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The Prince of Risk A Novel(45)



“Palantir.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s walk.” Astor headed north out of the park. He went over what had happened the night before in Washington, sharing the message he’d received from his father and his belief that the word was a clue about who was responsible for the attack. “My father was working on a secret project at the Exchange,” he added, handing over the stolen agenda. “It’s all here. See for yourself.”



Astor didn’t go into what had transpired at Penelope Evans’s home in Greenwich. Grillo was an employee, not a friend. Astor was quick to draw that line, though there was more to it than that. Sharing that information would make Grillo an accessory. Grillo wouldn’t want that.

They crossed State Street and walked up Broadway. Grillo, an expert in all matters security, was unable to envision any scenario that would engender a Secret Service agent driving his vehicle onto the South Lawn. Astor brought up Sloan Thomasson’s suggestion that the driver had forfeited control of his vehicle. Grillo scoffed at the idea, then seemed to take it more seriously. “Forfeited how?” he asked. “You mean like someone else was driving the car for him?”

“Something like that,” said Astor. “I don’t know. Just spitballing here.”

“I think we need to take a step back,” said Grillo. “It’s not what happened on the lawn. It’s what happened before. You said he texted you a minute before he was killed?”

“Yeah.”

“That means he had an idea something bad was going to happen. He knew they were onto him—whoever ‘they’ are. We have to find out what those three big shots were going to tell the president.”

The men stopped at Trinity Church.

“That word…Palantir,” said Grillo. “Might ring a bell. When do you need something?”

“Yesterday.”

“I need some information about your pop: phones, credit cards, Social Security number.”

“How soon?”

“Yesterday.”

Astor shook hands with Grillo. “I’ll e-mail you what I have.”

“Do that.”





30




The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was located in a six-story government building on the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street adjacent to NYU Langone Medical Center, where Alex had given birth to Katie and, in the years after, had recovered from two miscarriages. She parked in the red zone across the street, throwing her law enforcement shield on the dashboard.

Inside the building, the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the heat of the day. Alex crossed to the security desk, upset that the morgue assistant hadn’t come up to meet her as promised. She badged the young woman and waited as she called down to the body shop—the refrigerated storage locker where corpses were kept pending autopsy or burial. The morgue assistant appeared five minutes later. He was a short, bearded, unattractive man, slovenly in appearance as well as in manners.

“NYPD was already here,” he said as he led her to the elevator and they descended to the basement. “Got prints, DNA, took some pics—the whole nine yards.”

“I got the memo,” said Alex. “I still need to see the body.”

The attendant opened the door to the storage room and walked in ahead of her. Alex waited as he located the body and transferred it to an examining table. “Take your time,” he said. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Alex approached the table without hesitation. A Catholic childhood and its attendant visitations and open-casket funerals had robbed her of any fear of the dead. Her job had done the rest. She stood over the assailant, Randall Shepherd, true name unknown. The body had been washed. Hours in refrigeration had turned it the complexion of a fish belly.

Three entry wounds decorated the torso. Two were spaced an inch apart just above the liver. The third defined an immaculate circle directly above his heart. Alex shot 40-caliber hollow-points designed to explode on impact and spend their energy within inches of entering a body. In layman’s terms, they went in small and came out big, and in between wreaked havoc on bone, arteries, and organs.



The hatred provoked by the sight of this lifeless, inert form astounded her. A will to violence rose up inside her. She dug her fingers into the seams of her pants to stop herself from striking the body. Death wasn’t enough. He deserved worse.

Three hits and thirteen misses.

If one of those misses had struck him earlier, Mara and DiRienzo might still be alive. The thought would haunt her for a long time. Alex released her grip on her slacks. She was not angry at Shepherd. She was angry at herself.