The King

by Steven James

  Valkyrie also knew that they always traveled with explosives when they were overseas, but he wondered if they would be so bold as to smuggle suicide vests into the States—particularly DC. Though he didn’t want to rule it out, he considered it most likely that they would not.

  In either case, he didn’t anticipate any problems, but he was willing to deal with enhanced negotiation procedures if necessary.

  41

  1:34 p.m. 8 hours until the drowning

  Lien-hua felt optimistic.

  The chest tube had been removed, she was out of ICU, her leg was in a cast, and if all went as planned, she would be leaving the hospital tomorrow.

  Yes, she was still in a lot of pain and it would take her weeks or perhaps months to fully recover, but she was feeling markedly better than she had a couple of days ago. Already she was anxious to get out of the hospital and start on the path back to her typical routine.

  Pat, who’d been waiting for her when she returned to her room after the doctors were done with her leg, had told her what he’d discovered about the missing drugs at Corey Wellington’s house.

  Working together—Pat making calls while she surfed on his laptop—they found out that Corey had no memberships at any gyms where he might have kept the drugs. Pat had officers comb through Corey’s desk at work and his car and they found no sign of the rest of the blister packs of drugs. His ex-girlfriend did not have any packets of his Calydrole.

  Another relationship we don’t know about?

  A secret place where he kept his meds hidden?

  Lien-hua had to acknowledge that those were possibilities, but it seemed to be looking more and more like someone had removed the medication from Corey’s house after his suicide and before the police arrived.

  But still, she didn’t have nearly enough information to work on even a preliminary profile, so together, she and Pat focused on pursuing the investigative leads that they actually did have.

  The fingerprints from the medicine cabinet came back with four results: Corey’s, those of Officer Dustin Wilhoit, who evidently hadn’t worn gloves at the scene, the woman whom Corey had been seeing, and a former Marine: Corporal Keith Tyree.

  A background told them that Corporal Tyree had served with distinction and had disappeared off the grid after he left the military a year and a half ago.

  When they dug deeper, they found that there were no credit cards, e-mail accounts, addresses, phone numbers, or insurance polices in his name. Someone had wiped him off the electronic map, and in today’s world that was not something that was easily done.

  It pointed to a major player, maybe a nation-state.

  Considering how thorough the wipe was, Pat noted that it was surprising that Tyree’s prints were still in the system.

  “I agree,” Lien-hua said. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to turn him into a ghost and now he leaves identifiable prints at a scene that was supposed to be a suicide? Something isn’t clicking here.”

  “First, I think we need to find out everything there is to know about Corporal Tyree. Also, we should see if there’s any way that Corey’s life might have intersected with his.”

  “I’d say we have enough to get Margaret to assign a couple more agents to delve into the possibility that there are other apparent suicides related to the use of this lot number of Calydrole.”

  “Especially those where Tyree might have left his prints.”

  “Yes.”

  He put in the request, but Margaret was currently in a meeting and her secretary said she would relay it as soon as the Director was available.

  He also contacted the pharmaceutical firm to find out more about this drug’s known side effects and about any class-action lawsuits that might be pending regarding the product. The analysts at the firm were going to e-mail him their data. Also, they were still looking into the lot number and promised to get back to him with details of the side effects of the drug.

  “PTPharmaceuticals,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe it’s those guys.”

  During the first case she’d worked with him in North Carolina, they’d had a run-in with the man who used to own the company.

  Actually, it was more than a run-in. The guy, who, as it turned out, was sociopathic, had tried to kill Patrick and a group of dignitaries and media representatives.

  It was a complex investigation that had tendrils running all the way back to the Jonestown massacre in the seventies. Lien-hua considered that briefly, but since the former owner hadn’t had any real connection with the firm for years, at least for the time being, she set those thoughts aside.

  It didn’t take much research to find out that PTPharmaceuticals imported most of its products from India, where the FDA inspected only a small percentage of the plants to assure that the supplies weren’t tainted or substandard.

  “So,” Pat said, “if there was tampering, it might have been done before the drugs were shipped rather than after they entered the supply chain here in America.” Lien-hua had done more interagency work than he had, and now he asked her, “Who do you think we should call? Homeland Security or FDA?”

  “Well, if we’re going in the direction of the supply chain, let’s start with FDA. I know that some of their Office of Criminal Investigation agents pose as pharmaceutical wholesalers and distributors of counterfeit drugs to record conversations and confessions of wrongdoing, that sort of thing. Maybe there’s someone from the OCI who’s worked in India who can help us.”

  He contacted the FDA’s Counterfeit Alert Network, but that proved to be a dead end. The FDA has only two hundred investigators total, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has more than three thousand who work to stop illegal trafficking of guns, humans, drugs, and intellectual property. It took Pat a little while, but he finally set up a meeting with an ICE agent named Jason Kantsos who’d worked in India. He agreed to meet tomorrow morning at ten o’clock at Pat’s office at the Academy.

  After they ended the call, Lien-hua shook her head. “If there are counterfeit pharmaceuticals involved here, this is going to be a jurisdictional nightmare.”

  “It shouldn’t be that bad.”

  “Really? Are you serious?”

  “Well, sure, there’s some overlap between us and the DEA . . .” While he contemplated that, she thought about that overlap.

  Most people don’t know this, but the FBI has over three hundred different types of crimes it investigates, and one of them is drug trafficking. In fact, back in 1999 there was going to be a merger between the DEA and the FBI to take care of the overlap, but nothing ever came of it. Lien-hua hadn’t been with the Bureau at the time, but she’d heard about it all, yet to this day no one had ever been able to give her a satisfactory explanation for why the merger hadn’t happened.

  “And,” Pat continued, drawing her out of her thoughts, “the OCI and ICE.”

  “And U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, if they were shipped to someone here in the States.”

  “Hmm . . .” he reflected. “So, hypothetically, let’s say someone living in India produces a counterfeit version of Calydrole.”

  “Okay.”

  “He ships it to a U.S. port and then has an associate mail it to a customer in another state. That crime would be investigated by local and state law enforcement agencies, as well as CBP, because it crosses our borders; USPIS, because it was mailed; OCI, because it’s a counterfeit drug; DEA, because it contains a controlled substance; ICE, because it’s a form of illegally trafficked intellectual property; and the FBI, because it involves interstate crime?”

  “And that’s not to mention working with Interpol, the World Health Organization’s Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force, and . . .” She tapped at the laptop’s keyboard for a few seconds. “The Permanent Forum on International Pharmaceutical Crime, and testing agencies like the Cent
ers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

  “Okay, you win. A jurisdictional nightmare.”

  She scootched into a different position in the bed, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. “Reporting procedures vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but unless there’s an overdose, I’m thinking that most law enforcement personnel wouldn’t search for fingerprints at the scene of a suicide.”

  “We’re going to have to do a national search for reports of suicides of people taking Calydrole.”

  She didn’t even want to think about how long that could take. “Let’s start with people who have fatal stab wounds in the abdomen like Corey did. If there’s foul play involved here, it’s possible others who were taking the drug might have died from similar types of wounds.”

  A call came through and when Pat answered, from listening to his side of the conversation, Lien-hua could tell it was from the Director.

  When he hung up, he announced that Margaret had agreed to assign two other agents to the case.

  “Great.”

  But he seemed distracted. She sensed that he was doing his best to be present, but his attention was split—which only made sense, with everything that was going on this week.

  “I had a thought,” he said. “We should also do a metasearch to see if there are any suicides in which Calydrole should have been found at the scene but wasn’t.” Then he admitted, “I know that’s a long shot, but let’s throw it in the mix.”

  She typed a note to herself. “There’s one other thing we’ve been overlooking. The most obvious one of all.”

  “And that is?”

  “Corey was the brother of the FBI Director. If there was someone tampering with his medication, do you really think that could be a coincidence?”

  “So you’re thinking we look into suicides of relatives of other FBI staff or agents?”

  “Yes. Especially high-ranking ones.”

  He shook his head. “This is going to take some time.” His focus seemed to drift into another place again.

  “Is it Basque?” she asked him.

  “What?”

  “Basque. You’re here with me, but for the last fifteen minutes you haven’t quite been here with me. I’m wondering if it’s Basque.”

  “You’re pretty good at reading minds.”

  “Occupational hazard.”

  He sighed. “Honestly, I am having a hard time putting him on the back burner.”

  “Listen, ever since Friday night you’ve been almost as cooped up as I’ve been. You need to get out. Go visit the neighborhoods of the hot spots you identified. You haven’t even had a chance to orient yourself to the locations yet.”

  “You’re even better than I thought.”

  “At reading minds?”

  “See? That just proves my point.”

  Typically, profiles were drawn up before the apprehension of a suspect and were used to narrow the search. But in some instances, such as in the case of Basque, the NCAVC had detailed profiles of the people they’d already identified and were actively searching for. And though Lien-hua hadn’t worked on Basque’s case personally, because of Pat’s close involvement with it, she was familiar with the files.

  Of course, she was aware of how excited Pat was about using profiles—a point of mostly friendly contention they’d had since their relationship began—but she went ahead and gave him her take on it anyway.

  “He’ll want privacy,” she said, “anonymity, control. He’s brash but definitely not stupid and would have a home base where he could work without the fear of discovery.”

  “So, no normal life in suburbia.”

  “Sometimes the suburbs can be as anonymous as the city, but I think in this case it’s more likely he’ll seek a greater degree of isolation.”

  “So, outside of town.”

  “But not too far from an interstate or highway that would give him quick access to the city, or away from it if he needed to flee.”

  “You’re thinking a farm, maybe? Somewhere on the outskirts?”

  “Maybe. And there’d be some way of warning him that people are approaching—security or infrared cameras, a dog, motion detectors, maybe something that would trigger a silent alarm in the house, I’m not sure. And he’ll have an escape plan if law enforcement should arrive.”

  “Like he did in the water treatment plant.”

  “Yes. His face has been all over the news for months, so it’s likely he’ll avoid too much exposure to the public, or at least to people who might identify and report him. A disguise is a definite possibility.” She thought again of the long hair he had.

  He might be using a wig.

  In either case, that wouldn’t really help Pat nail down a location, but it might help if he spoke with someone or reviewed video of Basque leaving or entering a place of business in one of the hot zones. She brought it up and he nodded. “Good thought.”

  “Brineesha said she’d stop by,” she told him. “Don’t worry about me. No more lingering today. I’ll work on bringing the two new agents Margaret is assigning to this thing up to speed. You take some time to go and look for Basque.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He leaned in for a kiss. “Thanks.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Okay.”

  After she’d told him how much she loved him and he’d replied in kind, he took off.

  She tracked down the two newly assigned agents and invited them to her hospital room for a briefing.

  The agenda: get them started pulling up more background information on a former Marine who’d disappeared from the system, exploring his possible connection with Corey Wellington, looking for victims of fatal, self-inflicted stab wounds, and searching for suicides of the relatives of FBI agents or staff—especially those scenes that might be missing packets of Calydrole.

  This promised to be an interesting afternoon.

  42

  2:34 p.m. 7 hours until the drowning

  Over the years, despite my reticence to trust profiling, I had to admit that more often than not Lien-hua’s insights were right on target. It was somewhat disconcerting and a little exasperating, but it was what it was.

  Before I left the hospital parking lot, I called Ralph to tell him I’d be in the field investigating the hot zones.

  “Man, I need to get out of this freakin’ office too. I’ll come with you. We can catch up on the case and you can tell me about this meeting you had with the Director. I heard about her brother. That’s terrible what happened.”

  “Yeah, it looks like he killed himself, but we’re starting to suspect he was murdered too.”

  “That, you’re going to have to explain to me.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Actually, it really would be beneficial to connect with Ralph and bounce some ideas off each other. With my teaching responsibilities and the time I’d been spending with Lien-hua, we had a lot of catching up to do.

  We agreed to meet one block from the Capitol, and I left to pick him up.

  ++

  Richard Basque had practiced his tricks all morning and into the early afternoon.

  Getting out of steel handcuffs wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought it would be, and using hairpins, a barrette, and even paper clips, he’d been able to decrease his time from two minutes to forty-five seconds.

  The plastic flex cuffs were a different story.

  It was possible to use a wire to saw through the plastic, also possible to wedge a pin into the locking point to release it, but it was difficult, especially if your hands were cuffed behind your back.

  Richard decided to give himself another two hours or so of practice with the plastic cuffs before heading to Chesapeake Beach for Noni’s birthday party, where he would go after some litt
le sheep.

  ++

  Based on Lien-hua’s ideas, Ralph and I didn’t bother with the first hot zone, the one in southeast DC. It didn’t afford the kind of isolated opportunities that the potential zones north and east of the city would provide.

  Instead, he drove my car north while I used my phone’s 3-D hologram app and FALCON to identify isolated homes in the geographic area I’d come up with that might be worth looking into. As I worked, I gave him a recap of what Lien-hua and I had uncovered about Corey Wellington’s death.

  Ralph listened reflectively. “Did we hear back about the side effects of this drug yet?”

  Checking my e-mail, I found that PTPharmaceuticals hadn’t sent the data on their studies regarding Calydrole’s side effects, but they had finally e-mailed the results of their probe into the lot number and explained that “there is no evidence that this lot exists, but it is only two digits off from a shipment that is produced in Hyderabad, India.” There were no class-action lawsuits against them for this drug.

  Thinking aloud, Ralph said, “Pat, if you were going to come up with a fake lot number, don’t you think you’d make it close to a legitimate one? That way it’d be easier to slip into the supply chain.”

  “Quite possibly, yes.”

  “Maybe by analyzing the locations in India where similar lot numbers are produced, we can zero in on the facility that’s producing the ones in question.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  “I’ve been working with you for a decade. ’Bout time you took note of that.”

  “Funny how it just occurred to me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Lien-hua didn’t have a cell, but I phoned her room to tell her to have the two new team members look into the location of the facilities that produced closely related, legitimate lot numbers from India, specifically that plant in Hyderabad.

  FALCON brought up forty-two homes for Ralph and me to check out—isolated residences in the area north of DC that fit the geoprofile.

  I couldn’t imagine we’d have time to look into that many. We needed a way to cut the number in half—at least.