by John Douglas
Trish poked her head into the conference room. “We’re getting ready to taxi, Jake. You need to move up to the cabin. There’s a storm front coming in so we expect to run into some turbulence. Buckle up.”
I looked around the table at my team, all highly qualified and all just a bit eccentric, which is how they became Broken Wings in the first place. “I’d say Trish has the right idea.”
“Yeah,” Katie said, “buckle your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Jerry raised his hand. “Can I get a drink before we take off?”
5
We rented two cars at RDU Airport, got directions into Research Triangle Park, and took off. We traveled light, just one bag each except for Trevor, who also carried the duffel held over from his days with the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team. I had never looked inside this bag, but I guessed enough firepower was in there to take out a small village.
I called our contact, a Detective Weller with the Durham PD, and made a courtesy call to the local special agent in charge, the SAC in FBI parlance, telling him we were in his jurisdiction and what we were doing. People in law enforcement, myself included, are not big fans of surprises, so it’s best if no one jumps out from behind the sofa and yells, “Happy birthday!”
Detective Weller said the body was in the morgue at Duke Hospital and invited Dominic in to talk to the medical examiner. He gave Jerry the number of the Crime Analysis Unit, and Katie scribbled down directions to the crime scene.
Katie got behind the wheel, I got in the passenger side, and Trevor climbed in back.
“Figures,” Trevor said.
“What’s that?”
“We come to North Carolina and you make me ride in the back of the bus.”
“It’s not a bus,” Katie said. “It’s a Lincoln.”
“Whatever.”
“Think of me as your driver.”
“That would be okay.”
I turned so I could see Trevor spread out in the back. “Just settle back, Miss Daisy, while we carry you to the Piggly Wiggly.”
We rolled through gentle hills, dotted with high-tech buildings set back behind a screen of trees, until we came to the exit Weller had instructed us to take. From there a four-lane road, shaded by tall pines, ran past entrances to several Fortune 500 companies plus firms on the bleeding edge of pharmaceutical and high-tech research. Between two landscaped security gates, out of sight of either, was a tan sedan pulled to the side of the road.
“Looks like an official automobile to me,” Trevor said.
“And there are two official-looking officials,” Katie said.
Two men were standing beside the car, and even from a distance you could see they were plainclothes cops. It’s not the look so much as the way they move, slow and easy, as if they get paid by the hour.
Katie pulled up behind their brown-wrapper sedan and we got out.
The moonlight made the men shadows, and one stepped forward. “Is that you, Agent Donovan?”
“MisterDonovan, and you must be Detective Weller.”
Weller nodded and introduced his partner, Detective Snead. Snead raised a finger to his brow, but hung back.
“I’ve read your books,” Weller said, “especiallyViolent Crime Identification and Investigation . It’s been very helpful.”
“I sleep with it under my pillow,” Snead said. If he’d been a dog, he’d have snarled. I have that effect on local law; they either love me or hate me, depending on their own confidence, usually.
I introduced Katie and Trevor. We shook hands all around.
“I put together packages for each of you,” Weller said, and handed us files. “Inside are photos, initial reports, everything we know about the victim and the man we suspect is responsible for this.”
“Thank you, this is really conscientious work, Detective Weller,” I said. “But for now, don’t tell me anything. I like to see things for myself, okay?”
Weller shrugged. “Suits me.”
Even in the dark, I could see the rumple and slump of a cop near the end of a long day. Weller’s tie was loosened and his face sagged like a bed with broken springs. But his partner had an edge to him that practically threw off sparks.
“Let’s get this over with,” Snead said.
We followed the two through the trees, our footsteps cushioned by a blanket of pine needles.
“Things up in D.C. must be in a hell of a stew,” Weller said, “what with that attack on the First Lady.”
“It’s got everyone’s attention,” I said.
“Except yours,” Snead said. “I hear the AG personally pulled your ass off the case.”
“You heard right.” The admission caught Snead off-balance. Honesty will do that sometimes.
“Wait here a minute.” Weller moved down the slope and into the darkness of the woods. A moment later we heard a starter crank, a diesel cough and catch, and then the scene was bathed in light. Below us, an asphalt jogging path ran through the woods. The crime scene itself was in a shallow depression.
As many hours as I’ve spent around crime scene tape, when it’s wrapped around trees, I can’t shake the feel of cheap party streamers. The single stand of halogens threw the jogging path into high contrast of bright light and deep shadows.
“We’ve swept the area,” Weller said. “Everything’s back at the lab.”
Snead shrugged, his hands in his pockets, as if to say that there wasn’t anything to see here, but if we wanted to waste our time, he would oblige.
“You can see where they found him.” Weller pointed to tape marking out the rough outline of a prone body. “We did that for your benefit,” he said, referring to the outline. “Otherwise we wouldn’t bother.”
“I appreciate it.” I knelt by the outline and aimed my flashlight beam. “Has it rained today?”
“No,” Weller said.
“Not much blood. What else have you got?”
“One footprint.” He stared at the outline with me. “Two shell casings.”
“You pick up prints from the casings?”
“No. Clean. He must have wiped them.”
“So, the shooter was careful,” Katie said. “Except here.” She stood over the footprint, marked clearly by the white residue of the plaster cast.
As usual, Katie and I were thinking on the same frequency. The smart criminals, the real professionals who have learned from their mistakes, don’t usually give us something so obvious as a shoe print. It didn’t fit.
I could see Trevor’s flashlight farther down the path. He was looking through the trees toward the building a few hundred feet away. “That where he worked?”
Snead said it was.
I straightened up and Weller straightened with me. “Okay, now tell me what you think happened.”
“Callahan killed him and dumped him here,” Snead said.
“But we don’t know that,” Weller said.
“Bullshit, Frank.” Snead stepped into the light. His hands were out of his pockets and he counted the evidence off on his fingers. “One, people saw Callahan’s car parked up there last night.”
“Callahan’s the husband,” Weller said.
“Two, we found the shoe that matches that print in Callahan’s closet. Three, the casings are nine-millimeter Kurz, not exactly your standard caliber.”
“Makarov,” Trevor said. He’d come back up the trail and was standing behind Snead.
Snead turned, startled. “Yeah, a Makarov.”
“What’s that?” I looked up from my notepad.
Snead stared, openmouthed.
Trevor laughed. “Jake isn’t up on his esoteric firearms. That’s why he’s got me. It’s a Russian pistol, Jake, KGB tested and approved. Fires a nine-millimeter round slightly shorter than standard.”
“Kurz,”I said.
“Right. German for ‘short.’” Trevor turned to Snead. “Go on. The man’s up to speed now.”
Snead hesitated, then said, “I just can’t believe the great Jak
e Donovan’s never heard of a Makarov.”
“He still carries a .38,” Katie said.
“Get out.”
“Show him, Jake.”
I lifted the cuff of my pants so Snead could see the Airweight in its ankle holster. “It’s not the caliber of the bullet that counts—”
“—it’s the caliber of the man,” Trevor and Katie said together.
I ignored them. “So how does this KGB gun play out?”
“It’s the law in Durham County to register your handgun,” Weller said.
“Although nobody ever does,” Snead said.
“It’s not exactly a great system,” Weller said.
“Papers in a shoebox,” Snead said.
“Yeah, practically.” Weller shrugged.
“Took us all day to find it,” Snead said, “but there it was, a Makarov, made in East Germany when there was an East Germany, and it was registered to Callahan. So, combined with the gun, the car, the shoe, and the fact that Callahan and his wife are both missing, I think you can present this to the congressman as a closed case.”
“And, with the pictures, we’ve got motive,” Weller said.
“Pictures?”
Weller sighed and ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, in the victim’s computer. Pictures of him and Mrs. Callahan.”
For the first time, Snead smiled, revealing small, pointed teeth in a possum grin. “Pictures of them doing the nasty in a number of interesting ways. I’ll tell ya, pictures like that would make any husband crazy.”
“Jake, could you come here?” It was Katie, outside the roped-off crime scene. I could see her flashlight farther up the slope toward the road.
“Could you excuse me for a moment?” I walked up the rise, following my light, being careful where I stepped. “What have you got?”
“This.” Katie’s light followed a short pair of furrows, about nine inches apart, through the pine straw. “The pine needles look different here, as if they’ve been disturbed. Smoothed over, maybe.”
“We saw that, too,” Weller hollered up to us. “We figure that’s where the killer dragged the body down the hill.”
“Motive, opportunity, weapon, and witnesses.” Snead smacked at a mosquito on his neck. “I say we’re wasting our time out here when we should be looking for the husband.”
Katie and I walked back down to the jogging path. “I agree with your partner,” I said to Weller. “I think we look at the husband.”
Weller worked his jaw muscles a bit and said, “Well, that’s what we thought, but the congressman sent in an official request…”
“The congressman,” Snead interrupted his partner. “That’s the only reason Donovan’s here. Look, he even travels with his own camera crew.”
Above us, a van pulled in behind our rental car. The side door slid open and a cameraman climbed out, followed by the soundman, earphones clamped to his head. Another man got out from the driver’s side and waved.
“Damn.” I looked at Weller. “This didn’t come from us.”
Weller nodded, too tired to suspect anything different. “I believe you.”
“Excuse me, Agent Donovan?”
It was Spider Urich, a reporter with a hundred-dollar haircut and a million-dollar smile. He was making his way down the slope, slipping on his Italian soles.
Snead cut him off. “This is a crime scene, dickhead, you can’t come down here.”
“Agent Donovan? Can we have a word?” Behind him, the cameraman had me in his lens, and the soundman aimed his boom mike at my face.
I looked at Weller. “I’m sorry, they follow me like toilet paper stuck to my shoe.” I looked back at Spider and shouted up, “Give us a minute. Okay? But you have to wait by the van.”
I knew what Spider was thinking, and that was how waiting by the van might affect his screen time. When he decided it probably wouldn’t affect it at all, he said, “Okay.” He backed up the slope toward the cars, but the cameraman continued to roll.
“Katie? Go charm Spider for me, okay?”
“Right, Jake.”
“And, Katie? If Spider gives you a hard time…”
“I’ll give him a colonoscopy with the camera.”
“The woman can read minds,” I told Weller.
As Katie talked to Spider in the glare of the camera lights, Weller and I conferred on the path. “These people could be useful,” I said. “He’s done favors for me before.”
“You mean in getting the husband to turn himself in?”
“Maybe. Or just getting the guy’s face on the air and hope a good citizen turns him in. But right now, let Katie feed him a few lines of doodah. She’s very good at it.”
Weller smiled. “I know I’d watch her.”
“She’s not hard to look at, is she?”
“No. No, she isn’t.” Weller turned back to the jogging trail. “So, what do you think?” He nodded at the victim’s outline.
I turned my back to the camera, just in case the cameraman wanted to shoot some B-roll to back up Katie’s talking head. “It’s too early to tell. I want to hear from the ME and forensics and talk to some of the people they worked with. But right now, the husband looks real good for this.”
“You think he looks a little too good,” Weller said.
“That’s what I think.”
Snead stepped out from the shadows and joined us. “Come on, Donovan, everything points to the husband.”
Weller said, “Except for the shell casings.”
“Right,” I said. “They probably came from Callahan’s gun. But look around here. The shoe print, from a shoe that’s put back in the closet where you can find it.”
“The car by the road,” Weller said.
“It’s all pretty sloppy,” I said.
Trevor wandered back into our circle, “It’s too much like TV,” he said. “Only thing he didn’t leave behind was his wallet.”
“Or a matchbook from a local cocktail lounge,” Weller said.
“But he thought enough to wipe his prints from the shell casings,” I said. “Inconsistent behavior, don’t you think?”
“Everybody makes mistakes. The guy’s not a pro.”
“And the victim was killed somewhere else and then moved. I want to know where and why.”
“But he was shot here,” Snead said. “We have the brass.”
“The guy might have been shot here, but he wasn’t killed here. There’s not enough blood. So if he was killed somewhere else, why shoot him again here?”
“You think it was staged?” Weller asked.
“Yeah, and badly.”
Snead scratched his head. “So, you think it was someone else?”
I laughed. “No. I think we look real hard at the husband. But this other stuff bothers me. Now, let’s get up there before Katie shoots the reporter and we have another crime scene on our hands.”
6
Unlike in our days with the FBI, Mrs. De Vries’s budget allowed us to put up at a good hotel, one with a comfortable bar and a bartender who poured by feel. Trevor and I settled in for a postmortem of the day, but Katie begged off, saying she was tired. Jerry was in his room and Dominic was still at the morgue.
A woman with teased hair sipped at a cosmopolitan, and a man with no hair gulped Amstels. The TV was on CNN coverage of the plane explosion. They’d even come up with a swell graphic, a Hawker 700 split in half by an orange ball of flame. They were calling the story “Assault on the First Family.”
Most of the details were the same as we’d heard before except that they’d identified the explosive.
“Semtex,” Trevor said.
The announcer said, “The explosive is believed to have been Semtex, a plastic explosive detonated by a timer.”
I looked at Trevor. “How’d you know that?”
“Look, security’s tighter than a duck’s asshole at National. They have dogs and machines capable of sniffing out last July’s firecracker residue. Now, there’s only one explosive I know of that
you might be able to sneak past those highly trained sniffers. Semtex.”
The bartender was at the register with his back to us. While ringing up the cosmopolitan and the Amstel, he said, “From either Romania or Hungary.” He turned and placed the change and receipt in front of the customers.
I looked at Trevor again and he shrugged.
The woman with the cosmopolitan said, “They’ve been developing an odorless version for the past five or ten years.”
Her partner, the man with the Amstel and the bad toupee, leaned in so he could see past his companion and said, “It’s similar to C-4 except for the odorless part. All you’d need is a quarter pound of the stuff to take out a small jet like the Hawker.”
“Is this something everyone knows but me?”
The bartender refilled my Scotch without taking my money. “They will before the weekend’s out. It’s been all over the news.”
Trevor sipped his gin and tonic.
The mechanic who’d been found shot in his apartment had been working at the airport the night before, the anchorman reported. But so far, there was no conclusive evidence that his murder was connected to the bombing of the congressman’s plane.
When the eleven o’clock news came on, I asked the bartender to switch it to Fox. As I expected, the first fifteen minutes were a repeat of what we had just seen on CNN with an interview with the Speaker of the House, who hinted that the opposition party’s current budget fight had weakened morale and caused our security to be compromised.
The headlines were followed by a nice one-shot of Katie in the camera’s glare, answering Spider Urich’s questions. She looked beautiful, even without makeup, and I found myself wanting to get upstairs, shower, and climb into bed next to her. There’s nothing quite like the novelty of a hotel room to add a gymnastic edge to Katie’s sexual appetite. It was the one good thing about being on the road.
Katie was good at giving the usual diplomatic answers to Spider’s questions. The attorney general was a former prosecutor and more than capable of directing the investigation, she said. We were here only to assist local law enforcement in a homicide investigation, she said. There was no truth to the rumor that Jake Donovan and his team were taken off the assassination attempt. Yes, Katie repeated, the attorney general was quite capable.
