Hidden Order

CHAPTER 57

To his credit, Harvath not only didn’t mind going out for coffee, he actually found some and it wasn’t half bad. He returned with three cups in a cardboard tray.

The evidence techs still hadn’t arrived yet, but Cordero had made a significant find.

“Check this out,” she said, holding up a clear plastic bag. Inside, there was a piece of black card stock the size of a business card. On one side, printed in blood red, was a skull and bones with a floating crown. On the other side were the words I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

It was followed by the letters S.O.L.

“I think that’s a line from John Hancock,” said Harvath.

Sal held up his smartphone. “Correct. Part of the speech he gave on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.”

“Why is it printed on a card? And why leave it here?”

“Maybe it was left by accident,” said Cordero.

“Where’d you find it?”

“Behind where the crates were stacked up against the wall.”

She had a point. Maybe it had been left by accident. One thing was for certain, though: finding this warehouse was a huge breakthrough. At least he hoped it would be.

“What else have you been able to find?” he asked.

“Other than that card and the blouse,” replied the female detective, “nothing.”

“There’s got to be something more here. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“You’re welcome to look around,” said the male detective. “If you find anything, just don’t touch it. Call one of us or one of the FBI agents.”

Harvath nodded and went to the other end of the warehouse. He was used to hitting terrorist safe houses where the kind of evidence he was expected to collect were things like thumb drives, CDs, and written documents, not hair and fiber samples.

Finding the card with the Hancock quote, though, had been huge. They were definitely in the right spot. The only question was, had any other clues been left behind?

Once the crime scene techs arrived, they would go through the laborious process of dusting for prints. Undoubtedly, they’d find a ton and he didn’t envy the person or persons who would be charged with having to run all of them down. Considering a building of this size with this many surfaces, the question wasn’t what to dust, but what not to?

He figured they’d do the obvious items like the crates, the chain attached to the wall near where the blouse was found, the door handles, the light switches, and any bathroom surfaces. Other than that, it was anybody’s guess, though he knew there was a strict procedure both the police and FBI followed.

What he was looking for as he walked through was something out of the ordinary, something that didn’t belong or something that was conspicuous because it wasn’t there.

Whoever had been using this location had probably been here since the early hours of Monday morning. That was only two days ago. If they were careless enough to leave one of those cards behind, where else had they screwed up? Was the blouse a mistake? Or was it left on purpose? Or did they simply not care about it?

The fact that the metal thief had seen multiple males in the warehouse backed up the theory that they were dealing with a team. The fact that they were carrying what looked like submachine guns bolstered the hypothesis that they were well trained, possibly even aligned with a military or intelligence organization. Add to that the way in which the victims had been killed, particularly the ear removal of Claire Marcourt and Kelly Davis, and it looked like Bill Wise’s Swim Club was a real potential factor in this entire thing.

As Harvath continued to walk the building, his mind was drawn to the passage on the back of the card from John Hancock. As he had been laying out the time line for Cordero, the Boston Massacre was the next big event he was going to mention before her commander had interrupted them.

What if the killer’s next murder scene wasn’t going to be Boston Common or Faneuil Hall, where the two regiments of British troops had stayed, but the actual site of the Boston Massacre?

The more he thought about it, the more the idea began to crowd out all other possibilities. The line from Hancock had to be tied to where the killer was going to strike next. It had to be.

The only question that remained was whether they should spend any more time at all in the warehouse or turn it over to the evidence techs and try to get a jump on the next location. Actually, there wasn’t any question at all.

Giving up his search, Harvath turned around and walked quickly back to find Cordero. If they did this right, they might be able to set up a trap and have the killer walk right into it.