by Brian Haig
Like that, the couple upstairs were no longer clinical clue magnets; they were now Grandma and Grandpa, they took the grandkiddies to the Smithsonian and remembered all their birthdays, and their murder became more than an incident: It became a tragedy for some family and a matter of more than passing interest for me. Wondering if Margold's mood reflected some personal connection, I asked, "Did you know these people?"
She faced me and said, "Open your mouth again and you're gone."
We were getting along famously
Anyway, we proceeded to a door and entered a small room that, from the condition of the drywall and unmarred whitewash, appeared to be a recent addition.
A heavyset middle-aged male stood in the middle of the floor, running his hands through his balding hair, and he turned to face us as we entered. The absence of other living beings in the room indicated this would be Ben. The room-small and claustrophobic, because in addition to Ben were some ten wall-mounted video monitors, a high-tech communications console, a brown Naugahyde lounge chair, and a single bed in the far corner. Also, strewn here and about, three additional corpses.
Nearest to the door and us sat a young woman who had taken three or four slugs on the right side of her body. She was seated in an office chair at the commo console, her body pitched to the left, her right hand stretched toward the console, and it struck me she might've been reaching for something when she got popped. The other two corpses were males, late twenties and mid-thirties, wearing wrinkled gray suits and more bullet holes.
The younger of the two men had removed his jacket and was prone on the bed, and if you ignored the small hole in his right temple and the splatter of skull viscera on the far wall, the expression on his face was weirdly placid and content-arms crossed, feet crossed; his sleep had turned permanent without so much as a whimper.
The second male corpse was seated on the lounge chair, jacket slung over the chair back, eyes wide open, and his expression, not placid, was a mixture of shock and agony. His fingers were clutched at his throat, just like the lady at the door, where he'd also been shot. If you didn't know better, you'd think he'd had a heart attack. In a way he had. They all had.
Another thing got my attention. The dead guy on the bed had removed not only his jacket but also a holster containing a Glock automatic. A matching holster and Glock pistol were still hooked to the belt of his dead partner. I eliminated my CIA employee theory and leaned toward the blown witness thing. "Who are these people?" I asked Margold.
Margold was busy feeling the neck of the young lady at the console and said, "Shut up" to me, and then to Ben, "Roughly same time of death as the others."
"Yeah." After a long moment, he noted, "Nearly simultaneous."
"Same weapon as upstairs, right?"
"Uh… maybe. Same caliber. I'm thinking a thirty-eight."
"About. Had to be a silencer."
"Had to be," he agreed. After a moment, he said to her, "Can you reconstruct yet?"
"Yeah… it's pretty straightforward. Who's at the front door?"
"June Lacy" He added, "Been with us three years. From upstate Minnesota, I think… engaged to get married next week."
"Uh-huh. What time did Hawk's driver arrive?"
"Same time every morning, 6:15. Name's Larry Elwood. Anyway, Larry'd pull into the driveway, leave the car idling, come to the front door, and June, or whoever was on shift, took over from there."
Agent Margold was examining a clipboard on the console, apparently a security log, because she said, "The entry's right here. Six-twenty, Elwood arrived." She looked at Ben. "'Took over from there'? What's that mean?"
"The team had a morning routine. June would roust the Hawk out. She'd escort him out to the car, and Elwood drove him in. The Hawk liked to be at his desk at 6:45 sharp, even on Saturdays. You can tell by the condition of the house the man was a stickler… We got serious heat if we threw him off schedule."
"So that's what happened," Margold replied after a moment. "Elwood-at least someone who looked like Elwood-pulled into the driveway, came to the door, rang the bell, only this time, when Lacy answered, she took it in the throat." She added, "Nothing arbitrary about that throat shot. Drowned out her warning."
Ben nodded. "I just reviewed the tape. The car pulled up at 6:20. Like you said-five minutes late. And you're right, a guy who looks like Elwood walked directly to the front door. Obviously, the cameras only canvass the exterior, though."
"Yeah, well… it's fairly obvious what happened inside. After he killed Lacy, he stepped inside, capped the Hawk and his wife, then rushed down here and did these three." She pointed at the bank of monitors. "Let's see the tape."
I didn't think it was that obvious, but Ben raised no objections, nor did I. Ben moved to the console, pointed to one of the monitors, pushed a few buttons, and rewound till you could see the time was 6:19. He pushed play, and after about thirty seconds a shiny black Lincoln Town Car with impenetrably darkened windows crossed in front of the house and pulled up the driveway, not stopping till it was nearly to the garage door. A male got out, walked to the front of the car, then you lost him for a few seconds as he crossed the front of the car, but he reappeared as he headed up the walkway to the entrance. The camera lost his image again when he walked under the overhang supported by the concrete columns. So you couldn't observe what happened at the door, though from June Lacy's corpse, you knew what happened, just not how.
The driver, Larry Elwood, wore a dark suit, was heavyset and black. One of those silly chauffeur's hats with a visor obscured his face. Also he walked slowly, almost haltingly, and slightly hunched over, like he had a stomach cramp or was trying to work a kink out of a bum leg. Or perhaps as though he was hiding his face, disguising his physical appearance from the camera.
Margold picked up on it, too, because she asked Ben, "You're positive that's Elwood?"
"Looks like him. Hell, though, I'm not sure of anything."
I suggested, "Maybe there was more than one of them."
Ben asked, "Who's he?"
I asked, "Who're you?"
"Ben Marcasi." He turned to Agent Margold and again asked, "Who the hell's he?"
Margold looked at me. "I thought I warned you to keep your mouth shut."
"Right. Just, you know… forget what I said."
But obviously she couldn't forget what I said. She informed me, "Ben's Secret Service… the deputy chief of the White House security detail." She waved an arm around. "This house falls under his supervision. These are his people."
Goodness. It all came into focus-the poop was hitting the fan, and clearly they knew it. What wasn't at all clear was who had died upstairs, and what I was doing in range of the splatter.
So to clarify that first point, I asked, "And the dead guy upstairs… Mr. Hawk?"
"A code name. The deceased male upstairs is Terry Belknap… White House Chief of Staff." But she obviously wasn't interested in providing more insights or information. She asked me, “Why do you think there were two shooters?"
"Did I say only two?"
"I don't… uh, okay, two or more. Why?"
I allowed her a moment to digest her own question before I suggested, "You understand that the couple upstairs were shot nearly simultaneously right? He was facing his wife and he took it in the right temple. The geometry suggests his shooter fired from the living room entry into the dining room. Had the same shooter nailed Mrs. Belknap, the bullets would've struck her in the front or possibly left frontal lobe. But the Mrs. was facing the Mr. and she took it in the rear left quadrant of her neck. Ergo, a second shooter popped her from the kitchen entry into the dining room."
Agent Margold nodded and said, "You could be right. But there are-"
"Not could be… It's a fact."
"All right…"
"That's two shooters who gained entry If they found a way to get two inside, why not three? Or four? Lacy opens the front door and takes it in the throat. Two, three, or four guys race in. One moves to the livin
g room, one to the kitchen. The third and maybe the fourth sneak down here."
Margold said, "Let's entertain your theory for a moment. They've got some kind of signaling device-radios maybe-and as you suggested, they launch their attacks simultaneously." She walked over to the dead guy in the lounge chair. "He's armed, he's alert, he's facing the door
… he gets it first. Then her, before she can push the central alarm," she said, indicating the dead lady at the commo console. "The sleeper, he's harmless… he gets it last."
"Nope," said Ben, shaking his head. "Not only are cameras covering the whole exterior of this house, there's also motion detectors. No way you could get even one person approaching undetected. Couldn't happen."
After pondering Ben's blanket assurance, I asked, "No blind spots?"
"Glad you asked-none. Cameras cover the full backyard, the house flanks, and there's two roving cameras mounted high on the columns in the front that give you a panorama of everything approaching this house." He pointed at the monitors. "You saw yourself-driveway, lawn, street out front… everything's covered."
I noted, "I saw a blind spot against the front wall of the house."
"Well, yeah. The cameras had to be mounted on the columns. But we were aware of that. So that space is covered with movement sensors."
"Radar or light beams?" I asked.
"Radar. I oversaw the security architecture and installation myself. One detector spaced every five feet. Foolproof."
Wrong answer, Ben. I asked, "And what happens when two or three bodies breach a beam simultaneously?"
"That's imposs-"
"Like, they're walking in a line, so they all hit the beam at once?" I knew the answer, actually. But sometimes the Socratic method works best.
Ben paused. He then gave the only answer he could give. "Theoretically, you might get one alert."
"So this Elwood guy pulls into the driveway-and one, two, or three other guys are inside the car with him. He gets out; they get out. They stay low, using the car as a visual screen from the cameras till they get to the blind spot by the garage door. They get right against the front wall of the house, inside the blind spot, and move in lockstep with Elwood." After a short pause, I added, "And because the folks down here observe what they think is Elwood moving alone on the walkway, they assume it's him making the movement detectors go off."
The room was suddenly quiet. I asked, "Is that a possible scenario?"
Poor Ben looked like he just understood he was about to have a big career problem. "I… I don't think so."
Margold looked at me, then at Ben, then at the three corpses in the tiny room. She said, "Ben… we better check."
So we trudged back upstairs, through the long hallway and the spacious foyer, past poor Lacy's body, and onto the front entry. Neatly trimmed bushes and shrubbery were up against the front wall of the house, and there was a thick strip of mulch separating the bushes from the well-manicured lawn. But once you knew what you were looking for, and at, the disturbances in the garden mulch jumped out at you. Ben bent forward at the waist and gawked. After an awkward moment, he insisted, "That proves nothing. Could've been a gardener or a wild animal made those tracks."
I suggested to Margold, "They're footprints. You should definitely get molds before it rains."
Margold's nostrils sort of flared. "I'll decide how to do my job, if you don't mind." She contemplated the mulch, then pointed at me and snapped, "You… let's have a word."
We walked, she and I, to the end of the driveway, far enough to be out of Ben's earshot. She studied my face and asked, "Who the hell are you?"
"Nobody. Forget I was here. Now, if you'll please tell your people to give me a lift, I'd like to go back to my office. Incidentally, it was really swell working with you. Tough case. Best of luck."
"Look… in case you haven't noticed, six people are dead inside that house. Including the White House Chief of Staff."
"I noticed. Do I need to walk out of here?" Okay, I was being a little over the top. And maybe Margold's testiness that morning was justified, as she had obviously been shoved in front of a moving train. But she had rubbed my face in the crap, and what goes around, comes around.
She said, "You're staying. Don't pretend otherwise."
Also, I was thinking on my feet. I had no idea why my boss dispatched me to this gig, and if I stayed I'd only sink deeper into the muck. Mrs. Drummond had not raised a complete idiot, and I now knew that what had happened inside that big house was the form of execution subtitled a political assassination. Mention that phrase in the CIA and people go all pale and sweaty on you. The next thing you know, some idiot named Oliver Stone's making a movie with a character named Drummond. I said, "You're the FBI. You're great-handle it."
Ms. Margold ignored me and began talking about the seriousness of this thing and so forth. I tuned her out.
In fact, I was sure this was why my boss had ordered me to keep a low profile. The Agency did not want to be within ten miles of this thing. Actually, the Agency headquarters was only two miles down the road, so I should walk fast.
Apparently Margold saw she had lost my attention, because she swallowed and said, "Okay, I get it. Look… well, I'm sorry if I was… a little brusque earlier."
"A little what?"
"Okay… I was rude. Nothing personal."
"Bullshit. You're worried because you've got the murder of the year on your hands. The Lord of the Feebs will be here any minute, and you caught the rap. You're supposed to show you're on top of this thing and explain what happened here, yet for some reason no ME or forensics people have arrived, the first guys on the scene are standing around with their thumbs up their butts, Ben's worried about covering his ass, and it suddenly struck you that you're all alone with your ass on the line. So I say something bright and enlightening, and you decide I might be helpful. Also, you'd like somebody to help catch the crap when it flies. Thanks. Get me a ride out of here."
Her jaw muscles tensed a bit, but she kept her cool. Actually she smiled. "You're more alert and intuitive than I gave you credit for, Drummond."
"Are you going to get me a ride?"
"But you're not leaving."
"Wrong. Says so in the federal statutes-CIA handles assholes outside, FBI handles assholes inside. It's yours."
I spun around and was starting to walk away when she warned, "You better hear about the note before you take another step."
I stopped, but did not turn around. Actually, I knew I should not have stopped. But knowing what you should do and doing what you should do are two very different things. I could feel her eyes on my back.
She mentioned, "It was found on that oriental chest in the foyer. The initial entry crew immediately transported it to our lab for analysis."
Okay, now I had a millisecond to decide-did I really want to hear about the note? This was Washington, the one place where in fact what you don't know doesn't hurt you. But having seen all those bodies, I was curious. Boy, was I in a fix.
Then it was too late as she explained, "To paraphrase the words read to me over the phone, this slaughter was a warning. 'You can't stop us. There will be others, and the President will be history in the next two days.'"
"History?"
"Their word, not mine."
That awkward phraseology aside, it occurred to me that my options had just dwindled. The assassins could be foreign terrorists, and that would definitely involve the Agency, so I should stay or I'd be in hot water. Or they could be homegrown idiots and staying would implicate the Agency in a domestic legal matter, and also put my ass in the sling. The only clear fact was that the people who found a way to bypass the security in this house, murdered six people, and beelined out of here were legitimately bad hombres, skilled, bold, and smart. In fact, Mrs. President might think about calling a few term life agencies to see who offered the most affordable rates for a few days of additional coverage on Mr. President.
Margold was thinking along the same lines and said, "This
thing might be beyond domestic. You're as involved as I am."
Not so. At least, not yet.
She added, "The Director could get here any second. He's expecting a full and comprehensive briefing. Trust me, he's not a man you want to disappoint with half-assed results."
"All right. I'm here in an advisory capacity." I reconsidered and said, "Actually, I'm not here. The instant your boss shows up, I'm out of here."
She nodded, but did not reply.
In retrospect, I should have heeded the old warning: Never test the depth of water with both feet. But it was already too late.
CHAPTER TWO
We stepped back inside for another visual and mental sweep of the surroundings. First, however, I took a moment for attitude adjustment. I was annoyed at being back inside this house, annoyed at being blindsided by my boss, and most of all, I was annoyed at Ms. Margold. Had Miss Tightass not kept the motive and victim profiles from me in the first place, we wouldn't have to go through this again. For the record, I've seen death, destruction, and corpses in my Army and legal career, and I'm not queasy. Yet it is something I've never grown used to, and a rerun is in some strange way worse than a first run.
But you have to focus at a murder site, and I noted first the absence of a peephole on the front door. There were lines of small side windows to each side of the door, and I suggested, "Possibly she never saw his face."
"What? Oh… Lacy… You mean Elwood's face?"
"Yeah. Look here. If he stood close enough when he rang the doorbell, even if she peeked out the side window, she could only observe the side of his body"
Margold walked over and peered out the window to confirm the accuracy of this observation.
I obviously did not need to explain why this point was relevant, even important. The driver, Larry Elwood, was at that moment our only identified suspect. But there were no living witnesses and Elwood's face wasn't on the videotape in the basement, which left open the possibility that the gentleman we observed on film stumbling up the walkway was an impostor. The fact that June Lacy couldn't recognize Elwood's face at the door would leave his status ambiguous. Solving crimes is about inclusion and exclusion; Larry Elwood could still go either way and we were back to roughly five billion UnSubs-FBI-speak for Unknown Subject and normal-speak for haven't got a clue. I mentioned, "Make sure your forensics people take fingerprints from the doorbell buzzer."
