Identified Nance Laurel as lead prosecutor. IDs of the NYPD investigators to follow soon.

The Smoke diminished considerably at reading this.

At last. A place to start.

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

JACOB SWANN APPROACHED HIS CAR in the lot of the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia airport.

He set his suitcase into the trunk of his Nissan sedan carefully—his knives were inside. No carry-on with them, of course. He dropped heavily into the front seat and stretched, breathing deeply.

Swann was tired. He had left his Brooklyn apartment for the Bahamas nearly twenty-four hours ago and had had only three or so hours’ sleep in that time—most while in transit.

His session with Annette had gone more quickly than he’d expected. But, after he’d disposed of the body, finding an abandoned trash fire to burn the evidence of his visit last week had taken some time. Then he’d had to take care of some other housekeeping, including a visit to Annette’s apartment and a risky but ultimately successful trip back to the site of Moreno’s shooting itself: the South Cove Inn.

He’d then had to get off the island the same way he had last week: from a dock near Millars Sound, where he knew some of the men who clustered daily to work the ships or smoke Camels or ganja and drink Sands, Kalik or, more likely, Triple B malt. They would also handle various odd jobs. Efficiently and discreetly. They’d hurried him via small boat to one of the innumerable islands near Freeport, then there’d been the helicopter ride to a field south of Miami.

That was the thing about the Caribbean. There was Customs and there was custom. And the lower-case version allowed for people like Jacob Swann, with a bankroll of money—his employer had plenty, of course—to get where he needed to be, unnoticed.

After the scoring with the blade, after the blood, he was convinced that Annette had not told anyone about him, about the questions he’d casually asked her a week ago regarding the South Cove Inn, suite 1200, Moreno’s bodyguard and Moreno himself. All those facts could be bundled together, resulting in some very compromising conclusions.

He’d only used the Kai Shun a few times, slice, slice…It probably hadn’t been necessary, she was so frightened. But Jacob Swann was a very meticulous man. You could ruin a delicate sauce simply by too quickly adding hot liquid to the sizzling flour-and-butter roux. And once you’d done that there was no correction. A matter of a few degrees and few seconds. Besides, you should never miss an opportunity to hone your skills. So to speak.

He now pulled to the airport parking lot’s exit kiosk, paid cash then drove a mile on the Grand Central before pulling over and swapping license plates. He then continued on to his house in Brooklyn.

Annette…