Words of Conviction

by Linda J White

  “Thank you.”

  Swiftly, Scott booted up his laptop, accessed the website he’d set up, and quickly reviewed the data entered by agents involved in the investigation. He took a few notes on a small pad and shut down the computer just as his boss entered the anteroom.

  “Miss Sampson, you look absolutely wonderful,” Tom Shuler’s booming voice proclaimed.

  “Tom! My goodness, how long has it been?”

  Scott rolled his eyes. Shuler was a player, even with seventy-year-olds.

  A loud buzz from Miss Sampson’s phone interrupted the two. “Yes, sir?”

  “Send Shuler in when he gets here.”

  “He’s here now, sir. Along with Special Agent Hansbrough. I’ll send them both in.” Miss Sampson winked at Scott as she said that. The director’s voice continued to bark over the speakerphone. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” She hung up. “Gentlemen?” she said and she ushered them in.

  Joseph D. Lundquist was not a J. Edgar Hoover kind of director. He liked to delegate. He liked interaction with his deputies, thinking outside the box, and letting street agents do their job. “They know more than I do,” he would say, and it instantly bred loyalty in his troops. Joe Lundquist understands. That was the word all over the Bureau.

  He didn’t have as much rapport with Congress. One senator in particular, Chuck Schwartz of Wisconsin, rode him pretty hard, especially at budget time. And Scott knew that Schwartz played tennis regularly with Grable.

  “Sit down, gentlemen,” the director said, nodding toward two leather chairs facing his substantial desk. Behind him, a large window looked out on the Capitol building, resplendent in the late afternoon sun. He saw Scott staring at the view, glanced over his shoulder, and said, “It’s beautiful, huh? That’s what I thought, too, when I first moved in here. Now I feel like there’s a vulture just over my shoulder, staring at me all day. If I don’t keep moving, I’m dead.” He smiled and shook his head.

  Scott and his boss, Tom Shuler, both laughed.

  “All right. Update me on the Grable case,” Lundquist said.

  Scott’s boss nodded toward him. “Yes, sir.” Scott checked his watch. “We’re at approximately twenty hours, sir. Mrs. Grable reported Zoe missing around twenty-two thirty yesterday. The nanny died before we were able to question her. We’ve done a full evidence sweep of the Grables’ house and collected a few prints, including a partial palm print we’ve not been able to identify.”

  The director sat with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, his hands forming an A-frame in front of his face. His gray eyes were piercing, his gray hair conveyed the impression of wisdom, and he focused on Scott as if the agent were the only person in the world.

  “As you know, sir, we’ve been in a dry spell, and the grass and garden were hardened. So we don’t have footprints. No tire marks either. We’ve collected tapes from surveillance cameras in the area, sir, and we have agents reviewing them now.”

  “What about this other child?”

  Scott told him about the tip on the man in Kalorama, about the entry, the suicide, and the body in the closet. He felt himself getting emotional now, as he talked about it, and he wondered why. Was it the little girl they’d found in Lopez’s apartment, Zoe, or his own daughter Cara who played on his heart? Maybe all three. He gripped his hand into a fist, forcing himself to focus.

  “So, it wasn’t Zoe. Which was both bad and good news.”

  “Yes, sir. D.C. police have taken over that investigation.”

  The director nodded.

  Then Scott told him about the hair in the package delivered to the senator’s house. He saw Lundquist stiffen, saw the corners of his eyes grow tight and his mouth become a straight line. “So he’s a sadist,” the director said.

  “He at least wants to goad the senator,” Shuler chimed in. “It’s what this seems to be about. Getting at Senator Grable.”

  The director took a deep breath. He swung his chair around halfway, and stared at the Capitol, at the statue called “Freedom” on the top, at the flag hanging still and limp in the late afternoon. He turned back to the two agents. “Mrs. Grable called me.”

  Scott raised his eyebrows.

  “She wants our agents out of the house and the command center out of the alley.”

  A rush of anger swept through Scott.

  “How do you feel about that?” The director looked at Scott.

  “Sir,” Scott said, fighting to keep the tension out of his voice, “if we hadn’t been there when that package came, it would have been mishandled. Had it been a bomb, the senator would be dead.”

  “I know.” The director was a patient man.

  “Having immediate access to the senator and his wife will help us respond right away when the next development occurs.” Scott paused. “And sir, we have not yet ruled out Mrs. Grable as a suspect.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  So he did, summarizing her statements, her attitude, her odd behaviors. The director listened carefully, asked a few pertinent questions, and then thought for a moment. “OK, Agent Hansbrough. I hear what you’re saying. But see what you can do to lower our profile.”

  “Yes, sir.” What else could he say? Scott immediately started thinking about the implications of moving their operation and lost track of the conversation. Until he heard his name. “Yes?” he said, regaining focus.

  “I was just suggesting we could use some help with the Lab,” Shuler repeated.

  “Oh, yes, sir. The DNA scans, fingerprint identification, hairs and fibers—we could certainly use some grease on the skids there, sir.”

  “You’ve got it,” the director said, and he buzzed Miss Sampson. “Get me Fuller on the phone, please.” Seconds later, his call connected with the director of the FBI lab, now located down at Quantico. “Fred, let me give you a case number.” He motioned with his fingers and Scott hurriedly scrawled it on a piece of paper. “You get anything with this number on it, you pull out the stops. Top priority, understand? All right. Thanks.” He hung up the phone. “Hansbrough, you keep going. We want this child back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The director stood up and began moving toward the door. On cue, Scott and Shuler followed. As he opened the door, the director clapped Scott on the back. “How long have you been up, son?”

  Scott checked his watch. “Going on thirty-three hours, sir.”

  “You get some sleep, you hear? Six months from now, I don’t want to have to be answering Senator Schwartz’s questions about why my case agent was making such poor decisions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grayson and Sandy sat on the couch. She watched TV while he worked on his laptop. Gray had made her help him remove the coffee table. Looking at its damaged finish irritated him. But he couldn’t get away from the large white splotch on the carpet. Like the blood on Lady Macbeth’s hands, it remained.

  “You need to do a better job handling her,” Grayson said, looking up from his work. “She’s a five-year-old for crying out loud. How hard can it be?” He sighed with exasperation. “Look, I’m doing everything I can to make this come together. But you’re not helping!”

  “Well, Gray, honey, you’ve jerked her out of her house, cut off her hair . . . no wonder she’s upset! Plus, she just seems a little sick to me, like she’s got the flu or something.” Sandy was filing her nails with an emery board. “How long is it going to take you to do this? I mean, what are you waiting for?”

  “I’m working on it! I’m telling you, you don’t know the half of what’s going into this. Making sure we get the money without the cops finding us . . .”

  “And finding a place to let Zoe go that won’t lead to us, right? Are you working that out?”

  “Sure, sure.” Better soften up, he thought. He reached over and stroked Sandy’s neck, just below her ear. “I’ve got to figure it out, too. Just be patient, baby. And for crying out loud, take care of the kid.”

  The show on the TV ended and loud commercials too
k over. Sandy hit the mute button on the remote. “I want to go shopping,” she said suddenly.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not babysitting.”

  “But I’ll take her with me. Isn’t that why we cut her hair? So she’d be disguised? I mean, Gray, nobody’s going to look twice at us.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Sandy moved over and began stroking his arm. Then she touched his chest. “Gray, honey, you promised.” She kissed him on the lips. “Come on, baby. Let me go out. I’m bored. Besides, she needs some more clothes. Everything you grabbed from her room is pink.”

  “All right, all right!” he said, returning her kisses. At least she was good for something. “Tomorrow,” he said, snapping shut his laptop. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to a mall. IF you get that nail polish off. Who ever heard of a boy wearing pink nail polish?” He rose to his feet and picked up his car keys.

  Her eyes widened. “Where are you going now?”

  “I’ve got something I’ve got to do.” And with that, he left.

  11

  Kenzie slept for three hours straight. When she woke up, the attic bedroom had grown shadowy with the declining light of dusk. She startled, remembered where she was, and jumped to her feet. She threw her clothes on and raced downstairs.

  Crow looked up as she entered the dining room, his dark eyes capturing her immediately. The deep yellow shirt he wore set off his dark hair and red-brown skin. “Sorry I slept so long. What’s up?” she asked.

  “I sent an agent up to Chambersburg. The package came from a shipping store. False return address. False phone number. The kid paid cash.”

  “What kid?”

  “The kid who shipped the package. Black kid, about fourteen. The clerk actually ID’d him. She had seen him hanging around the arcade in a shopping center. So we found him. Some dude paid him a hundred bucks to send that package. A hundred bucks! Big money to the kid.”

  “Can he identify that person?”

  “Never saw him. Guy came up to him while he was playing a video game and said, ‘Don’t turn around.’ Then he offered him the deal. Go to the elementary school where there’s a package in the culvert. Mail it, and return the receipt to the same place. Then come back and pick up the money.”

  “What did he sound like?”

  “Middle-aged white guy. Nothing more specific.”

  “No accent? Speech impediment? Exactly what words did he use?”

  “Not everybody’s a linguist, Kenzie.”

  She blushed. “How about the child that we found?” she asked, changing topics.

  Crow shrugged. “I don’t think we know anything about the child.”

  “The DNA results on the hair?”

  “That’ll be a while.” He hesitated. “Scott called.”

  Kenzie raised her eyebrows.

  “He’s on his way back. Mrs. Grable got to the director. She wants us out of the house.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kenzie responded. “Why?”

  “We’re intruding on her privacy.”

  “Good grief.”

  “What’s going on?” Senator Grable walked into the room. Crow told him about the Chambersburg connection and Mrs. Grable’s request. “That’s ridiculous. I want you here. I want to know what’s going on!” he said, his eyes snapping with anger, and he turned on his heel and walked out.

  Kenzie raised her eyebrows. “I don’t want to be in on that conversation!” she said.

  They spent the next hour alternating between the house and the Mobile Command Center. They fielded phone calls from agents, asked more questions of Senator Grable, and correlated the information that came in, sometimes in dribbles, sometimes in a flood.

  Kenzie and Crow were working side by side in the Grables’ dining room, taking bites of dinner in between surges of activity when they got an urgent radio message from an agent behind the house. “We’ve got an intruder, a runner,” he gasped. “Back alley.”

  The two agents sprang to their feet. Kenzie touched her side, feeling for her gun.

  “What’s happening?” Senator Grable asked, as they raced toward the back door. His eyes were wide.

  “Someone is in the back. You stay inside, in the hallway, away from the windows until we check it out,” Crow commanded. He radioed for another agent to come into the house.

  Kenzie followed Crow out the back door. The heat and humidity smacked her like a hot, wet towel, and she sucked in a breath of the thick air. She could smell the ozone. Thunder rumbled in the west. A storm was on the way. They raced down the garden walk toward the back gate.

  “What do you have?” Crow asked the agent in the alley behind the Grables’ house.

  “Kid was creeping around here. We saw him, ordered him to halt, and he took off.”

  “Which way?”

  “Down there.” The agent pointed.

  Crow took off. Kenzie chose a different direction, jogging to the right, around the back fence of the Grables’ property.

  Five minutes later, Crow and a second agent returned, a teenager in tow, everyone puffing from exertion. The teenager wore jeans, torn at the knee, and a black T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley on the front. His hands cuffed behind him, his head hung low. His dark blond hair hung down in dreadlocks. He was fourteen, maybe fifteen—a rich white kid. Crow and the other agent began to interrogate him.

  “What were you doing back here?” Crow asked. “Why didn’t you stop? Where do you live? What’s your name, kid?” Their questions peppered the young man, who shook with fear.

  Crow had the kid lean over the hood of a Bureau car as he searched him. Something told him the kid was just a teen snooping around, but he wanted to scare him a little. Someone else called the teenager’s mother. Crow pulled a pocketknife, a movie stub, and a couple of pills out of the kid’s pockets and put them on the hood. What were the pills? Crow looked more closely. Prozac. Why did he have them? Why were so many kids depressed these days? Rich city kids, who’d never known hunger or how cold it could get in a hogan in January.

  The thunder rumbled louder and rain began splashing down, making tiny explosions in the dust of the Bucar. One more pocket: As Crow pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, Scott arrived.

  “What’s going on?” Scott said. “Grable said you were . . .”

  Crow stared at the bill in his hand. A C-note? He blinked, then looked at Scott. “This young man was hanging out here in the alley. When our agent told him to stop, he ran.”

  Scott nodded. “You have his identification?” The other agent handed Scott the kid’s wallet, which contained a picture ID from a fancy D.C. private school, a library card, a racy magazine picture, and three dollars.

  “He says he was just curious about all the activity,” the agent said.

  “Stay still!” Crow yelled as the kid turned to speak and defend himself.

  “Let’s put him in the back of the car,” Scott suggested.

  Crow took the kid by the arm and guided him into the back seat, and shut the car door.

  Scott glanced around. “Where’s Kenzie?”

  Alarm flashed through Crow. Kenzie? “I don’t know. In the house maybe? She was here when I ran after this kid.”

  “She isn’t in the house,” Scott said.

  “She went that way,” the other agent said, motioning with his hand. “Over there. Quite a while ago.”

  “You watch him,” Crow said, gesturing toward the kid in the car. Then he started moving toward the direction the other agent had indicated. Scott followed him. Where was Kenzie? Rain began to fall harder. They jogged along the stockade fence at the rear of the Grables’ house to the corner and made a hard right turn. There, the property abutted an undeveloped area of Rock Creek Park. Just beyond the fence, a steep slope studded with thick woods dropped away toward Rock Creek Parkway.

  Crow stopped, trying to see into the dark, unlit area. All of his senses were on alert. Where was Kenzie? Why hadn’t she come back? He wiped
the rain out of his face with his arm.

  On the Reservation, they called this the male rain—the hard-driving kind of a rain sending torrents pelting down, stinging bare skin and soaking clothes; this kind of rain would send a wall of water crashing down the washes with a force able to sweep a man away. It was the dangerous kind of rain. Crow moved forward as the male rain pelted his shirt, his shoulders. Lightning flashed.

  Suddenly, the hair on the back of Crow’s neck stood up and fear arrowed up his spine. He knew she was there, knew she was nearby, before he ever saw her.

  His heart began drumming. He heard a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He saw a lightning-lit hardwood forest; he saw a bright, sunlit desert field. He slipped on the wet grass, imagined sliding sand beneath his feet, saw a drifting cloud, and, in his mind’s eye, saw smoke lifting from a hot tent in Iraq. He saw a body, lying on the ground. He saw Julie, he saw Kenzie . . . and his heart nearly broke.

  “There!” Scott shouted.

  Crow ran to her, slipping on the grass, the thunder roaring in his ears. He dropped to the ground next to her prone body, felt for a pulse, a breath. Behind him, Scott yelled for agents to search the area, calling for an ambulance, summoning a K-9 unit. And Crow’s head began to feel like it would burst.

  Kenzie moaned softly. The back of her head felt sticky and a trickle of blood streaked her face. Crow found a strong pulse. He flicked on a small light and looked for more wounds—a gunshot, a knife wound. His hands were shaking. He called her name. Thunder rumbled again.

  “Is she all right?” Scott asked.

  “Lip is cut. Head’s bleeding—blunt trauma wound. I need some ice.” Crow bent over her, shook the rain out of his eyes, and tried to rouse her. “Kenzie? Come on, wake up.” He felt like the ground underneath him was moving, like sand slipping into a hole. “Kenzie!”

  “I want people down in those woods!” Scott shouted. “Grab anybody that’s moving.”

  “Hansbrough!” The senator’s voice sounded frantic.

  Crow and Scott looked up. Grable ran toward them. He had something in his hand. Scott put his flashlight beam on it.