by Steven James
He nodded, then crossed the room to speak with Officer Tielman, who had just arrived.
I checked my texts: only one—Tessa telling me she was fine.
Good.
I positioned myself at a table near the wall, pulled out my laptop, and clicked to the online case files.
But after fifteen minutes of dead-ends I decided to try another angle and surfed to www.thomas.loc.gov to search through the list of pending legislation in the House of Representatives. It would take forever to read the bills, most of which were probably hundreds of pages long, but two topics could help narrow things down.
I had the first in mind already: justice reform.
And Margaret had given me the second.
Abortion.
She had drained his savings account and was in a hotel room cleaning up, thinking about the implications of her decision to disappear.
Everything she needed to fake her death was in their basement, in the room that the man she’d trusted had so carefully remodeled. All the tools. All the chemicals. But of course, since he might show up at the house at any time, she would be taking a huge chance going back there.
However, she needed to take care of this tonight, as soon as possible, and the basement was the most obvious place to do it. In fact, given the tight time frame, it might very well be the only place she could pull this off.
If she were a suspect in this crime spree, the airports would likely flag her name, but being presumed dead she would be off the radar screen. She would be free.
By leaving some of her own blood and tearing out some of her own hair she would make it appear as if she was the prey.
But a little blood and hair wouldn’t be enough to convince the FBI.
To make this work, she needed a body. One that she could dissolve beyond recognition—put the body in the tub, fill it with water, add a few gallons of drain cleaner, turn the victim into soap. Even recombinant DNA becomes almost impossible to identify when you use enough drain cleaner.
If she could leave just enough evidence that a woman had been killed, and just enough evidence to make it appear that the woman had been her, she could at least buy enough time to get out of the country.
To escape.
Disappear.
Start a new life and raise her baby.
So in the end she realized that even though returning to the house might be risky, it was a chance she had to take.
However, she’d never killed anybody in NowLife, just arranged things so that her lover could put her ideas into action, and now, to her surprise, the more she thought about taking another woman’s life, the more unsettling the idea became.
But there was no other choice. For the sake of her own freedom, for the sake of her baby’s future, someone would need to die. One life for two.
And because of the research she had done for work, she knew the perfect person to choose as her victim.
She changed into a new set of clothes, grabbed the car keys, and left the hotel to go get her prey.
Margaret found what she was looking for.
She was in her office at FBI HQ and had just finished analyzing interoffice memos and electronic communication to track the release of the Project Rukh files. She discovered that indeed it was FBI Director Rodale who had approved the transfer of the Project Rukh research to the Gunderson Foundation—just days before Congressman Fischer’s contributions to the Foundation began.
Maybe the two men weren’t at odds at all, maybe they were partners.
But then why would Fischer propose budget cuts to the Bureau?
Whatever Rodale’s connection with Fischer, the next step seemed obvious to her.
Follow the money.
Margaret picked up the phone to make a few calls.
96
3 hours left . . .
6:29 p.m.
I didn’t find anything specific on justice reform, but I did uncover two House bills with Fischer’s name on them that were currently before Congress—either of which might relate to the case.
The first one, H.R. 597, would add restrictions to death penalty sentencing procedures. “In response to the burgeoning world sentiment on the human rights abuses often precipitated while carrying out lethal injections.”
Second, a bill he was cosponsoring that would increase federal funding for the in-vitro testing of babies to identify genetic or neurological disorders: H.R. 617. The bill didn’t appear to relate per se to abortion, as Margaret had intimated, but these types of in vitro tests were often used by parents who were considering abortion as a—
Tielman called my name and I looked up.
“We have another plate for you,” he announced.
It took me a moment to mentally shift gears. “A plate? A license plate?”
“Yup.” He crossed the room toward me. “A National Academy student going back to the dorm. Ends up, the plates on her car aren’t hers. A sergeant at the front gate, guy named Hastings, noticed it. Just ten, fifteen, minutes ago.”
“Which student?” I asked.
He glanced at the note he was carrying. “Detective Annette Larotte.” He handed me the paper. “They’re registered to her, but she says she never applied for them.”
Her plates: SED-UAR.
Hmm.
I jotted the plates from Mahan’s car beneath them:
SED-UAR
IPR-OMI
Or maybe,
IPR-OMI
SED-UAR
Ignoring the dashes and read together, the plates could be read “I promised you are—”
You are what? Who is it referring to?
While I was considering this, I noticed Lee Anderson step into the room.
“And get this,” Tielman went on, “they’re Colorado plates. From Denver.”
“Denver?” I was only half-listening.
“Aren’t you from Denver?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, then I called to Anderson, “Who’s tailing Basque?”
He looked annoyed. “I lost him.”
“What? You lost him!” I left Tielman, strode toward Anderson.
“We were at a stoplight,” he muttered, “I was three cars back—maybe he made me, I don’t know. But he turned at the corner, and when I finally got past the light I found his car halfway down the block parked next to the curb. He was nowhere in sight.”
“So someone’s currently watching the vehicle, right? In case he returns?”
Anderson was quiet. “I didn’t know this was that high of a priority.”
I smacked the table beside us, and the chatter in the room immediately became silent. “Was there a woman with him? Anyone else in the car?”
“No.” Anderson seemed defensive, resentful that I was making a big deal out of this. “He was alone in the car. He didn’t meet anyone.”
“Before you lost him.”
He took a breath. “Yes, but he’s not a suspect in this case, is he?” There was a subtle challenge in his words, an attempt to diminish his mistake and thereby excuse it.
I didn’t want to get into this. Not here, not in front of everyone.
“He’s of interest,” I said and left it at that.
A door flew open, and Doehring stormed toward us. His eyes were knives. “Anderson!”
I decided to let Doehring deal with Anderson. As he approached I said, “We have someone monitoring the mass transit footage, right?”
“Angela Knight’s on it.” He was glaring at Anderson.
“Did she say if she’s at HQ today or Quantico?”
“Quantico. With someone named Lacey.”
Perfect. “All right, let’s assign an officer to watch Basque’s car.” I shook my head. “Hopefully, it’s still there.”
Considering the killers’ habit of leaving clues to future crimes, I asked Doehring to arrange protective custody for Annette Larotte until we could make some progress on the case. He agreed, then corralled Anderson to the other side of the room to get the location of the vehicle, and I phoned An
gela, told her to keep looking for Basque’s face to show up on the transit videos. “Dr. Lebreau too,” I added.
“Anything else?” She sounded exhausted. “I’m sitting here with pretty much nothing to do, you know.”
“You can look for Adkins.”
“Who?”
I told her about Sevren, and she said, “I thought he was dead.”
“He is.”
What is obvious is not always what is true.
“I think.”
I glanced at the slip of paper Tielman had given me with the plates. “Hey, can you do letter permutations for me? Or if you’re too busy, transfer me to another analyst who can?”
A pause. “How many letters?”
“Twelve.”
“Pat, do you have any idea how many combinations that would be?”
“A lot.”
A few seconds later she said, “479,001,600.”
“I’m not asking you to do it by hand. Lacey loves this kind of stuff.”
Silence.
“Here they are—ready?”
A small sigh. “Go ahead.”
“S-E-D-U-A-R I-P-R-O-M-I.”
“You didn’t tell me there were only ten different letters; that two letters were repeated.”
This type of math was never my thing. “How much does that change things?”
“Now we’re down to . . .” I heard a few keystrokes. “119,750,400.”
“Great. 360,000,000 fewer to worry about. It should be a breeze. I just want to know what other actual words or phrases these letters might spell.”
“Well, in that case,” she said ambiguously.
“Thanks, Angela.”
A pause. “Sure.”
After she hung up I called Ralph, who answered after one ring. “Hey. I was gonna give you a holler,” he said. “I’m on my way to the airport now. And I’ve got some news on the address book.”
“You need to know something first, Ralph. The officer who was following Basque lost him.”
“What!” He took the opportunity to utter some of the very same words I’d been thinking about sharing with Lee Anderson only a few minutes ago.
“You still think you should come back?” I asked Ralph.
“Yeah. If Basque is there somewhere, that’s where I need to be. Now, listen, the address book: there’s a person in the DC area whose address was deleted from her computer three days ago. We were able to do a data recovery.”
“Who is it?”
A pause. “Gregory Rodale.”
His words stunned me. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I just got off the phone with him. He said they met once at a jurisprudence conference years ago. Hasn’t heard from her since.”
That sounded weak to me. “Does Margaret know about this yet?”
“I just spoke with her.”
I tried to sift through everything. “So do you think Professor Lebreau might have left Michigan of her own accord? Come to DC to see Rodale?”
“Man, I don’t know what to think. I arrive at Reagan National at 9:02. We’ll sort it out then.”
“Call me as soon as you land.”
We hung up.
Rodale?
I had no idea what to make of that. I pulled up the case files on Basque and started to look for anything that might connect him more closely not only to Renée Lebreau but also to FBI Director Gregory Rodale.
Margaret could hardly believe what she’d discovered.
The Gunderson Foundation was nonprofit, yes, but the two neuroscience research companies that supported Fischer’s campaign were not. And Rodale held enough shares in each company, so that if their stock rose just 10 percent he would stand to make tens of thousands. If either stock doubled, he would make millions.
He’d purchased the stocks just after Project Rukh was terminated, just before he allowed the research to be acquired by the Gunderson Foundation.
While it was true that the Project Rukh files would have eventually ended up being released through a Freedom of Information Act request, he’d approved their release prematurely.
And now, considering his financial investments, Margaret could see why.
But then why did he tell Bowers about the Project Rukh connection yesterday? Why draw attention to it?
She didn’t know. Maybe after the attack on Twana Summie at the Gunderson facility, Rodale realized it was too late to keep all of this under wraps; that the connections would eventually surface.
She paused.
She’d been the one to recover the Project Rukh files in February.
Rodale could tie them back to you.
Maybe he knew that everything was about to hit the fan and he was positioning someone else in front of him so he could walk away clean. That might be why he put her in charge of the case.
Time to have a little sit-down with her boss.
Margaret strode down the hall to Rodale’s office but found that he’d already left for home.
She called his cell.
“Greg, it’s Margaret.”
“Yes?” There was a lot of noise in the background. Maybe he was in a restaurant.
“We need to talk.”
“Was there a break in the Fischer case?”
“No. It might be better if we spoke in person. About this matter.”
A pause. “What is this concerning?”
“Project Rukh.”
Rodale said nothing. She went on, “I happened upon the memos. And I find your interest in nanotechnology fascinating. Would you like to wait until after my press conference to chat?”
A moment passed, then he gave her the name of a pub near his home. “Eight o’clock,” he said.
“Eight o’clock,” she echoed. “Semansky’s Bar. On 4th.”
As she hung up the phone, she took a deep breath of both anticipation and hesitation.
Things were about to get very, very sticky.
Tessa stepped into the house.
Locked the doors.
Gave Detective Warren a call.
“I’ll be right over,” she told Tessa. “Do you need me to bring dinner?”
There was still some of Lien-hua’s leftover Chinese from last night, but Tessa decided not to suggest that. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”
“No meat or meat by-products, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll see you in a bit.”
Tessa hung up.
And set up the chessboard.
Black versus white.
The two colors every piece, every person, travels across at some point during the game.
Brad parked across the street from EAD Wellington’s house. From his research and prior excursions to the house, he knew the pass code to her security system.
No car in the driveway. The window to her garage revealed it was empty. But to be safe, he drew his gun and held it beneath his jacket while he crossed the street.
As he ascended the porch steps, he heard the jangle of Lewis’s collar just inside the door. The golden retriever gave a friendly bark.
Brad picked the lock.
Entered the house, and as Lewis watched him, he located the security touchpad control on the wall.
“Good doggie,” he said as he closed the door behind him.
97
2 hours left . . .
7:29 p.m.
I found no connections to Director Rodale in Basque’s files.
Figuring that Ralph and Margaret would be looking more closely into that tunnel, I turned my attention back to the relationships we were aware of.
I typed:
Vice President Fischer is tied to Lansing.
Lansing is tied to Basque.
Basque is tied to Lebreau.
Lebreau is tied to Rodale.
Rodale is tied to . . . ?
As I was puzzling over the list, I heard footsteps, light, quick. I looked up to see Lien-hua on her way toward me. She read the weariness, the frustration on my face. “You look whipped.”
“Did the custody meeting go all right?”
I realized I hadn’t spoken with her about it yet. “It was okay. I think things will work out. You heard about Basque? That he was there?”
“Yes.” She seemed distracted. Something was on her mind. “And I heard that Anderson lost him.”
I refrained from commenting, just nodded. “Ralph’s on his way back. Should get in a little after 9:00. Oh, and Rodale knows Lebreau.”
“I heard that too—listen, Pat.” She lowered her voice until she was speaking to me almost in a whisper. “I may have found out why the dog didn’t bark.”
“Go on.”
“Let me get my files. I’ll meet you upstairs. Room 413.”
Curious now.
Very curious.
“Why upstairs?”
“Trust me. Five minutes.”
She left, I checked my text messages and confirmed that Tessa was all right. As I was collecting my things, one of the agents dialed up the volume of a television screen mounted near the ceiling at the far side of the room.
“Unnamed sources,” the announcer was saying, “have confirmed that Congressman Fischer has made significant contributions to the Gunderson Foundation. In light of the Foundation’s application for government funding for controversial nanotechnology research, Republican lawmakers are calling the news ‘striking’ and ‘revealing.’ We’ll have more as things develop . . .”
Federal funding.
Nanotechnology research?
Interesting.
A cavern I hadn’t thought of.
I jogged up the stairs to hear what Lien-hua had to say.
98
“Natasha Farraday,” she told me.
“What?” We were in a vacant office on the fourth floor and she was spreading a stack of files across the table.