Locke couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “How dare you talk to your sister like that! I’ve heard quite enough out of you, young man! Leave us at once before I kick you out of this house!”
He wagged his finger and stepped toward him aggressively to underscore his parental authority. The boy backed up. For the first time, a look of genuine fear—and the warranted respect—appeared on his beefy, pimply face.
“Leave us now,” commanded Locke. “I’ll be down in a minute. And never talk to your sister like that again. Do you understand me?”
The boy bowed his head submissively. “Yes, sir.” He started to leave, but turned around when he reached the door. “You know, Dad, I’m just trying to help. You know that, right?”
Locke knew perfectly well it was a lie, but held his tongue. The boy was up to his usual trick: trying to make Susan look bad while at the same time win over Locke’s affections. The ugly truth was that Benjamin Jr. didn’t care a lick what happened to his sister, nor did he care for anyone but himself. Looking at him standing with fake contrition in the doorway, Locke felt nothing but fatherly disappointment. Good Lord, will he ever amount to anything, or am I going to be bailing him out of trouble for the rest of his life?
“Wait for me in the kitchen, Son.”
The boy nodded obediently and walked from the room. Locke watched him disapprovingly for a moment before returning his gaze to his wife and daughter. They both looked at the bulky, receding figure with burning contempt. What was happening to his family? First his son had been kicked out of college, and now his daughter was pregnant out of wedlock at the precise moment that he was trying to rescue America from self-destruction. Could the timing possibly be any worse?
“That son of yours will be the death of us,” grumbled his wife.
“He’s your son too, Mary.”
“Sometimes I wish he wasn’t.”
“Come now, you can’t mean that. He’s going through a tough time right now, just like Susan, and needs our support.”
“He’s nothing like Susan.”
“It is not right to favor one child over another, regardless of their shortcomings.”
“Well, I’ve given up on him. He’s mean as a snake.” She gave a weary sigh and looked worriedly at her daughter, whose eyes were bloodshot. “We need to leave Susan in peace. I’m keeping her home from school. She’s been through enough for one day.”
“That’s fine.” He looked at his daughter with a mixture of sympathy and disappointment. “Susan, I’m sorry for the way your brother treated you. And I’m also sorry if I upset you. But you must realize that you have let us all down. Your parents, your peers, and the Lord our God.” He let his forceful gaze linger, making sure she understood the seriousness of the situation. “At the same time, we are going to give you the opportunity to make up for this.”
“B-But how?”
“Your mother and I will decide. All you need to worry about is coming through this stronger and better than before.”
She leaned over and hugged him, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for your understanding.”
He smiled reassuringly. “Everyone deserves a second chance in this world. Especially my baby girl.”
CHAPTER 40
AFTER THEY LEFT THE ROOM, he sat back down at his desk to make one last call before eating breakfast and heading off to work at American Patriots with his son. But as he reached for his daytimer, the secure phone on his desk rang, beating him to the punch. Only a select group of individuals had the unlisted number, so he knew it had to be important. He punched a button on the voice modulator next to the phone before speaking into the mouthpiece.
“Hello,” he said, his voice electronically distorted.
“How are you today, Mr. Chairman?” It was a man’s voice, undistorted, and Locke recognized it instantly as that of Fowler’s right hand man, Peter Frautschi.
“Just fine, thank you, Pete,” he replied, though he was still furious over his daughter’s pregnancy and his son’s cruel ways. “Congratulations on your being appointed chief of staff.”
“Thanks. Things are moving quickly.”
“Indeed they are. I know this can’t be a simple courtesy call. You want your money, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite that bluntly. Let’s just say I’m a big fan of twenty-million-dollar political contributions delivered at precisely the right moment in history.”
“I’ll make arrangements for the transfer today.”
“Good. I want two people to have full discretionary authority on the accounts. The names are Chip Chapin and J.D. Wells.”
Locke wrote the names down on a piece of paper. “I’ll call you back with the account numbers later this afternoon.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Frautschi said, and he was gone.
CHAPTER 41
AFTER CHECKING UP on the troops in the bullpen, Patton returned to his desk, pulled out a stack of case files, and grabbed his iPod from his desk drawer. He didn’t feel like fiddle music right now while he worked, so he scrolled from Vassar Clements to something a little jazzier and more wildly improvisational, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. As he was about to place the headphones on, his desk phone rang. He quickly checked the caller ID.
Sharp—damn!
He lifted the phone after the second ring. “What’s up, Henry?”
“I need to know what went down at the elevator on the fourteenth floor before we brief the governor.”
“I’ll be right—” But Sharp was already off the line.
Asshole! Patton muttered to himself as he hung up the phone. Reaching across his cluttered desk, he grabbed the autopsy report on Chris Clark and Kim Purky prepared by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and headed down the hallway to Sharp’s office.
He gave a little rap on the half-open door and walked in.
“Take a seat,” his boss commanded him, scratching a gold pen across his notepad.
Patton did as instructed, pondering the supreme irony of being handed the case of his career, but under the direction of Wyatt Fucking Earp!
As if on cue, the ASAC put his pen down, leaned back in his chair, and began twisting the tips of his gunfighter’s mustache with his fingers in the way that Patton found irritating. “All right, tell me what you’ve got on the elevator killings, Special Agent—and don’t leave anything out.”
Suppressing a gulp, Patton quickly scanned the summary page of the autopsy report. “Both victims received gunshot wounds from a high-velocity, heavy-caliber firearm. The bullets were expanding, softnosed types. Three perforating wounds in each victim. Not penetrating wounds.”
“So what you’re telling me is the shooter used dum-dums.”
Patton nodded. Dum-dums were the poor man’s explosive cartridge. Their soft- or hollow-point tips ensured that a bullet flattened and expanded on impact, providing maximum knockdown power and causing massive damage. They were far deadlier than normal bullets, because they left a gaping hole upon exiting the body much larger than the entrance wound.
“But dum-dums are everywhere these days. And the slugs are probably useless for ballistics.”
Patton conceded this point with a nod. “The projectile deformity was severe in both victims. The recovered slugs were flat as a pancake. No land or groove markings. The examiners couldn’t even come up with a probable firearm, let alone a match.”
“That doesn’t leave us with much.”
“We still have one thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“The examiners were able to reconstruct the trajectory of one of the bullets that struck Kim Purky. Based on the reconstruction, they found a descending firing line. They determined the shooter had to be over six feet tall, but no taller than six-three.”
“That’s assuming the victim was standing upright when shot. But we don’t know that for sure.”
Patton couldn’t help a little smile. “Ah, but we do. The spatter patterns show that bot
h victims fell straight back when they were shot. Had they been kneeling, their legs would have been trapped beneath them as they fell back and the mist portion of the spray wouldn’t have been as dispersed. By all indications, Chris Clark and Kim Purky were standing upright, about to step into the elevator, when they were killed.”
“Why didn’t they just turn and run?”
“Chances are they were shot the instant the elevator doors opened and didn’t have time to. Also, there were no powder burns or tattoos on the skin or in any of the wound tracks. So the shots had to have been fired from over two feet.”
“Still, you’d think they would have tried to run or duck for cover.”
“Not if they were paralyzed with fear. Or maybe the assassin didn’t look threatening to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe the guy didn’t look like a killer. Maybe he was in disguise or something.”
The phone rang, interrupting the conversation. Sharp leaned across the desk and picked it up before the second ring. “Yeah,” he said impatiently.
Patton pretended to study the patterns of the perfectly vacuumed carpet as Sharp spoke into the mouthpiece. His boss was getting on his nerves. It was like he was playing some kind of psychological game, trying to score points with subtle putdowns and shallow contradictions. But why was he doing it? What could he possibly stand to gain?
Sharp hung up the phone and smiled.
“What is it?” Patton asked.
“Taylor’s found something—something important.”
CHAPTER 42
THEY DASHED down the hallway to the bullpen where the task force was busy at work. The room was as frenetic as a stock trading floor and smelled of stale pizza and bitter coffee. There were four standard DVD players with color monitors set up on a long table against the wall, and in front of each one sat a technician and a small crowd of agents. Senior Secret Service Agent Fred Taylor parted through the crowd and led them to the monitor where Agent Weiss was sitting. The screen was frozen with a grainy image of a fair-haired, medium-built man with a mustache and dark sunglasses. The man wore a brown UPS delivery uniform and matching cap and was pushing a package cart.
Taylor instructed Weiss to roll the disk. The man in the uniform began moving toward the camera with the cart, which was filled with long tubes, boxes, and letter-sized packs, all with UPS air bill stickers. Patton noted that the man’s brown UPS cap was pulled down low over his eyes and he kept his head inclined downward toward the pavement. There was a shadow of facial hair along his chin and running up to his ears, and a tuft of light-colored, curly chest hair was visible in the V of his unbuttoned UPS shirt. Using the cart for scale, Patton estimated his height at around five foot eight.
“This is the southwest entrance to the Union Plaza Building,” Taylor said, providing a narrative to the silent film. “The subject you see here entered the building at 3:57 P.M. on Friday afternoon, took the elevator to the fiftieth floor, and disappeared. We have no record of him coming back down or leaving the building.”
As the man began pushing his way through the revolving door, Taylor motioned to the technician to the left of Weiss to begin rolling a second DVD, showing a different camera angle. “This is from the lobby,” he said. The man in the uniform appeared again, pushing the cart through the door towards the bank of elevators on the right.
“Do we have any idea who he is?” Sharp asked.
“Not yet. But he’s no UPS delivery man,” Taylor said. “He’s gone to great lengths to conceal his identity from the security cameras.”
Patton had noticed that straight off. The guy hadn’t looked up once. Even if he had, the cap was pulled so low it would be difficult to see his upper face. But Patton did manage to catch an important detail as the third screen was activated and the man was filmed from the rear. A blond ponytail dangled from the guy’s UPS cap and down the back of his jacket.
To the fourth technician, Taylor said, “Let the last one run.”
The view showed the man pushing the cart into an elevator. In the background, Patton could see a security guard pause a moment to check out the man and then look away, disinterested.
The elevator doors closed and the man disappeared. They all watched as the floor numbers lit up above the elevator, one after another. Taylor moved closer to the screen, his face filled with expectancy. “Here it comes.” He pointed to the light for the fiftieth floor, which lit up. “Bingo.”
They all looked at one another.
Sharp said, “You’re sure none of the footage shows this guy coming back down to the lobby or leaving through any of the exits?”
“Positive,” Taylor said. “He went to the fiftieth floor and there’s no record of him after that. None of the ten or more security cameras still operating Sunday afternoon show him coming back down. My guess is this guy took out the two cameras in the parking garage so he wouldn’t be seen leaving the building.”
“Okay, so we know he’s an accomplice at least. But is he our killer?”
“I don’t know if we have enough to answer that question. His role may have been to get the shooter inside once he disabled the security cameras in the garage.”
“But there’s no record of entry in the garage on the day of the assassination,” Patton pointed out. “So he couldn’t have let someone in unless he disabled the card keypad. And the security company said it wasn’t tampered with.”
Sharp held up a hand. “Let’s go through it one more time.”
As Patton watched the sequence again, it dawned on him how perfectly suited the UPS delivery guy was for the job, if he was, in fact, the assassin. Anonymity was a contract killer’s best friend, and with his bland uniform and air of quiet efficiency, this guy blended in like an everyday package handler. Here he was, pushing a cart into a building, past a security guard, and heading to the fiftieth floor without raising a single eyebrow. The guy was the very picture of anonymity.
“I think he’s our shooter,” Patton said when they were finished. “He doesn’t care about being seen going in, but he definitely doesn’t want to be ID’d going out. Why? Because he wore a disguise, something different than the UPS uniform he wore going in. What the package handler front gives him is the perfect way to sneak in all his gear: his disguise, sniper’s rifle, and other equipment.”
“If you’re right,” Taylor said, “he would have had to wait all weekend to make the hit. The speakers’ platform wasn’t set up until Saturday afternoon.”
“But just by knowing the speech was going to be at the plaza, he could easily find out where the platform would be. It’s always set up on the west end, closest to the City and County Building.”
“You two can work the details out later,” Sharp said impatiently. “Right now, we’ve got to move on what we know for sure.” He looked at Patton. “I want you to talk to the receptionist again plus the security people, the guard, and UPS. See if anyone remembers this guy. Also, put together a photo-kit and send out a wanted pronto.”
“I’m on it.”
“I’ll get started on the campaign footage,” Taylor said. “Chances are this guy’s been trailing Kieger for some time.”
“Let’s get busy then, people,” snapped Sharp.
Suddenly, Patton thought of something. “Wait a second, Henry. We still have a problem.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“If this guy’s the assassin, why is he not even close to six feet tall?”
CHAPTER 43
FIVE MINUTES LATER, with the unanswered question still ringing in his head, Patton went to Dr. Thomas Hamilton’s office on the seventeenth floor. Hamilton was the sole criminal profiler in the Denver field office, which meant he had the responsibility of trying to get inside the mind of every violent wacko pursued by the FBI in the Rocky Mountain region. A Ph.D. in Criminology-Abnormal Psychology from Penn State and a decade with the Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico garnered him this unusual honor. Quantico was home base for the Bureau�
�s foremost behavioral sciences sleuths, who grappled with the most twisted, horrifying, and intriguing aspects of the criminal mind. It was, needless to say, more than just a job.
Patton had given Hamilton all the case information so he could work up a profile on the assassin. That insight would, hopefully, produce promising leads on the perpetrator’s identity. But having just seen the video, Patton wanted to hear what Hamilton’s thoughts were on the assassin before the profiler had observed the video footage. That way, his profile would not be tainted by visual bias.
“Howdy, Doc. How’s it going?”
The freckle-faced criminal profiler was hunched over a book as thick as Tolstoy’s War and Peace . When he looked up and saw his new guest, he pulled off his John Lennon glasses, rubbed his eyes, and pushed the book to the side. “I’ve made some headway. The profile’s still preliminary, but I think I have enough to give you some idea of who we’re dealing with here.”
Patton took a seat in the upholstered leather chair in front of his desk. “Music to my ears.”
“Okay, we already know we’re dealing with a pro, but now we can get into some specifics. I believe our man is a veteran freelance assassin backed by a well-organized, ideologically driven group. He himself is not an ideologue, but an intelligent, highly trained operative who kills for money. A great deal of money.”
Patton began typing notes on his iPad. “You said he . Can we be certain it’s a man?” he asked, playing devil’s advocate even as the image of the UPS man on the tape floated through his mind.
“Not one hundred percent. But the preliminary results from the firearm analysis and the hair samples are most consistent with an adult male suspect. There are other considerations too—for example, the nature of the crime. Ninety-eight percent of violent crimes are committed by men. So from the start, without any evidence in the case, there’s a ninety-eight percent statistical probability the assassination was committed by a man.
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