was some kind of spook, he’d probably picked a location that wouldn’t get much attention.
No name on the button over the address Lewis had given him. Carruth tapped the button and waited.
No answer.
There were four other offices upstairs, and he could have leaned on those buttons until somebody buzzed him in, but he didn’t want to leave any more memories than he had to.
The security door was a steel-framed job, made to look like wrought iron, with expanded metal grating filling the gaps, backed with glass. The lock would open via an electric pulse from upstairs, or with a key, and it wasn’t a dead bolt, but a basic latch hitting a strike plate. Meant to keep honest people out.
Carruth had a thin and flexible piece of spring-steel a little smaller than a credit card in his wallet. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his Nike wide-receiver gloves. They offered a little protection from the weather, but were still thin enough to allow you to use your hands. He could pick up a dime wearing them. No point in leaving any prints around.
He used his gloved fingertip to wipe the button clean, then worked the spring into the edge of the door.
To people passing by on the sidewalk in the cold, he’d look like he was using a key.
Using the flat spring, it took all of four seconds to slip the latch and open the door. Hell, it might as well have
He grinned as he started up the stairs.
Simmons’s door was unmarked, save for the office number—4—all the way at the end of the hall to the right. All the doors were solid, no glass, and no windows into the hall, so nobody saw him pass. There didn’t seem to be a security cam in the hall.
Simmons’s door was unlocked. Carruth opened the door. “Hello? Mr. Simmons?”
The smell hit him as he stepped inside. It was that sickly-sweet, something-spoiled odor that, once you’d sniffed it, you never forgot.
He didn’t bother to pull his gun, but moved into the outer office, down a short hall toward a closed door. If there was a corpse that had been there long enough to stink, there wasn’t gonna be a bad guy standing around watching it rot and waiting for visitors.
The inner door was also unlocked, and it opened to reveal, sure enough, a dead man lying on the floor next to a big wooden desk.
The guy was maybe fifty-five, bald, heavyset. He wore slacks and a sport coat, with a pale blue shirt open at the neck. One of his loafers had come off, revealing a pale gray sock.
There was a window behind the desk, but a set of blinds covered it.
Carruth bent down. Two, three days, probably. No obvious bullet or knife wounds. No blood.
He leaned the man’s head back a bit—gone past rigor—and spotted ligature marks around the man’s neck. Throttled, with a thin piece of rope or maybe wire. Not an amateur’s weapon. Getting ripe in the heated building. Another day or two, the neighbors would notice big-time.
He found a wallet in the man’s back pocket. It had maybe two hundred bucks in twenties, and some odd fives and ones. He also wore a nice-looking watch. So, it hadn’t been a robbery.
“Hello, Mr. Simmons,” he said, looking at the driver’s license. Actually, there were three licenses—from D.C., Virginia, and—of all places—Oklahoma. Also a gun permit for the District—that was impressive, those weren’t easy to get. Plus some very official-looking cards with photo IDs for the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Metro Police. Very interesting.
Carruth replaced the contents and slipped the wallet back into Simmons’s hip pocket. When he did, he noticed a small pistol holster on the man’s belt, but the gun it had contained was gone.
There was a computer terminal on the desk. He sat in the chair and touched the keyboard. The terminal was in sleep-mode, and it swirled to life.
He found the mail program and lit it. When he tried to access the in-box, it asked for a password. Carruth wasn’t a computer nerd who could break into files. He looked in the desk drawers, found a box full of blank C-DVDs. He inserted one into the computer’s drive. He copied the mail program and as many of the other files as would fit on the disk, ejected it, and slipped it into his pocket. Repeated the same thing three more times, copying the entire hard drive. Lewis knew how to fiddle with stuff like that, let her play with it.
He set the computer’s program to “Reformat Disk,” and started it. He hoped that would wipe the files so the cops wouldn’t be able to get them.
He picked up the phone and touched the controls. The man had a Cable Packet Service, including call-waiting, caller ID, and forwarding. Carruth thumbed the recent-calls button, and got a list of the most recent ones. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and copied them down. He erased them with the delete button. The cops would be able to get a record of calls from the phone company, but no point in making it any easier for them.
There were a couple of file cabinets, and he went through those, along with the desk, but other than a checkbook in the desk’s center drawer, showing an account with forty thousand dollars and change in it, there wasn’t anything useful he could see. Probably anything important was on the computer and password- protected.
It was tempting, but he left the checkbook where he’d found it.
He stood. Somebody had killed Mr. Simmons here, and while a man in his line of work might have made all kinds of enemies and it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with Lewis and Carruth’s business, making that assumption was probably not a good idea. Could have just been coincidence, but then again, maybe it wasn’t. Which way of thinking would get you in the most hot water?
In the Navy, Carruth had been taught to assume the worst-case scenario and prepare for it until you had more accurate intel. If you thought there might be fifteen enemy soldiers and it turned out there were only five, well, then, that was a good kind of surprise. If you were figuring on five and there were fifteen? That could get you killed.
Whoever had garroted the late Mr. Simmons—who had been a pro and very likely armed when it had gone down—was a dangerous person or persons. And if Simmons had information in his possession that might allow the killers the slightest chance of being able to locate Captain Rachel Lewis, then that ought to be the working assumption. If they could, they would, and how best to deal with that when it happened?
Time to leave. There wasn’t anything else to be gained by staying here, and much to be lost—given he was home again and carrying a gun that had killed two Metro cops. Any more surprises like this, he would have to rethink hanging on to the piece. When this all got done, he’d have a ton of money—he could buy a matched pair and go off to hunt lions, if he wanted. Maybe he should at least hide his gun somewhere it wouldn’t be found until he got rich? After all, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have other guns he could carry.
Well, worry about that later. First, he had to get out of here unseen.
Carruth checked the hall. Nobody around. He hurried out and down the stairs, then into the cool afternoon. He walked quickly away from the building, not so fast as to draw attention, but he didn’t dawdle.
Lewis was probably not going to be happy to hear this, but better she knew it than not.
And what was it going to mean for their business?
17
Lewis had gone over the list of numbers Carruth had given her. That, plus the files he’d copied—no trouble breaking into those, Simmons had used his birthday for the password—gave whoever had killed him at least two fingers pointed vaguely in her direction. One of her one-time phones was on the list a couple times, and there was an e-mail drop.
The one-time phone she crushed under her heel and dumped into a garbage can on a street corner. The e- mail address was a spoof, and she zeroed it out. End of trail.
Maybe whoever tapped out Simmons had nothing to do with her, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
