Odd Partners

by Mystery Writers of America

“Pretty much, that’s right.”

  Ivers continued, “About an hour ago there was an anonymous call about a white male in a red Toyota sedan. Plate was covered with mud. The driver was standing outside the car and making a cellphone call. The citizen who called 9-1-1 heard this guy mention ‘Ebbett’ and ‘rally.’ That’s all he could hear. But he saw there was a long gun in the backseat. It was outside a strip mall in Avery.”

  “About five miles south of here,” Morton said.

  Ivers continued, “That put all red Toyota sedans on a watch list.”

  “The caller say anything more about the driver?”

  “He was in combat or camo, medium build, bald with an old-timey moustache. Droopy, like gunslingers wore. The computers started to scan every CCTV—public, and the private ones that make their data available to law enforcement. There were two hits on the target vehicles. At nine this morning one was spotted in a parking lot near a gun shop in Haleyville.”

  Tomson turned to Morton, his eyebrow raised.

  She said, “Twenty miles south.”

  “He parked in front of a closed-up drugstore in a strip mall,” Ivers said. “The closest active store was the gun shop. We got their security video. The first customer of the day was a bald white male, thirties to forties, with a drooping moustache.” Ivers sighed. “He bought forty .338 Lapua rounds. Prepaid debit card he paid cash for. Owner said he was a scary guy.”

  “Brother,” Tomson said, sighing. He added to Morton, “Lapuas are high-powered sniper rounds.”

  “And he didn’t park in front of the shop,” she said, “to avoid the camera in the gun shop.”

  “Probably.”

  Ivers added, “Then another hit. Two hours ago the Toyota was videoed parked near—but not in front of, again—a hardware store in Prescott, twelve miles away. He bought a toolbox and six three-quarter-inch PVC pipes. No CCTV inside but the clerk’s description was the same as the others. Same debit card as before.”

  “Where’d he buy the card?” Tomson asked.

  “A Target in Omaha a month ago.”

  “Been planning this for a while.”

  Morton grimaced. “Those towns? That’s a straight line to where we are now: Haleyville, Prescott, Avery.”

  Tomson asked, “Status of vehicle?”

  “Nothing since then. He’s taking his time, sticking to back roads.”

  “What would he want the pipes for?” Morton asked. “To make bombs?”

  Tomson said, “Probably not. That’s pretty thin. You couldn’t get much explosive in them.”

  “A tripod for his gun?” she suggested.

  An interesting idea. But when he considered it, that didn’t seem likely. “Doubt it. Anybody with a gun that fires Lapua rounds would have professional accessories to go along with it. And in an urban shooting solution like here, he could just use a windowsill or box to support the weapon for a distance shot.”

  Tomson said, “Put out the info on the wire. Let’s advise Searcher.”

  He knocked on the suite door. “Sir. It’s Art.”

  A voice commanded, “Come on in.”

  The candidate was jotting notes on a yellow pad. Presumably for his speech that night. He’d do this until the last moment. A transcriptionist was on staff, and she would pound the keys of the computer attached to the teleprompter until just before the candidate took the stage. Open on the table was Barbara Tuchman’s brilliant—and disturbing—book about the First World War, The Guns of August. One of the first items on Ebbett’s agenda as president would be to revitalize the U.S. military—“make a great army even greater!”—and stand up to foreign aggression.

  Tomson said, “Sir, we’ve received some information about a possible threat.” He explained what they’d discovered.

  The candidate took the details without any show of emotion. “Credible?”

  “It’s not hunting season, but he could be a competitive marksman, buying those rounds for the range. The camo? A lot of men wear it as everyday clothing. But the license plate was obscured. And he’s headed this way. I’m inclined to take it seriously.”

  The candidate leaned back and sipped his iced tea. After he’d reinvented himself this was the strongest thing he imbibed.

  “Well, well, well…hm. And what do you say, Ms. Morton?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m just a girl who spots tomato-throwers. These men know all the fancy stuff.”

  “But what’s your gut tell you?”

  She cocked her head. “My gut tells me that with any other candidate this’d probably be a bunch of coincidences. But you’re not any other candidate. You speak your mind and tell the truth and some people don’t like that—or what you have planned when you take office. I’d say take it seriously.”

  “She’s good, Artie.” A smile crinkled his face. “And I like that she said ‘when’ I take office. Okay. We’ll assume it’s a credible threat. What do we do?”

  “Move the press conference inside,” Tomson said. “The location’s been in the news and a shooter would know that’s where you’ll be.”

  The conference, planned for a half hour before the candidate’s speech at the rally, was to be held in an open-air plaza connected to the convention center. The candidate had wanted to hold it there because clearly visible from the podium was a factory that had gone out of business after losing jobs overseas. Ebbett was going to point to the dilapidated building and talk about his criticism of the present administration’s economic policies.

  Tomson had never been in favor of the plaza; it was a real security challenge, being so open. The choice had been Tyler Quonn’s, but Ebbett had liked it immediately. Now, though, he reluctantly acquiesced to moving the conference inside. “But I’m not changing one thing about the rally tonight.”

  “No need, sir; the center itself is completely secure.”

  “The press’ll probably like it better anyway,” Ebbett conceded. “Not the best weather to be sitting outside, listening to me spout off—as brilliant as my bon mots are.”

  Tomson noticed that while Kim Morton got the gist of what he was saying, she didn’t know the French expression, and this seemed to bother her.

  English and vocabulary? Forget it….

  He felt bad that his partner was troubled.

  Tomson called Tyler Quonn and explained about moving the press conference. The chief of staff apparently wasn’t crazy about the idea, but agreed to follow Tomson’s direction. Then Ivers opened his tablet and they studied the area, setting the iPad on the coffee table. Tomson explained to Morton and Ebbett, “Assuming he was going to try a shot at the press conference, we’ll locate where a good vantage point would be. Get undercover agents and police there to spot him.”

  Then Ivers added, “I keep coming back to the pipes. The PVC. And the toolbox.”

  “He could slip into a construction site, fronting as a worker. You know, bundle the gun up with the pipes.” Tomson shrugged. “But there’s no job site with a view of the plaza.”

  “There’s construction going on there,” Morton said, her unpolished nail hovering over the screen. She was indicating a city block about a mile from the convention center.

  “What is it?” Ivers asked her.

  “A high-rise of some kind, about half completed. All I know is the trucks screw up traffic making deliveries. We avoid that road commuting here.”

  Tomson picked up the tablet and went to 3-D view. He moved his fingers over the screen, zooming and sweeping from one view to another. He grimaced. “Bingo.”

  “Whatcha got, Artie?” Ebbett asked.

  “You’ll be inside the convention center for the rally. But the only way to get into the hall itself is along the corridor behind this wall.” He zoomed in on a fifty-foot wall, with small windows at about head height. The windows fac
ed the job site.

  Ebbett chuckled. “Artie, come on. It’s nearly a mile away. At dusk. Who the hell could make that shot?”

  “A pro. And shooting a Lapua round? It’s so powerful, what’d just be a wound with another gun would be fatal with a slug like that. Sir, this is a level two threat. I’m going to ask you to cancel.”

  Ebbett was shaking his head. “Artie, just let me say this: My enemies, and the enemies of this country, want to make us afraid, want to make us run and hide. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I know it makes your job tougher. But I’m going to say no. The rally goes on as planned. Move the press conference inside, okay. That’s as far as I’ll go. Final word.”

  Without hesitation the agent said, “Yes, sir.” Then, given his orders, he turned immediately to the task at hand. “Don, you get a team together. I want eyes on every CCTV from here to that job site, looking for that Toyota. And I want two dozen tactical officers inside and outside the job site. And I need to come up with a different route to get Governor Ebbett into the hall, one that doesn’t involve any outside exposure. Not even a square foot.”

  Ivers said, “I’m on it. I’ll call in when I’m in position.” He hurried down the corridor.

  Tomson said, “I’ll find a covered route to get you to the hall, sir.”

  As he and Morton turned to leave, Tomson glanced down once more at the coffee table, where The Guns of August sat. It hadn’t occurred to him earlier but now he remembered something; the cause of the First World War, in which nearly twenty million people died, could be traced to one simple act—a political assassination.

  * * *

  —

  In conclusion, my fellow Americans:

  This country was founded on the principles of freedom and fairness. And I would add to those another principle: that of fostering. You may remember someone in your youth, who fostered you. Oh, I don’t mean officially, like a foster parent. I mean a teacher, a neighbor, a priest or minister, who took you under his wing and saw within you your inner talent, your inner good, your inner spirit.

  And nurtured your gifts.

  Freedom, fairness, fostering…

  Together, you and I will invoke those three principles to make our nation shine even brighter.

  To make our strong nation stronger.

  To make our great nation greater!

  God bless you all, God bless our future, and God bless the United States of America.

  Governor Paul Ebbett looked over his notes and rose from the couch. He practiced this passage a few more times, then revised other parts of the speech. Little by little, he was closing in on the final version. He still had a couple of hours until showtime.

  He smiled to himself.

  Little by little.

  Which was exactly the way he was creeping up on the presidential nomination. So many people had said he couldn’t do it. That he was too brash, too blunt. Too honest—as if there were such a thing.

  A knock on the door. “Sir?” It was Artie Tomson.

  “Yes?”

  “Your dinner’s here.”

  He entered, along with the woman who had saved him from tomato target practice. He liked her and was sorry she was only a security guard and not on his full-time staff. They were accompanied by a white-jacketed server, a slim Latino, who was wheeling in the dinner cart. Under the silver cover would be his favorite meal: hamburger on brioche bread, lettuce, tomato, and, since the first-lady-to-be was not present, red onion—the sandwich accessorized with Thousand Island dressing and a side of fries.

  And his beloved sweet tea.

  The man opened the wings of the table and set out the food.

  “Enjoy your meal, sir.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait,” the candidate commanded.

  The convention center employee turned. “Sir?” His eyes grew wide as Ebbett pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, extracted a twenty, and handed it to him.

  “I…oh, thank you, sir!”

  Ebbett thought about asking, as a joke, if the man was going to vote for him. But he didn’t seem the sort who would get humor and he worried the server might actually think it was a bribe.

  The slight man scurried off, clutching the money, which, Ebbett bet, he was going to frame rather than spend.

  Artie Tomson was giving him an update about the potential assassin, which really was no update at all. They hadn’t learned anything from the state police about local threats, or the NRO, NSA, or CIA about foreign operatives. There was a full complement of tactical officers—some undercover in construction worker outfits—in and around the job site. But there was no sign of the bald, moustachioed suspect or the red Toyota.

  As they spoke, Ebbett glanced across the living room and noted Kim Morton on her phone, head down, lost in a serious conversation.

  Tomson received a call and excused himself to take it.

  Ebbett strolled casually to the table and plucked a fry from the basket. Nice and hot. He dunked it in ketchup and, salivating already, lifted the morsel to his lips, as he turned to the TV to check the weather and see if the predicted storm would possibly keep people away. No, it looked like—

  Then a crash of china and glass and, with a sharp pain in his back, Ebbett tumbled forward onto the carpet. He realized just before he hit the floor that he’d been facing away from the curtained window and he wondered, with eerie calm, how the assassin, who was apparently across the street nowhere near the job site, had known exactly where he would be standing.

  * * *

  —

  Art Tomson was in the hall, surrounded by a half dozen other Secret Service agents and local police, all facing him as he gave them calm, clear instructions on how to proceed.

  One by one, or two by two, the agents and cops turned toward the elevator and headed off for their respective tasks.

  Ivers walked up to him and Kim Morton, who stood silently beside the senior agent. Ivers’s face was even paler than normal as he displayed his phone. “Here’s the answer.”

  Tomson was staring at the words on the screen. Then he nodded to the door of Suite A. “Let’s go.”

  They walked into the hotel room, Kim Morton behind them.

  Searcher, Governor Ebbett, was sitting on the couch, a heating pad on his back.

  That was the only medical attention he’d needed after being tackled while about to take a bite of French fry, dipped in what they suspected might be poisoned ketchup.

  Tomson said, “Sir, we’re awaiting the analysis of the food. But the substance in question is zinc phosphide.”

  “The hell’s that?”

  “Highly toxic rodenticide, used to kill rats mostly. Ingest some and it mixes with stomach acid, and a poisonous gas is released.”

  “What’s going on, Artie?”

  He nodded to Kim Morton and said, “I’ll let my partner here explain. She’s the one who thought of it.”

  With her eyes on Ebbett’s she said, “Well, sir. I was thinking that this guy…perp, you say perp?”

  “We say perp,” Tomson said.

  “I was thinking if this perp really was some brilliant assassin, well, he didn’t seem to be acting so smart. Conspicuous, you know. Parking suspiciously. Talking about the rally in public, while he had a rifle in the back of his car, and he wasn’t too concerned if anybody heard him. Wearing camouflage. Buying the PVC pipes and toolbox so we’d think he’d be in a job site….I mean, it just seemed too obvious that he was planning to shoot you. And I looked at those windows in the hallway again. I mean, even if he was a pro, that’d be a hell of a shot.

  “So what might other possibilities be? I thought I’d call the places we know he’d been: the gun shop and the hardware store. We know what he bought, but what if he’d shoplifted something that could be used as a weapon�
�a tool or a knife or a can of propane to make into a bomb? Nothing was missing at the gun shop, but at the hardware store—where there weren’t any video cameras—I asked the clerk if anything was missing. They did an inventory. Two cans of rat poison had been stolen.

  “When I saw you go for that fry, sir, I just panicked,” Morton said. “I thought whatever I said, you might still take a bite, so I just reacted. I’m sorry.”

  He chuckled. “No worries. It’s not every day a beautiful woman launches herself into me…and saves my life at the same time.”

  Tomson said, “We’ve closed down the kitchen and concession stands and analyzed the HVAC system. No sign of poison yet. But all of your food and beverages will come in from outside, vetted sources.”

  “Don’t have much of an appetite at this point.” He grimaced. “Had to be the fucking Russians. They love their poisons. Look at Litvinenko.” The Russian expat murdered in London by Moscow agents, who slipped polonium into his tea. “And the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury—that Novichok toxin…Jesus.”

  “There was no chatter about it in the intel community,” Ivers pointed out. “Washington’s been monitoring.”

  “Of course there’s no chatter,” Ebbett muttered. “They’re not talking about it overseas—the communications would be picked up. No, they hired some locals to handle the operation—where the CIA can’t legally monitor phones and computers without a FISA warrant. Tell the attorney general I want the bureau and the CIA to check out the known Russian cells and anyone with a connection to them. I want them to use a proctoscope.”

  “Yes, sir. They’ve been alerted.”

  “And the car? That Toyota?”

  Ivers said, “Never got close to the job site. Like Officer Morton was saying, it was a diversion, we think. A CCTV in Bronson, about thirty miles east, spotted it, headed out of the state. We’re still looking but, after that sighting, it’s disappeared. I’ve got one team going through the hardware store, looking for trace evidence and prints. Other teams are going over the convention center service entrance, kitchen, the suppliers, and onsite staff. We’re looking at the tea in particular.”