The Sinai Secret by Gregg Loomis Read Free Book Online

whoever had killed Lewis.
    Or was it?
    The destruction and disarray of the laboratory had been intended to look like a random invasion. What was it Morse had said? A junkie looking to feed a habit. Yet the missing hard drive and notebook pages belied the scenario the killer had wanted believed.
    Lang's condominium had been searched by a professional, someone after something very specific. Someone who didn't intend Lang to know.
    Or someone leaving something behind.
    Standing, he crossed his condo back and forth, removing every switch plate and the cover for every electrical outlet.
    He found it in the telephone's receiver. It was a device about the size of the battery for a hearing aid. Not only every word spoken on the phone would be transmitted, but every sound in the apartment as well. He suppressed his rage at the invasion of his personal space and his gut reaction to remove it. Instead he left it in place.
    It might be useful.
    Before he left, Lang took two hairs from his head. Licking his finger, he stuck the first one to the top of the knob on the door that let out onto the common hallway. The second he put on the underside. Both would fall off at the slightest touch. Any professional would expect the possibility that he had left a telltale and would replace it.
    Not many would anticipate a second.

SEVEN

    Peachtree Center
    227 Peachtree Street
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Thirty Minutes Later
    As usual, Sara was already at her desk outside his office when Lang walked in. He frowned as he took the stack of pink call slips.
    "The mayor said it was, important," she called after him.
    It always was.
    To the mayor.
    Unable to find work with any Atlanta firm amid the very public federal investigation at the end of his term, the mayor had joined a personal-injury group in South Florida where mere suspicion would go unnoticed among the indigenous sleaze.
    But the mayor had not moved far enough away to prevent micromanagement of his defense with daily multiple phone calls and at least one trip to Lang's office per month.
    The note said the mayor wanted to discuss the tax- evasion counts, possibly the toughest to beat. If you spent it, you presumably had it. Explaining the source of large sums of cash was likely to be embarrassing if not incriminating. The mayor's credit cards reflected less than a thousand dollars a year charged in spite of a publicly flamboyant lifestyle. The gambling trips, the gifts, the dinners had been paid for in cash. Cash was both untraceable and suspect. The excuse of weekly poker games in some crony's basement wasn't going to satisfy the U.S. Attorney. Those proceeds hadn't been reported, either.
    The mayor blamed the failure to declare the money on his personal inability to keep adequate books. The government blamed it on his personal inability to keep his hands out of any funds being paid to contractors by the city.
    The mayor's salary had been $110,000 per year. In his last twelve months in office he had taken a trip to Paris, half a dozen junkets to Las Vegas, and enjoyed very expensive seats at both the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game— all paid for with cash. And he had used cash to purchase a few trinkets such as jewelry and clothing for various female companions, none of whom had been his wife.
    Neither fidelity nor frugality was among the mayor's attributes.
    When asked about the former by an ever-voracious press, the mayor's comment had been, "But I never missed one of my son's basketball games."
    Swell. A father-of-the-year award was not a defense.
    Lang wadded the pink slip and sank a three-pointer into the wastebasket beside Sara's desk.
    He was almost through returning his other calls when Sara stood impatiently in his doorway.
    Lang covered the receiver. "What?"
    "There's a man from the FBI here to see you, a Mr. Witherspoon."
    Odd.
    With the arrogance that had persisted since the Hoover days, the Fibbies usually summoned people to their offices. He guessed Witherspoon wanted