by Bobby Nash
Montgomery was about to comment when the Secretary of Defense cleared his throat and gave the agent a stern look that reminded McHenry of his place. The President was well aware of why he was there and not to press it further.
The President knew from his demanding father how strong a message a simple clearing of the throat could convey. Although his children seemed immune to it, Montgomery was happy to see that the tactic still worked.
McHenry got the message, so Montgomery was happy to let the matter drop and continue.
“Understood, gentlemen,” the President said. “I hate to be blunt, but I do have a rather full schedule today so let us move it along, shall we? I have a ton of meetings today, all of them urgent.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” Secretary of Defense Conrad piped in, much to the chagrin of Agent McHenry. “Intelligence has uncovered information that could be classified as a direct threat to this office, sir. A direct threat to you.”
More rhetoric. Montgomery wasn’t impressed. He heard more of it than he wanted and grew impatient “I’m sure there’s a point you’re trying to make and that you’ll get to it sometime today, won’t you gentlemen?”
McHenry spoke up before Conrad could begin again.
“Sir, does Project: Blood Shot mean anything to you?”
The President felt the color drain from his cheeks. That had been the last thing he had expected to hear ever again.
“Y... yes,” he stammered. “Yes, I’m afraid it does.”
Before McHenry could continue, Montgomery held up a hand to silence him. The President stood, prompting the others to get to their feet as well. The President walked around to his desk and toggled the intercom to his aide.
“Yes, Mr. President,” his aide’s chipper voice called back.
“Cancel my appointments for the day, Tommy. Something urgent has come up.”
“I will forward your apologies, sir.”
“Oh, and Tommy?”
“Sir?”
“Cancel that breakfast order too, please.”
“Sir?”
“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”
fifteen
Langley, Virginia
Sunday
Samantha Patterson watched the growing crowd with awe.
How could so many people with absolutely nothing to say manage to make so much damned racket? she wondered. She could make out the occasional bits and pieces of conversations happening all around, but mostly it was just noise. She imagined it would only be worse once she left the confines of the car. Thankfully, her time working protection detail had taught her how to tune out the extraneous din and focus on the more important sounds.
“Over there,” her passenger said, pointing to an empty space to park.
“I see it,” she said, managing to keep her annoyance with Special Agent Robert Corwin almost completely out of her voice. Not that he would have noticed either way. He was too wrapped up in his own business to pick up on the little details. He would never make it working Protection, she decided. His focus is in the wrong direction.
Pulling the unmarked Crown Vic, a car that all but literally screamed government issue, to the side of the road, she listened as Corwin complained for the fifth time that “it’s a zoo out here!” She kept all replies to herself.
“Let’s go,” Corwin said once they were parked. He stepped out into the brisk night air and made his way around the car before Samantha could pull the key out of the ignition and remove her seatbelt.
What’s the rush? she wondered. The D.C. Metro P.D. had the area cordoned off and they were keeping everyone out. They were certainly not about to let a couple of Secret Service Agents trounce all over their crime scene. D.C. Metro clearly had jurisdiction. Agents from various agencies were merely bystanders on this one. At least for the moment. She imagined there were a lot of late night favors being called in at the moment.
Flipping her collar up to ward off the chill from the early morning air, Agent Patterson entered the gaggle of Federal Agents with nothing to do but wait impatiently behind the yellow Crime Scene Tape. Luckily, she would not have to join them. The Secret Service had a little more pull than most agencies, though not as much as they had in those early post 9/11 days. Corwin only had to flash his badge twice before they were escorted through the barrier. They were being taken to meet the officers in charge.
Detective Plummer of the District of Columbia Metro Police Department lead them over to the edge where the car belonging to Calvin Hutchinson had allegedly left the road.
“Excuse me, Lieutenants?” he called. “You have visitors.”
The way the woman, and boy was she tall, spun around, Samantha felt for a moment like she was about to lose a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
“Dammit, Plummer, didn’t I tell you to keep everyone back?” a slightly rotund man carrying a cane shouted.
“Sorry, sir,” the chastised officer said as he went back to the perimeter where Corwin had found him.
Corwin, as pompous as ever, introduced both of them, as if Sam could not speak for herself. She wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Picking her battles was not a skill she had mastered, but she was slowly learning. This one wasn't worth the effort to argue over and she needed to stay on Corwin’s good side. A few years ago, she would have laid into him by now. However, she had worked too hard to get back into the Service’s good graces to jeopardize it all by getting in a pissing contest she couldn’t win with the man who could just as easily end her career as he revived it.
“I’m Special Agent Robert Corwin, Secret Service,” he said before motioning toward her. “And this is Agent Patterson.”
Samantha nodded, content to let Corwin do all the talking for the time being and leave her alone long enough to do her job.
“Good to know,” the man with the cane said. He patted his chest. “I’m Mulder and my partner here,” he motioned to the amazon at his side, “is Agent Scully. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
“Very funny.”
“I hate to keep repeating myself, Agent Corwin, but for you I will make an exception,” the detective said. “I’m the officer in charge of this particular crime scene. My name is Melvin Walker, Lieutenant. That’s one L in each word. You, sir, are coming close to contaminating my crime scene.”
Tuning out the heated debate between Corwin and his new best friend, Samantha eased toward the edge, noticing the numbered yellow plastic cones dotting the ground. Careful to avoid getting near the uncollected evidence, she stopped short of the drop off. She was too far away to see the actual crash site, yet close enough to smell the lingering smoke from the burning car that she could not see, but knew lay down the embankment, just out of sight. What was easily evident, however, were the signs of sliding cars along the gravel as they left the road.
Cars. Plural.
There had been at least two from the look of the tire tracks on the gravel and dirt, Sam noted. She assumed this had not gone unnoticed by the detective either. She noticed the two evidence markers nearby, but no evidence. Whatever they had found had already been bagged and tagged.
Kneeling, she touched a large damp spot on the ground, careful not to disturb their pattern lest she too incur the wraith of the lead detective and his Amazonian partner.
Lifting a bit of dirt just under her nose, she sniffed, her nose crinkling slightly at the specific smell she had suspected she would find.
“You got something?”
Startled, Samantha stood up straight, looking like she had just been caught in the backseat with her boyfriend on prom night.
“Sorry,” the amazon detective said as she moved in closer to Samantha’s position. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Your partner there is a bit of a hard case,” she said.
“My boss, actually.”
“My condolences,” the amazon smiled. “I’m Catherine Jackson,” she said, her voice friendly, hand outstretched.
“Sam Patterson.” She shook the detective’s hand.
“Sorry if Corwin comes across as difficult. He’s a pain in the ass that way. It’s just his nature.”
She was surprised at her ability to joke with this total stranger. Usually, Samantha did not connect so easily with anyone, especially not someone she just met, but the amazon seemed friendly enough.
“Reminds me a bit of my captain, only without the grandfatherly curmudgeon vibe,” Catherine Jackson said only half jokingly and Samantha was again surprised by how quickly she found herself liking the amazon’s sense of humor. “How long have you worked for him?” the detective asked.
“Not long. Well, I worked for him a few years ago, but only transferred back to his unit this week.”
“Glutton for punishment, eh?”
“Something like that,” Samantha said around a pained grin she hoped the detective hadn’t noticed.
“So, what did you find?”
“Huh?”
The detective pointed to her hands.
“Oh,” Samantha absently rubbed her hands on her slacks, a nervous tic held over from childhood. She kneeled again and the detective did as well. “Looks like a spill of some kind. It wasn’t flagged here, but there are a couple markers there.”
She pointed toward the plastic markers she had noticed.
The detective followed with her eyes and nodded.
She looked over at Detective Jackson. “Smells like gasoline. A lot of it.”
“You’re right,” Jackson agreed as she sniffed the dirt as Samantha had moments earlier. “Hey, Mel?”
She turned as her partner walked toward her, his limp a bit more pronounced than before. Agent Corwin was walking the opposite direction in a huff.
“Yeah, Jacks?”
“You see this?”
“The gas? Yeah,” he cocked his thumb toward the tech team.
“And?” Agent Patterson inquired.
“Jacks...”
“It’s okay, Kimosabe. Agent Patterson is just trying to help.”
Walker shuffled. “Okay. At first, we thought it was just a little leakage from one of the cars, but it’s in a roughly rectangular shape and there’s more than a little here. Gas evaporates rather quickly, but the smell lingers.” Melvin made an invisible rectangle in the air with his cane.
“Like it was poured onto something?
“That’s our guess.”
“Something like a car, perhaps?” Samantha asked.
“I’d call that a clue,” Jackson joked.
“Way ahead of you. CSU already took a crap load of pictures before the gas could evaporate or soak into the ground. We also pulled random soil samples just to verify that it is gas before they moved on to the actual car.”
“And the markers?”
“The cap is off of what looks like a gas container. There were two of them. We did not find the containers. If I had to guess, I bet we find residue that puts them in the cars down below.”
The detective pointed toward the crane being lowered toward the first car. Nearby, a flatbed tow truck waited for its cargo.
“We had to take up the tags so the crane and flatbeds could come in,” he added. “They just haven’t grabbed these yet.”
“I wasn’t trying to second guess you, Detective Walker,” Samantha said, holding up her hands in a non-threatening manner. “Just making an observation.”
“It’s okay.” Walker shuffled. “I’ve got no problem cooperating with those who are willing to do the same, but your boss don’t seem like the share and share alike type.”
“No. He’s not,” Patterson agreed.
“Gas was definitely the accelerant used. It’s what set the second car on fire. According to CSU, there’s no doubt about that. The question becomes whether or not the driver set the car on fire before he drove off the edge.”
Samantha finished the thought. “Or if someone did it for him.”
“You thinking he was killed first, then set on fire and pushed off a cliff?” Jackson asked. The look on her face told Samantha how farfetched it sounded.
“Just a theory that fits the facts,” Patterson said. “If the car was stopped here, then our victim wasn’t just forced off the road. If he did stop up here, why would he then drive off the road? I’m guessing he was killed here, the car set on fire, and then pushed off the road.”
“Then, the million dollar question is this,” Lt. Walker said. “Why did the guy who killed our guy go over the cliff with him?”
Patterson shrugged.
“I have to admit, Lieutenant, you got me stumped there,” she said.
“Murder/suicide? Does that even make sense?” Jackson asked.
“That certainly elevates this to a whole new level, doesn’t it?” her partner added.
“That’s a bit of an understatement. All these Feds will be out for blood if someone murdered one of their own.”
“Just what we don’t need. What we do need are answers.”
“And here I thought this job was going to be tough,” Agent Patterson joked.
###
The Controller watched with interest.
It was cold, but he barely felt it except in his hands. Even though he wore gloves, the freezing temperature plucked away at his extremities. His fingers tingled, partly from the cold, partly from excitement.
He pulled off his gloves and blew into his cupped hands, feeling the warmth of his hot breath that quickly evaporated under the cold. A couple of more breathes and he pulled the gloves back into place.
Nervous energy tugged at him.
It was brazen to come out here to the crime scene. He stood along the side of the road, surrounded by enemies on all sides. How easily he had slipped into their inner circle. He could have been there for any of them. Surely, they were all deserving on one way or another. They were all alike and he hated their kind.
The sanctimony of it all got to him, but he held in the anger. There would be time to finish his plans. There were still more tweaks, a few more tests before he was completely satisfied that all of the bugs had been worked out. He had come so far and success was just out of reach.
He was so close he could taste it.
That’s why coming out here was a mistake, but also so exhilarating.
He had to see her for himself.
The Controller had chosen Catherine Jackson to be his challenger. She certainly had the credentials to make a favorable opponent. She was smart, fierce, and she possessed a deductive mind. He had taken it upon himself to do his research. It was a simple enough matter to bypass DC Metro’s firewalls and get a look at her reports as well as her classified file.
Catherine Jackson was the perfect opponent on paper, but he wanted to see her in person, to see first hand how she worked. Playing the game meant playing your opponent.
He planned to study Catherine Jackson very closely before making his next move.
Let the games begin.
sixteen
Washington DC
Sunday
Theodore “Ted” Brown was in heaven.
Gasping for breath, the forty-two year old systems analyst rolled over onto the left side of the bed. Next to him, and similarly taking in deep lungs full of air, was Sarah Smith, a twenty-six year-old college student who worked part time as a waitress at Lou’s Bar & Grill just a block and a half away from Ted’s Washington DC apartment.
They knew each other from the bar, which is where they originally met and eventually struck up a friendship. The bar was so close to his apartment that he could walk and not have to worry about driving after having a few drinks. Ted popped in a couple of times a week after a stressful day at work or to catch a game on pay-per-view with the other locals. It was so much more fun to hoot and holler with the other fans than to sit at home alone in front of the TV.
Sometimes he went to the bar hoping for a chance to talk to Sarah. Not that he would ever admit it, of course, because he was a guy and that’s just not the sort of thing they did. After a time, they became first name acquaintances to eventually friend
s and eventually that became something more, something exciting.
Sarah fascinated Ted. She was attractive, smart, witty, and they shared similar interests. She had an Associates Degree in computer/IT from Northwestern and was working part time jobs while she worked toward her Master’s during the day. As Ted worked in that industry, he often offered to help her study and had even passed along some contact information to help in her search for an IT analyst job in the city.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Perpetually shy, Ted never got up the courage to ask her out, although he came this close about a hundred times. Eventually, he just gave up on even trying, content to have a friend who shared his interests.
Eventually, it was Sarah who finally asked him out.
She had received an invite to a fancy black tie White House reception dinner. How she got invited remained a mystery to him, but he never asked for fear of alienating her. All she would say was that she knew people and that was enough for him. Despite some initial reservations, he accepted the invitation and accompanied her as her date for the evening and actually managed to enjoy himself. After hours of idle chit-chat, listening to boring speeches, and the other tedious things that came along with travel in political circles, they left for home.
He had not missed those types of political functions at all and it had been a few years since his last time squeezing into the tuxedo to sip expensive wine and eat undercooked chicken while some old windbag droned on endlessly about things he could care less about. Nope, he didn’t miss it at all, but Sarah was worth digging out the ol’ monkey suit. He was surprised it still fit.
Back when he was married, Ted attended more than a few state dinners and other functions when the ex-wife’s job required her to be there. At first, he enjoyed the hell out of it. It wasn’t every day he got to rub elbows with America’s power elite, after all. Eventually though, he realized these were ordinary people with high stress jobs and they complained about their jobs just like normal people complain about theirs and just as he complained about his. The shine was quickly off the political lifestyle and Ted was content to slip back to his small spot on the fringes of the political roller coaster ride that was Washington DC. Once the divorce was final, he assumed he would never find himself in those circles again, a thought that did not disturb him. That was her world, not his. His job as an outsourced analyst for the CIA was about as close to political life as he ever wanted to get.
