she’d scored Mensa-level on her IQ test. It was a blessing and a curse. As a teen she was attracted to jocks but they lacked the brains to be more than fuck buddies. She related more to nerds who, despite the pain of their social awkwardness, had something going on between their ears. But they lacked the balls to match her adventurousness, pushing envelopes of physical risk, morality and legality.
Briefly in junior high, she’d thought she’d found the right guy. Derek had been a swimmer for the track and field team, with dreams of Olympic medals. Brilliant in science, he wrote poetry that made her cry. He was bright and daring but, despite his Olympian dreams, didn’t seem to care if he lived or died, which became obvious whenever he drank and got behind the wheel of a car. He was also confused about his sexuality and confessed to her on their last night together that he might be gay but didn’t know how he could ever come out, seeing his father was a hard-ass cop and all. Next day at school, when word went around like wildfire that he’d shot himself with his father’s gun, nobody understood but Carrie.