Checkmate (9 page)

Director Wellington had her laptop open on the table in front of her and was removing a packet of papers from her briefcase when I walked into the conference room on the second floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building.

Two other people were already there, dressed impeccably. I recognized one as Dimitri Sheridan, Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division. He was talking in a hushed voice in the corner of the room with a man I didn't know.

As I approached the table, Margaret peered at me with those cool, unflinching eyes. Straight brown hair. Perfect posture. “Agent Bowers.”

“Director Wellington.”

“How is your side, where the shrapnel hit you? Did they provide adequate care for you at the medical center?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I waited.

Her turn.

She said nothing.

Six years ago, before I worked a stint in Denver, Margaret and I were both teaching at the Academy. One day I found out about some missing evidence in a case we were involved with and brought it up to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Bureau's internal affairs office.

After an investigation, the OPR didn't officially
reprimand anyone or declare any negligence, but they did discreetly arrange for Margaret to be reassigned to the Resident Agency in Asheville, North Carolina—which was not exactly a promotion. At least not in her eyes.

However, she was a persistent woman, and to her credit she'd worked her way back into the graces of the upper echelons of the Bureau and, eventually, after a scandal cost her predecessor his job, ended up getting nominated and approved by the senate to be the new Director.

A few months ago she'd asked me to help look into the apparent suicide of her brother, and as a result of that investigation Margaret and I seemed to have been able to bury the hatchet somewhat—a saying that, when it popped to mind right now, only served to bring grisly images of Jerome Cole's crime scene with it.

As long as Margaret did her job and let me do mine, I was fine with things staying just as they were between us.

Finally, she said, “You'll let me know if there's anything the Bureau can do for you regarding the injuries you sustained. Expediting insurance forms—whatever you need.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“I appreciate you coming in today.”

“Of course.”

“I'm trusting that your input will be valuable to the investigation.”

“Yes,” I said. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. “Me too.”

Then neither of us had anything more to say.

No insults. No offense. No lost tempers. No tussles. Chalk that up as a good conversation between Director Wellington and me.

I found a seat at the far end of the table near a sweating pitcher of ice water.

As I was pulling out my laptop, the man who'd been speaking with Dimitri came over and introduced himself as Pierce Jennings, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Early fifties. Eyes of lead, a gaunt face, and a hard-edged jaw. “I'll be reporting back to the National Security Council this afternoon.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

So, Ralph had been right about the NSC sending a rep to the briefing.

While Jennings found a seat, René Gonzalez, the Bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force Director, walked through the door. He was a short but commanding man with a thick scar running along the edge of his chin from a knife fight he'd been in back when he was working as an undercover cop in LA.

Yes, this was definitely going to be the highest-level briefing I'd ever sat in on. And I was so thrilled to be here.

Tact.

You're Mr. Tact, remember?

Right. Okay. Tact. No problem.

I could do tact.

I lost myself in reviewing my notes until Ralph settled in next to me and I saw that two other men and one woman had entered the room in the meantime.

There were nine chairs around the table, so it looked like everyone was here.

I expected that Ralph might ask me about my side as Tessa, Lien-hua, and Margaret had, but he only said, “I don't want you whining about those stitches; we've got work to do.”

“Right.”

He set his arm on the table and I was reminded about the dog bite he'd sustained last spring. One of Richard Basque's pit bulls had latched onto his forearm when we located his residence. The fight didn't end so well for the dog, but it had managed to score a chunk of meat from Ralph's arm before he stopped it for good.

My friend didn't like to talk about it, but as far as I knew, the recovery hadn't been going as well for him as he'd hoped.

Ralph opened up a package of gummy bears. “Have you ever heard of these things? Amazing.”

“Ralph, those have been around for years.”

“Just discovered 'em. They made it to my top-ten list.”

“Mini-weenies with mustard and ranch dressing still number one?”

“Still number one.”

A young woman who had “I'm an intern” written all over her face scurried around the table, placing nameplates in front of everyone. She must have done her homework, because without having to ask anyone his or her name, she correctly identified everyone in the room.

According to the nameplates, the two men who'd just come in were from the Department of Justice and the woman was the Assistant Director of Domestic Affairs from Homeland Security.

Nine people was plenty for me to keep straight, but considering how many chief security officers, section chiefs, assistant directors, and executive assistant directors we had just in the Bureau alone, there could have easily been another couple dozen people invited to a briefing like this.

The intern came to me last, gave me a hurried smile,
and placed my nameplate, which had evidently been printed up special for this occasion, in front of me.

I turned it so I could read it:
FBI SPECIAL
AGENT PATRICK POWERS
.

With the misspelling, it sounded like a superhero name. Tessa would have a field day with that one if she ever found out about it.

I dialed it back around to face the group.

As everyone else took a seat, Margaret stood, cleared her throat, and got things started. “Alright. We're here to review what we know and put a plan together to coordinate our teams in order to apprehend the individual or individuals responsible for these crimes before any more innocent people perish. Let's stay on track and let's make some progress.”

Brief. Concise. To the point.

Good.

Off to my kind of start.

Rather than take time to have everyone introduce themselves, she just directed our attention to the nameplates.

After having Ralph summarize what had happened at the NCAVC and review the findings from the autopsy that had been performed last night on Jerome Cole, Margaret turned to me. “In your report you described the driver who dropped off the lawnmower that had the improvised explosive device.” She phrased it as a statement, but left it hanging there as a question.

“Yes,” I replied. “Male. Caucasian. No facial hair. Age undetermined. Hair color and eye color unknown. He was wearing dark sunglasses, a weathered Chicago Cubs baseball cap, and had a wedding band on the ring finger of his left hand.”

“From what I understand”—it was the woman from Homeland Security—“from reading over the case files, you only glimpsed this man for an instant in the side-view mirror of the truck?”

“Yes.”

“Through the rain?”

“Yes.”

I was about to apologize that I couldn't offer more details when Ralph spoke up. “Agent Powers has a penchant for noticing things.”

Powers.

Great.

Thanks for that, Ralph.

Jennings, the NSC's Special Assistant to the President, said, “So, how do you know he wore a wedding band?”

“He repositioned the mirror. That's when I saw the ring.”

“So, our guy, he's married.” He jotted something down on a yellow notepad. “That's good. That gives us something.”

“No,” I said. “I'm afraid it doesn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don't know why he was wearing the ring, only that he was. It's the same for the Cubs hat—it doesn't mean he's a Cubs fan, it simply means he had it on during the commission of the crime. We need to stay focused on what we do know and not drift into speculation about what we don't.”

Everyone stared at me. Someone on the far end of the table coughed slightly and I realized I'd been a little too abrupt. “Sir,” I added.

Jennings turned to Ralph. “What about forensic evidence at the scene of Mr. Cole's murder?”

“No prints, no DNA, no fibers.”

“Nothing?”

“Correct.”

“That would be very tough to pull off, don't you think? I mean . . .” Now he gazed at Margaret. “There must be something there.”

“Our team is continuing to evaluate the situation and collect any evidence that might be pertinent.”

“And video?” he asked me. “Nothing from the external cameras at the facility?”

“No facial features, not even a partial,” I said.

“Because of the ball cap.”

“That's right.”

A stiff pause.

“And you're telling me that he knew exactly where to turn his head as he exited the vehicle and unloaded the lawnmower?” His skepticism was evident in every word.

“Yes.”

“Doesn't that sound like an inside job to you?”

“It sounds like someone who knew what he was doing. I don't think we should assume that it was an inside job or, conversely, that it wasn't. I don't think we should assume anything.”

“You don't.”

“No.”

“And what do you suggest we do instead?”

“Study what we have. Hypothesize, evaluate, test, and revise. The offender could have obtained some of that information from torturing Jerome Cole, but avoiding all the traffic cameras and accounting for the orientation of the surveillance camera at the Exxon station all indicate someone who carefully planned this out from the start.”

Jennings looked at me severely and jotted some more notes on the legal pad. He seemed far more impatient than the situation called for and I wasn't sure why.

Joint Terrorism Task Force Director René Gonzalez spoke up, addressing the group in general. “And no one has claimed responsibility for this yet?”

“Actually, sir,” one of the DOJ guys answered, “this morning two Islamic extremist groups have—one from Pakistan, the other from Saudi Arabia. However, at this time there's no way to confirm that either was involved.”

“And the ViCAP archives . . .” Gonzalez scratched at the scar on his chin. “Were they damaged in the blast?”

“Minimally,” Ralph replied. “It looks like nearly all the files were saved.”

“Nearly all.”

“Correct.”

“How did our guy know the pass code to open the loading-dock door?”

“He likely got it from Jerome Cole when he was torturing him,” Ralph said.

A blunt silence spread through the room until the Homeland Security rep asked what we knew about the explosives used in the attack.

Dimitri Sheridan, our resident counterterrorism expert, spoke up. “The Lab concluded that it was military-grade Semtex. Limited production. Made at a plant in Louisiana. A team is on-site now, trying to determine the lot number and figure out who it was shipped to.”

“I thought Semtex was more of a European explosive.” It was the DOJ member again.

“It's starting to be developed in the States—although that's information that's normally kept under wraps.”

“Homegrown terrorists,” Jennings muttered. “Perfect.”

I recalled my conversation with Lien-hua last night and how she'd said the consensus among her profiler colleagues was that this was an act of domestic terrorism, but that she remained unconvinced.

I did as well.

René Gonzalez scratched at his scar again, a nervous tic. “Last night one of our agents located an expert on Colonial-period weaponry. Those arrows and that tomahawk are authentic. According to the fletching on the arrows and the length of the handle of the tomahawk, the guy was able to establish that the weapons came from sometime between 1710 and 1760.”

Okay. Now this was something I hadn't heard.

“Authentic?” I said.

“According to this guy, yes. Apparently, there's a whole subculture of collectors out there and he's the one everyone else talks about—I guess he's the one to ask. Anyway, the style of the weapons points to the Catawba tribe. They're from the southeast, originally, near the border of North and South Carolina. They have a reservation in Rock Hill, South Carolina.”

After a little discussion about that and a quick video conference call with Cyber to check on their progress, the conversation pooled off into a discussion of who might have released the information regarding the book that was found on Cole's body and the names of the deceased to the media.

No answers there.

The topic turned to the upcoming funerals.

“They're scheduled for Thursday morning at ten o'clock,” Margaret noted. “The families decided they wanted a joint service.”

Of the five people who were killed in the blast, only one, Stu Ritterman, the man I'd tried to help, would be having an open casket.

Jennings dialed his focus on me. “You were there. You saw this guy in the truck. What are you thinking as far as motive?”

“I don't feel qualified to say, sir.”

“You don't.”

“No.”

“Well,” he said. “Terror. Intimidation. Revenge. Maybe all three. I'm just wondering which direction you're leaning.”

“I'm not leaning in any direction. We may never know his motive.”

“And why do you say that?”