The Society by Michael Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

hers.
    “Hi, Colonel,” she said. “I’m glad to see you.”
    At six-three, Moriarity was nearly a head taller than his daughter. For the briefest moment it looked to Patty as if he was going to bend down to embrace her, or kiss her on the cheek. Then he simply smiled the creased, weathered smile she loved so much, and returned the greeting.
    “You know Wayne Brasco?” she asked.
    “Of course. Your wife and family okay?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Margo, isn’t it?”
    Patty knew her father might have only met Brasco’s wife once, possibly years ago. She wasn’t the least surprised that he remembered her—he remembered everyone.
    “Yes, sir, Margo. She’s doing great.”
    “So?”
    Although the question was directed more or less to the group, Brasco was not about to pass up the opportunity to impress the colonel.
    “So, it’s another managed-care executive,” he said. “The other two looked like professional hits. So does this one. Probably Semtex, we’re guessing. I just told Corbin and Brown here about the alphabet letters we found with the other two victims. It’s my guess there must be letters in the garage.”
    Patty stifled a groan.
    “Roosevelt,” Moriarity said, “do you think you could check with the crime-scene people and get us permission to take a look in there?”
    “No problem.”
    Moments later, the detective returned and indicated that so long as they were careful, they could enter the garage through the kitchen of the house. Just leave the garage door alone until someone could determine how it might have been opened and closed by the killer without the electronic code and without anyone knowing. Stepping around and between grisly remnants of Cyrill Davenport, they entered the house through the front door.
    Using a handkerchief, Patty gently opened the door from the rear hallway to the garage. Then she extracted a slim, powerful flashlight from her purse, located the light switch, and flicked it on with a pen.
    It took just three minutes of searching before Tommy Moriarity said, “Well, Lieutenant, it looks as if you are absolutely right.”
    He indicated a heavy metal rake, tines propped up against the back wall. Impaled on the tine at each end of the row was a three-inch white square that looked as if it was cut from a file card. Meticulously, artistically printed on one card was the block letter
B
, and on the other, an
E
. Careful to touch nothing, the four of them peered at the finding as Patty further illuminated it with her light.
    “E, R, R, T, B, E,”
she said softly.
    “Heartbeat?” Corbin offered.
    “Possible,” Patty replied. “Maybe it’s parts of several words in a quote.”
    They searched the garage for another five minutes, but found nothing unusual or out of place. Back outside on the driveway, Moriarity encouraged Corbin and Brasco to keep him informed and to contact him if there was anything he could help them with, including passage around any bureaucratic roadblocks to their investigation. Then he motioned Patty to a spot on the lawn where the two of them could talk unheard.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “Good enough. You?”
    With friends, Patty often referred to herself as
the son my father wishes he had had
. Her wonderful older brother, Tom, a wilderness guide and expert fly-fisherman, was often unemployed but always busy advocating for various environmental causes. He was also openly gay and exceedingly happy—except for those infrequent times he spent with their father.
    “Soon,” Patty’s brother would say every time he ventured east from Oregon. “Soon the guy’s going to figure it all out. What a force he’ll be then.”
    Moriarity scuffed at the ground with the toe of his spit-polished shoe.
    “I’m doing all right. I miss your mother, that’s for sure.”
    It had been two years since Ruth Moriarity lost a heroic battle with ovarian cancer—two years during which Tommy seemed to have aged a dozen.
    “Yeah,” Patty said, risking a squeeze