AS SAMPSON AND I came out of the conference room, we found Joyce Catalone from our Communications Office standing outside the door.
“I was just going to pull you out,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t have to.”
I looked at my watch — four forty-five. That meant at least three dozen reporters were downstairs, waiting to grill me for their five and six o’clock news cycles. Damn it — it was time to feed the beast.
Joyce and Sampson walked down with me. We took the stairs so she could run through a few things for me to consider on the way.
“Keisha Samuels from the Post wants to do a profile for the Sunday magazine.”
“No,” I told her. “I like Keisha, she’s smart and she’s fair, but it’s too early for that kind of in-depth piece.”
“And I’ve got CNN and MSNBC both ready to give this thing thirty minutes in prime time, if you’re ready to sit down.”
“Joyce, I’m not doing any special coverage until we have something we want to get out there. I wish to hell that we did.”
“No prob,” she said, “but don’t come crying to me when you want some coverage and they’ve moved on to something else.” Joyce was an old hand in the department and the unofficial mother hen of Investigative Services.
“I never cry,” I said.
“Except when I get you on the ropes,” Sampson said, and threw a punch my way.
“That’s your breath — not your punches,” I told him.
We’d reached the ground floor, and Joyce stopped with her hand on the door. “Excuse me, Beavis? Butt-Head? We ready to focus, here?” She was also excellent at her job and great to have as backup at these daily press briefings, which could get kind of hectic.
Did I say “kind of”? A buzzing swarm of reporters came at us the second we hit the front steps of the Daly Building.
“Alex! What can you tell us about Woodley Park?”
“Detective Cross, over here!”
“Is there truth to the rumors —”
“People!” Joyce shouted over the group. Her volume was the stuff of legend around the office. “Let the man make his statement first! Please.”
I quickly ran down the facts of the last twenty-four hours and said what I could about the Bureau’s ballistics report without going into too much detail. After that, it was back to the free-for-all.
Channel 4 got in first. I recognized the microphone but not the reporter, who looked about twelve years old to me. “Alex, do you have any message for the sniper? Anything you want him to know?”
For the first time, something like quiet broke out on the steps. Everybody wanted to hear my answer to that one.
“We’d welcome contact of any kind from whoever is responsible for these shootings,” I said into the cameras. “You know where to find us.”
It wasn’t a great sound bite, and it wasn’t badass or anything else that some people out there might have wanted me to say. But within the investigation, we were all in agreement: there would be no goading, no lines in the sand, and no public characterizing of the killer — or killers — until we knew more about who we were dealing with, here.
“Next question. James!” Joyce called out, just to keep things focused and moving along.
It was James Dowd, one of the national NBC correspondents. He had a thick pad of notes in his hand, which he worked off of as he spoke.
“Detective Cross, is there any truth to the rumors about a blue Buick Skylark with New York plates — or a dark-colored, rusted-out Suburban — near the scene in Woodley Park? And can you tell us if either of those vehicles has been traced back to the killer?”
I was pissed and taken off guard all at once. The problem was, Dowd was good.
The truth was, I had an old friend — Jerome Thurman from First District — quietly following up on both of those leads from the night of the Dlouhy murder. So far, all we had was a mile-long list of matching vehicles from the DMV, and no proof that any of them were connected in any way to the shootings.
But more than that, we had a strong desire to keep this information under wraps. Obviously someone had spoken to the press, which was ironic given my lecture about discretion on the FIG call just a few minutes ago.
I gave the only answer I could. “I have no comment on that at this time.” It was like dangling a steak in front of a pack of wild dogs. The whole mass of them pressed in even closer.
“People!” Joyce tried again. “One at a time. You know how this works!”
It was a losing battle, though. I threw out at least four more “no comments” and stonewalled until someone finally changed the subject. But the damage was already done. If either of those vehicles did in fact belong to the snipers, they now had full warning, and we’d just lost an important advantage.
It was our first major leak of the investigation, but something told me it wasn’t going to be our last.
Chapter 31
LISA GIAMETTI LOOKED at her watch for maybe the tenth time. She was going to wait five more minutes and then take off. It was just amazing, the way some people didn’t think twice about wasting your time in this business.
Four and a half minutes into the five she’d allowed, a dark-blue BMW pulled up and double-parked in front of the house. Better late than never anyway. Nice car.
She checked her teeth in the rearview mirror, ran a hand through her short auburn hair, and got out to meet the client.
“Mr. Siegel?”
“Max,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m not used to the city traffic.”
His handshake was warm, and he was just tall, dark, and hot enough to forgive easily. Considering all the eye contact, she figured he liked what he saw as well. Interesting guy, and well worth the wait.
“Come on in,” she told him. “I think you’ll like this place. I know I do.”
She held the door open for him to go first. The place was a half-decent row house on Second in Northeast, a little overpriced for the current rental market but a good fit for the right tenant. “Are you new to Washington?”
“I used to live here, and now I’m back,” he said. “I don’t really know anybody in the city anymore.”
He was doing the code thing — new in town, alone, etc. No ring on the finger either. Lisa Giametti was not an easy mark, but she knew a hungry man when she saw one, and if something happened to happen here, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
She closed the door and locked it behind them.
“It’s a great block,” she went on. “You’ve got the back of the Supreme Court Building right across the street. Not exactly a lot of loud parties over there. And then a nice little yard in the back with off-street parking.”
They came through to the kitchen, where the garage was visible outside. “I don’t have to tell you how handy that can be around here.”
“No,” he said, looking somewhere south of her eyes. “That’s a very nice pendant you’re wearing. You have good taste — in apartments and jewelry.”
This guy didn’t waste any time, did he?
“And how about the basement?” he asked next.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I’d like to see the basement. There is one, isn’t there?”
Normally the client might have asked about the upstairs at this point. Maybe even the bedroom, if she was reading this guy correctly. But whatever. The customer was always right, especially when he looked like this one did.
She left her briefcase on the kitchen counter, opened the basement door, and led him down the old wooden stairs.
“You can see it’s nice and dry. The wiring’s been redone, and the washer and dryer are only a couple of years old.”
He walked around, nodding approvingly. “I could get a lot of work done down here. Plenty of privacy, too.”
Suddenly, he took a step toward her, and she backed into the washing machine.
If there had been any doubt about where this was headed, it was gone now. Lisa tossed her hair. “Do you want t
o see the upstairs?”
“Of course I do — just not quite yet. You mind, Lisa?”
“No, I guess not.”
When she went to kiss him, he reached between her legs at the same moment, right up her skirt. It was a little presumptuous — and a little hot, too.
“It’s been a while,” he told her apologetically.
“I can tell,” she said, and pulled him closer.
Then, before they ever got to the paperwork still waiting on the kitchen counter upstairs, Lisa Giametti got the fuck of her life, right there on the two-year-old Maytag washer. It was hot, and dirty, and quite wonderful.
And the 12 percent commission was very nice, too.
Chapter 32
THE FEDS DIDN’T KNOW SHIT. Metro Police didn’t know shit either. All anyone knew was that Washington was becoming one very hot and scary place to live.
Denny ate up the headlines — page A01 every morning, lead story every night at five, six, and eleven. He and Mitch sold their papers in the afternoon, then caught the evening news at Best Buy or, if they had a few extra bucks, at one of the watering holes that didn’t mind a couple of dusty guys like them sitting at the bar.
It was always the same story: unknown assailant, phantom fingerprint, and very high-grade weaponry. A few channels were throwing around rumors about a Buick Skylark with New York plates, and a supposedly dark-blue or black rusted-out Suburban — which would have worried Denny a lot more if his own Suburban wasn’t white. Even eyewitnesses were going south these days, just like everything else in the republic.
For Mitch’s part, he liked the hoopla well enough, but as the days slipped by, he seemed to get a little more sluggish, a little less engaged. There was no doubt about it in Denny’s mind: these “missions” were the thing that kept Mitch focused. Nothing else did it for the big guy.
So on the seventh day of no action, Denny told Mitch it was time to go again.
They were driving on Connecticut, away from Dupont Circle in rush-hour traffic, which was perfect, as it turned out. The longer it took to crawl past the Mayflower Hotel, the more they could scope it out on the first pass.
“That the place?” Mitch asked, looking up from the passenger seat.
“We’ll do a full recon tonight,” Denny said. “Tomorrow night, we go.”
“What kind of crumbum we bringing down this time, Denny?”
“You ever heard of Agro-Corel?”
“Nope.”
“You ever eat corn? Or potatoes? Or drink bottled water? They were into everything, man, a whole vertically integrated conglomerate, and our boy sat right at the top of the pyramid.”
“What’d he do?”
Mitch kept picking Taco Bell crumbs out of his lap and eating them, but Denny knew he was listening, too, even if some of it went over his head.
“Man lied to his company. Lied to the Feds, too. He sent the whole place down the shitter and took some hundred-million-dollar parachute, while everyone else took the shaft — no pensions, no jobs, nothing. You know what that’s like, don’t you, Mitchie? Doing everything you should, and still getting the short end while the Man just keeps getting fatter?”
“Why ain’t the Man in jail, Denny?”
He shrugged. “How much does a judge cost?”
Mitch stared out the windshield, not saying anything. A light changed, and the traffic surged forward again.
Finally, he said, “I’ll put a bullet in his brain stem, Denny.”
Chapter 33
THE NEXT NIGHT, they did things a little differently, trying to shake up the routine. Denny dropped Mitch off with both packs in an alley behind the Moore Building, then parked a good four blocks away and walked back. Afterward he’d pull the car around again.
Mitch was waiting inside the building. Neither one of them spoke while climbing the twelve flights of stairs. The packs were sixty pounds each. It wasn’t a picnic anyway.
On the roof, they could hear traffic noises from down on Connecticut but could see nothing until they got right up to the edge.
The whole facade of their building was built up, so all anyone could see from the street was a twenty-foot-high triangle of brickwork instead of the usual flat roofline. The spot was like a bird blind, with a perfect view of the Mayflower Hotel across the street — still one of the most famous hotels in DC.
Denny scoped things out while Mitch got himself set up for the turkey shoot.
The target, Skip Downey, had some very regular habits. He liked one suite in particular, which made Denny’s job a hell of a lot easier than it might have been.
Right now, the curtains were open, which meant Mr. Downey hadn’t checked in yet.
Twenty minutes later, though, Downey and his “friend” were waiting around for the bellman to take his twenty-dollar tip and skedaddle out of the suite.
Downey had an embarrassing reddish-blond comb-over to go with his million-dollar bank account. And apparently he liked the Mensa type. His companion today had her hair up in a bun, with heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a little business suit that was way too short for any real librarian to wear.
“Bow-chicka-wow-wow,” Denny sang — a little porn theme for the occasion. “Two windows down and four over — you got it?”
“I’m there,” Mitch said. He was eyeing over his own scope and flipped off the safety as he watched. “Nice-looking piece of ass, Denny. Shame to mess her up, you know?”
“That’s why you’re just going for the shoulder, Mitchie. Just enough to put her down on the ground. Mr. D. first, and then the girl.”
“Mr. D. first, and then the girl,” he repeated, and settled into his final stance.
Downey poured a couple of scotches on rocks. He drained his own and then walked straight over to the suite’s living room window.
“Shooter ready?” Denny asked.
“Ready,” Mitch said.
The man of the moment reached up to close the heavy coffee-colored drapes, his arms spread in a wide V.
“Send it!”
Chapter 34
AT TEN THIRTY that night, I was standing on the roof of the Moore Building, looking across to the hotel suite where Skip Downey had just joined a small but growing fraternity of those recently deceased by sniper fire.
This latest made three incidents — the magic number. Our guys were now serial killers in the public eye.
Connecticut Avenue down below was a forest of mobile broadcast towers, and I knew from experience that the blogosphere was about to officially catch on fire with this thing.
“Can you see me?” I said into my radio.
I had Sampson on the wireless, from inside the hotel room. He was standing right where Skip Downey had gone down.
“Wave your arm or something,” he said. “There you are. But, yeah — that’s pretty good cover.”
Someone behind me cleared his throat.
I wheeled around and saw Max Siegel standing there. Great. Just who I didn’t want to see.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No problem,” I said. Unless you counted the fact that he was up here at all.
“What have we got?” He came over to get the same view I had, and looked out across Connecticut. “How far a shot is that? Fifty yards?”
“Less,” I said.
“So they’re obviously not trying to top themselves. At least, not in terms of distance.”
I noticed he said “they” and wondered if he’d been on that FIG conference call — or if he’d come up with it on his own.
“The MO’s the same otherwise,” I said. “The shots came from a standing position. Caliber seems like a match. And then there’s the target profile, of course.”
“Bad guy out of the headlines,” he said.
“That’s it,” I said. “Plenty of people got screwed over by this Downey guy. The whole thing has vigilante justice written all over it.”
“You want to know what I think?” Siegel asked — of course, it wasn’t reall
y a question. “I think you’re oversimplifying. These guys aren’t hunting, not in the traditional sense. And there’s nothing personal in the work at all. It’s completely detached.”
“Not completely,” I said. “That print they left at the first scene had to have been deliberate.”
“Even if it was,” Siegel said, “that doesn’t mean the whole thing was their idea.”
Already I was getting tired of the jawing. “Where are you going with this?”
“Isn’t it kind of obvious?” he said. “These guys are guns for hire. They’re working for someone. Maybe there’s an agenda — but it belongs to whoever’s footing the bill. That’s who wants all these bad boys dead.”
He had laid out his opinion as fact, not to be questioned — as usual. But, still, the theory wasn’t completely off the wall. I owed it to myself to consider it, and I definitely would. Score one for Max Siegel.
“I’m a little surprised,” I told him honestly. “I’m used to the Bureau sticking to harder evidence and staying away from supposition.”
“Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises,” he said, and put an unwelcome hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got to widen your mind, Detective, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I minded very much, but I was determined to do the one thing Siegel seemed incapable of — taking the high road.
Chapter 35
I LEFT THE MAYFLOWER crime scene soon after that, glad for an excuse to get away from Siegel.
Our second victim that night, Rebecca Littleton, was at George Washington University Hospital with a single gunshot wound to the shoulder. Word from the emergency room was that it had been a penetrating trauma, as opposed to a perforating one. That meant the bullet still had to come out. If I hurried, I could catch her before surgery.
When I got there, they had Littleton on a gurney in one of the blue-curtained ER cubicles. The truss over her shoulder was stained dark with Betadine, and whatever the IV meds were doing for her physical pain, they sure weren’t helping her mental state — she still looked ghost white and scared as hell.