“Your best guess?” Jaime asked.
“Didn’t jump.” With a gesture, he nodded toward the building. “Something you ought to see. Call it a professional courtesy.”
Sergeant Davis guided him into the building and up the elevator to the twelfth floor of the Homeland Intelligence Division. They followed a circuitous route down hallways and around corners to an executive suite. After donning sterile gowns, booties, and gloves, they ducked beneath crime scene tape and entered the neon-lit confines. Only two items lay on the vacated desk. This morning’s edition of the Washington Gazette. And a computer monitor. Jaime speculated on the contents locked behind the login screen. If he were a betting man, he would put his money on the online version of the Gazette’s front-page story, written by a journalist with brass-plated ovaries. He had already read the article, scouring every word, comma, and semicolon. Even if Vikki Kidd didn’t name her source, he could read between the lines. It could only have been John Jackson Coyote who, up until a month ago, worked in this very building and reported to the same man whose name was engraved on a placard just outside the door of this office.
“I’d like to know what’s showing on that monitor,” Jaime said.
“Wouldn’t we all.”
The company laptop had been tagged for evidence along with the newspaper and pretty much the entire contents of the office. HID would fight like hell to keep any company documents from being leaked. Likely the DOJ and FBI would get involved, muddying the waters. If the case ever came to trial, any classified material presented as evidence was bound to be heavily redacted, hamstringing the prosecution. Regardless, all this speculation was probably irrelevant. That the incident was an execution meant to permanently silence a potential whistleblower hardly mattered. The killer would never be found, and Lady Justice would remain forever blind.
Davis nudged his head and led the way to the roof. Crime tape marked out the route from elevator to stairwell. The crime took place beneath the stars. It was daytime now, the opening hours of a typical workday. The roars and honkings and rumblings of vehicles reached them from twenty storeys below. Distant murmurings from street level were audible enough to know the crowd hadn’t diminished but increased exponentially.
A seagull soared overhead, screeching. Beneath her wings, Chesapeake Bay was an azure haze of sky and water. Down on terra firma, it was all madness and incomprehensibility.
There was very little evidence of a crime. Some crumbling at the base of the parapet. Minor blood splatter on the ledge. Most tellingly, a pair of brown Oxfords were left behind, no doubt belonging to the victim. Jaime always found this recurrent theme curious. Victims who met with sudden, violent ends almost always lost their shoes, as if it were a purposeful act, like a message in a bottle or initials scrawled in the sand.
“As a professional courtesy,” Jaime asked, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep me informed.”
“Looking for anything specific?” Davis asked.
Jaime was vague. “The usual. DNA. Blood type.”
“Your prime suspect ... Coyote ... did he have an accomplice?”
“Possibly.”
“Sightings?”
“Hasn’t been seen for a while.”
No point in going into specifics. Reports had come in from Arizona, New York City, Miami, and other places too numerous to count or give credence. The last time he ran into Jack Coyote, the bastard handcuffed him to the steering wheel of his squad car, a fact he never confessed to his superiors. And, Lordy, didn’t have to since he kept spare keys in the glove compartment. Coyote was a clever son of a bitch, all right, as driven to prove his so-called innocence as Benedicto was to nail him to the cross.
They climbed back downstairs. “Video cameras?” Jaime asked along the way.
“The agency keeps a low profile. Security is much lighter here than at Langley, which is where they ought to be. All entrances and exits in this building are electronically controlled. Only employees have access. Visitors are screened. We already made inquiries with building maintenance for records spanning the last twenty-four hours. Wouldn’t be surprised if they beefed up measures after this. Surprised they haven’t done it already.”
Jaime speculated how the assassination came down.
First. Contact made, mission outlined, and payment rendered.
Second. The hit man registered at a convenient hotel under an assumed name. A package was waiting for him. It contained a single item: an electronic badge.
Third. He holed up in the deluxe suite, ordering room service and awaiting orders.
Fourth. When the go-signal came, he changed into sweat pants and hoodie. Within an hour, he arrived at HID Headquarters on foot after having traveled most of the way via rental car, taxicab, and public transportation.
Fifth. He entered the building through the lower-level garage, made his way to the elevator bank, and used the electronic badge to gain entry.
Sixth. He took the elevator to the top floor, located the emergency exit, and climbed the rest of the way.
Seventh. When he emerged on the rooftop, the target turned toward him. Since the government bureaucrat was expecting someone else, he looked at the stranger with a mixture of surprise and puzzlement, but not shock. This momentary confusion spelled his doom.
Eighth. The assassin rushed forward, manhandled the target with brute force, and pushed the unsuspecting slob over the parapet.
In the end, it wasn’t a bad way to go. Quick and efficient with a heave and a push. Momentary suspension. Arms and legs flailing. Stars rising upward. Earth rushing up to meet him. The fall itself swift and painless, the victim barely comprehending what had happened. At the count of a few seconds—two or three, four at most—he screamed. Abruptly, his scream was cut off.
Based on the condition of the victim’s skull, he probably dived headfirst. The impact of his head meeting concrete would have sounded like the afterthought of a bad dream, no more and no less.
The killer would have looked over the parapet and viewed the motionless body, just to make doubly sure no mistakes had been made. There might have been witnesses, but from twenty storeys below no one could have identified the dark shadow up above. In no hurry, the killer departed the same way he arrived, calmly retracing his steps, exiting through the garage, and joining a rubbernecking crowd gathering around the grisly mess. The killer experienced a perverse pleasure in listening to the wails of grief and exclamations of horror. He stuck around for the emergency vehicles to arrive and watched as a phalanx of police officers cordoned off the building and herded spectators behind barricades. He made direct eye contact with one or more of the cops, looking as innocent as the day is long. He loitered long enough to observe the headshakes of paramedics declaring the victim dead at the scene. News reporters arrived a short time later. This was the killer’s cue to leave and not look back. He would never chance having his image captured on live video feed.
Jaime thanked Davis for his time and saw himself out.
At the Homeland Intelligence Division, dead bodies were stacking up like kindling for a bonfire. Maybe Jaime’s math was rusty, but the count was up to eight. Make that nine. First a pretty data analyst. Then the rumored disappearance of another HID employee. A woman pushed to her death beneath the wheels of a Metro train. A network security expert drowned off Virginia Beach. His wife killed weeks later in their Virginia home. Their eight-year-old daughter gone missing. An independent consultant found hanging in his apartment. Another HID employee dying of an overdose. And now a senior director plunging to his death.
Even if Jack Coyote had been indicted for only one of the deaths, he was guilty of them all. How many more would fall victim before he was put away for good? When that joyful occasion took place, Jaime would be the one to bring him in.
He exited the lobby and stepped onto the plaza. The ambulance was just now pulling away with the victim’s body onboard. Barricades remained in place. As did the evidence tent, its canvas sheeting ruffling in light summ
er breezes beneath which a man’s lifeblood stained the paving stones.
A handsome woman headed straight for Jaime. “Well, hallelujah, look who the cat drug in!” Vikki Kidd shot her eyes up to the top of the building. “What’s the verdict? Jumped? Or pushed?”
Jaime washed a palm over his face, then looked where she was looking, twenty storeys up. “Jury’s still out.”
“The jury is in!” She sang the words like the sole member of a church choir. Approaching closer, she shielded the side of her mouth and spoke softly. “A little secret, Sergeant. He was pushed.”
“Do in no small part to your article.”
She slapped a hand to her chest. “Oh, my, Sergeant, you slay me. I represent the Fourth Estate. Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Superwoman to the rescue, that’s me.” And with that, she trudged across the plaza and went to seek out more truths.
On his way back to the squad car, something caught his eye. He approached closer. A cell phone lay in the storm gutter, the face plate cracked and the protective frame scuffed and askew. He rolled out a handkerchief and scooped it up, studying its mangled condition. Then he twisted around and peered up toward the roofline of a skyscraper where a bureaucrat had either taken the easy way out or been killed at the hands of an assassin.
Once inside the squad car, he slipped the phone into an evidence pouch and calmly drove away.
5
Vienna, Virginia
Monday, August 11
AT THE AGE of twenty-seven, Cordelia Burke still harbored enough naïveté to believe most people were good at heart.
She trusted her superiors at the Monetary Compliance Network—better known as MonCom—to eventually recognize every one of her exceptional qualities, including the sterling degrees earned at top universities and her stint with one of the largest CPA firms in the country. Augmented by street smarts, dedication, and hard work, her abilities should have taken her far. They hadn’t. Probably never would. Unless she carved out a path of her own.
When life throws you a curve ball, you duck. Then you get up, dust yourself off, and get yourself a Louisville slugger.
Jon Taggert—head of Illicit Finance Methodologies—interrupted her introspections. He appeared in the doorway of her cubicle, his expression oddly curious, sort of like a dog sniffing a bone.
The cup of coffee nestled in Cordelia’s hands had become lukewarm. She cautiously set it aside, distrustful.
He pulled out the chair opposite her desk, took a seat as if he personally paid for the damned thing, and leaned back, hands laced behind his neck, a power move. “Find anything else about that fifty mill?” He grinned. It was a smug grin. He was hiding something under his rolled sleeves.
Taggert was a good-looking man. Virile, trim, a demanding boss, a smooth operator. Though his ideas didn’t always jive with upper management, he was an indispensable fixture and had the run of his division without interference. Critical and bad-tempered, he expected each of his reports to exceed expectations. He barked and harangued and nitpicked. Nothing Cordelia did was ever good enough. Combine his cogitating brain and his knack for being two steps ahead of everyone else, particularly Cordelia, she always found herself backed into tight corners.
Plus he read her like the front cover of a paperback. “C’mon, Delia. Give.”
She gazed at him levelly, eyes narrowed and stubborn. She had a few more intelligence reports to download, disseminate, analyze, and store for future reference. A few more databases to scour. A few more phone calls to make. But the bulk of the grunt work was behind her. “You heard about the Spinnaker Papers?”
When the article broke this morning, Cordelia avidly listened to the news bulletins. About a secret intelligence-gathering operation run by the Homeland Intelligence Division. About black operations taking place right under the noses of the President, the Congress, and Senator Wallace Reed, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. About the agency’s clandestine support of terrorist organizations, mercenaries for hire, and sleeper cells. About the rumored shadow government that looked as if it weren’t only real but was operating out of HID headquarters. About a massive data collection program reaching into the private lives of every man, woman, and child. About the journalist’s unnamed source, speculated to be Jack Coyote, the data analyst who once worked for HID, arrested last month for the murder of his girlfriend but unexpectedly released on bond based on contradictory evidence, only to jump bail a few days later. About the rumored disappearance of another HID employee, a purported whistleblower whose job involved black ops. And then a late-breaking addendum about the apparent suicide of yet another high-ranking official who jumped off the roof of HID headquarters in the early-morning hours, details pending. A footnote was added, absent fanfare: Jack Coyote was still at-large despite a manhunt conducted by the Severn County Sheriff’s Office in cooperation with the FBI.
Taggert eyed her without blinking. “Does it have anything to do with your vanilla name inside the manila envelope?”
She made the connection over a week ago but kept it to herself. She wanted to get ahead of Taggert for a change. And she wanted to line up all the dominos before tipping them over with the tip of her manicured fingernail. She did so now. “Everything.”
He raised his eyebrows, considered her meaning, and nudged his head.
Minutes later, Cordelia was riding in the passenger seat of Taggert’s luxury sedan. Every so often he peeled his eyesight away from traffic and cast furtive glances towards her. His face was intense yet relaxed, mirroring the dichotomy of a man not quite settled in his skin, and probably never would be. His was the profile of an intelligent bureaucrat but also one of a sharp-edged executive on the go. Possessed of a sturdy head that sat squarely on a sturdy neck, he had the darkest eyes and blackest hair Cordelia had ever seen on a third-generation Scotsman. His square jaw, dimpled chin, carved nose, and sandpapered cheeks reminded her of those famous marble statues from the Italian Renaissance, features hacked with mallet and chisel. He played down his good looks but never hesitated using them to his advantage. The steady temperament of a man concentrating on his foremost problems of the moment—and when weren’t there problems?—had endeared him to her. She couldn’t help it. She recognized perfection when she saw it. And he was pure perfection, even if an unmitigated ass.
They arrived at a motor hotel situated miles away from Pennsylvania Avenue and Ford’s Theatre, the type of motel where random couples occupied rooms by the hour with no questions asks. The seedy kind with musty smells and dirty carpets but clean linens and dark drapes. The friendly sort that accepted cash with a wink and a nod.
They shyly glanced at each other while disrobing. It had always been this way: the shedding of their professional deportment into naked lust. He had come into bed and into her arms with his mouth on hers while the palms of his hands raked over her breasts, inside the curves of her waist, and around the fullness of her hips. None of the women at the office would have believed Jon Taggert a tender man. When they came together, there was no shock or surprise, merely the effortless joining of their bodies with sweet kisses and murmurs of devotion, usually uttered from his lips rather than hers. Her conscience told her this was wrong. Wrong for a promising financial analyst to be in bed with her boss. And wrong for her to take these sleazy but most enjoyable side trips away from the office.
After they had exchanged intimacy for intimacy, Taggert collapsed onto his back and stared at the ceiling, occasionally stealing shy glances of her while drumming angular fingers on his bare chest, resplendent with a pleasing pattern of pectoral hair, athletic musculature, and sweaty exertion. This was the real Taggert, stripped to his core. Energetic and vibrant. Raw boned and hard muscled. The kind of man a woman either took into her heart and her arms, or flat-out rejected without a backward glance. Cave man, modern man, and wolf man melded in a single package, harboring jealousies, cravings, complexities, and sentimentalities, and given to either angry tirades or poetic monologues, but only on
alternate days.
She asked him about his wife. “What about Amy? Doesn’t she ...?”
He turned his head, shot her a penetrating look, and completed the incomplete question. “Jog? Does Amy jog? Is that what you want to know?”
She elbowed him in the gut. “Satisfy your needs.”
He grunted before chuckling, a nasty kind of chuckle but bubbling with glee. “It’s not a matter of satisfying a man’s needs. It’s about sharing, affection, comfort, companionship, getting away from the grind, having a meeting of minds.” A surprising statement from an equally surprising man.
Taggert smelled of the outdoors, of the laundered sheets they were entangled in, and faintly of aftershave. A man who would cheat on his wife while she was home cleaning an already clean house and looking after their two boys with tolerant devotion had to be a louse. He admitted it to her more than once, always in tones of sincere self-flogging. He felt the pangs of guilt but also needed to escape the false image of the man he presented to everyone else. In many ways, he was a great man among lesser men. A man of another century, back when battle dress was everyday fair and assassins lurked around every corner. Yet still a man of this century, when war was played with different weapons requiring considerably more brain than brawn.
“Is that what we just did? Have a meeting of minds?”
“And other things.” He chuckled and snuggled closer, wrapping his arms about her and making a pillow of her breast.
They lay like this for several minutes, saying nothing, just letting the heat of passion dissipate from their skins and the perspiration of exertion evaporate from their brows.
He reached over and checked his cell phone for messages before setting it aside. “The Spinnaker Papers. The fifty mill. The vanilla name inside the manila envelope. How are they all connected?”
Enemies Within Page 3
