by Andrew Mayne
“That didn’t stop you from grabbing us,” Aileen replies. She’s still trying to assess Vachon.
Vachon turns to her. “I think there was a credible threat to Agent Blackwood. Seriously, it’s dangerous for you to be out here.” She’s scolding us like we’re a couple of high school kids caught in the park after midnight.
I’m not in the mood for a lecture. If the Secret Service is aware of this threat, they’re still not doing enough. Turf wars aren’t going to help.
“Why don’t you put your badge on your chest and we take a walk outside and see who’s the first one to get assaulted? Right now, we’re all targets.”
“Some of us are special targets.” She glances down at my side. “I heard you had an encounter already.”
“How is trapping us in a basement in the middle of DC going to help?” asks Aileen. She points to the door. “Whoever was following us could be waiting for us to leave your little clubhouse.”
“Trapped?” snaps Vachon. “I pulled you in here to get you out of here.”
“Well, unless you got some Harry Potter shit up your sleeve,” Aileen replies, “I don’t see how you’re going to manage that one.”
Vachon smiles at me. “It turns out I’m not the only one here who knows a trick or two.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Wormhole
Marisa Vachon’s trick was an impressive one. If our pursuers had the benefit of a bird’s-eye view, they would have seen us enter that brownstone just down the street from Lafayette Square and never emerge.
Her method was behind a secure door in the basement. On the other side stood two marines and a golf cart at the entrance of a narrow underground corridor that stretched for several blocks. Vachon turned toward L Street before we got to see how far it actually goes.
The White House tunnel leading to the Federal Reserve is a well-known piece of history. It was excavated during World War II so President Roosevelt could be wheeled to his bedroom inside a vault. It was the safest place in the city for him to wait out a theoretical Nazi bombing raid.
In the years since, the White House has dug deeper basements and created a labyrinth of tunnels below the city. I briefly dated a software consultant who once showed me an infrared map of DC. You could see the well-known tunnels leading from the White House to the Federal Reserve and the Capitol Building, but there were also several others leading off in various directions, including what looked like a small subway line straight to Andrews air force base.
If it sounds like an extravagant effort, it’s important to remember that this is the federal government we’re talking about, where a few billion dollars can represent a rounding error on a defense appropriations bill.
“I guess this makes getting to work a little easier,” I joke as Vachon takes the corner.
“That would not only be a firing offense, it’s probably also a federal crime,” she replies, with a small sigh. “I’m sure the Russian and Chinese have maps of these tunnels, so keeping it a secret is really just a bureaucratic formality. You guys get a free pass, given the circumstances.”
As we drive down the tunnel I see basement entrances to other buildings at intersections that follow the street map above.
“How do they keep landlords from digging through their basements and into here?” I ask.
“We’re under the sewage lines, mostly.”
“Well, that makes sense,” says Aileen, under her breath.
“I heard that,” Vachon shoots back. “Sometimes we need to move the president and other officials around more securely than we can on city streets. We’ve expanded on the tunnels recently given changes in technology. It’s the cost of living in an age when, for under a thousand bucks, you can buy a remote control drone that could deliver a half pound of C4 faster than you shout, ‘Get down.’”
I’ve had my own run-ins with bad guys using the devices. It’s scary to think we’re only just scratching the surface of what can be done with technology. The future is frightening.
“You guys can jam those kind of things?” Aileen asks.
“We have countermeasures . . .” She doesn’t elaborate as she brings the cart to a stop in front of a metal door. “Here we go.”
I stay put. “Are you going to level with us?” I ask flatly.
Clearly the Secret Service has its own intelligence about the Red Chain and what’s been going on. I’m getting a little sick of the interdepartmental territorialism. Vachon doesn’t seem like the type to tolerate it either. I get the sense she’s trying to level with us, but doesn’t know how, or is under pressure not to.
Aileen gives me a confused look.
“I’m sorry?” Vachon acts genuinely bewildered.
I gesture to the corridor. “Why expose all this to us?”
“I’m sure you can be trusted with a secret.”
“Of course. But there were other ways to get us out of there.”
Vachon fiddles with the keys on her chain. “Speed is critical.”
“What’s going on? Is there something we need to know?”
She nods toward the street above. “We think things are going to blow up pretty badly out there. We’re about to have several platoons of marines stationed in the tunnels ready to protect federal buildings at all costs.”
“What’s changed?” asks Aileen.
Vachon weighs something in her head for a moment. “I can’t say, but could either of you pull the radio transcripts for Capitol Police?”
“We have overlap. I could,” Aileen responds. “What do you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I just don’t want to be telling tales out of school. It’s going to leak any moment, and that’s what we’re preparing for.”
“What?” I implore. She’s testing my patience.
“Bogden and Steadman, the two officers involved in the shooting? One hour before it happened, they were dispatched to meet with Senator Friedkin. He’s the head of the domestic surveillance appropriations committee. That was the black-budget committee the public only found out about a few months ago.”
That caused yet another public privacy outrage, because this was the group that voted in secret on how much to spend tapping our phones and reading our Facebook posts.
“If you were into conspiracy theories and wanted a bogeyman, Friedkin would be it,” Vachon says. “Obviously, it’s just a coincidence. But that’s not the way the less stable people are going to see it. They want to believe the shooting was a planned government plot. You’ve seen the news. It’s one thing when we have two random cops acting out of line. It’s another when they were allegedly just with the one man who oversees the NSA and CIA’s secret budgets beforehand. The one guy who could lead a coup.”
“You sound like one of the protestors,” I reply.
“I have to understand how they think. I have to be even more paranoid than they are.”
“What do you mean when you say they met with him?” Aileen asks.
“Capitol Police provide a protected escort, in between reinforcing White House Police and Metro at federal buildings. They were sent to get him out of the Capitol.”
“He’s still here?” I ask, surprised that someone this high up would still be in the city after the protests.
Vachon shakes her head. “No. It was a scheduling screwup. An old appointment on his calendar. Apparently Bogden and Steadman never actually met him. But the conspiracy theorists won’t see it that way. They’ll spin them as his own hit squad or something equally ludicrous.”
“But the radio transcript has them meeting with him?” I ask.
“Yes. Their badge numbers are called out and told to go to that address to pick him up. They use a code for Friedkin, of course. But it’s a thinly held secret. The media is already suing for the transcripts. It’s only a matter of time. Like I said, things are going to get real ugly. That’s why I need you ladies out of here.”
“What address?” I ask.
“For what?” Vachon holds open the door.
“What address were they sent to? Is it in or out of the protest zone?”
“Outside. Why?”
I turn to Aileen. “Because we’re going there.” I can tell she’s with me on this.
Vachon groans. “Whatever you two do away from the White House is your business. But it’s not safe anywhere near here. Especially for you.” She looks right at me. “There are people out to get you.”
“It’s not safe for anyone. And has anyone looked into the pickup request? Doesn’t that sound weird?”
Too many coincidences are piling up. A pattern is emerging. Vachon and everyone else’s problem is that they’re too cautious to call it what it is—a conspiracy.
“People kind of have their hands full. Besides, it was a nonevent. Unless you think Friedkin really was there.” She considers us for a moment. “It’s on Ninth near the Convention Center.”
“I don’t think he was there,” I reply. “But the call is suspicious. And right now, we shouldn’t let anything like that go by us without looking into it.”
We haven’t been able to crack the Red Chain yet, and I’m desperate for anything that could tie it to the protests. The Friedkin connection could be something.
We follow Vachon up a flight of stairs and through another door to emerge into the back of a post office on L Street. She walks us to a side exit.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Too late for that,” says Aileen. She glances at me. “We’re full of stupid. No point changing now.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Line of Sight
Bogden and Steadman were supposed to pick Friedkin up at a brick building next to a dry cleaner and a print shop. The businesses are all closed in the event that the protest expands even farther outward.
A front doorway leads up a flight of stairs to two offices. One belongs to Friedkin’s accountant, the other to an attorney. Both of them cleared out of the city when the protests started getting violent.
Aileen called the building superintendent and got permission for us to take a look at the common areas. He offered to bring us a key, but I told her to decline once I saw the lock. A simple tumbler, I have it open in five seconds. Aileen, still on the phone, scowls at me like I’m a delinquent teenager. I take notice of the fact it wouldn’t have been difficult for someone less skilled than me to trip the latch with a piece of thin plastic.
As she finishes up on the phone running down some leads, I stand in the doorway and think things over. Assuming the dispatch was intentional but they never met Friedkin, what was the purpose?
Did they meet with someone else here? Were they threatened? I’ve seen something like that happen before. But Bogden and Steadman were single and childless, and not the kinds of guys who would easily be threatened.
Were they blackmailed? Did the Red Chain have something on them?
Aileen puts her phone away. “The dispatcher said the call to pick up Friedkin was booked several days prior. There’s no information besides that. Friedkin has three secretaries. One of them says she could have made the request.”
“‘Could have’? That doesn’t sound too sure.”
She shrugs. “They make a hundred calls a day.”
“Still.” I walk up the flight of stairs to the accountant’s office. “It seems like a clever way to pull two cops from a war zone.”
Aileen steps into the hallway and scans the names on the directory. “And do what? Ask them to commit murder?”
“I know. I know.” I take a seat on the top of the stairs and stare down at her.
“What would make you shoot at an unarmed protestor?” she asks, trying to put herself in Bogden and Steadman’s shoes.
I can’t think of a single reason. But I’m sure we all have our limits. “I couldn’t even take the shot when that crazy bitch was about to kill the infant . . . I don’t know.”
“Me neither. I keep telling myself the gun went off accidentally and Steadman was just reacting to that.”
“But why did Bogden point it right at her face?” I ask, more to myself.
“I know. I know,” Aileen says, echoing my thoughts.
I survey the small hallway and the staircase. “Did they meet with anyone after they were here?”
“Not that we know of. After here, they were called to the White House perimeter. It was really chaotic. They had to back up White House uniformed police.”
“So they were in riot gear already?” I’m trying to imagine what the hour before the incident was like for them.
“Probably. Lots of us are reporting straight from home to the front lines. We’re stretched thin.”
Until they left, Bogden and Steadman were considered fine upstanding law enforcement officers working for Metro Police, skilled enough to assist other Washington, DC, law enforcement agencies on special details. Nothing about them raises a red flag until the shooting. After that, they both go on the run—almost as if they’d planned an exit strategy.
Why? What did they stand to gain? If they were coerced, then fleeing would be the dumbest thing they could do. The only alternative, assuming premeditation, is that they were bribed, but even then I can’t imagine a price high enough to persuade someone to commit a public killing like that. Especially if they are police offers with everything to lose.
On my phone, I pull up the image of Bogden in riot gear, pointing his gun at Tia. She’s ten feet away, but the angle and focal range make them seem much closer. In all the photos, he looks cool and dispassionate behind his face shield. Headlines describe him as “unemotional” and a “monster.”
“What do you have?” Aileen asks, noticing the expression on my own face.
Damn. We may have been looking at this the wrong way.
“Hold on a second.” I lie flat on the top of the landing, facing down the stairs.
“Are you feeling okay?” She starts up the stairs.
“Yeah. One second. Back up a foot. Don’t move.” Behind Aileen’s head I can see the street a foot beyond the sidewalk. “Come up here.”
She stares at me, unsure if I’ve gone insane.
“Seriously, woman?” She shakes her head and joins me, giving me a skeptical glance as she lies down next to me.
“Indulge me.” I pull out a laser pointer from my purse and hand it to her. “Aim this at my head,” I tell her as I get up and go down the staircase.
She’s humoring me like I’m a crazy person, but she shines the light right at me, as asked. “Better hope this is all I’m pointing at you.”
I stand at the bottom of the stairs with the green dot on my forehead. “Just a little higher. Maybe over my head?”
Aileen raises the light. When I turn around, the green dot is roughly where I was looking at outside from the top of the stairs.
She lowers the laser. “You’re not thinking . . . Seriously, what are you thinking?”
I think she knows where I’m leading her with this, but she doesn’t want to say it out loud and look like the mad one.
“I don’t know. Hold it up again?”
I step outside the entrance and search the street around the green dot. I move a stone to where the green laser dot lands. “Okay. Come down here.”
Aileen descends and hands the laser pointer back to me. “I only see two problems with your theory.”
“I didn’t say I had a theory,” I reply, examining the asphalt at our feet.
“Well, it doesn’t take a genius to see where you’re going. As I said, two problems. The first being that there are no bullet holes here. The second is if Bogden and Steadman were killed, then it’d be damn hard for them to have killed Tia too. Ghosts can’t kill.”
“But people impersonating them can.”
“Impersonating?” she asks, surprised.
I pull out my phone and show her the image of Bogden right before he shoots Tia. You can make out his face, but sunglasses cover his eyes.
“Why do we think Bogden killed her?” I ask.
“Bec
ause it happened in plain sight.”
“Let me play defense attorney for a moment. We have a man with his face obscured by sunglasses and a face shield. I can have a silicon prosthetic made that would look real in those conditions. In all the photos and video of the shooting, neither Bogden nor Steadman move their mouths. In fact, the press called them sociopaths because of their lack of expression. What if they really couldn’t?”
“Are you saying they were impersonated?”
“You know why everyone thinks they did it? Because the Capitol Police think they did it. Bogden and Steadman show up for duty, go on a fool’s errand, and the next time they’re seen, an hour later, they murder a girl in public and vanish under the noses of the Capitol Police. Why couldn’t they find them?”
“It was chaotic.”
“Maybe so. But I think it’s time we start asking if that’s really Bogden. Were any of the men on the line friends of theirs? Did they talk to them?”
“I don’t know.” Aileen shakes her head. “But you still have your second problem.” She points toward the ground. “If they were shot entering this building by someone at the top of the stairs, chances are there would be a bullet in the ground here. Now, I know it can be impossible to find one without a metal detector, especially in asphalt, but this surface is smooth. Real smooth.”
“Yeah. I know how it sounds.” I was hoping to find some kind of ballistic evidence. Rain would probably have wiped away any visible blood spray.
“It was a clever idea,” she consoles me.
“Maybe too clever.” Sometimes I make things more complicated than they need to be.
“I doubt they got rid of the bodies and the bullet holes at the same time . . .” Aileen trails off then glances at me sharply.
“Unless they did,” I reply, the other piece of the puzzle falling in place.
Her eyes light up as she whips out her phone.
“Hey, Jackson, I need a favor.”
