Текст книги "The Execution"

Автор книги: Dick Wolf

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER 36

St. Michael’s Cemetery on Astoria Boulevard in East Elmhurst is one of the oldest cemeteries in the New York metropolitan area. The cemetery is open to all faiths, though it is owned and operated by St. Michael’s Episcopal congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It is the final resting place of Granville T. Woods, better known as “the black Edison,” and ragtime composer Scott Joplin.

Again, a secondary entrance gate had been breached overnight. But the gate had swung back to its usual position, making it appear closed as usual. The bodies had been discovered by a groundskeeper removing dead flowers from a nearby grave.

Silvia Volpi lay floating in a small pond on the southeastern corner of the property. She was facedown, only her back and shoulders out of the water, but Fisk recognized the dress from the hotel security camera. He could see abrasions and blood on her neck and shoulders.

They were pulling her to the bank as he arrived. That she was floating indicated that she was dead before she was put in the water. A drowning person swallows water, expelling oxygen from the lungs, usually resurfacing a day or two later as gases build up inside the body. An already dead body in still water generally remains buoyant due to its air-filled chest cavity.

The other body floated closer to the bank on the other side of the pond. Fisk could tell by the way Garza looked at the body that it was Virgilio, even before they hauled him to dry land and turned him over.

He had been beaten, but the wounds were barely swollen, indicating that he had been in a fight and died soon after. His shirt was torn and bloodstained. The way the fabric lay against his chest, Fisk could see multiple stab wounds in his chest, a half dozen or more. His hands were also cut with defensive wounds. His eyes stared at the sky, but lacking the supreme blankness of most corpses Fisk had seen. He wondered if knowing he was dying for a cause—choosing death over betrayal—informed Virgilio’s steadfast expression.

Garza stared down at the man. Fisk could only guess at their relationship, but felt it had been purely professional. Perhaps she saw in Virgilio a dedication to lawful order complementary to hers, but which, as a woman in Mexico, she felt herself unable to fulfill as completely as he had. Perhaps she envied his easier road to success . . . and perhaps it was this ease that had allowed him to let his guard down at the worst possible time.

Fisk went around backing off arriving law enforcement. There is, even in veterans, a human impulse to get close to the scene of a crime. He wondered why they had chosen two different cemeteries.

He came back to Garza, who was on the phone with General de Aguilar. “Yes, General . . . It would be most proper for you to come, I think. I cannot remain here a moment longer than is necessary . . . No, too many things to do. Yes. Thank you. . . .”

She hung up. Fisk watched her. She seemed to be okay. Maybe too okay.

“No cameras in a cemetery,” said Fisk. “I’m thinking they dumped the other car and body first, hoping to get something out of your man. Looks to me like he went down fighting.”

“Of course he did,” said Garza quietly.

“And the girl? Probably killed because she was a link to them.”

“Exactly why,” said Garza. “No witnesses. Ever.”

“We should key on her. I know she’s an illegal, but she had to live somewhere, sleep somewhere. Know someone.”

Garza nodded, still looking at the ground.

Fisk said, “There are enough traffic cameras in the areas surrounding both cemeteries that we should get some images of them. License plates, maybe faces. It will take time, but we will have something.”

Garza nodded again, saying nothing.

Fisk said, “I’m not going to ask you if you are okay, because I know you are not.”

“I am fine.”

Fisk waited for more. “We’re going to get this guy. This is New York City, not Mexico.”

She looked up at him with heated eyes, as though taking offense.

Fisk said, “What I mean is, this isn’t his native country, he doesn’t know how everything works. He’s going to screw up.”

A crime scene tech came over. “We checked his pockets, no phone.”

Garza stared at the young man, then nodded. She e-mailed this news back to her people. “He will have cloned the phone by now, disabling GPS and cellular service. He wants to know what Virgilio’s schedule was . . . and by extension, President Vargas’s.”

Fisk said, “I’m sure he had it encoded. It was a secure phone?”

“It was,” said Garza. “But how can we assume anything except that he has that information, or will have it soon?”

“It’s mostly public, I imagine.”

“It is something to check. To make sure. We should go now.”

“Go where?” asked Fisk, surprised.

“To go over the president’s itinerary.”

“Hold on,” said Fisk. “Take a minute here.” He pointed to the body, just a few yards behind her. “It’s okay.”

“I am fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She started past him. Fisk hooked her arm, spinning her around . . . and raising her ire.

“Take a moment,” he said. “Pay your respects.”

Garza glared at him, all fire. “I will pay my respects when I have time, Detective. Let go.”

Fisk let go. She walked around to the girl’s body, speaking to the arriving Mexican EMP agents, then continuing on to the car.

Fisk followed, watching her climb inside while checking her phone. He knew he should let it go, but he could not.

He climbed in behind the wheel, leaving his door open. “Look,” he said, “maybe this is none of my business, but you should—”

“It is entirely none of your business. This is the business of the Policía Federal and the Estado Mayor Presidencial.”

“Use this anger, this pre-grief. Don’t run from it.”

Garza did not look up from her phone. “Is that your professional advice? Is that what you did when your comrade was killed by Jenssen?”

Now it was Fisk’s turn to stare at her. Garza was tapping out an e-mail with her thumbs.

“You know about that?” he said.

“Of course,” she said, clipped. She tapped in a few more letters, then said, “I suppose you were sent to therapy and pursued a talking cure.”

Fisk said, “I did. I had no choice. It is built into the system.”

“If we did that in Mexico, there would be no time for work. No time at all. You tell me to honor my fallen comrade? I will do so by pursuing the man who killed him.”

Fisk nodded, still digesting her attitude. “And by pretending not to be distraught over his death?” he said.

Garza did not look at him, did not say anything.

Fisk started the engine and said, “I can see you come by your reputation honestly.”

Garza resumed typing out her e-mail as she opened her door and got out of Fisk’s car, walking back to the cemetery gate.

Fisk did not follow her. And she did not want him to. She was going to ride with someone else.

CHAPTER 37

Fisk returned to Intel headquarters. He fed more money into the vending machine and ate another chicken salad sandwich on damp white bread from a triangular plastic carton. He badly needed a long run or some gym time, but couldn’t foresee either one happening until after United Nations Week was over.

He filed the forms to get eyeballs on corner cameras within a four-block grid of each cemetery. He narrowed the window of time from 10:00 P.M., when Virgilio departed the Four Seasons, and 7:00 A.M., just after dawn.

He had a long list of e-mails, which he was able to cull by two-thirds without too much effort. The rest pertained more directly to his desk duties. A few of them he was able to pawn off on others. The rest remained, needing to be addressed.

Two of them were from the U.S. Attorney’s office downtown. Those he did not even open.

Fisk went back to the break room for a bag of barbecue potato chips. He sat at the only table, brushing away the last person’s crumbs, and finished the large bag in about ten handfuls. He crumpled up the evidence and tossed it into the trash, stopping to buy a Coke Zero before returning to his desk.

Nicole had gotten back to him. Nothing yet on the tattoo sent for face recognition. He checked his phone and found he had a missed call from Kiser.

“I heard there are more dead Mexicans,” said Kiser, answering on the first ring.

“There are,” confirmed Fisk.

“These ones have heads?”

“They do.” Fisk gave him the details, just generally. “There is a link, but I would pursue your own case independently for now. You don’t want a piece of this interagency morass.”

“That’s good advice I already gave myself,” said Kiser. “You can thank Comandante Garza for me.”

Fisk exhaled. “I could if she were here. Thank her for what?”

“The break. You don’t know?”

“Not unless you tell me.”

“Her agency used the tattoo photographs to identify four of the headless horsemen. Two of them they got from Mexican driver’s licenses, no criminal histories. They were illegals, but apparently not bad guys. Bystanders who got caught in this Hummingbird guy’s nest. The other two are illegals linked to the Zeta Cartel. And the Terrorist Screening Center has both on the No Fly List.”

The little-known Terrorist Screening Center is a division of the National Security Branch of the FBI, though it is a multiagency organization including representatives from the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Postal Service. While the No Fly List began as strictly a register of terror suspects not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel into or out of the United States, it had since grown to include other more generalized criminals, including known traffickers.

“I’m writing,” said Fisk, grabbing a pencil and paper.

“A Mexican national by the name of Carlos Echaverria. Nickname Carlito. Big huge guy, one with the gang tats. I guess Carlito translates as Little Carlos. Kind of like calling a big guy Tiny. Unless there’s a bigger Carlos in his family.”

“I get it,” said Fisk, not in the mood for Kiser’s banter. “Stay on point here.”

“Anyway, this Carlito guy, he’s Zeta Cartel connected. U.S. No Fly, but okay to board in Mexico and land in Canada, apparently. He flew into Montreal on July twenty-third, Aeroméxico Flight 269 from Mexico City. Payment for his ticket was on a credit card, a prepay Visa from a check-cashing store in Laredo, Texas. Presumably somebody bought it for him and carried or mailed it to him.”

July was when Chuparosa would have fled Mexico after the beheadings, Fisk remembered.

“The other corpse’s name is Elias Rincon—also a No Fly—flew in to Montreal the next day, July twenty-fourth. No hotel registrations in Montreal under those names, at least none that we can find. No record of either of them entering the United States, obviously.”

Fisk said, “Flying into Montreal . . . it’s a pretty good bet they snuck in across the border into upstate New York.”

“Right. Of course.”

Fisk remembered the smoky-bomb fiasco. “It happens to be an area I have some expertise in,” he said drily.

Kiser said, “The only other charge on the Visa prepay was a rental car picked up on the twenty-third and never returned. Surprised they haven’t found that yet.”

“It’s not a priority,” said Fisk. “Most rental companies would prefer the insurance money to the return of another beater with twenty thousand miles on the odometer.”

“I’d like to push this a little further,” Kiser said. “You think you could help me out? I know you Intel detectives have deep contacts. Maybe you can even do it yourselves. And a lot faster than I can.”

Fisk said, “What are you thinking?”

“Airport surveillance photos for those dates. Maybe a few dates on either side also. If you think your Hummingbird man might have come into the United States the same way.”

“It’s a good bet.” This guy had shown he was more than willing to kill those around him to preserve his anonymity. Chuparosa guarded his secrets ruthlessly. But at the same time, his circle was drawing ever smaller and smaller. It didn’t make sense.

Fisk told him he would get into it with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “No promises, but I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Do that,” said Kiser. “And again—thank Ms. Garza when you see her.”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

Fisk hung up. He wrote up a memo with the dead men’s names and a request that they be searched for on Montreal-Trudeau’s CCTV system via the CSIS.

Then he checked his e-mail and text messages again, looking for at least a CC on the No Fly List discovery Garza had forwarded to Kiser.

There was none.

CHAPTER 38

Having no messages from Garza at all angered Fisk, both professionally and personally. That was when his phone rang. An unfamiliar number, though he recognized the exchange. Somebody from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Probably the same guy who’d e-mailed him twice already. He listened to it ring, thinking about pressing the red circle that would kick it to his voice mail . . . but he knew how U.S. attorneys were. This guy would call again and again.

Instead, Fisk thumbed the green button on his cell.

“Fisk.”

“Hi, Detective Fisk? Kevin Leary, U.S. Attorney’s office. How are you?”

“Super busy. What can I do for you that won’t take more than one minute?”

“Oh. Um . . . look, I don’t know if you got my e-mail . . . ?”

“I have not, no.”

“Okay, sir, well, here’s the thing. I’m looking at Case Number S Dash Seven Six Four One Three? Exhibit Number Three One One Nine? Anyway, Detective, the thing is it weighed out at a one hundred and thirty-nine point two five three grams. And it weighed in at one hundred and thirty-nine point two five one grams.”

“Is this supposed to mean something to me?” asked Fisk.

“It’s the polonium,” said Leary. “From the smoky-bomb case. You didn’t see the subject line of my e-mails?”

The prosecutor was starting to get that I’m getting irritated because I’m smarter and more important than you tone in his voice. This was always Fisk’s cue to start stalling, just on principle.

“No,” said Fisk, trying to find a way out of this.

“The evidence sheet has a weigh-in and a weigh-out line.”

“I gather that. I’m sure you must have a question, Kevin. I just haven’t heard it yet.”

Leary said, “The weight change is a problem.”

“The point zero zero two grams?”

“The defense has filed a brief about there being less polonium-210 than when originally booked into evidence. This is your case.”

“It is my case. But I’m not responsible for the evidence handling. When I left it, it was in a sealed steel container inside a sealed evidence envelope.”

“Where do you think it went, then?”

“The point zero zero two grams? Are you sure you calibrated the machine correctly? What is that, half a grain of salt?”

“Detective, the defense is trying to exclude the evidence by claiming evidence tampering. If we don’t have the evidence, we have no case.”

Fisk said, “Was the evidence envelope still sealed?”

Leary said, “No, the envelope was not still sealed. Defense had to open it to weight it.”

“Was the steel container still sealed?”

“Is that a trick question?” asked Leary. “I assume it was, they didn’t say otherwise.”

“Well, then?” said Fisk.

“I don’t know,” said Leary. “Can those envelopes be duplicated?”

“I doubt it,” said Fisk. “But you should pursue that with someone responsible for handling said evidence. For example, the defense.”

Leary sighed. “You see, this is the sort of thing that brings down otherwise ironclad cases. A little bit of doubt in the jury’s mind . . .”

“. . . and O. J. Simpson goes free, I get it. Why don’t you reweigh it yourself? Maybe the mistake is on their end.”

“I did reweigh it. Pain in the ass. It says one thirty-nine point two five one grams. That’s pretty damn exact.”

“Kevin, no offense,” said Fisk. “But this doesn’t seem like my problem.”

“Your signature is next to the larger amount, so it is potentially your problem. I weighed the evidence on a scale called a Lyman Micro-Touch 1500. It’s intended for weighing bullets. Because normally bullets are the only evidence that small that needs to be weighed with any degree of accuracy, it happened to be the only scale in the evidence lockup that weighs in fractions of grams. Now the thing about the Lyman 1500 is that if it’s been out of service for a while, you have to let it warm up for up to twenty-four hours before it stabilizes for final calibration. Up to that point, it varies by a couple of thousandths in either direction. That gives a potential range for error of point zero zero five grams, top to bottom.”

“Okay, so, there we go.”

“This is all lawyer talk I’m doing now. This is how we’ll have to counter this. The machine’s accuracy is affected if you don’t have time to warm it up for twenty-four hours and then calibrate it.”

Fisk said, “I didn’t weight it in myself. I did sign for it.”

“Okay,” said Leary.

“In lawyer speak,” said Fisk, “no matter what kind of scale you use, there will always be some level of error. So the only scientifically supportable approach is to round the observed figure to a reasonable, scientifically supportable number based on the published accuracy of the machine.”

“One hundred and thirty-nine . . . uh . . .”

“One hundred and thirty-nine point two five grams, correct.”

“But still . . . if it says in your logbook—”

“The logbook will not be entered into evidence,” said Fisk. “Here’s what you do. You put a little footnote in the filing that says, quote, ‘All exhibit weights expressed to published limits of machine accuracy.’ That’s a scientific term that you can look up in any manual of bench chemistry. If it ever comes up—and it won’t—but if it does . . . then I’ll have to get on the stand and explain that I’ve taken all these courses in evidence handling and scientific measurement and blah blah blah, and that scales have inherent levels of inaccuracy, that they have to warm up, calibration, blah blah blah, and that’s why we round the number to one thirty-nine point two five, that this number is the scientifically correct number despite the fact that the machine has a higher level of recordable and observable resolution.”

The line was silent.

“Kevin. A hundred and thirty-nine point two five grams.”

Leary said, “Okay.”

“I should not have to be telling you how to do this. Okay? This is stuff you’re supposed to know.”

Leary said, “Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

Fisk said, “No rush,” and hung up.

He darkened the screen and sat there a while, looking at his phone.

CHAPTER 39

Secret Service agent Dukes said, “Fisk, I only have a minute.”

“It’s the Mexican president’s itinerary. There’s one blocked-out period of time that isn’t accounted for.”

“Okay.”

“That doesn’t concern you?” asked Fisk.

“It might if I didn’t know what it was.”

“So you do know what it is.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Fisk waited a breath. “So what is it?”

“Some things I’m not allowed to share, Fisk. Even with a friend. That’s my job.”

“Not even if it might affect your job. That is, protecting visiting heads of state.”

“If I knew there was an immediate need to know, maybe. Why not ask your girlfriend?”

Fisk winced. “That’s funny.”

“It’s smart. I’d help her out if I could, too. And if I wasn’t otherwise married.”

Fisk scowled. He was tired of this. “What time is the restaurant walk-through?”

CHAPTER 40

The Waldorf was fully occupied,” said President Vargas, watching his bags being unpacked on the seventh floor of the Sheraton. “I guess I’ll make do.”

He seemed to regret the attempt at humor almost as soon as he uttered it.

“I didn’t know the man well,” he said. “But I know he was your personal hire.”

Garza nodded, wanting to move past this. “It is a terrible loss. Do you understand my concerns now?”

“I have understood them from the beginning,” said the president. “But I cannot see any way to curtail my activities here.”

“The festival for Independence Day,” said Garza. “That has to be left off the schedule.”

Vargas stopped, sitting down on his bed. “This visit is where we set the tone for my entire administration. I understand that the treaty has angered the cartels. That is its purpose, in large part.”

Garza said, tamping down her impatience, “This is not a cartel. This is a lone assassin. I am sure of it.”

Vargas clapped his hands once. “Who is dead set on making an example of me? If you know he is here, and know his intent, is it not that much easier to forestall him?”

“Not this man. He is killing everyone who has aided him in coming here. I believe there is no way to deter him from his goal.”

Vargas said, “I have not known you well for many years now. But your reputation is such that I would think you could not back down from such a challenge.”

Garza bristled at this second reference to her “reputation” in a matter of hours. “It is quite a different matter when the life of the Mexican president is at stake.”

“Granted,” he said. “Which do you want more? To save me? Or to catch this Chuparosa?”

“I want both. They go hand in hand.”

“And trust me, I have no desire to be a . . . a piece of bait. But allow me do my job, and I will allow you to do yours. Tomorrow will be a great day, signing the treaty on the anniversary of our country’s independence.” He checked his wristwatch. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am due at the UN for a meeting with the Costa Rican ambassador and I am already running late.”