He paused. The man was in no hurry to tell his tale. He had two hundred years to kill. I stared at his hands while I waited. They were just as big as the rest of him. I tried to picture him manipulating the delicate mechanism of a bomb.
He caught me looking. “I know,” he said, holding up his hands. “You’d think these giant paws would be a handicap, but no—not when you use jeweler’s tools. Nobody can build a shaped charge bomb like me. I can put one in the middle of a symphony orchestra, take out the piccolo player, and leave the entire string section intact. I never shared my technique—figured it would die with me. Then one day Rom Ran asked if I could teach him the tricks of the trade. I thought, Hell, it can’t hurt to be buddy-buddy with the toughest motherfucker in the prison. So I diagrammed the first step on a piece of rolling paper, gave him five minutes to study it, then rolled a cigarette and smoked the evidence.”
“And then what?”
“Then I told him to redraw it for me. Of course he couldn’t. It took him weeks before he could commit that first step to memory. When I was sure he had it, I moved on to step two.”
“How many steps are there altogether?”
“Nineteen. I probably gave myself lung cancer waiting for that wanker to commit every step to memory, but I guess all that studying paid off. The kid gets an A plus.”
“We need to find him,” Kylie said. “Do you know where he is?”
“Sorry, but he didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Is there anything you can tell us that might help? We’d really like to tell your pal P.J. that you were cooperative…” Kylie’s voice trailed off, the quasi threat dangling in the air.
Samuels rubbed his thick beard. “How many people has he killed so far?”
“Two,” I said.
“Two,” Samuels said, repeating the number. “If I were you, I’d hurry on home, mate. He ain’t done yet.”
CHAPTER 48
Suvarnabhumi Airport was only a thirty-minute drive from the prison, and after spending less than a day and a half in Thailand, we were, as Samuels had suggested, hurrying on home.
Captain Fennessy and his crew were on the tarmac, waiting for us, and once again I was reminded that the rich really do live differently.
I spent the next eighteen hours flying back to the woman I love, and the twelve hours after that reconnecting with her. First physically, then emotionally. After a good night’s sleep, we gave physically another shot.
At 7:00 a.m. Cheryl and I walked to the precinct. It was mid-May, one of those perfect spring days in New York when Central Park looks like it was Photoshopped by the man upstairs, and most New Yorkers on their way to work have full-blown smiles on their faces.
And then I was back to reality: Captain Cates’s office. Kylie and I had identified the prime suspect in the Silver Bullet bombing case. Now came the tough part: catching him.
“Did you release Sura’s picture to the press?” I asked.
Whenever there’s a citywide manhunt, the brass debates whether or not to enlist the public’s help by releasing a photo of the suspect to the media. Most of the time we don’t. The standard reasoning is, Why let the perp know that we’re onto him?
“Absolutely not,” Cates said. But this time the logic was different. Cates spelled it out for us.
“Sura is Guatemalan. His mama could pick him out of a crowd, but if you flash a picture of a dark-skinned, dark-haired mad bomber on a TV screen for five seconds, you know what’s going to happen.”
“Chinese waiter syndrome,” I said. “They all look alike.”
Every year, thousands of witnesses identify the wrong person—especially when the felon and the witness are of different races. In a city with four million white people it was smarter to circulate Sura’s picture to trained police officers.
“Next order of business,” Cates said. “A hundred thousand dollars of the DA’s money flew off into the sunset last week. Would you like to know how many times he’s called me since you left for Thailand?”
“No, Captain, but did you tell the DA that we have two suspects?”
“Yes, and he doesn’t give a shit about suspects. Nor is he interested in the fact that Detectives Corcoran and Fischer have been tailing them. All he wants to hear is that he’s getting his money back. Where are you on finding it?”
“We’re meeting with Corcoran and Fischer as soon as we’re done here.”
“In that case, we’re done. Go—and don’t come back empty-handed.”
Danny Corcoran and Tommy Fischer were parked outside the precinct. “We’ve been tailing Troy Marschand and Dylan Freemont since Friday,” Danny said as soon as we got in the car.
“Who’s watching them now?” Kylie said.
Danny pulled out. “These boys don’t need watching at this hour. They sleep in till around noon.”
“Don’t they work?”
“Marschand, if he’s still employed, is the assistant to a dead woman. Not very demanding on his time. Freemont is an actor-slash-waiter. We followed him to a burger joint on Second Avenue on Saturday. He went inside, came out fifteen minutes later, and hailed a cab. We checked with the manager. She told us he quit. Came in to pick up his money.”
“You think he landed an acting job?”
“More likely he’s found a new career as a blackmailer. The two of them have been dining at some of New York’s finer restaurants, and they spent yesterday shopping on Madison Avenue. Paying cash.”
“The tips must be good at that burger joint,” Kylie said. “So now what?”
“You remember Jerry Brainard, the dispatcher who worked the new mobile command center? Jerry knows drones. We showed him the chopper video of the one that scooped up the ransom money, and he ID’d it as a DJI Phantom 3.”
“Get a court order for their credit card records,” Kylie said. “See if they bought one.”
“We did. Nothing came up, but that doesn’t prove anything. There are third-party sellers all over the lot. Or they could have bought a used one. Jerry checked with the FAA. You’re supposed to register these things with the Feds, but there’s nothing under either of their names.”
“We can get a warrant to search their apartment for a drone with a grappling hook dangling from the bottom,” I said.
“The hook was homemade. I doubt if they’d leave it on. But even if we found a drone on their kitchen table, the ADA said she couldn’t make a case that they committed the crime. We were about to give up on the drone connection and wait for them to hit another victim, but Jerry texted me last night, said he had an idea, and asked if we could meet him at the fire academy on Randall’s Island.”
“What’s he doing out there?” Kylie asked.
“Teaching cops to fly drones,” Fischer said.
Kylie’s eyes lit up. “Now you’re talking.”
Fifteen minutes later, we rolled up to a huge training facility where the streets are lined with buildings that are set on fire regularly. There was a bombed-out city bus with mannequin arms and legs sticking out of the charred remains, and there were more plastic bodies—civilians and fallen firefighters—lying in the street.
Jerry Brainard was waiting for us in front of a row of mock storefronts. “I’m really sorry to drag you all the way out here, guys. There’s almost no place in the city where you can legally fly, so the FDNY lets us use their space.”
“No problem,” Kylie said. “I heard you’re the man to see if a girl wants to lose her drone virginity.”
I jumped in. “Before we get to the fun and games, can we focus on the mission at hand?”
Jerry Brainard has the unflappable temperament of a man who sits at a console fielding emergency calls all day. “Actually, a short lesson couldn’t hurt.” He showed Kylie his iPhone. “Your controls are all on your phone or your iPad.”
Thirty seconds into the tutorial she grabbed his phone. “Got it,” she said.
Kylie flew like she drove. Total cowgirl.
“Pretty good,” Brainard said. “But aren’t you the same cop who ran a million-dollar Mercedes into a—”
“Exigent circumstances,” she yelled. “I was completely exonerated.”
He gave her another few minutes in the air, then had her bring it in.