their Sigs for old times’ sake. Enough juice to make a noticeable entry wound and a god-awful exit. The P220 was likely the same gun the UNSUB used to kill Adrien Zalentine on the sailboat.
Kurtz, genius that he was, even passed a digital image of the bullet through the IBIS database—the Integrated Ballistics Identification System—to see if he could link the Sig Sauer P220 that fired the bullet that killed Alain Zalentine to other crimes used by the same gun. Unfortunately, no matches came back. Cady figured the odds of his ever finding the actual Sig Sauer for Kurtz to positively match striations was right up there with his collaring sasquatch or stumbling across the Holy Grail. The shooter would have been a fool not to toss the Sig Sauer into Chesapeake Bay on the return trip from his tête-à-tête with Adrien Zalentine.
Cady closed the Zalentine file. He looked at his uneaten Reuben and then at the digital clock by the hotel room’s double bed. Almost two o’clock in the morning. Cady was exhausted, mentally and physically, but he wondered how well he’d sleep with thoughts of the Zalentine twins dancing in his head. Cady walked into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and asked himself repeatedly why he’d agreed to cold-case this for Jund.
Then he returned to the Zalentine files.
Cambridge PD traced the Ice Hash back to some small-time yuppie dealer named Courtenay LaMotte, a man who expanded his client list by fluttering about the upper-crust watering holes in Cambridge and neighboring communities. Turned out Courtenay LaMotte’s real name was Jim Webber. Webber was able to minimize his overhead on account of living out of his mother’s basement. He was twenty-six but looked all of fourteen, a tall twig of a boy who hadn’t yet begun to shave.
A black Cambridge detective named Allan Sears picked Webber up, brought him back to the station, tossed him in an empty interrogation room for three hours—no chairs, no table, no potty breaks—then came back in, Mirandized him, and informed Webber he was going down hard for the two Zalentine killings. Webber, sobbing like a baby, walked Sears through every dime bag he’d ever sold since junior high. The Zalentines were his best customers, always paid upfront in cash, even tipped him and placed future orders. He had absolutely no motive to kill Alain or Adrien. Unfortunately, burger and gas station receipts corroborated Webber’s alibi that he’d been in Virginia, buying ecstasy tablets from his source, when Alain and Adrien had been murdered.
Detective Sears came to Adrien’s condo to let Agent Cady know the results of the Ice Hash connection, walked in, saw Cady standing in the kitchen, looked at the island, then turned and left. A minute later Sears came back in and said, “Have you checked his hidey-hole?”
“What do you mean?” Cady asked.
“In Alain’s kitchen space, the island is
Better Homes & Gardens
. Open cupboards below the tabletop to stack the fancy pots and pans they never used. But Adrien has his island space walled off, looks okay with the wooden doors on one side, but that’s how it looks in, say, my house. Certainly not
Better Homes & Gardens
.”
Cady squatted down. “You’re right. Both condos mirror each other, except for this. Why would the designer go pedestrian in one condo and high class in the other?”
“More likely Adrien did some remodeling,” Sears said. “When I worked in Baltimore, we had this child pornographer dead to rights, a real sick piece of work. He wasn’t downloading, he was distributing. We warranted his house, found his cameras and picture rooms, but no pictures, not even digitals in the various cameras. So we sledge-hammered the island and hit the mother lode. Eight cameras full of the most disturbing shit you can imagine, and about twenty pounds of hard copies. He’s doing life in Hagerstown—that is, if the other inmates let him.”
Cady began knocking on the wooden panel of the
Kurtz, genius that he was, even passed a digital image of the bullet through the IBIS database—the Integrated Ballistics Identification System—to see if he could link the Sig Sauer P220 that fired the bullet that killed Alain Zalentine to other crimes used by the same gun. Unfortunately, no matches came back. Cady figured the odds of his ever finding the actual Sig Sauer for Kurtz to positively match striations was right up there with his collaring sasquatch or stumbling across the Holy Grail. The shooter would have been a fool not to toss the Sig Sauer into Chesapeake Bay on the return trip from his tête-à-tête with Adrien Zalentine.
Cady closed the Zalentine file. He looked at his uneaten Reuben and then at the digital clock by the hotel room’s double bed. Almost two o’clock in the morning. Cady was exhausted, mentally and physically, but he wondered how well he’d sleep with thoughts of the Zalentine twins dancing in his head. Cady walked into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and asked himself repeatedly why he’d agreed to cold-case this for Jund.
Then he returned to the Zalentine files.
Cambridge PD traced the Ice Hash back to some small-time yuppie dealer named Courtenay LaMotte, a man who expanded his client list by fluttering about the upper-crust watering holes in Cambridge and neighboring communities. Turned out Courtenay LaMotte’s real name was Jim Webber. Webber was able to minimize his overhead on account of living out of his mother’s basement. He was twenty-six but looked all of fourteen, a tall twig of a boy who hadn’t yet begun to shave.
A black Cambridge detective named Allan Sears picked Webber up, brought him back to the station, tossed him in an empty interrogation room for three hours—no chairs, no table, no potty breaks—then came back in, Mirandized him, and informed Webber he was going down hard for the two Zalentine killings. Webber, sobbing like a baby, walked Sears through every dime bag he’d ever sold since junior high. The Zalentines were his best customers, always paid upfront in cash, even tipped him and placed future orders. He had absolutely no motive to kill Alain or Adrien. Unfortunately, burger and gas station receipts corroborated Webber’s alibi that he’d been in Virginia, buying ecstasy tablets from his source, when Alain and Adrien had been murdered.
Detective Sears came to Adrien’s condo to let Agent Cady know the results of the Ice Hash connection, walked in, saw Cady standing in the kitchen, looked at the island, then turned and left. A minute later Sears came back in and said, “Have you checked his hidey-hole?”
“What do you mean?” Cady asked.
“In Alain’s kitchen space, the island is
Better Homes & Gardens
. Open cupboards below the tabletop to stack the fancy pots and pans they never used. But Adrien has his island space walled off, looks okay with the wooden doors on one side, but that’s how it looks in, say, my house. Certainly not
Better Homes & Gardens
.”
Cady squatted down. “You’re right. Both condos mirror each other, except for this. Why would the designer go pedestrian in one condo and high class in the other?”
“More likely Adrien did some remodeling,” Sears said. “When I worked in Baltimore, we had this child pornographer dead to rights, a real sick piece of work. He wasn’t downloading, he was distributing. We warranted his house, found his cameras and picture rooms, but no pictures, not even digitals in the various cameras. So we sledge-hammered the island and hit the mother lode. Eight cameras full of the most disturbing shit you can imagine, and about twenty pounds of hard copies. He’s doing life in Hagerstown—that is, if the other inmates let him.”
Cady began knocking on the wooden panel of the
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