Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (15 page)

‘
San Diego?’ Shepherd said, frowning. ‘The victim?’

‘
A client; turned out he had quite a history. He’d hand over
the money then waste the hookers in a motel room or wherever
afterwards, taking his cash back. He tried the same with her but
she cut his throat.’

‘
Since?’

‘
That’s what’s strange. That jail time is the last entry on
her record from six years ago and that was on the other side of the
country. No sign of her since.’

‘
Associates?’

‘
Just low-level players in San Diego. As I said, she was a
hooker; most of the crew she ran with are either dead or in
jail.’

‘
No links with New York?’

‘
Just Pittsburgh, from what I can see. Parents aren’t on the
file, so I’m guessing she was fostered or orphaned. When they
arrested her, SDPD couldn’t find anything more on her background
and she wouldn’t tell them anything.’

‘
Keep looking, Rach,’ Shepherd said.

‘
Will do.’

As the
call ended, Marquez slipped the cell back into her pocket. ‘An
ex-con street hooker from Pittsburgh who served time in San Diego.
How the hell did she end up in New York killing Santiago with this
lye shit?’

‘
And why?’ Josh added. ‘What’s the motive?’

‘
Before we figure that out, we need to locate Santiago’s
partner,’ Shepherd said. ‘Carlos Goya.’

‘
If they whacked Santiago like this, I’d take a guess they’ve
done the same to his friend,’ Hendricks said. ‘We might never find
that son of a bitch. He’s probably been flushed down a plug hole
already.’

‘
Until we have proof of death, we have to assume he’s still
alive,’ Shepherd replied.

‘
Judging by what’s in that bathroom, Lister and her two friends
don’t leave proof, Shep.’

During
the exchange, Archer had gone quiet. As the others continued to
debate what to do next, he swung round and walked back towards the
bathroom, where the CSU investigator and a colleague had now pulled
what was left of Santiago’s body out of the tub, dumping him
straight into an open black body-bag to take him to the
lab.

‘
Was his phone in his pocket?’ Archer asked, covering his mouth
from the fumes as he arrived at the doorway, deliberately not
looking at what was lying on the plastic.

The
investigator nodded, holding up a transparent tagged evidence bag
with the remains of a black Nokia inside, the exterior whitened and
eaten away. ‘It’s completely fried.’

‘
What about the SIM card?’

The man
looked at him for a moment; then he opened the bag and took out the
mangled cell, turning it over and forcing off the rear case.
Unclipping what was left of the battery, he reached inside and
withdrew the SIM card, holding it up.

It
looked relatively undamaged, like a pearl inside an oyster,
protected by the shell, the last thing to dissolve.

‘
Got a glove?’ Archer asked, opening up his own phone as
Shepherd, Hendricks, Marquez and Josh stopped talking, his
conversation with the CSU investigator catching their attention.
The investigator passed him a spare.

Stepping
out of the bathroom, Archer snapped it over his hand, took the SIM
and slid it into his Nokia, pushing the battery back and turning
the phone over.

‘
C’mon,’ he muttered, pressing the power button.

Nothing
happened.

Shaking
the device, he tried again.

Again,
nothing happened.

But then
it switched on.

‘
Son of a bitch,’
Josh whispered,
watching as the phone took a few seconds to recognise the SIM
before syncing with it.

‘
No PIN or password?’ Palmer asked, peering over Marquez’
shoulder as she watched.

‘
These guys use disposables,’ Archer said. ‘Ninety nine percent
of the time, they don’t bother with passwords or PIN codes. They
use them until they run out of credit then ditch them and buy
another.’

Going to
the recently made and received calls, Archer saw Santiago had made
several to a number yesterday, a three week gap between them and
the other most recently-called number seeing as the man had been
serving time in prison. Showing the screen to Shepherd, Archer
waited as the Sergeant pulled his own cell and called the Bureau,
putting it on loudspeaker.

‘
Ethan, I need you to check a number for me.’

‘
Go ahead, sir.’

He read
it out as the others waited.

‘
One moment,’
he said, the sound of
tapping keys coming down the line.
‘Searching.’

Pause.

‘
Got it. It’s from a motel outside Scranton,
Pennsylvania.’

‘
Can you connect me to their police department?’

‘
Yes, sir. Doing it right now.’

As the
group waited, Shepherd looked at Hendricks and his team. ‘Ten bucks
says it’s Carlos. He’s probably hiding out there, waiting for the
heat on him to cool.’

Looking
at what was left of Santiago’s body as it was zipped up in the
black bag, the entire apartment stinking of lye, Archer didn’t
reply.

If he
and the other detectives had located Goya that quickly, no doubt
Lister and her two friends could have done the same.

*

‘
Shit!’
the smaller of the two killers
shouted as he hit the steering wheel, the van roaring uptown
through the dark East side streets
. ‘They
killed her, bro! They killed her!’

Beside
him, his partner didn’t reply, finishing tapping a text message
into his phone with hands shaking from anger as he gradually
steadied his breathing after his escape from the apartment
building. What had just happened was not only devastating but also
a major problem. Lister had served time in San Diego, which meant
her prints were still on file. The cops would know who she was by
now, which meant for the first time in years they’d have a sniff of
a trail. Once that happened, it was just a matter of time before
shit went south, especially on a case involving
cop-shooters.

For the
first time in a very long time, the extermination team had made a
mistake.

Trying
to calm down and think clearly, the big guy stayed silent, waiting
for a response to his message. Beside him, his partner saw the
lights of a cop car reflected off a shop window ahead and swore.
Spotting a sign, he suddenly turned a hard left and moved into an
underground garage, pulling into an empty space.

Not
wasting a second, the pair jumped out, the driver taking some fresh
plates and starting to replace the old ones as the big guy opened
up the back of their van and pulled out a jet-gun attached to a
barrel of water. As his partner changed the plates the larger man
turned the tap on the barrel for the jet-gun and then started
spraying the outside of the van, the outer white layer peeling off
from the force of water and revealing a black coat
underneath.

As he
worked he fought to stay cool, waiting for the buzz in his pocket
indicating a reply to his text. Nina might have been killed but
their work tonight was nowhere near finished.

And it
meant they were going to need a hell of a lot more lye.

SIXTEEN

Law
enforcement arrived at the Pennsylvania motel within eight minutes
of Ethan and Shepherd making the call. Scranton PD had their own
SWAT team and they descended on the site with military precision,
the motel owner already pulled aside and being questioned as the
place was surrounded, sharp-shooters covering every exit, the rest
of the task force encircling the building.

Around
the corner from the forecourt, the SWAT Sergeant was standing with
the motel owner beside the police team’s truck, an iPad in his
hands with Carlos Goya’s NYPD mug-shot on the screen.

‘
This the guy?’

The man
nodded. ‘That’s him. Room 5.’

‘
How long’s he been here?’

‘
Nine days.’

‘
Last time you saw him?’

‘
Yesterday.’

As
officers covered the back window in case of an attempted escape,
rifle scopes on every exit, one of them came to a halt beside the
door, a stream of armed officers behind him poised to enter the
room, weapons loaded, body armour and helmets in place.

The
point man took the key they’d been given and slid it into the
lock.

In one fast movement, he opened the door half a foot and the
officer behind him pulled the pin on a stun grenade, tossing it
into the room. Pulling the door back, he and the other officers
covered up as the flash-bang detonated with a
whump
of light.

A beat
later the point man smashed the door back and they poured into the
room.

‘
Police!’
they shouted, quickly
clearing the space, searching for Carlos Goya.

There
was no-one in the main room. The trash was full of empty food
wrappers, beer cans and take-out containers, the bed sheets were
messed up, all a sign that the occupant had been here for a while.
The SWAT team ripped open the closet, upturned the bed and pushed
back the bathroom door, checking every possible hiding
place.

Finishing the sweep, the point man turned to his Sergeant.
‘He’s not here, sir.’

The SWAT
team Sergeant didn’t reply. A strong chemical smell was hanging in
the air, as if the bathroom had just been cleaned.

Frowning, he sniffed again, the point man doing the
same.

‘
What the hell is that?’

Inside
the parking lot in New York, the larger of the two men had just
finished taking off the last of the white water-based paint when
his phone vibrated in his pocket, indicating a new message. As the
other man finished changing the plates, using the set they’d had on
the vehicle from their recent trip to Scranton, his partner pulled
the cell and read what he’d just been sent.

Find April Evans and do what you have to do.

I’m buying you more time.

Whistling to his partner and tossing him the phone so he
could read the message, the big guy used the jet gun to sluice away
the old white paint on the concrete then quickly stowed the gun and
barrel back in the van. Slamming the doors, he jumped into the
driver’s seat, taking his phone back from his partner as he climbed
in beside him.

The
larger man fired the engine and releasing the handbrake, headed to
the exit with the van now black and with different plates from
those it had arrived with minutes earlier. As they pulled back out
onto the street and headed north, they passed a cop car to their
left parked at a red light, the two officers inside checking out
the van as it passed.

However,
neither showed any interest in the vehicle and it continued on its
way out of the neighbourhood, heading uptown and out of the search
area.

At that
moment inside a nightclub in South Brooklyn, a black-haired
Eastern-European re-read a text message he’d received a minute or
so ago, just to make sure he was reading it right. Then he turned,
moving quickly through the club towards a booth at the back, past
three other members of the organisation and several employees
carrying cases of booze to the bars to stock up in preparation for
business tonight.

At the
back of the club, a thickset black-haired man sitting with a
three-quarter full bottle of whiskey in front of him noticed his
lieutenant approaching and poured himself another drink. At forty
six years old, Vladimir Bashev was a man who’d fought his way up
from the bottom. He’d survived because he was intelligent, vicious
and brutal; he had no boundaries and no conscience which, coupled
with his ambition, had resulted in him achieving his ultimate goal;
induction into this prized circle in New York.

The club was in the Little Odessa neighbourhood of Brooklyn,
the New York home of this particular Eastern-European Mafia; Bashev
was the leader. The network that his crew was part of was
far-reaching. The
Prizraki, ghosts
in English
,
had factions in Moscow, Boston, New York,
Pittsburgh and San Diego, and Bashev was the current head of the
New York branch, the most respected of them all here in the United
States. Although formed eighty or so years ago back home, the gang
had first arrived in New York in the 1970s and its members had
rapidly built a formidable reputation in the criminal underworld,
respected and feared in equal measure. They’d been dubbed
Prizraki
for good reason,
operating in an environment of intense secrecy in which membership
couldn’t be bought but earned.

However,
the gang’s reputation hadn’t protected them from experiencing a
shit-storm of a year, Bashev’s first and now possibly last in the
city. He knew he couldn’t survive much longer if this continued.
After the events of the past few months, paranoia had settled over
the club like smog, flowing over them all as things showed no sign
of improving.