Chapter One
Washington, DC,
August 8, 7:32 a.m.
“Unit Twenty-Four.”
“This is Twenty-Four, dispatch.”
“Unit Twenty-Four, see to report of an injured party at 1400 16th Street, Northwest. EMTs are en route.”
“Twenty-Four, roger.”
Officer Timothy Wisniewski of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department turned the marked unit southward onto 16th Street and activated his lights and siren. He glanced at his watch, noting the time he’d have to enter on the report when he wrote up the call.
Zero-seven, three-two hours. Seven thirty-two a.m.
He pulled to the curb in front of the building. A crowd had gathered around a figure lying on the sidewalk just inside the green barrier fence that ran along the curb.
They’re sure not getting too close to the guy, he thought.
The spectators had established an invisible barrier of about fifteen feet between themselves and the man on the ground. Some shook their heads, some covered their mouths with their hands. Some turned and ran away. One mother ushered her child away from the scene, glancing back over her shoulder in horror.
Nobody wants to help. Nobody wants to get involved.
Wisniewski jumped out and jogged around the front of the cruiser. A male, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a Philadelphia 76ers jersey was lying on his back, feet pointed north. His shoulders were facing south, toward Lafayette Park and the White House. A narrow rivulet of blood had left a dark-brown stain flowing down the sidewalk. Wisnewski leaned over the railing and looked at the figure, then reached for the microphone on the shoulder of his uniform.
“Dispatch, Unit Twenty-Four.”
“Twenty-Four.”
“Cancel the medics on that call for 1400 16th Northwest. Start homicide and alert the medical examiner.”
“Medics are en route Twenty-Four. Are you sure—?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Turn ’em around. This body has no head on it.”
He returned to the cruiser for a roll of crime scene tape and traffic cones, and was cordoning off the area when a green Buick pulled in behind his cruiser. A large figure in a navy-blue suit emerged, his shaved black head shining in the sun.
“Hello, Dix. I heard you’d gone back to Homicide.”
“Tim.” Detective Dixon Carter barely acknowledged the patrolman; he was already looking over the scene.
“Anybody here see anything?” Carter asked, still looking at the body.
“Haven’t really had time to do anything but roll out the tape. You got here pretty quick. From what I’ve overheard in the crowd, he was lying here when folks started showing up for work this morning.”
The bystanders closest to them overheard the exchange. Wisniewski saw them start to pull away, hoping to avoid the questions that were sure to delay them. They had things to do. Coffee to drink, newspapers to read. It was only another murder, after all. The District had hundreds every year.
“Just stay put for a minute, folks.”
Carter’s deep baritone froze them. He pulled out a small notepad and pen and started working the crowd.
“Anyone here see how this body got here? Anyone see any vehicles pulling away from
this area?”
A chorus of no’s answered him.
“Anyone have any idea who this might be?” Carter shouted.
A tall, distinguished-looking man pushed his way to the front of the crowd, flanked by four younger men in business suits. He looked down at the body, his shoulders slumping.
“It is my son.”
Carter was by the man’s side instantly. Wisniewski pushed the crowd back, assisted by four other uniformed officers who had just pulled up to help control the scene.
“How do you recognize him, sir?” Carter asked, his eyes sweeping the entourage that had followed the gentleman. Two of the four men kept reaching inside their coats. The older man saw the concern on Carter’s face. He turned and spoke to his escort in Spanish, and they seemed to relax.
“Please forgive me, officer,” the older man said. He was tall and slim with streaks of gray lining the temples in his otherwise coal-black hair. “I am Juan Carlos Lopez-Portillo, the ambassador to your country from El Salvador.”
“Mr. Ambassador,” Carter nodded, accepting the claim for the moment. “Can you tell me how you were able to make it here so fast, assuming this is your son, as you say?”
“My embassy is inside this building. Suite one-hundred.” The man’s voice was hollow and breaking, his gaze still fixed on the body on the sidewalk. “I am sure it is my son, Armando.” He pointed toward the body. “The birthmark on the left arm. There is a high-school class ring on his left hand. You will find his name engraved on the inside.”
A medical examiner’s van arrived, backing in at the front of Wisniewski’s cruiser. A second van had also pulled in behind his car. Wisniewski recognized it as one of the District’s crime scene vehicles.
“Where will you be taking him?” Lopez-Portillo asked Carter.
“He’ll be going to the morgue for an autopsy, Mr. Ambassador,” Carter said. “We’ll need to take a statement from you. If the ring confirms what you’ve said, we’ll certainly let you know, and the body will be released to you. The medical examiner will want to get some DNA samples from you, too. We have to preserve any evidence at this point. When was the last time you saw your son, sir?”
“Three days ago. He didn’t come home from school.”
“Did you call the police or file a report of any kind?”
“I’m afraid not. It is not the first time.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done this, sir?”
“No.”
The ambassador motioned to his escort and turned to leave. He handed Carter a card.
“You can reach me at this number. Please call me when we can take him home. If you’ll excuse me, I have to call his mother.”
“Of course.”
The ambassador walked back toward the building, his escorts separating the crowd for him.
The crime scene technicians were finishing with their photographs. There wasn’t much else for them to do on this one. No shell casings. No footprints. No personal effects dropped by the victim. No neighborhood to canvass for witnesses. This was a business district, and the bystanders who had seen nothing were already trying to get away from the scene. Just a headless corpse dumped on a sidewalk. They’d comb the immediate area anyway, in case the head had been tossed into a trash can or bloodstains could be located nearby, but they’d probably find nothing. Carter nodded to the medical examiner’s crew, who began to load the body onto a gurney.
“An ambassador’s kid?” Wisniewski asked.
“That’s the way it looks for now,” Carter nodded. “An ambassador who knows more than he wanted to tell me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He acted like he’d seen this coming,” Carter said. “His reaction was more like a father getting the news that his kid didn’t make it through a risky heart surgery. No shock, just grief. I asked him if he knew who could have done it, and he paused just a second before saying no, meaning he has some idea, but didn’t want to say anything. His kid’s headless body is lying on the sidewalk, and he doesn’t sob, doesn’t even cry out in anger.” Carter shook his head. “This one’s going to be weird.”
***
Inside the embassy, the ambassador returned the telephone to its cradle. His wife now knew. He dispatched an aide to be with her, telling the subordinate he would be on his way home shortly. He felt numb, sick, impotent. He picked up the phone again and dialed the international call from memory. When the voice answered, he did not say hello.
“You were right, old friend. I should have listened to your advice earlier. They have murdered my son. I want you here as soon as possible.”
The man in San Salvador hung up. He adjusted the black patch over his left eye before picking up the cell phone again and selecting the third number in its memory. When the ringtone stopped, he spoke in Spanish: “I need six. Get them immediately. We’ll be leaving this afternoon. Put them in a suitcase with a lock on it and meet me at the airport.”
***
San Salvador, El Salvador
August 8, 3:05 p.m.
As the blue sedan pulled into the passenger-unloading zone in front of the Comalapa International Airport in San Salvador, Special Agent Jason Mays of the Drug Enforcement Administration pulled the digital camera up to his eyes with his right hand and held a radio to his left ear with the other.
“You in position?”
“Yep. We’ll make the grab soon as he’s inside.”
“Stay out of sight for now. I’ll let you know as soon as he heads that way.”
“Roger.”
Mays swatted a fly away from his face and leaned against the tree. He adjusted the zoom and watched through the camera’s viewfinder as the driver of the sedan pulled a stainless-steel suitcase from the trunk of the car. Instead of heading into the terminal, however, the driver stood with the suitcase on the sidewalk, obviously waiting for someone.
“We may have a change in the ops plan –” Mays began.
He was about to direct the team outside, to the front of the terminal, when he saw a well-dressed man wearing an eye patch take the suitcase from the driver. The case was then transferred immediately to a team of six bodyguards who were following the man with the patch. One of them slapped some large, bright stickers on the outside of the case and tossed it on the top of a luggage rack already loaded with several other cases that all bore the same set of stickers. Mays hit the auto-shutter button and clicked off as many shots of the group as he could before lowering the camera in disgust.
“Dammit.” He raised the radio to his ear. “Abort.”
“What? Why, Jay?”
“Just abort the damned operation. See if you can tail the guy who made the drop. I’ll tell you why back at the office.”
At 4:45 p.m., the man with the eye patch and the others left El Salvador on Transportes Aéreos del Continente Americano Flight 580, bound for JFK.
***
Washington, DC,
August 8, 10:17 p.m.
Diego Morales smiled nervously at the gathering of twenty-five tattooed men who had surrounded him in the backyard of the house in the 3100 block of Georgia Avenue, NW. He had looked forward to this moment for months, but had also dreaded it.
“You did well, Diego. Very well.”
The leader of the group – a solidly built Hispanic male with a shaved head – nodded approvingly, and tapped the numbers inked into his left shoulder.
“Now it is your time.”
“Sí, Esteban.”
The leadernodded again, and held up a stopwatch as six of the gang members stepped forward, circling the boy.
“Begin.”
Diego covered his head as well as he could while the blows rained down on him. He felt the impact of a leather glove as it slammed into his forehead, opening a cut that started blood flowing into his left eye. He dropped to a knee and tried to bring his arms over the top of his head, but he was losing the battle now, his arms drooping from the pain of the punches and kicks. He felt himself sagging to the ground just before he lost consciousness. The beating continued.
“Not too hard. We don’t want to kill him,” Esteban cautioned.
He watched as the second hand approached the mark on the dial, signaling the end of the thirteenth second.
“Halto.”
He motioned again, and the six men who had beaten Diego picked the boy up and carried him gently toward the house.
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