by Jim Magwood
CHAPTER 13
Jake and Paul had gotten back to headquarters shortly after five and had watched the TV as all the stations ran stories of the senator’s death. The Secret Service had released the news mid-afternoon because the word was already out and the media was camped in front of the senator’s house. The family had been taken into secure seclusion, and there were no comments except to report the obvious. But, the murder of a senator was obviously big news and the rumors were running rampant. At the moment, it was being handled with just the local police being announced and no mention of the FBI or Secret Service.
The two men were in with Commander Carver and had just finished giving him all the details. There were no theories yet; no suspects; nothing—just the main facts. The small task force had been formed with just Paul, Jake, Maine, Duncan and Conrad as the point men, and they had not been announced to the media. Only the police Information Officer had made any statements yet, and the case was being handled as high profile, but still a regular police incident, so far. Very few people knew of the link to the White House.
Carver had pulled the two men off any other cases and directed them to nothing but the school arsons and the killing of the newsman, and doing whatever they needed with the task force.
The two were back at their desk when Paul said, “Good donuts, huh?” He heard a growl come from Jake’s side of the desk and he added, “Don’t like donuts, huh?” A ball of quickly crushed paper came over the desk and hit him in the chest. “Okay, I’ll know what not to get you for lunch from now on.”
Then he said, “Any thoughts?”
Jake didn’t speak for a bit, then replied, “If this is all tied together, it could turn out to be a major problem. If it really does turn out to look like a run at the White House, we’ll be part of an army working on it. And it’ll really get screwed up then. You know that.”
“Yeah, I do. But do you really think it could be something like that? So far, it all seems to be too disjointed, too unrelated to an attack on the president. What do school fires have to do with killing a senator and calling the White House?”
“Remember the note, though? Kind of links the senator to the schools?”
“Yeah, the note. That can’t be a copycat because we haven’t released the first note to the public yet. Looks like they’re closely related, if not from the exact same people.”
“Have any thought of any one guy, or a group?”
“I’ve been wondering about that myself. If it’s one guy, he’s able to start big fires, use a rifle from a distance (if he’s the one did the newsman), use a pistol from short range for the senator, and knows how to look up the White House phones and leave a message. And he’s able to do this stuff all over town.”
“And leave no traces.”
“Yeah. The notes seem to almost be pulling us off base with the bad English and that doesn’t relate well to the professionalism of the other actions. They might really be designed to send us off on bad guesses.”
“Guesses? We don’t do no guesses. We be dee-tectives. We don’t be guessin'.”
“So. You be ‘tecting’ anything yet?”
“Nope. Still guessing.”
“I thought you…”
“Shut up. Go ‘tect’ sumthin’.”
“Okay.”
They were both silent for a while until Jake said, “We need to update our research in the computers. Put the senator’s name in there with the school incidents and that newsman, maybe even add a note about the White House, see if any links come up.”
“Yeah, I made a note on that a minute ago. If we do get a link, it could be something that might really give a place to look. They’re all too far apart for a link to not mean something. Hopefully. I’ll call the data center right now. The faster we get something, the better.”
“For sure. Right now we’ve got a big zero.”
CHAPTER 14
Early Thursday morning, Frank Maine called Paul at headquarters.
“Could you meet with me in about an hour?”
“Yeah, no problem. What's up?”
“Someone wants to see you.”
Paul paused for a moment, then replied, “Okay. Where?”
“Meet me at the Willard Hotel. You know it?”
“Yeah. 14th and Pennsylvania?”
“Right. Drive up to the front and give your car to the valet. Tell him that I said to park it in my place. I'll be waiting there at nine-thirty, okay?”
Paul said, “What are we doing there?”
“I'll tell you when you get here. Nine-thirty, okay?”
“No problem. See you then.”
Jake had gone to one of the schools already, digging for anything he could find, so Paul left for the Willard. He drove up to the front and handed his keys to the valet with the message from Paul to park it, looked around and saw Frank Maine at the curb, so walked over and got in his car. Frank drove quickly up 15th Street, over to 17th and finally in to West Executive Drive. He was passed easily through the guardhouses by the uniformed agents and in moments was driving into the garage under the White House.
Paul had had his suspicions as soon as they turned onto 17th, and when they parked in the garage finally asked, “And what are we doing here?”
As they walked to the elevator, Frank replied, “A certain gentleman who lives here would like to meet with you for a bit.”
Paul stopped in mid-stride and said, “The president?”
“That's the man. He wanted to have a few words with you. Just to kind of kick-start your day.” Frank had a quiet grin on his face. They stepped into the elevator.
Paul muttered, “Yeah. Kick-start. Right.”
Frank chuckled.
As they stepped out onto the main floor of the West Wing and walked down the hall, they passed several Secret Service agents that Paul could see were very aware of his presence. The further they got into the West Wing, Paul could see more of them watching him, scanning him up and down, practically felt them seeing inside his clothes. He knew that without Frank guiding him, his progress would have been zero long ago. They finally turned into the office of the White House chief of staff and Frank pointed to a place at the conference table. Bob Duncan and Charles Conrad of the FBI were already sitting at the table and Paul greeted them.
Frank said, “Tom Drummond—he's the chief of staff— will be here in a minute and he'll brief you on what's happening. Then the president will be in for a quick visit. Coffee, juice, rolls?”
“No, thanks. Anything more you can tell me at this time?”
Before Frank could reply, the side door opened quickly and an obviously strung out, middle-age man in rumpled, but expensive clothing, appeared to almost run into the room and over to Paul. Anyone would have said that it looked as if he had been up all night, maybe for a few in a row.
“Tom Drummond,” he said. “You must be Detective Corbin. Let me get some coffee and I'll brief you.”
He looked ready to explode and Paul began to wonder if something else had happened he didn't know about.
Drummond came back with his coffee and said, “Sorry to pull you in so quick like this, but the president wanted to see you for a moment. You're the main D.C. detective assigned to this case, right?”
“My partner and I are, but he's off this morning looking at the schools.”
“Okay. Well, let me tell you a little. The president will be here in about,” he paused and looked at his watch, “ten minutes.” He stopped again and then said, “If I look a little frazzled, it's because I am. We haven’t had a direct threat at the president for quite a while and it has us shook up a bit. I know Frank here and his people are good, but this is a little scary. The president doesn't want to change any of his schedules yet, so we're trying to run a normal day within a definitely not normal day. So, let me tell you what…”
There was a short knock at the door to his office and his secretary stepped in to say, “Sir, the president.”
As a Secret Service agent enter
ed and quickly scanned the room, Drummond said, “Okay, he's a little early, so I'll let him tell you.”
The men all quickly stood as President Jeffery King walked into the office and said, “Good morning, Tom, gentlemen.” Then he turned to Paul, walked across the room, held out his hand and said, “And you must be Detective Corbin. Welcome to the ‘big house.’ As you can probably tell, we have ourselves a little uproar going on.”
As Paul and the president shook hands, Paul said, “Yes, Mr. President, I imagine you do. Its good to meet you, though, sir.”
“Thanks. Now, let’s us all sit down with some coffee and some of these rolls that Tom seems to make magically appear every time I come in here, and let’s do some talking.”
For the next twenty minutes, the six men discussed the cases and the apparent links between them. Paul told them about the data search he and Jake were running to see if anything in any of the cases appeared to be associated.
“Are you running that nationwide, Paul?” Frank asked.
“Yes, but we’re just doing that on a wild thought that something might pop up. The types of data are too diverse to have much chance of matching nationwide. Far too many probabilities. But, we’re not ruling anything out.”
“School fires; newsman shot; senator shot; rhyming notes. Anything else?” Duncan asked.
“We’ve put in the president both by his title and by name. Also, the fact of a rifle used in one shooting and a pistol in the other. So far there isn’t much else.”
Frank spoke then and said, “We’ve begun to seriously think about bringing the CIA in with us on this. So far we haven’t seen any sign of anything international, but right now we feel we should go with overkill up front rather than pick up pieces later. Any objections, anyone?” When no one spoke, he added, “Here’s the name of my specific contact over at the Agency; Ron Kincaide. I’ll call him right after this meeting and get things started, then any of you can reach him whenever you feel the need.”
The men were quiet for a minute until President King finally spoke. “Gentlemen, I know each of you have different areas of responsibility in this, or these, cases, and I respect each of you and know you’ll do your job well. However, I’ve had to come to a decision as to my role in this, and it is fixed. I’m not going to change any of my plans or schedules while this is going on. I’ve discussed this with Tom here, and with my wife, and although they disagree or have some concerns, they both understand. There’s just too much that has to go on these days in this house for me to hide under the covers.
“I want each of you to do your respective jobs the way you know how to do them, and I’ll do mine the same way. If any of you have some specific concerns that tie into me, then by all means I’ll be available to you and we’ll do what’s best. If you need any information or assistance from this office— my office—then you only need to let me know. I’ve instructed Tom here to be the immediate contact between me and any of you on this, so you only need to call him.
“I know this will cause some grief for some of you—especially you Tom, and Frank—but I’ve decided it has to be this way. We can’t stop governing just because of a maybe threat. Now I’m deeply concerned with all the others being affected by this—Senator Marks and his family, the newsman who was shot, all the people affected by the school fires—and if there’s anything I can specifically do to help in those cases, I want you to contact me. They are all to be treated with the utmost respect and care because they, gentlemen, are the ones who pay our salaries and we work for, and we need to be serving and protecting them.
“Now, if there’s nothing more you need of me, I have a meeting in a few minutes so I need to bow out. I want to be kept abreast of what’s going on in all of this, and I will be praying for you all and I wish you a speedy end to this.”
With that, the president left the room. The other men continued their discussion for a few more minutes and made some general plans for coordinating their activities. Then the meeting broke up. Frank took Paul back to the Willard to retrieve his car, and Paul headed back to the office to check on the data search and on Jake’s progress.
CHAPTER 15
Jake was at the desk when Paul got back to the office. They spent an hour reviewing what they had found that morning, which turned out to be essentially nothing. Jake had combed the fire scenes and found nothing but burned debris. The arson squads had already been through the messes and had pronounced the fires to be arson but with no signs of who or why. They knew how, but even that was nothing. Accelerant spread around the outside base of most of the buildings; the one school where it had been thrown through the windows. Apparently not inside jobs, so the person or persons responsible likely didn’t have any access. Just walked up to the buildings, spread a lot of fuel, lit it and walked away.
Paul’s description of the White House meeting was equally devoid of any results. Several people working the cases from different angles, but nothing to hang on the wall. No one had any clues; no good ideas; no targets; nothing to follow. Everybody was still digging to find the first clue to work on.
Finally the two walked down to the data center and looked at the progress with Sammie Zetta, the data supervisor.
“Guys, there’s no solid links to anything and there are far too many links with nothing clicking. We have, so far, about twelve thousand school incidents that we can look at. We have several hundred attacks of various kinds on media people, eleven of them murders. There are about twenty direct violent attacks on politicians. And there are about three thousand incidents of some kind of notes being left, with several dozen of them being some kind of poems or rhymes. There are a very few links among all of these, but nothing so far that stands out to where you would say that any certain one is a possible. There are names of individuals in many of these incidents, of course, but nothing that stands out. As I said, far too much data and no major, even good, links.”
“Are you actually running everything against everything else?”
“Not totally yet. I coded in a parameter that will flag something if it obviously matches against something else, but until we get everything there is, I decided to wait. It won’t take long to run the whole file against everything once we get it all in here. But, so far, no matches of any consequence.”
“Anything that relates to incidents from out of town or state?”
“Yeah, a few. But, again, nothing that makes my heart flutter.”
Jake looked deep in thought for a while, then asked, “Sammie, has there been anything that you felt might be a direction? Something we plugged in, or something you’ve seen come out of all this yet? Something that caused you to think of anything else?”
“Nope. I’ve given that a lot of consideration, but nothing yet. The only thing that has me questioning at all is along the line of the references to the kids. One school torched is maybe just a fun or evil thing. But, what do we have now, five? There seems to be something there. Some reason, or pattern. Like I said: One school, okay. But several? Why? Does it have anything to do with the kids themselves? You know, maybe somebody’s kid got stomped in a gang fight and so he’s burning all the schools? But what that has to do with all the other things, who knows?”
Paul chimed in with, “Yeah, and I feel it’s the same person or people doing all these things. Too much coincidence between the events for them not to be related. But, how are they related? There just don’t seem to be any links between any of the things.”
“Okay, Sammie,” Jake said. “Just keep on with it. If you get any possible links, call us immediately, and try to run some ‘what ifs’ on what you get.”
“No problem, Jake.”
The soldier walked around the office in a frenetic manner: twitchy, darting here and there, bobbing his head up and down. He had some of the appearance of a wind-up doll— jerking, spastic actions. His eyes were half closed and his eyeballs kept rolling around behind the lids as if they couldn’t focus on anything. His hair was messed and his upper body was almost
greasy with sweat, beginning to soak through his suit. As he darted back and forth in the room, a strange, moaning sound came from his mouth; plaintive, almost a whining sound, piercing.
There was a set of building plans spread out on the desk and several marks were placed over the schematics indicating strategic places for him to concentrate on. He had gone on the Internet and downloaded the drawings, then had gone through the reference books to get the same basic drawings and matched them for accuracy. Then he had taken the bus downtown and had walked the buildings himself, again matching what he had found in the drawings with the actual.
He truly hated the Smithsonian. Hated it with a passion that sometimes caused him to fall on the floor with cramps from his legs to his shoulders. They were just so wrong. Lying to everyone. Pretending they knew everything and making everyone believe they had the truth. Making up stories from tiny bits of nothing and telling the world they knew it all. Drawing all the innocents to their hallowed halls of lies. They were so wrong. Somehow, he knew he had to stop them. Stop them from deluding people. Stop them from causing any more evil to come down. And he would! They wouldn’t be able to lie any more when he was finished. Everyone would know the truth. They wouldn’t hurt any more kids when he was finished.
He stopped suddenly in the middle of the room, then jumped several feet to the plans on the desk. Stabbed a finger down on them and screamed a short, “There.” He knew where he had to go now and what he had to do. And how to do it.
And he grew calm, slowly relaxed. His shoulders drooped and his breathing slowed. His head stopped bobbing. His eyes almost closed. He looked as if he had gone completely catatonic as he just stood in the middle of the floor, not moving. Then his head slowly lifted; his eyes opened and stared through the ceiling; his mouth opened and a soft laugh replaced the moaning, gradually growing louder and louder. At first it bounced back off the ceiling; he swallowed it back and then forced it out again. Then it became piercing, as the moaning had been, and it pierced through the ceiling. He didn’t even consider that someone might hear him. As it got louder, it became like the pounding of the surf at the ocean; unstoppable, slamming wave after wave through the ceiling into that scene only his eyes could see. And he watched as the people in the scene disintegrated as the waves hit them and rolled over them, crushing them into mud. The roaring laughter went on and on and on.