Page 68 of Paranoia

“This is the perfect placeandtime. Are you crazy? I’ve killed guys for doing less than you just did.”

Doyle realized the mistake he’d made. While Joe sat there and stared at him, open-mouthed, Doyle reached into his pocket and, with a flick of his thumb and wrist, popped out the four-inch folding knife he kept honed to a ridiculous edge. With no hesitation, he jabbed the blade straight up under Joe’s chin.

The steel blade passed through Joe’s soft palate at the roof of his mouth and into his brain. It caught him midsentence. Doyle wasn’t even sure what the hit man had been saying. He just stopped. There wasn’t even a change in his eyes. He was still staring straight ahead as Doyle slowly withdrew the blade.

Joe flopped over onto the roof. There was some blood, but not that much. The attack was so swift his heart only beat a few times after the blow.

Doyle recognized he’d made an error. He just couldn’t stand to see a guy like Joe shoot someone like Bennett. If anyone asked him, Doyle wouldn’t be able to explain it. Especially in light of the fact that he had killed dozens on his own.

He’d make a quick call to his friend Amir. No one would ever find a trace of Joe’s body. He’d tell his employer he didn’t knowwhat happened to Joe. He intended to say, “We tried to find Bennett but couldn’t.”

Doyle took a moment to unscrew the rifle and stick it back in its fancy case. Then he started to slide Joe toward the rooftop door. It only took a few seconds of dragging the fat hit man for Doyle to realize he should’ve stabbed him on the first floor, not on the roof.

CHAPTER 99

AFTER A QUICK stop at One Police Plaza so Rob Trilling could pick up a piece of fingerprinting equipment from a forensics tech friend of his, we found ourselves back on Staten Island in front of Roger Dzoriack’s apartment. Crime-scene tape still hung across his doorway in a giant X.

I considered knocking on Lesa Holstine’s door but didn’t want to disturb the cats. I noticed my business card was still stuck in the other neighbor’s door—strange that she hadn’t been home since we were here the last time. But we were working against the clock. I wanted this done as soon as possible.

Once we were inside the apartment, Trilling showed me the high-tech camera he’d borrowed. Trilling said, “I can take a photo of the print with some oblique light and load it directly into the database from this camera. I told Walter to be on the lookout andI’ll send him an email so he can start working his magic if we find a usable print.”

I broke out my old-school fingerprint kit with a brush. I don’t know why I thought this might lead somewhere. Only about a quarter of crime scenes have usable prints connected to the crime. But everything about this apartment seemed to say we had a chance. One resident. Few visitors. Many possibilities. I had hope.

I checked the table near the bed. There were several fingerprints on the lacquered wood, but I easily eliminated them all as Roger Dzoriack’s. Same in the bathroom and on the bedroom doorknob.

Trilling called to me from the kitchen. “It looks like there’s a decent thumbprint on the kitchen faucet. It’s flat and shiny. And it looks a little different from the others. We could have a winner.”

I took my little kit into the kitchen, to the area Trilling pointed out. He was right. There seemed to be a perfect, complete thumbprint. Trilling used a flashlight and took a digital photo of the print. I checked it against both thumbprints of Roger Dzoriack. Neither matched. The victim had a big loop, and this print had a whorl in the same place. In the olden days, or what I call my earlier career, we would lift prints with tape. Just to be cautious, I ran the light brush of my kit over the print and captured it on adhesive tape as well.

I checked a few more places without luck and decided I had to be satisfied with this print. I turned to Trilling and said, “How long before we can get that thumbprint in the system?”

“Already done. I texted Walter to forward the print to all of his ‘posse.’” We both had a laugh at that.

Walter was hard at work by the time we returned to the office.As soon as he saw us, he jumped from his desk and rushed forward with a sheet of paper in his hand.

“We need to buy the guys at the Department of Defense a big cake or something. They got this back to me unbelievably fast.” He handed me the photograph of a young Army officer. Walter said, “His name is Kevin Doyle. He was a Green Beret. He’s also applied to several high-tech firms over the years.”

I stared at the photo of the handsome young man. “You think this could be our killer?”

“I’ve just started running a background on him. I don’t see any connection to Roger Dzoriack in any way. It’s not like he was a nephew who came to visit. I’d say this is a pretty good suspect.”

CHAPTER 100

I SAT WITH Rob Trilling and Walter Jackson. The three of us tried to think of ways to find Kevin Doyle. Walter had quietly recruited analysts from other squads to start running his name to see if he was listed in any hotels or had taken any flights into or out of the city recently.

Walter said, “I know we’re supposed to keep this whole investigation on the down-low, but what if we issue a bulletin to every patrol car in the city just to keep an eye out for him?”

I shook my head. “This is a print from a supposed suicide’s apartment. It’s not an official active case. I can just imagine all the questions that would come streaming in from One Police Plaza. We gotta figure out something ourselves. I don’t even want to let Celeste Cantor in on this until we have more. She still doesn’t know that you and Terri are on this too—that was my choice, not hers.”

I noticed Trilling hadn’t said much and kept fiddling around with notes and drawings. I asked him what he was doing.

He was slow to answer, as usual. But this was a different kind of hesitancy. He was forming his thoughts. Finally, my young partner said, “We both agree someone intentionally tried to run down Jaime Nantes yesterday.”

I nodded.

“That means Nantes would still be on the hit man’s list.”

Again I nodded.

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