“No, but my guess is it’s either cheese or cow related.”
“Neither,” Smith said dryly. “The Justice Department lost a witness in a major racketeering trial.”
“Did they check under the sofa cushions?”
“It is not a laughing matter,” Smith informed him, looking pained. “They had a safehouse in the woods, upstate. Ten miles from nowhere. I am told that no more than a dozen people in the whole department knew where he was hiding out.”
“That’s ten too many.”
“So it would appear. In any case, a shooter found the safehouse, killed three U.S. marshals, and the witness. Marshal number four was, er, indisposed. But he got lucky with the shooter.”
“Think he’s part of it? An inside job?”
Smith frowned and shook his head, a somber negative. “He was given a polygraph examination and PSE first thing. They swear he is clean. However, you know as well as I do, polygraphs are wrong at least twenty-five percent of the time. That is why they are inadmissible in most state courts. The psychological-stress evaluator is a little better, but it’s still more art than science.”
“Then it’s all just a freaking waste of time,” Remo said.
“I agree,” Smith said, “but as it happens, that part of the problem is not our concern.”
“What is?”
“The shooter.”
“He’s in custody?” asked Remo.
“More or less,” Smith said dryly. “He is in the morgue.”
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
“Again the difficulty is not his condition,” Smith pressed. “It is a question of identity.”
“You’re losing me Smitty,” Remo warned.
“Let me start at the beginning.”
Smith paused to open his battered leather briefcase. Lifting out an inch-thick file, he closed the briefcase, pushing it to one side. He laid the file between them, on the tabletop.
“Two years ago,” the CURE director began, “a minor left-wing politician with connections to the drug trade was assassinated in Palermo. Apparently he was strangled with piano wire and almost decapitated.”
Smith opened the file; a photograph changed hands. A slender man of middle age lay stretched out on his back, head cocked at a peculiar angle, blood fanned out around him like a crimson halo.
“Four months later, in Toronto, two police detectives were machine-gunned in a brothel. Both were under scrutiny by their department, on suspicion of accepting bribes to help protect a major white-slavery ring.”
Another photograph. One body draped across a chintzy couch, another on the floor. The wall behind them was pocked with, bullet holes.
“Somebody took a shortcut. Probably saved taxpayers a bundle on another dipsy-doodle trial.”
“Another twelve weeks after that,” Smith continued, “a dignitary from South Africa was killed while visiting New Orleans.”
“I remember that one,” Remo said. “It was the first time that I ever heard of anybody famous falling down a flight of stairs by accident.”
“There was no accident,” Smith said seriously. “In fact, there were no stairs. That particular story was circulated for press consumption. In point of fact, someone slit his throat in bed. Likewise the prostitute who was with him. The State Department did a better job than usual on the cleanup, with cooperation from Johannesburg. They were concerned at what an interracial dalliance might do to the man’s posthumous reputation. The truth was buried.”
The crime-scene photo was a long shot, taken from the foot of what appeared to be a king-size bed. Nude bodies, ebony and ivory on scarlet sheets. “No suspects?” Remo asked.
Smith’s face was grim. “I am coming to that,” he said. “Last June, in San Francisco, someone snatched the founding father of the National Gay Pride Alliance. He was gone three days before they found his body—tortured and mutilated—in the trunk of an abandoned car, near the Presidio.”
The glossy eight-by-ten was taken from an angle, peering down into the trunk of a midsized sedan.
The victim’s mother would not have been able to identify him, slashed and burned and bloody as he was. A rubber dildo had been tossed in with the body, also stained with blood.
“Sex crime?” asked Remo.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is only supposed to look that way. The victim had announced his plan to run for Congress in November. His supporters call the murder a political assassination.”
“Are they right?”
“They could be,” Smith admitted. He slid another photograph across the table.
“Geez, Smitty, can’t you have vacation pictures from Florida like everyone else your age?”
Another car. This time with a corpse behind the wheel. Shot in the face, from all appearances, his head thrown back, mouth open, leaking crimson.
“This one is from Chicago,” Smith explained. “The target was Jordanian. A legal immigrant and successful businessman. He owned a string of self-serve laundries and convenience stores.”
“Somebody didn’t like his Slurpee?”
“I have learned that on the side he handled money and munitions for Hamas, Abu Nidal and the like. The real hard-core resistance to a cease-fire in the Middle East.”
“So, we’ve got chickens coming home to roost,” said Remo. “Have you checked with Israel?”.
“Mossad records indicate that it was not one of theirs.”
“Hmm. There’s more there,’ Remo said, nodding to the stack of photos.
“Miami,” Smith replied, and passed another photograph to Remo. Bodies on a sidewalk, crumpled, still. “From April. These two were Colombians who were known to deal drugs on a heavy scale. The DEA was after them, but it would seem that someone else was quicker.”
“That’s life in the coke trade,” Remo said.
“This time, however, we got lucky.” Speeding from the scene, the shooter crashed his stolen car into a garbage truck and knocked himself out cold.. He woke up in the ambulance and kept his mouth shut, right through booking. He did not ask for an attorney, and would not give his name.”
“A pro.”
“And then some. On his first night in the county lockup, he committed suicide by wedging his head through the bars of his cell and then breaking his neck.”
“A determined pro,” Remo amended. “But I still don’t see—”
“Nine victims,” said the CURE director, interrupting him. “Four states, two foreign countries. One might think that there was nothing much in common.”
“I’m one of the ones.”
“You would be mistaken, Remo. As it happens, all nine victims were apparently dispatched by the same killer.”
Remo frowned. “Are you kidding me?”
“He did not take much care with fingerprints,” said Smith. “In fact, according to the FBI and Interpol, he left clear prints at four of the five crime scenes. All except the double-murder in New Orleans.”
“What’s the link down there, then?”
“Blood and skin. It seems that the, er, lady scratched her killer. Residue beneath her fingernails was matched against the suspect in Miami. It came back positive—not only blood type, but a positive report on DNA analysis.”
“No doubts?”
“One chance of error in a hundred thousand.”
“Sounds like someone renting out his talent to the highest bidder. And the lucky winner is…?”
“That is one problem,” Smith replied. “I mentioned that the subject in Miami carried no ID and would not speak to the authorities. Apparently he had no criminal or military record, either. The only record of his prints was from the unsolved cases prior to his arrest.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“I’m not so certain,” Smith said worriedly.
“Meaning?”
“Here is the subject from Miami.”
Remo took another photo from the CURE director’s hand. It might have been a mug shot, but the subject’s eyes were closed, his head cocked at a crazy angle, livid bruises showing on his neck and jawline. At a second glance, it was apparent he was lying down. Morgue table, Remo thought.