Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 68

It was crowded in the Gulfstream’s central compartment, but Koenig wanted Draper, Carlyle and Margaret to see everything the way he had – together. He laid out seven photographs on the table. Arranged them so they were visible to everyone. He placed the yellow ink cartridge next to the photographs. That was all he needed.

Three photographs were from the Hank Reynolds file. The fruit bowl, a photograph of the trash can under the dressing table, and a photograph of the trash can in his bathroom.

The fourth photograph was the gap on the wall in Louise Durose’s hotel room where the missing print should have been. The fifth wasn’t a CSI photograph; it was a picture of Van Gogh’s Chair that Koenig had printed off the internet.

The sixth and seventh photographs were of Michael Gibbs’s station wagon. One with the smiley-face air freshener, the other without it.

‘Tell me what you see,’ Koenig said.

‘We were due to land in DC in three hours,’ Draper said. ‘Now you’re saying we’re going to JFK. If that’s the case, I need to tell the pilot now. Stop dicking around and tell us what you’ve found.’

‘I’m not being a jerk,’ he said. ‘I need to know I haven’t made a connection that isn’t there.’

‘We don’t have time—’

‘Is it a puzzle, Benjamin?’ Margaret cut in.

‘Sort of, Margaret,’ Koenig replied.

She readjusted her hairpin, then said, ‘In that case, I’ll need a pot of tea and some biscuits.’

‘Why did you include a picture of Van Gogh’s Chair among these police photographs?’ Margaret asked.

It was the first time in five minutes that anyone had spoken. Draper, after huffing and puffing and moaning about changing flight plans at the last minute and a bunch of other stuff Koenig didn’t listen to, had settled down and studied the photographs the same as everyone else.

‘It was the print that was stolen from Louise Durose’s hotel room,’ Koenig explained.

‘Was it valuable?’ she asked.

‘About three bucks.’

‘Did Louise steal it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then who?’

Koenig didn’t answer.

‘Yellow,’ Draper said. ‘That’s what connects everything – the colour yellow.’

‘Explain,’ Koenig said.

‘The smiley-face air freshener is missing from the wrecked station wagon,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t missing when Gibbs arrived at the restaurant. The dominant colour in Van Gogh’s Chair is yellow. It should have been hanging in Durose’s hotel room, but it wasn’t. Like you said, someone removed it.’

She picked up the three photographs taken in Hank Reynolds’s hotel room: the fruit bowl, the bedroom trash can and the bathroom trash can. She studied them, blowing a wisp of hair out of her eyes as she did. She barely paused before she said, ‘Bananas. There’s no banana in his fruit bowl. You included the trash cans to show he didn’t eat it when he got back to his room?’

Koenig nodded.

‘Perhaps he took it with him?’ Carlyle said.

‘I rang housekeeping, and the room was serviced while he was out,’ Koenig said. ‘Each fruit bowl gets one red apple, one green apple, one orange and one banana.’

‘OK,’ Draper said. ‘If we accept that for reasons unknown, everything yellow has been removed from Hank Reynolds’s hotel room and Michael Gibbs’s station wagon, why did Van Gogh’s Chair need to be removed from Louise Durose’s hotel room? How does that fit? She wasn’t murdered in her room; she was murdered in an alleyway.’

‘I’m guessing now,’ Koenig said. ‘But I think whoever is behind this planned to kill her in her room. Probably another staged suicide. Pills, not hanging. Statistically, that’s how women kill themselves. But Louise went off script. She hooked up with someone. Was on her way back to her hotel room with him. I think one of the killers improvised. Beat Louise to death with a brick. I think Bess is right; the man she hooked up with was collateral damage.’

‘You said one of them improvised? You think it’s a team?’

‘I do.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve heard of them.’

‘And removing yellow from the crime scene is kinda their calling card?’ Carlyle said. ‘A way to taunt the cops? Like the Beltway snipers leaving tarot cards and the Night Stalker leaving pentagrams?’

‘Nothing like that,’ Koenig said, shaking his head.

‘I don’t understand then.’

‘No reason you would, Bess. You were military. Jen was CIA, then private intelligence. And Margaret’s an academic. But I was law enforcement. I was tuned in to a different kind of rumour mill. One that was fed at both ends – by the cops and the robbers. And during my last few months with the SOG, there was a rumour about a father-and-daughter contract-killing team. High end. Referrals only. Most of us dismissed it. But it was persistent. Kept cropping up when perps were trying to make deals.’

‘And the yellow?’

‘Way I heard it, the dad has xanthophobia,’ Koenig said.

‘Which is?’

‘For the dad it’s a debilitating condition that makes it impossible for him to be near the colour yellow. For the daughter it’s employment. She goes on ahead and cleans the kill zone of anything yellow like—’

‘Bananas, Van Gogh prints and smiley-face air fresheners?’

‘Exactly, Bess,’ Koenig said. ‘She cleans the kill zone, then he moves in and does the actual deed.’

‘Do you know how to find them?’ Draper said.

‘I’m not even sure they exist.’

‘But you want to go to New York anyway? What’s your plan? Stand on the corner of 53rd and 3rd with a caged canary, see who pukes?’

‘We’re not going to New York to stand on a street corner,’ Koenig said. ‘We’re going to New York to offer someone the deal of a lifetime.’ He paused. ‘If she’s still speaking to me, that is,’ he added.

‘If who’s still speaking to you?’

Koenig told her.

‘Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding,’ she said.