The precinct was quiet.
It was late — past midnight — and most of the bullpen had gone home. But McGee sat at her desk, staring down at the victim list spread in front of her. Sixty-three names. Sixty-three people who'd paid fifty thousand dollars for a dinner and never came home.
She wasn't reading. She was just staring.
Hannah set a cup of coffee on the desk. Sat down across from her.
"You know I would have made the same call."
McGee didn't look up.
"In the alley," Hannah continued. "Wrists out, ticking clock. Anyone would have chased the gas. That's not a mistake, McGee. That's the job."
"He lied." McGee's voice was flat. "There was no gas to find. They were already dead."
"I know."
"I let him walk. I had him — I could have put cuffs on him — and I let him walk for nothing."
Hannah pushed the coffee closer. "You didn't let him walk for nothing. You made the only call you could with what you knew. He just knew more than you."
McGee finally looked up. Her eyes were red. "He used me."
"Yeah." Hannah didn't sugarcoat it. "He did."
They sat in silence for a moment. The coffee steamed between them.
"What did the guest list turn up?" McGee asked.
"Nothing." Hannah pulled out a folder, flipped it open. "We pulled every name. Cross-referenced business ties, political donations, criminal records. They're all dirty, McGee. Every one of them — Langley's machine, bought and paid for. Nothing that points anywhere new, but nothing innocent either. No pattern that helps us."
"So it's a dead end."
"It's a dead end."
McGee picked up the coffee. Took a sip. It was too hot, but she didn't care.
"Langley's detail got pulled," Hannah said quietly.
McGee looked at her. "What?"
"To back up your meeting." Hannah leaned forward. "Every available unit was on you in that alley, McGee — including his detail. Command pulled them for your protection." A beat. "Fauwks knew. He didn't have to create an opening. We handed him one."
McGee stared at her. "The plan was already in motion."
"Before you ever picked up that phone behind the bush. The donors were dead. Langley was taken. All of it." Hannah's voice was gentle. "ME puts Langley's time of death hours before the fundraiser. Fauwks took him that morning — had his three hours with him — and then went to the ballroom. There was nothing you could have done."
McGee set the coffee down. She felt something shift in her chest — not relief, exactly, but a loosening. A weight lifting slightly.
"I was a pawn," she said.
"You were a pawn."
"All that running. The taxi, the train, the riddle. I thought I was hunting him."
"You were following a script."
McGee laughed — a short, bitter sound. "He's good."
"He's the best I've ever seen." Hannah stood up, walked to the window. "Which brings us to the question nobody wants to ask."
"How does one man do all of this?"
Hannah nodded. "Gas a ballroom. Kidnap a senator. Plant phones across the city. Coordinate a driver. Walk into a precinct and make a phone call." She turned around. "That's not one man, McGee. That's a team."
"He doesn't have a team." McGee said it with more certainty than she felt. "Everything about him — the mask, the ritual, the phone calls. He's solo. He's always alone."
"Then how?"
McGee thought about the taxi driver. The messenger at Rick's.
"We pulled them," Hannah said, as if reading her mind. "The driver was paid in cash. Envelope left on his windshield with an address and a time. Never saw who left it." She sat back down. "The messenger at the coffee shop — same thing. Cash to sit in a booth and hand you a note. Never saw a face."
"Cutouts," McGee said.
"Cutouts." Hannah nodded. "He doesn't need accomplices. He needs strangers who'll do one thing for money and ask no questions."
"So he's alone."
"He's alone." Hannah picked up her own coffee. "And he's smarter than everyone in this building combined."
McGee looked back down at the victim list. Sixty-three names.
"He's going to do it again," she said quietly.
"Yeah."
"And we don't know where."
"No."
McGee was quiet for a long time. Then she looked up at Hannah.
"I'm not going to be a pawn next time."
Hannah held her gaze. "No," she said. "You're not."
They sat in silence for a moment. The precinct hummed quietly around them — the buzz of fluorescent lights, the distant ring of a phone nobody was answering.
Hannah stood up. "I need a drink."
McGee looked up. "It's past midnight."
"I didn't say I needed a good decision." Hannah grabbed her jacket. "Come on. One drink. We earned it."
McGee hesitated for half a second. Then she stood up and grabbed her own jacket.
They walked out of the precinct together, into the cold night air.
Chapter 16