The automatic trained on the door, her hearing perked for anything behind it, she had just started keying in Rogers’ new number when she sensed something behind her.
An anonymous nine millimeter snugged in his waistband, Joe Reeder stood on the fire-escape landing outside DeMarcus’s crib, pulling on a cigarette liberated from the half-pack of Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra Lights left behind by the formerly naked Sheila in the couple’s rush to leave. The beautiful starry evening seemed at odds with the storm clouds of the situation, though a March crispness provided a reminder that a chill was coming.
That distinctive white hair of his Reeder had tucked under a Nationals cap, appropriated (like the Georgetown windbreaker) from his host’s closet. The door was propped open, a shaft of light cutting the darkness of the wrought-iron landing as he waited for Rogers and Miggie, knowing they should be back soon.
He hadn’t smoked in over a year, not even a single cigarette, but he couldn’t resist just this one as he tried to calm his jangly nerves. He’d been going over every single aspect of the Yellich assassination and the dead CIA quartet in Azbekistan, looking for possible connections—was Len Chamberlain’s murder the connective tissue? He tried to separate what he knew from what he thought, what he could prove from what he surmised.
As soon as he saw headlights swing onto Tenth, Reeder tossed the cigarette sparking into the alley and went down to greet them.
When Rogers parked the car alongside the building, Reeder stepped behind the vehicle so that when she popped the trunk, he’d be ready to grab some of Miggie’s gear. With the three of them, a single trip got all of it up and inside. Although Mig used a tablet for most of his searches, the rest of the tech wizard’s toys, which were in part to help hide his presence here, would not exactly fit neatly into a shoulder bag.
With the door finally pulled shut, Miggie looked at Reeder and said, “Patti gave me the Cliff Notes version. How about the unabridged edition?”
Reeder motioned for them to move to the comfy chairs and couches facing the big flat-screen and settled in. Reeder brought Mig up to speed quickly but thoroughly.
Then he asked Miggie, “Have you had any luck tracking the money Wooten was paid to take Secretary Yellich down?”
Mig, in gray Hoyas Basketball sweats, shrugged. “Some . . . but nothing that does us any good yet. Shell companies, a slew of them. Whoever paid Wooten wanted the transaction untraceable. Nothing is, of course . . . but tracking it could take time.”
“How much time?” Reeder asked.
Miggie shrugged again. “Who knows? Weeks, even months.”
“We have four days. Then it won’t matter.”
Miggie frowned, flipped a hand. “I can only do what I can do, Joe. It’s like peeling an onion a layer at a time.”
Rogers asked, “What about our friend from the GAO?”
“Your elevator buddy? Well, knowing he’s from the GAO—if he’s really from the GAO—isn’t much to go on.”
She clearly didn’t like the sound of that. “Can’t you round up some pictures for me to sort through?”
Miggie huffed a non-laugh. “Patti, there’s somewhere north of three thousand employees in the GAO, more than half of ’em male—you want to look at all their photos?”
She frowned. “There has to be a faster way . . .”
“Might be,” Miggie admitted. “I’ve got a couple of ideas. Get back to you on that. In the meantime, what else do we need?”
Reeder held out the plastic bag with the busted flag-lapel camera in it. “Any way to track this?”
Miggie took the bag, removed its contents, studied it. Finally he said, “There’s no onboard memory, so it recorded images to a hard drive somewhere else. Meaning . . . probably not. Any idea who it belongs to?”
“A guy who jumped me in the dark.”
“Giving me a lot to work with, aren’t you?”
Reeder lifted a shoulder and put it back down. “Well, the Secret Service is the only agency I know of that uses these, this model anyway. It almost has to belong to one of their agents. If not, why did the GAO drone try to intimidate us right there at the Secret Service?”
Rogers asked, “What do you say, Miggie? Is there a way to track down the right agent?”
Examining the back of the mini-camera, the computer expert said, “There’s an ID number . . . maybe match it, if I hack the Secret Service. No small feat that, and when the flag cam got smashed, the ID number appears to’ve been ground into the concrete, and it was a tiny one to begin with . . . but we should be able to come up with several possibilities.”
“Good,” Reeder said.
As if taking stock for the first time, Miggie glanced around, sniffing some, and said, “You’ll need more Febreze than that to cover up that much weed.”
Reeder chuckled. “Who says Miguel Altuve can’t determine anything without a computer?”
Really taking their surroundings in now, Miggie asked, “What the hell is this place?”
Not missing a beat, Rogers said, “The Batcave.”
Miggie smirked. “Oh really? Is that how Bruce Wayne made his fortune, selling dope and guns?”
Ignoring that, Reeder rose and said, “Get set up, Mig, and get at it. You should be safe here . . . just don’t answer the door.”
The smirk morphed into a frown. “You think that elevator clown who threatened you can find us? Him or whoever he works for, anyway? And I don’t mean the GAO.”
Reeder shook his head. “Probably not, but in this town, what couldn’t happen? And the friend of mine who loaned us this pad has customers who will not be expecting you. So don’t answer it unless it’s one of us. There’s a camera—you’ll be able to see who’s out there.”
Miggie nodded, let some air out, said, “Got it.”
Reeder turned to Rogers. “Have you taken care of the Kevin situation?”
“No, but it’s next on my list.”
“Mine, too.”
She rose. “Joe . . . I can handle it myself. You stick here, why don’t you, and keep Miggie safe.”
Miggie volunteered, “I can handle myself.”
“He’s right,” Reeder told her. “This is a fortress. But you’ll be out in the world, Patti, and the next time they come at us, it’ll be with more than just threats. Consider me your backup.”
They took the rental car, Rogers driving, sticking to secondary streets, headlights like twin Maglites searching the darkness. When they were about a mile from her Joyce Street apartment house, Reeder had her pull over. He got out and in back and stayed low. He figured no one would recognize the rental, but understood that all of their residences were likely under surveillance.
A mile later, she pulled into the underground garage of her apartment building, pausing to swipe her card at the entry.
“Anything on the street?” he asked, still ducked down.
“Not that I saw. But these are pros.”
“So are we.”
“Should that be a comfort?”
She parked and they got out of the car and headed for the elevator, which was close to her stall. They didn’t bother trying to evade the security cameras, including the elevator cam, but going up the stairs would only put them in view of more high-mounted cameras. Odds were good no one would be monitoring the security system in Rogers’ building—her comings and goings would be the important observations.
They rode up in silence. Reeder had only been to her place two or three times, and not at all since Kevin Lockwood had more or less moved in. Of that he didn’t give a damn—as long as she was happy, he was fine with it. His only concern was that they now had another person who needed protecting. Another member of their extended “family.”
As she unlocked her apartment door, Reeder backed against the wall to one side, with his hand on the butt of the nine mil in his waistband.
“We’ve been busy,” she said, “so it’s kind of a mess,” then led him into the immaculate living room.
Browns and
greens dominated, giving the place a vaguely military feel. A new sofa and matching recliner, dark green, dominated the middle of the room, angled toward shelves to Reeder’s left with a flat-screen and books. To his right, next to the door, hung a framed poster of Kevin and his late friend DeShawn Davis in their drag costumes—“The Plain Sisters,” a spoof of the Haynes sisters played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen in White Christmas. Kevin and African American DeShawn—stage names Virginia Plain and Karma Sabich—posed in floor-length gowns, blonde wigs, and dazzling smiles.
DeShawn’s murder had first put Rogers and Kevin in contact. Despite the stressful circumstances, the pair had hit it off and had gradually become a couple. Reeder had accompanied Rogers to one of her boyfriend’s performances at the Les Girls club, and the young man, in his drag queen persona, was quite good . . . not that this was Reeder’s preferred form of entertainment.
Trying to process this relationship between a woman he assumed was gay and a guy he figured was bisexual only made Reeder’s head hurt. So mostly he didn’t bother.
Rogers turned toward the back of the apartment, where a hallway led to two bedrooms and a bathroom, and called, “Honey, I’m home!” Like this was 1957 and they were a typical couple. In a lot of ways, they were.
“Joe’s here!” she added.
Towel in hand, Kevin trotted out wearing only baggy shorts and a chin full of shaving cream, his wide grin nearly as white as the foam. “Mr. Reeder! Welcome.”
Kevin strode over and, somewhat soapily, shook Reeder’s hand.
“Not exactly a social call,” Reeder said.
Kevin frowned in confusion, then turned to Rogers and said, “Patti, why didn’t you give me a little warning? I’d have cleaned up the place.”
The apartment was about as messy as a NASA clean room, but Reeder said nothing.
“Not prudent, calling,” Rogers said.
Kevin looked even more confused.
She touched his arm. “I need to fill you in about something.” Then she led him by the arm to the couch.
Taking his cue, Reeder said, “I’ll just step outside and check in with Miggie.”
Rogers nodded and he went out into the hall, then punched the computer expert’s cell number into the burner phone.
When the call went straight to voice mail, Reeder tried not to make anything of that. He debated calling back, but then his phone trilled at him—UNKNOWN.
Letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, he took the call. “Yeah.”
“Miggie,” the phone said. “Saw you called my cell. Figured I better use one of your friend’s burners instead.”
“Yeah,” Reeder said again.
“Everything okay on your end?”
“So far. We’re at Patti’s. Anybody else check in?”
“Bohannon and Wade are treading water out in the field, each on his own. Hardesy, too. He picked up burner phones from some street source of his and got ’em to Bohannon and Wade. Nothing new from Nichols, although Lucas did get a burner to her.”
“Try to call her?”
“Yeah, no answer.”
Reeder didn’t love that. “What about Trevor?”
“He’s the only one Hardesy couldn’t link up to and give a clean cell. But, then, you know Ivanek.”
Not working with a partner, the profiler would occasionally fall off the grid for a day or even more. Didn’t answer calls, check e-mails, nothing. That he’d been out of touch for less than a day didn’t concern Reeder, not much anyway—but he wished they’d heard from Nichols.
Reeder asked the computer guru, “You have any luck on the flag-pin front?”
“Unless the guy reports it missing, finding who that cam belongs to is gonna be tough going.”
“I figured as much. What about our GAO drone?”
“Well, an employee signed out of GAO and into the Secret Service building yesterday.”
Reeder perked. “Do tell.”
“Could be our boy—one Lawrence Morris.”
“Why ‘could be’?”
“Well, I never saw him, and what you and Patti gave me was fairly general. Seen one government drone, seen ’em all. I’m sending you a photo to this number. See if it’s your elevator buddy.”
“Will do. Good work.”
“Thanks. Oh, and I’m still digging through Wooten’s Cayman Island money.”
“And?”
“And one of the shell companies the money was funneled through was owned by Adam Benjamin.”
The late billionaire had launched an independent run for president last year.
Reeder grinned at the phone. “So we’re getting somewhere.”
“Somewhere . . . and nowhere. This transaction was made after Benjamin died. Still . . . considering Benjamin’s role in last year’s fun-and-games, it’s a hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Like most law enforcement types, Reeder hated coincidences. But sometimes seeming coincidences were very real clues. “That shell company—does the Benjamin estate own it, or what?”
“No, it was sold as part of his holdings. But this looks like another shell company—something called DTOM Holdings.”
“Which is what the hell?”
“No idea. Shells within shells, like those Russian dolls.” Miggie laughed a little. “Except here you open one doll and there are fifteen inside.”
“Then why do you sound so chipper?”
“Why, don’t you like a challenge?”
Reeder chuckled and said, “Stick with it. I’ll get back to you after I check the photo. And keep trying to reach Nichols, too.”
“Will do.”
They clicked off and Reeder called up the photo. Staring blandly back at him was the bespectacled bastard from the elevator, who was indeed one Lawrence Morris. A name to put with the face was always good. Now, to learn more about him . . .
Reeder knocked on Rogers’ door.
“It’s open, Joe,” she called.
He went in and saw Rogers and Kevin side by side on the new couch. The boyfriend had wiped off the shaving cream, the blue of beard making his profession seem unlikely. His concerned expression didn’t surprise Reeder, who walked over to face them.
Looking up at him, locking eyes, Rogers said, “Kevin isn’t coming with us.”
Reeder frowned. “He really should. Kevin, you really should.”
She held up a hand to cut him off. “It’s not that we don’t value your opinion, Joe, or your advice . . . but this is our issue, mine and Kevin’s, and we think it’s safer for both of us if only I know where he is.”
Reeder nodded. She was right, of course, it was their issue. But he did say, to both of them, “Staying here would be foolish.”
They were holding hands. “Kevin won’t be here . . . he has friends he can stay with.”
Reeder’s eyebrows went up. “He might be endangering them.”
“Kevin doesn’t think so. Joe, other than these friends and a few others, no one really knows about us anyway. We’ve kept it low-key, these months. It’s not like we’re posting selfies on Instagram or Facebook.”
Reeder shifted his gaze to Kevin. “You’re sure about this? You do seem to be living together. I don’t know how much Patti told you, but we’re navigating very treacherous waters right now. I sent my own family away.”
Kevin said nothing, just raised a forefinger in “wait” mode. He got up and disappeared down the hall. Reeder frowned at Rogers again, but she just smiled, and raised a hand in her own “wait” gesture.
Kevin was gone about two minutes, but that was enough time for him to finish his shave and put on his shoulder-length wig of brunette curls. Wrapped in a dark blue silk robe, he was Kevin no more—this was Virginia Plain.
Planting himself before Reeder, Kevin—his voice higher, sharper now—said, “Joe, dear, how long have you and Patti been on the radar of these miscreants? Long enough for them to know about Patti and me, despite our discretion?”
“They m
ight know about Kevin,” Reeder admitted, “but probably not Virginia.”
Startlingly, Kevin’s voice dropped to his normal male pitch. “That’s right. And until we all can come in from the cold, I’ll be in full-on Virginia—clothes, makeup, heels, hair, the whole magilla. Trust me—they’ll never know.”
Reeder nodded. “I’m convinced. But we’re dealing with people who have no compunction about killing, remember . . . and who have resources that stretch into the highest reaches of government. You need to be good and goddamn careful. Patti, you gave him a burner?”
She nodded.
“Kevin—Virginia—whatever. Anything out of the ordinary, anything scares or disturbs you, you get back to us, now. Understood?”
“Understood, Mr. Reeder.”
“And Kevin?”
“Yes?”
“Goddamnit, it’s ‘Joe.’”
The beautiful face beamed. “All right, Joe.”
Reeder curled a finger at Rogers and said, “Time.” She nodded, went over and gave Kevin a quick kiss, and then she and Reeder were out the door.
They were in the elevator, on their way down, when she asked, “So—Miggie?”
He told her what Mig had shared about the GAO drone.
She frowned. “Lawrence Morris—he even sounds like a damn accountant.”
“Accountants don’t generally threaten to kill you.”
Then he told her that everybody but Ivanek and Nichols had checked in, and gave her the number of Miggie’s new phone.
In the parking garage, Rogers said, “I’m not worried about Ivanek—half the time he doesn’t answer when he knows it’s you.”
“No argument,” Reeder said. “But I’d feel better if we checked on Nichols.”
“No argument,” Rogers echoed.
Anne Nichols lived in a two-bedroom flat in a high-rise on Connecticut Avenue NW, a good neighborhood strewn with apartment houses, south of Melvin C. Hazen Park. The tan-brick building was on the corner, two burning-bush trees guarding either side of the front walk.
At the entrance, up a few steps, Reeder called Miggie and asked, “Any luck reaching Anne?”
Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller) Page 14