The Zoo Job Read online

  Not that he did so. From all Hardison had seen, he was a quiet, friendly guy who went to work every day, took a walk on the campus during his lunch hour, and then went home to his luxury Cambridge apartment. He lived there with his husband, whom he’d married in June 2004, not long after Massachusetts made same-sex marriage legal.

  It was just about lunchtime, so Hardison knew that Allerton would be taking his walk. Sure enough, a short, balding, pudgy man in a rumpled brown suit and large glasses exited the Cronkite Center onto the quad. Two coeds were walking a large golden retriever across the grass, and at the sight of them, Allerton suddenly tensed up. The dog was trying to run at full speed, but one of the coeds maintained a tight grip on his leash, which was attached to a choke collar.

  Standing stock-still and pointing an accusatory finger at the dog, Allerton cried out, “What is that thing doing here? There shouldn’t be any animals on campus!”

  “Excuse you?” said one of the coeds. “There’s no rules against walking Lucas here. We take him through the quad every—”

  Sweat beaded on Allerton’s high forehead. “Just get him out of here, right now! I hate animals.”

  Lucas was currently sniffing the grass. When he was done sniffing, he peed on it.

  “God, that’s disgusting! I want to see your IDs right now!”

  As the coeds started arguing, Hardison heard Parker’s voice through his earbud. “Okay, I’m about ten miles from McAllister’s estate.”

  Hardison blinked. “Already? Damn, girl, how fast were you goin’?”

  “Thirty over the speed limit, apparently.”

  Not liking the sound of that, Hardison asked, “What does ‘apparently’ mean, exactly?”

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  Shaking his head, Hardison wondered how soon a notice for an unpaid speeding ticket would arrive at the mail drop he used for Alice White, the identity for Parker under which she’d rented the car.

  “Seriously, Hardison,” Parker said, “there’s nothing to worry about.”

  TWENTY-TWO MINUTES AGO

  Trooper Michael Mazzarano sat in his cruiser, guzzling his fifteenth cup of crappy coffee this shift, hating his job.

  Oh, he liked the job generally. Being state police in general was awesome. He got to carry a gun, he got to help maintain law and order in the great state of Massachusetts, and anytime he wanted to get laid, all he had to do was walk into Jacobson’s Bar while in uniform and he had his choice of women.

  As long as they didn’t cry. Mike could never deal with women who cried.

  Still, for all that that part of the job was totally awesome, he hated the actual work he had to do, which consisted of sitting in the damn cruiser and nailing people who drove recklessly on the road.

  Who defined recklessly anyhow? Mike himself was never comfortable if he was going under eighty miles an hour—unless he was driving Mom’s Buick, which didn’t go over seventy without rattling. But in his own Benz? Or in the Ferrari he was going to buy someday? He had to be going at least eighty to be comfy, and better still up around ninety.

  And he’d never hit anybody or anything in ten years of driving. So why should he punish drivers for doing the same thing?

  Besides, it was dumb. The department didn’t want to stop reckless drivers, they wanted to build up ticket revenue for the state—which really ended up meaning higher premiums collected by the insurance companies. Plus, if their unit didn’t give as many tickets as the other units around the state, Sergeant Klissewicz yelled at them. Mike hated being yelled at by Klissewicz because he turned purple and started spitting and it was really gross.

  It was all about statistics. When he joined the state cops, Mike thought the job would be about justice and solving crimes. Instead it was “did you give enough tickets this month” and “why did Sergeant D’Amato’s unit give more tickets, especially when you had the holiday weekend” and all this other crap.

  He hated it.

  Two weeks ago, he got to talking with Detective Patrick Bonanno, hoping to see if there was some way to get a gold shield. Bonanno was walking with a cane, recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, and said, “I wouldn’t do it, Mazzarano. When you’re a detective, you piss off everyone you talk to.”

  That just got Mike to grin. “I give out speeding tickets. I already do that.”

  “Good point. Maybe you should try out.”

  Bonanno was respected and had recently been promoted. Mike could do worse for a rabbi. Not that he’d actually committed to helping him, but it was a step.

  Right now he was sitting on I-91 near the Vermont border. The speed limit was sixty-five miles an hour this far north, and Mike just didn’t see the point in giving out tickets to anyone unless they were at least twenty over. Most of the people who zoomed past his spot on the side of the road were going between sixty and eighty.

  Then the Chevy Aveo zoomed by at ludicrous speeds. Checking the radar gun, he saw that it was going ninety – five.

  Hitting the siren and putting his coffee into the cup holder, he accelerated onto the highway and floored it. He had to get to the Aveo before it went over the border. He could still give the ticket if he nabbed her in Vermont, but the VT staties got all pissy when Massachusetts troopers did that, and when they got pissy, they bitched to Klissewicz, which resulted in another yelling fit. Not worth it.

  The Aveo slowed going up a hill, which enabled Mike to catch up to her and tailgate, siren blaring. This close, he could see that the driver was a blonde, which surprised him. It was usually guys who went this fast.

  She’d been in the right lane, and then got into the left when he tailgated—and kept going. With a snarl, Mike pulled in behind her in the left lane, at which point she got back in the right. So he got in behind her again.

  Finally, she got the hint and slowed down. This had happened to Mike three times before, and each time it was a teenager who’d never been caught speeding, and thought that they should get out of the cop car’s way, not pull over for them.

  The Aveo pulled onto the shoulder off the right lane and eventually came to a full stop. Mike did likewise with his cruiser, and then grabbed the blower. “Remain inside the vehicle, please,” he said, his voice projected by the outer speakers to the Aveo.

  Thankfully, the blonde didn’t try to get out of the car.

  Mike ran the license plate, only to discover that it was a rental from a place in Boston. It wasn’t one of the chains, just some rent-a-wreck place he’d never heard of, and they only updated the state police on their rentals every Friday. The Aveo appeared in the system as unrented, which meant she’d only picked it up in the last few days.

  Climbing out of the car, he put his hat on and walked slowly over to the car.

  The blonde pushed the button to lower her window.

  “License and regist—”

  And then the woman burst into tears.

  “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to go so fast, but my boyfriend just broke up with me and my son’s in jail again and I just wanted to drive up to Vermont and get away from it all, y’know, and it was just awful, and—”

  Mike could feel his sphincter clench. “Please, ma’am,” he begged, “stop crying. It’ll be okay, if you can just give me your license and registration, and everything’ll be—”

  “—and then my mother went into rehab again, just because my father kept beating her up and then I had to blow up the house and—”

  “Look, ma’am, you were going thirty over the speed limit, I have to—”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she just kept going. “—the dog has diabetes and the cat has leukemia and I wanted to take my son to the zoo, but I can’t because he ran away and—”

  Now Mike was starting to feel seriously nauseated. Clutching his belly and wishing to hell this woman would stop cryi
ng, he held up a hand. “Look, it’s fine, just go, and stay under the speed limit, okay?”

  “Okay.” She nodded quickly, and immediately hit the accelerator and drove off.

  Snarling, Mike stumbled back to the car, hoping the stomachache would stop now that the crying woman was gone. He just hated it when women cried.

  He collapsed into the driver’s seat of the cruiser, not even bothering to close the door. He reached for his coffee, then tossed it aside. The idea of drinking any more suddenly made him feel ill.

  Then he stared after the Aveo, only just now realizing that the blonde’s shirt had been covered in black grease. And had she said something about blowing up her house?

  NOW

  Hardison started walking back to the truck. “Nate? Parker’s almost there.” He’d been expecting her to take another hour or so.

  “Yeah, I heard.” The background of Nate’s comms sounded like wind, so Hardison guessed that he was back outside.

  “I’m headin’ to the truck to figure out how to get us in there. Beats the hell outta followin’ Allerton around. Most exciting thing he’s done is yell at two girls for bringin’ a dog on campus.” As he went to the borrowed NSTAR truck, he filled Nate in on Allerton’s adventure with Lucas the dog and his two humans.

  “No, no, that fits,” Nate said.

  “Fits what?”

  A pause. “Not sure yet, but this is why I wanted to do a little old-fashioned surveillance.”

  “So it wasn’t just to make me crazy?” Hardison couldn’t resist saying.

  “No, Hardison, it wasn’t just to make you crazy. That was just a nice side effect.”

  Hardison shook his head at Nate’s snark as he climbed into the NSTAR truck. Sometimes, the man just begged to have his credit rating trashed and get a butt load of porno spam in his in-box.

  Nate continued. “The digital stuff is useful, yes, but it’s only from the surveillance that we know that Allerton doesn’t even like animals, that Morgan doesn’t care much about the zoo, that the zoo has little to no impact on Fischer’s daily routine, which never changes, and so on. We just assumed that these people were all animal lovers, but after watching them for a couple of days, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Now, I’ve seen boards of directors that take a very active role, and I’ve seen boards that could give a rat’s ass.”

  At this point, Hardison had his netbook up and running, using his own private secure portable wireless node to get online and call up a map of the area around McAllister’s estate. “I’m guessin’ we’ve decided these people are the don’t-give-a-crap variety?”

  “It’s looking that way—but the board had to have done something that caused Marney to add a rider to their insurance policy that only she could approve an insurance claim. And it’s the friend of a board member that set up the black rhino purchase. I’ve got a call in to one of my old colleagues at IYS.”

  “Uh, Nate?”

  “What?”

  “Well, we’ve met three of your old colleagues at IYS. One was the guy who got your kid killed. One was a nutjob who tried to steal a van Gogh. And the other one’s Sterling.”

  “Not everyone there’s crazy, Hardison.”

  “Coulda fooled me.” He shook his head. “Fine, whatever. Parker, you there?”

  “Yup. Just looking for a way in.”

  “All right.” Hardison alt-tabbed over to the information he’d already gathered on McAllister. “I’m only findin’ records for a few animals on his estate—an emu, a capuchin monkey, and two turtles—but he’s got a heavy-duty e-fence around the whole place that packs enough of a wallop to knock out three elephants. I’m thinkin’ he’s tryin’ to keep in a lot more than one frisky emu.”

  “Black-market animals?” Nate said.

  “Mhm. Or stolen from ships called the Black Star.”

  “Seems a good bet.”

  Parker asked, “So how do I get in?”

  “Most of the estate borders on Pond Lane, which is the street the estate’s on, and Lake Drive.” Hardison shook his head. “Up all night comin’ up with them names. Anyhow, we also got us a state park on one side that’s got a hiking trail. That may be the way in.”

  “What kind of e-fence is it?” Parker asked.

  Hardison quickly found the purchase order for the electric fence, as well as its security history. “It’s a Storm-Richards 61. He got it right around when he got the permits, along with a mess of smaller ones. The big one’s got seventeen projectors all around the property.”

  “How does it work, Hardison?” Nate asked.

  “Two ways. If you’re wearing a collar, and you try to cross the fence, you get a nasty jolt. That’s what he uses for the animals.”

  Nate asked, “What if you’re not wearing a collar?”

  “A much less nasty jolt—kinda like after you walk on a rug and touch a wall.”

  “I hate that,” Parker muttered.

  Hardison smiled. “But more importantly, it alerts the security system that someone’s hit it. And part of the trigger’s mechanical, so I can’t hack it remotely.”

  Nate’s breathing got a little louder, which meant he was thinking. “How many people on security?”

  “Based on the security firm’s payment records, just one guy, but still—”

  “No, perfect. You don’t want to hack it remotely, you want to take it out on-site, so the security guy goes to look at it, and Parker sneaks past him.”

  “So,” Parker said, “I should take out a projector?”

  Shaking his head, Hardison said, “A projector ain’t gonna cut it. There’s redundancies. He only needs twelve for the size perimeter he’s got. In fact, the original purchase order’s for twelve, but he got five more when . . .” And then he broke into a grin. “. . . when a bird set up a nest at the projector on the other side of the fence by the hiking trail. And there was another incident with a raccoon knocking the projector out of whack.”

  “That’s our way in,” Nate said. “Parker, can you mimic an animal attack on two projectors?”

  “Yup.” Parker’s smile was actually audible—at least to Hardison, who smiled himself. “What are the two farthest from the main house?”

  Alt-tabbing over to the map, Hardison said, “Right on the hiking trail. It’s number eleven and seventeen.”

  “Why are eleven and seventeen next to each other?” Parker asked almost accusingly. “Twelve should be next to eleven.”

  “He put seventeen between eleven and twelve after he had to shore up the fence against nestin’.” Hardison refrained from adding comments about OCD, knowing that he’d just regret it later when he and Parker were next in the same room. “I’m sendin’ the map to your phone now.”

  “Okay.” A pause. “I think I’m gonna need a change of clothes.”

  ELEVEN

  “Hello, Sophie. Or would you rather I called you Jenny?” Sterling smirked. “That was, after all, the name you used when first we met.”

  Eliot had never actually seen Sterling smile. He had a variety of smirks, which Eliot had been tempted to categorize, but ultimately they all boiled down to “the smirk that makes me want to punch him in the face many times,” so he didn’t bother.

  He only didn’t punch him in the face many times right now because of the three red dots on his chest. Typically, Sterling didn’t enter a situation that he wasn’t in control of, and his method of dealing with the fact that Eliot wanted to punch him in the face many times was to train not one, but three snipers on him.

  Sterling, of course, kept talking. “Or perhaps I should call you Rebecca. But that’s the name of a dead woman, isn’t it? The footage of you getting shot is very entertaining.”

  Eliot noted that Sophie didn’t react at all to Sterling’s provocation, and good for her. The job that had taken Damie
n Moreau down in San Lorenzo required that the team get involved in that nation’s presidential election: Moreau’s puppet president, Ribera, against a schoolteacher named Vittori. Sophie had posed as Vittori’s fiancée, Rebecca Ibañez, and she was “shot” on international television as part of the grift.

  Sophie finally spoke. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “Oh, I did.” Sterling rose from the couch and started toward the doorway and the two of them. Under any other circumstances, Eliot would have stepped between the Interpol agent and his teammate, but he was rooted in place as long as those snipers were there.

  Sterling walked right up to Sophie and smirked again. “On really bad days, I’ll call up the video of you falling dramatically into President-Elect Vittori’s arms. Gives me a nice warm and fuzzy feeling.”

  Rolling her eyes, Sophie asked, “What do you want, Sterling?”

  “What I want,” Sterling replied as he reached over to turn the hotel room’s lights on, “is to capture a ring of international smugglers whose members include high-ranking members of General Polonia’s government, as well as people in the U.S., Iraq, and India.”

  “And what has this to do with us?”

  Sterling returned to the couch, then hesitated. “Where are my manners? Have a seat, won’t you? Not you,” he added with a sharp look at Eliot, “unless you promise to behave.”

  Through clenched teeth—he wasn’t sure how itchy the snipers’ trigger fingers were, so he didn’t want to risk moving any more than necessary—Eliot said, “Let’s say I don’t.”

  Sophie decided to go ahead and sit down on the easy chair that was positioned perpendicular to the sofa, which Eliot couldn’t blame her for. The more civilized this conversation was, the more likely they were to emerge from it . . . well, not okay, because Sterling was involved, but as close to okay as was possible.