“I know that I’m not sitting in Cell Block Nineteen in Pollsmoor Prison. And I know that you made the arrangements for my jailbreak. But to be entirely honest, I have no idea why.”
“Ah,” Dyson said, arching his brows as if the matter hadn’t before occurred to him. “Right. Well, I hoped we might have a little talk, you and I. I have sort of a business proposition for you.”
“Yes,” Baumann said mildly, and then gave one of his brilliant smiles. “I didn’t think it would take you long to get around to that.”
CHAPTER NINE
Early the next morning, Sarah arrived at the FBI Boston field office and took the photocopies of Valerie Santoro’s handwritten Rolodex cards to the counter where the computer searches were done. A young Latino clerk-trainee named Hector took the sheets and squinted at Sarah amiably. “You want these run through NCIC?”
The FBI’s computerized National Crime Information Center database is used by police whenever they stop a motorist, to check for stolen vehicles, cash, and guns, as well as fugitives, missing children, and missing adults. It would also tell her which of Val’s clients had criminal records or warrants outstanding.
“Right,” she replied. “And Intelligence and Criminal. And of course FOIMS. See if we get a hit.” FOIMS, the Field Office Information Management System, was the FBI’s main database.
The Boston office of the FBI occupies four floors of an enormous curved modern building called One Center Plaza. Sarah’s cubicle was located on the building’s fifth floor, where the Organized Crime and drug squads shared space. The vast expanse of floor was covered in tan wall-to-wall carpeting. Long blue partitions separated small office areas known as pods, two or three desks equipped with telephones, walkie-talkie radios, and, on some desks but not all, computer terminals. The younger agents tended to be computer-literate, unlike their older colleagues, who left the computer-search headaches to the folks in Indices, at the other end of the floor. Next to her desk was a paper shredder.
Apart from the usual equipment, Sarah’s desk held her Sig-Sauer pistol in its holster in a small green canvas bag (a pistol was standard issue in both drugs and OC), her pager, and a few personalizing touches: a framed photograph of her parents sitting on the couch at home in Bellingham, Washington, and a framed snapshot of Jared in his hockey uniform, holding a stick, smiling broadly, displaying his two large front teeth.
The atmosphere was quiet, yet bustling. It could have been any private corporation in the country. The FBI had moved here a few years ago from the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building across the street, where the whole Boston office had been crowded onto one big open floor, noisy and boisterous and gregarious, and you could hear what everyone else was doing at every moment.
She returned to her desk, gazed for a moment out at the Suffolk County Courthouse, leafed through the photocopies of Val’s appointment book that Peter had had made.
The entries were brief and unrevealing. Val did not record the names of her clients, just times and places. On the night she was murdered, she’d had two appointments, one at eight o’clock at the Four Seasons, the other at eleven o’clock at the Ritz. It wasn’t out of the question that one of these two “clients” had followed her home after an assignation and murdered her. The possibility couldn’t be ruled out.
Had Valerie Santoro been murdered because someone had discovered she was an FBI informant? If so, was it one of her clients? Valerie’s information had helped Sarah make two major OC cases; quite likely she’d been the victim of an organized-crime hit.
Sarah was one of a handful of women in the Boston office, and for some reason she hadn’t become friends with any of the others. Her closest work friend was her partner and podmate, an immense grizzly bear of a man named Kenneth Alton, who was
“Ah,” Dyson said, arching his brows as if the matter hadn’t before occurred to him. “Right. Well, I hoped we might have a little talk, you and I. I have sort of a business proposition for you.”
“Yes,” Baumann said mildly, and then gave one of his brilliant smiles. “I didn’t think it would take you long to get around to that.”
CHAPTER NINE
Early the next morning, Sarah arrived at the FBI Boston field office and took the photocopies of Valerie Santoro’s handwritten Rolodex cards to the counter where the computer searches were done. A young Latino clerk-trainee named Hector took the sheets and squinted at Sarah amiably. “You want these run through NCIC?”
The FBI’s computerized National Crime Information Center database is used by police whenever they stop a motorist, to check for stolen vehicles, cash, and guns, as well as fugitives, missing children, and missing adults. It would also tell her which of Val’s clients had criminal records or warrants outstanding.
“Right,” she replied. “And Intelligence and Criminal. And of course FOIMS. See if we get a hit.” FOIMS, the Field Office Information Management System, was the FBI’s main database.
The Boston office of the FBI occupies four floors of an enormous curved modern building called One Center Plaza. Sarah’s cubicle was located on the building’s fifth floor, where the Organized Crime and drug squads shared space. The vast expanse of floor was covered in tan wall-to-wall carpeting. Long blue partitions separated small office areas known as pods, two or three desks equipped with telephones, walkie-talkie radios, and, on some desks but not all, computer terminals. The younger agents tended to be computer-literate, unlike their older colleagues, who left the computer-search headaches to the folks in Indices, at the other end of the floor. Next to her desk was a paper shredder.
Apart from the usual equipment, Sarah’s desk held her Sig-Sauer pistol in its holster in a small green canvas bag (a pistol was standard issue in both drugs and OC), her pager, and a few personalizing touches: a framed photograph of her parents sitting on the couch at home in Bellingham, Washington, and a framed snapshot of Jared in his hockey uniform, holding a stick, smiling broadly, displaying his two large front teeth.
The atmosphere was quiet, yet bustling. It could have been any private corporation in the country. The FBI had moved here a few years ago from the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building across the street, where the whole Boston office had been crowded onto one big open floor, noisy and boisterous and gregarious, and you could hear what everyone else was doing at every moment.
She returned to her desk, gazed for a moment out at the Suffolk County Courthouse, leafed through the photocopies of Val’s appointment book that Peter had had made.
The entries were brief and unrevealing. Val did not record the names of her clients, just times and places. On the night she was murdered, she’d had two appointments, one at eight o’clock at the Four Seasons, the other at eleven o’clock at the Ritz. It wasn’t out of the question that one of these two “clients” had followed her home after an assignation and murdered her. The possibility couldn’t be ruled out.
Had Valerie Santoro been murdered because someone had discovered she was an FBI informant? If so, was it one of her clients? Valerie’s information had helped Sarah make two major OC cases; quite likely she’d been the victim of an organized-crime hit.
Sarah was one of a handful of women in the Boston office, and for some reason she hadn’t become friends with any of the others. Her closest work friend was her partner and podmate, an immense grizzly bear of a man named Kenneth Alton, who was
Similar Books
