What Lies Behind (22 page)

“What? Who the hell signed out the vaccines?” Fletcher asked tightly.

“The signature is scribbled, so we don’t have a name. He said he was from the CDC, picked up the vaccines from HAZMAT, signed all the paperwork, got in his car and left. Got him on camera—a big guy, wearing a ball cap with the name of a courier company that doesn’t exist on it. He’s gone, and the evidence is gone with him.”

Fletcher turned white with anger. “Holy shit. Holy shit, people. We are well and truly fucked.”

“Fletcher, now it’s time to call Girabaldi,” Sam said. “Everyone who’s tangled up in this case or discovers a facet of it is being tracked down and eliminated. We can’t contain the story if we can’t stop the people involved from being killed. Not to mention whoever is behind this has their hands on the vaccines. This is not good, and we need to move quickly.”

He breathed deeply a few times, thinking, then nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right. Girabaldi is the key. I just don’t know which side she’s on.”

Sam shook her head. “I don’t, either.”

“We’ll head over there right now, explain what’s been happening, and that we’re going public. We can’t let those vaccines be used against us. I will not have a terror attack in this city on my watch.”

“That’s a good plan, boss. I’m with you. You be careful,” Hart said.

“Yeah. You, too.”

Fletcher gave Hart some directions on what to recover from upstairs, and they set off, knowing the crime scene was well in hand.

They stepped out into the cooling fall evening. Sam had the oddest sense of dislocation. The gloaming was hovering around them, everything so clear, so perfect, and for that fraction of a moment as the sun began to set, light bouncing off the windshields of the cars lined up at the meters on the street, she saw the world around her with an unearthly clarity. It made her uneasy; things were too far out of control.

They started toward Fletcher’s car, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a car turn onto the street. A black sedan, very similar to the one Edgar Poe had described. The window started down.

Sam turned abruptly, grabbed Fletcher’s arm and pulled him toward her just as the bullet crashed into the building behind her.

Chapter 41

THERE WAS A
second of calm before pandemonium broke out around them, and the gunman managed to get off another few shots.

Fletcher reacted quickly. He shoved Sam to the ground, stepped forward to the curb and returned fire. It wasn’t SOP, and the sedan was already pulling away, the tires screeching smoke. Suddenly Hart was there, too, the two men shoulder to shoulder, firing in unison, both in perfect triangle stances, mimicking each other, and the rear window of the sedan shattered.

The car lurched hard to the right, up onto the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians like a flock of birds hit with shrapnel, and slammed into the building one block down.

Fletcher and Hart took off. Sam was right behind them, up and running hard. The smell of gas reached her nostrils as she skidded to a stop next to the car. She saw someone bolt from the passenger seat. Hart saw him, too, took off running after him.

Fletcher shouted at her to get back and yanked the driver from the car. The man flopped from the driver’s seat onto the pavement. She heard the shouts and screams of the people around, blocked it all out.

The driver’s head was ruined. He’d taken one of their bullets to the back of his skull, but he wasn’t dead yet. She pushed Fletcher to the side, pressed her fingers into the man’s neck, felt the feeble pulse starting to skip. There was nothing to be done, nothing at least that she could do. The bullet had decimated his brain; his heart was just waiting for its last signal to stop pumping.

Fletcher was rolling the body, slapping the man’s pockets, looking for ID and other weapons, getting blood on the pavement and his pants. There was brass all over the car, and thick red blood, and Sam sighed heavily as the man died with her hand on his neck.

She sat down on the curb. Her knees and her palms were skinned from landing hard on the concrete sidewalk. Fletcher saw her, his face filled with concern, and more—anger, frustration, an almost feral gleam from the adrenaline she knew was punching through his system. Killing was hard, but the first rush was impossible to avoid. It was the power of taking a life, of being the stronger creature, that drove the limbic system into overdrive. It didn’t care about morality, it simply was.

He shook himself a little, trying to get back to normal. “Are you okay? You’re not hit?”

She shook her head. “He’s gone,” she said unnecessarily, gesturing to the man at her feet.

The adrenaline was fleeting, and now Fletcher was starting to freak out. Sam didn’t blame him a bit. She was feeling quite rattled herself.

“Holy shit, holy shit. Do you know who it is?” He wasn’t asking, he wasn’t looking at the body. He was walking in circles, letting his body and mind get back onto the same plane.

Hart came back, panting, shaking his head, talking a mile a minute. “He got away. Bastard got away. I lost him in the crowd on M Street. What the hell was that about? Who’d we shoot?”

He grabbed the wallet Fletcher had stripped from the pants pocket, opened it. “Jesus, he’s one of ours.”

Sam nodded. She’d recognized the man from their meeting earlier in the day. As she’d stood over him, a finger on his erratic pulse, her mind tried to reconcile the situation—an ally turned enemy. And there was going to be hell to pay.

The man who’d tried to kill them was Jason Kruger, head of the Africa desk, from the State Department.

And now they had to figure out who had been in the car with him.

* * *

Sam watched Kruger’s body being loaded into the blue morgue van. The sun was setting in earnest, night coming on fast. The lights of Foggy Bottom were ringed in haze, leftover precipitation from the afternoon rains. Small wisps of fog drifted up from the Potomac, and Sam listened to the conversation taking place beside her with half an ear.

She’d just received a text from Daniels. He was in Robin Souleyret’s world; they were crashing her email. He hadn’t found anything yet, but he’d only gotten started five minutes earlier. She texted him back an
OK
, then tuned in to Fletcher and Hart’s hushed tête-à-tête.

“It was a man who fled the scene, right, Lonnie? I wasn’t imaging that?”

“Looked like a dude to me. Moved like one, too. Big, wearing a baseball cap. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was a guy. Why?”

“Just wanted to be sure we weren’t dealing with Robin Souleyret face-to-face. We keep finding evidence that points in her direction.”

“Media’s here. You want to make a statement?” Hart asked.

Fletcher shook his head. “Hell, no. What I want is to get in Regina Girabaldi’s face, find out what the fuck her acolyte was doing shooting at us.”

Sam saw a large black man making his way toward them, and pointed him out to Fletcher. “Isn’t that your big boss?”

Fletcher groaned slightly, stood to meet the man. “Chief, I can explain—”

Fred Roosevelt, the D.C. chief of police, held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. There are cameras and reporters thick as lice on the street behind me, and who knows who’s managed to point a boom mike in our direction.”

Fletcher nodded. “I’ll save it, then. You’re up to speed?”

“I am. You’re all okay?”

“We are.”

Roosevelt glanced over his shoulder. Sam saw a reporter staring their way. He didn’t mince words. “Captain Armstrong’s here. He’s going to have to take your guns. Let’s do that quietly, inside, with a crime scene tech. Then you and Hart need to go home.”

“Sir, I can’t—”

Roosevelt shook his head. “Not now, and not here. Go surrender your weapon, then go home. You’re off the case, effective immediately. We’ll hand it over to Woolrich—he’ll do it right.”

Fletcher nodded, red-faced, swallowing down his anger, and turned, signaling to Hart. There was no fighting this; it was how things had to be. There were some protocols even Fletcher couldn’t outmaneuver.

Roosevelt turned his attention to Sam. He gave her a long, lingering, thoughtful look. She knew he had never liked her, not since he was the captain running Homicide and Fletcher and Hart got involved in a shooting trying to protect her. She’d just moved to D.C.; she barely knew any of them. Hart hadn’t even held it against her, and he was the one who’d been shot. Roosevelt always had it in for her after that. The higher he rose on the food chain, the more difficult it became. She knew Fletcher had been shielding her from Roosevelt’s animosity, but there were no barriers to entry now.

His eyes were appraising and unfriendly. “Trouble follows you, doesn’t it, lady?”

She squared her shoulders. “We—”

He bent closer, voice low. “Get off my scene. You may have Lieutenant Fletcher wound around your little finger, but you’re going to end his career one of these days, whether you mean to or not. I’d prefer you not end it with a bullet. Now, go play with your FBI friends and leave my boys alone. You hear me?”

She opened her mouth to retort, then closed it. He was right. Any time she got involved, things went from bad to worse. Instead, she decided to play it cool. She nodded, turned and started to walk away. There were muffled words, then she clearly heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.

She turned around and stepped to his side.

“That is entirely uncalled for. Fletcher originally brought me into this case, yes, but I was assigned to work it by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I don’t care if you have a problem with me. I intend to help Lieutenant Fletcher and Detective Hart solve this case, and finish it, whether you want me involved or not. As a matter of fact, Chief Roosevelt, the FBI should probably take over the investigation from here. I’ll send a liaison with official instructions.”

His mouth dropped open. “You can’t do that. This is my case, my jurisdiction.”

“I can’t take you over, no, but I am already conducting an investigation, and I am going to make an official request for jurisdiction. I’m a federal officer, and I’ve been shot at. The suspect in question is a government official. This should be our case, and I’m going to make sure it is. You’re welcome to continue working it—your team is a great asset. But the FBI is officially in the mix.” She gave him a smile. “Now you can call me a bitch to my face, because I’ve earned it.”

His eyes bugged out and a vein popped up in his forehead. He started to sputter, but before he had a chance to form words, she went up the stairs toward Fletcher, who was staring at her narrow-eyed. She didn’t bother to look back.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Not now,” she replied.

They went inside the building. There was a crime scene tech waiting near the broken metal detector. He was quiet, did his job quickly and efficiently, taking swabs of both Hart’s and Fletcher’s hands, bagging their guns. Sam realized her hands were covered in blood. The crime scene tech handed her a wipe. It stung obscenely against her abraded flesh.

They were done in five minutes, and Fletcher’s immediate boss, Captain Armstrong, was waiting for them. If he’d seen Sam’s exchange with Roosevelt, he chose not to mention it. He leaned in, spoke quietly in Fletcher’s ear, close enough that she saw him twitch when Armstrong’s mustache tickled the lobe. “Go home, Fletcher. Let me deal with Roosevelt. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Armstrong shot her a strange glance, and she could have sworn he smiled, albeit briefly. So he had heard their tiff, damn it. She was beginning to feel foolish for losing her temper, then decided to hell with it. Part of working with the FBI, as Baldwin had explained, was putting up with the occasional skirmish with the locals. Of course, she hadn’t expected to get into one so soon, but Roosevelt had it coming.

Sam spared a glance toward the front doors, saw a bevy of microphones and camera flashes, the black stalks of camera tripods being hurried into place. Roosevelt was going to do a presser right here at the scene, and distract the media long enough to get his men away.

“Good of him,” Fletcher said to Hart. “He could have thrown us to the wolves.” And to Sam, “Now are you ready to tell me what all that was about? You seemed a bit heated talking to the big dog.”

“You don’t want to know. Suffice it to say, I just jacked your case.”

“You did what?”

She grabbed his arm as the flashbulbs started behind them.

“Come on. We need to get out of here.”

“I’m off the case. I’m supposed to go home and sit on my hands like a good little boy.”

She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Well, you can do that. Or you can come with me and solve this case.”

Fletcher shrugged back into his jacket. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Samantha, but I’m with you.” He turned to Hart. “Go home. Watch your back. I’ll stay in touch.”

“Hey, dude, we’re off the case. What do you think you’re doing?”

Fletcher glanced at Sam, gave his old partner a shrug and a grin. “We’ll see.”

Sam called Quantico as she walked out the back door of Bromley’s building, avoiding the press corps and that puffed-up rooster Roosevelt. Fletcher followed Sam. He looked troubled, not that she blamed him. What she’d just done was impulsive, but necessary. She couldn’t let someone like Roosevelt get in and muck things up. He used to be a cop, but now he was a politician, and everything was going to turn his way if they weren’t careful. And this way, she could protect Fletcher, too.

Charlaine answered on the first ring. “You’ve got my kid Daniels working hard, don’t you?”

“I do. Listen, I may have just mouthed off to D.C.’s chief of police that I’m requesting jurisdiction of this case.”

Charlaine started to laugh, and Sam told her the whole story with relief, fighting down her own laughter as Charlaine hooted. “You don’t waste any time, do you, Dr. Owens?”

“Apparently not. I felt it was justified. We were just shot at, and the shooter was an employee of the State Department. And the chief was being a jerk. He’s a politician. He’ll screw everything up.”

Charlaine laughed again. “Then you did exactly the right thing. Set up at the Hoover Building. I’ll brief them on what’s happening. You’ll have to go in and give them the rundown. Do you want to run this yourself, or do you need more help?”

“I think we need all the help we can get right now, Charlaine. Night has fallen, and we’re chasing our tails. We’ve got a manhunt ongoing, a spree killer shooting his way through D.C., five dead and two suspects missing, plus a load of possibly hot vaccines in the wind. We have a dead State Department official in the street outside. This is bigger than even my capable hands, and we need to work with the D.C. police, too. And someone needs to get Regina Girabaldi in a private room.”

Charlaine whistled. “She’s involved?”

“To her perfectly waxed eyebrows. I’m not sure exactly how, but she pulled us in this morning and asked us to cover the whole thing up. It’s beyond that now.”

“I hear you. You’re smart, Sam. We do our best work when we work together. I’ll handle things from this end. And I’ll let Baldwin know. He just checked in from the plane. I think he’s headed your way when he lands in a couple of hours, so you can coordinate together.”

“Roger that. I have to go home. There’s a whole separate branch of this case brewing in my living room. You saw the assassination attempt of James Denon this morning, right?”

“I did.”

“That was my guy who shot the would-be assassin. He’s got Denon holed up at our place while he tracks down who was involved. Turns out, I think we’re working the same case. There’s a common player between the two. Our girl.”

“Seriously? Sam, be careful. Go take a breath, let me get things moving.”

“I will. And, Charlaine? Thanks.”

“You got it, kid. Nice to have you on board.”

* * *

Fletcher listened to Sam’s call and decided he needed to make one of his own. It might get him fired; he knew continuing to work the case was dangerous to his career, but he had a feeling in the long run, it would be better to keep pushing than step back and wait like he’d been told. Armstrong would agree, he was sure of it.

When Armstrong had replaced Fred Roosevelt as captain, Fletcher had been worried. Armstrong was tough, no-nonsense, a careerist who liked to see his numbers move in the right direction. He’d spotted Fletcher as a troublemaker from the beginning, and Fletcher naturally assumed the two would clash constantly.