The smile dissolved. Joanne held my eye. "You'd make a good politician, Corte. Good night."
Chapter 20
AT 11:00 P.M., after making rounds inside the house, I stepped outside and settled into a nest of fallen leaves. I began scanning the property with a Xenonics SuperVision 100 night vision monocular. They're very expensive but the best on the market. We could afford only three in the department and I'd checked out the last one earlier today.
This was normally the work done by a clone but I believed that even we shepherds should get our hands dirty on the job regularly. Abe's philosophy, of course--a belief, you could say, that killed him.
I was concentrating on looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. I found my shoulders in a knot. I was breathing hard. I began reciting silently to myself: rock, paper, scissors . . . rock, paper, scissors . . .
Lulled by the flow of moon shadows from the slowly moving clouds, I began to relax. After forty minutes, my fingers numb and arm muscles shivering from the chill, I headed inside.
In the shepherd bedroom I unsnapped my Royal Guard holster and took a bottle of Draw-EZ from my gym bag. I massaged some of the gel into the natural-colored leather, now tanned as a beloved baseball glove. The smooth side fit against my skin, the rough facing outward. I didn't really need to work on the leather--I've timed my draws and they're acceptable--but I found it relaxing.
When I was through, I took care of business in the bathroom and then rolled into the lumpy old bed, blinds drawn, of course, though the odds of a shooter emerging from the glorious line of old oaks to pump a round into the room were pretty slim.
The window, though, was open a crack and I could hear the faint unfurling sound of the wind and the softer rustle of the water over the falls a half mile away.
I'm lucky because I can sleep almost anywhere, nearly on command. Which I've learned is particularly rare in my job. Not surprisingly, my principals suffer from insomnia. I knew I'd doze off soon but at the moment I was pleased to lie in bed, fully clothed, though minus shoes, and stare at the ceiling. I was thinking: Who'd lived in this house originally?
It had been built around 1850. I supposed it had been a farmhouse, with much of the land devoted to oats, corn, barley--staples, not the designer crops you see nowadays. I had an amusing image of a working-class nineteenth-century family kicking off supper with an arugula and spinach salad.
Though the property hosted ten thousand trees now, I knew the vista back then from Mathew Brady's and others' photographs. Much of what was now woods in Northern Virginia had been open agricultural land around the time of the Civil War.
Great Falls had been occupied early by the Union Army. This area wasn't the scene of any major battles, though nearly four thousand troops met briefly at what was now Route 7 and Georgetown Pike, in December 1861, resulting in about fifty dead and two hundred wounded. It was considered a Union victory, though most likely because the Confederates saw no strategic point in occupying an area where they weren't greatly supported, and they simply walked away.
More than any other area in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Great Falls had been a place of mixed sympathies. Those favoring the Union and those the Confederacy were often neighbors. Here, "brother against brother" was not a cliche.
I knew this from reading history--another one of my degrees--though I've also learned a lot about world affairs and conflict from playing board games. I enjoy those games that re-create famous battles, which are almost exclusively of American design. The Europeans prefer economic and socially productive games, the Asians abstract. But Americans love their combat. Among the games I have are Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg, D-Day, the Battle of Britain, the Siege of Stalingrad, Rome.
Some people I've met through the gaming community shunned them, claiming they were disrespectful. But I believed the opposite was true: that we honor those who died in the service of their country by remembering them however we can.
Besides, who wouldn't admit that rewriting the past has a deep appeal? I once utterly defeated the Japanese military at a game based on Pearl Harbor. In my world, the Pacific campaign never happened.
My thoughts kept returning to the family who'd lived here when the house was new. It had been a large clan, I assumed; many children were the rule then. The seven bedrooms could easily have accommodated the offspring plus an older generation or two.
That always appealed to me: generations living together.
An image from the past: of Peggy and her mother and father.
I realized now that in appearance, and because of her quirky side, Maree reminded me of Peggy. None of Maree's darkness, of course, or the irritations and unsteady nature.
Mr. Tour Guide. . . .
Peggy had once called me a bad boy but it happened after I realized we'd been given a large order of fries at McDonald's instead of the regular and I said, "Let's sneak out without telling them."
More memories I didn't want.
I stretched, feeling the pain in my calves and joints from the pursuit of Henry Loving at the flytrap and in my back from the retreat at the hotel. I forced myself to play a few mental rounds of the Chinese game Wei-Chi against an invisible opponent I sometimes imagine to help me banish unwanted thought.
Then I decided it was time to sleep and rolled over on my side. In two minutes I was out.
SUNDAY
Players do not always take alternate turns to move their armies. Instead, a deck of Battle cards determines which player moves next, and which of his units can move and attack. No one knows whose turn will be next until the top Battle card on the deck is flipped over. In this way, the play sequence remains a mystery.
--FROM THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BOARD GAME BATTLE MASTERS
Chapter 21
DOING NOTHING.
It's not such a problem for us shepherds; we're used to it. We're like airline pilots, whose life is routine 99 percent of the time. We expect this and--though we train for the rare moments of action to avoid calamity--we understand that most of our lives on the job will pass in a waiting state. Ideally so, at least.
But for our principals, time spent in a safe house often becomes a nightmare. They're plucked from their active lives and have to spend hour after hour in places like this, cozy though they may be, unable to work, unable to pursue projects around their houses, unable to see friends. Few phone calls, no email . . . Even TV is unsatisfying; the programs remind them of the world that exists outside their prison, fading reruns of our existence they may never see again, frivolous shows, both drama and comedy, that mock the tragedy they're living through.
Doing nothing . . .
One consequence of which is that they often opt for the oblivion of sleep; there's no reason for principals to wake early.
At 9:30 Sunday morning, I was sitting in the den at the desk, where I'd been since five, when I heard the snap of a door opening and creaks in the floorboards. I heard the voices of Ryan and Joanne, saying good morning to Lyle Ahmad, making small talk. He gave them details about coffee and breakfast.
I sent some more emails and then rose, stretching.
The night had passed in peace and a new spec in West Virginia told me in a deeper voice, though with a twang identical to that of his associate, that scans of the property had revealed nothing of concern. A car had driven by at midnight but it was taking a route that was logical for a local returning from dinner in Tysons Corner or the District. In any case, our GPS had measured his speed and he hadn't slowed as much as one mile per hour when he passed, which took him off the threat list, according to our algorithms.
I joined the Kesslers in the kitchen and we exchanged greetings.
"Sleep well?" I asked.
"Well enough, yeah." Ryan was bleary-eyed. He was moving slowly--because of the limp and, perhaps, a hangover. He wore jeans and an Izod shirt, purple, with his belly hanging over the belt buckle. He still wore his weapon. Joanne was in jeans too and a black T-shirt under a floral blouse. In a round compact m
irror she inspected her lipstick--the only makeup she was wearing--then put it back in her purse.
Ryan said he'd talked to Amanda for a long time earlier and everything seemed okay at Carter's place. The girl had enjoyed fishing yesterday and they'd had dinner with neighbors last night, a barbecue.
I'd called Bill Carter too, that morning. I told the Kesslers this and added, "He said there hasn't been anything suspicious. Just that your daughter was still bothered about missing school tomorrow and her game and some volunteer job."
"A student counseling hotline," Ryan explained. "She practically runs the place."
Knowing what I did about the girl now, I wasn't surprised.
"Let's hope she won't have to miss anything," Joanne said.
It was still early on Sunday. If we got Loving and the primary soon, the Kesslers' lives could return to a semblance of normality by suppertime.
"What do we do today?" Ryan asked, looking outside. I'd seen golf clubs in the garage and I guessed he'd miss what might be a warm fall day on the links.
"You just relax," I said. I couldn't help but think of Claire duBois, who'd once commented to me as we were flying to Florida to collect a principal, "The pilots always say that, 'Now just sit back and relax and enjoy the flight.' What options are there? Do handstands in the aisles? Open a window and feed the birds?"
The Kesslers too had no options. I knew they weren't going to like my further instructions, which I now delivered, that they had to stay inside.
"Inside," Ryan muttered, peeking out through a slit in the curtain at a band of sun on leaves just beginning to color. He sighed and knifed butter onto an English muffin.
Doing nothing . . .
My phone rang and I glanced at caller ID. "Excuse me."
I headed back to the den, clicking ANSWER. "Claire."
"I've got some information."
"Go ahead."
Her youthful voice offered enthusiastically, "The electronic trackers? This's interesting. They're made by Mansfield Industries. The small tracker has a range of six hundred yards, the big one a thousand. That sounds impressive but they're older models. The new trackers, like the ones we use, are GPS and satellite based, so you can sit in your office and track. The ones planted on you were cheap. That means they're used by police departments."
Yes, that was interesting. "And the model numbers--"
"--are the same used in the MPD." Ryan Kessler's employer.
"Serial numbers?" I asked.
But she said, "No serial numbers. So we don't know the specific source."
"Prints or trace evidence on them?"
"None."
I considered this information. A principal who was a detective and hardware that might have come from the same police department he worked for.
Another piece of the puzzle.
I asked, "Graham?" The Department of Defense employee whose checkbook was stolen. The man who'd surprisingly dropped the charges.
Her voice lost its lilt as she said, "Okay. About that."
Didn't sound good. "What?"
"I think I may need some help."
"Go on."
"A teeny problem . . ."
An adjective I never quite got.
She continued, "I was researching and making some headway. I found that the chief of detectives--"
"Lewis."
"Right. COD Lewis got a call from 'somebody powerful.' That's a quote, though I have no idea what 'somebody powerful' means. It sounds like what a scriptwriter would say when he's describing a bad guy, the nefarious character. Anyway, this power person had Lewis make sure the case wasn't being pursued."
"Somebody from the Pentagon?"
"I don't know. Then I got some numbers. Graham makes ninety-two thousand a year. His wife fifty-three. They have a six-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage and two daughters in college, in addition to their son, Stuart. The girls're going to William and Mary, and Vassar. Their collective tuition is about sixty thousand a year. Room and board probably not too bad. I mean, with all respect to Williamsburg and Poughkeepsie. You ever been there, either of them?"
"No." I considered this. "So the stolen forty thousand is a bigger hit for him to swallow than we thought."
"Huge. I was thinking about when I went to Duke. My folks saved every penny they could for my tuition. It'd take something disastrous for them to give up and doom me to a career of memorizing specials of the day."
"You mentioned a problem."
Teeny . . .
"Actually . . ."
"Claire?"
DuBois came in a quirky package--her dancing mind, her bizarre observations--but she was, in her way, as much a competitor as I was and it was hard for her to admit defeat, especially if she'd made a mistake, which was what I sensed had happened.
"I got this idea. Because of his clearance, Graham would have had to take a lie detector test."
All government employees with security clearances have to do this regularly. Some organizations have their own polygraphist; the DoD usually relies on the FBI.
"So I called up a friend at the Bureau to find out. Graham was scheduled to take one last week but he called the field office and said he was staying home. He had a bad cold. They don't let you take the exam if you're on medication. So it was postponed until next month."
"You checked log-in records at the Pentagon."
"Exactly. Graham didn't stay home when he said he had. And nobody got the impression he was sick. He lied to avoid the test."
"Good thinking. Go on."
"Apparently somebody in Records let him know I'd been looking into it. Graham got my name. He called. He wasn't happy."
It wasn't the best outcome, I agreed. I'd rather that Graham had been kept completely in the dark about our investigation. But I still wasn't sure why duBois seemed so upset. Then she explained. "I figured as long as I was blown, I may as well interview him, see what he had to say about withdrawing the complaint. He got, um, uncooperative. Actually pretty insulting. He called me 'young lady.' Which I don't really like."
I was sure not.
"He told me, kind of R-rated, where I could put my warrant."
"Warrant? How did a warrant come up?"
"That's sort of the problem. I threatened to serve him."
"For what?" I couldn't see any scenario in which a warrant made sense.
"I made it up. I just got mad, the way he was talking. I said if he wasn't going to answer my questions, I'd go to a magistrate, get paper and serve him to force him to talk."
I was silent for a moment. Lesson time. "Claire, there's a difference between bluffing and threatening. With a threat you have something to back it up. With a bluff you don't. We threaten. We don't bluff."
"I was sort of bluffing, I guess."
"Okay," I said. "Where is he now?"
"His caller ID put him at home. Fairfax. I'm sorry. He's stonewalling now."
Young lady . . .
"Tell you what. Meet me at the Hyatt in Tysons. A half hour."
"Okay."
After disconnecting, I joined Ryan Kessler at a table in the living room, poring over documents. I told him about the trackers that Loving's partner had slipped into my wheel wells.
"They were from the department?" he asked, surprised.
"We couldn't source them. But they're the same model numbers the Metropolitan Police buys."
"Fact is, we never use them," Ryan said. "They're great in theory but that's not how most tails work. Reception gets screwed up, the signals get crossed. Mostly we put 'em in buy-money bags if there's a lot of cash and we're afraid of losing it. But you can also get them from almost any security gadget company."
"Anybody in the department you can think of who might be monitoring the Graham or Clarence Brown cases? Or one of your smaller ones?"
"Somebody inside working with Loving? Impossible. We don't do that, cops don't do that to each other."
I said nothing, though I thought: People will do anything to anybody--if the edge
is right.
I returned to my computer and, not wanting him to hear my request, wrote an email to duBois, giving her another item on her growing to-do list. She acknowledged it.
Garcia and Ahmad were making rounds. I told them I was leaving for a while to continue investigating who the primary was. I stepped outside to the detached garage and opened the door. Inside was a Honda Accord, registered to a fictional resident of Arlington, Virginia. Billy'd made some modifications to it--run-flats, better horsepower and a bit of armor--but it was still pretty much off the shelf. I started the car and drove out of the compound, cruising through the tunnel of leaves and branches glowing in the sun.
I was about ten minutes from the safe house when the phone buzzed. I recognized Westerfield's number. I'd forgotten my promise to Aaron about keeping the prosecutor up to speed.
So I answered.
I shouldn't have.
Chapter 22
"CORTE, YOU'RE ON speaker here with me and Chris Teasley."
"Okay."
"I've talked to the attorney general and he's agreed to move the Kesslers into a slammer in the District--Hansen Detention."
All because I hadn't returned his call? Seemed a little excessive. "I see. Why?"
Chris Teasley came on. She said, "Um, Agent Corte."
"Officer Corte," I corrected. My organization is an office, not a bureau or an agency. When Congress gave Abe the money that's what he created.
"Officer Corte," she continued. "I backgrounded you." She sounded uneasy; I was close to twice her age.
I concentrated on driving and looking for a tail, which shepherds do automatically, all the time. Even when we go grocery shopping. But I didn't expect to be followed and I saw nothing. "Go on."
"It's routine in cases like this," she said quickly. So I wouldn't think I was being persecuted. "One thing that came up: an operation you ran in Newport, Rhode Island. Two years ago."
Ah, so that was it.
"I have the whole report of the investigation here."
She kept pausing, as if giving me the chance to confirm or deny. I remained silent.
"The assignment involved you and two associates from your organization guarding several witnesses from the same man involved in this case, Henry Loving."
She paused again. I wondered if Westerfield was testing her the way I test duBois and Ahmad and my other proteges. It's easy to do research. It's hard to aim it at somebody and pull the trigger.