The Kill Room

This comforted him.

My little butcher man…

Now he set his rib eye on a cutting board – always wood, to save his knives’ edges – and ran his fingers over the meat, sensing the tautness of the flesh, examining the grain, the marbling of the fat.

Before slicing, however, he washed and re edged the Kai Shun on his Dan’s Black Hard Arkansas whetstone, which cost nearly as much as the knife itself and was the best sharpening device on the planet. When he’d been sitting atop A

Finally, the knife was ready and he turned back to the steak, slowly slicing the piece into quarter inch cubes.

He could have made them bigger and he could have worked faster.

But why rush something you enjoy?

When he was done he dusted the cubes in a mixture of sage and flour (his contribution to the classic recipe) and sautéed them in a cast iron skillet, scooping them aside while still internally pink. He then diced two red potatoes and half a Vidalia onion. These vegetables he cooked in oil in the skillet and returned the meat. He mixed in a bit of veal stock and chopped Italian parsley and set the pan under the broiler to crisp the top.

A minute or two later, the dish was finished. He added salt and pepper to the hash and sat down to eat the meal, along with a rosemary scone, at a very expensive teak table in the bay window of his kitchen. He’d baked the scone several days ago. Better with age, he reflected, as the herbs had bonded well with the hand milled flour.

Swa

He had just finished when he received an email. It seemed that Shreve Metzger’s great national security intelligence machine was grinding away as efficiently as ever.

Received your text. Good to hear success today.

Liabilities you need to minimize/eliminate:

Witnesses and allied individuals with knowledge base of the STO operation.

Suggest searching Moreno’s trip to NY, April 30–May 2.

Identified Nance Laurel as lead prosecutor. IDs of the NYPD investigators to follow soon.

Individual who leaked STO. Someone is searching for identity now. You may have thoughts on how to learn ID. Proceed at your own discretion.

Swa

Scrubbing, scrubbing, removing every trace of food from metal and glass and porcelain.

And thinking hard.

To eliminate witnesses would cast suspicion on NIOS and its affiliates, of course, since the kill order was now public. That was unfortunate and under other circumstances he would have tried to arrange accidents or construct some fictional players to take the blame for the murders that were about to happen: the cartels Metzger had claimed were really responsible for Moreno’s death, or perps the police and prosecutor had put in jail, out for revenge.

But that wouldn’t work here. Jacob Swa

He could do that. Jacob Swa

Besides, he had no choice but to eliminate these threats. There was no way he’d let anybody jeopardize his organization; its work was too important.

Swa

CHAPTER 13

Robert Moreno Homicide

Crime Scene 1.

Suite 1200, South Cove I

May 9.

Victim 1: Robert Moreno.

COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Moreno, 38, U.S. citizen, expatriate, living in Venezuela. Vehemently anti American. Nickname: “the Messenger of Truth.”

Spent three days in NYC, April 30–May 2. Purpose?

Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua.

COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.

Victim 3: Simon Flores.

COD: Gunshot wound, details to come.

Supplemental information: Moreno’s bodyguard. Brazilian national, living in Venezuela.

Suspect 1: Shreve Metzger.

Director, National Intelligence and Operations Service.

Mentally unstable? Anger issues.

Manipulated evidence to illegally authorize Special Task Order?

Divorced. Law degree, Yale.

Suspect 2: Sniper.

Code name: Don Bruns.

Information Services datamining Bruns.

Voiceprint obtained.

Crime scene report, autopsy report, other details to come.

Rumors of drug cartels behind the killings. Considered unlikely.

Crime Scene 2.

Sniper nest of Don Bruns, 2000 yards from Kill Room, New Providence Island, Bahamas.

May 9.

Crime scene report to come.

Supplemental Investigation.

Determine identity of Whistleblower.

Unknown subject who leaked the Special Task Order.

Sent via anonymous email.

Contacted NYPD Computer Crimes Unit to trace; awaiting results.

Hands on her hips, Amelia Sachs studied the whiteboard.

She noted Rhyme glance without interest at her flowing script. He wouldn’t pay much attention to what she’d written until hard facts – evidence, mostly, in his case – began to appear.

It was just the three of them at the moment, Sachs, Laurel and Rhyme. Lon Sellitto had gone downtown to recruit a specially picked canvass and surveillance team from Captain Bill Myers’s Special Services operation; with secrecy a priority, Laurel didn’t want to use regular Patrol Division officers.

Sachs returned to her desk. She didn’t do well sitting still and that was largely what she’d been doing for the past two hours. Confined here, the bad habits returned: She’d dig one nail into another, scratch her scalp to bleeding. Fidgety by nature, she felt a compulsion to walk, to be outside, to drive. Her father had coined an expression that was her anthem:

When you move they can’t getcha…

The line had meant several things to Herman Sachs. Certainly it could refer to his job, their  job – he too had been a cop, a portable, walking his beat in the Deuce, Times Square, at a time when the murder rate in the city was at an all time high. Fast of foot, fast of thought, fast of eye could keep you alive.

Life in general too. Moving… The briefer you were a target for any harm, the better, whether from lovers, bosses, rivals. He’d recited those words a lot, up until he died (some things, your own failing body, for instance, you can’t outrun).