The Kill Room

“Well, look who it is,” she said and stopped beside him.

This was a quiet area some distance away from downtown Nassau. Sleepily commercial. The dogs watched lethargically, ears flopped downward like place marked pages in a book.

“Hey there.” Jacob Swa

“Hm. Maybe my phone’s not working,” A

“Probably is,” Swa

But the offense was a misdemeanor at worst; A

On the other hand, that night last week had  been more than john – escort. She’d charged him for only two hours but had given him the entire night. The evening hadn’t been Pretty Woman , of course, but they’d each enjoyed the time.

The hours of their transaction had fled quickly, the soft humid breeze drifting in and out of the window, the sound of the ocean metrically intruding on the stillness. He’d asked if she’d stay and A

Then they’d returned to bed.

“How’s business?” he now asked, nodding back to the shop to make clear which business he was talking about, though the part time job at Deep Fun was also a feeder for clients who paid her a lot more than for snorkel rental. (The irony of the shop’s name was not lost on either of them.)

A

The overgrown lot was decorated with bald tires and discarded concrete blocks, a few dented and rusted appliance shells, the guts long scavenged. The day was growing hotter by the second. Everywhere was glare and dust, empty cans, bushes in need of trimming, rampant grass. The smells: grilling fish, lime, plantains and trash fire smoke.

And that spice. What was  it?

“I didn’t remember I’d told you where I work.” A nod at the shop.

“Yes, you did.” He rubbed his hair. His round skull, dotted with sweat. Lifted his jacket again. The air felt good.

“Aren’t you hot?”

“Had a breakfast meeting. Needed to look official. I’m just back for the day. Don’t know what your schedule is…”

“Tonight?” A

“Ah, I’ve got another meeting.” Jacob Swa

“What was that wine?”

“That I served with di

“It was scrumptious.”

Not a word Jacob Swa

A

She said, “I had plans but…”

The sentence ended in a new smile.

As they walked to his car she took his arm. He escorted her to the passenger side. Once inside she gave him directions to her apartment. He started the engine but before he put the car in gear he stopped. “Oh, I forgot. Maybe I didn’t call but I brought you a present.”

“No!” She keened with pleasure. “What?”

He extracted a box from the backpack he used as an attaché case, sitting in the backseat. “You like jewelry, don’t you?”

“What girl doesn’t?” A

As she opened it he said, “It’s not instead of your fee, you know. It’s in addition.”

“Oh, please,” she said with a dismissing smile. Then concentrated on opening the small narrow box. Swa

She gasped, eyes wide. Rearing back and gripping her damaged neck.

“Uhn, uhn, uhn…”

The blow was a tricky one to deliver. You had to hit gently enough so you didn’t crush the windpipe completely – he needed her to be able to speak – but hard enough to make it impossible to scream.

Her eyes stared at him. Maybe she was trying to say his name – well, the cover name he’d given her last week. Swa

He looked back evenly at her and then turned to pull the duct tape from his backpack.

Swa

Coriander.

How had he missed it?

CHAPTER 5

“The victim was Robert Moreno,” Laurel told them. “Thirty eight years old.”

“Moreno – sounds familiar,” Sachs said.

“Made the news, Detective,” Captain Bill Myers offered. “Front page.”

Sellitto asked, “Wait, the Anti American American? What some headline called him, I think.”

“Right,” the captain said. Then editorialized bitterly: “Prick.”

No jargon there.

Rhyme noted that Laurel didn’t seem to like this comment. Also, she seemed impatient, as if she had no time for deflective banter. He remembered that she wanted to move quickly – and the reason was now clear: Presumably once NIOS found out about the investigation they’d take steps to stop the case in its tracks – legally and, perhaps, otherwise.

Well, Rhyme was impatient too. He wanted intriguing.

Laurel displayed a picture of a handsome man in a white shirt, sitting before a radio microphone. He had round features, thi

Rhyme pointed out, “There wasn’t much of a splash in the press. If the government’d been caught with their finger on the trigger, so to speak, it would’ve been bigger news. Who was supposedly  responsible?”

“Drug cartels,” Laurel told him. “Moreno had created an organization called the Local Empowerment Movement to work with indigenous and impoverished people in Latin America. He was critical of drug trafficking. That ruffled some feathers in Bogotá and some Central American countries. But I couldn’t find facts to support that any cartel in particular wanted him dead. I’m convinced Metzger and NIOS planted those stories about the cartels to deflect attention from them. Besides, there’s something I haven’t mentioned. I know for a fact that a NIOS sniper killed him. I have proof.”

“Proof?” Sellitto asked.

Laurel’s body language, though not her facial features, explained that she was pleased to tell them the details. “We have a whistleblower – within or co