by J. L. Brown
“Oh?”
“That’s our older son, James.”
“Where is he now?”
“He . . . uh . . . died. When he was thirteen. A bicycle accident.”
Jade replaced the frame on the mantel.
“Do you have any pictures of Caleb?”
Mrs. Hewitt nodded toward the pictures. “Such a happy boy, wasn’t he? And he was smart and talented. An excellent athlete.”
“What about Caleb, Mrs. Hewitt?” Max asked.
“Caleb was smart, too,” Mrs. Hewitt said, “but he was quiet. Kept to himself. Spent a lot of time alone in his room. He didn’t like sports much. He’d rather listen to the news.” She gave Jade a feeble smile. “He was always . . . different.”
Christian straightened from where he had been leaning against the window frame. “May we see his room?”
“You may,” Mrs. Hewitt said, “but you won’t find anything. I turned it into an office as soon as he left. My home office.”
To prevent herself from pacing, Jade returned to the sofa and sat down. At her full height, she could be intimidating.
“Mrs. Hewitt, do you have any photographs of Caleb?”
The woman inspected her hands again. “I may. I’ll need to check in the basement.”
Jade stared into her eyes. “We’ll wait.”
*
Mrs. Hewitt returned with a photograph of Caleb with four other boys and two girls. The boys wore ill-fitting business suits, the girls, shirts and skirts. Caleb stood at the end. Long blond hair, a darker shade than his older brother’s, leaning away from the others. Caleb appeared to be about fourteen.
This Career Day photograph was the most recent one Mrs. Hewitt had of her younger son.
The agents said good-bye to the Hewitts and walked toward their car parallel parked on the tree-lined street.
“Did you see how the mother’s eyes lit up when she talked about her other son, James?” Christian said in a low voice.
“She couldn’t wait to turn Caleb’s room into an office for herself,” Max added.
Jade pulled on the handle of the front door on the passenger side and looked across the top of the car at them.
“No wonder Caleb left and never came back.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Washington, DC
Jade spent the next afternoon at the Bureau entering Christian’s notes from the interview with the Hewitts into the database. She finished polishing off an Italiano sandwich from the Cosi across the street. At noon, swarms of agents left HQ for lunch at the many surrounding restaurants like kids sprinting out of an elementary school for recess. She avoided the rush by eating late.
She had given the photograph of Caleb Hewitt to Pat to analyze against the millions of faces kept on file and on the Internet. A nose, the width between the eyes, the chin, any aspect of the face could be matched and lead them to the suspect. Nothing had come back, yet. She also hadn’t received any confirmed hits on the facial composite of the UNSUB.
Michael Brown.
Michael Brown, the name the UNSUB flew under from DC to Seattle.
Mrs. Hewitt had said Caleb had freaked out at the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. The person in charge of that operation worked for the Emergency Preparedness and Response division of Homeland Security. His name was Michael Brown.
Coincidence?
Jade didn’t believe in coincidences.
She stood, stretched, and paced her office before sitting back down again. Sometimes, when she wasn’t making progress with a case, she started from the beginning. Jade pulled out a folder from the bottom of the stack containing the emails from TSK. She read the first one and leaned back in her chair.
Something about the first email bothered her. What was it?
She closed her eyes.
Something involving Zoe. She thought back to the time when she had been working at home and Zoe dropped by with dinner. They had talked about the Fairness Doctrine and the haves and have-nots. Zoe mentioned the online chat room and how its members discussed the email from TSK.
Something about that remark.
And it came to her.
Zoe’s group had been discussing the email before it was released to the public.
She grabbed her cell phone, touched a button, and stood.
“Hey, you. Long time, no—”
“The guy in the chat room . . . what was his name?”
“You’re not going to bother to say ‘hello?’”
“Zoe, I don’t have time. The guy.”
“Which guy?”
“We were at my house. The chat room. Where you talk with like-minded individuals. You told me once about a guy in that room. You said he was intense. We talked about the TSK email. What was his name?”
“Oh. Him. He uses the name Oedipus.”
“But what’s his real name?”
“I don’t remember. Hold on, hold on. You’re making me nervous. Let me think.”
Jade tightened the grip on her phone.
After a while, Zoe said, “Caleb. His real name is Caleb. I’m not supposed to know that, but he let it slip one—”
Jade hung up.
*
She put out an APB for Caleb Hewitt.
While waiting and without anything better to do, she reached over to a stack on her desk to pick up another report. Reading was more productive than pacing. The phone rang.
“Harrington.”
Static. “Jade, it’s Austin.”
“What’s up?”
“I may have something.”
She sat up at the excitement in his voice. “What is it?”
More static.
“From the . . . three identical . . . voice—”
“What? You’re breaking up. What about the three identical voices? Austin, are you there?”
“I’m going to move.” He said nothing for thirty seconds. “Can you hear me—?”
The line went dead.
Jade speed-dialed Austin’s number. The phone rang and rang and rang. She disconnected and tried again. And again.
Her calls kept going to his voicemail.
She tossed the phone on her desk and sat back hard. She got up and started to pace and waited for Austin to call her back.
*
Jade placed her hand on the door handle.
Christian, a step behind her, said, “Where’s Austin?”
“Not sure. He called me earlier and said he may have something. I haven’t heard from him since. I’ve been trying to reach him all afternoon.”
They walked in. Jade had had a liberal blogger named Evan Stevens brought in for questioning. Even though Caleb Hewitt was now the prime suspect, she decided not to cancel the interview.
Inside, sat a man, his posture excellent. He wore jeans and a button-down, black collared shirt. His hair was medium length and styled with gel, his short beard trimmed to perfection. His lawyer sat next to him, bent over a legal pad. Although the lawyer was in a suit, Evan Stevens appeared the better dressed of the two.
Jade went through the preliminaries of an interrogation.
“Tell me about your blogs.”
“Have you read them?”
Jade didn’t answer.
“What’s there to tell? I write about injustice. Unfairness. Inequality.”
“Is Evan Stevens your given name?”
“Yes.”
She threw TSK’s manifesto on the table. The document landed with a thud. Evan jumped.
“Did you write this?”
Evan leaned forward, peered at the cover. “No.” He shifted his eyes to his lawyer and back at Jade, his eyes boring into hers. “I discuss ideas. I don’t need to kill anyone to get my point across.”
“Your writing style is similar.”
“A lot of people believe in an equitable and tolerant society.”
Jade hesitated. This wasn’t going well. She wished she could see Max’s face through the interrogation window. She was wasting h
er time.
A knock on the door. Her boss, Ethan Lawson, leaned his head around the door frame.
What was he doing here?
“I need to talk to you,” Ethan said. “Both of you.”
Jade and Christian glanced at each other, and followed him out.
From behind her, Evan asked, “What about me?”
“I’ll be back,” Jade said, over her shoulder and shut the door.
Max and Pat were standing in the hallway.
“Ethan, I’m busy. What’s up?”
The somberness on Ethan’s face surprised her. She had never seen this expression on his face before.
“What happened?” Jade asked. “Another killing?”
He spun his wedding ring. Once. Twice. “Yes.”
“Dammit!” Jade slapped the wall. “Brennan?”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t Brennan.”
“No? Who else could it be?”
“Jade,” Ethan said, placing his hands on her shoulders. His eyes searched hers. “It was Austin.”
A knot started to form in her stomach. “What about Austin?”
“He’s dead, Jade.”
Her legs failed her. She sagged against the wall, as if someone had punched her. Christian’s strong hand gripped the back of her upper arm holding her up.
*
Jade took two dribbles to the right, stopped on a dime, and went into her fluid shooting motion. The ball swished through the basket eighteen feet away, nothing but net.
Ordinarily, there was no sweeter sound.
Austin had discovered something and decided to check out his own lead. She still didn’t know what he had found out.
His body was found by a couple of kids on an outdoor basketball court in Springfield, Virginia. Austin had stab wounds on the right side of his body. His tongue was left intact.
Austin wasn’t a talk-show host.
After the crime-scene technicians had finished yesterday, she pushed her way through two agents as she used to bust through double picks during her basketball career. Despite the protests, she cradled Austin’s head in her lap. Surrounded by agents, police officers, techs, photographers, and reporters, she held her rookie agent. Her rookie agent. She gazed at him. He appeared peaceful. She took in the freckles from the bridge of his nose to his cheeks.
A note was pinned to the lapel on his suit jacket.
Dear Special Agent Jade Harrington,
I’m sorry about this. It was an accident. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He seemed like a nice kid. My battle is not with him. Or you.
I have a job to do. Let me do it.
Your Friend,
TSK
P.S. I thought this would be an appropriate place to leave him.
After slicing through the net, the ball hit the ground and spun back toward her. The sign of an excellent shooter was one who didn’t need a rebounder. She dribbled back to her original spot and took the same shot going to her left. She shot like a machine for a half an hour. She rarely missed.
She continued to shoot and think about Austin. How he balked at the beginning of his assignment to listen to the radio broadcasts. How he didn’t quit. His passion. His enthusiasm. How his freckles seemed to multiply when he became excited.
No one had protected her when she was a kid. And, now, she had failed to protect Austin. She should have tried harder to call him back.
She shot an air ball.
The ball sailed out of bounds and rolled to a stop under a tree.
She thought about LaKeisha, the middle-school basketball player she had coached last year. LaKeisha told her life was hard, but with Jade she felt safe.
Jade sank slowly, ignoring the pain as her knees hit the asphalt. She looked up to the sky searching for a God she never thought much about and yelled.
“Why?”
After several minutes and hearing no answer from above, she started to cry. And cry. Her head fell to the ground with the weight of her tears.
She didn’t know how long she lay there, but eventually felt a hand of comfort and strength on her shoulder. She looked up, expecting to see either Max or Christian.
“He was a good kid,” Dante said.
Part III
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Arlington, Virginia
“How long were you standing there?”
“A while.”
Jade never wanted anyone to see her cry. Ever. Especially Dante. She shifted in her seat, uncomfortable.
“My father played professional basketball,” he said.
Jade took a sip of her latte and swallowed. “I know who your father is.”
Marco Carlucci was a long-time professional Italian basketball player who spent his twilight years in the NBA.
“You have no idea what it was like.”
Jade glanced around the near-empty coffee shop. “Tell me.”
“I was tall,” Dante said, a bashful, charming smile spread across his face, “and I was awful. My dad put a ball in my hands when I was three years old. I couldn’t hang on to it to save my life. I was so uncoordinated. I thought it would kill my father.” He sipped his espresso. “Later, I tried soccer. To placate him.” He laughed. “I couldn’t play that either.”
Jade sipped her latte, watching him over the rim of her cup.
“My whole life. Everyone told me how great my dad was.” He pitched his voice an octave higher. “‘Are you going to be a baller like your dad?’ I got so sick of being compared to him. I still am. I joined the FBI over his objections. I did pretty well at the Academy. My first few years here were going well. I thought I would be promoted.” He looked across at her. “And then you came along. You were great. You are great. At everything. People talk about you all the time. You have no clue how you come across. Like you’re better than us. Better than me.” He looked down into his cup. “You remind me of him.”
They each sipped their coffee, lost in their own thoughts.
“There’s more to life than basketball,” Jade said. “No matter how great of an athlete you are, it ends someday, and most of your life is spent doing something else.” She set her cup down. “What’s your passion? Outside of work.”
He gave her an embarrassed smiled. “Cooking.”
“Italian?”
A shake of the head. “French.”
“I read in a book once,” Jade said, “that athletes grow up later in life than everyone else.”
“That makes two of us.”
They eyed each other, before they both burst out laughing.
*
A few days after Austin’s funeral, Jade sat at her desk at the Bureau staring—unseeing—at the 302 form for the aborted Evan Stevens interview. She dropped the document on her desk. She couldn’t concentrate. Besides, she had a hard time deciphering Christian’s handwriting on a good day.
The funeral had been a solemn affair with over a thousand people in attendance: FBI agents, police officers from Maryland, DC, and Virginia, Austin’s family, as well as President-Elect Whitney Fairchild. She exchanged nods with Fairchild, but did not have a chance to speak with her.
When Jade’s turn came to offer condolences to Austin’s mother, Jade had trouble looking her in the eye. What do you say to a mother who has to bury her youngest son a week before Thanksgiving?
While she mourned her agent, TSK always seemed to be one step ahead of them. Jade was sick of waiting and reacting.
Enough!
She typed “Cole Brennan” into her browser. Millions of hits came up. She did a quick scan of his Wikipedia page. Most of the information she already knew. She clicked the link for his radio show’s website. No, she didn’t want to order his latest book or a t-shirt, thank you very much. After rifling through a few pages, she stopped at a link midway down the page of Upcoming Events. It read American Values Conference.
She clicked on the link and the screen filled with the conference’s home page. The annual American Values Conference brought together conservativ
e luminaries from across the country. The conference promised speeches on traditional family values, pro-life, gun rights, and protecting Americans from their government and illegal immigrants.
Cole Brennan was the keynote speaker.
Jade’s pulse accelerated. She scrolled down to the bottom of the page to find out where and when the conference would take place. Three days from now at The Washington Convention Center.
Here.
What better place for TSK to strike?
*
The task force gathered in the conference room, but the mood today was different. Earlier, she had met with Christian, Max, and Pat to go over her idea. If they were surprised at Dante’s presence in the room now, they didn’t show it. She outlined her plan to them, and they went over the logistics.
This time they would be preemptive.
She scanned the room and stopped at the empty chair. Austin’s chair. Jade walked over and stood behind it, facing Dante sitting up straight in his chair instead of the usual slouch.
He searched her face, uncertain.
“Welcome back to the task force. I want you to finish what Austin started. Find out why he died.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Bethesda, Maryland
Cole Brennan opened the front door to his home. The younger kids ran past him and down the hall toward the family room. He and Ashley and the older kids followed. Everyone, except for Kaitlin and Cole Jr., was stoked; an animated conversation ensued throughout the ride home from the conference. His speech was a big hit, and TSK didn’t appear. The younger children didn’t realize how many people loved their daddy, outside the Beltway anyway.
Cole Jr. turned on the TV set, as Cole sat on the sofa. Ashley left and returned with cognac. He smiled and held his hand out, accepting the drink. He patted the seat next to him. She laid her head on his shoulder. The family viewed sound bites of his speech on the news.
Cole beamed. “Daddy looks good!”
The doorbell rang.
Cole Jr. left to answer it. A few moments later, he reappeared with one of the FBI agents wearing the regulation blue jacket and sunglasses. Cole let out a breath, relieved. But his relief soon turned to anger. He hated feeling afraid in his own home.