Hidden Order: A Thriller (34 page)

Harvath and Cordero walked on the opposite side. As they drew parallel with their destination, Harvath noticed a plastic plaque on the building next to Cordero.

“You were right,” he said. “Look.”

The female detective skimmed the historical marker. “How about that? I know some Boston history after all. Four Garden Court Street. Home of John J. ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, Boston mayor, and birthplace of daughter Rose Fitzgerald, mother of American president John F. Kennedy.”

As they slipped between two parked cars and around a fire truck idling in the middle of the street, Harvath tried to process what the Kennedy connection could be.

That train of thought, though, came to an immediate halt when they arrived in front of 5 Garden Court Street, which had an even more dramatic plaque, this one from weathered bronze, announcing the building’s, or more appropriately the site’s, historical significance.

“Here stood the mansion of Governor Thomas Hutchinson,” Harvath read aloud as he typed the man’s name into the web browser on his phone.

“Who was he?” Cordero asked.

“Apparently, one of Boston’s most hated citizens. Brother-in-law to Andrew Oliver, the man they hung in effigy from the Liberty Tree. Hutchinson was also the last royal governor of Massachusetts before the Revolutionary War. It says here that Sam Adams couldn’t stand him. For many of the colonists, Hutchinson represented everything that that they believed was wrong with Britain. He was greedy, arrogant, and a pretty big snob. A couple weeks after the Liberty Tree incident, angry Bostonians looted and tore Hutchinson’s house apart.”

“Didn’t Hutchinson have something to do with the Boston Tea Party?”

Harvath scrolled further down on his screen and nodded. “When the colonists wanted to send a large shipment of tea back to England to protest the tea tax, Hutchinson intervened. When word leaked that he was the secret distributor for the tea, people went berserk. There were city-wide protests, which grew in scope and anger until culminating in—”

“The Boston Tea Party.”

“Bingo,” said Harvath. “He left not long after and died in exile in England.”

“So he wasn’t killed in Boston? Never boiled to death?”

“No, not according to this,” he said, as he slid the phone back into his pocket. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of connection to whatever it is we’re about to see.”

“Are you ready to go in?” she asked.

Harvath wasn’t even near the front door and already he could smell the horrible odor of burnt tire. Taking a last breath of semi-fresh air, he nodded and followed her inside.

T
he smell of a burnt tire was worse than driving behind a bubbling asphalt truck. The smoke had left black streaks up the front of the building from where it had escaped out the front door and where the firemen had smashed the front windows.

Inside, you could trace the smoke’s path along the upper walls and ceiling straight back to the bathroom. Unless there was something terribly interesting he had to see in there, he’d put off ground zero for the tire burning for as long as he could. What he was most interested in was the victim. He followed Cordero into the living room.

Her partner was there waiting, smug as usual and looking fresh as a daisy with his hair combed, face shaved, and shoes shined. He’d probably gotten a great night’s sleep as well.

“Looks like you were wrong about the killer’s next stop being Fort Hill,” he said.

“Let’s not start, Sal,” said Cordero. “Okay?”

“I’m just saying, our golden boy here isn’t right about everything.”

“Why don’t you sit down and give your mind a rest, Sal,” Harvath said as he brushed past him.

Cordero joined him in the living room. “Can we not do this, please?” she asked quietly.

“Without looking at the body, how do you expect to figure anything out?”

She cut him a look and tilted her head toward her partner in the entry hall. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“I’ll try,” Harvath replied as he approached the gang box. As he got closer, he began to pick up another scent.

Cordero could smell it, too. “What is that?”

“Pine.”

“Like Pine-Sol?”

Harvath shook his head as he noticed a couple of stray feathers near the gang box. “Pine tar.”

“What is—” she began, but stopped when she looked into the box and saw the horrific state of the body.

Harvath stood next to her and looked at the corpse as well. For several seconds neither said anything. Then, he stated, “Pine tar was used in the colonies to preserve wood on sailing ships and to weatherize rope. It was also used for a form of physically and emotionally painful public humiliation called tarring and feathering.”

As seasoned as she was to death and murder, this one was particularly rough to look at. “Do you think he died from the tarring and feathering? Or from having his head shackled to the bottom of the box and having it filled up with pine tar? Feel it,” she said, reaching her hand out to touch the metal. “It’s still warm.”

Harvath didn’t need to feel it. He would take her word for it. What he was interested in was the message painted in red on the underside of the lid. In addition to the crossed bones with the skull and crown hovering above was a sentence, which read
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Beneath it were the letters
S.O.L.

“Any idea what that phrase means?” she asked.

Harvath was unaware of its historical context, but he had a pretty good idea of why it had been chosen by the killer. Bill Wise had mentioned something about how the Fed purposefully obfuscated what they did
in order to divert attention. If he had to bet, that was what he’d put his money on. As far as who said it, he had no idea.

“Sam Adams,” said Cordero’s partner, who had come into the living room to join them. He held out his smartphone and read, “From a letter to John Pitts. January twenty-first, 1776.”

She couldn’t tell if Harvath was warming up another jibe or not, but she decided to circumvent it and keep the conversation focused. “What do we know about the victim?” she asked.

Harvath had already identified him, but he wasn’t about to spill that information to anyone but Cordero. And it would be done in private.

“Right now,” replied the male detective, “we don’t have anything. He’s a John Doe. We’ll see what the ME gets prints-wise and if they turn up anything. If there’s nothing on file for this guy, we’ll have to attempt dental records, and maybe facial reconstruction.”

“How about the fire?” asked Harvath. “Any clues there?”

The man shrugged. “Go ask the arson investigators. They’re back in the bathroom.”

Harvath figured Sal had already gleaned a preliminary report from them and could have easily filled him in, but he had promised Cordero he’d try to go easy on him.

Walking to the bathroom, he stopped just short of the doorway. The lingering odor was terrible.

“What do you guys have?” he asked.

“Who are you?” one of the investigators asked tersely.

“Emily Dickinson,” he replied just as tersely, sensing that was about the only thing this guy was going to respect. “Now tell me what you’ve got.”

His partner held up a plastic evidence bag with what looked like charred and half-melted circuit board. “Pretty simple setup. A timer and an igniter. Left it sitting on top of the tire. Tire was soaked with gasoline or kerosene. Consensus right now is that he wanted to send a smoke signal, not burn the building down.”

“Think you’ll be able to trace those parts?”

“Maybe, but they look rather basic. Could have come from anywhere. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

That was exactly what Harvath was doing, and he needed some fresh air. Passing through the apartment, he signaled for Cordero to join him.

Outside, he stepped away from the building and took in a couple of deep breaths.

“You all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine. I just hate that smell.”

She wrinkled up her nose. “It
is
pretty awful. Why’d you want me to follow you out here?”

“I think I know who the victim is.”

“You do? How? A huge part of the poor guy’s face was melted off and he’s covered in feathers.”

“It’s Peter Whalen from Chicago,” said Harvath. “In the file I have on him, it describes him as being five foot five. The other missing man, Renner, is six foot two. You wouldn’t have been able to fit a six foot two man in that box unless you sawed him in half. Make sure to tell the ME to look for scars on the victim’s knees once they get all the tar and feathers cleaned off. Whalen was a skier. He’d blown both his knees and had to have them repaired back before the surgery got a lot less invasive. The scars should be pretty obvious.”

“I’ll let them know.”

He took a breath and said, “This means there’s only two left now.”

Cordero nodded. “Do you think the killer plans to do them both here in Boston?”

Leaning against the side of a police cruiser that had been parked up on the sidewalk, he tried to think. “I honestly don’t know,” he said.

“Whalen went missing in Chicago, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, if the killer brought Whalen here, why not the others?”

It was a good question, except for the fact that all five missing candidates had been grabbed on the same night, which meant there had to have been teams involved. At least one of those teams had brought Peter Whalen from Chicago to Boston. Had the others been brought here, too?
Anything was possible.

“The remaining two
could
be here,” said Harvath. “I suppose.”

“You’ve had one murder in Georgia and two now, unfortunately, in Boston. I’d say just numbers-wise Boston is your best bet.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“First, coffee,” said Cordero.

“And then what?”

“And then we try to figure out where the killer is keeping the remaining two and get to them before he can kill again.”

W
ASHINGTON

D
ISTRICT OF
C
OLUMBIA

“G
o easy on him,” said Wise, as he watched them secure the CIA operative. “You don’t have to hurt him.”

Bob McGee looked up at the man like he was nuts. “In case you missed what just happened, Mahatma, this guy wasn’t here for yoga class. He came to kill you. In fact, he came here to torture you
and then
kill you. Why are you so bent out of shape about how tight I put the cuffs on him?”

“Because I know Samuel, and I want you to treat him with respect.”

McGee shook his head. “This is a big boy. We’re trussing him up tight. After that you can show him all the respect you want. Fair enough?”

Wise knew there was no point in arguing. In fact, he wanted McGee to restrain Samuel as tightly as possible. If he didn’t, and the man got loose, they’d all be in trouble. What’s more, by petitioning for kind treatment, Wise was already conditioning Samuel for interrogation. The gruffer and more inconsiderate of Samuel that McGee was, the more it played into Wise’s plan.

“There,” said McGee, as he stood back and admired his handiwork. “This fella ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”

Samuel did not reply.

Wise looked at Ryan and said, “You can lower your weapon now.”

Ryan looked at McGee, who nodded, at which point she aimed the muzzle of her weapon down, but didn’t put it away.

Samuel had been secured to a support column and was facing away from the living area. Wise brought over a pair of shooting muffs.

Showing them to Samuel, he said, “This is only going to be for a few minutes while we discuss what we’re going to do. May I?”

Samuel nodded and Wise slipped the muffs over the man’s large head. They almost didn’t fit. When he had them in place, he laid his hand on Samuel’s shoulder for a moment and then walked away to join the others.

They gathered on the other side of the glass display case with the sewing machines and the typewriters. It was not only an additional sound barrier; it also allowed them to keep Samuel in their sight. McGee was the first one to speak.