Free The Echo of the Whip by Joseph Flynn

Busby.”
    Get a promotion to assistant deputy director, too, but Benjamin didn’t need to share that.
    For his part, Dekens now saw that he was dealing with a woman who would thrash him professionally as mercilessly as she’d broken Kasim’s bones. That she was American didn’t lessen the threat. Just protesting the way he’d used her to his superiors would sting.
    If the FBI were to look at the KLPD as uncooperative, well, his job would be sacrificed before the government’s relationship with the Americans would.
    The problem was, many of the “European big shots” who paid for their carnal pleasure were members of neighboring governments. Embarrassing them would also not be good for him. But on balance …
    “Of course, I’ll help you,” Dekens told Benjamin, “but my inquiries will have to be discreet and singularly focused.”
    “Sure, those considerations are fine, but don’t try to drag things out, hoping I’ll go away. I won’t. That’s not who I am.”
    She took her iPad mini out of her purse. Showed the inspector photos of women who’d been Tyler Busby’s escorts at public functions in New York and Washington. Told him the FBI had tabbed the ladies as prostitutes.
    She said, “We don’t know if Busby has called on any of these women in the past year, but if their faces haven’t wrinkled or their figures sagged, maybe he has. If not, we’d like to know if others of their type with the same professional connections have traveled to out of the way places. Locales that women like them wouldn’t normally visit. You understand what I’m saying?”
    “I do,” Dekens said. Still hedging his bet, he asked, “Would any of the women I might locate be required to testify in American courts?”
    Benjamin shook her head. “We don’t care who they screw or if any of them banged Busby. All we want to do is find the SOB. We’ve got enough to hang him as it is.”
    Shock filled Dekens’ voice. “The United States still hangs people?”
    Benjamin, a lawyer as well as a federal officer, had to check her memory. “New Hampshire allows it by choice of the corrections officials; Washington state allows it by choice of the condemned person. But I was speaking figuratively. The federal government wants to lock him up for the rest of his miserable life. How’s that?”
    “Much better. I will begin my inquiries first thing tomorrow.”
    “Terrific. Just so you know, you prove helpful to the United States in this matter, we’ll see that you, the KLPD and your government get full credit. Or we won’t say a word. Your choice.”
    “Yes, it’s always good to have choices.”
    Dekens chose to gulp his aperitif, put Benjamin in a cab to her hotel and call it a night.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — Bethesda, Maryland
    By the whim of irony and the dictate of political necessity, Joan Renshaw, following her psychotic break, had been transferred from the federal correctional institution in Danbury, Connecticut to a secure ward in the same military medical facility where Reverend Burke Godfrey had taken his last breath.
    Burke Godfrey, of course, had been the televangelist husband of Erna Godfrey, the woman Joan Renshaw had choked to death. When Renshaw’s change of address had made the news, there had been public gatherings of people praying for the late preacher to wreak supernatural vengeance on his wife’s killer. Thinking just the opposite, the government had moved the prisoner with thoughts of greater security and a higher quality of care.
    Thus far, mass supplication for supernatural payback had yet to make it to the top of the Almighty’s to-do list. Even so, the nature of Renshaw’s continued existence didn’t rise beyond simple respiration and being fed and drained through various tubes. Her condition was described as Kahlbaum Syndrome, motionless catatonia.
    She exhibited what was called waxy flexibility. Placed into a given posture, she would hold it indefinitely. Her position