The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  “In theory,” Swamp said. “But first I have to convince PRU. Any DHS request for Bureau assets is going to have to come from the Secret Service. I keep saying I’m Secret Service, but I’m really not. The PRU won’t make that request just on my say-so.” He thought about Hallory’s demeanor at their meeting. “Or ever, perhaps.”

  “Didn’t they call you?”

  Swamp smiled. “Yes, they did,” he said. “But they didn’t seem very impressed with what I brought them. The DHS bureaucracy is a lot more convoluted than what you were dealing with over in Fairfax County. Everybody being oh so careful not to step on anybody’s toes. A committee-of-equals theory. A couple dozen scorpions in a fog-filled bottle is closer to the truth.”

  “What does PRU care if the Bureau works it? Everybody knows those guys are really good at that kind of shit.”

  “If we surface an actual conspiracy, PRU’d want the credit. The FBI would never allow that.”

  “Credit? Who gives a shit about credit?”

  “Anyone trying to turn an organizational reputation into federal budget dollars.”

  Gary shrugged, and then Swamp saw one of the patrons giving Gary a not so subtle once-over. Gary saw it, too.

  “Let it go, now,” Swamp said calmly. “Remember, you’re a married man.”

  Gary turned back to stare hard at Swamp for a second, then started laughing. They finished their drinks and left to go make their phone calls.

  Connie Wall couldn’t believe that she was being freed. She’d finally gotten to talk to a lawyer, an extremely young-looking black man from the District public defender’s office. She’d begun to tell him the background of what was going on, but he had stopped her right away.

  “They’re gonna cut you loose,” he had announced. “Surprised me, too, when I heard the original beef. But I went in, asked the usual questions about charges. Senior Homicide dude just says, ‘No charges. We’re gonna ask her for a statement; then she walks.’ Wanted me to come in here, just so they can say you got your lawyer, because you did ask for one.”

  She hadn’t known what to say to that, and it was obvious that the lawyer thought his time had been wasted. He’d told her she didn’t have to give a statement, that all the cops wanted was a sequence of events from the night before. Her side of the story, in other words. She’d told him that she would do that, but not answer any questions beyond that. The lawyer left and then returned with Jake Cullen and the other Homicide detective. They’d put down a tape recorder, opened the interview, and then let Connie tell it. She was done in ten minutes.

  “I know you said no questions, Ms. Wall,” Jake Cullen said. “But I’d like to ask a couple. You can answer or not, and we’ll go with it, either way.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Like did you get a look at the guy’s face? Good enough so’s you could ID him, you saw him again?”

  “No,” she said. “He did one of those Halloween numbers—you know, flashlight under his chin? All I could see were teeth and eyes. And, no, I don’t think I could ID him.”

  “When you struggled down in the park, did you get the impression he’s a real big guy? Really strong?”

  She had to think about that. It had happened so fast. “It was dark. I was fighting to get away, and I’m in pretty good shape, but he was able to hold me down with one arm. I got lucky with that one kick, and then he was all done.”

  “Big, then?”

  “No-o. Probably my height. But strong. Very strong.”

  “What did he smell like?” Howell asked.

  “Smell?” She had to think about that.

  “You know, stink like some homeless guy, or was he wearing aftershave? Garlic breath? Curry breath? Beer breath? Smoker? Any smells you can remember?”

  She shook her head. “It was a fight. My adrenaline was pumping. I smelled and tasted mostly metal. But, no, nothing sticks out.”

  “He wearing gloves?”

  “Yes. I felt leather against my cheek.”

  Cullen sat back in his chair and punched the recorder off. “Connie, here’s one you may not want to answer, but hear me out. As you know, Cat Ballard and I went way back. I went to his wedding, but I also introduced the two of you at that party. I knew he was seeing you. That was Cat’s business, none of mine, or ours, for that matter. Okay so far?”

  She just looked at him.

  “Here’s the question: Did Cat come out there last night to socialize, or was he there for some other reason? Had you called him?”

  “I’ll answer that, as long as you promise that it won’t get him in trouble. I mean, I know he’s dead, but—”

  Cullen put up a hand. “Lemme explain,” he said. “If he was there because something had happened, as in he was there as a cop, then there’s a way into a line-of-duty finding. You know how this stuff works, right? You follow me here?”

  Connie absolutely understood. If Cat had been there for a late nooner, then he was on personal time. But if he’d been there because she’d called him fearing a threat to her life, then he had died in the line of duty, protecting a citizen that he’d also happened to know. It could have a bearing on his estate, and, just maybe they could sell that story to the grieving widow. She nodded. He turned the recorder back on.

  “Ms. Wall,” he said. “Was Lieutenant Ballard there on official business?”

  “Yes, he was. I’d called him.”

  “Why?”

  She went through the sequence of events, including their suspicions that someone had been in the house and left poison of some kind in the milk container. Detective Howell was writing in his notebook. Connie continued. “He said he was going to give the milk container to your lab. Anyway, on Tuesday, I got an anonymous phone call. A man’s voice whispering, ‘Everyone’s dead. Except you.’ I got scared, called Cat again. That’s why he was there that night.”

  “This clinic—is that what the Secret Service guy was talking about?”

  “Partly. But that’s why Cat was there. Actually, we were arguing. He wanted me to come in, make a statement to the government security people. I was…reluctant to do that. Then when the guy threw that thing through the window, that’s…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, and nobody said anything. She nodded at the tape recorder, and Cullen shut it off.

  “That’s when Cat went out the door, after the guy.”

  “And ran into that saw blade.”

  She nodded. “Now I’ve got one, Jake.”

  Cullen blinked and said, “Go ahead.”

  “I want to go home, pack some shit, get in my car, and get out of town. Just hit the road, get away from Washington. You guys have any problem with my doing that?”

  They looked at each other; then Cullen shook his head. “We’d prefer that you hang around.”

  “But do I have to?”

  He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I guess we could tag you as a material witness, get a judge to make you stay in the area. Or we could keep you in custody. But here’s the real deal: We can’t catch this guy because we don’t have the first clue as to what he looks like. All we know is that he’s after you.”

  He stopped and waited for her to get it, which she did. “No way,” she said immediately. “You want me to be the bait? To go home, wait by the window for him to do it again? Or to push me under a Metro train one day?”

  “Not in those exact words, Connie, but yeah, we do. And let me tell you why you should do it: Until we catch him, your life’s gonna be hell. Every stranger you see walking toward you on the sidewalk, every knock on the door, every phone call, you’re gonna be asking yourself, Is this him? The guy standing behind you on the Metro platform. The guy who’s going the same direction you’re going in the grocery store parking lot. Like that.”

  “Not if I leave town.”

  “You know that? A guy wants you bad enough to ice a cop? And what if he follows you? And what happens when he finds you? All alone now.”

  She closed her eyes.
“And I suppose you’d have people around to protect me?”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  “Twenty-four/seven?”

  “It wouldn’t appear that way, but yes. We need him to think he’s got a shot.”

  “Great choice of words there, Jake.” He sighed, but then she smiled, and some of the tension drained out of the room.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m a lone wolf. Cat Ballard was probably my best friend. We go back, too, guys. To before he got married, just for the record, okay? So yes, I’ll help you. But listen to me: I didn’t do anything wrong at that clinic, except maybe take some easy money.”

  “And?”

  “And the government’s looking into what those doctors were doing. I’ll take my chances with them. But if I help you, I want your promise that you won’t do anything to put me under the government’s wheels. Can you make that promise?”

  The detectives exchanged glances. “I can,” Cullen said. “We’re after a cop killer, and between you and me, we’re kind of ambivalent as to whether or not his ass survives the arrest. We don’t know what the government wants; we never do. But since it sounds like they want this mutt, too, you should be safe from the G. After that, though, it’s anybody’s guess.”

  She thought about that for a minute. It sounded like the truth. “All right,” she said. “I’ll help. Can someone go with me tonight, make sure there’re no snakes in my house?”

  “Tonight, we’ll put you in a hotel,” Cullen said. “Give us time to clear the house, make it look like we’re all done there. Set up the surveillance operation. Tap the phone. Some other technical stuff. Then tomorrow, we’ll announce you’ve been released but told to stay in town.”

  “So he’ll know.”

  Cullen nodded. “If he’s still around, he’ll know.”

  “Okay,” she said. They settled a few other logistics issues, asked her to wait there in the counsel room, and left. Her lawyer got up.

  “What do you think about all this?” she asked.

  He glanced up at the video camera to make sure it was off. “Florida’s nice this time of year,” he said as he closed his briefcase.

  “You know what I meant,” she said. “About being bait.”

  “Bait gets bitten before the hook gets set,” he said. “Me? I’d go to Florida.”

  Jake Cullen came back into the room as the lawyer left. Detective Howell was not with him.

  “How’s…how’s Lynn coping with all this, Jake?” she asked.

  Cullen started to answer but then shook his head. “Her husband’s dead. She hasn’t asked the hard questions yet.” His pager went off. He looked at it and swore. “I’ll be right back.”

  As the door closed again, she mentally kicked herself for asking that question. Then she wondered if she was doing the right thing.

  Why start now? she thought.

  It was 7:30 when Gary came back into Swamp’s cubicle. “Too late, they’ve let her go.”

  “Shit. Another one of my bright ideas bites me in the ass.”

  “Well, I talked to Carl Malone. He says they have her in a hotel for the night, and then they’re gonna set up a watch box and see if the guy tries again. He said we needed to talk to Detective Howell in the morning, because he’s the one setting up the box.”

  Swamp looked at his watch and shook his head. Time flew while you were having real fun. “Tomorrow’s another day,” he said. “I guess we wait. I have to talk to Tad McNamara first thing in the morning. Bring him up to speed, see if he’ll go along with folding the Bureau in.”

  “He’ll make it dependent on PRU’s read?”

  “Probably. Carl say how big a surveillance op they’re going to set up on the nurse?”

  “He said a rough-and-smooth. They don’t have all the assets in the world right now. Or any extra overtime money.”

  Swamp nodded thoughtfully. “Better than nothing. I hope PRU goes along.”

  “They work late? Maybe call that dragon lady you were talking about. Telegraph the punch.”

  Gary had a point. PRU would indeed be working late this close to the inauguration. He nodded. “Good idea. In the meantime, why don’t you—”

  “Right,” Gary said. “Take the rest of the day off.”

  “Something like that. What’s your wife think about your new posting?”

  “I’m in the Secret Service. She’s still waiting for the White House tour.”

  After Gary left, Swamp fished out the card Lucy VanMetre had given him earlier and placed the call. He expected a secretary, but then he remembered what time it was. An agent working late in PRU answered, said he thought she was still there, and put him on hold. She came on the line a minute later.

  “Developments so soon, Mr. Morgan?” Her voice was cool, a little impatient.

  “Can we go secure?”

  The telephones did their thing, and then she was back. He told her what had transpired since they’d last talked. “Now I’d like to enlist the help of Mr. Hoover’s finest—to do an evidentiary screen of all the medical records in that clinic.”

  “Why the Bureau and not our own resources?”

  “You’ve got some bodies to spare, Lucy? A week before the big day? And besides, the Bureau’s better at this kind of thing than we are. They’ve got all those specialists.”

  “That would take the intervention of our director,” she said. “To bring in assets from another agency. For what might be a firefly.”

  “I understand. I suppose I could just run this up to the fusion committee, and they could order the Bureau directly into it. Or order your director to sign off on Bureau involvement.”

  “The fusion committee? As easy as that, Mr. Morgan? I’m impressed.”

  He laughed. “I would be, too, if I could swing it. That may have been an attempt at crude bureaucratic strong-arming. You’re supposed to be quailing in terror at this point.”

  He heard her laugh. “The truth is,” he said, “I would have to convince my boss to expend political capital with his boss, and then we’d have to gen up a briefing for the fusion committee, probably staff it around OSI, and so on.”

  “Which is why you want PRU to make the request.”

  “To sign off at least. But there’s a better reason: Wouldn’t PRU rather control this investigation?”

  “I thought PRU did control what you’re doing—PRU tasked OSI, which tasked you. And as I recall, it was fairly limited tasking: Is it a firefly, and if so, say so. If not, report back to PRU, which will handle it from there.”

  “My problem is that I think Hallory’s gonna tank it. Based in no small part on what he had to say this morning. ‘Pathetic’ as that might sound.”

  “Handling potential threats to presidential security is PRU’s job, Mr. Morgan. You were in the Service. You know how it works. The detail handles the crazies who pop out of the crowd with guns; PRU handles the plotters and schemers, hopefully before they get into the crowd. If Mr. Hallory thinks it’s a firefly, then that’s his call. It’s his to make.”

  He tried again. “The District cops are going to troll the nurse, in hopes that the bad guy will make another play. If they catch him, the Service can always step in and wave White House security at them, especially since it’s the Service that started this ball rolling in the first place. But not if the Bureau has been turned on by somebody else. Then all bets are off.”

  “Somebody else?” she said.

  “We all work for the secretary of DHS. If it escalates to that level, PRU and the Service won’t have a pit to hiss in.”

  “You obviously think that the guy who killed the lieutenant and who’s after the nurse is the same guy who did the Nazi rant.”

  “I don’t know that. But I can’t find out, either, unless we all take this thing seriously.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then a moment of silence. “Well, it’s late, isn’t it, Mr. Morgan? I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Bypass Hallory, Lucy. If he doesn’t ask, don’t tell. If he does, tel
l him you’re handling it.”

  “Oh right. Cut my boss out of the loop. Is that how you got to SES, Mr. Morgan?”

  He took a deep breath. They were going to punt it. He just knew it. “I got to SES by tuning my instincts, Lucy. By being able to tell the fireflies from the firestorms. In advance.”

  “That was then, Mr. Morgan. Admittedly, you were famous for it. But now I think it’s Mr. Hallory’s turn.”

  Swamp hesitated before asking the question that had just popped into his mind. But he had to know. “Do you have the authority to be telling me this, Lucy?”

  “I’m Mr. Hallory’s deputy, so, yes, I think I do.”

  Suspicions confirmed. Not an assistant, but the number two at PRU. He should have guessed, if only from her demeanor. “Okay, Lucy. Thanks for taking the call. Let me know something tomorrow morning if you can.”

  He hung up and sighed audibly. PRU was going to pull it back. We asked you to look at a firefly. You did. You reported. We disagreed. Thank you very much for your interest in national defense and good fucking bye. And if Hallory was really clever, he’d ice the cake with some sympathetic noises to Swamp’s boss, Tad McNamara, about how heart-warming it was that the old guys always wanted to get back in the game. We appreciate it, we really do, but, you know, things have changed a lot. We have different sources and methods now. It’s too hard to bring the recalled guys back up to speed, what with the press of everything that’s going on. You know how it is…and nothing from our web makes a connection between presidential security and a fire in D.C., or some cop getting his throat cut. A married cop, who was visiting his main squeeze, as we understand it. We don’t want the Service involved in tawdry shit like that. You see where we’re coming from, right?

  But if nothing else, Swamp thought, a cop did get his throat cut. While trying to protect a woman who might have indirect knowledge of a plot to bomb the Capitol when most of the government would be present in the building. That was sufficient reason to pull the string. He thought about calling McNamara at home, then got up and went into McNamara’s office to look at his calendar for Thursday. Annual physical exam.

  Shit. He’d probably be gone all day.