Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 66

Koenig grabbed another beer and made his way to the Gulfstream’s intelligence hub. He closed the door behind him. He set up a laptop on the narrow table and opened the police files Draper’s guys had uploaded.

He started with Hank Reynolds, the man who’d hanged himself with the cord from his hotel dressing gown. A suicide note had been found on his open laptop. It hinted, but didn’t explicitly say, that he was tired of living as a straight man. Koenig thought this death would be the easiest to confirm one way or the other. Hangings and strangulations left different wounds. He would know if someone had staged a hanging. The ligature furrow would be horizontal. He scrolled through to the autopsy photographs. Sure enough, the wound was where he’d have expected it to be – underneath the jaw.

He read the suicide note, but it offered nothing. It was vague, but the language was consistent with other documents he’d written. The investigating cop’s report stated that Reynolds had dinner with an unidentified male and had seemed in good spirits. He’d had half a dozen whiskey sours, then returned to his room. He was discovered in the morning by the maid. The police report didn’t offer an opinion as to why Reynolds had chosen to kill himself in Coos County, Oregon, but suicidal people were rarely thinking clearly.

Koenig read about Louise Durose next. She was a sanitation engineer from San Diego. She and the man she’d hooked up with at a convention had been beaten to death in a New Jersey alley. Carlyle believed Louise was the target, and the man was collateral damage. She refused to explain why. Condoms and erectile dysfunction pills had been found in Louise’s purse. The detective investigating the double murder concluded they’d been looking for a third person to turn a twosome into a threesome – his words, not Koenig’s – and had crossed the wrong pimp. Koenig thought that was a jump. Pimps lived under near constant threat, and they habitually carried firearms. He didn’t think a pimp would use a brick. He thought a mugging gone wrong was more likely. That someone had used a weapon of convenience. Other than that, Koenig couldn’t see anything to suggest their deaths were anything other than a tragic case of wrong place, wrong time.

He read the statement from the cop who’d delivered the death knock to her ex-partner, the man who was battling Louise Durose for custody of their chocolate Labrador, Dexter. On hearing about her murder, he’d said, ‘Does this mean I can sell this asshole dog now?’ Nice guy.

The last file belonged to Michael Gibbs, the guy who’d driven his wife’s station wagon off Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park. Koenig spent the least amount of time on this one. The accident investigation unit report was unequivocal. It had been an accident. The officer in charge said it was likely Gibbs had fallen asleep at the wheel after a heavy meal. It was why there were no skid marks on the bend in the road. The barriers had been no match for the heavy station wagon.

Koenig shut the laptop and sighed. Reading reports like these had been part of the job in his SOG days. He hadn’t missed them.

The soundproof door opened. Draper stepped through. She shut it behind her.

‘Smerconish has called. He wants to know what happened in Scotland.’

‘How did he know it was us?’

‘We left the embassy Jag.’

‘Of course. What did you tell him?’

‘Not as much as he wanted.’

Koenig grunted. He didn’t trust Smerconish. The firefight at the airstrip meant someone had accessed the Gulfstream’s flight plan. That kind of information wasn’t readily available.

‘Anything?’ Draper asked, tilting her head at the laptop.

He shook his head. ‘A suicide, a mugging and an accident, as far as I can tell. With the same information, I’d have reached the same conclusions.’ He paused a beat. Opened the laptop again. ‘But I’m going to keep looking.’