“I get it,” said Fisk, not in the mood for Kiser’s banter. “Stay on point here.”
“Anyway, this Carlito guy, he’s Zeta Cartel connected. U.S. No Fly, but okay to board in Mexico and land in Canada, apparently. He flew into Montreal on July twenty-third, Aeroméxico Flight 269 from Mexico City. Payment for his ticket was on a credit card, a prepay Visa from a check-cashing store in Laredo, Texas. Presumably somebody bought it for him and carried or mailed it to him.”
July was when Chuparosa would have fled Mexico after the beheadings, Fisk remembered.
“The other corpse’s name is Elias Rincon—also a No Fly—flew in to Montreal the next day, July twenty-fourth. No hotel registrations in Montreal under those names, at least none that we can find. No record of either of them entering the United States, obviously.”
Fisk said, “Flying into Montreal . . . it’s a pretty good bet they snuck in across the border into upstate New York.”
“Right. Of course.”
Fisk remembered the smoky-bomb fiasco. “It happens to be an area I have some expertise in,” he said drily.
Kiser said, “The only other charge on the Visa prepay was a rental car picked up on the twenty-third and never returned. Surprised they haven’t found that yet.”
“It’s not a priority,” said Fisk. “Most rental companies would prefer the insurance money to the return of another beater with twenty thousand miles on the odometer.”
“I’d like to push this a little further,” Kiser said. “You think you could help me out? I know you Intel detectives have deep contacts. Maybe you can even do it yourselves. And a lot faster than I can.”
Fisk said, “What are you thinking?”
“Airport surveillance photos for those dates. Maybe a few dates on either side also. If you think your Hummingbird man might have come into the United States the same way.”
“It’s a good bet.” This guy had shown he was more than willing to kill those around him to preserve his anonymity. Chuparosa guarded his secrets ruthlessly. But at the same time, his circle was drawing ever smaller and smaller. It didn’t make sense.
Fisk told him he would get into it with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “No promises, but I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Do that,” said Kiser. “And again—thank Ms. Garza when you see her.”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
Fisk hung up. He wrote up a memo with the dead men’s names and a request that they be searched for on Montreal-Trudeau’s CCTV system via the CSIS.
Then he checked his e-mail and text messages again, looking for at least a CC on the No Fly List discovery Garza had forwarded to Kiser.
There was none.
CHAPTER 38
Having no messages from Garza at all angered Fisk, both professionally and personally. That was when his phone rang. An unfamiliar number, though he recognized the exchange. Somebody from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Probably the same guy who’d e-mailed him twice already. He listened to it ring, thinking about pressing the red circle that would kick it to his voice mail . . . but he knew how U.S. attorneys were. This guy would call again and again.
Instead, Fisk thumbed the green button on his cell.
“Fisk.”
“Hi, Detective Fisk? Kevin Leary, U.S. Attorney’s office. How are you?”
“Super busy. What can I do for you that won’t take more than one minute?”
“Oh. Um . . . look, I don’t know if you got my e-mail . . . ?”
“I have not, no.”
“Okay, sir, well, here’s the thing. I’m looking at Case Number S Dash Seven Six Four One Three? Exhibit Number Three One One Nine? Anyway, Detective, the thing is it weighed out at a one hundred and thirty-nine point two five three grams. And it weighed in at one hundred and thirty-nine point two five one grams.”
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?” asked Fisk.
“It’s the polonium,” said Leary. “From the smoky-bomb case. You didn’t see the subject line of my e-mails?”
The prosecutor was starting to get that I’m getting irritated because I’m smarter and more important than you tone in his voice. This was always Fisk’s cue to start stalling, just on principle.
“No,” said Fisk, trying to find a way out of this.
“The evidence sheet has a weigh-in and a weigh-out line.”
“I gather that. I’m sure you must have a question, Kevin. I just haven’t heard it yet.”
Leary said, “The weight change is a problem.”
“The point zero zero two grams?”
“The defense has filed a brief about there being less polonium-210 than when originally booked into evidence. This is your case.”
“It is my case. But I’m not responsible for the evidence handling. When I left it, it was in a sealed steel container inside a sealed evidence envelope.”
“Where do you think it went, then?”
“The point zero zero two grams? Are you sure you calibrated the machine correctly? What is that, half a grain of salt?”
“Detective, the defense is trying to exclude the evidence by claiming evidence tampering. If we don’t have the evidence, we have no case.”
Fisk said, “Was the evidence envelope still sealed?”
Leary said, “No, the envelope was not still sealed. Defense had to open it to weight it.”
“Was the steel container still sealed?”
“Is that a trick question?” asked Leary. “I assume it was, they didn’t say otherwise.”
“Well, then?” said Fisk.
“I don’t know,” said Leary. “Can those envelopes be duplicated?”
“I doubt it,” said Fisk. “But you should pursue that with someone responsible for handling said evidence. For example, the defense.”
Leary sighed. “You see, this is the sort of thing that brings down otherwise ironclad cases. A little bit of doubt in the jury’s mind . . .”
“. . . and O. J. Simpson goes free, I get it. Why don’t you reweigh it yourself? Maybe the mistake is on their end.”
“I did reweigh it. Pain in the ass. It says one thirty-nine point two five one grams. That’s pretty damn exact.”
“Kevin, no offense,” said Fisk. “But this doesn’t seem like my problem.”
“Your signature is next to the larger amount, so it is potentially your problem. I weighed the evidence on a scale called a Lyman Micro-Touch 1500. It’s intended for weighing bullets. Because normally bullets are the only evidence that small that needs to be weighed with any degree of accuracy, it happened to be the only scale in the evidence lockup that weighs in fractions of grams. Now the thing about the Lyman 1500 is that if it’s been out of service for a while, you have to let it warm up for up to twenty-four hours before it stabilizes for final calibration. Up to that point, it varies by a couple of thousandths in either direction. That gives a potential range for error of point zero zero five grams, top to bottom.”
“Okay, so, there we go.”
“This is all lawyer talk I’m doing now. This is how we’ll have to counter this. The machine’s accuracy is affected if you don’t have time to warm it up for twenty-four hours and then calibrate it.”
Fisk said, “I didn’t weight it in myself. I did sign for it.”
“Okay,” said Leary.
“In lawyer speak,” said Fisk, “no matter what kind of scale you use, there will always be some level of error. So the only scientifically supportable approach is to round the observed figure to a reasonable, scientifically supportable number based on the published accuracy of the machine.”
“One hundred and thirty-nine . . . uh . . .”
“One hundred and thirty-nine point two five grams, correct.”
“But still . . . if it says in your logbook—”