I stared at the dark windows, two of which were broken from BB gunshots or maybe a .22. Unoccupied places like this would be, as the law said, attractive nuisances to local kids. I knew this from the house in Woodbridge that Peggy and I had owned. Two doors down from it was an abandoned Victorian and every neighborhood kid at some point tried to sneak inside the dangerous place. I'd gone to town hall to have the city put up better fences, which they ultimately did.
Once more I wondered if it was the Kesslers or Henry Loving conjuring these memories within me. I pushed them away. No more distractions, I resolved.
I heard cars approaching, though I spotted no lights. I gave Freddy a call to tell him where I was. A few minutes later he and the tactical officers joined me.
"Anything on a car at his cousin's?" I asked Freddy.
The senior agent was looking over the lay of the land, as were the tactical officers, each covering a different quadrant. "We found a few drops of blood in a parking space about fifty feet away. Nothing else helpful. No tread marks. No trace. But what do you expect?"
True, with Loving, you weren't going to find the quality of evidence that led you back to his hidey-hole.
"I want to get moving," I said, gesturing at the house. I was uncharacteristically impatient. I glanced at the tactical agents and whispered, "I haven't seen any sign of anyone since I've been here. Loving might not remember what he told his cousin--he was doped up--and he might've come back to go to ground or at least to pick up his things." I regarded them gravely. "And it's possible he said what he did to the cousin to make sure it was relayed to us. This could be a trap. And remember, he's got a partner."
They scanned the grounds, the trees, the black windows of the house with keen eyes.
We divided into three groups and, Freddy and I leading, moved forward.
Chapter 34
AWARE OF THE fine shooting that the partner was capable of, we didn't expose ourselves by surveying any vantage points for more than a second or two before dropping to the ground or crouching behind trees.
In five minutes we arrived at the house and made arrangements for the tactical entry. This is not my area of expertise, nor was I as heavily armed as everyone else in the group. I would remain outside on the front porch and keep an eye out for any flanking movement until the house was cleared. Another tactical officer would do the same at the back door.
Freddy gestured to one of his tac officers. The large man examined the door and with a single kick sent it flying inward, simultaneously blurting the requisite, "FBI, serving a warrant!" Agents streamed inside through the front and back doors. Flashlights clicked on but I ignored the search and continued surveying the front and side yards, crouching and presenting as little target as I could to a sniper in the surrounding woods. Using my night vision monocular, I scanned but spotted no evidence of shooters.
Finally Freddy stuck his head out the front door. "We're clear."
"Any sign of inhabitants recently?"
"Yep. Food and drinks with pretty far-off expiration dates. A set alarm clock. Five a.m. Boy's an early riser. Fresh linens. Some clothes that don't seem too old. Loving's size."
So he had been staying here.
I walked inside and drew closed any open shades and curtains, then clicked on the lights. The air was musty and tinged with cedar and rot. An agent appeared in the doorway; he'd checked for evidence of the vehicles but reported that the driveway and apron were gravel and he'd found no tire prints.
"What are we looking for?" another agent called. Freddy tipped his head to me.
"Credit card receipts, correspondence, computers or hard drives, bills . . . anything with or without Henry Loving's name on it. He uses fake identities a lot."
I doubted we'd find much about his immediate plans; he was too smart to leave obvious evidence but even a player as conscientious as he made mistakes sometimes.
Game theory takes this into account. In a "trembling hand equilibrium," a player can accidentally pick an unintended strategy--say, when you reach for a queen's bishop's pawn and accidentally move the knight's in error. If you release the piece, you've made the move, even if the consequences are the opposite of what you'd intended and are disastrous.
Still, we found little or nothing that was helpful.
But one thing I did indeed find was Henry Loving's past.
Virtually all of it. Neither he nor his family had eradicated his history.
Everywhere throughout the house were photographs, framed postcards, ribbons from awards won at state fairs and carnivals, pictures of Loving family vacations. On the mantelpiece and on the shelves in place of books were souvenirs and memorabilia like ceramic animals, ashtrays, hats, candleholders.
And, in the den, scrapbooks. Probably thirty or forty of them. I checked quickly but none was more recent than about five years ago. The most current one contained only a single item about Loving himself. It was a clipping from the Washington Post, the same clipping I had in my office, as a matter of fact. About Loving's murder of Abe Fallow and the woman he'd been guarding. Had he clipped it? And if he had, why? I guessed it was a matter of craft: to see how the authorities were handling the investigation.
I flipped through the memorabilia and examined the many pictures of a younger Henry, his sister and their parents. I was struck by the fact that in most of them he seemed somber and preoccupied, rarely smiling and seemingly distracted. But there were also a number of images of the young Henry laughing. One or two showed him with a girl, presumably on a date, though there was little physical contact between them.
Young Henry's sports were track and archery. There were no pictures of him with teammates. He seemed to enjoy solitary pursuits.
I went back even earlier. I opened one page and stared down at it. Beneath a piece of yellowed Scotch tape was a tuft of clipped brown hair. I read the careful script below. The hair was Henry's, at one year of age. I started to reach out and touch it. Then withdrew my hand when Freddy walked into the room.
"Whatcha think, son?" Freddy asked. "Anything helpful here? You're looking like you found Bernie Madoff's stash."
I shook my head. "Nothing pointing to his next move. But everything pointing to him."
"That helpful?"
"Not immediately. But ultimately, I hope so. Only there's a lot here to go through. We'll collect it all, take it in. You folks have evidence bags?"
"In the cars."
I then noticed something against the opposite wall: another shelf on which a dozen shoe boxes sat. I picked one up. Inside were stacks of photographs. I supposed the family had stored them here temporarily until somebody got around to pasting them into a scrapbook. I realized, to my surprise, that there was a dust-free rectangle at the end. The last shoe box had been removed--today, if not within the last hour or so.
Had he sped back here from his cousin's for the purpose of grabbing this one box?
What was there about it that Loving wanted?
Did it reveal something about his past that he wished to keep secret?
Or was there something sentimental connected to it?
I mentioned this to Freddy, who noted it without much interest. I flipped through the others. Like the scrapbooks, they revealed nothing immediately helpful, though we'd have forensic teams prowl through them for clues to summer houses or family members we hadn't been able to locate earlier.
"Corte?" Freddy asked. He was getting impatient, I supposed.
"Okay," I told him.
"Got something here," a tactical officer called from the hallway that led to the kitchen in the back of the house. Freddy and I joined him.
"Looks like bills, sir."
Sitting on the floor beside the kitchen table was a stack of envelopes, bound with a rubber band.
"He must've dropped them and not noticed."
Trembling hand . . .
The agent picked them up but then froze. They only came halfway and tugged to a stop.
"Fuck," he muttered and we all stared
at the thin strand of fishing line that vanished through the hole in the floor.
Freddy grabbed his radio. "Clear the house, IED, IED!"
From the basement I heard the bang of the booby trap--softer than I expected--and saw on the foliage and trees a brief flare as the flash radiated through the basement windows.
The room was eerily silent. For a moment I thought the device might be a dud and I'd have ample time to collect the scrapbooks and shoe boxes.
But I'd taken only one step toward the repository of Henry Loving's history when the nearby basement door blew outward and a vortex of orange and yellow flame shot into the hall, while simultaneously the fire raging in the basement erupted from every floorboard vent and crevice on the first floor.
Chapter 35
THE DEVICE MUST have been made up of a grenade or small plastic explosive charge attached to a large container of gasoline. I could smell the distinct, astringent odor of burning fuel. In seconds, the fire was racing up the walls and consuming the rugs. I kicked the basement door closed but the flames and heat muscled it back open, as the fire spiraled outward and up.
"Freddy, anybody down there?" I shouted.
He called, "No. After they cleared it they came upstairs."
I started forward again toward the den. Yet every time I edged a few feet through the smoke, there'd be another flare-up and I'd have to spin backward to keep from losing eyebrows and skin. I looked around for water or a fire extinguisher or even a blanket I could use to protect myself to get to the scrapbooks and shoe boxes and save as many as I could.
I supposed that Freddy wasn't as convinced of the importance of the memorabilia as I was but he knew that this was my expertise--dealing with lifters and hitters from a strategic, rather than tactical, position--and he helped me push furniture against the vents and fling rugs over the flames that sprouted from the floorboards. I didn't think we could control the fire--it was going to win--but at least we might contain the flames long enough to get to the books.
We tried for three or four minutes but finally the heat was too intense, the smoke blinding. I was close to vomiting from the fumes and ash. I grew light-headed and knew that to faint here would mean death. Choking, our eyes streaming, we had to retreat. The living room was now a mass of flame and so was the kitchen. We kicked out a side window and rolled onto the ground. The rest of the agents were nearby and, thinking that the fire could be a diversion, they were covering the trees, the logical position for a sniper to take out those fleeing the house.
But there were no shots. I wasn't surprised. Loving, I knew, would be gone.
"Report!" Freddy shouted. His fellow agents called back about their condition. They were all accounted for. One had a slight burn and another had been cut, breaking through a window to flood the basement with water from a garden hose--a futile effort, of course. There were no serious injuries, however.
No, the only victim here was Henry Loving's past.
I rubbed my stinging eyes, wondering if, as I'd speculated, this had in fact been a trap all along.
I was alive but this round of our game was a decided loss for me.
Scissors cut paper . . .
The roar of the flames was so loud that the fire trucks were almost to the property by the time we heard the sirens.
Freddy said, "A shoe box with pictures in it. He destroyed everything else. Why'd he save that? What's inside?"
A good question and one that I knew I'd ponder into the early hours. Did it contain photos of his sister? Of himself and her? Some place he liked to go? Pictures of a cabin in the woods or a lake somewhere he planned to retire to? I said nothing but stared at the fiery tornado that had been the family house. I walked back to my car to call the safe house in Great Falls and check on my principals.
I didn't, however, get very far.
Two black vans, with flashing red and blue lights on top, skidded to a stop not far away and a small entourage got out, making right for me.
My eyes closed momentarily as I realized who was leading them: Jason Westerfield and Chris Teasley, his assistant, possibly sans pearls. She wore a zipped-high jacket; I couldn't see any necklaces.
I shouldn't have been surprised to see these two. I now realized that, of course, Westerfield would have learned about the house and that I'd probably be here, because we were on record: We'd gone to a federal magistrate to request a warrant to search Loving's family's house. The U.S. attorney had sped directly here to find the man who'd lied to him and sent him an empty armored van.
I'd hoped that he'd be satisfied with a dressing-down in front of the troops and I could get back to work, but he had a different agenda. He glanced toward Freddy, standing nearby, and announced, in a voice louder than I thought necessary under the circumstances, "Arrest him. Now."
Chapter 36
THE FBI AGENT made no move to put me in cuffs and I thought that on one level the U.S. attorney was going more for effect than to see me in chains. But I was hardly sure.
I looked at the occupants who'd been in the second vehicle. They had FBI jackets on too and could have arrested me themselves but they were deferring to Freddy, who was senior and technically their boss.
Freddy stepped between us, like a referee. "Jason." He nodded to the other agents who'd accompanied Westerfield here.
"I want him arrested. I want somebody else to take over baby-sitting."
I wasn't sure what the actual charge would be. Using an armored van to not deliver something you said you would isn't a federal crime.
"He lied to an officer of the federal court. That's the charge."
On reflection I wasn't even sure I'd done that. I couldn't remember my exact words. Which wasn't to say I couldn't be arrested in the first place, even if the charges were ultimately dismissed. That had happened to me before.
Westerfield glanced my way. "I want the Kesslers downtown, near me. I want to interview Ryan personally. That is going to happen immediately."
"I can't do that," I said.
"Release them to me or somebody Aaron Ellis recommends. You do that and give me access to interview Kessler, I won't pursue the charges."
"I can't do that," I repeated.
Freddy, at a tennis match.
"Agent Corte, I think we've been in this business too long to play games," Westerfield said.
"A slammer was not the right strategy, Jason. You kept pushing. I had no choice. My first job's to keep my principals safe."
"Interesting to hear that. My impression would be that you felt your first job was to harpoon your white whale. Agent Fredericks? Could I see some handcuffs, s'il vous plait?"
Freddy, who worked more for Westerfield than he did for me, seemed nonetheless marginally on my side. He said, "Whatever he's doing is working, Jason. The family's safe."
"But I can't help but notice he's here, not with them. . . . And, on top of it all, Loving got away." He waved to the burning house.
That was true, though I hadn't expected to find him here. I was more interested in clues to his life--now, of course, dissolving into ash and embers.
Westerfield glanced toward the senior FBI agent. "Are you going to arrest him?"
"Probably not."
A disgusted sigh. The U.S. attorney looked my way. "Corte, you've even missed the boat on the primary."
I looked away from the house to him. "What do you mean? We've eliminated Graham. Now we're concentrating on Ali Pamuk."
"Pamuk's not the one either. You said he was a terrorist."
"I said that was a possibility since most of the fund's money was showing up in the Middle East. My associate is still investigating his involvement."
"Ms. duBois."
"That's right." I wondered how he knew about her. And--more interesting yet--how he knew the name was pronounced the non-French way. "You got it wrong, Corte. You've been spinning your wheels with Pamuk. We've been doing some work on our own. I've found the primary."
"Who?" Freddy asked.
I was frowning
and I said nothing.
He turned to Teasley. "Chris, could you tell Officer Corte and Agent Fredericks what we've learned?"
She said, "Detective Kessler has been involved in some internal administrative work for the Metropolitan Police."
I said, "Something about the budget, accounts."
"So you know about that?" Westerfield said with some satisfaction.
"He mentioned it, yes."
"You didn't think it was relevant?"
"To Loving and the primary? No."
Westerfield glanced toward Teasley again.
She continued, "A year ago, there were some mix-ups with expenses in the police department. Overtime charges. Nothing big, it seemed. But the head of budgeting told the chief of police, who thought it'd make sense to have somebody--somebody in their financial crimes division--look over the books and see what was going on."
"It seemed to be nickel-and-dime stuff," Westerfield filled in. "But bottom line . . . tell him the bottom line."
Teasley continued, "Expense checks were issued for tens of thousands of dollars but the money ended up in different department accounts. Been going on for years."
I said, frowning, "You're saying that it was intentional? Some kind of a plan to skim money out of the police budget?"
"Exactly," Westerfield said.
Catching on, Freddy said, "And whoever was behind it--somebody senior in the police or city government--got scared because Kessler had a background in investigating money crimes. He was getting close to figuring out who."
I looked absently at the burning house and mused, "High up in the city government--somebody high enough to have access to an MPD helicopter. Claire couldn't find a flight plan or charter." I grimaced and shook my head. "She even wondered if it was a government chopper that'd been used to extract Loving and the partner but I said, no, it was probably private. I didn't have her check police department logs. My fault."
Westerfield wasn't gloating but he liked my last sentence.
I said to Freddy, "And somebody within the department would have access to police equipment too."