by Clancy, Tom
“What is that, a quote from the FBI manual?”
“No,” McCaskey replied evenly. If they both got angry, this would get ugly. “That’s a personal observation from twenty years of stakeouts, undercover stings, field work, and saving the asses of rogue warriors who thought they could handle entire operations by themselves.”
Herbert thought for a moment. “Okay. I deserved that. Now, take your hand off my shoulder before I go rogue warrior on it.”
There was a disturbing absence of levity in Herbert’s voice. He knew he had been the target of McCaskey’s remark and did not like it. McCaskey let go and stepped to one side. Herbert wheeled away. McCaskey would try to talk to him when he got back. Herbert’s temper had a way of subsiding as quickly as it flared.
Other Op-Center personnel had maintained a discreet distance from the three men. They moved through the corridors in silence, their eyes down or facing straight ahead. But this was an intelligence-gathering organization with sharp political hearing. The employees did not miss much.
“Sorry about that, Darrell,” Rodgers said. “Bob’s angry.”
“He’s Bob,” McCaskey replied.
“True.”
“Look, you’ve got things to do, and I’ve got to be somewhere,” McCaskey said. “Let me know when you’re free for a beer.”
“The end of the week should work.”
“Sounds good,” McCaskey said and shook Rodgers’s hand. It seemed a remarkably anticlimactic gesture after all these years and all they had shared. But this was not the time or place for good-byes.
McCaskey hurried down the corridor to the elevator. He got in his car and switched on the new FIAT device, the Federal Intelligence Activity Transponder. It was a chip built into his watch and activated by pulling the stem and twisting it clockwise. The signal was monitored by all mobile metropolitan and state police units. It was basically a license to speed or leave the scene of an accident. It told the authorities that the car was on time-sensitive government business and could not be stopped. The FIATs were introduced two years before so that unmarked Homeland Security officials would not be stopped or detained. Though McCaskey was not on a high-priority mission, Scotland Yard was an important ally. He wanted to get them what they needed as quickly as possible.
Wilson’s body had been taken to the Georgetown University Medical Center on Reservoir Road. That was where the medical officer was conducting autopsies while the coroner’s office was being modernized. McCaskey went downstairs to look at the body with Dr. Minnie Hennepin. The middle-aged woman had red hair and freckles. She was wearing a sharply pressed lab coat.
“I guess this is what the Feds refer to as ‘cover your ass,’ ” the slender woman said as they walked down the concrete stairs.
“There’s a little of that in everything we do,” McCaskey admitted.
“May I ask why Scotland Yard did not simply send over one of their own investigators?”
“The press would have been all over that,” McCaskey said. “It would be positioned as suggesting a suspicion of wrongdoing. British authorities want to put their minds at ease and also be able to tell Wilson’s shareholders that someone with criminal investigation experience had a look at the body.”
“You understand, Mr. McCaskey, that there was no evidence of lacerations or contusions other than what I would characterize as the natural result of an exuberant sexual encounter. We also did a very thorough toxicological examination. I’m not sure what’s left.”
“You checked for every chemical that could produce results consistent with natural organic failure?” McCaskey asked.
“Everything from formaldehyde to pancuronium bromide,” Dr. Hennepin said. “We found nothing.”
“Some of those chemicals dissipate very quickly.”
“That’s true, Mr. McCaskey. But they would have to be of very low dosage and injected relatively near to the heart in order to be potent,” the doctor said. “I did the pathology for that area of the body, looking for evidence of hypodermic trauma. There was none.”
“In the armpit?” McCaskey asked.
“Yes. I also checked the femoral artery, since that would be a rapid delivery system for chemicals.”
“Well, I’ll have a look at the body anyway,” McCaskey said. “You never know what will turn up.”
“Frankly, I’ll be interested to see a nonmedical approach to a cadaver,” the doctor admitted. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”
“I’ve sent a few people to the morgue but never had a look at them after they’ve made the trip.”
They reached the basement, and she turned on the light. The morgue was smaller than McCaskey had imagined, about the size of a bedroom. There were six stainless steel coolers on one wall in two rows of three. Cases filled with chemicals and equipment stood against the adjoining walls, and a lab table with a deep sink and a computer sat along the fourth wall beside the stairwell. Three autopsy tables filled the center of the room, each beneath a lowhanging fluorescent light.
“Do you want him out of the cooler?” the woman asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” McCaskey said. “Do you have a light we can bring over?”
“Yes,” she said.
McCaskey had been around death before. Too much, in fact. But that had been in shoot-outs or entering a drug den when someone had just ODed. However sad, however tragic, there was drama in the exit. It was the last act of a life. The exchange with Dr. Hennepin had been casual, as if they were deciding what to do with refrigerated leftovers. In fact, they were. There were no pyrotechnic or emotional fireworks, no memorable or even unmemorable gestures. Just the muted echo of their footsteps and low voices, and their curiosity, which hung in the air like buzzards.
The doctor pulled the heavy handle on cooler number four. Billionaire Wilson was not even in number one. Leftovers and one notch below the bronze. The morgue was one hell of an equalizer.
There was a rush of cool air and a smell like raw lamb meat. The body had not yet been embalmed. Dr. Hennepin slid the slab from the cooler. Then she got a workman’s light from one of the cabinets and hung it from the handle of the cooler above. It was not an elegant setup, but it did the job. She also brought over a box of latex gloves. They each donned a pair. Starting at the head, she rolled back the white sheet that covered the body. There was a large Y-shaped incision in the trunk. The area well outside the cut was purple. It shaded to surrounding flesh that was yellowish white. Instead of being sutured, the area had been covered with adhesive tape. The cut had been made through the white tape. After the autopsy was concluded, the wound was closed with a series of clasps built into the tape.
“That’s enough,” McCaskey said when she reached the waist. Since she had already looked at the femoral artery, he was not interested in any region that far from the heart. The first thing he did was look at the eyes.
“A drug might have been applied by eyedropper,” he said. “You often find broken blood vessels from the pressure of holding open the lids.”
“This is a little far from the heart,” the doctor pointed out.
“Yes, but a megadose of coenzyme Q10 could have been given that way—”
“Causing an infarction that would impact the heart quickly and directly,” the medical examiner said.
“And Q10 would not turn up on a routine toxological scan,” McCaskey added.
“How did you find out about the coenzyme?”
“I investigated a doctor who killed a patient with whom he was having an affair,” McCaskey told her. “When we had enough circumstantial evidence, he confessed and told us how he did it. In this case, though, the eyes look normal.”
They did not feel normal, however. The ocular muscles had begun to tighten, setting the eyes stiffly in their sockets. It was like working on a mannequin.
“May I borrow your microlight?” McCaskey asked.
“Yes,” she said, taking the tiny, powerful flashlight from her vest pocket. She handed it to him.
>
McCaskey angled the head back slightly and shone the light up the nose. The veins of the nasal passage were another area where a killer might have made an injection. The skin did not appear to have been broken.
“Do you need any of the cartilage retracted?” the doctor asked.
“No. There would be a small clot if he had been injected here.”
“And you know that because—?”
“Junkies,” McCaskey said. “There are a number of places they inject themselves so the track marks don’t show.”
“Interesting. I had heard of them using the areas between the fingers and toes,” the doctor said.
“Yes, but law enforcement can see those. That would give us reasonable cause to conduct a search.”
“Fascinating,” the medical examiner said.
McCaskey moved to the mouth. He checked the cheeks. There were no scars, nor any along the gums. Then he checked under the tongue. It was swollen with uncirculated blood. That made the veins underneath it particularly visible. One of them appeared to have a prick mark.
“Look,” McCaskey said.
He pinched the tongue between his index finger and thumb and shone the light into the cavity. Dr. Hennepin looked in.
“I see it,” she said.
The medical examiner retrieved a scalpel and a sterile test tube from the autopsy table. She also grabbed a small tape recorder. Narrating her activities for the official autopsy record, she carefully sliced a piece of skin from the area. When she was finished, she clicked off the recorder.
“I’ll get this to the laboratory at once,” she said. “It will be about two hours before I have the results.”
“Thanks. I’m going to keep looking, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” she said. “Just don’t make any incisions.”
McCaskey said he would not.
The doctor went upstairs to arrange for analysis of the tissue. That left McCaskey alone with the cadaver. The former FBI agent found no other marks on the upper half of the body. He covered Wilson with the sheet and returned him to the cooler. He closed the door.
Wilson was not doing drugs. They would have shown up on the initial lab report. So would injections of insulin or some other medication. Unless the man had nicked himself on a fish bone at the party, this probably meant that someone stuck him under the tongue.
If William Wilson had been murdered, Washington would be turned into a pop-culture Dallas with public and private investigations and endless conspiracy scenarios about who killed the Internet tycoon.
The medical examiner returned. She took McCaskey’s cell phone number as well as his office number and promised to call as soon as she heard something. He thanked her for her help and asked for her complete discretion.
“The autopsy results will be sealed,” she said, “though in my experience that’s as good as saying we have something to hide.”
“In this instance, we may,” McCaskey remarked.
As he left the medical center, McCaskey found something ironic in how this had unfolded. Something that even Bob Herbert might find amusing.
That for a few hours at least, the quintessential team player would be working on this case alone.
TEN
Washington, D. C. Monday, 11:00 A.M.
As the press secretary to Senator Donald Orr, twenty-nine-year-old Katherine “Kat” Lockley typically reached the office around seven-thirty each morning and stayed until seven or eight at night. That was fine with her. She loved her work. But it was intense and exhausting, and a midday lunch break was not a luxury, it was a requirement. She liked to get out of the office, go to the Green Pantry down the street, stock up at the salad bar, and do the New York Times crossword puzzle while she ate. Forty-five minutes. That was all she required to recharge her brain.
She would not be getting away from the office today.
Kat did not care about William Wilson personally. The two had barely made eye contact at the party, let alone spoken to one another. When she turned on the BBC news at six A.M., as she did every day, and learned of his death, Kat’s only concern was for Senator Orr and how the software magnate’s death would impact them. As someone who greatly admired the senator, Kat would have to work hard to keep the focus on politics, not gossip. As the daughter of one of Orr’s oldest friends, Lieutenant Scott Lockley of the RED HORSE unit, it was also Kat’s pleasure to help the senator.
Kat mentally composed a press release as she showered, made notes as she dressed, dictated the final draft as she drove to work, and plugged the digital tape recorder into her computer when she arrived. The voice recognition program transcribed her words, and she edited them while she phoned the senator. It had been a long night of meeting and greeting, and he was still asleep when she called. He listened to the news without comment, a talent good politicians practiced even in private conversations. Kat E-mailed the text of the press release to the senator’s laptop. He approved it, and the short statement was E-mailed to the press by eight A.M.
Although the media reported that Wilson had been with a woman he apparently met at the senator’s party, neither Kat nor Kendra knew who that was. The official party photographer had E-mailed all the images he took the night before, over two hundred of them. Wilson spoke to a number of women. He left alone. That fact was included in the press release.
At the Columbia School of Journalism they called this “drawing first blood.” You did not wait for reporters to come to you. You went to them and established the parameters of the dialogue. Kat had the senator state, “I have never been interested in the private lives of private citizens, so I will only comment on the man as I knew him: through his work.” She had made a point of specifying “private citizens” in case it ever became necessary to attack the personal activities of a fellow politician. Kat did not want to have their moral stand in this instance misunderstood as general disinterest in the morality of public officials.
After sending out the press release, Kat fielded calls literally from A to Z, from Blue Danube Radio in Austria to ZBC Television One in Zimbabwe. There were also interview requests from all the American network morning and evening shows. Kat declined to make the senator available to everyone but CBS Evening News and Nightline . That would give them several hours to find out more about what had happened to William Wilson and to formulate a response. She E-mailed that information to the staff.
Senator Orr sat in his sunny, wood-paneled office with Kendra and Kat and decided that Kat’s plan was a good one. The senator would stick to the day’s schedule. Wilson had not been a friend to the American economy. The only reason the Englishman had been invited to the party was so that key Washington bankers could make his acquaintance and try to discourage him from his Eurocentric banking plans. It was a delicate thing, mourning a man whose invention had improved everyone’s quality of life but whose politics were aggressively anti-American.
“I am curious, though, about who he might have met at the party,” the senator had said. “Any ideas?”
“I had the photographer send over his shots from last night,” Kat said. “He talked to a number of women, most of them married.”
“Which could be why there are no clear video images of her from the hotel security system,” Kendra remarked.
“She didn’t want to be identified,” the senator said. “Well, hopefully, it will not be our concern after today.”
“Which is why I’ve instructed the photographer not to provide any of those pictures to the press,” Kat said. “The fact that he was here shows that you were trying to be a mediator. That’s a good thing. Photographs of Wilson at the party will create a different impression.”
“In what way?” Kendra asked.
“I call it the stink of Pulitzer prize,” Kat replied. “What’s the first thing you think of when I say ‘John F. Kennedy?’ The Bay of Pigs invasion? The Cuban Missile Crisis? Marilyn Monroe?”
“The Zapruder film,” Kendra admitted.
“And what do we
remember Dallas for?”
“I get it,” Kendra said, nodding.
“Death resonates, unnatural or otherwise, and pictures reinforce that,” Kat said. “Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center, the Challenger and Columbia—the emotional power of the end of something overshadows whatever else it stood for. Images strengthen that impact.”
“But there’s something we want to strengthen,” Kendra said. “The difference between what Wilson stood for and what the senator and USF stand for. Wouldn’t this be a good opportunity to do that?”
“It would be convenient, but not good,” Kat said. “There is a certain level of tawdriness in how Wilson died. We want to stay clear of that, especially if it turns out he was canoodling with someone from the gala.”
“Couldn’t we use that to cheapen him and his ideas?” Kendra asked.
“That would cheapen us, I think,” Kat replied.
“Yes, I have to agree with Kat on that one,” the senator said.
Kendra nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I was just asking.”
Kat did not always like Kendra’s go-for-the-throat thinking, but at least the woman did not take the rejection personally. She was here for Senator Orr and the USF, not for herself.
“There is also the chance that late-night comics turn on Wilson and his lover in a day or two,” Kat added. “If that happens, we risk becoming part of the joke right when we are holding our convention.”
“Another good point,” Orr said.
“So how do we exploit the media exposure we’ll have tonight?” Kendra asked. “If the senator condemns Wilson, he’ll appear heartless. If he praises the man, we lose credibility. If he goes into his stump speech, then we’re obviously exploiting the media exposure. Could we move the announcement of a presidential run?”
“Ouch,” Kat said.
“Why?” Kendra asked.
“That would keep Wilson alive,” Kat said. “Wilson’s death and the senator’s candidacy become a run-on sentence, inseparable.”
“I see it as planting flowers in fertilizer,” Kendra said. “Something wonderful coming from shit.”
