A Brewing Storm

Now she was beginning to irritate him.

  “Since you mentioned it, what do you think of my ass, Agent Showers?” he asked. “Most women like it.”

  For a moment, he thought she might actually slap him. Instead, she walked away enraged, her three-inch heels smacking the marble floor like a stick beating a snare drum.

  Showers finally got it. She understood that he was right. She knew that she was on the bottom of the totem pole. She was in line to become the scapegoat, the fall guy, the weakest link. It wasn’t fair, but it was what would happen. What she still didn’t seem to realize was that Storm was the only person who could save her.

  Chapter Eleven

  The J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue was considered such an architectural eyesore after it opened that there had been talk for years about demolishing it and moving the FBI’s headquarters into the suburbs. Hoover, himself, had reportedly bullied the architects into adding several unusual safeguards to the building’s boxy design. At the time, race riots were rocking Washington and other major cities, and 1960s antiwar protestors were threatening the tear down the “establishment.” Fearing the FBI building might come under siege, Hoover demanded that the street level of his new headquarters be constructed without any windows or offices. Built of concrete mixed with crushed limestone for extra strength, the first level resembled a castle wall. It protected an open mezzanine where there were a limited number of elevators leading to the upper floors. There was no second floor. Instead, the second level was an ugly open gap with only structural supports and reinforced elevator shafts and stairways linking the ground and third floors. The second floor was missing to deter rioters from using ladders to scale the building. At one point, rumors surfaced that Hoover had put razor wire in the branches of the trees that lined Pennsylvania Avenue outside his building to stop attackers from climbing them to reach the headquarters’ upper floors.

  It was two days after the trash can explosions had alarmed the city and Matthew Dull’s body had been found floating in the river. Storm was sitting alone in a conference room on the FBI headquarters sixth-floor, waiting for Agent Showers. In an upside-down move that would have been unthinkable in any major city except for Washington, D.C., Storm had come to the headquarters today—not to be questioned—but to interrogate Agent Showers.

  Things had played out much as Storm had anticipated. Within minutes after Dull’s corpse had been found, Jedidiah Jones had started pulling strings. FBI Director Jackson had guaranteed Jones that Storm would remain invisible and untouchable—at least for now. Senator Windslow had circled the wagons around Samantha Toppers.

  Agent April Showers had been stonewalled.

  At a news conference held on the morning after Dull’s body was found, an FBI spokesperson told reporters that the senator’s stepson had been kidnapped, held for ransom, and murdered, apparently by a foreign gang. The spokesman said Senator Windslow had cooperated fully with the FBI during the tragedy. The lead investigator on the case, Special Agent April Showers, had been removed from the investigation and was going to be reassigned to a field job.

  There was no mention at the press conference of the four trash can explosions that had happened that night, no mention of the six-million-dollar payment that had been destroyed by the blasts and fire. Instead, the agency mouthpiece had said that Dull had been executed by gang members, possibly from Mexico or Ukraine—even though the Windslows had agreed to negotiate.

  Agent Showers walked into the conference room where Storm was waiting, with a thin file in her hands and a scowl on her face. She dropped the paperwork in front of him, where it landed with a thud.

  “Are you going to sit down?” he asked.

  Showers pulled a chair from the conference table and took a seat across from him.

  “They’re sending me to Tulsa,” she said.

  “You’re not gone yet,” he replied.

  Storm carefully thumbed through the documents that she’d brought him. The first was her final report about the kidnapping/murder. In the classified, secret section of her report, she theorized that Dull had been kidnapped because of a sour business deal between Senator Windslow and Ivan Petrov. She claimed that the Russian oligarch had paid Windslow a “fee,” believed to be six million dollars, but the senator had later broken their deal. Petrov had reacted in typical Russian fashion, by abducting the senator’s stepson as a threat to force Windslow to comply. Petrov also had demanded his six-million-dollar payment back in the form of a ransom.

  Although Agent Showers had been kept from interrogating Storm and Toppers, the clever FBI agent had figured out the link between the ransom demand and the exploding trash cans. In her report, Showers explained that destroying the cash had dovetailed perfectly with Petrov’s criminal mind-set. Not only had he taken revenge by killing Windslow’s stepson, Petrov had destroyed the original six-million-dollar bribe that he’d paid the senator.

  While Showers’s report was nice and neat, it did not contain any evidence to justify her theory or an arrest. Her account mentioned that immigration records from the night of Dull’s murder indicated that four Ukrainians had boarded an international flight for London. Yet no one attempted to stop them from fleeing. Further investigation showed that all four were former KGB agents.

  When Storm finished reading Showers’s analysis, he asked, “Do you feel confident that Petrov was behind the kidnapping and it was carried out by hired thugs?”

  “That’s what I wrote, isn’t it?” she replied in a sarcastic voice. “Not that it matters. It doesn’t appear that anyone is really interested in the truth.”

  Storm removed a second report from the case file. It was an autopsy. Dull had been shot twice, once in the back of his skull and once in his heart. Both rounds had been fired behind him at close range, based on the entry and exit wounds. The shot through his head had passed completely through his skull and had not been recovered. However, the damage caused by the slug revealed it had been made by a hollow-point round. This meant the bullet’s tip had mushroomed upon impact so it would cause maximum damage as it ripped through brain tissue and destroyed Dull’s once handsome face. The bullet fired into his skull had been shot at a downward angle, which suggested the gunman had been standing behind Dull, who was most likely sitting in a chair. The location of the two wounds further suggested that Dull had been shot first in the back of his skull and then fallen forward onto the floor, where the gunman had fired the second shot straight down while standing over him. The second slug had entered through Dull’s back, caused his heart to literally explode, and had exited through his chest. Because Dull had collapsed onto a hard-surfaced floor, the slug had been stopped when it attempted to exit his body. In an odd move—most likely caused by its mushroom shape—it had ricocheted back into Dull’s chest, where it had lodged. The FBI had recovered this slug and discovered attached to it microscopic slivers of tile and concrete that had come from the floor. An examination of Dull’s lungs confirmed that he had been dead before his body had been dumped into the river.

  The report found that the bullets that killed Dull had been 9mm rounds. FBI ballistic and firearm experts had determined that the bullets had been manufactured by the JSC Barnaul Machine-Tool Plant in Russia, a leading maker of Russian military ammunition.

  Storm returned the autopsy to the folder and closed the case file, which he pushed across the table to the still bitter Agent Showers.

  “Do you have any files about the four trash can explosions that happened that night?” he asked.

  “Why would you want to see them?” Showers asked, not trying to hide the contempt in her voice.

  “Don’t play dumb,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Are you now telling me that those four explosions were related to the kidnapping?” she asked. “Are you admitting that you and Toppers put money in those trash cans?”

  “Let’s just say I’m curious about everything odd that happened that night. I want to be thorough.”

  ??
?Then you should contact the D.C. police,” she said sarcastically. “Maybe someone stole an elephant from the National Zoo or ran naked down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “Stolen elephants and naked people do interest me,” he quipped. “Naked people more than stolen elephants, unless midgets and butter are involved. But for now I’ll settle for the file about the four explosions.”

  A clearly irked Agent Showers left the conference room. When she returned, she jabbed another case folder at Storm as if it were a knife.

  “You and I both know,” Showers said, “that the kidnappers blew up the ransom money after sending you and Toppers on an elaborate goose chase. Ivan Petrov spit in Windslow’s face. Petrov took back his bribe money and killed his stepson. But I can’t prove any of this—thanks to the higher ups protecting you, Toppers, and Senator Windslow.”

  Storm took the file and asked, “Did the FBI work the blasts that night or was it some other agency?”

  “The explosions happened on parkland so the National Park Police and the District of Columbia police were responsible for the investigation. The actual bomb investigation was done by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives because of its expertise.”

  Storm removed the BATF analytical report. All four explosions had been caused by identical homemade devices. The explosions had come from small amounts of ammonium nitrate packed tightly into plastic bottles. A cell phone had been used as the trigger. The devices resembled the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used against U.S. troops in Iraq, but they packed much less power. This similarity prompted BATF investigators to speculate that the bomb maker had some military training. The IEDs were missing the projectiles that insurgents normally used to cause maximum damage. Instead the bombs had been designed to cause a loud noise and ignite fires.

  Included in the report was a list of debris that had been collected at each blast site. Despite the explosion and resulting fire, numerous remnants of one-hundred-dollar bills had been found. Newspaper fragments had been collected, too, along with other debris from items commonly found in trash cans, such as plastic bottles and aluminum soda and beer cans.

  Although the four cell phones used to trigger the bombs had been destroyed, investigators had been able to glean that they were identical Motorola models.

  With the report still in his hands, Storm asked, “Did you read this list of remnants?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “Do you think you’re the only one who wants to be thorough?”

  “Did you notice anything odd?”

  “I assume you’re talking about the large amount of newsprint.”

  “The report says there was four times more newsprint found at each blast site than there was remnants from hundred-dollar bills,” Storm said.

  “At first, I didn’t think that was significant,” Showers admitted, “but then I remembered that newsprint is made of wood pulp.”

  “And currency is made from cotton and linen,” Storm said, completing her sentence.

  “Which means,” she said, “that the newsprint should have burned faster than the currency. Less newsprint should have survived. But there was more of it.”

  Storm closed the file and handed it to her.

  She said, “What are you saying—that something happened to the money?”

  “I’m saying this case is far from over.”

  He stood to leave.

  “Hey, where are you going?” she asked. “What do you mean, 'This case if far from over’? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’ll be in touch. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “You can’t just walk out of here like this,” she said.

  But that was exactly what he was doing.

  “You’re a son of a bitch—whatever your name is,” she said.

  The coldness in her voice was strong enough to have chilled shots from an entire fifth of Jack Daniel’s.

  Chapter Twelve

  Matthew Dull’s funeral was held in the prestigious Washington National Cathedral and attracted the sort of attention you would expect when the deceased had been murdered and was related to a powerful U.S. senator. The President of the United States was traveling overseas, but he sent the vice president to represent him. At least forty members of Congress took seats in the front pews. Georgetown socialites, who knew Gloria and her son, intermingled with the politicos. Every member of the Washington press corps who mattered was covering the event. While most mourners came to genuinely pay their respects, Storm knew a few had shown up simply to curry favor or rub shoulders with the city’s crème de le crème. He arrived late and stood at the rear of the church. He spotted Jedidiah Jones in a second-row seat.

  A colleague of Senator Windslow had just started the eulogy when there was a ruckus in the front of the cathedral. Samantha Toppers had fainted and was sprawled on the floor. Everything stopped while security officers administered first aid and carried her outside to an ambulance. She was driven to an exclusive, private hospital on Capitol Hill.

  After the service, television news reporters doing stand-up reports outside the cathedral could be overheard telling viewers that Toppers had collapsed because of her “broken heart.”

  Storm didn’t stick around for the funeral processional to the famed Georgetown Tall Oaks cemetery. Dating back to 1849, Tall Oaks had run out of room long ago, but its owners had recently dug up the cemetery’s paths and walkways to create more space. Matthew’s body would be interred in a double-decker concrete crypt covered with slate and used as a new footpath. A tasteful marker would be placed beside the walkway, noting who was buried beneath it.

  The local newscast that night revealed that Toppers was being held overnight for observation at the St. Mary of the Miracle Hospital. It was standard procedure. She was suffering from situational depression, her doctor said, and needed rest.

  Visiting hours at St. Mary’s, which only accommodated fifty patients in its private suites, ended at precisely 8 P.M., which is exactly when Storm walked through the hospital’s entrance. The lobby was designed to look as if it were a living room. All visitors were required to sign in with a kindly looking elderly woman stationed behind a mahogany desk. The white-haired matron would press a concealed button that opened a solid oak door that led into the ward.

  “I need to speak to the security officer on duty,” Storm told her.

  “Oh, that’ll be, Tyler Martin. He’s a real nice fellow, but he’s always late. He’s supposed to be here now because my shift ends at eight o’clock.”

  At that same moment, an overweight, balding middle-aged fellow wearing dark blue trousers, a light blue button shirt, and a black tie burst into the lobby and hurried toward them.

  “Sorry, Shirley,” he said, puffing from his rushed pace, “traffic is a mess out there.”

  “You know it always is, Officer Martin,” the woman replied, “especially since they got the streets around the hospital torn up with construction. You’d think all that construction work would stop drivers from racing by here, but I almost got hit last night crossing at the intersection. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

  “The good news is that if they get hit, they’ll be outside a hospital,” Martin quipped.

  The older woman didn’t smile. She said, “Officer Martin, this man wants to speak to you.” Collecting her purse, she walked to the exit, calling over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow and please don’t be late again.”

  “Give me a moment please,” Martin said as he popped behind the reception desk and put a paper bag and thermos bottle into a large drawer. Sucking in a deep breath, he looked up at Storm and said, “OK, now, how can I help you?”

  Storm handed Martin a thin black wallet that contained the fake private investigator credentials that Jones had given him earlier. “Senator Windslow sent me over,” Storm explained. “He wants to make certain Ms. Samantha Toppers is protected from the media. He’s worried some tabloid photographer is going to sneak in here and take pictures of her while she’s
distraught.”

  “I heard about her on the radio driving to work,” Martin said, “but the senator doesn’t need to worry. We keep things pretty tight around here, especially at night. I’m the only officer on duty and all the doors except the front entrance are locked. No one gets by me.”

  Retrieving his false credentials, Storm extended his hand and gave Martin’s a firm shake. “Officer Martin, I’m glad you’re on duty. It’ll be a pleasure working with you. Now, I’ll just take a seat in your lobby, and if someone asks to see Ms. Toppers, you can signal me.”

  Martin hesitated. “I’ll need to call my supervisor about this.”

  “No problem. Tell him I’m here in case one of those photographers manages to slip by you. They’re sneaky bastards, and this way, it will be my dick, not yours, on the chopping block if the senator gets angry.”

  The thought of Storm taking the blame seemed to remove any doubts Martin might have had. “I guess there’s no reason to bother my boss. He gets cranky when I call at night.”

  Storm smiled reassuringly. “I’ll just take a seat over there.” He pointed to a brown leather chair near the lobby wall where he would have a clear view. “If someone comes in who you don’t know—anyone—even a doctor or someone who claims they’re a new employee on your janitorial staff—you give me a nod.”

  “We should have a code word,” Martin volunteered. “I’ll tell them, 'You’ll have to wait a moment before I buzz you in.’”

  “That would be great. I hope your boss knows how fortunate he is to have you working here.”

  “He doesn’t, but you’re right, he should,” Martin said, beaming.

  Storm had dealt with people like Martin all of his life. All they wanted was a little respect, a little appreciation and some encouragement. If you gave them that, most would turn over state secrets to please you.

  Storm took a seat and picked up a copy of the Washington Tribune from a nearby coffee table. During the next two hours, a handful of doctors arrived to see patients, but Martin recognized each of them.