Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  When David stared at him, he continued, “I have two agents in Charlottesville making hay, but the video data for August of last year has been misplaced, according to campus security. Our guys say the UVA people are obviously embarrassed and don’t have any explanations for it.”

  As Martin swore, David said to Omar, “Are there any other security cameras in the area besides the university’s?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

  “I also want as much information as you can get me on Philip Goodman,” David had asked. “Early life, education, adulthood. Everything.”

  Now Omar excused himself from the conference room. “Need to check on the progress we’re making on the old Goodman audience videos,” he said as he departed. He paused in the doorway and added, “You two should follow Martin’s advice. The rest of us slept last night. We can handle things for now.”

  Shortly after midnight, David’s father had stood up abruptly from his chair at the table. “I’m too damn old to pull thirty-six-hour shifts like this,” he’d said almost angrily. He’d announced he was going back to David’s house to sleep, and that he’d be back first thing in the morning. “You and Butch should do likewise. We’ll have our hands full tomorrow, and you’ll both be goddamn brain dead if you try to pull back-to-back all-nighters.”

  Alone now, David and Lauren sat looking at each other with a drowsy sort of distraction. He realized there were things he should say about their near miss with romance—emotions he felt that he should express to her—but Lauren spoke first.

  “So you didn’t know what to make of Goodman either?”

  He shook his head, and she added, “I can’t believe he won’t cancel his rally.”

  “Can’t you?” he said.

  “What are you getting at?”

  He looked at her for a moment. “Answer honestly. How would you feel if he did cancel?”

  Lauren considered this. “Probably a little disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “These messages and the murders—we’ve been building up to this for three weeks. If he cancels his event tomorrow, we may lose our shot at Harney.”

  “So after three weeks of working the case, you’re willing to risk the lives of tens of thousands of people so you can find out what Levi Harney might have planned tomorrow?”

  “Wait a second—” Lauren started to say. But David held up a hand to stop her.

  “It’s okay, Butch. I feel the same way.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s our job to prevent murder. But more than that, it’s our job to apprehend murderers—to catch people who hurt people.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Goodman feels it’s his job to get his message out to the public, and tomorrow he’ll have the chance to do that on a massive scale. He’s been working up to this for years, not weeks, and it doesn’t surprise me he’d be willing to put his life on the line.”

  Lauren nodded thoughtfully, and neither of them spoke until David said, “We should probably talk about the other night.”

  “The other night . . .” she said, looking at him questioningly. “You mean last night?”

  He smiled wearily and tapped his fingers on the side of his coffee cup, deciding how to start. “I had a good time with you, Lauren.”

  “There you go calling me Lauren again.”

  “You were honest with me about how you felt. I haven’t given you much back.”

  “No way,” she said immediately. She shook her head and stood away from the table. “You don’t owe me anything, David. I told you how I felt because it was the truth, but don’t feel like you have to reciprocate just because—”

  He motioned for her to settle down. “Take it easy. Let me finish.”

  She regarded him warily and then sat back against the edge of the table.

  “I don’t rush into things like this—” he started to say.

  “Things like this?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, but when David glared at her she got the message. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll shut up now, I promise.”

  He took another sip of his coffee. “What I mean is, I’m not frivolous with people I care about. And I care about you. The other night, when I hesitated . . . there were a lot of reasons for that, but none of them is a lack of interest. There are things I need—”

  Before he could finish, Lauren set her coffee cup down on the table and leaned forward. She wrapped her hands around David’s face and kissed him on the mouth. She pulled her head back, but only slightly, keeping her green eyes close to his. “You’re usually good about not saying too much,” she said. “So don’t say too much right now. We like each other, and we’ll see where things go. In the meantime, we have a bigger problem to deal with.”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  She leaned back from him, and one of her hands dropped into his. They held each other for a moment, and then she walked to her laptop on the other side of the conference table.

  “Shut that down,” he said. He stood up from his chair and set his coffee cup down. “Martin and Omar are right. We need sleep—at least a few hours.”

  He could tell the stubborn part of her wanted to protest, but the fatigue won out. “A few hours,” she repeated, “but that’s it.”

  He nodded and waited as she pulled on her suit jacket.

  “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

  She grinned. “Can I trust you? You know what happened the last time you walked me somewhere . . .”

  They made their way toward the conference room door just as Omar was returning.

  “You guys taking a break?” he said. “Good.”

  “We’ll be back by six,” David said

  “Seriously, David,” Omar said, “there’s nothing you can do here that we can’t. Get some sleep.”

  David patted his arm as he and Lauren made to leave, but he paused in the doorway. “Omar,” he said, “does the name Harney sound familiar to you?”

  The small man made a face. “Yeah it does, but I can’t place it. I’ve been going crazy thinking about it all afternoon.”

  Both men were silent until David said, “I’m too tired to think straight right now.” He nodded to Omar and said, “Thanks for holding down the fort tonight.”

  Lauren was waiting for him in the corridor outside of the conference room. Together, they made their way out into the night.

  Chapter 28

  DAVID LEANED BACK in the driver’s seat of his Lincoln and unfastened his seatbelt. The clock in his car’s dashboard glowed at him. Two-thirty in the morning.

  It’s Sunday morning, he thought absently. The seventeenth. Time’s up.

  He stepped out onto the brick-lined street and shuffled toward his home. His body felt gravid with exhaustion. Walking in the late-night solitude, he found himself grappling with a dozen questions—any one of which, if left unanswered, could mean disaster at Goodman’s rally.

  When he reached the front door of his house, he saw a light burning in his study. He found his father standing amidst the stacks of media report printouts in the small office at the front of his house, a glass of whisky in his hand as he examined the framed photo collage on the wall. The collage included at least twenty photographs of David’s childhood and adolescence, and many of the pictures featured one or both of his parents. Angela Yerxa had put the tableau together for him years before—an imitation of the half dozen photo mosaics that hung in Martin’s home in Philly.

  David stood in the doorway and watched his father.

  Not taking his eyes from the collage, Martin said, “I slept for a bit, but then I woke up. Needed a nightcap.” He gestured with his glass toward one of the photographs in the frame. “There’s one in here of our last trip to Charlottesville. That must have been twenty years ago.” He shook his head. “You and your mom look so young.” He took a sip of his drink, and stared silently at the photo for another few seconds. He turned to face his son. “You look like hell,” he said.

  David realized he’d been leaning sideways against the
doorjamb that separated his office from the front hall, and he stood away from it. “I’m tired,” he said. “We didn’t turn up much after you left. More questions than answers right now.”

  Martin turned back to the photo collage. “We’ll get Harney—whoever he is.”

  David stared at nothing for a few seconds, his mind numb with fatigue.

  Martin turned away from the photo collage and walked to his son. He put a hand on his shoulder, and David could smell weak remnants of tobacco smoke on his skin. He thought his father’s hand felt impossibly heavy.

  “Sleep,” Martin said. “Tomorrow we’ll find our answers.” His eyes became distant then, and he squeezed David’s shoulder. “You know, this reminds me of when I was with the engineers, clearing land in Vietnam.”

  Martin rarely spoke about his time in the military, and David stood up a little straighter, curious.

  “For days at a time,” Martin said, “I’d spend ten or twelve hours squeezed into one of our big Rome plows, wiping away jungle so our boys could actually see the enemy and feel safe bedding down at night. At the end of the day, I’d drive the plow back to our rear position and spend another three or four hours tuning it up so I could do it all over again the next day. It was the most exhausting work of my life.”

  He smiled and shook his head, remembering. “Late one morning—fortunately not one of those mornings when I was in charge of clearing the trace line—my Romey died on me. That wasn’t unusual. Those plows sometimes crapped out half a dozen times a day, and I was sure I’d have her up and running again in no time. I knew it wasn’t an issue of fuel because we filled up first thing every morning. So I tried all the usual tricks—checked the oil and the belts and all those components that tended to cause problems. But it did no good. I could not get the damn thing going again. So finally I radioed in for some maintenance support, and two more engineers showed up to give me a hand. And the three of us banged our heads against it for another forty minutes without any luck.”

  Martin paused and took a sip of his drink, a small grin collecting at the corners of his eyes. “Finally, out of pure frustration, I decided to peek in the gas tank. And you know what? It was bone dry!” His big laugh rattled in David’s tired head. “I was so damn tired I’d forgotten to fill up that morning, and the other engineers—who were as exhausted as I was—assumed the problem would be something complicated.”

  He looked at his son and nodded. “I learned two important lessons that day, and I’ve tried not to forget either of them. One: Never assume anything. That only gets you in trouble.”

  David nodded. “And two?”

  “Two,” he said, leaning toward him. “Fatigue really fucks up your judgment.”

  David smiled. Taking his father’s point, he turned to walk to his bedroom. But a thought stopped him. “Why do all this?” he said, facing his father. He thought of Edith Vereen and the messages, and he shook his head. “All this killing. To draw attention to the Constitution?”

  When Martin nodded, he added, “It all seems pretty blunt to me.”

  His father laughed. “Psychopaths and terrorists aren’t big on nuance.”

  David looked at him and quoted, “For every complex problem, there’s an answer that’s clear, simple, and wrong. Isn’t that what you always say?”

  Martin shrugged. “I talk out of my ass sometimes.”

  “Not about the job you don’t.” He was quiet for a moment. “I feel like there’s more to it—something deeper. ”

  Martin frowned. “Now I know you’re not thinking straight,” he said. “You’ve been in this racket long enough to know people do all kinds of horrible shit, and whatever they claim to want to accomplish, the root cause is always the same. They hate themselves and they want others to suffer.” He took another sip of his whisky. “Remember McVeigh? He killed a hundred and sixty-eight people. And for what? He said he hoped his attack would inspire a revolution to overthrow the government. Now, does that make any goddamn sense?” Martin shook his head.

  “People who kill only do it because they hate themselves,” David repeated to him. When Martin nodded, he added, “You think it’s always that simple?”

  “I know it’s that simple.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Martin patted his son’s face. “Go to bed, David. In the morning you might find a few answers you can’t put a hand on tonight.” He stepped back to the photo collage and swished the whisky in his glass.

  “You coming up?” David asked him.

  His father didn’t take his eyes from the photographs. “I’ll be up soon,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  SITTING AT THE head of the familiar Quantico conference table, David felt good. Sharp. Like he’d slept for two days though it had only been four hours. He looked at Lauren and could see she was likewise rejuvenated.

  Omar, on the other hand, looked a little worse for wear. It was almost eight in the morning, and David was sure the small man had been up all night. “You doing all right?” he asked him.

  Tucking his hair behind his ears, Omar offered him a bleary smile.

  David looked around the room, which was unusually full; more than twenty other agents and analysts were sitting in to assist with the day’s security operation.

  “Any action at Philip Goodman’s last night?” he asked Omar.

  “All quiet.”

  “Take me through our security for the event.”

  Omar nodded. “The usual, plus plenty of extras. SEMU’s been on top of it.”

  “SEMU?” Martin asked as he paced along one side of the conference table.

  “Special Events Management Unit,” Omar said. “Carl called them in. They help run security and response operations at major events terrorists are likely to target—the Super Bowl, presidential inaugurations, that sort of thing. They got a big injection of funds and bodies after the Boston Marathon bombing, so they were ready to rock and roll on short notice.”

  He paused to let out a yawn. “They’ve put up temporary barriers and security check points around the entire west side of the Mall. Everyone will be screened before entering. We’ll also have a few dozen plain-clothes agents mixed in with the audience, along with uniformed D.C. Police at either end of the stage and around the perimeter. Sharpshooters posted on the scaffolds erected for the show’s cameramen. That and all our normal security measures for an event like this—thermal cameras, facial recognition, etcetera.”

  “Do we have detailed plans of the stage and event equipment?” Lauren asked.

  “We do,” Omar said. He brought up a diagram on the conference room’s projection monitor. “As you can see, the stage will be at the base of the obelisk, with camera structures at the corners and sides of the platform. Two more camera scaffolds will be positioned about forty yards in front of the stage. That’s where we’ll have our sharpshooters.”

  “And the stage is already set up?” Martin asked.

  Omar nodded. “They were working on it all day yesterday.”

  “Do we have canine units checking things out?” Lauren asked him.

  “We had dogs there last night sniffing for aluminum oxide, C-4, Semtex, you name it. We’ll have them back later this morning for another go-round. We’ll also have people there to search everyone working in or around the stage.”

  David looked from Lauren to his father. “What do you two think?”

  “Sounds like we’re running a tight ship,” Martin said, “considering she’s anchored out in the open of the National Mall.”

  “There’s something else NPS thought we should know about,” Omar said, glancing around the room. “Remember the damage the monument sustained a few years ago after that earthquake?”

  “Sure,” Lauren said. “They had that repair scaffolding up for months.”

  Omar nodded. “Turns out there’s still some concern about the monument’s foundation. Some of the parks service engineers think a big enough rumble could topple the whole structure.”

 
“You’re kidding me,” Martin said.

  “Uh, no,” Omar said. He rubbed his eyes as he spoke. “Very few people know about that—NPS said they don’t want to give terrorists any ideas. But they wanted us to be aware of it.”

  David exchanged a look with his father, then turned his eyes back to Omar. “What have we heard from Farnsworth’s people?”

  “He’s still planning to attend.”

  “Did you warn them about the possible security threat?” Lauren asked.

  “We did. His people told me Farnsworth understands the nature of an event like this, and that he has every confidence in the FBI, the Parks Service, and D.C. Police to keep things in order.”

  “Politicians are used to death threats,” Martin said. Many of the assembled agents grinned at his remark.

  “Any updates on the Harney blog?” David asked Omar.

  The small man shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. This guy knows what he’s doing. I thought I had it pinned down half a dozen times, but it jumped on me. He really buried it deep in the cloud.”

  “What about the name?”

  David had started thinking about it again as soon as he’d climbed out of bed, but he still couldn’t pinpoint why it sounded familiar to him.

  “Can’t put my finger on it,” Omar said. “We also haven’t turned up any more leads on people named Levi Harney, or L. Harney.”

  “How about Goodman’s audience lists and B roll?” Lauren asked him. “Any luck there?”

  Omar smacked his forehead and said, “Shit. I’m sorry. I should have started there. We found her.”

  David watched as he pulled up an image on his laptop. It was a close-up of a man shouting, one fist raised and mouth open. Omar clicked the image and the video started to play. The camera pulled back from the cheering man and panned slowly across the audience. After a few seconds, he froze the video. Manipulating his track pad, he moved his mouse pointer over the second-to-last row.

  “See her?” he asked.

  The conference room had grown completely silent. In the video image, Edith Vereen sat several inches taller than most of the people around her. Though the crowd was jubilant, her face was a pale mask absent expression, almost as though she’d been superimposed into the shot—a foreign entity inserted into a place where she did not belong.