by Gene Riehl
“Who’s on him?” Monk asked.
“Seven … but they didn’t know about the opera until just a few minutes ago. They don’t have anybody dressed for it.”
Surveillance teams were ready for most contingencies, but it was impossible to be prepared for everything. In this case, Team 7 had been caught short, and there was no question about going to help them.
“I’ve got to run by the barn to get suited up. Tell Seven I’ll be at the Kennedy in forty minutes.” He paused. “And see if they can get a seat number … or some idea where the guy’s going to sit.”
Twenty minutes later he was in his locker at the SOG, pulling out the tuxedo he’d been issued, the formal clothing that everyone kept in their lockers just in case. He changed quickly, and eighteen minutes after that he was at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, next to the Watergate Complex on the east bank of the Potomac.
Brian Shanahan, the Team 7 leader, handed Monk a photograph of the spy, a ticket to the opera, and—thanks to the cooperation of a woman in the box office who’d been helping the bureau for years—the number of the guy’s seat inside.
Monk took his seat just as the opera started, a dozen rows behind the Chinese IO, in a perfect position to make sure the man didn’t slip out of the place unobserved. That he didn’t go back to his car before 7 could drill a big enough hole in the tail light to make it a cinch for the airplane to follow him when the opera was over.
But the spy didn’t go anywhere, and halfway into Aida, Monk found himself hoping to God he would. Dead tired, his mind filled with his failure at Bally’s, Monk kept asking himself why Verdi hadn’t gone to an editor somewhere along the way. When at last the curtain fell, the IO returned to his car and left the parking lot, Team 7 strung out behind him like water skiers behind a speeding boat.
Monk didn’t bother returning to the SOG for his clothes. He drove straight toward Logan Circle instead, back to Lisa at the loft, and it was close to twelve when he parked the Saab in the basement garage. On the way upstairs he realized something was wrong, that his fatigue had somehow disappeared. Now he found himself wide awake and filled with nervous energy. He’d never get to sleep unless he burned some of it away, until he grabbed his bike and took a midnight ride. The problem would be doing it without disturbing Lisa.
The loft was dark when he opened the door. He pulled off his shoes and headed for the bedroom before veering toward the bathroom. He wasn’t paying attention, however, and two steps from the bathroom door his foot came down on the loose board in the hardwood floor. He recoiled from the sharp screech as the edge of the board rubbed against the one next to it. Damn it! He turned toward the bed, hoping Lisa hadn’t heard, but it was too late.
“Puller? Is that you?”
He walked toward the bed. “Sorry, sweetheart. I forgot about that damned board.”
“It’s okay. I just now closed my eyes.” She looked at his tux. “Another night at the opera?” He nodded. “Come to bed,” she told him. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”
“I’m going for a ride first. I’m too wired to sleep.”
“You’re going riding now?” She turned to look at the red digital numbers on the alarm clock. “It’s midnight.”
“I just need to burn off some energy. Go back to sleep. I won’t be more than an hour or so.”
Lisa plopped back onto the bed and pulled the covers up. Monk stepped quietly to the wardrobe and changed into his black riding shorts and matching T-shirt, grabbed his thick-soled cycling shoes, and went back to the living room for his bike. A few minutes later he was out on the street again.
He would take Q Street to Rock Creek, Monk decided, then cross the creek on the Dumbarton Bridge—the buffalo bridge everybody called it—and continue on to one of the many bike trails in Rock Creek Park. He could sprint around the empty pathways for half an hour, then head back. If he put his mind to it, that would be plenty.
Monk had to be nuts.
Behind the wheel of the black Camry she’d just stolen, Sung Kim shook her head. Half a block in front of her on Q Street, the FBI agent was making it too easy. Riding a bicycle at this time of night, in clothing just as dark as the streets, was plenty dangerous enough on its own. Doing such a thing was either crazy or brainless, and she was certain he wasn’t stupid.
She reached for the lever to the left of the steering wheel and turned her headlights off, then began to close the distance between them.
Monk felt the car behind him before he heard it.
He turned to look, but there was nothing there.
What the hell? He couldn’t be mistaken. It must have turned down a side street. Or pulled over and …
No. There it was. No headlights. Right behind him, coming fast. Some drunken bastard on his way home.
Monk pulled as far right as he could as he moved past the first of the famous buffalo statues at the near end of the bridge. He kept his eyes on the low wall just off his right handlebar, careful not to catch the edge of the narrow sidewalk and rebound into the car’s path. He pumped harder to keep his momentum going as he approached the center of the bridge. The car swung out to pass him. Monk waited for the driver to go around, but the car seemed to hesitate. He felt a jolt of fear … there was no more room to his right.
What the hell is the guy thinking?
He turned to shout, but had no chance to before the car hit him.
The impact against his back tire slammed the bicycle toward the low wall. An instant later his front tire struck the wall and the lightweight racing bike shot like a kite into the air. Monk wrenched his feet out of the toe clips, but in the next second he was upside down, still astride the bicycle, above the wall, then over it, and plummeting toward the creek below.
Time seemed to slow down.
He felt like he was floating as he fell toward the water, but he hit the shallow creek back first with a blow that knocked the wind out of him. He sank fast, under the water now, struggling to shed the bike and stand up. Stumbling, falling, getting back up. Gagging, gasping, he slipped to his knees, then toppled face forward. Chill water washed over his face and up his nose. He struggled until he was upright again, then dragged the bicycle to the nearby bank of the creek and stood shivering on the grass.
Jesus Christ!
Monk tried to focus his mind, to stop his body from shaking, but he couldn’t seem to make his brain send the commands that would get him up the slope and back onto the street.
He wasn’t sure how long it took but he made it to the slope at last, and stood for a moment to inspect his bike. The front wheel was bent double from where it had hit the wall, and the impact from the car had ruined the back wheel, but the frame was intact. Sinking to the grass, he lay there shivering, snot running from his nose, creek water from his hair. He released his chin strap and pulled the helmet from his head, then stared at the creek, at the slope he was on, and the bank on the other side of the creek.
He’d been lucky, Monk realized. Very lucky. Had the accident occurred a moment sooner, or a few moments later, he’d have missed the water, would have fallen to the ground instead. He’d have been killed. That imbecile behind the wheel would have killed …
The thought died as a new one took over.
Where the hell was the car?
Where’s the son of a bitch who hit me?
It took Monk a few moments to understand what had happened. In all likelihood the driver hadn’t even seen him. It wasn’t impossible. People didn’t notice cyclists, it was the first thing a rider learns. The driver couldn’t have seen him, or he’d be here now, helping him, making sure he wasn’t dead. As a matter of fact, the accident was nearly as much his fault as the driver’s. He’d been preoccupied again, his mind filled with everything but what it should have been, and this time it had almost killed him.
Unbelievable!
Sung Kim had stopped the Camry a block away, watching as Monk pulled himself out of Rock Creek. There was no way he could have survived a fall f
rom that bridge, but he had.
She made a U-turn and turned the headlights back on. Monk was walking now, on the sidewalk, carrying his mangled bicycle as he started back to his loft.
Sung Kim accelerated, then slowed down behind him. Reaching for the silencer-mounted Beretta in her lap, she slid the passenger window down and held the pistol low until she was abreast of him. He was walking with his head down, oblivious to her presence. She lifted the Beretta into place, her finger curling around the trigger, before she lowered the weapon. Damn it, she thought, it would be so much easier this way.
But it was an accident her people wanted.
And it was an accident she was going to give them.
THIRTY-TWO
“Just fill in the file number, Mr. Monk,” Alicia Donaldson told him the next morning, from behind her counter in the 1B vault on the second floor at WFO.
More commonly known as the bulky-exhibit room, the 1B vault was the field office storage locker for evidence too large to be kept in the manilla 1A envelopes attached to the case files themselves. It was also the most important room in the office. The bureau in Washington had hundreds of cases in court at any one time, virtually every one of which would be dismissed immediately should something happen to the evidence locked up in here.
Monk wrote the Lyman Davidson robbery file number on the form Alicia gave him, and handed it back to the gray-haired lady with the long yellow pencil stuck behind her ear.
“Give me a second,” she said, and hustled away into the long rows of government-gray metal shelving behind her.
The bulky-exhibit room looked more like a humongous garage sale than anything connected with the somber business of the federal judiciary. Evidence too big to fit between the stiff cardboard file covers tended to run a gamut you’d have to see to believe. As a matter of fact, the black Lincoln Navigator the thief had used was currently a 1B exhibit, although it was being kept downstairs in the basement garage: Some things were too big even for this room. Looking around—without half trying—Monk could see dozens of computers and monitors, two old-fashioned floor safes that looked heavier than elephants, and a bicycle built for two. A bicycle built for two? He shook his head, then turned to Alicia as she came back with a cardboard box slightly larger than a case of wine.
“You taking this back to your desk?” she wanted to know. “Or looking at it here?” As long as he’d signed for the stuff, he could take it anywhere he wanted.
“Here’s fine.” He glanced to his left and felt a jolt of pain from his still-aching back. “I’ll use the table for a few minutes.”
Alicia carried the box around the end of her counter and took it to the library table in the corner near the door. Monk joined her, and she handed him the green sheet, the long green 1B form. He checked it over. The form served as a chain of custody log as well as the document to input the evidence into the filing system, and chain of custody was taken very seriously around these parts. When you got to court, you had better be able to prove not only where the evidence had been when you seized it, but where it had been every single moment since that time. In some cases it could be years before the start of a trial, but that didn’t make any difference. Every moment the evidence was in FBI custody had to be accounted for, and there were no exceptions. Ever.
Monk saw from the form that the office crime-scene specialists had recovered the evidence from two places: from Lyman Davidson’s house and from the rented Navigator that had been left behind at the curb outside the house.
The evidence people had signed the stuff in the box into the bulky vault at three-thirty-seven in the morning, about four hours after the robbery. He saw from the form that nobody but him had looked at it since. He took the pen Alicia offered and bent to sign his name. In the blank entitled OUT, he wrote the date and the time of day. He would repeat the process when he was finished, when he left the box for Alicia to put away until next time. When he finished his entry, she took the form and went back to her desk behind the counter.
At the table, Monk began to remove items from the box. The first and biggest was the portable makeup kit, a box about six inches high and fifteen inches long. It opened like a tool box or a fisherman’s tackle box. He glanced at the contents. Makeup, costume jewelry—fake pearls, five or six pairs of earrings, a few fake diamond rings—and an assortment of brushes, sponges, and small square wiping cloths. He examined the makeup in the various containers: a little heavy duty for his taste, but perfect for disguise.
Obviously the woman Davidson had known as Sarah Freed was not what she’d appeared to be, but Monk already knew that. He was neither surprised by anything in here nor hopeful that it would help find her. He put the kit aside and pawed through the box for the hairs and fibers, found them in a large glassine envelope sealed with white tape on which the word EVIDENCE was printed in brilliant red lettering. He didn’t need to look at the individual specimens, so he grabbed the attached paperwork, the sheets of paper detailing what was inside the envelope.
The searchers had found all kinds of hair, both in the front seats and in the rear compartment of the SUV, not surprising in a rental car that probably didn’t get much more than a wipe-down and quick vacuuming between uses. Monk read the list, and shook his head. Christ, it couldn’t be much worse. Black hairs—some from wigs, some from still-living heads—blond hairs, ditto. Same with brown, same with red. “No help,” as a poker dealer might say when he threw you the wrong card.
There was one wig in there, too. Blond, with a ponytail. No label, no way to use it to find a trail leading back to her. The hairs in the glassine envelope did contain DNA, of course—the non-wig hairs—but that didn’t mean shit either. There was no national DNA database—not yet anyway—and without a suspect in hand for comparison purposes, the DNA was useless. Sure as hell wouldn’t lead him to Sung Kim. Monk looked at the green sheet again. The evidence techs had lifted a bunch of latent prints, but who knew which were hers and which had come from previous renters? And again there was the problem of using prints to catch her. One thing Monk knew as well as he knew the feel of a deck of cards in his hands was that Sung Kim’s fingerprints wouldn’t be on file at the bureau’s identification division.
The fibers the techs had collected were pretty much useless as well. Plain cotton strands, polyester tufts, common stuff from clothing you could buy anywhere, recovered from a car that had been used by multiple renters.
But it didn’t mean that what the specialists had gathered wouldn’t one day be used. Despite the fact that all Monk cared about was catching Sung Kim before she struck again, he still had to observe every last detail of evidence gathering, analysis, and preservation. The case could end up in court—it damned well better end up in court—and when the time came, all the seemingly useless minutiae would come into play.
Monk turned and called to Alicia. She smiled and started toward him with the chain of custody log in hand. He glanced back at the box. He’d been hoping for something here, for inspiration if nothing else. Monk chewed the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t sure what inspiration was supposed to feel like, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t it.
THIRTY-THREE
“Hey, Mary Anne!” Steve Batcholder said, when Sung Kim pulled up at the guard shack. “Have I got a joke for you!”
She laughed. “You’ll have to save it till I come back out. Grace Woods has been paging me for an hour.”
He pushed the button that opened the gate. “You better get moving, then. I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account.”
She waved as she drove through and headed up the driveway toward the mansion. A few minutes later she was at the rear of the big house, at the delivery door, and ringing the bell. Grace Woods came to the door.
“Finally,” she said. “Mr. Franklin is anxious to make the skeet house look right. He wants as many fresh plants as you can jam into the place.” She turned in the direction of a noise behind her, shook her head, and turned back. “It’s a madhouse around here today.�
�� She pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her gray tailored suit, handed them to Sung Kim. “You can give them to one of the staff when you finish.”
Sung Kim nodded. “Shouldn’t take me more than thirty minutes.”
She turned and went back to her van, drove back up the driveway, then onto a second driveway that led to the skeet house, several hundred yards from the mansion. She backed up to the front door, then continued the charade of using the keys Grace had given her, although she’d long ago made her own set of keys to every door at Battle Valley Farm. With the double doors open, she turned back to the van and pulled out the first of two huge, brilliant red azaleas.
Inside the skeet house, a masculine space without a trace of the glamour that typified the rest of the farm, she took the azalea to the left-hand corner, set it down and went back outside for the second one. That one she stuck in the right-hand corner. Next she grabbed a large centerpiece from the Dodge, took it back to the plain wooden table, and set it in place. Roses this time, two dozen of them. Long-stemmed red roses, with delicate white baby’s breath and slender green ferns to complete the arrangement. The largest and nicest display she’d been able to buy from a real florist. And it was perfect, she saw. The guest of honor would especially appreciate the colors.
Now for the important part.
Back in the van she grabbed a wreath this time: red and white carnations and chrysanthemums, more of the baby’s breath and greenery, entwined in a circle of branches and festooned with a generic crimson banner that read “Welcome.” The wreath under one arm, she picked up the metal stand that would hold it. The stand felt even heavier than it had when she built it. It was the C4. She’d decided on steel for the third support leg—steel that would make the plastique even more effective, and virtually impossible for the Secret Service dogs to smell—but it had increased the weight of the stand enough to trouble her. It wasn’t likely anyone would notice, but it wasn’t impossible.