The Innocent

by David Baldacci

  “They’re doing the posts today. I asked for a rush on the results.”

  “The bus?”

  “Just going through the bodies—or body parts, rather—will take a long time. We’re transporting the remains to an FBI evidence facility. We’ll comb it to see if we can find what caused the blast. We’ve called in ATF to assist. Those guys are the best. They can usually find the detonation source. But it’ll take time.”

  Robie cleared his throat and asked the question that had been hammering in his gut for too long now. “Any surveillance cameras in the area? They might show what happened. Give your guys a shortcut.”

  “There were some. We’re collecting those now. Don’t know what they’ll show, but they might give us something to go on.”

  “Where are you collecting them?” he asked.

  “The mobile command post outside. We should have them all there later today or tonight. We wanted to make sure we were thorough in gathering them all. One I know is from an ATM, and another was posted on the corner of a building, but its sight line might be obstructed. And I’ve been told there are others.”

  Robie nodded, thinking how he was going to phrase it. “I know that technically I’m not deployed on the bus case, but since it seems the two cases might be connected, you mind if I go over it too?”

  She thought about this for a few moments. “Never turn down a fresh pair of eyes.”

  Vance signed off on some documents handed to her by a tech while Robie glanced through the window at the portable command center.

  If I show up on one of those videos? Or Julie does?

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  He turned to see Vance watching him.

  “So what can I do to help?” he said, ignoring her question.

  “You can noodle all this. And we can follow a few leads down.”

  “What are they?”

  “Wind’s employment at DCIS, for one. You’re of course uniquely positioned to follow up on that. And then there’s her husband. Was there something in her background that led to his death?”

  “From the condition of the body, he was killed before her.”

  “Which leads me to believe the reason might lie with Rick Wind,” said Vance. “Anything else you know about him?’

  “He was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan while in the military,” said Robie.

  “So was everybody in uniform the last ten years.”

  “He apparently left the military with a clean record. His wife, in her capacity with DCIS, also visited Iraq and Afghanistan on several ocassions.”

  “At the same time as her husband?”

  “No, afterwards.”

  “You said Wind left the Army clean, but could there be something else? How long was he in the Middle East? Was he wounded or captured? Or did he have a change of heart?”

  “You want to know if he was turned somehow? Became an enemy of his own country?”

  “Yeah, I would.”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “I don’t know the answer.”

  “They cut out his tongue.”

  “I was there, Agent Vance.”

  “I did some research on the computer last night.”

  “That can be dangerous.”

  “And I also emailed some of our Middle East experts. Islamic fundamentalists sometimes cut out the tongues of people who they believe have betrayed them.”

  “Yeah, they do.”

  “That could be the case here.”

  “We need to know a lot more before we can confirm something like that.”

  “Tongues cut out, a bus blown up. This is starting to look like international terrorism, Robie.”

  “Why the bus?”

  “Mass casualties. Throws the country into a tizzy.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Rick Wind was somehow involved. He got cold feet. They took care of him. And then killed his wife because they were afraid he might have told her something.”

  “His ex-wife. And she works for DCIS. If he had told her something she would have told us. And I can tell you that she didn’t.”

  “Maybe she never got the chance.”

  “Maybe she didn’t.”

  “It’s a workable theory.”

  Robie scratched his cheek. “I guess.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “That’s because I’m not.”

  CHAPTER

  47

  ROBIE WALKED OUTSIDE an hour later after going over the details of the mass shooting. The air was warmer today and felt warmer still as the sun rose higher. It was one of those cloudless days in D.C. that you knew would not last. Not at this time of the year. The capital city was like a bull’s-eye on a weather map. Systems from north, south, and west regularly crossed the line of the Appalachians and hit the area, and their confluence could cause severe weather.

  Yet today was good, weather-wise. But that was the only good thing about it.

  Robie looked over at the numbered markers for the dead on the sidewalk. Yeah, the weather is the only good thing.

  He mulled over what Vance had told him.

  A Secret Service SUV had been the shooter’s platform.

  It had gone missing.

  Things did not go missing from the Secret Service.

  Robie had worked with that agency years ago to clean up a mess in a country he had never wanted to go back to. The agency was small in comparison to the behemoths of the FBI and DHS. But its people were excellent, loyal, really the only federal agents who systematically trained to take a bullet for their protectee.

  He glanced to his left and saw the FBI mobile command post.

  He approached, rapped on the door. He flashed his creds to the agent who answered his knock. He mentioned Vance’s name, and was allowed in. It was filled with high-tech gadgetry and investigation equipment. There were four other people present. In his mind Robie split them up between special agents and tech support. The two techs were hammering on computer keyboards, and data obediently flowed across the multiple computer screens stacked on the long table.

  Robie said, “Vance told me about collecting surveillance camera footage from the scene of the bus explosion. You got any of it uploaded yet?”

  The agent who had let him in the command post nodded. “Hang on a sec.”

  He texted something on his phone. Robie knew exactly what.

  He’s getting the okay from Vance to show me the pictures.

  Robie would have expected nothing less. The FBI did not employ stupid people.

  Robie heard the sound of a text shooting back to the agent. The man glanced at the screen and said, “Over here, Agent Robie.”

  He led him to one corner and indicated a blank screen.

  “Here’s what we have so far.”

  The agent punched some keys and the file uploaded to the screen.

  Robie sat in a swivel chair, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

  “Have you looked at it yet?” Robie asked.

  “First time for me too.”

  Robie felt his pulse quicken.

  This might truly be enlightening for everybody, he thought.

  The door opened and he saw Vance. She closed it behind her and walked over to them.

  “Am I in time for the show?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the other agent respectfully.

  She sat down next to Robie, their knees nearly touching. She focused on the screen that was now coming to life.

  The bus came into view. It traveled a few hundred yards. Robie was relieved to see that the camera shot was not on the side of the bus with the door. A few seconds later the bus exploded.

  Robie tensed again. With the bus destroyed, there would be nothing to block the camera’s view across the street, where Robie and Julie’s pixeled figures were now rolling and eventually coming to rest. In a few seconds they would both rise and then…

  The screen went bl
ack.

  Robie looked at the agent controlling this process. “What happened?”

  “Blast must’ve knocked out the camera. That can happen. It’s not like bank cameras are built for that stuff.”

  He tapped more buttons on his keyboard and finally called a tech over. The tech executed more keystrokes and five minutes later they still had nothing.

  Robie sat through two more video feeds that were very much like the first two. Opposite side of the bus and the cameras went down after the explosion.

  “Any cameras around the bus depot showing the passengers getting on?” asked Robie. He had searched his memory but could not recall any such surveillance.

  “Not that we can find right now,” said Vance. “But it’s early days yet. And we’re trying to locate more footage. Particularly from the other side of the street. And everybody has cell phones and most cell phones have camera and video features, so we’re trying to find anyone who was there last night who might have seen or even photographed or filmed something in the aftermath. Though if they did it probably would be on all the news shows or YouTube by now. I’m going to have my guys go check for more surveillance cameras along the bus route this afternoon, after we get this crime scene under better control.”

  Which means I have to find it first, Robie thought.

  CHAPTER

  48

  ROBIE STOOD NEAR what was, for him, ground zero.

  The remains of the bus were being sifted through by a dozen forensics techs, with an FBI evidence truck waiting nearby to take these items away to the lab. Just like at Donnelly’s, roadblocks were everywhere, holding back the reporters who wanted to see and know everything right now.

  He looked left and right, up and down. Vance was correct; nothing obvious that he could see. The bank video across the street was already in the database but thankfully also had been knocked out by the blast. He gazed upward. Surveillance camera about ten feet off the ground at the corner of one intersection. It was pointing downward and had gotten a shot of the bus as well. If it had been pointed a bit differently, it might have captured on film both him and Julie as they escaped.

  Like football, a game of inches. Some things were just beyond your control. Then you counted on luck.

  But how much more luck can I count on?

  His attention turned to the troublesome part of the street, the side he and Julie had been on. He started to walk. With the angle of coverage a camera might have on the street, he gauged what his box of concern should be and added ten percent on each end just to be safe. He covered this ground methodically.

  He quickly registered on a camera posted on the wall about twenty feet to the left of where the bus had gone down. It seemed to be pointing directly at the spot of the explosion. He looked at the business located there.

  Bail bondsman. Of course. In this neighborhood the owner probably had a ready group of customers. He looked through the plate glass window with rusted iron bars in a crisscross pattern fronting it.

  The sign to the right of the door said, “Ring Bell.”

  Robie rang the bell.

  A voice came out of a small white box set to the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Federal agent. Need to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  “Face-to-face.”

  Robie heard footsteps approaching. A short, wide man in his fifties with more white hair in a mustache over his lip than on his head looked out at him through the window.

  “Let me see your badge.”

  Robie pressed it against the glass.

  “DCIS?”

  “Part of DOD. Military.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Open the door.”

  The man pulled the heavy door open. He was dressed in black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Above his loafers Robie saw pink skin.

  Robie stepped through and closed the door behind him.

  “So what do you want?” the man asked again.

  “The bus that blew up across the street?”

  “What about it?”

  “You have a surveillance camera.”

  “Right, so?”

  “FBI been by to see you about it yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to have to confiscate the film or DVD or whatever you use to house the images captured by the camera.”

  “That would be nothing.”

  “What?”

  “That camera hasn’t worked for a year. Why do you think I had to come to the window to see who it was at the door, smart guy?”

  “So why leave it up?”

  “As a deterrent, why else? This is not exactly a safe area.”

  “I’ll still need to see for myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Smart guys like to cover all the bases.”

  However, it turned out the man was telling the truth. The system had evidently been broken a long time, and when he examined the camera Robie saw that the cable running to it inside the building wasn’t even connected.

  Robie left and continued his walk.

  He had nearly gotten to the end of the sector he’d outlined when he saw the homeless guy from the night the bus had exploded, the one who’d been dancing around yelling about wanting some s’mores to grill on the bonfire of metal and flesh. It looked like he and his fellow homeless had been evicted from the crime scene and were huddled on the other side of the police barriers. There were three of them, each with their trash bags filled, no doubt, with everything they possessed.

  The homeless guy looked like he’d been on the streets for a long time. His clothes and body were filthy. His fingernails were long and blackened and his teeth rotted. Robie could see that the reporters were giving the three a wide berth. He wondered if it had occurred to any of the journalists that the people of the streets might have seen something that night. Even so, Robie wondered how successful the reporters might have been in getting any reliable information out of them.

  And then he wondered if the FBI had attempted to interview them. Vance’s folks might not have even known they were there that night. Might not know that they could possess valuable information. And also some