Looking around, he noticed the large plastic industrial garbage can on wheels again. Originally, he hadn’t paid much attention to it, figuring the can belonged to a cleaning crew or something. Now his interest was piqued.
Removing his flashlight, he walked over to the can and shined some light inside. It was streaked with moisture and there was a small puddle of what looked to be water in the bottom. There was also something else.
Returning his flashlight to his pocket, he bent down and examined the exterior of the can. Near the very bottom, he found it. It appeared that the can had been filled with water, but that someone had drilled a hole at the bottom to let the water out. Why?
Harvath stood and went back over to the plank and reexamined everything. That’s when it hit him. The killer, or killers, had probably left long before Herman Penning was even dead.
It was all making sense now and what he had originally seen as ingenious was quickly reaching the brilliance level.
The sixty-year-old man had been fitted with a noose and was then placed onto the plank, which would function like a chute. When the appointed moment arrived, the chute tipped forward and gravity jettisoned the father of two and grandfather of four through the window. The man then fell, but only until he reached the literal end of his rope, at which point his neck was snapped.
Judging by the size of the garbage can and how much water it could hold, it had functioned like a timer. Secured to the plank, it would have acted as a counterbalance, holding it horizontal for as long as its weight was greater than the victim’s. As soon as that ratio changed, gravity would take over.
After taking several pictures of everything, Harvath grabbed a chair in order to better examine the pulleys. He’d only been up on it for a few moments when he heard a throat being cleared behind him.
He turned around to see a man and a woman, shields on their belts and their hands very near their weapons.
“Agent Wyatt Earp, is it?” the woman said. “I’m Detective Annie Oakley and this is my partner, Buffalo Bill. Why don’t you step down. We’d like to have a word with you, please.”
CHAPTER 28
“Annie Oakley” turned out to be Boston Police Homicide Detective Lara Cordero. Her partner’s name sounded like Sabatelli or Sabatano, but Harvath didn’t catch it. He wasn’t really paying attention at that point. He was trying to not appear as if he was staring at Cordero while he was, in fact, staring at Cordero.
She was a very exotic-looking woman and quite attractive—a knockout, actually. If Harvath had to guess, he would have pegged her as maybe Spanish with something else. It was hard to discern. She was in her early thirties, tall, tan, and took very good care of herself. She had green eyes and long brown hair that was streaked blond by the sun.
Harvath introduced himself and presented each of them with a crisp white business card embossed with his company’s name and a phone number, nothing else.
“So you’re the kidnap and ransom specialist,” said Cordero. “I wasn’t aware that the kidnappers had made any demands.”
“They haven’t,” Harvath replied. “Not yet.”
“Maybe it got lost in the mail,” her partner said.
While Cordero’s Boston accent was almost nonexistent, this guy’s was over-the-top. It had an edge to it, too, that Harvath didn’t care for.
“Who’s the client?” Cordero asked.
The Old Man had warned him to be ready for this question. The FBI was being circumspect with the details it was sharing with the Boston PD. Monroe Lewis had told him to do the same. “The deceased has some very powerful friends in Washington.”
“Had,” Cordero’s partner corrected him. “Past tense.”
Harvath studied him for a moment. He was dressed in a halfway decent suit. Other than that, there wasn’t anything particularly impressive about him. He wasn’t short, he wasn’t tall, and his features were unremarkable. He looked to be in decent shape compared to a lot of the other cops in the room, but that wasn’t saying much. It was obvious that the man didn’t like him, and that was fine by Harvath, who was about to thank him for the English lesson when Cordero asked another question.
“So what’s your background?”
“Why do you ask?” Harvath replied.
“You don’t strike me as the law enforcement type.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. You’ve got more of a military vibe to me. They hire a lot of ex Special Forces types for Kidnap and Ransom companies, right? What, are you an Army Ranger, or maybe a Navy SEAL?”
It was either an incredibly good guess or she was intentionally flirting with him. He couldn’t tell. Either way, he didn’t really want to get into what his background was and laughed it off. “A SEAL? They only take smart guys,” he replied. “Plus, I can’t swim.”
Cordero smiled. “I think you may be downplaying the smarts part.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was watching the way you examined the pulleys and the rest of the crime scene.”
“I did that good of a job, huh? How about we trade places and I’ll watch you this time. Maybe I can learn something.”
“How about we go swimming instead?” the partner interjected.
Good one, but this guy was getting on Harvath’s nerves. He ignored him and said to Cordero, “Who found the victim?”
“About half of Boston,” she replied. “We’re right downtown. We’ve got lots of people on their way to work. Our 911 center was flooded with calls. A patrol unit responded within about four minutes. Within fifteen minutes of arriving on scene, they had accessed the building and retrieved Penning’s body. They’d hoped that he was still alive and one of the officers even tried to resuscitate him, but we’re confident his neck was broken instantly. There’s nothing they could have done.”
“Where’s the body now?”
“On its way to the ME.”
Harvath leaned and looked out the window to the street below. “Any CCTV footage, traffic cams, that sort of thing you can pull from the area?”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” the male detective snarked.
“What I meant to say—” Harvath began, but Cordero interrupted him.
“I know what you meant and yes, we’ve got a few cameras we’ve already requested footage from. We’re not holding out much hope, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’ve already checked the security cameras here in this building. As far as that footage is concerned, no one ever entered.”
“The footage was looped,” said Harvath.
Cordero nodded. “With that level of sophistication, plus getting around the alarm system and no signs of forced entry into the building, we think the chances are slim that we’ll get him on any of the cameras, but you never know. They got the Son of Sam with parking tickets, right?”
“Have you uncovered anything else unusual?”
The woman’s partner rolled his eyes. “Nah, we see murder scenes with ropes and pulleys and little dolls every day.”
“Dolls?” Harvath repeated.
“Yeah, it was shoved into the boot Penning was wearing.”
“He was wearing only one?”
“We think the other one fell off and maybe some homeless person picked it up or something. We’re looking into it.”
“No doubt,” replied Harvath. “Let me ask you about the victim’s boot. Was the sole painted green?”
“Yeah, it was.”
“And the doll. Does it look like a little devil?”
“Yeah,” the man answered, his eyes narrowing. “How’d you know that?”
Harvath plowed forward. “It’s grinning and holding a scroll, too, right?”
“What the fuck? How do you know all this?”