Edge of Black

by J. T. Ellison

  “I understand, sir. These things happen. This is your desk. And that is mine.”

  There was a bit of privacy to the setup—they were in a corner, and not in the main flight path through the room. The desks were in a U, there was a window overlooking the lights of the Capitol, and the coatrack hid them from the main foot traffic area.

  “You pick this spot?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “Well done.”

  “I know. We’ll want some privacy, and it’s quieter here.” She smiled, a thousand watts of bright white teeth, the front two slightly crooked, and he forced himself to check his libido. She was young enough to be his daughter, assuming she was as gifted as she sounded and had been conferred her degrees a bit earlier than was the norm, and that wasn’t right. But man, the girl was a looker. She had that sexy librarian thing going on.

  “So what’s first?”

  The smile disappeared, replaced by Inez’s usual rapid-fire demeanor.

  “Agent Bianco would like to meet with you.”

  “And who, pray tell, is he?”

  “Bianco is a she, and she’s your boss for the foreseeable future. Special Agent in Charge Andrea Bianco, former head of the Futures Working Group, graduate of University of Virginia, summa cum laude, four years with the FBI in counterterrorism, two years at Interpol, a return to the FBI for three years in the BSU. Got her Ph.D. in behavioral psychology, steadily moved up the ladder since. In her latest role, she was tasked with figuring out what’s coming down the pike at us, and she was handpicked this morning to head up the Metro investigation. She’d like a briefing on your information in five.”

  Inez was big on the qualifications and short on the personal. All he managed to glean from that recitation was the chick he’d be answering to was smart. Really smart.

  “All right. I’m ready to go. Let’s do it.”

  Inez hesitated for a moment. “Don’t you want to prepare? Bianco is a stickler for details.”

  Fletched held back a laugh. “How old are you, Inez?”

  “Twenty-four next Tuesday, sir. Assuming we have a next Tuesday.”

  “How many briefings have you done?”

  “Plenty, but remember, I’m just the assistant here.”

  “I’ve been doing this awhile. Almost as long as you’ve been alive. I think I can handle it. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  More offices, more hallways, more glamorously intense young people rushing about. Children, really. The clatter of keyboards complemented the ringing of phones and the occasional shout. This section of the JTTF held twenty people total, but they were generating enough energy to power a small city grid.

  The whole place felt...alive. Fletcher couldn’t help but catch a bit of the buzz.

  He followed Inez into the big cheese’s domain. There was a conference room set up, and she led him there.

  “Do you have any multimedia you’d like to use?”

  Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “No, I guess not.”

  She got him seated with a fresh pad of paper and a steaming hot cup of coffee, stood by his side for a moment, then whispered, “Don’t worry about notes, I’ll transcribe everything,” and slipped back against the wall.

  He could get used to this.

  Ten seconds later the door to the conference room opened, and in came Bianco’s team. Fletcher didn’t need to be introduced to see who was in charge.

  Andrea Bianco was dressed in dark jeans and a black jacket, with a Glock on her hip in a tooled leather holster. She had green eyes and hair the color of a burnished sunset, and skin as white and flawless as a bowl of milk. God, was every chick at the JTTF pretty?

  She shook his hand warmly, not at all what he expected from Inez’s prep. He figured Bianco would be hard and calculating. Instead, she seemed incredibly calm and approachable, like someone he would like to share some boiled shrimp and beer with on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Just a couple of cops, talking about the injustices of the world, the patter of drops on the roof making them slide inexorably toward a more comfortable position...

  He rolled his eyes inwardly. Beautiful women always jarred his poetic side loose. He had a line out the door of them. Some even deigned to still speak to him.

  “Detective Fletcher, I’m Andrea Bianco. I’m so glad to have you on board. Welcome to the JTTF.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “No ma’am necessary, you can call me Andi.” She went around the table to the other five people, four men, one woman, all serious and capable looking. “I don’t expect you to get everyone’s names immediately, but this is Nick Cusack, Ron Halder, Tom Hasty, Eduardo Mancha and Hyatt Sutton. I’ll let you get to know each other later.”

  Fletcher shook hands with everyone, intentionally not lingering on Sutton, who was so severe looking and tightly contained he was afraid she might leap up and bite him on the neck.

  “I understand you’ve been working the Peter Leighton angle for us today. I know you must be tired, we all are. But would you mind giving us your briefing now?”

  “Of course. I don’t have much.”

  He ran them through his day concisely, only presenting the facts, skipping over his suspicions, the rumors about the congressman’s private life, the weird feeling he got from Temple, the chief of staff who knew everything and nothing. He talked for about ten minutes, outlining the case. Bianco listened with her head cocked slightly to one side, nodding occasionally. When he finished, he glanced at Inez. She gave him a little wink, which he took to mean he’d done a decent enough job.

  Been at this party a few times, kid.

  Bianco twirled a pen around on her blank notepad for a moment. With a small smile that belied her words, she said, “That’s all great information, Detective. Now, would you mind filling in the blanks? You left a few things out.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Andi. You left a few things out. We need to hear it all. We don’t operate like some of the folks you may have worked with. We must investigate all the angles, all the issues, all the rumors and innuendoes. We are life detectives, in a sense. Nothing is safe, absolutely nothing. Nothing is sacred if it means stopping these bastards from hurting another person. So give it to us, and give it straight this time.”

  Fletcher ignored the small, humor-filled cough that emanated from behind and to the right of his shoulder. Perhaps Andrea Bianco was more of a force to be contended with than she first appeared. The friendly welcome was a guise, he saw. Inside, she was hard and unforgiving as a chalky cliff.

  He took a breath and started again. At the top. He detailed what he’d left out, which was precious little. Bianco sat in her bird pose and watched him, listening, again, and when he stopped she gave him a curt smile, then stood. The room’s focus moved to her, and she began to speak. Her voice was infused with passion.

  “Thank you. I appreciate that you were uncomfortable gossiping about the congressman. But everything matters right now. We have an interesting situation on our hands. The attack this morning caught everyone by surprise. That, in and of itself, is somewhat miraculous, considering how well plugged in we are to all the terrorist networks. There have been claims of responsibility from groups we’ve had under close scrutiny, which leads me to doubt the veracity of their claims.

  “There is more than meets the eye in our attack this morning. The head of the Armed Services Subcommittee is dead, along with two others. Many people are sick, but none are dying. The tests that have been run have narrowed the toxin to something biologically similar to ricin. We have a thousand people working this case, and it’s going nowhere. There are two groups forming, one to investigate what happened, one to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Prevention is the biggest tool the JTTF has, and we failed this morning. I won’t let us fail again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,
this attack is a stain on our character. I don’t believe that it’s a terrorist cell. I think it’s a lone renegade cell, independent, self-actualized, and far from finished. My bosses don’t agree with me, so it is our mandate to prove them wrong. With their approval, we are going to work separately from the rest of the JTTF, go at this from a different angle. Nick, Ron and Hyatt, you are on the Metro. Figure out how the toxin was delivered. I want a step-by-step, moment-by-moment breakdown. Eduardo, I want you to compile a list of possible threats that focuses on the United States. Tom, you’re our scientist. I want you to assess what the toxin is, where it came from, everything.” She turned to Fletcher. “Darren, you’re with me. Any questions?”

  Silence.

  “Good. Brief me at ten. Go to it.”

  The others gathered their things and scooted out of the room. Bianco watched them go. When they were the only ones left in the room, she excused Inez, who shot Fletcher a meaningful look and shut the conference room door behind her.

  “So.” Bianco sat at the table and pulled out a red file folder. She placed it carefully in front of her, squared the edges with the table. “What do you think of my theory?”

  “It’s as sound as anything else I’ve heard today.”

  “Why did you bring in an outside medical examiner to do the autopsy on the congressman?”

  “Like I said, she’s the best at what she does. That’s not a knock on our medical examiners, she’s just gifted. She thought it was a ricin hybrid, something new, something developed specifically for the attack.”

  “You didn’t mention that.”

  “She asked me not to. She didn’t want to speculate. Ricin-like was all she’d commit to officially, that ricin mimics the findings from the autopsies, but doesn’t match exactly.”

  “All right. First things first. This is eyes-only.” She slid the file to him. “Read it. I’ll wait. You want some more coffee?”

  He glanced at his empty cup and then at the wall clock. 3:15 a.m. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Andi,” she said, then left him to read.

  He waited until the door shut, opened the file. The first line of the report made him suck in his breath.

  Holy shit.

  Chapter 13

  Fletcher couldn’t believe what he was reading.

  There was a DNA profile, a confirmed match between two identical sources. He read the name on the bottom of the page, and his suspicions began to grow.

  The DNA profile belonged to Congressman Peter Dumfries Leighton.

  Fletcher’s mind immediately raised all sorts of questions—why do they have a file on Leighton, where did they get the DNA, why do they have DNA, what the hell is this?—but he flipped the page and started to digest.

  The top sheet was a summary police file from 2004, a cold-case murder from Indianapolis, Indiana. Christine Hornby, age sixteen, found beaten and raped in a ditch off the side of a state road leading into town. No one was ever caught, despite a solid DNA profile put into the system.

  Fletcher flipped further. There was another cold-case murder, this time from 2006. Diana Frank, seventeen, also from Indianapolis, Indiana. Another beating and rape. In 2008 there was one more, Brandy Thornberg, seventeen, from Terre Haute. Three in all. Christine Hornby, Diana Frank and Brandy Thornberg, all brunette teenagers murdered by the same person. DNA matched all three of their cases, and no killer had ever been identified.

  A deep knot began building in his stomach. He turned back to the front sheet, the DNA profile.

  Tried to fit the pieces together.

  Peter Leighton—congressman, soldier, father—a serial killer?

  He sat back in his chair and rubbed his face with his hands. What in the hell had he gotten himself into?

  Bianco was back. She handed him a steaming cup of coffee, sat at the table next to him.

  “Now you know why I wanted the gossip along with the facts. It started when he was making his first congressional run back in 2004.”

  “This is hard to believe.”

  “Trust me, I know. I received the report this evening, after the DNA profile matched.”

  “Why was Leighton’s DNA run? And how did you get it?”

  “He tossed out a soda with a straw last week. McDonald’s. It was retrieved. They extracted the DNA and sent it in to run through CODIS.”

  “He was being investigated for the murders?”

  “I don’t have all the details. Indiana Bureau of Investigation was handling this until three hours ago. I haven’t been fully briefed yet. All I know is it was brought to my attention the moment word got out that he was dead. We have to take into consideration that he knew about the investigation and used the attack this morning as a cover to commit suicide.”

  “Suicide by asthma attack? Isn’t that a bit hard to manage?”

  “You stated very clearly that the chief of staff had to find his inhaler and give it to him, and the autopsy found no evidence of use of an EpiPen. The briefcase where he normally carried these items is still missing. It’s not impossible to get yourself into respiratory distress if you’re already compromised.”

  “Or that someone knew about this and decided to kill him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or that this is just a wildly crazy coincidence.”

  “That, too. What do you think?”

  Fletcher closed the file and slid it back to her. “Too early to draw any sort of conclusion. If the samples from the three autopsies match, then we know it was a coincidence. If they don’t, then you can look at the other scenarios. But I’d make sure I crossed every T and dotted every I before I went forward with allegations like this.”

  “I’d like you to look into this for me.”

  Fletcher didn’t answer right away. He sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. JTTF did a better job with their brew than his homicide office did, that was for sure. More funding, better coffee. He’d always thought that was hearsay, but here he was, in the exalted offices of the best of the best, finding out firsthand that the rumors were true.

  And now he was starting to understand why they wanted him on the JTTF.

  “What about the text message he received this morning? How does that fit into this?”

  “Again, Darren, that’s under your purview. You have free rein to do whatever you feel is necessary to uncover the truth here. You will have all the resources you need to do a thorough investigation into the congressman’s every move for the past eighteen years. All we ask is that you keep your inquiries discreet, and not share your task with anyone. Even your bosses.”

  Bianco was leaning forward, and the top of her blouse was gaping just the tiniest bit. He caught a hint of lace and cream, dutifully looked away and went back to his coffee.

  “Well?” Bianco asked.

  He sighed. “This could be a suicide mission, Andi. Can you imagine the headlines if we fuck up?”

  “Can you imagine the headlines if you don’t? You’ll be a hero. Some would say this was a gift.”

  He saw what she’d done. We to you. This is your problem now, Fletcher. We’re going to wash our hands of it and let you take the heat, keeping the JTTF’s nose clean in case somewhere along the way, someone else screwed up. Some would say this was a gift. He caught her meaning—who was he, a lowly homicide dick, to look a gift horse in the mouth? A huge story, earth-shattering news, at least a couple of weeks in the news cycle, Fletcher’s name and fingerprints all over the bloody mess.

  It was a setup. He felt it immediately. There were stakes he wasn’t aware of.

  Worse, what had he done to deserve this? He’d pissed someone off. Two years from his twenty, a decent career under his belt, and he was being thrown to the wolves on a case that looked damn close to a foregone conclusion.

  Something else was up. Somethi
ng big.

  “I have to think about it.”

  Bianco actually sat back in her chair and smiled. She had a nice smile, her parents had sprung for some orthodontics and her teeth were even and white. She ran her bottom lip up over the edge of her top teeth. The effect made her lips fuller, a move that he associated with prolonged use of a headgear. His son, Tad, had the same habit.

  Stop thinking about her lips, Fletch.

  He looked down at the file before him. What a mess.

  “Of course you do. Go on home and get some rest. I always find a good night’s sleep helps me think clearly.” She stood then, stretching her back a little, almost as if to say, See, I’m tired, too. I’m working hard. I’m all kinked up and I know, I understand, what you’re going through, and shook his hand, effectively but kindly dismissing him.

  He found Inez back at their respective desks. She had her nose deep in her laptop.

  “Anything new?” he asked.

  “No. Everything cool with you?”

  “Sure,” he replied. “I’m going to go home and catch some z’s. You should, too. Meet me back here at nine, okay? We have a big project to tackle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Inez?”

  “Sir?”

  “You can call me Fletch.”

  * * *

  Fletcher left the JTTF office buzzing with adrenaline. Hand chosen to handle a fuck-all dog of a case that could wind up being his death sentence with Homicide. He wanted out, sure, but not like this. Not on a case that smelled to high heaven.

  He lived in a row house on a quiet Capitol Hill street, catty-corner to the Longworth House Office Building, the very place he’d spent the better part of his afternoon trying to glean enough detail from the monosyllabic answers of Leighton’s staff to figure out what the hell was going on.

  He kept a light on in the foyer so it looked like someone was around, though the neighborhood itself was very safe, and most of his neighbors knew he was a cop and kept an eye on his place in addition to their own. But tonight it was off. He had to think back—had he turned the switch off when he left God knows how many hours earlier? No, that was impossible, he never did. Maybe the light was out...but he had one of the new long-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs in there that was supposed to burn for five years or more. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d changed it, but it certainly wasn’t five years ago.