Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  Jameson stood up and walked past his desk to face the large window behind it.

  Bryce continued. “You’ll have to be at that press conference tomorrow, Dan. We’ve got to make sure that the media sees you getting personally involved in this.”

  Jameson was only half listening. “Is it our fault, Mike?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t just mean you and me. I mean the government in general. In the last, say, fifteen years, what has the U.S. government done that has really made a difference to its citizens?” He turned around and looked at Bryce. “Now things have gotten so bad, the public is forced to take action to correct the country’s problems.”

  “This isn’t the public taking action, Dan. This is some nut running around murdering people.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jameson said, but he wasn’t as certain as he made himself sound.

  Bryce stood. “Of course I’m right. You’ve got a good record of trying to get a handle on crime. We just have to make sure we keep that in front of the public during this thing.”

  16

  Washington, D.C.,

  February 9

  Beamon punched in the combination to the door guarding the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center, or SIOC, and pulled the heavy door open. Inside, the space was broken into a number of soundproof rooms. The interior walls were glass, and he could see straight through to the back.

  The suite was almost empty. Beamon nodded to a young agent manning the phones as he refilled his Styrofoam cup with coffee. Calls coming into the JEH Building after hours were fielded in SIOC. It was this kid’s unlucky week.

  To Beamon’s left was the largest of the four rooms and the space reserved for his team. Through the glass wall he could see that Laura Vilechi was already hard at work. She sat at the conference table that dominated the room, framed by a large blackboard. Her nose was stuck in a blue file folder.

  On the blackboard she had written a chart.

  INVESTIGATION

  DRUGS CHECKS POISON

  Tracing to Source Bank Identifying

  ????? Description (Disguise)

  Handwriting Sample

  Alias/Driver’s License Number

  Lance Richardson?

  Physical Evidence (FedEx)

  Beamon shook his head and wondered for the fiftieth time if he’d made a mistake in hiring Laura as his right-hand man—as he intended to introduce her.

  They had met almost five years ago on an embezzlement case and discovered quickly that they couldn’t agree on anything. Beamon was the absentminded professor—prone to flashes of brilliance that left everyone shaking their heads in amazement. Between those flashes, though, he had to struggle to keep up with the mundane details of the nuts and bolts investigation.

  Laura had a completely different style—and the chalkboard told him that it hadn’t changed. She had a photographic memory for details, and fanaticism for process. She left no stone unturned, and never, never made mistakes.

  Their first meeting had been less than pleasant. She had already decided how she wanted the investigation run, and she wasn’t about to let anyone screw it up. Beamon had his own ideas about how to get things done. She had stood there, hands on hips, staring coldly at him as he ranted and raved about her inexperience and uninspired approach to investigation. She hadn’t backed down, and he respected that.

  “How you doin’, Laura,” Beamon said, slipping through the door and closing it quietly behind him. He couldn’t believe it, but he was actually a little nervous.

  She looked up at him with mild suspicion. “I’m good, Mark.”

  Beamon examined the blackboard more closely, finally pointing to it. “I see you haven’t changed.”

  She pointed to the large bag of donuts dangling from his right hand. “I see you haven’t, either.”

  Beamon laughed and set them on the table.

  “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got an assortment.”

  She opened the bag and pulled out a chocolate-covered. The topping stuck to her fingers. “Well, I’m here, but I sure can’t figure out why.”

  “My doctor told me I didn’t have enough stress in my life. Naturally, you came to mind.” Beamon flashed a wide grin and reached into the bag to find another bear claw. “I think you took our last run-in too seriously, Laura. I defended my methods and you defended yours. Shit, if anybody came off that case worse for the wear it was me.”

  “Come on, Mark. You obviously don’t agree with my methods. Why did you bring me in on this?”

  Beamon frowned. “If I gave you the impression that I didn’t agree with your methods, I’m sorry. The fact that you and I approach a problem from opposite sides is precisely why you’re here. I’m willing to admit that my weakness is detail and procedure. And as I see it, yours is being too rigid.” Laura bristled slightly at the criticism, but he ignored it. “Put both of us together, you get the perfect investigator.”

  “And you think we can work together?”

  Beamon turned serious. “Yup. Our problem last time was that neither one of us was really in charge. This time I’m the boss.”

  They stared straight at each other for almost ten seconds. Laura finally averted her eyes and reached for her donut. “Maybe next time it’ll be me.”

  He laughed. “The thought keeps me awake at night. So when did you fly in? You look tired.” Her blue skirt and white blouse looked like they had come directly from a suitcase, and her strawberry blond hair wasn’t pulled back as tightly as he remembered it. It didn’t matter, though, she would have been striking in old blue jeans and a dirty sweatshirt.

  “I got in tonight at ten. I was up watching TV when CNN started reporting on the hospitals, and I figured I might as well come in before the phone started ringing.”

  Beamon nodded toward the blue folder lying next to her on the conference table.

  “So what have we got?”

  “Not a whole lot,” she said quietly. “The Saint Louis office has interviewed everyone at the bank where the suspect got the cashier’s checks—except one guy who apparently quit and is on a rock-climbing trip in parts unknown. We should be able to find him in a few days, but he didn’t really have much in the way of direct contact with our guy. Anyway, not much there.” She flipped the page.

  “We and DEA are interviewing the victims who are still able to talk and getting the names of their suppliers. DEA’s working on tracing the poisoned drugs back to where they got hit—but it’s too soon to see if that’ll go anywhere.” She flipped another page.

  “Our forensics guys haven’t had much luck in figuring out what the poison is, but they’re working on it round the clock. Apparently they’ve brought in one of the world’s leading experts on toxicology. He’s from Harvard, or something.” Laura tossed the folder on the table, sending it spinning to the far edge.

  “What about the envelope? Anything there?”

  “Zip.”

  “So I’m safe in saying we don’t have dick,” Beamon said.

  “An unfortunate choice of words, but that’s what it boils down to.”

  “Any estimates on casualties?”

  “Last time I looked, we were moving into four digits.”

  Beamon crossed his arms and stared at the blackboard. “This should be one hell of an interesting case. It’s the only crime I’ve ever investigated that the victims don’t want to talk. We’re gonna hit a brick wall trying to get information out of the narcotics community.”

  Beamon considered his next move. No brilliant strategies flashed into his mind, and he knew from experience that he couldn’t force them. They would probably have to wait for the CDFS’s next move to get anything concrete. That is, if there was a next move.

  The piercing ring of a phone cut off his train of thought. He looked around, spotting it on a credenza against the wall. He strolled slowly over and picked it up. “Mark Beamon.”

  “Mark! It’s Trace.”

  Trace Fontain was
the head of the Bureau’s laboratory science group, and in charge of filtering through the blood of the victims and confiscated narcotics to isolate the poison. Beamon didn’t know him well, but they had been running into each other every now and again for the last fifteen years.

  “What’s the good word, Trace?” Beamon found a remote control and was trying to figure out how to turn on the television anchored to the wall above him.

  “Afraid there is none, Mark. Your choices are bad news and worse news.”

  “Jesus, I just can’t seem to get a break around here. Bad news first.”

  “We haven’t been able to figure out what they’re using yet. We know it attacks the vital organs, but it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

  “Fuckin’ hell, Trace. All you have to do is put the shit under one of those mass spectron microscope doodads and the goddam computer does your job for you.”

  Laura frowned deeply and stared up at him. He’d forgotten how much he hated that look.

  She was right, of course. Trace had enough academic plaques to side a house. The Bureau was lucky to have him.

  “Sorry, Trace. It’s early, you know? Hit me with the worse news.”

  “You’re really not gonna like this one.”

  “I’ll try not to kill the messenger.”

  “We’ve been interviewing the victims that are still lucid, and examining the organs of the dead ones, and there is evidence that the poison has a, uh, bit of a delayed reaction.”

  Beamon considered that for a moment. “So, like, if I snort some coke today, I might not show symptoms till tomorrow? They have stuff like that?”

  “Uh, no. It’s a little worse than that. It works on kind of a bell curve. Depending on how much you take and your body chemistry, reaction times are different.”

  “Get to the point, Trace.”

  “Well, a pretty good average would be, uh, right around a week and a half for the first symptoms. Death three days after they start appearing.”

  Beamon started pounding his head slowly on the wall in front of him. “No more bad news today, okay?”

  “You all right, Mark?” Laura asked as Beamon slammed down the phone.

  “Did you know that some poisons have delayed reactions?”

  “Sure, I guess. I never really thought about it.”

  “And how long do you think the longest delayed reaction would be?”

  “Dunno. One or two days?”

  “Try one or two weeks.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Is this another one of your dumb jokes?”

  “You’re not feeling any better, are you, honey?”

  Erica pulled the gray and brown afghan up around her husband’s shoulders and looked into his red-rimmed eyes. The Reverend Simon Blake didn’t reply.

  “I can’t imagine that this is helping any,” she said, looking at the TV where a CNN anchor was discussing casualty estimates. In the upper right-hand corner of the screen a black-and-red graphic depicted a needle and vial with the simple caption THE DRUG CRISIS. The media’s ability to attractively package a tragedy like a bar of bath soap never ceased to disgust her. She took the remote control off the arm of her husband’s chair to try to find something a little more upbeat. He snatched it back before she could aim it, slamming it back down on the arm of the chair.

  Erica eyed him strangely. She couldn’t ever remember him grabbing something from her like that. She had also expected him to have something to say about what was happening in the news, but he hadn’t uttered a word on the subject. He just watched the reports, keeping any feelings about them bottled up inside. It was probably just the flu, she reasoned, as she walked angrily out of the room.

  “Close the door,” her husband yelled. She wanted to leave it open—he hadn’t showered and it was getting a little close in his den. But she didn’t want to argue, and did as he asked.

  As the door clicked shut, Blake increased the volume on the TV until the sound penetrated every corner of his mind. He sat there, staring blankly at the screen in the dim light of the den.

  He had stopped sleeping after the first few victims died. It had turned out that two of the first few had been drug dealers—scum of the earth, as far as he was concerned. But he’d been responsible for their deaths and that was a sensation he wasn’t familiar with, and as it turned out, wasn’t fond of.

  Then the sky had fallen. CNN was estimating four hundred deaths and another six hundred terminally ill. A thousand people. Hobart and he had discussed the possibility of casualties, but never in his wildest dreams had he thought anything like this could happen. Why hadn’t people stopped using? The ad had been clear enough—had they not read it? No, that was impossible. The media had saturated the airwaves with the story. Everyone knew, he told himself. Everyone.

  Blake coughed loudly, leaning over the arm of his chair until the spasms subsided. Waves of nausea came over him, combining with the burning in his stomach. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up, but he managed to fight it off.

  Mark Beamon pressed his back against the wall, narrowly avoiding a collision with a Secret Service man hustling to the other side of the room. He didn’t know how those guys did it. There must have been thirty people moving frantically back and forth waiting for the President to appear; all dressed the same, all with nearly the same haircut, and all talking in the same medium-loud monotone. And these guys had to keep it all straight. No thanks.

  Beamon slid a few feet to his left, giving himself a partially obstructed view of the curtain leading to the small auditorium where the President held his press conferences. He could detect movement behind the curtain, but couldn’t really see anything.

  He wished they’d get this show on the road. The makeup that had been slathered onto his face in preparation for the television cameras was beginning to dry in the corners of his eyes, and it was driving him crazy. He reached up to scratch at it.

  “Don’t do that, Mark,”

  Beamon turned his head toward the familiar voice and watched Laura Vilechi weaving effortlessly through the crowd.

  “Laura! What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you a present.”

  “A present? Really? What is it?”

  Laura pulled a deep maroon tie with subtle blue dots from her bag and pressed it against the frayed lapel of his jacket. She nodded approvingly. “I didn’t have time to do anything about the suit, but this tie should help.”

  “I take it you don’t like the one I have on.”

  Laura pursed her lips and ran her tongue across the front of her teeth. “If you’re going to be on TV, you need a tie that says ’trust me, I know what I’m doing. I’ve got everything under control.’”

  Beamon grabbed Laura by the shoulders and moved her a couple of feet to her right. A boom mike just missed her head.

  “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but just what is it that my tie says?”

  She pulled it out of his jacket and held the tip like it was the tail of a dead mouse. “Meet me at my trailer later, I’ve got a cooler full of brewskis.”

  “I brought a six-pack. It’s a little early, but I thought we might need it,” Robert Swenson said, slamming the door to the apartment and making a beeline to the refrigerator. It was 9:58 A.M., and Hobart was sitting on the sofa, watching the lead-in to the President’s press conference. The subject today was near and dear to his heart.

  Swenson plopped down on the sofa and put two beers on the coffee table in front of them, unopened. The scene on the television changed from a reporter framed by the White House to a crowded room with an empty podium as its focal point. An unintelligible rumbling came from the reporters fidgeting in neatly organized chairs.

  A few moments later President Daniel Jameson strode purposefully out onto the stage, followed closely by two conservatively dressed men. He took his place behind the podium and shuffled papers for a moment, a look of deep concern on his face.

  “Shit,” Hobart said, no louder than a w
hisper.

  Swenson looked over at him. “They haven’t said anything yet.”

  “See that ugly son of a bitch next to Calahan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s Mark Beamon.”

  “Beamon. Why do I know that name?”

  “He’s the asshole that got me thrown out of the DEA,” Hobart replied, twisting the top of a beer. Swenson was about to ask for more details, but the President began to speak.

  “As all of you know, a group known as the Committee for a Drug-Free Society threatened, through advertisements in a number of major newspapers, to poison the U.S. narcotics supply. It would appear that they have made good on that threat. I understand that current estimates of dead and injured are nearing a thousand people.” He paused for a moment to accentuate the point. The reporters struggled to contain themselves.

  “I have directed the FBI to take the lead in this investigation, and to make it their top priority. I have further directed that all other law enforcement agencies give the FBI their full cooperation. With that, I would like to introduce Bill Calahan and Mark Beamon from the FBI.”

  Jameson began to turn away from the podium but was prompted back by the shouted questions of the press.

  “We’ll take questions at the end of the conference,” he said into the microphone, and turned away again, shaking hands with the two men moving toward the podium.

  Calahan spoke first, with Beamon flanking him a few feet behind.

  “At the request of the President, I’ve formed a task force to investigate this most serious crime, and have told my people to make it their top priority. I’ve also appointed Mark Beamon, whom many of you know, as head of the task force. Mark should be able to bring you up to speed on where we are in the investigation. Mark?” Calahan gave up the podium and took a place alongside the President. Beamon moved forward and adjusted the mike, wondering how he was going to stretch what little he knew into a reasonable speech. There was nothing he hated more than coming out on national TV and saying he didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but that he’d do his best to find out.