Harvath held up his hands and looked around as if it were obvious. “This is the Liberty Tree Building, right?”
The male detective mimicked Harvath’s gesture and replied, “It obviously ain’t Fenway Park. So what?”
“It’s not important. Never mind.”
Cordero, to her credit, knew that it was important and that Harvath understood much more than he was letting on. “Sal, can you give us a few minutes, please?” she asked.
Her partner looked at Harvath and then back at her. He didn’t like being asked to leave. It made him feel as if he were some sort of impediment and that hurt his pride. He paused just long enough to suggest that he was trying to come up with something clever to say, but nothing materialized.
Finally, he replied, “No problem. I need to talk with the uniforms anyway and see how the canvass of the neighborhood is going.”
“Thanks, Sal,” Cordero replied. “I’ll be down shortly.”
“Mr. Harvath,” he said, drawing out the word mister as if to highlight Harvath’s non-law-enforcement status before turning on his cheap shoes and walking away.
“Interesting guy,” Harvath said once the man was out of earshot.
“He means well.”
“You two been together long?”
“Partners for six years. Best cop I’ve ever known. Loyal and nobody knows the streets better than him.”
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“I can see it’s breaking your heart.”
“I’m insecure like that.”
Cordero stifled a laugh. “Yeah, you’ve got insecurity written all over you. That was the first thing I noticed when you came in.”
“What was the second?”
Ignoring his question, she said. “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
As they walked, Cordero asked, “How did you know about the boot and the doll and all that?”
“I paid attention in class.”
“And what class would that be?”
“American history,” said Harvath. “Boston colonists hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the man chosen by King George to impose the Stamp Act. They hung it from an elm tree right on this spot that became known as the ‘Liberty Tree.’ Along with it, they also hung a British cavalry jackboot with its sole painted green. It was meant as an ‘up yours’ to two British prime ministers tied to the Stamp Act. One was named Grenville and the other Bute. Grinning from inside the boot was a devil doll holding a scroll with the words Stamp Act written on it.”
The female detective nodded as she turned the information in her mind. “I guess I really didn’t pay enough attention in class.”
“You walk by history every day in Boston.”
“But nobody’s ever a tourist in their own hometown, are they?”
That was true. “Did you grow up here?” he asked.
“We moved here when I was a little girl. I was born in another country.”
“Is Cordero Spanish?”
“No, Portuguese, but via—”
“Brazil,” Harvath replied, everything about her falling into place.
She stopped and smiled. “Very good,” she said. “You know your geography.”
“My parents felt bad that they couldn’t afford swimming lessons, so they gave me a globe instead. I got rather good with it.”
“Your insecurity is showing again.”
“Is it?” Harvath asked, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m going to have to get a better tailor.”
Cordero started walking again. “Been there recently?”
“Brazil? Yes, a few years ago, but only a quick in-and-out for business.”
“Kidnap and ransom business?”
“You could call it that,” he replied as he remembered traveling there to track down a man he believed to be involved with the torture and killing of several friends and family of his.
The female detective appraised him once more, this time with a bit more appreciation. “Maybe you actually could be Navy SEAL material.”
“Except for the swimming and the smarts stuff.”
“Except for those,” she agreed with a smile as they arrived at a long counter where the evidence technicians had arrayed everything that had been bagged, tagged, and would soon be dragged to headquarters once the rope, plank, and pulley apparatus was disassembled and packed up.
“Here,” she said, tossing Harvath a pair of latex gloves. “Anything you see and want to touch, please just ask my permission first.”
There were only a million responses that rushed to the front of Harvath’s brain at that point, but being the consummate professional that he was, he refrained from all of them. “Why don’t we start with the doll?”
Cordero nodded at her evidence tech, who presented a log and asked Harvath to print and sign his name before allowing him to examine the item.
Harvath didn’t need to remove the grinning demon from its clear plastic bag. He only wanted to see what was on its little scroll. “Does anyone have a magnifying glass or something that I can use on this?”
The evidence tech borrowed one from a crime scene technician and handed it to him. Harvath held up the bag so he could get as much light on it as possible. Upon the scroll had been drawn the same skull and crossbones with a hovering crown that he had seen in the Claire Marcourt crime scene photos. Beneath it were written the words Death to Tyranny. And beneath that were the initials S.O.L.
Harvath thanked the evidence tech and handed back the doll and the magnifying glass.
“Any idea what any of the writing stands for?” Cordero asked.
She wasn’t asking for state secrets. A few minutes on a Web browser and she’d be able to figure it out for herself. “Death to Tyranny and the skull-and-bones motif with the crown summarized popular anti-British sentiments in the colonies leading up to the Revolutionary War,” he said. “We think S.O.L may be shorthand for Sons of Liberty. They were an organized resistance group back then and were believed to have been responsible for hanging the Oliver effigy in the Liberty Tree.”
Cordero jotted a couple of notes in a notebook, then asked, “What’s the connection to our victim, Mr. Penning?”
Now she was drifting into state secrets. “What do you mean?”
“Why so heavy on the symbolism?”
“Maybe somebody thought he was a tyrant.”
“What do you think?”
“I barely know anything about the man, certainly not enough to have an opinion.”
Glancing back at the ropes and pulleys, then returning her gaze to Harvath, the detective said, “This all looks pretty personal.”
“The killer definitely wanted to send a message.”
“Death to tyranny? Pretty nonspecific, if you ask me,” she replied. Making a final mark in her notebook, she looked up and asked, “What else would you like to take a look at?”
Harvath scanned the table. There wasn’t really anything else of interest, nothing that screamed lead. “I think we’re good.”
“Okay,” she replied, adding her own signature to the evidence log and letting the tech know he could take everything down to the lab. “Now let’s talk about why you’re really here.”
“I told you, Detective, the victim has—excuse me, had—some very powerful friends in D.C.”
“First the FBI pretends all it knows is that Penning was kidnapped. Then we find out there were four others grabbed the same night, but the FBI won’t tell us what they have in common. You don’t have to be a detective to pick up on the fact that they’re probably holding something back. Now, a wisecracking James Blond type in the K-and-R business shows up at my murder scene knowing a bit too much about American history and won’t tell me who the client is. You’ll forgive me if my BS meter is drifting into the red zone.”
James Blond. He’d have to remember that one. “I imagine your job requires you to be a little suspicious about everything.”