Parker recalled that within the Bureau assistant special agents in charge were referred to by the acronym, pronounced A-sack, while the heads of the offices were called S-A-C’s. An aspect of his former life he hadn’t thought about for years.
She continued, “Could we come inside for a minute?”
A parental warning alarm went off. He responded, “You mind if we stay out here? The children . . .”
Her eyes flickered and he wondered if she considered this a snub. But that was just too bad; the kids’ exposure to the Bureau was limited to sneaking a look at Scully and Mulder on
The X-Files
when sleeping over
at friends’ houses. He planned on keeping it that way.
“Fine with us,” Cage said for both of them. “Hey, last time I saw you . . . man, it was a while ago. We were at Jimmy’s, you know, his thing on Ninth Street.”
“That’s right.”
It was in fact the last time Parker Kincaid had been at the Bureau headquarters. Standing in the large courtyard surrounded by the somber stone building. A hot July day two years ago. He still got occasional e-mails about what a fine speech he’d delivered at the memorial service for Jim Huang, who was one of Parker’s former assistants. He’d been gunned down on his first day as a field agent.
Parker remained silent.
Cage nodded after the kids. “They’re growing.”
“They do that,” Parker answered. “What exactly is it, Cage?”
The agent gave a shrug toward Lukas.
“We need your help, Mr. Kincaid,” she said quickly, before the stream of breath accompanying Parker’s question evaporated.
Parker tilted his head.
“It’s nice out here,” Cage said, looking up. “Fresh air. Linda and I should move. Get some land. Maybe Loudon County. You watch the news, Parker?”
“I listen.”
“Huh?”
“Radio. I don’t watch TV.”
“That’s right. You never did.” Cage said to Lukas, “‘Wasteland,’ he’d call TV. He read a lot. Words’re Parker’s domain. His bailiwick, whatever the hell a bailiwick is. You told me your daughter reads like crazy. She still do that?”
“The guy in the subway,” Parker said. “That’s what you’re here about.”
“METSHOOT,” Lukas said. “That’s what we’ve acronymed it. He killed twenty-three people. Wounded thirty-seven. Six children were badly injured. There was a—”
“What is it you want?” he interrupted, worried that his own children might hear this.
Lukas responded, “This’s important. We need your help.”
“What on earth could you possibly want from me? I’m retired.”
Cage said, “Uh-huh. Sure. Retired.”
Lukas frowned, looked from one to the other.
Was this rehearsed? A good cop/confused cop thing? It didn’t seem to be. Still, another important rule in his invisible parental
Handbook
was: “
Get used to being double-teamed.
” He was on his guard now.
“You still do document examination. You’re in the Yellow Pages. And you’ve got a Web site. It’s good. I like the blue wallpaper.”
He said firmly, “I’m a
civilian
document examiner.”
Lukas said, “Cage tells me you were head of the Document Division for six years. He says you’re the best document examiner in the country.”
What weary eyes she has, Parker thought. She’s probably only thirty-six or thirty-seven. Great figure, trim, athletic, beautiful face. Yet what she’s seen . . . Look at those eyes. Like blue-gray stones. Parker knew about eyes like that.
Daddy, tell me about the Boatman.
“I only do commercial work. I don’t do any criminal forensics.”
“He was also candidate for SAC Eastern District. Yeah, yeah, I’m not kidding.” Cage said this as if he hadn’t heard Parker. “Except he turned it down.”
Lukas lifted her pale eyebrows.
“And that was years ago,” Parker responded.
“Sure it was,” Cage said. “But you’re not rusty, are you, Parker?”
“Cage, get to the point.”
“I’m trying to wear you down,” the graying agent said.
“Can’t be done.”
“Ah, I’m the miracle worker. Remember?” To Lukas he said, “See, Parker didn’t just find forgeries; he used to track people down because of what they wrote, where they buy writing paper, pens, things like that. Best in the business.”
“She already said you said that,” Parker said acerbically.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Cage observed.
Parker was shivering—but not from the cold. From the trouble these two people represented. He thought of the Whos. He thought of their party tonight. Thought of his ex-wife. He opened his mouth to tell lanky Cage and deadeye Lukas to get the hell out of his life. But she was there first. Bluntly she said, “Just listen. The unsub—”
Parker remembered: unknown subject. An unidentified perp.
“—and his partner, the shooter, have this extortion scheme. The shooter lights up a crowd of people with an automatic weapon every four hours starting at four this afternoon unless the city pays. Mayor’s willing to and we drop the money. But the unsub never shows up. Why? He’s dead.”
“You believe the luck?” Cage said. “On his way to collect
twenty million and he gets nailed by a delivery truck.”
Parker asked, “Why didn’t the
shooter
pick up the money?”
“ ’Cause the shooter’s only instructions’re to kill,” Lukas said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with the money. Classic left-hand/right-hand setup.” Lukas seemed surprised he hadn’t figured it out. “The unsub turns the shooter loose with instructions to keep going if he doesn’t get a call to stop. That way we’ll hesitate to cap the perp in a tac operation. And if we collar the unsub he’s got leverage to work out a plea bargain in exchange for stopping the shooter.”
“So,” Cage said. “We’ve gotta find him. The shooter.”
The door behind him started to open.
Parker quickly said to Lukas, “Button your jacket.”
“What?” she asked.
As Robby stepped outside Parker quickly reached forward and tugged her jacket closed, hiding the large pistol on her belt. She frowned at this but he whispered, “I don’t want him to see your weapon.”
He put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Hey, Who. How you doing?”
“Stephie hid the controller.”
“I did not,” she called. “Didn’t, didn’t!”
“I was winning and she hid it.”
Parker said, frowning, “Wait, isn’t it connected with a cord?”
“She unplugged it.”
“Stephie-effie. Is that controller going to appear in five seconds? Four, three, two . . .”
“I found it!” she called.
“My turn!” Robby cried and charged up the stairs again.
Once more Parker noticed Lukas’s eyes follow Robby as he climbed to the second floor.
“What’s his name?” Lukas asked.
“Robby.”
“But what did you call him?”
“Oh. ‘Who.’ It’s my nickname for the kids.”
“After Wahoo?” she asked. “Your alma mater’s team?”
“No. It’s from a Dr. Seuss book.” Parker wondered how she knew he’d gone to the University of Virginia. “Look, Cage, I’m sorry. But I really can’t help you.”
“You understand the problem here, boy?” Cage continued. “The only link we’ve got—the
only
clue at all—is the extortion note.”
“Run it by PERT.”
The Bureau’s Physical Evidence Response Team.
Lukas’s thin lips grew slightly thinner. “If we have to we will. And we’ll get a psycholinguistic from Quantico. And I’ll have agents check out every goddamn paper and pen company in the country. But—”
“—that’s what we’re hopin’ you’d take over on,” Cage filled in. “You can look at it, you can tell us what’s what. Stuff nobody else can. Maybe where he lived. Maybe where the shooter’s going to hit next.”
Parker asked, “What about Stan?”
Stanley Lewis was the current head of the Bureau’s Document Division. Parker knew the man was good; he’d hired Lewis years ago as an examiner. He recalled that they’d spent an evening drinking beer and trying to outdo each other forging John Hancock’s signature. Lewis had won.
“He’s in Hawaii for the Sanchez trial. Even in a Tomcat we can’t get him back here before the next deadline.”
“It’s at four,” Lukas repeated.
“It won’t be like last time, Parker,” Cage said softly. “That’ll never happen again.”
Lukas’s head swiveled between the two men once again. But Parker didn’t explain what Cage had meant. He wasn’t talking about the past; he’d had enough past for one day.
“I’m sorry. Any other time, maybe. But I can’t now.” He was imagining what would happen if Joan found out he was working on an active investigation.
“Shit, Parker, what do I have to do?”
“We have nothing,” Lukas said angrily. “No leads. We have a few hours until this crazy shoots up another crowd of people. There were children shot down—”
Parker waved his hand abruptly to silence her. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now. Good luck.”
Cage shrugged, looked at Lukas. She handed Parker her card, with the gold-embossed seal of the Justice Department on it. Parker had once had cards just like these. The typeface was Cheltenham condensed. Nine-point.
“Cell phone’s on the bottom. . . . Look, at least if we have any questions, you mind if we call?”
Parker hesitated. “No, I don’t.”
“Thank you.”
“Goodbye,” Parker said, stepping back into the house.
The door closed. Robby stood on the stairs.
“Who were they, Daddy?”
He said, “That was a man I used to work with.”
“Did she have a gun?” Robby asked. “That lady?”
“Did you
see
a gun?” Parker asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Then I guess she had one.”
“Did you work with her too?” the boy asked.
“No, just the man.”
“Oh. She was pretty.”
Parker started to say, For a lady cop. But he didn’t.
Back here in Washington I live under a sorrowful pall, haunted as I am by visions of Polly on horseback . . .
Parker, back in his basement study, alone now, found himself thinking of the letter in front of him as Q1. FBI document lab procedures dictated that questioned documents were called Q’s. Authentic documents and handwriting samples—also called “knowns”—were referred to as K’s. It had been years since he’d thought of the suspect wills and contracts he analyzed as Q’s. This intrusion of police mindset into his personal life was unsettling. Nearly as troubling as Joan’s appearance.
Forget about Cage, forget about Lukas.
Concentrate . . .
Back to the letter, hand glass in front of his face.
He now noted that the author—whether it had been Jefferson or not—had used a steel pen; he could see the unique flow of ink into fibers torn by the nib. Many forgers believe that all old documents were written with feather quills and use those exclusively. But by 1800 steel pen points were very popular and Jefferson did most of his corresponding with them.
One more tick on the side of authenticity.
I think of your Mother too at this difficult time and though my dear I do not want to add to your burden I wonder if I might
impose on you to find that portrait of Polly and your Mother together, do you recall it? The one Mr. Chabroux painted of them by the well? I meant to bring it with me that their faces might sustain me in my darker moments.
He forced himself not to think about the context of the letter and examined a line of ink where it crossed a fold in the paper. He observed there was no bleeding into the gully of the crease. Which meant the letter had been written before it was folded. He knew that Thomas Jefferson was fastidious about his writing habits and would never have written a letter on a piece of paper that had been previously folded. Score another point for the document. . . .
Parker looked up, stretched. He reached forward and clicked on the radio. National Public Radio was broadcasting another story about the Metro shootings.
“ . . . report that the death toll has risen to twenty-four. Five-year-old LaVelle Williams died of a gunshot wound. Her mother was wounded in the attack and is listed in critical—”
He shut the radio off.
Looking at the letter, moving his hand glass over the document slowly. Swooping in on a lift—where the writer finishes a word and raises the pen off the surface of the paper. This lift was typical of the way Jefferson ended his strokes.
And the feathering of the ink in the paper?
How ink is absorbed can tell you many things about the type of materials used and when the document was made. Over the years ink is drawn more and more into
the paper. The feathering here suggested it had been written long ago—easily two hundred years. But, as always, he took the information under advisement; there were ways to fake feathering.
He heard the thud of the children’s feet on the stairs. They paused, then there were louder bangs as first one then the other jumped down the last three steps to the floor.
“Daddy, we’re hungry,” Robby called from the top of the basement stairs.
“I’ll be right there.”
“Can we have grilled cheese?”
“Please!” Stephie added.
Parker clicked out the brilliant, white examination light on his table. He replaced the letter in his vault. He stood for a moment in the dim study, lit only by a fake Tiffany lamp in the corner, beside the old couch.
I meant to bring it with me that their faces might sustain me in my darker moments.
He climbed the stairs.
“The weapon,”
Margaret Lukas called abruptly. “I want the deets on the shooter’s weapon.”
“You want what?” Cage asked.
“Deets. De-tails.” She was used to her regular staff, who knew her expressions. And idiosyncrasies.
“Any minute now,” C. P. Ardell called back. “That’s what they’re tellin’ me.”
They were in one of the windowless rooms in the Bureau’s new Strategic Information and Operations Center on the fifth floor of headquarters on Ninth Street. The whole facility was nearly as big as a football field and had recently been expanded to let the agency handle as many as five major crises at once.
Cage walked past Lukas and as he did so he whispered, “You’re doing fine.”