Hidden Order: A Thriller (31 page)

“Is that why your partner took over the scene at the Charles River this morning? Is that kind of thing hard for you?”

“Not usually. I guess it depends.”

“Well, you seemed like you had it together. You were pretty tough on me.”

Cordero smiled. “I enjoyed being tough on you.”

“I could tell. Both of you did.”

“Sal can be a bit overprotective.”

“No kidding,” replied Harvath.

“As far as kicking me loose to go interview those girls with you, I’ll fill you in on a little secret. Sal’s also a bit of a snob. He’s from Southie, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Joined the Army to escape his old neighborhood. Ended up coming home and becoming a cop. He helped me out a lot after my husband died.”

“Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Me, too, but mostly for Marco. Children need fathers.”

“You know, I lost my dad the same way,” said Harvath.

“He drowned?”

“He did. Not too long after I graduated from high school.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. At least you knew him. You were lucky to have had the time that you did.”

“I know that now. My father was a good man.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Harvath grinned. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’m very intuitive.”

She was flirting with him and he definitely felt attracted to her, but business and pleasure were often a bad mix. “I think we’d better order dinner,” he said, raising his hand to get the waiter’s attention.

 • • • 

They polished off a bottle of wine together and Harvath wondered if maybe she really was trying to get him drunk when she asked if he wanted to order another one. He declined, but did say yes to some grappa.

They talked about many things: how Cordero became a cop, what it was like balancing her career with being a mom, what they both did to stay in shape, how Cordero’s partner had not helped him at all regarding the Four Seasons, and how Harvath had subsequently checked into the W hotel on points.

They spent the majority of their time discussing the case, and they did so in detail. Harvath admitted that even though he’d offered up Fort Hill as a likely site for the killer, it was still a long shot. He’d been trying to think outside the box. The fact was, though, that if the killer had remained in Boston, he could end up striking anywhere. For all Harvath knew, the killer was gone. He was growing more and more certain that the next time his phone rang, it would be with news of the killer having struck in Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle. He’d hop back on the plane, fly to wherever it had happened, and start another murder investigation from square one. It was not only frustrating, it made him angry.

But there was also something else. On top of his professional reasons for not wanting to leave Boston, he also had a personal one. The more time he spent with Cordero, the more he liked being around her.

It was a beautiful night and still early, so they decided to walk for a while. They passed several historic sites, like Faneuil Hall, the Old Corner Bookstore, and the Old South Meeting House, where they stopped to read their weathered bronze plaques. Harvath showed off his knowledge of Boston’s role in the American Revolution and teased her good-naturedly from time to time, but she took it all in stride with a smile.

By the time they reached Boston Common and his hotel, neither wanted their evening to end. He invited her in for a nightcap, but she demurred. It was already later than she had intended to be out. She joked that the one thing you could count on with children and criminals was that neither class cared how little sleep or how much to drink you’d had the night before; both would try to turn your weakness to their advantage.

He waited with her while the hotel doorman flagged a cab and then helped her climb in. “I had a very nice evening, Lara,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I had a nice time, too. And it’s still Detective Cordero,” she replied with a mischievous grin as she closed the door and gave the driver her address.

Harvath smiled and stood back as the taxi pulled away. Her sense of humor was one of the many things that were growing on him.

He stopped in the bar and ordered a cup of coffee to take up to his room. He needed to check his email, and undoubtedly the Old Man, who was a night owl, would be up and would want to talk. He might even have some good news for him. At least that was what Harvath told himself as he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for his floor. In his gut, though, he had a very bad feeling that something evil was hovering on the horizon and would make itself known sooner, rather than later.

G
arden Court in Boston’s North End was a one-way street that only allowed parking along one side. It being Boston, parking was always at a premium and there were no spaces available. The killer hadn’t expected there to be any. Pulling his van up as far as he could onto the sidewalk, he made sure there was enough space for traffic to get by and placed a placard on his dashboard that read
EMERGENCY PLUMBING REPAIR IN PROGRESS
. It wouldn’t stop a cop determined to give him a hard time, but he hoped not to be here long enough to draw much attention. In the meantime, the sign might prevent an angry local from calling the police because of how the van was parked.

He parked as close as he could to 5 Garden Court Street in order to use the van to obscure the entrance. Stepping into the cargo area, he opened the sliding door from inside and had unfettered access to the building’s front door.

With his pick gun, he made quick work of the cheap lock. In the blink of an eye, the door to the empty, unoccupied ground-floor apartment was
open. Stepping inside, he did a quick check to make sure no squatters had taken up residence since his last reconnaissance. It was clear.

He used a collapsible aluminum loading ramp to wheel the gang box out of the van and into the squalid apartment. As soon as it was in, he quickly offloaded the rest of his equipment, including the van’s spare tire.

The window facing the street had been covered over with newspaper and he had no idea if the apartment even had functioning electricity. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t risk any light from inside spilling out and drawing attention. Snapping a series of glow sticks, he tossed them into corners of the tiny apartment and then used a staple gun to hang the padded moving blanket over the inside of the window.

With that complete, he focused on getting the buckets cooking. Using his knife, he pried off their lids and with the cinder blocks and bricks, he created a series of raised platforms for each, in order to get them up off the cracked linoleum floor.

Next, he ignited the torches and placed them around the metal buckets in order to start heating their contents. The trick was getting them close enough to bring the ingredients to a boil without rupturing the buckets themselves and having them spill their contents all over the floor. It had taken him some practice in the days leading up to this moment to get it just right, but he had been able to perfect his technique and was confident that he could reproduce the results once he arrived in the apartment.

Very soon the air was filled with the liquid’s pungent odor. He knew that it wouldn’t take long to spread farther up into the three-story building. As he had at the Liberty Tree Building, he kept a silenced pistol at hand while he worked. If anyone came to investigate the source of the smell, they’d be immediately dispatched. The lion would not be deterred from his kill.

He used a professional-grade infrared thermometer to monitor the temperature in each of the buckets. As they started climbing closer to their boiling points, he assembled the rolling winch system that would allow him to move each of the buckets to where he needed them without risk of spilling any of the liquid on himself.

When the winch system was assembled, he rolled the spare tire into the bathroom, placed it in the tub, unscrewed the lid of a large jug, and poured the contents over it. He then placed the timing mechanism and rapidly made his way back to the living room and extinguished all the blowtorches.

Unlocking the lid of the gang box, he lifted it up and looked inside. The man inside had been stripped of all his clothing and his head had been shaved. His hands, feet, and neck were shackled to eyehooks welded to the bottom of the box. He had also been gagged. The gag was necessary not only for quietly transporting him, but to silence the screaming he was about to do.

The killer knew he was deviating from his instructions, but nevertheless he had chosen not to administer the paralytic this time. He wanted his victim to thrash and spasm. When they later examined the body, he wanted all involved to see the signs of the man’s struggle and to envision how painful his death must have been.

Making sure that the casters beneath the gang box were locked, so that it would stay in place and not begin moving across the floor, he used the rolling winch system to pick up the first boiling bucket and bring it to the box.

It took a moment to get it to the correct height, just above the rim of the box, but once he had it where he wanted it he hooked two claw hammers underneath and splashed the boiling liquid inside.

The naked man writhed and screamed in agony as the hot substance boiled off his flesh. Quickly, the killer fetched the next bucket and poured it in.

The gang box was made of thick metal panels, which helped retain the liquid’s intense heat, while its welded seams prevented even one drop from leaking.

It took him exactly eight and a half more minutes to empty the remaining buckets and then five more minutes to clean up and make sure he hadn’t left any clues. His hair and clothing reeked, as did the rest of the apartment, but it was nothing compared to what it was going to smell like soon enough.

Confident that the scene was exactly as he wanted it, he retreated outside, pulled the apartment door shut behind him, and climbed into the van. He looked at his watch and reached into his backpack for a small handheld scanner. Turning it on, he set it on the seat next to him and turned the key in the ignition. As he drove off the curb and headed away, he smiled. Sleepy Garden Court Street was about to get very, very active.

W
ASHINGTON

D
ISTRICT OF
C
OLUMBIA

T
he bald-headed CIA operative watching the house had a thick neck, broad shoulders, and meaty hands that looked like a bunch of sausages sewn together. His were not the hands of a surgeon or a pianist, but they nevertheless conducted very skilled labor. If this were not so, he never would have risen to the level he had.

When he picked up the phone vibrating on the armrest next to him, it looked like a child’s toy being held in a baseball mitt. He activated the call. “Samuel speaking,” he said.

“You’re being retasked. Priority one,” a voice said on the other end.

“Same targets?” Samuel asked, his eyes never leaving the house.

“No.”

“What is my new target, please?”

“It’s all in the file. You know where to find it.”

“When?”

“Now,” said the voice. “I’m sending someone to relieve you. They should be arriving any moment.”

“Understood,” Samuel replied and disconnected the call. Less than ten minutes later, another black Lincoln Town Car pulled up across the
street and turned off its lights. The parking lights came on momentarily before being extinguished. The relief shift had arrived. Samuel started his car, checked for traffic, and pulled away.

 • • • 

As he did, there was a third car just up the street whose occupants had watched the changing of the guard transpire.

“Did you see that?” McGee asked. “No
Hello Igor how are you
?
How is Natasha and little Boris?
No
nothing
. That’s not how these limo drivers are. They’re all tight, they all come from the same part of the world, and they all clump at the same companies. That was way too fast.”

Ryan agreed. “You’re right,” she replied. “He wasn’t here for some late-night airport run. They’ve got all the team members under surveillance. He was watching Tara’s building to see if we’d show up.”