Collision

by William S. Cohen

  Poindexter chose to stand rather than sit, as Agrawal had. He was a pudgy, balding young man in his midthirties. He wore a blue blazer with golden buttons over a white shirt and flowery tie, and he had that ineffable look of a man not used to wearing a tie. Agrawal handed him the remote. He brought up an image of a black Mercedes-Benz S600 on a lift in a garage that looked as sanitary as a surgical theater. A click on the remote changed the image to the inside driver’s door and showed the opened pocket that had contained Viktor Yazor’s gun.

  “An extra accessory,” Poindexter said.

  The image shifted to focus on the navigation screen to the right of the steering wheel. “This car is a treasure for us. The navigation system produces what we call a bread-crumb trail that shows dates, time, routes, and destinations and saves it all on board. The user would undoubtedly like to encrypt or dump that data to keep it secret. But because the car’s navigational electronics is so intertwined with the car’s other suites of electronics, tampering is limited and encryption is weak, unlike the laptop. We attacked the car encryption with relative ease. We were able to download everything it had. One of the—”

  “Results,” Sarsfield cut in, “is that we can construct two timelines. Okay, Poindexter, put them on screen.”

  Onto the screen came what at first looked like two Google Maps pages, one labeled Laptop Timeline, the other Car Timeline.

  Falcone leaned forward as, under Laptop Timeline, a blue, arrow-headed line appeared on a map of the Washington area.

  “Okay,” Sarsfield said. “The computer arrives at Reagan National Airport on the night of October second at a time coinciding with the time that an American Airlines Los Angeles flight arrives. Cole Perenchio is on that flight.”

  “Under his own name?” Falcone asked.

  “Yes,” Sarsfield responded, frowning at the interruption. “Carrying a stolen laptop.”

  Agrawal’s laser beam hit the blue arrow, which moved from the airport to the Rosemont neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia.

  “The laptop goes to Locust Lane in Alexandria. Investigation shows that it was carried in a Town Car, owned by Luxury Autos of Washington and hired by Harold Davidson, a partner in the law firm Sullivan and Ford, which maintains an account at Luxury Autos.”

  Falcone knew that FBI agents were extremely proficient at courtroom testimony, often embellished with charts and maps. Even the tone of an agent’s voice was modulated so that it was flat, unemotional, thorough, and therefore trustworthy to a juror’s ears. He was listening to a bravura performance of FBI testimonyspeak.

  “The laptop spent the night at Davidson’s home, and—”

  “How do you know that?” Falcone asked.

  “His wife—widow—was shown a photograph of the laptop,” Sarsfield said, his voice turning from that of a testifier to that of an interrogator. “She says that Davidson brought a Dell laptop, which she had not seen before, into the home on the night of October second. On the morning of October third he took it with him when another Luxury Autos vehicle picked him up and took him to the Sullivan and Ford Building, arriving at nine thirty-five, according to his elevator-entry card.”

  Sarsfield nodded to Poindexter, who aimed his laser at the car timeline and controlled the movement of a red, arrowed line as Sarsfield narrated its October 2 passage from the airport to a hotel at Thomas Circle—“following the taxi that Cole Perenchio took, because the driver of his taxi said in an interview that he dropped him at this site, the Washington Plaza Hotel, at ten fifty p.m. The car then drove to a motel at New York Avenue in Washington, where, earlier in the day, three men had registered for individual rooms.”

  Sarsfield continued his narrative, noting that the men spent October 3 in their rooms, except for venturing out to eat lunch and dinner at places that Sarsfield did not include in his narrative, probably because they left the motel on foot, separately or together. “The only use of the car, according to the GPS data,” Sarsfield said, “was a drive to the area around the Sullivan and Ford Building, apparently to plan the attack.”

  “Does the car show up on security cameras on that day?” Falcone asked.

  “I am confining these two timelines to data obtained from the computer and the car that pertain only to this interview.”

  “So far,” Falcone said, “I have not seen any reason for this interview. May I ask why I am here?”

  “Very well, Mr. Falcone. I am examining the chain of evidence regarding an exhibit from the crime, the SpaceMine laptop. Through the use of the laptop tracker and the car’s GPS data, we have determined that there is a gap in the movement of the laptop from the crime scene at the law firm to the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police, prior to when that organization turned the laptop over to the bureau.”

  “Gap? Where’s the gap?”

  Sarsfield pointed to the car timeline and motioned to Poindexter. The red arrow point moved to Eleventh and D. “The car stops here,” Sarsfield said. “We think the driver picked up the surviving shooter here.” The arrow kept moving. “They pull into a public parking garage, where they spent nearly two hours—and then they stop at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, where you happen to live.”

  Falcone said, “What the hell are you—”

  “Switch to the laptop timeline,” Falcone ordered, and Poindexter moved that map’s blue arrow to accompany Sarsfield’s narrative of the laptop’s passage from the Sullivan & Ford Building to the homeless shelter and then to 701 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “Paul Sprague told me, in a sworn statement,” Sarsfield continued, “that you, Mr. Falcone, called him at approximately three thirty p.m. and said you had the laptop. My question, Mr. Falcone, is how did you obtain the laptop?”

  “I told Paul how I obtained it. I got it—along with a gun and a black jacket—from a homeless guy who had picked it up from behind a Dumpster near the Second Street shelter.”

  “That is not what Mr. Sprague told me. He merely said you handed him the laptop, gun, and jacket and asked him to give it to the DC police. But these two timelines indicate that the car stopped at the homeless shelter on Second Street Northwest, discovered that the laptop was no longer there, and then drove to your address, where the laptop next appears.”

  “I told Paul Sprague about getting the items from the homeless man—his name was Thomas Crawford. I asked Sprague to give the laptop, gun, and jacket to Detective Emmetts, along with the name Thomas Crawford.”

  “Mr. Sprague did hand the laptop and other items to Detective Lieutenant Emmetts, but there was no mention of a Thomas Crawford,” Sarsfield said. “The laptop tracker shows that the laptop was briefly in the Sullivan and Ford Building.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Falcone said, raising his voice and staring at the laptop timeline. “Your timeline shows that Sprague had it for thirty-two minutes. The building is so close to DC police headquarters that Emmetts would be there in, at most, ten minutes after Sprague called him.”

  Before Sarsfield could respond, Agrawal said, “There’s an explanation. The phone calls.”

  Sarsfield glared at her as Falcone asked her, “Phone calls?”

  “Using a national security letter, we obtained records of the firm’s phone calls on the day of the shootings,” Sarsfield said. “Mr. Sprague appears to have made two phone calls during the time that he was in possession of the laptop.”

  “To whom?” Falcone asked.

  “I am not at liberty to say,” Sarsfield mumbled.

  “And did Verizon get a national security letter from you to get a record of my home phone calls and Ben Taylor’s calls?”

  “Again, I am not at liberty to say.”

  Falcone turned to Agrawal and asked, “Does the tracker show that attempts were made to use the laptop’s USB ports during the time that Sprague made those two calls?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Sarsfield ordered. That was answer enough for Falcone, remembering his favorite Pynchon quotation.

  “This is a farce, Sarsfield,” Falcone sai
d “I’m beginning to feel like that poor son of a bitch in Atlanta whom you guys called ‘a person of interest.’”

  “That’s what your friend Dr. Taylor told me,” Sarsfield said. “But neither one of you is charged with anything … yet.”

  “Well, then I’m through here.”

  “I thank you. And I know all we need to know … for now,” Sarsfield said. “I’ll make an appointment soon to obtain a formal statement.”

  Sarsfield stood up. He told Poindexter and Agrawal to stay while he escorted Falcone out of the building and added, “I’ll be back. We have a few things to tie up.”

  “Like who killed Cole Perenchio,” Falcone said.

  Sarsfield turned, pointed at the car timeline for October 5, and said, “At nine fourteen, they park near Perenchio’s hotel. The night manager’s log shows that at nine twenty he called for a cab. The cabbie who responded identifies Perenchio from a photo, and—”

  “Excuse me,” Falcone interrupted. “A photo?”

  “Correct. Obtained from NASA Human Resources,” Sarsfield said. “And the cabbie drops him off at Constitution Avenue near the Capitol Grounds. He remembers because there’s nothing there, no bar, no restaurant, and he asked his passenger if he was sure this was the right spot. The cabbie figured maybe he was meeting someone. The car moves two minutes later, obviously following the cab to Capitol Hill. Nine minutes later, the car returns to the motel.”

  “And Cole Perenchio is dead.”

  “Correct,” Sarsfield said. “Let’s go.”

  54

  Falcone stepped out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and took a cab to the Taylor home. When a surprised Ben Taylor answered the door, Falcone said, “Sorry I didn’t call ahead.” As he followed Ben to the entrance hall, he kept talking: “We both definitely have to watch what we say on the phone. Tell Darlene. And tell her to warn Sam. We all have to be very careful.”

  “Sit down, Sean,” Ben said, pointing to the living room couch. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve just had an ‘interview’ with Agent Sarsfield. We have to move fast. Now we’re both persons of interest.”

  “Welcome to the club. What’s he after?”

  “The shooters are dead. So the shootings case is closed. But he keeps working. I think he’s obsessing to find out what’s behind the shootings and the murder of Cole Perenchio. He knows there’s a connection, but he doesn’t know where to find it.”

  “What are they getting off the hard drive? Was it completely cleaned?”

  “You know better than I do that a good tech can pull a lot out of a hard drive. They’ll eventually get some bits and bytes.”

  “But it will take a long time and a lot of work to put them together and make sense,” Taylor said. “They’d probably have to hand it off to NSA experts. They’re the folks with very dark techniques unknown outside the NSA. From what I’ve heard, there’s no such a thing as a cleaned hard drive.”

  After describing what had happened at FBI headquarters, Taylor said, “But I should thank Sarsfield for what he gave me.”

  “What’s that?” Taylor asked, sinking into his favorite living room chair.

  “All along I’ve wondered why Cole lugged a laptop around when he could have just put a thumb drive in his pocket.”

  “Right. I wondered that, too,” Taylor said.

  “Turns out the USB ports were disabled, locked—but they could be activated on command. And it looks as if Sprague did use them.”

  “Downloaded them before he gave the laptop to the DC police,” Taylor said, leaning forward. “I guess he did that to give the data to Hamilton.”

  “Bull’s-eye! Sprague made two phone calls while he had the laptop. One to the cops about turning it over and the other, I’ll bet, to Hamilton, who gave him the commands to open the laptop and activate the port. So Hamilton would get what was on Cole’s laptop—and the cops would get an empty laptop.”

  “The FBI will figure that all out,” Taylor said. “They should be talking to Sprague, not you.”

  “I think their real person of interest is Sprague,” Falcone said. “Sarsfield is incredibly thorough—and clever. He called me and set up his dog-and-pony show because he wanted to find out whether I was somehow involved with Sprague. Turns out Sprague didn’t tell them what I had told him. It was a typical Sprague move: get me into trouble and keep himself out of trouble. But forget that. I know something that Sarsfield doesn’t know.”

  “What’s that?”

  Falcone told him about Sprague’s computer illiteracy. “Now stay tuned,” Falcone said. He reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out his Best Buy cell phone. “I don’t think they’ve got me linked to this number yet.” He tapped the number for Sullivan & Ford and asked for Ursula Breitsprecher, knowing she never let her phone ring more than twice.

  “Ursula? Sean. Don’t hang up. You need to hear this,” he said.

  He could picture the frown rippling across her face, the good-sense part of her brain calculating.

  “Make it fast,” she said icily.

  “I have just visited the USG organization on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Falcone said, fearing that “FBI” would trigger an NSA keyword response. “I learned that on the afternoon of October fourth you provided your boss with your usual assistance. Twice. For your own good, you need to get that information to the correct USG officials,” Falcone told her in his most persuading voice. Now he pictured her, pursing her lips and raising her head, as if the answer were on the ceiling. She has to know she tampered with evidence, he thought. And “USG” will get to her German soul.

  “How?” she asked in a firm voice.

  “Easy. Meet me at the Starbucks near you in an hour. Bring the thing. I’ll bring my laptop, load it in, and give it back. You will have cooperated. Problem solved.”

  Seconds ticked by. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “Is this a client-lawyer conversation?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  “I do.”

  “Agreed. As usual, Ursula, good thinking. See you in an hour.”

  Taylor’s car was parked down the block. While he drove Falcone home, they planned their next moves. At 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, Taylor parked underground. Then they took the elevator to the penthouse, where Falcone picked up his laptop and put two cups of morning coffee into the microwave.

  Sitting next to each other at the kitchen counter, they completed their plan.

  “I used to hate heated-up coffee,” Taylor said, extracting the cups and handing one to Falcone. “Not bad from a microwave, though.”

  Falcone nodded. He took a couple of sips and said, “Right. Not bad. But not good. I’ve got another reason for looking forward to Starbucks. What do you think we’ll be getting?”

  “We’ll be getting something that Hamilton wanted real bad. That’s for sure,” Taylor said. “And remember Cole said to me that he blamed himself for Hal’s death. He was scared. He thought he was in danger. And he was right. Hal dead. Cole dead.”

  “Don’t brood, Ben. We’re both still vertical,” Falcone said. “See you soon with the goods.”

  He finished his coffee, put his laptop in its carrying case, and headed for the door.

  55

  Falcone’s bespoke suit and cashmere topcoat did not blend into the Starbucks style, which favored jeans and hooded jackets with the hoods down. But his laptop certainly did fit in. He opened it and looked around. From his corner two-person table he counted twelve fellow patrons hunched over their laptops. He did not count the number of times he looked at his watch. Fifty-two minutes had passed since he said he would meet Ursula in an hour. He believed that she would be here in eight minutes or she would not come at all, because she did not know how to be late.

  She swept into Starbucks with seven minutes to spare, her long blond hair and her crimson cape flowing around her trim figure. Several men looked up from their screens as she twisted through the tables to Falcone, who rose and extended his hand, which she did
not take.

  “Can I get you coffee—or tea. I nearly forgot, you prefer tea,” Falcone said.

  “No thanks,” she said as she sat down opposite him and used her coldest voice. “Luckily Paul is in Middleburg for the day. But I’m jammed, as usual. Let’s get to the business. I have what you want.” She pulled the cover off a black thumb drive and inserted it into the side of his laptop.

  “I did not know what to do. I knew … knew something was wrong,” she said, her voice losing its frost. “Paul, always with secrets. I know he is doing something wrong and … pulling me in.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, Ursula,” Falcone said.

  “But, Sean, what does it mean for me to do the right thing?”

  “It means you are putting yourself on the right side of the law.”

  Falcone’s eyes were locked on the laptop. When the thumb-drive download ended, he grasped the drive with one napkin and wiped it with another before handing it back to her.

  She slipped the thumb drive into her small black handbag and asked, “What will you do with this?”

  “Hold on to it for now. I guess you know that the laptop was taken from Hal’s office during the shooting.”

  “Yes, although Paul did not tell me that.”

  “You probably know more law than most of the partners. So I’m sure you realize that one important element in the chain of evidence is who secured the evidence and who had control or possession of the evidence.”

  “So Paul was in possession—and tampered with the evidence,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning across the table. “And … and I helped him.”

  “But you didn’t know it was evidence, did you?”

  “No. I walked into Paul’s office and saw a laptop, and I did what he told me to do.”

  “The usual ballet?”