by Davis Bunn
“Would it do any good?”
“Couldn’t say for certain. But you got some bonus points coming your way, saving a cop’s life.”
Matt settled back into the car. “What are you not telling me?”
“Around Baltimore police headquarters, a federal tag is worse than a rap sheet. There are people who will do anything to keep you out of the game room. But today might change things. Not for feds in general. That’d take a shift in the earth’s axis. For you. If, say, you could bring us something the feds aren’t giving up, Chief Bernstein might be convinced to reconsider.” D’Amico smiled and added, “Skippy.”
Matt awoke to sweats and vague dreams of gunfire and lingering crystal chimes. The doctor’s orders kept him from running at dawn, nor did he much feel like it. He could hear his father moving around upstairs, talking through the day with Sol and a couple of other early risers. Matt ate standing by the kitchen sink, then left the house.
The Federal Building rose above a six-floor parking lot, across Lombard from the federal courthouse. Homeland Security occupied one entire floor, marked upon entry by nothing save a security cop on permanent bored detail. Matt showed his credentials, got checked off the duty list, and waited in the special agent in charge’s front office. His father’s latest project dominated the west-facing view. Some of Downtown’s decrepit office blocks had been empty for more than a decade and stared back in sullen hopelessness. Matt hardly saw them. He was no clearer on what direction to take than he had been the previous evening. Nor could he say why the homicide detective unsettled him like he did. Lucas D’Amico’s quiet manner covered a multitude of layers, all of them subtly threatening. Matt was still thinking about the cop when the SAC arrived a few minutes after eight.
Bryan Bannister, the special agent in charge, was as ironed and starched as his navy suit and white button-down shirt. Crisp, direct, hard-edged, not a fraction of wasted seconds to his psyche. “Very sorry for your loss, Kelly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Bannister pulled a file from the wire basket and seated himself, already deep into his rapid scan of the contents. “The directive assigning you temporarily to this office arrived yesterday. But it doesn’t indicate the priority level.”
Matt might have been new to the force, but he knew enough agency doublespeak to reply in kind. “I’m the only one tasked to collect on it, sir. It’s way down everybody’s list but mine.”
“So State has the lead on collecting here.”
“Yes sir.”
“You have point.”
“Correct, sir.”
The agent said nothing because he didn’t need to. Matt knew exactly what the man was thinking. The SAC’s role had changed enormously since 9/11. This place was still on the books as an FBI field office. But Homeland Security now demanded that all resources be available to other intelligence agencies. Bannister was not asking because he was concerned about helping Matt get his job done. The agent wanted to cover his position.
Bannister asked, “We’re on flank?”
“I doubt, sir, that there will be any need for further agency involvement.”
The office was standard field-office grim—bland desk, squeaky chair, fake-wood shelves, obligatory family photos, trophy wall, and mountains of papers and forms. The SAC made notes in the margin of the office directive and slipped it into his out tray. “You’re new to fieldwork, I take it.”
“Green as they come, sir.”
“You heard of stovepiping, Kelly?”
“Yes sir.”
Bannister explained anyway. “Pre-9/11, intelligence work was all tightly controlled. Information went up the in-house chain of command; orders came back the same way. There was no crossover at all. Agencies didn’t talk to one another. If you were caught talking to another intel division, it meant your career.”
“The law of the iron rice bowl,” Matt agreed. “Every agency was out to protect its own funds and turf.”
“You’ve got it. But today, now, we’re facing a totally different world.” Bannister pointed at the filed orders. “Case in point. Here you are, a State Intel agent, sitting in a regional FBI office, wanting to liaise with Baltimore police on an unsolved murder.”
Matt responded to the unasked question. “I used up all my in-house markers to get this assignment, sir.”
“Still, you got to admit, it’s interesting. A green officer being assigned to such a highly sensitive case. Not to mention the fact that just prior to your walking through this door, I received a flash cable from home office, directing me to offer all possible support to this case. That’s a lot of pull for an agent fresh out of academy.”
“Ambassador Walton wants me as his new adjutant. I agreed to take the job. But I asked for this assignment first. I’m not out for headlines here, sir. I just don’t want the police to find some body they can squeeze to fit the perp sheet.”
“So this is about revenge.”
“Justice,” Matt corrected. “I want the guy who did this. Your office is welcome to all the credit.”
The SAC nodded approval. “I’ve heard State Intel doesn’t include backstabbing and spotlight-grabbing in its training routine. Nice to see that it’s true.”
“Sir, I need to ask a favor.” Matt ran through an abbreviated version of the previous day. “I’ve been assigned a desk in Siberia. The detective said I might be able to work more closely with them if I could bring something to the table.”
“A Baltimore cop told you that?”
“He seemed to suggest that the feds might be holding back.”
Bannister studied him for a long moment. “Sit down, Kelly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ve been in this job for six months. I’ve met with the local police a grand total of once. It was at a dinner with the mayor. We had prime rib. I sat three chairs down from the new commissioner. He refused to shake my hand.” He picked up his phone and punched in a number. “Bring in the armory file.”
Matt asked, “They have refused the FBI’s assistance on this case?”
“Point-blank. The Baltimore police department is a mess. Some very good officers are hamstrung by politics. Baltimore has one of the highest murder rates in the United States. They’ve got gangs; they’ve got drugs; they’ve got neighborhoods I wouldn’t enter without SWAT. They need a shake-up at police headquarters. They need a strong-arm boss who will come in and clean house.” He accepted a manila folder from a young woman in a navy suit and continued, “You didn’t hear any of that from me.”
“No sir.”
“Eight months ago, we had a break-in at the National Guard Armory. You know the one?”
“On Martin Luther King and Preston.”
“A neo-Nazi crew got away with a truckload of automatic weapons, decommissioned claymores, and C-4. That’s our turf.”
“Theft from federal property,” Matt supplied.
“Right. My predecessor set up a sting. Got some information. Traded that for more. We brought in some agents from Delaware. Worked it for two months. Made a dawn sweep on nine different locations. All but one of our arrests took place inside Baltimore city limits. Know how my predecessor liaised with the Baltimore police?”
“No sir.”
“He didn’t tell them diddly. Not a single word. The police commissioner found out on the morning news. Didn’t go down well. The commissioner—not this one, the one before—he went on television and blasted us proper. My predecessor responded with a leak to the local press. About how a police dispatcher was the live-in girlfriend of the neo-Nazi leader behind the heist. How she bought the break-in team enough time to get away by alerting her man. Which led to the last commissioner’s resignation. His deputy is now the top man. He’s still friends with the one we got canned. You getting the picture?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Two nights after the new commissioner was sworn in, one of our agents came off duty and was arrested a block from here. Failed taillights. Found drug p
araphernalia in an evidence bag. How it got in the foot well of the backseat I am not even going to comment on. My agent spent the night in the drunk pen. The press went into a feeding frenzy. Our agent was cleared but found himself reassigned to Fresno. And that, Kelly, is the last time we’ve had official contact with the Baltimore police.” He shoved the file across his otherwise-clean desk. “But there’s been a change at the top over here in our office. I’m willing to take a chance. Just one.”
Matt reached for the file. “Thank you, sir.”
“There’s information in there that could burn us, Kelly. You sure you can trust this detective?”
“I think so, sir.”
“You let him know that if they use this against us, if any of it ever goes public, they’ve just made a new enemy.”
“You got it, sir.”
“One more thing. There’s a consultant living out by Gunpowder Falls State Park. He’s former British military, does bomb work for Homeland Security. Name is Allen Pecard. I’ve liaised with him on several cases. He’s good, Kelly. Before you return to the police, I’d strongly advise you to go have a word with this man.”
“I’ll leave now.”
“Pecard’s address is on the first page. I’ll call and give him a heads-up.” He dismissed Matt with a wave. “You’d best make one thing perfectly clear to those folks in police headquarters. I’m in this saddle for five years. If they see this as a chance to burn the bureau, I’ve got a long time to get even. Make sure they understand that before you hand anything over.”
Matt headed north on the Jones Falls Highway, driving hard. He skirted Lutherville and entered the borderlands around Gunpowder Falls. Baltimore’s octopus reach could still be seen. On both sides of the road, rolling farmlands were being carved into subdivisions. He spotted a mailbox made from an ancient cannon and turned down a graveled lane.
Allen Pecard’s home was surrounded by heavy woodlands. Matt caught the fresh smell of newly cut lumber as he climbed from the car. An old barn was gradually being reshaped into a garage with a large office or guest apartment overhead. The house was as old as the barn, a farm cottage redone in slow and exacting stages. The front porch was a masterpiece of pegged maple and hand-turned banisters. A varnished swing creaked in the chill breeze. Matt rang the doorbell. A second time. A third.
He was about to leave when an older man in blue denim coveralls and a muddy T-shirt ambled around the side of the house carrying a shovel. He had the stooped quality of someone long used to heavy labor, grown old before his time. “Help you?”
“Is Mr. Pecard here?”
“Might be. I believe I seen him round here somewhere.”
“Can . . .” Matt stopped because the man had turned and shuffled out of sight.
Matt came off the porch and followed. But instead of leading Matt to Pecard, the old man made his way to the back of the cleared yard. He dropped into a hole he was digging and asked, “What you be wanting Pecard for anyway?”
“I’d say that was between me and the man.”
“The man.” He dropped his head and began digging. “Come to see the man.”
Matt searched the yard for a sign of someone else. The hole was surrounded by raw earth and wood chips and a trio of muddy stumps recently plucked from the earth. Between them and the house was a lawn tended with military precision, a painted-stone border, and a hedge of blooming shrubs. On the hole’s other side the forest closed in tight, ready to reclaim its territory as soon as the digger’s back was turned.
“You be another of them fellows up from Washington? Wanting the man to solve your problems for you?”
Matt returned his attention to the digger. “What kinds of people come to talk with Pecard?”
“Oh, folks like you, I ’spect. Got themselves guns but no shooters, crimes and no answers.”
Matt glanced at his watch. “If Mr. Pecard isn’t available—”
“Else they got bombs with strange habits.” He pitched another load of red earth. “Like they blowed out one wall of a house and left all the china in the next room just standing there, neat as you please.”
Matt stared at the sweaty back. “Who did you say you were?”
The man straightened. In so doing, he became a second man. Someone else entirely. Intent and focused and ten years younger. And scornful in a clipped British manner. “You saw only what you wanted to see, Mr. Kelly. You judged me by my clothes and my stoop and my speech. You didn’t look any closer. You ticked me off your list and stopped paying attention.”
Matt was too dumbstruck to speak.
Pecard resumed his digging, shifting the earth with ease. “If I had been your mother’s assassin, Mr. Kelly, I could have killed you twice.”
Matt managed, “Guilty.”
Pecard gestured at a second shovel half-hidden in the tall grass. “Perhaps you’d care to give me a hand.”
Matt had little choice. He slipped off his tie and shirt and reached for the shovel. His injured leg complained bitterly as he landed in the soft dirt. The hole was a sharp-edged rectangle about eight feet long and chest-deep. “Bannister called you?”
“That is not the question.” The man’s precise speech was doubly jarring, given the initial mask he had shown and his current sweat-stained state. “You came out here with only one issue that matters. The rest is mere noise.”
Pecard went silent on him. Matt dug and searched and came up with nothing he felt was solid enough to ask. He worked with his back to Pecard. Images from the blast seeped through the surrounding earth. Once more he walked along the side wall. Again he saw the blurred image of someone who might have slipped from around the house across the street. But the image was the same as always, diffused and dreamlike. Matt attacked the earth, his fractured memories, the pain in his thigh. He should remember more. But he could not. Just the way the man moved, or might have. Like a shadow. Melded into the trees and the shrubs at the rear of their neighbor’s house. There but not there.
Matt pushed the image away. Noise, Pecard called it. Matt knew the man digging at his back would not speak again until Matt asked the right question. Which meant looking at the one single solitary point only Pecard could answer. He ran back through the report Bannister had given him.
He jammed his shovel into the earth. “The FBI report says you claim the blast was caused by a decommissioned claymore. One of several stolen from the National Guard Armory.”
“Are you telling or asking?”
“The way the file read, you figured this out without a lab.” His leg was complaining fiercely now that he had stopped. Matt clambered from the hole while he still could. Seated upon the lip, he asked, “How?”
“First give me the why, Mr. Kelly.” Pecard stood a trace under Matt’s height. His T-shirt was matted to a lifetime warrior’s frame. He possessed no body fat whatsoever. Just sinew and muscle and sunburned hide. “Obviously I am cleared by Homeland Security. Why ever would I choose to work without proper laboratory analysis to confirm my findings?”
Matt could not decide whether he liked the man’s testing. “The previous SAC claimed publicly that all the claymores had been accounted for. If you used their lab, there would be a paper trail. The former SAC would have been publicly shamed. This way, he owes Bannister big-time. Assuming Bannister told his predecessor what you discovered.”
“I can assure you of that. Life in your nation’s capital is all about debts and favors, Mr. Kelly.” The red clay sucked noisily as Pecard pried out another shovelful. “Even a rank beginner such as yourself should be aware of this.”
“So how—”
“Decommissioning a claymore is quite simple. All one must do is remove the explosive core. The mine itself is too tough to deconstruct.” Pecard tossed out his shovel and clambered up the side. “Imagine, if you will, a thick plastic pie with a hole in the middle. The charge and the mine are both shaped to aim the blast with pinpoint accuracy. It must do so in order to achieve its stated objective, which is to take out a tank.
”
“The blast made a twelve-foot hole in the house and didn’t damage anything else.”
“Which meant your assailant placed his signature device upon a reinforced base.” Pecard fished a water bottle from the grass and offered it to Matt.
Matt waved away the bottle. “How did you identify it as a claymore?”
Pecard drank deep. When he wiped his mouth, he left a muddy smear across the lower half of his face. “Claymores are fired by a spe– cial high-octane explosive. Virtually impossible to locate on the open market. Your homegrown user will replace the charge with C-4. That’s strong enough to blow, but not strong enough to demolish. Bannister had one of his men track outside the police perimeter. They identified yellow plastic shards from a tree across the street. The claymore’s yellow plastic exterior is turned to dust by the normal charge, but hard enough to resist total destruction with C-4.”
The man’s hair was military stubble against a raw-earth scalp. A scar ran up the right side of his neck and wrapped under his ear. The eyes were as clear as sunlit glass. It was impossible to imagine this as the broken-down, shuffling old man he had seen before. “How did you fool me? I mean, before.”
“I suggest you focus, Mr. Kelly. We are discussing the bomb that killed your mother.” Pecard rose to his feet and started toward the house. “Your next task is to identify the question which the local police have been unable to formulate properly. When you do, phone me. And not before.”
Pecard pried off his boots, dropped his coveralls in a heap, and then called back, “If you fail to accomplish this in twenty-four hours, Mr. Kelly, don’t bother phoning at all.”
Matt returned home to shower and change clothes. He pulled behind the house, where he had parked with his mother. He cut the motor and sat listening to the voices barking inside his head. Doing what Pecard said. Separating the noise from the one critical point, the next step. The clue on which he needed to take aim.
He got out of the car and walked around the corner. Retracing his steps from the moments preceding the blast. Matt did his best to ignore the confusion and the guilt and the pain. Walking and looking and asking himself what he did not see. He studied the freshly repaired wall, the new bricks brighter in color, the new door sparkling in the autumn sunlight. Then he turned and looked at his father’s face staring down from the side of the carriage house, twelve and a half feet tall.
