Pushing his chair out from the desk, he stood and walked back to Cordero. “Any luck?” he asked.
“Nothing. You?”
Harvath shook his head.
“You knew we weren’t going to find anything, didn’t you?”
“I had a pretty good feeling,” he replied. “Whoever this guy is, he’s a pro.”
“A professional psychopath,” Cordero replied. Looking at her watch, she said, “I’ve got to pick up my son. Are you staying in Boston tonight?”
Harvath hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’m not sure. It depends.”
“On whether or not the killer is still here?”
He nodded.
“Five victims from five different cities,” she said. “For all we know, the killer has already left Boston and is on his way to the next.”
“That’s the problem. He could be anywhere. I’ve got no idea.”
“Any reason at all to think he may still be here?” she asked.
Harvath thought back to what Wise had said. “There may be a slim chance. A very slim chance.”
“Based on what?”
“I spoke with an expert back in D.C. Call him a profiler. He thinks one of the reasons the killer weighted Kelly Davis down and sunk her in the river, rather than leave her body wherever he killed her, was that he needed to buy himself more time.”
“You don’t seem convinced,” said Cordero.
“My question is what would he be buying more time for? To get out of town and get to one of those other cities? Or is it something else?”
“What does your profiler think?”
“He thinks maybe the killer still has unfinished business here.”
“You’re the guy who paid attention in history class,” she stated. “If this guy was going to stage another murder in Boston, where would he do it?”
Harvath had already thought about that and had been doing a little research online. It could be any number of locations. But there was no reason, apart from Wise’s speculation, to believe that the killer hadn’t already left.
Cordero glanced at her watch once more.
“Go pick up your son,” said Harvath.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll probably hang around here a little bit longer to see if anything breaks. Maybe the FBI will get lucky. If not, I’ll head back to D.C.”
“And what if the killer is still here?” she asked.
“Then I guess you and I’ll see each other again.”
Cordero and Harvath shook hands, holding on a fraction of a second longer than they should have.
“Stay safe, Annie Oakley,” he said as she let go of his hand and brushed past him to pick up her umbrella and a small plastic bag with a box in it.
“You, too,” the detective replied.
As she reached the door, the answer to the question she had asked him popped into his mind and he said, “Fort Hill.”
Cordero stopped and turned around. “What?”
“You asked me where I thought the killer would stage another Boston murder if he was still here and the answer is Fort Hill.”
“The water tower in Roxbury?” she replied as her partner entered the office and walked past her.
“Water tank,” the male detective corrected her, drawing out the words in his heavy Boston accent as he sat down at his desk.
“Excuse me, water tank.”
“No,” said Harvath. “We’re talking about two different things. It’s a fort.”
“It was a fort,” Cordero’s partner said. “When the town of Roxbury was annexed by Boston in the 1800s, they put a water tank on Fort Hill made to look like some fairy princess tower and renamed the area Highland Park.”
Cordero looked at her partner. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Other than arcane Red Sox trivia, I’ve never heard you mention one historical thing about Boston.”
“I guess you just don’t know me.”
She stared at him, half in disbelief and half with the conviction that he was not telling her the full truth.
The male detective looked at Harvath and said, “Do you want to tell her why Fort Hill is significant, or should I?”
Though Harvath didn’t know the man from Adam, he was equally stunned by his sudden fluency in Boston history and chose to let him keep the floor.
“By all means,” Harvath said. “Please.”
The male detective looked at his partner and said, “After Penning’s murder this morning, I decided to do a little research.”
Cordero was going to be late picking up her son, but this was more than worth a dollar a minute. “Do tell, Sal.”
“I’m a smart guy, with an even smarter smartphone,” he said with a smirk. “So I researched what happened after they hung Andrew Oliver’s effigy from the Liberty Tree.”
“And?”
“The mob ginned itself up and ended up tearing down the dockside warehouse Oliver owned. Probably because that’s where he was storing all the stamps from King George.”
“What does that have to do with Fort Hill?”
“Oliver lived at the foot of Fort Hill. The mob set the effigy up in front of his house, chopped its head off, and set it on fire.
“When local law enforcement showed up and tried to calm things down, they got showered with rocks. The crowd then looted Oliver’s house and set it on fire. The next day, Oliver resigned his commission from King George, but the colonists weren’t done with him. They made him march down and publicly renounce his office beneath the Liberty Tree.”
Cordero’s partner shifted his gaze to Harvath and said, “Correct?”
Harvath hated to hand it to the guy, but he had done his homework. “That’s right,” he replied.
“So, let’s pass that along to the FBI and beef up patrols around Highland Park and the water tank just in case. We’ll see what happens.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Cordero, who then looked at Harvath and asked, “How about dinner?”
“What about your son?”
“My parents live in the apartment above mine. They’re older. They don’t drive anymore. But they can babysit after I get Marco put to bed. If the killer is still here, you want a crack at him, right?”
“Of course,” Harvath replied.
“Good,” she said, as she turned to walk out the door. “So do I. I’ll text you in an hour and we’ll pick a place to meet. In the meantime, have Sal help you find a hotel. If you’re lucky, he’ll put in the good word with his sister. She’s one of the assistant managers at the Four Seasons.”
As he watched her leave, Harvath looked at the male detective and realized that he probably had a better chance of having the killer walk right into the police station than he did of having Cordero’s partner put in the good word for him anywhere, much less with his sister at the Four Seasons hotel.
CHAPTER 38
FORT BELVOIR
VIRGINIA
After purchasing groceries and a few extra items of clothing, McGee and Ryan returned to Brenda Durkin’s. With coffee brewed, they made sandwiches and turned the Colonel’s dining room into their makeshift operations center.
The name of each member of Ryan’s former destabilization team was written on a three-by-five card and taped to the wall. Under those, cards were added based on what Ryan could remember about her teammates including physical descriptions, training and experience levels, where they lived, what their marital status was, if they had children, and what their weaknesses and potential pressure points were, among other things. They were attempting to create the best 30,000-foot picture possible and from there they would zoom in on their target.