Kill Zone: A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller (2 page)

“See if there’s any update from Burroughs,” FBI Supervisory Special Agent Lucy Guardino told her partner as she drove through traffic leading from Downtown. Pittsburgh drivers were immune to lights and sirens, but she used them anyway.

Isaac Walden waited until he had Don Burroughs, the city detective who’d requested their help, on the line before putting the phone on speaker.
 

“Raziq’s still not talking,” Burroughs reported. “Except to ask for the Feds—you, the DEA, CIA, I don’t think he cares. Says he can’t compromise his safety, won’t deal with us locals. I’d be offended, except this one has fucking crazy written all over it, so I’m glad to have you on board.”
 

The last came out in an almost conciliatory tone—for Lucy’s benefit, she was sure. She and Burroughs had worked together before. They’d had their differences, but he was a good cop.
 

Local law enforcement officers didn’t call the FBI for assistance except as a last resort. Not even for two dead girls.

Except the victims’ father’s name had shown up in the NCIC database with a note to call a DEA agent named David Haddad. No reason why, no label, no sign that Rashid Raziq was in protective custody, just a cryptic flag. Burroughs was savvy enough to know a lose-lose situation when he saw it.

Walden was working his own phone. “Only thing I can find on Raziq is that he’s here on a State Department-sponsored visa. From Afghanistan. Everything else is behind DEA firewalls.”

“Nice to know us locals aren’t the only ones being kept in the dark,” Burroughs said. “Happy to hand this off to you before word gets out.”

“I take that to mean you want us out there as targets for the press if things go wrong,” Lucy said.

“Not to mention the DEA. Only things are already about as wrong as they can get.” Burroughs sounded jovial. “Just the way you like them, Guardino.” She had the feeling it was payback time after she’d gotten him involved in a case that almost got him killed a few months ago.
 

“The ME release the bodies yet?” Walden asked.

“No.” Burroughs grew serious. Two kids dead on his watch: a four-year-old and a fifteen-year-old. Close in age to Burroughs’ own sons, Lucy realized. “They’re taking it slow so we can process the scene fully. You can jump on board the crazy train with everyone else once you arrive.” He hung up.

“Still nothing from this DEA Agent, Haddad,” Walden said before Lucy could ask. Federal agents’ cell phone numbers weren’t shared readily, not even with fellow agents, not without a supervisor’s permission. “I left a message with the call center.”

Exactly why Lucy liked working with the man. Walden was her Rock of Gibraltar, his logic a good counter-balance to her more intuitive methods of investigation. She could trust him not to undermine her, even when she wasn’t playing as close to the FBI protocols as the brass upstairs would like. Plus, it was a whole lot of fun working with him. There was nothing like seeing the look on a subject’s face after being questioned by a big scary black man only to have Lucy with her petite Italian frame walk in acting even crazier and scarier than Walden. It usually sent them scurrying back to Walden for protection, ready to give it up.

“Two kids dead and a father refusing to talk to the locals. Why is it the crazies always come out at Christmas?” she asked.

“No idea.” Walden shifted in his seat as she edged the Tahoe into the lane beside them, sliding into a vacancy that hadn’t existed when Lucy began the maneuver. “Maybe just to piss you off?”

“Then they’d better watch out. Nick is surprising me with tickets to
The Nutcracker
tonight and there’s no way I’m missing it.”

“
The Nutcracker
? You do know it’s a ballet, right?”

Lucy smiled—not at him but at the driver who moved out of her way without her even needing to show him her weapon. “Yeah, I know. My mom told him I was in it when I was a little girl. I was one of the extras, those kids opening presents in the background, barely even remember it myself—but now he thinks I like ballet.”

“Wait a minute. After fifteen years of marriage, Dr. Nicholas Callahan, the man with a doctorate in clinical psychology, who has taken advanced training in behavioral analysis and specializes in untangling the dark recesses of the mind, this man thinks you like the ballet because your mother told him so?”

“Isn’t it sweet? Good thing I found the tickets so I can act surprised.”
 

They hurtled down the parkway—well,
crawled
would be more like it, as they approached the Squirrel Hill Tunnel. Why the hell did everyone slow down just because they were driving beneath a mountain? If you were worried about the damn thing collapsing on top of you, shouldn’t you go faster?
 

“Mom had ulterior motives,” she continued. The radio cut out as they entered the tunnel, leaving only the tires humming against the concrete pavement as background noise. “Gives her an excuse to take Megan for the weekend.”
 

“Your mother would have made an excellent hostage negotiator.”
 

“I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s three hours long and you have to keep your cell phone off, so I’m thinking it’s going to be the best uninterrupted sleep I’ve had in a long time.”

“Still worrying about Morgan Ames?” His voice dropped as if someone could be eavesdropping.

Morgan was a teenaged girl-slash-psychopath whose homicidal tendencies had been instilled in her by her serial killer father. A serial killer father who’d kidnapped Lucy last month and tried his best to kill her before she’d been able to turn the tables on him. Now he was in maximum security, locked down twenty-three hours a day, awaiting trial.

“Yeah,” she admitted grudgingly, not wanting to talk about Morgan, Morgan’s father, or last month. She hadn’t told anyone the entire truth, not even Nick. He specialized in treating posttraumatic stress disorder and wanted her to see one of the FBI headshrinkers, but no way was she going to let one of the Employee Assistance goons rattle around inside her brain. Not when she had the best guy for the job sleeping beside her every night. “But it’s getting better.”

Walden gave a small grunt. “Still owe you for not taking me on that one. What a nut case.”

They emerged from the tunnel, the mountain’s shadow casting them in darkness. Lucy goosed the accelerator and they took the exit onto Braddock Avenue, narrowly avoiding running down a car ogling the Christmas decorations adorning Regent Square.
 

The address Burroughs had given them was on a quiet street in Point Breeze North, not far from the Allegheny County Police Headquarters where the 911 Communications Center was housed. Lucy tended to navigate by law enforcement landmarks since part of her job as leader of the FBI's Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Taskforce was coordinating the efforts of over two hundred municipal, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.

Unlike the narrow streets north and south of it, the Raziqs lived on a wide boulevard off the major thoroughfares. It was a few blocks west of Westinghouse Park and another couple of blocks south of the ravine that carried the railroad tracks and municipal Busway. The street felt isolated in both time and space. A safe haven.
 

Until tonight.

They pulled up to the modest white frame Colonial and parked in front of the ME’s van. Walden went to gather witness statements and get the lay of the land from the city detectives. Lucy paused beside the Tahoe to take in the scene.
 

The houses on this block were uniformly old, most a century at least. Some looked newly renovated, others in various stages of disrepair. Scattered across lawns and front porches were holiday decorations in an international festival of light celebrating Christmas, Kwanza, and Chanukah.
 

Except this house. No decorations here. Not even a pink flamingo on the neatly mowed lawn. The shrubs were carefully bundled beneath burlap to shield them from the Pittsburgh winter, although it looked like they weren’t going to have a white Christmas, not this year. The only color came from the flashing amber lights on top an SUV parked haphazardly across the driveway, one tire trespassing onto the grass. Diamond Security, the logo read. Their reporting witness.
 

Burroughs’ unmarked white Impala was a few doors down the street along with two marked radio cars, one on each side of the street.
 

She felt stares from the surrounding houses, but no one was bold enough to come out and see for themselves what disaster had landed at their neighbor’s doorstep. Interesting. She wasn’t sure if it said more about the Raziqs or their neighbors.

“How’s Kim?” Lucy asked Burroughs as he approached the Tahoe from the house.

“Good. I think we’re going to make it this time.” He and his ex-wife had reconciled a few months ago. It suited him. He’d added a few pounds to his six-foot frame, filled in the hollows beneath his eyes. Even his wardrobe had undergone a face lift: instead of a variety of suits and shoes all in shades of brown matching his hair and eyes, today he wore a navy blue suit and black shoes. And his wedding ring, a definite good sign.

“The boys?”

His eyes lit up. “They’re great. Kevin made the traveling hockey team.”

“Thought we were trying for a low profile?” She nodded to the lights on the SUV sitting across the drive.

“Security guy saw the youngest, and ran back for his car, thought maybe he could get her to the ER.” Burroughs shook his head at the guard’s naiveté. “He’s over there,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the shrubs shielding the driveway from the neighboring house, “puking his guts out, you want to talk to him.”

“When did the father arrive?” Raziq, the gentleman insisting on making life difficult for the investigators trying to work his daughters’ murders. She couldn’t wait to hear what the story behind that was.

“He got here right after I did. Screaming and cussing when we wouldn’t let him inside. Literally ripping his shirt. Threatened us in three different languages then demanded we call the Feds. Guess us local yokels weren’t good enough for him.”

“Where’s he now?”

Burroughs nodded to a patrol car across the street. “Back of a squad with a patrolman. Only way to shut him up and keep him out of our hair. Still haven’t heard back from the DEA.”

Lucy sighed, hoped this didn’t turn into some kind of pissing contest with the cowboys over at Drug Enforcement.

Burroughs read her expression effortlessly. “This one’s a ball buster. And I have a feeling it’s only going to get nuttier.”
 

<><><> 

Text message received 16:24

Tres: Police took bait. Have Raziq.
 

Z: Maintain contact. Intercept on signal.

Tres: Police?

Z: Kill them all.

Chapter 2

“Run it down for me,” Lucy told Burroughs.

“Rather you see it for yourself.”
 

She glanced toward the squad car parked beneath a street lamp across the street. Shadows from a barren sycamore scratched the roof of the car like a skeleton’s fingers. Thankfully the vehicle pointed away from the house. The father sat in the back, alone. As far as she could make out in the faint light, the man sat facing front, away from the crime scene activity. “You made notification?”

“Told him as little as I could. Enough to let him know his girls were gone.”
 

“How’d he take it?” Death notifications were the worst part of a policeman’s job, but they also provided an opportunity to observe subjects at their most vulnerable. There was a damn good reason why cops were cynical: they had to be in order to separate true reactions from superb performances.

Burroughs shrugged one shoulder, glancing over his shoulder towards the patrol car. “After his initial hissy fit, after it sank in, he choked up, tore the top button off his shirt trying to get air. A few tears, lots more shouts, then… nothing. Just shut down. Could be cultural, I don’t know.”

She wished she knew more about Raziq, and why his name had popped up with a DEA flag attached. “They’re from Afghanistan?”

“Right. The dad speaks English. British accent, kinda.”

“Been here long?”

“A little more than a year.”

“We brought them here. Any idea why?” she asked, trying to get a handle on the politics and the DEA involvement.

“Not sure. Once a Taliban, now a Yankee Doodle Dandy, or something like that. Here to help the good ole US of A with its war on drugs, I guess.”

She thought about that. DEA, Afghanistan… the two together meant drug violence. Could that violence have traveled halfway around the world to Pittsburgh, targeting two little girls?

“No signs of drugs in the house?” It wouldn’t be the first time the DEA had allied with a dealer. One of the problems working drugs: often you were forced to choose the lesser of two evils.

“Nope. Clean as a nun’s habit. A few weapons, but they’re mainly antiques. Showpieces.”

They walked past the SUV blocking the driveway, Burroughs pausing to reach inside and turn the flashing lights off, and continued up the path to a uniformed officer standing guard at the front door. Lucy showed him her credentials, which he duly noted on a clipboard. There was a cardboard box of surgical booties, hair caps, and gloves waiting at the threshold.