Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  Deb stepped through the coatroom that connected her garage and her kitchen, and sniffed her home’s familiar bouquet: Walgreen’s-brand potpourri, Yankee candles (cinnamon scented), and mothballs. But today she smelled something else. Something foreign.

  She scrunched up her nose and walked into the kitchen, sniffing. Then she gasped.

  A woman, pale as skim milk, was sitting at the kitchen table.

  The woman wore a cream-colored blouse and gray slacks that stretched taut across her thighs. Her hair was a shocking, carroty shade of orange. In one latex-gloved hand, which was poised near her well-defined cheekbone, the woman held a cigarette between two of her long fingers. A trail of white smoke floated up toward the ceiling.

  Deb’s shock lasted less than a second before anger took its place. “Who in the hell are you and what are you doing in my kitchen?” she demanded. She held the strap of her purse in one hand as though it were a weapon she could use to bludgeon the intruder.

  “I’m Edith Vereen,” the woman said. Without taking a drag from her cigarette, she tapped its ash onto the floor. “I’m here to kill you, Deb.”

  Deb Pepper’s hands and mouth began to twitch, and she stepped backward. She turned away from the ghastly looking woman and started to move toward her front door, but she didn’t get very far. Her feet tripped over a thin piece of wire tied across the doorjamb separating the kitchen from the front hall.

  Deb’s arms were too weak to break her fall, and she slammed down, smacking her cheek and nose into the floorboards. She groaned, and could taste blood on her lips as her nose began to gush. She moved to push herself up, but before she could, she felt a small prick on the back of her neck. A sensation of warmth spread quickly over her shoulders and head, and then all the strength left her body.

  A few moments passed for Deb as though she were dreaming. But then her mind came back into focus as she felt herself being dragged down her front hallway and into the living room, where she was pulled onto one of the two wingback chairs that faced her fireplace. Her eyes rolled in her head, and she felt something tightening around her chest and stomach. It took her a minute to recognize the woman was binding her to the chair with rope. She tried to scream, but could summon only weak groans.

  “What gives you the right,” the woman said as she stepped back into Deb’s field of vision, her breath a little heavy from the exertion, “to foist your regulations and your will on free American citizens?”

  Even if she could have spoken, Deb was too frightened to reply.

  She’s so white, Deb thought. So sickeningly white.

  The woman leaned down toward her as she spoke. “You create laws and regulations that restrict individual liberty, and you think you can hide behind claims of protecting public health and wellbeing?” She stopped, and bent closer to Deb’s face. She spoke quietly, but her voice was soaked with rage. “You claim the power to protect people from themselves as if they were children, and you their mother. You live here in your cocoon of self-righteousness, and you dictate to everyone else what they can and cannot do, even when their actions affect no one but themselves.”

  Deb blinked, working hard to focus her eyes on the woman’s face. Though she couldn’t move or speak, tears began to well in her eyes.

  The woman saw Deb’s tears, and her rage seemed to intensify.

  Not just rage, Deb realized. Disgust. The woman’s eyes and mouth were drawn up now as though she were confronting something unspeakably wretched.

  “Look at you,” the woman said, taking a step back. “You weak little shrew.” She shook her head slowly, not taking her eyes from Deb’s. “Everything about you repulses me.”

  She walked behind Deb’s chair, disappearing from view.

  Minutes passed, and Deb started to wonder if the awful woman had left. Then she heard a grunt. She experienced a brief instant of surprise as a thick black liquid cascaded over her head and chest and pooled in her lap. Before she could consider what the liquid might be, she felt a boiling, searing heat.

  Despite her paralysis, Deb began to scream.

  Chapter 27

  DAVID FELT THE chopping whooms of the helicopter blades almost as much as he heard them.

  As the Bell 407 lifted off the rectangular landing field at Quantico, he and Lauren began reviewing the scant biographical information Research had collected on their suspect.

  Martin had volunteered to stay behind to investigate the list of names they’d received at the James Madison Memorial Building’s library. “I had enough of helos in Vietnam,” he’d said.

  David hadn’t been surprised. He knew his father hated to fly, and never did so if he could help it.

  He scanned the file as Lauren read from it out loud. The two sat facing each other in the back of the Bell, both strapped in and wearing noise-canceling communication headsets so they could hear each other above the pulsing hum of the rotor blades.

  “Jay Anthony Carmichael, age forty-one, of Towson, Maryland,” Lauren read. “Married, two children. Wife Brit, daughters Amanda and Jenna. Five-foot-ten, 165 pounds. Wears a size eleven shoe. Software sales rep. Works primarily in Baltimore, but occasionally travels to New York and New England. No history of criminal activity, apart from a DUI in 1997. Was an American History major at UMD.”

  David checked his watch. After reviewing the preliminaries on Carmichael, he’d green-lighted the HRT operation despite his father’s objections—and his own sense of unease. He’d had no choice; if Carmichael turned out to be their guy and David didn’t pursue him with all the tools at his disposal, his career at the FBI would be over.

  “I don’t like it,” Martin had said. He’d stood at the end of the conference table at Quantico with his thick forearms crossed over his chest, shaking his head at his son while Lauren, Omar Ghafari, and several of their team’s analysts sat in silence, their eyes cast down while they tried to look invisible.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Martin had added.

  “Doesn’t feel right,” David had repeated, his voice calm as ever.

  Martin had frowned. “A software sales rep with a wife and kids? Come on. That doesn’t fit.”

  “Anyone’s capable of anything,” David had said.

  Martin had shrugged dismissively. “The print we have is only a ninety-percent match with Carmichael’s. I’d send a couple people to bring him in, but I wouldn’t go at him full throttle like this—not when all we have on him is this single partial.”

  “Thanks for your input,” David had said, ending the discussion.

  Now, sitting across from Lauren in the Bell chopper, he thought about what his father had said. He realized he’d been forming his own impression of their subject. And, however ill defined that impression was, he knew it didn’t align with the little he knew about Jay Anthony Carmichael. He thought again about the photograph in his phone of the blood on the bridge railing—and of the poison and the balsa wood used to create the device that killed Mitchell Cosgrove. He couldn’t explain it, but Jay Anthony Carmichael didn’t fit.

  “How long until SWAT’s in place?” he asked Lauren as the helicopter swept north over the Chesapeake.

  He’d put her in charge of coordinating the first stages of the apprehension while he met with Carl Wainbridge to secure approval to deploy the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT—the elite SWAT unit reserved for the most significant or high-risk operations.

  “I trust your judgment,” Carl had said. “Do what you feel is necessary.”

  “HRT will have a team at his residence in about ten minutes,” Lauren said. “A second team is securing the Woodlawn office building where he works, and they have intel that he’s there now. They’ll move first.”

  David nodded and leaned over to peer through the Bell’s small window. He watched as the shadow of the helicopter passed over farm fields as they crossed into Maryland. His mind leapt back to his time in Kosovo, and he imagined a small, soundless burst of flame blooming at the edge of one of the fields, and the helicopte
r shuddering and falling from the sky in a ball of fire. He also remembered the look on the face of the foreign service officer in charge, Rick Cantrick, as he described to David and the rest of his diplomatic team in Pristina the official response and course of action the U.S. State Department wanted to pursue in the wake of the hostile attack on American soldiers.

  David forced his mind back onto the present. He thought of the twin operations that were coalescing a hundred miles north. Bureau SWAT units of between twelve and twenty-four men—always even numbers, every man had a shadow—would have assembled and been briefed by now, and would already be working to secure all routes of ingress and egress from both Carmichael’s home and office.

  Because of the nature of the crimes, David knew SWAT would have categorized Carmichael an HVT, or high-volatility target, and there would be no advance plain-clothes agents working at either scene. They would sever all hardline and cellular communications just before entering Carmichael’s house and office.

  “They’ll loop us in?” he said, turning back to Lauren.

  “Yeah. We’ll be live any minute now. When we take him—if we take him—you and I should be on-site within twenty minutes.”

  David sat back against the vibrating body of the helicopter’s cabin, waiting for the sound of radio static in his ear that would signal their audio uplink with the SWAT units. He thought about their suspect, and his father’s words echoed in his ears. Doesn’t feel right.

  A ninety percent print match was strong, but certainly fallible, David knew. After the 2004 bombing of a passenger train in Madrid, Spain, the Bureau had arrested an Oregon attorney named Brandon Mayfield. At the time, the FBI justified the arrest based on what they claimed was a “100-percent match” between Mayfield’s prints and those collected at the site of the bombing. European police officials eventually proved Moroccan nationals had carried out the attack, and the FBI was forced to offer Mayfield a $2-million mea culpa. A decade later, the Bureau was still wiping egg off its face.

  David thought about Jay Anthony Carmichael, and again he tried to identify the source of his unease.

  It wasn’t the wife and kids; history had shown time and again that serial killers could be functioning members of society, and remained so right up until the day they were caught. They had families and jobs. They watched football in the fall, and went to barbeques and baseball games in the summer. The real monsters never looked like monsters, which was what made them so frightening.

  Of course, there was the occasional Ted Kaczynski—a high-IQ sociopath with a scraggly beard living in some shack out in the middle of nowhere. But men like that were the exception, not the rule. And they were nearly always men, for reasons David knew had to do with hormones and neurochemicals that preprogrammed their male minds for sexual and physical aggression—the same chemicals that were pumping through his brain and body.

  He knew any number of things could set a person off, from a brain tumor to a bad day at work. Or the death of a loved one. In fact, he thought it was a minor miracle and a testament to human nature that more people didn’t open fire in public or decide to burn the whole world down, especially considering the small boxes modern life seemed to pack people into—the ways a person had to act and sound and dress in order to be left alone.

  Anyone was capable of anything, he thought to himself, repeating in his mind the words he’d said to his father. His own experience had taught him that was true. But he still didn’t believe Carmichael was the man they were looking for.

  Lauren’s voice crackled in his helmet’s earpiece. He looked up and found she was staring at him.

  “What is it?” she asked. “I can tell something’s bugging you.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is it about what Martin said?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “You made the right call,” she said. “Your hands were tied as soon as the print team called in the match.” She looked at him with sympathy, and then turned her eyes to her own window. “It can’t be easy working with your dad.”

  David started to speak, but he was interrupted by a burst of static in his headset, followed by the monotone voices of the SWAT unit personnel: “This is Blue Spear. I repeat this is Blue Spear. Blue Spear is in position, waiting for confirmation from Red Shield. Over.”

  A five second pause, then more crackling.

  “Ten-two. Ten-two. This is Red Shield. Thirty-five seconds. Repeat, thirty-five seconds. Over.”

  Lauren told him the Red Unit was positioned at Carmichael’s home, while the Blue Unit was at his office.

  After half a minute, the Red Unit leader’s voice came back into David’s headset. “Red Shield is in position. Red Shield is in position and the perimeter of the house is secure. Over.”

  “Ten-four. Blue Spear moving now. Over.”

  David heard faint cries of surprise and alarm as the SWAT personnel entered the offices where Carmichael worked.

  The Blue Unit leader’s voice was calm and clear, loud but not angry.

  “This is the FBI,” he said. “I repeat, this is the FBI. Everybody down on the floor with your hands on the backs of your heads. Down, hands on your head, right now.”

  More muffled cries mixed with the sounds of the SWAT unit’s swift movement.

  “Sir, I said hands on your head RIGHT NOW.” There was a brief pause, and then the Blue Unit leader’s voice came back on the line again, now more urgent. “JAY ANTHONY CARMICHAEL. ON THE FLOOR NOW. NOW. HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD.”

  David could hear a man’s frightened voice, more distant than the unit leader’s: “What the hell . . . what is this?”

  “DON’T FUCKING SPEAK. DO NOT SPEAK. ON THE GROUND, HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD OR I WILL SHOOT YOU.”

  David knew the SWAT unit would be moving to restrain Carmichael. He and Lauren looked at each other, both waiting for sounds of gunfire. The sounds never came.

  “This is Blue Spear,” the unit leader’s voice said into David’s helmet. “Suspect is secure. I repeat, suspect is secure.”

  Chapter 28

  MARTIN STOPPED PACING and crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head. “Shut it off,” he said.

  Omar Ghafari nodded and clicked a few keys on his laptop, severing the secure communications link he’d set up with his counterpart on the Bureau’s tactical operations side.

  Omar was a small man, short but well proportioned.

  Like a miniature human, Martin thought.

  Omar wore honey-colored horn-rimmed glasses, and the elbows of his shirt were worn to the point of tearing. Like many of the Bureau’s Communication and IT Unit members, he was young—only late 20s, Martin guessed.

  Along with several other analysts, the two of them had listened in on the SWAT unit’s communications during Carmichael’s arrest.

  Now Martin exhaled a deep breath and began again to pace. He thought of the blowback if Carmichael wasn’t their man, and he scolded himself for contradicting David so directly. He knew challenging his son like that in front of his team had been foolish; he’d practically forced David to take an opposing stance. He’d voiced his concerns because, knowing David as well as he did, he’d had a feeling his son shared his apprehension. But he’d gone about it the wrong way.

  You’re getting old and you’re getting stupid, he told himself.

  After pacing silently for a few seconds, he said to Omar, “What kind of background checks are you planning to run on that list I gave you?” He pointed at the printouts containing the names they’d collected at the Madison Memorial Building that morning.

  “Already performing them, Agent Yerxa,” Omar said. “My guys have started on the criminal histories—checking to see if any of the names or addresses pop up in CJIS.” He paused to tuck a few strands of his jawline-length black hair behind his ears. “I realize we probably won’t pursue any of them now that we have Carmichael in custody, but I’m having them go through the whole list just in case.” As he spoke, he looked like an eager student handing
in an assignment to an intimidating teacher.

  Martin felt himself frown at the mention of Carmichael’s name. “David had you working on something else—something to do with cell phones?”

  Omar nodded vigorously, but seemed to be waiting for Martin to give him permission to speak.

  “Tell me about that,” Martin said, shuffling impatiently.

  “I requisitioned signal data from the cell phone service providers who own telecommunications towers in those regions encompassing our murders,” Omar said as he dropped his eyes to his computer and started clicking open various folders. “Then I synthesized that data in SQL in order to isolate overlapping—”

  Martin clapped his hands together, and Omar and one of the other analysts jumped in their seats. “Omar,” he said, “I’m sure the work you do is very complicated and very impressive. But I just want the sausage. I don’t want to know how it’s made.”

  Omar swallowed as he nervously tucked his hair behind his ears. “I looked to see if the same phone signal would show up near each of our crimes sites around the time the murders were committed.”

  “Better,” Martin said. “And?”

  He shook his head. “No luck there. But I also CALEA’d a few search indices so I could perform a link analysis—” Omar caught himself this time. He stopped in mid-sentence and then smiled nervously at Martin. “Sorry. CALEA is the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. It’s the legal backbone of our PRISM program, and it allows us to examine internet data collected and stored by the big online search engines.”

  “Google,” Martin said, pursing his lips.

  “Right!” Omar said brightly. “And Microsoft, and Yahoo, etcetera. So, the type of link analysis I ran identifies those computers or devices that have searched for specific groups of words. In this case, we were looking for search histories containing each of the victim’s names.”