Текст книги "What Lies Behind"
Автор книги: J. T. Ellison
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
Chapter 31
FLETCHER CALLED HART back and got the name of the renters of Souleyret’s house on Capitol Hill—Michael Oread and Jared Lanter.
“They’re both Congressional staffers,” Hart said. “I called to talk to them, but neither man was at work today. I haven’t had a chance to follow up. Also, Robertson is under sail to find and isolate the vaccines.”
“Good. Good work, man. Where are we with the cameras around Cattafi’s house?”
“Nothing yet. We still haven’t been able to touch base with the neighbors. They must be out of town.”
“The cameras will have a brand name on them. Get someone up on a ladder, find out who makes them, call the company and give them the address. They’ll have an emergency contact for the owners.”
“That’s next on my extremely long list. Let me know if you find anything at Souleyret’s house.”
Fletch hung up with a bad feeling. Just something in his gut that told him things were all wrong, all off. How a simple case of domestic dispute had turned into an international intrigue and a possible bioterror attack in less than twelve hours was mind-boggling. There was no keeping this quiet; there were too many moving parts. He didn’t feel the need to inform Girabaldi, though. He was going to handle this his way.
They got in his car and headed toward Souleyret’s place. Sam was silent on the ride over, making notes in her round handwriting.
“Anything good coming?”
She shook her head “No. Nothing good. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the data we just saw. I keep hoping I’m wrong.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the exact same thing. Moving that info, smuggling it in, is one thing—bringing live diseases and tissue samples? It’s so risky. If Souleyret was working for us, for State, couldn’t she just send an email or pick up the phone and blow it wide-open? For that matter, leak it to the press? Why run the risk of allowing an epidemic on our shores, too?”
“There must have been a very compelling reason. And you can’t trust the press to work the information. Too much partisanship nowadays. It falls into the wrong hands, it gets swept under the rug, or blown into a different story, or starts an irretrievable panic. But yes, there are all sorts of ways to pass information, secure ways—interagency emails, diplomatic pouches, all that. She must have felt it was too important to chance, and I can understand why. There’s a group out there killing people, and I imagine they’ll do anything and everything in their power to keep it quiet.”
She messed with her bangs for a moment, smoothing them down. “The problem is, we have no idea who Amanda was hiding the information from, Fletch. If she wasn’t willing to risk coming in through her own service, or letting the people she was working with know where she was, that tells a lot about her situation. She clearly knew what was on the SD card. Why didn’t she go to Girabaldi? Why did she sneak into the country, and how? And she went to a med student in Georgetown instead of her handlers? That’s all kinds of messed up. We need to trace her last steps, find out when she came in and from where, in addition to figuring out why she was avoiding her own people. I don’t see how we can do that without talking to someone who genuinely has her best interest at heart. Who might know what she was thinking.”
“Like a sister.”
“Exactly. I don’t have one, but if I did, and I was in trouble, family is the first place I’d go. Who knows what sort of situation she had? They could be close, they could hate each other. But if they are close, the sister might be the key. She may have heard or seen something that she doesn’t even realize is important. We have to find her. That data—if it’s even remotely accurate—could be worth killing for. If Amanda shared, Robin is in danger, too.”
“I agree. We’re here.” Fletcher made a right and pulled to the curb in front of Souleyret’s place.
The tall shotgun house was quiet, undisturbed, situated on a street that was also quiet, undisturbed. Real estate agents would call it charming. The whole neighborhood was a small oasis, one of those tiny pockets of homeyness in the middle of the urban sprawl. D.C. was changing all around him. Places that used to be dangerous at all hours were suddenly filled with sidewalks and driveways and grass and flowers and baby strollers. It was disconcerting. He liked it, but didn’t quite know what to make of it. He didn’t trust anything that looked so good on the outside it made people yearn for it.
He imagined them all sick, dead and dying, the strollers rusting in the driveways, the flowers decaying in their pots. He couldn’t let that happen.
He unbuckled his safety belt and climbed from the car. Sam followed him onto the small front porch, stood by his side as he slammed his fist into the door three times.
Nothing.
He rang the bell, and the dog next door, who apparently didn’t mind knocking but hated the chimes of the tinny bell, went mad.
Still, nothing from the house.
He tried the knob, found it unlocked, and his heart gave a little thump. This might be a nice area of town, but no one in their right mind left their doors unlocked. It was still D.C., after all.
“Exigent circumstances,” he said to Sam. “Back me up?” She nodded, eyes roving the neighborhood as if the answers were printed in the landscaping.
He called it in, told Hart they were entering the premises. Hart promised to have three patrols there momentarily. But Fletcher didn’t want to wait. Something was pulling him into the house. His years of experience told him something wicked waited inside.
He stepped into the cool foyer, called out, “Hello? Mr. Oread? Mr. Lanter? Metro Police.”
Nothing except the cool hiss of the air conditioner, which had been left on high. The whole place felt like the inside of a refrigerator. The floors were polished oak, the foyer empty of furniture aside from a small wooden bench, the walls painted a generic, builder-grade tan. A pair of muddy Wellies and dirt-covered work gloves stood in the corner—one of the renters had been gardening.
Fletcher cleared the rooms of the bottom floor out of habit; there was no one here, no one hiding, about to jump out. There was a table in the corner of the living room that had been disturbed. Searched, he thought, pointing toward it with his gun for Sam to see.
It was too quiet. Bad things awaited them above. He couldn’t smell them, but he knew there was death here.
He saw Sam staring up the stairs. She’d sensed it, too.
He raised his weapon again and started up. Sam followed in his steps, careful and competent, hands in her pockets so she didn’t accidentally touch anything. He appreciated not having to warn her to watch where she was going.
“Fletch,” Sam said, low. He turned and saw where she was pointing. A long blond hair, tag attached, drifted from the banister. “We’ll need to collect it. Amanda might have been here.”
“Or we could have a suspect. You feel it, too, huh? It’s all wrong in here.”
“Definitely,” she said. “Come on, let’s see what’s up there.”
When they found the renters, facing each other, one tied up, the other reaching out, such a strange, dislocated scene, Fletcher started to curse. Sam could already hear the sirens approaching; their backup’s arrival was imminent.
“How long have they been dead?” he demanded.
Sam touched the boy closest to the door on the arm. “You know I can’t tell you that without a liver temp. And with the air-conditioning set this high, it might retard the decomposition process. A day, maybe. It wasn’t recent, they’re out of rigor, but they haven’t begun to leak. The air-conditioning has helped preserve them a bit. I’d say within the past twenty-four hours.”
“Goddamn it all. We’ve been fucking around with the damn SD card while these kids rotted.”
She gently moved the boy’s arm. “Fletcher, I can’t tell you exactly, but they’ve been dead longer than you’ve been on the case. It wouldn’t have made a difference. You couldn’t have saved them.”
But she understood his frustration.
She saw a small piece of paper under the unbound boy. Carefully eased it out. “Fletch. We have another note. Listen to this. ‘I’m sorry, I had no choice. It’s better this way.’ Do you think it’s a coincidence? Could we have another murder-suicide?”
“I guaran-goddamn-tee you this isn’t a coincidence.”
There were voices outside. The police were here. Neighbors started to gather; Sam heard questions being shouted.
She ignored them, looked closer at the bodies, the positioning, the dried white strings of saliva around their mouths. Carefully eased a mouth open. Saw a brilliant red; the mucosa lining was irritated. “They ingested something. Something that worked fast. There are no signs of regurgitation, just froth. Whatever it was killed them very quickly.”
“Any ideas?”
“Not until I get them on the table—or Amado does, I mean. OCME has the in-house tox screen. I’d advise you have a death investigator take a blood sample and hightail it through the system, so we can see what we might be dealing with. And we should check glasses, cups, anything that’s been left out.”
“We’ll do that. I’m going to go let them in and get a crime scene unit here.” He stopped in the door, looked back at her. “Who the hell are we dealing with?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Fletch. But we’re going to figure this out.”
Hopefully, before too many more people die.
* * *
There was a big problem with being a professor, and not a medical examiner. Sam had to leave the room and let the D.C. people come in and do their work, without guidance or instruction from her. She could have pulled rank, thrown her FBI badge around, taken control, but honestly, she needed to keep herself separate and allow the investigation to continue.
She’d asked the death investigators to look carefully for injection sites, just in case her first instinct, that they drank some sort of poison, was incorrect. She had to assume whatever killed them had been administered against their wills, whether injected or ingested. She texted Nocek and asked him to rush the tox screen. But then she’d stepped away to let them do their jobs. There was nothing else she could do here.
Her fingers itched for a scalpel, to peel back the skin and see what sort of havoc the poison had wreaked. She checked her watch instead, counting silently. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three.
She looked at her watch again. Baldwin should be calling soon; he’d promised her an explanation. She walked down the stairs and went through the kitchen into the tiny backyard. Sent Daniels a text: Anything yet?
He responded immediately: Yes, I’ll have a full report shortly. Call you at this number?
Hurry. We have two more down.
She stowed the phone in her front pocket. She was good at waiting, but her agitation wouldn’t allow her to sit still. She wondered about the long blond hair on the banister—both of the men had short, dark hair, and there was only one bedroom that seemed to be in use. There were three bedrooms upstairs, and the other two were set up as offices, with couches that looked like they could pull out into guest beds. She didn’t like to make assumptions, but the setup screamed couple, not roommates. So probably no girlfriends staying the night. Which made exactly zero difference to the investigation. The hair could belong to anyone, friend or foe. But her first instinct when she saw it was to think it belonged to whomever had been here last. An automatic turn to the nefarious.
She started prowling the backyard, walked out into the alley and bumped into a small, portly woman with tightly marcelled white hair, wearing fluorescent yellow gardening clogs and holding a pair of dirty gloves. Her face was red, with both exertion and shock, Sam thought.
When Sam disentangled herself from the woman’s grasp, she patted her down slightly under the guise of making sure she hadn’t hurt her, but also looking for any surprises that might be coming. But the woman was clean, the gloves the only thing in her possession. She began asking questions immediately, voice high and breathless.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Oh my. Whatever is happening? I saw all the police cars. I was coming over to make sure everything is okay. Do you know what’s going on?”
“You’re a neighbor?”
“I am. I live next door. Please tell me nothing’s happened to Mike or Jared.”
She seemed a kindly old soul, but Sam was well-marshaled in the ways of crime scene investigation. “What’s your name?”
“Eloise Poe. I’m over there.” She waved a hand absently toward her fence. The dog they’d heard earlier uttered a short, sharp bark. “Hush, Tervis.” She turned to Sam, eyes full of concern. “Are the boys okay?”
Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Oh my. Oh my.” She had a hand on her chest, the red face going a duskier pink. Sam eyed her, making sure she didn’t fall or faint, but the woman kept her feet, uttering small exclamations of distress until Sam touched her arm, which seemed to bring her back to the present moment.
“When I didn’t see Jared on his run this morning I wondered if he was ill. I never imagined, oh my!”
“So they have a routine, a regular schedule?”
“They do...they did. Jared ran every morning at six. They both left for work at eight, together.” She gave Sam an assessing look. “They were together, you should know that. It didn’t matter to me. They were beautiful young men, very much in love. Jared said they might get married one day. And I thought that would be just grand. Well-suited to each other, did a nice job with the house, splitting the chores. And who am I to tell someone who they can love? I’m eighty-one and I’ve loved quite a few in my day who upset the people around me.”
Sam smiled. God bless nosy neighbors.
“When was the last time you saw them, ma’am?”
“Eloise, please. Jared ran yesterday morning, but I don’t remember seeing them last night. They usually sit out on the porch at night, have a beer, talk about their day. Oh, how could this have happened? How did they die?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t discuss any details with you. I need you to come with me, though. You’re going to have to talk to the detectives.”
Eloise Poe stopped short. “You aren’t a detective? Who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Owens, and I’m with the FBI.”
“The FBI is here? Oh my.”
Yes, Sam thought, oh my indeed.
Chapter 32
Capitol Hill
SAM PASSED OFF Eloise Poe to the uniforms at the front door, and went back inside to find Fletcher. Before she got very far, her cell phone rang.
Baldwin. Finally. She ducked off into the white-and-black kitchen, answered with, “I hope you have a whole lot of answers for me, because my list of questions is growing. I’ve got more dead.”
“More dead? Where?”
She filled him in. He cursed once, very gently.
“Baldwin, I can’t keep operating in the dark. We need to know what we’re dealing with, because this case is getting weirder by the second.”
“I know. I’m all yours.”
“Then would you like to tell me why Souleyret was killed, and why someone seems to be knocking off people who have connections to her, too?”
“I’ve had some back-channel conversations since we talked last. You already know Souleyret was tasked with working on incidences of pharmaceutical espionage.”
“That’s what the file says. Girabaldi seems to feel otherwise. She thinks Amanda was working on a bioterror threat.”
“Right. Well, Amanda had a specialized skill set. For lack of a better term, she was a honeypot. She’d get friendly with the people we needed to look at, get into their systems, load up the software that allowed us to take a look at these company’s practices.”
“I can imagine that would piss some people off. It sounds like she found the source of this threat, and someone realized they’d been taken. And now they’re killing everyone around her.”
“They’re looking for something.”
“I know what they’re looking for.” She told him about the SD card Souleyret had smuggled in and the vaccines they’d found. “We have the vaccination schedules for the whole region. Girabaldi thought the illness outbreak was an isolated incident. The files Amanda has here prove otherwise. They’ve been testing for a while now. It’s scary stuff.”
“Is that all you saw on the SD card?”
“All that we’d found as of an hour ago. We have an eager beaver from Quantico at Fletcher’s place, looking for Robin Souleyret.”
“Daniels, yes, Charlaine told me. He’s very good.”
“Yes, he is. The SD card was built on a sophisticated cipher, layers of encryptions. He cracked the initial code, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more.”
Baldwin was quiet.
“Come on, spill. We have no more time for secrets. We’ve got to find the sister, see if she knows anything and protect her.”
“You won’t have to protect her,” he said.
“So you know where she is?”
“Where? No. Who? Yes. She’s a CIA asset. Or was.”
“Was CIA? Is she dead?”
“In a way. Listen, Robin works for a guy I know. She’s unstable at best.”
“Unstable, how?” Sam asked slowly.
“Robin got blown up a couple of years ago. Literally. She never recovered all the way. She was tough as nails, but the PTSD got her. CIA kept her on the payroll, but she hasn’t been given real assignments in months. She works for my friend from time to time, on specialty jobs, but she’s lost her edge.”
“What did she do for them? What was her position? An analyst, a handler?”
“Um, her work was very specific. You know what Xander was used for often in his position with the Rangers? She was, too. That’s all I’m willing to say. But she’s messed up in the head. She’s better left alone.”
She knew exactly what Baldwin meant. Xander was an Army Ranger. He could do most anything well, without conscience or remorse, if he was given the order to do so. He’d been through every specialized school the Army had to offer, but he’d especially excelled at sniper school. Long-range hits.
Assassinations.
A cold finger paraded down her spine. Snipers scared her. Face-to-face assaults she could handle, but the idea of someone hundreds of yards away controlling your life genuinely freaked her out. Anytime, anywhere, Xander had told her. Pow.
“I see. What does Robin look like?”
“Like Amanda actually. They bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. She’s smaller, though, and a natural blonde.”
Sam thought of the long blond hair on the banister. About a woman who spent her life evading capture and arrest, who worked for the CIA.
Which led her straight to the meeting at the State Department, and Regina Girabaldi. That’s why she was involved—Sam would bet this month’s shoe budget the undersecretary knew Robin Souleyret, and had worked with her while she was still at the Agency. It explained the urgency of the meeting this morning. Sam had been right on the money; Girabaldi was closer to this than she let on.
“Did she work for our favorite undersecretary, perchance?”
“Wait,” Baldwin said. “Go careful here, that’s dangerous ground. Are you asking if I think she might be running this?”
“We know she is. She pulled us in this morning and gave us all sorts of crazy directions to cover all this up. Maybe the sister is more involved than we thought?”
“Involved how?”
“Working with the pharm company, moving information? Maybe she got on the wrong side of things? I don’t know, it’s silly to think she could kill her own sister. Isn’t it? I mean, how messed up was she?”
She heard his breath hiss in. “From all accounts, she was pretty messed up, Sam. I’ll get with my counterpart at the CIA, see if I can dig up something more on her. And look at the relationship between Regina and Robin. They were at the Agency at the same time. It stands to reason they know each other.”
“I need to talk to her, Baldwin. I need to have a sit-down with Robin. At the very least, to inform her of her sister’s death. And to ascertain if she’s our suspect.”
“I’ll find her. Don’t you dare go after her alone, you hear me? She’s very, very good at her job, and those instincts die hard. If she’s threatened, there’s no telling what she might do.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a hell of a lot more you’re not saying?”
A ghost of a laugh. “Because I only trust these phones so much. I’m done here. I’m catching a flight out this afternoon. I’ll be back in D.C. late tonight. I’ll come to your place. We can talk.”
“All right. Hey, listen. In terms of diseases or vaccinations, have you ever heard of anything called Gransef?”
“Gransef? No. What is it?”
“It was the label on one of the vials we found at Tommy Cattafi’s place. I’ve never heard of it before, and a basic search didn’t bring it up. I’m worried it might be...the something new we’re looking for. Which is no longer in our possession.”
“Shit. I’ll look it up, see if I can find anything on my end.”
“Thank you. Which reminds me, speaking of Cattafi, do you have any idea how Amanda came to be working with him? Regina said they were friends from way back, but that goes against most everything I’ve seen about Amanda and the nature of her work.”
“Now that I can help you with. I talked to Amanda’s most recent handler. She recruited Thomas Cattafi a couple of years ago. He was on a rotation with Médecins Sans Frontières. He was perfect material for us. Smart, connected. Had an understanding of the basic nature of the industry. I don’t know if he was doing actual work for her, but he was definitely a source, and a paid one—he’s on the books. She may have thought he’d be a safer place to head to if she was on the run.”
“It was a big mistake. Someone knew she was going to be there. I’m assuming they came here first, looking for her, and when they found the renters instead, they extracted what they could, killed them, either out of frustration or because they could provide an ID, left a note to try to make it look personal and headed straight for Cattafi’s place. Which would mean someone’s inside your system, Baldwin. I think Amanda’s whole world had been hacked. If they knew where she could be found, and who she’s recruited...”
“I hear you. It’s either someone inside or someone close.”
“Do you know when and where she came into the US?”
“No. There’s nothing on her main passport, nor any of her provided identities. Though with the nature of her work, I’m sure she has a few legends we don’t know about.”
“Who knew the FBI was so secretive?”
“Every organization has its secrets, Samantha. Remember that. And in the meantime? Be very careful. Something feels off about all of this, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
* * *
She found Fletcher on the second floor, staring mournfully at the crime scene, watching his people collect evidence. He shrugged when he saw her.
“Anything new?” she asked.
“Nope. What about you?”
“I talked to Baldwin. He confirmed Cattafi worked for Souleyret. And we need to find the sister. Right now.”
“Why the sudden urgency?”
“She’s a CIA assassin. And she’s a blonde.”
He started. “You don’t think she has something to do with this, do you?”
“Apparently, she had a bad go of it with an IED, and it scrambled her head. If she was approached by the wrong people...hey, while I’m cooking up theories, did anyone check exactly who these two work for?”
He checked his notebook. “One works for Marsha Harper, Republican out of Colorado. The other works for Joe Green, Democrat from New Mexico.”
“That would make for some interesting dinner conversations. Those two are on the opposite sides of most everything. Where did these kids meet? Here in D.C.?”
“We’re going to have to talk to their families and ask. They are both transplants. We’re contacting the local authorities to make notifications. Once that’s done, we can talk to them. Several hours at least.”
“We might be able to take a shortcut. The next-door neighbor was friends with them. She’s a sweet old thing—they clearly looked out for her. She’s downstairs now.”
“Yeah, all right. Nothing more I can do here, anyway. Let’s go talk to the neighbor.”
They went down the stairs to find Eloise Poe holding court on the front porch. She was telling stories about her neighbors. Sam could hear her lilting, breathless voice, full of grief and memories.
She introduced Eloise to Fletcher, who pulled the woman from her adoring fans and started peppering her with questions. After he’d established she was close enough to them to know what was really going on in the house, he asked about the renters’ backgrounds.
“They met in college. University of Colorado. Jared was the president of the Young Democrats, College Democrats, something like that. I understand it’s quite a vocal force out there in Boulder. Michael was the head of the College Republicans. In the minority—he used to laugh about it. They fought like cats that first year, Jared told me once. And when there was some big hullabaloo on campus, they got hauled into the dean’s office, and something clicked. They had coffee afterward and started dating. They knew it would be a contentious road with their backgrounds and their preferences, but they fell in love, and they fought for it all the time.”
Sam thought about the two young men lying upstairs, their lives cut tragically short.
I’m sorry, I had no choice. It’s better this way.
Anyone who knew their backgrounds would assume Michael had broken it off, and Jared couldn’t handle it. A good ploy, and it made Sam nervous. Normally, it took time to find out personal information about people, what the push buttons would be. This wasn’t hastily arranged.
She thought about Amanda Souleyret, and the note found at her crime scene.
You made me do this.
Something there.
She tuned back in to Mrs. Poe.
“And they moved to D.C., started renting this house. That was—what—four, no, five years ago now. Michael took a job with that pretty woman from his home district, Marsha Harper. She’s a firecracker, that one, and he loved working for her. Jared bounced around a bit, but he was working for what’s his name, Joe. Joe Green. He’s been there for three months or so now. He was out of his probationary period, I do know that. They had us over for dinner to celebrate.”
“Mrs. Poe, did you ever meet the owner of the house, Amanda Souleyret?” Fletcher asked.
Eloise waved at a gnat that was dive-bombing her head. “Of course I did. Amanda and I go way back. As a matter of fact, I’m a bit peeved with her. I saw her this morning, but she didn’t even say hello. It’s been a while since she’s been by. She didn’t need to babysit her renters, no, no. Those boys, bless their hearts, they were good kids. Quiet, respectful. Hardworking. No loud, crazy parties. They’d dog-sit for us when we went out of town. This is just so horrible, I don’t understand how—”
Sam interrupted her. “Wait, Mrs. Poe, you saw Amanda this morning?”
“Well, yes. She’s looking thin. She came to the fence and said hi to Tervis, then went in the back door. She wasn’t in there long, no more than ten minutes. Came out, got into her car—she has a new car, too, a nice Lexus—then drove off. Didn’t even bother to say hi, and it’s been at least two years since I saw her last.” Her eyes got wide, her mouth opened into a little O.
“You don’t think she had anything to do with the boys, do you? Oh my!”
Sam spoke to Fletcher, sotto voce. “The sister. It had to be.”
Eloise had sharp hearing. “Oh no, I’m sure it was Amanda. I was upset she didn’t stick her head in to say hello.”
“Have you ever met Amanda’s sister, Robin, Mrs. Poe?”
“No, I haven’t. Edgar has, though. Yes, my husband’s name is Edgar Poe. Edgar Georgio Poe—his parents had a diabolical sense of humor.”
Fletcher was already turning toward the Poes’ house. “Ma’am, could we speak to Edgar? Mr. Poe? We need to speak with Amanda’s sister right away, and we don’t have any contact information for her.”
She started trotting after him. “Well, Edgar’s not all there, if you know what I mean. Alzheimer’s. Bless his heart, he started to go two years ago, and now he only truly recognizes me and the boys, and that’s not all the time. We can talk to him, but I can’t guarantee you’ll find out anything worthwhile. Why don’t you just ask Amanda for her sister’s information?”
Fletcher stopped and patted the old woman on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Poe, but Amanda was killed last night. So you see, it’s very important that we speak with your husband right now.”
Eloise had done an admirable job of keeping it together, but with one last “Oh my,” the tears began to fall down her wrinkled face.
