Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (16 page)

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Chapter Fifteen

August 26

T
rask sat on the right side of the pine-framed couch in the den, his feet on a matching ottoman. The History Channel, or the “Hitler Channel” as Lynn called it, droned at low volume on the TV across the room. It was a bit past midnight, and Lynn was in bed with Nikki asleep beside her. Trask had to lean a little to his right so his right hand could access the notepad that rested on the end table, since the massive head of Boowulf—her now official, veterinarian-registered name—lay squarely in the middle of his lap. She was snoring, so Trask bumped up the TV volume a notch with the remote.

It had been a relatively calm day. The only real development had been a call from Chief Magistrate Judge Noble informing him that the remaining three defense attorneys from the MS-13 bust had all asked to withdraw from the case, not wishing to join the ranks of the newly dearly departed. Noble had granted their requests and told Trask that the court would be asking for volunteers from the defense bar to represent the five defendants. If there were no takers in the next couple of weeks, other appointments would be made by the court. Trask had assured Noble that they were running down every lead possible to prevent a further winnowing of the defense bar.

He thought about the few pieces of his current jigsaw puzzle, the most suitable metaphor for almost every criminal case, especially homicides.

He closed his eyes and made mental notes, cataloging the facts as he remembered them. He usually had no trouble doing this. The file cabinet in his head opened, and he pulled the images out of the files. He had trained himself to store them there, each page mentally photographed and recorded. The files spread across his mind, he returned to the puzzle.

In the center, he usually started with a big splash of color. Fit all the blood-red pieces together so that the crime scene was complete. Then he started defining the rim, the limits of the case. He tried to weed out any false suspects so he wasn’t distracted by all the collateral stuff. As the investigation team collected the various pieces, he could usually fit them together, and the whole picture would begin to take shape in his head, to make sense. A few pieces in one corner showing a motive, a few more showing the manner and cause of death, all hopefully leading to the final collection of pieces showing the killer. The big disadvantage with the process was that he was working without a box with a big, full color photo of the puzzle on the front showing the completed scene. He had to work from logic, from experience, sometimes from hunches.

He had several problems with the current puzzle. First, he didn’t have one crime scene, he had several. He hadn’t even decided they all actually belonged in the same puzzle, although his gut told them that they did. Until that was determined, defining the limits of the case was impossible. Did he have one, self-contained murder case with the ambassador’s kid? Were the various gang shootings just part of a war between the
Maras?
Was the embassy murder only related to the other shootings through an MS-13 connection, if in fact the ambassador’s son had been killed by MS-13? Was MS-13 responsible for the murders of the defense lawyers, or was some Salvadoran vigilante group now operating in DC? It was if someone had burned the boxes and thrown thousands of pieces of several puzzles together in one pile.

There was one thing of which he was certain. He didn’t have
all
the pieces yet, so there was no way of telling how related the cases were, how many distinct puzzles he was dealing with. He turned the page on his mental notepad so a fresh one appeared.

The only two incidents that were now conclusively part of the same criminal scheme were the murders of Boydston, his secretary, and Darren Regan, the other defense counsel. They’d all been shot with the same gun. Trask drew a rectangle in one corner of the page and put all three victims’ names inside the box. He drew another box, writing inside it the names of the five defendants from the thwarted MS-13 shooting mission. He then drew a line connecting the two boxes, writing “possible” above the connector. The victims had represented the defendants, after all, and he found it unlikely to be a coincidence, given the way the victims had been executed.

He drew another box, writing the names of Diego Morales and the two other victims from the Georgia Avenue sniper shootings inside it, and then another for the two other MS-13 casualties from the Langley Park convenience store murders. He thought a moment, and then drew another box for the two MS-13 bangers who’d been mowed down at the back of the car wash. A line between the Langley Park and Georgia Avenue boxes was labeled “sniper.” Even though ballistics said it was a different rifle, it was the same
modus operandi
. Lines were drawn between all the boxes having to do with MS-13, which were simply labeled “13.”

The next box was simply labeled “Armando” for the ambassador’s son. Trask thought for a moment. He drew a line from this box to the one containing the name of Diego Morales, marking the line “probable.” Lynn’s analysis had made sense. Fresh tats and bruises and a new
Salvatrucha
, initiated shortly after the body of the ambassador’s son was dumped in front of the embassy. Bad blood between the
Maras
and the new government, and an MS-13 signature killing. He decided to concentrate his focus on the ambassador’s kid and his probable killer for now. That puzzle seemed to have more clarity than the others. If he got lucky at all, if there were in fact connections to the other boxes, some of the pieces in Armando’s jigsaw would point the way to pieces in the other puzzles.

As an afterthought, he drew a final box at the bottom of the page and wrote “M-18 victim” inside it. The single victim found in the project in Northeast. He drew an arrow pointing toward the other boxes above it, with a question mark just above the arrow.

Maybe unrelated. Make a note. Check the ballistics.

The clock on the DVR beneath the TV indicated 1:15 a.m. Trask switched off the TV and the lamp on the end table and headed for the bedroom with a large dark shadow trotting dutifully behind him.

It was 7:00 a.m. when Trask left the house. Saturday morning. He took 301 North out of Waldorf toward Brandywine until he reached Surratt’s Road.

The good old Surratt family. Co-conspirators with Booth in the Lincoln assassination, or so
the verdict read. Old Mary Surratt hanged with the rest of them.

He made the first left onto Dangerfield Road.

Dangerfield, huh? Am I here because I don’t get no respect, or is a “dangerfield” really what
I’m wading into now?

At a stop sign, he took another right, and another turn took him to the main gate of the Cheltenham Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLETC, or “fletcee” for short. Junior Walker’s
Shotgun
started playing in his head.

He spent two hours under the tutelage of a US marshal firearms instructor, becoming acquainted with the weight, feel, and shooting characteristics of the Glock on the firing range. It was not the hand cannon that his .45 at home was, but it had some kick to it.

Enough to stop somebody if I actually hit them.
The Post
would love that.

His target was pulled back up from down-range.

“Nice shooting. Very tight pattern.” The instructor nodded with approval.

“I always qualified expert with the pistol at the Academy,” Trask said. “Had fits with the M-16. Funkiest balance I ever saw on a rifle.”

“We’re not giving you one of those. Just sign here, and you’re good to go with the Glock.”

He signed the forms and left with the pistol in a shoulder holster.

He drove into the District but did not stop at the Triple-nickel. There was no rush hour gridlock, and he made respectable time as he pointed the Jeep up Wisconsin Avenue, NW, toward Bethesda. He saw a sign for the turn to Fort Reno Park.

July 1864. Lookouts on the highest point in town—all of four hundred feet—see some
of Jubal Early’s Rebs prowling around and notify Fort Stevens in time to turn back the only
Confederate attack on Washington. May 2008. Some alleged scientist with the Geological
Survey thinks he finds arsenic in the dirt and they close the park. The city fathers panic, build
a fence around the whole damned thing, at the cost of a pretty penny to the taxpayers. Park
opens two weeks later after they conclude that the first tests were a false positive. Fence is
still there.

Trask looked at his image in the rearview mirror.

Why do I remember all this stuff?

He kept left and passed the turn to the right for 41st Street. Two blocks later, he turned into the parking lot. He got out and walked up to the storefront. The brick façade bore a brass plate: “The Law Offices of Victor Scarborough.” As he had expected, the place was locked down tight. No lights inside.

Nor would there be,
Trask thought.

He turned and looked to the other side of the street.

No bank this time.

He returned to the Jeep and headed back to the FBI field office. Saturday or not, there was plenty of work to do.

“His name is Brian James,” Carter began, “but he goes by Peewee. The citizen’s tip I got this morning said that he was buying lots of high-dollar weed from a car wash in Northeast. I figured it might be our MS-13 crew’s dope, so I stopped by Peewee’s place, picked him up, and brought him in. We’ve got some history. I’ve arrested him twice before for dope, once for weed, once for crack. He took felonies on each one.”

“Which means career offender status and a boatload of time if he takes another hit,” Trask said. “So we have some leverage to encourage cooperation.”

“Finally. A break.” Doroz leaned back in the tilt chair at the head of the conference table. “Did he flip?”

“Yes, he said he’s seen the error of his ways and is ready to join the forces of truth and light,” Carter said. “Tim and Puddin’ are downstairs printing him now.”

“Good catch, Dix,” Trask said, trying to mask his suspicion. “You say this was a tip you got?”

“Came in on the hotline early this morning. Shortly after 2 a.m. Anonymous call on a throwaway cell, unlisted. I’ve had Peewee flagged for years, so the tip-line guys called me on
my
cell. Turned out to be good information. He was firing up a big blunt of weed when I knocked on the door. No denying the smell. He tried to tell me he’d just bought a dime bag to smoke, but I bluffed him, told him I had a team with a dog on the way, and he could tell me the truth now or later. He caved and showed me a duffle bag of the stuff. Had to be at least fifty pounds of high-grade kush.”

Trask nodded. “Kush” was the generic street name for superior-quality marijuana. He thought that he remembered reading somewhere that the name had originated in Afghanistan.

I’ve got it now, the purple Indica marijuana from the Hindu Kush mountains. Grand
Daddy Purple, GDP, or Purple Kush. That’s it.

“Was Tim with you when you pitched him?” Trask asked.

“No. Like I said, I stopped at Peewee’s place on the way in this morning, and he knows me. Tim sat in on the interview, though, after I brought him in.”

“What did Peewee say about how he bought it?” Doroz asked.

“He told us he got it from ‘those damn wets’ at our car wash. Apparently, he has some contempt for those who violate the law by entering our country illegally, although he likes the quality of their weed. No phone contact in advance. He said they won’t give out any numbers. He knocked on the back door and flashed his roll, and they ushered him back into the office. That’s where they’re doing their business.”

“They haven’t had time to grow their own yet,” Trask observed. “Even if they planted the same night that you and Tim saw the pipe going in, the plants would just barely have sprouted.”

“My conclusion also,” Carter agreed. “They had to import some product, and in the meantime they’re cultivating a customer base as well as their crops.”

“Any objection if we sign him up?” Doroz asked Trask. FBI policy required that an AUSA sign off on the recruitment of a source if the cooperator faced potential charges of his own.