Rhyme noted that Laurel didn’t seem to like this comment. Also, she seemed impatient, as if she had no time for deflective banter. He remembered that she wanted to move quickly—and the reason was now clear: Presumably once NIOS found out about the investigation they’d take steps to stop the case in its tracks—legally and, perhaps, otherwise.

Well, Rhyme was impatient too. He wanted intriguing.

Laurel displayed a picture of a handsome man in a white shirt, sitting before a radio microphone. He had round features, thinning hair. The ADA told them, “A recent picture in his radio studio in Caracas. He held a U.S. passport but was an expatriate, living in Venezuela. On May ninth, he was in the Bahamas on business when the sniper shot him in his hotel room. Two others were killed, as well—Moreno’s guard and a reporter interviewing him. The bodyguard was Brazilian, living in Venezuela. The reporter was Puerto Rican, living in Argentina.”

Rhyme pointed out, “There wasn’t much of a splash in the press. If the government’d been caught with their finger on the trigger, so to speak, it would’ve been bigger news. Who was supposedly responsible?”

“Drug cartels,” Laurel told him. “Moreno had created an organization called the Local Empowerment Movement to work with indigenous and impoverished people in Latin America. He was critical of drug trafficking. That ruffled some feathers in Bogotá and some Central American countries. But I couldn’t find facts to support that any cartel in particular wanted him dead. I’m convinced Metzger and NIOS planted those stories about the cartels to deflect attention from them. Besides, there’s something I haven’t mentioned. I know for a fact that a NIOS sniper killed him. I have proof.”

“Proof?” Sellitto asked.

Laurel’s body language, though not her facial features, explained that she was pleased to tell them the details. “We have a whistleblower—within or connected to NIOS. They leaked the order authorizing Moreno to be killed.”

“Like WikiLeaks?” Sellitto asked. Then shook his head. “But no, it wouldn’t have been.”

“Right,” Rhyme said. “Or the story would’ve been all over the news. The DA’s Office got it directly. And quietly.”

Myers: “That’s right. The whistleblower capillaried the kill order.”

Rhyme ignored the captain and his bizarre language. He said to Laurel: “Tell us about Moreno.”

She did, and from memory. Natives to New Jersey, his family had left the country when the boy was twelve and moved to Central America because of his father’s job; he was a geologist with a U.S. oil company. At first, Moreno was enrolled in American schools down there, but after his mother’s suicide he changed to local schools, where he did well.

“Suicide?” Sachs asked.