Fate of the Union

Ten

Patti Rogers, in a gray suit with a white blouse, stood before her assembled team in a small conference room, with a sixty-inch wall monitor looming behind her.

Joe Reeder, in a camel-hair sport coat with a light-blue shirt and navy-and-black striped tie, was the closest thing to casual in a room of FBI agents in suits. Immediately to Rogers’s right, Reeder sat next to Miguel Altuve (blue suit, darker blue tie) with the rest spread around the oblong table — attractive African American Anne Nichols, dark-haired handsome Jerry Bohannon, former college hoop star Reggie Wade, skeletal Trevor Ivanek, and of course resident cue ball Lucas Hardesy, who was more up to speed than the rest, having been the one who’d called Rogers to the Karma Sabich crime scene the day before.

Arrayed on the big flat screen were all seven of Chris Bryson’s SIM card photos, as well as a glamorous head shot of Karma Sabich, pulled from the website of the club where the transvestite had worked.

“I trust you all know Joe Reeder,” she said, “or at least know of him.”

Nods and murmured hellos from the team, a nod and murmured hello from the new face at the table.

Rogers made a slow scan of the faces looking up at her. “Did any of you ever meet Chris Bryson? Or even just hear of him?”

Head shakes and a few “No” responses.

She paced a few steps. “Does anybody know how a one-man strip mall security outfit could get ahead of us in our serial investigation?”

Silence.

Which finally was broken by Reeder.

“Agent Rogers,” he said, in that flat manner he used in public, “if I might respond?”

She nodded to him. “Certainly. For the record, Mr. Reeder has signed on with us as a consultant.”

“Pro bono,” he said with a slight smile. “I know Agent Rogers has provided you with the basics. But let me reiterate: Chris Bryson was a friend. And I need to make a point about him. He was ex — Secret Service, so he wasn’t just some storefront PI. He was also a Medal of Honor winner. He was as good as anybody in this room. So we don’t need to beat ourselves up about him getting out ahead of us.”

If anyone else had said that, Rogers would have felt undermined. But Reeder was right, both in what he said and in gently guiding her onto the right track with her people.

Reeder continued: “That someone took Chris out of the game, before he could do anything about it, is worth our careful consideration. My guess is that those photos don’t represent an investigation for a client. Working on something else, Chris tumbled onto a situation that got his Spidey senses tingling. So he took a few pictures.”

Roger gave Reeder a tiny gesture that told him to join her. He rose, came up and stood beside her. Without a word, they were now sharing leadership of the team.

The four field agents traded looks, understanding very well what had just happened. Everyone seemed focused, even calm, except maybe Miggie, a chronic fidgeter due to his jones for imported coffee.

Ivanek was looking past Rogers and Reeder. “Have we identified that building?” the behaviorist asked, nodding toward the screen.

“No,” Rogers said.

Bohannon, in a well-cut gray suit probably picked out by partner Wade, said, “Small factory of some sort. Job shop, maybe.”

“Whatever it is,” Miggie said, “it’s not in DC. I’ve got software searching for it in concentric circles. Bryson may have downloaded it from the web — he took screenshots of the obits to get the victim photos. I’m searching, but with so little to work with, it may be a while.”

Wade, typically stylish in a tailored dark-green suit, looming even when he was sitting down, asked, “And the black cube?”

“No idea,” Miggie said with a shrug. “Nothing around it to provide context or perspective. No clue how big it is, where it is, what it is.”

Lovely Nichols — in a dark-taupe suit with black V-neck blouse (an ensemble Rogers would never have risked) — asked the computer guru, “What about our blond boy there?”

“Photo’s from the side,” Miggie said, “at a distance — a shot Bryson grabbed on the street. Facial rec no help so far.”

Ivanek asked, “What’s the story on the transvestite?”

Rogers nodded at Hardesy, saying, “Luke, take that, would you? You made the connection.”

“You got it, boss,” he said.

The other team members goggled at each other — though the behaviorist only allowed himself an arched eyebrow — as they tried to process this unlikely exchange between a pair of coworkers who to date had been adversarial.

Hardesy said, “DeShawn Davis, twenty-four. Worked as a dancer at Les Girls under the stage name Karma Sabich. Lived in Arlington. Night before last, found dead by a friend. Double-tapped. Sound familiar?”

“Familiar,” Ivanek said, “but not familiar enough. However scant the profile we’ve developed, it doesn’t leave room for a transvestite victim.”

“Why not?” Reeder asked offhandedly. “Agent Rogers says the other victims were all professionals.”

Now both of the behaviorist’s eyebrows went up. “You’re calling this person a professional?”

Reeder shrugged. “Did they pay her for what she did? And the comments at the Les Girls website are very favorable. She was a pro.”

“In the broadest definition.”

Reeder allowed himself a smile. “I hope that wasn’t a pun, Agent Ivanek.”

“No pun intended, or disrespect either. But also no apparent connection to previous victims, other than mode of death.”

“Mode of death,” Reeder said, “or mode of execution? The other person who’s a pro here — besides Karma Sabich and the other victims — would seem to be the killer. You can call this a serial killing if you like... and it’s useful labeling in that it allows the FBI to look into these crimes... but these are almost certainly contract killings.”

“A series of them,” Ivanek said, almost bristling.

“A series grouped close enough in time,” Reeder said, “to indicate a connection between victims.”

Rogers said, “A connection that we haven’t made yet. So let’s go over it again.”

The agents arranged their materials in front of them, ranging from field notes and printouts to tablets or laptops. No one bitched about going back to square one — that was common in any big case — but the team seemed especially alert, game faces on, perhaps because the celebrated Joe Reeder was present. Or maybe it was the additional victim, which seemed to say more bodies would be coming if they couldn’t stop this.

Whatever “this” was.

Bohannon was first to speak. “Still no ballistics match on the rounds. If one shooter is responsible for all these kills, he’s using a different gun each time.”

Reeder said, “I understood that these were all .45 double-taps.”

“They are,” Bohannon confirmed, “but from different weapons apparently.”

“Changing out the barrel maybe?”

“One possibility. A pro might do that routinely.”

Wade asked, “How about multiple shooters?”

Bohannon shrugged. “We have five known victims now. Do we think we have five killers, each using the same two-slugs-in-back-of-the-head MO? That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

Nichols asked, “What about a gang initiation? Five new members, five random victims?”

Wade said, “Bullet pattern is so closely placed, feels like one guy.”

Reeder asked, “Any shells found at the scenes?”

“Nope,” Bohannon said with a disgusted smirk. “He collects his brass.”

“So,” Rogers said, “most likely one shooter.”

“One very careful shooter.”

Still at Rogers’s side, Reeder said, “Let’s say this isn’t a professional assassin. For the sake of argument. Let’s say it’s a serial killer who saw a movie or a TV show with the double-tap thing and thought, wow, that’s cool. Now he’s randomly assassinating people.”

Ivanek leaned forward a little. “Random isn’t part of the serial killer playbook. There’s always a pattern.”

Pleasantly, Reeder said, “Random can’t be a pattern?”

“I couldn’t give you an example of one, Mr. Reeder.”

“Make it ‘Joe’... Trevor, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Ivanek said. “And I’m the guy who should be able to give you that pattern, but so far — unlike our killer — I’m shooting blanks. The victims don’t work in the same fields, they don’t live near each other, they’re not close in income, they’re not one race or gender. We just don’t have a bead yet.”

“Sounds random, anyway,” Reeder said.

The behaviorist said, “‘Natural selection is anything but random.’”

“You know your Richard Dawkins,” Reeder said with the slightest smile. “You think this is some kind of screwed-up social Darwinism?”

“No, but it’s not random. We just haven’t seen the pattern yet. Maybe as we accrue information on the new victim, it’ll finally become clear.”

“Okay,” Reeder said. “So we go back to contract killings.”

“In some respects,” Ivanek said, “that does make sense. In others, it doesn’t.”

“How so?”

“All the victims, prior to the transvestite, were good citizens, squeaky clean, no gang ties, no organized crime ties, no loan sharks in the mix, just plain nothing. And Karma Sabich or DeShawn Davis...”

“Rose by any other name,” Hardesy muttered.

“... may well have been a solid citizen, too, in the context of her, or his, world.”

Rogers said, “Trevor, take us through them one at a time, will you?”

All eyes returned to the faces on the big monitor.

Ivanek said, “Victim number one, September 12 of last year — Michael Balsin, congressional aide. Thirty-four years old, shot to death in his apartment, lived alone. No sign of struggle.”

Reeder asked, “Aide for...?”

“Congressman Silas Denton from New Jersey.”

“Liberal.”

“Yes.”

“Michael have a significant other?”

“No. Nor did he have much of a social life. A very work-driven individual. Representative Denton was extremely upset about the murder, said the young man was going places.”

Wade said glumly, “Which he did.”

“Victim number two is no liberal,” Ivanek said. “Harvey Carroll, CPA, Springfield resident, had his own small business in Fairfax Station. Killed at home, no struggle — October 7. Divorced, father of one girl, who lives with her mom. Conservative voter, churchgoer. A good guy, by all accounts.”

Reeder asked, “A good guy, but was he the accountant for somebody bad?”

“Not that we’ve found,” Ivanek said. “Mostly, he worked for Christian charities and a few small companies. He did very little work for individuals. We haven’t found anybody who’s had a bad word to say about him — well, except his ex-wife.”

Anticipating Reeder’s next question, Rogers said, “And the ex-wife’s bad words are limited to how boring ol’ Work-Work-Work Harvey had been. Not exactly the kind of complaints that lead to two bullets in the back of the head.”

Reeder’s eyebrows made a little shrug. “You should talk to my ex before you make that assumption.”

That got a few chuckles.

Ivanek picked up: “Victim number three — a reference librarian from Burke. Carolina Uribe worked at the Burke Centre Library, lived alone, killed November 15.”

Reeder asked, “The only female victim?”

Hardesy said, “Depends on how you count this Karma character.”

Rogers said, “Luke, let’s not spoil our new friendly relationship by you making inappropriate cracks about one of the victims, whose murder we’re trying to solve.”

All heads turned to the ex-military man, anticipating flying fur. None flew.

He held up his hands. “My bad, kids. My only question is whether we refer to this vic as Karma or DeShawn, her or him. Not bein’ snide, boss — just practical.”

Rogers thought about that. “Legal name is DeShawn, and gender on the autopsy is male. We’ll go with DeShawn and ‘he.’”

Nobody disagreed with that assessment.

Hardesy did say, “I understand this individual preferred to be referred to as female. But we’ll make it up to the vic by bringing in his goddamn killer.”

Nods and even some applause.

Ivanek resumed his rundown. “Victim number four, William Robertson. Floor supervisor at Dunnelin Machine in Bowie, Maryland. Married with two kids, only vic — including DeShawn Davis — not killed at home. December 17.”

Reeder asked, “Where did the shooting go down?”

“Men’s room of the shop where he worked.”

Nichols said, “I covered that one. Perfect place for a murder. Twenty employees who mostly run machines and don’t talk except at breaks. Office is separate, away from the workers. Trucks bring material in, take product out, mailman, FedEx, UPS, people in and out all the time. If you’re a killer, here’s the beauty part — no security cameras. They have no problem with theft, so there’s no need.”

Reeder asked, “Robertson got shot twice in the head and nobody saw or heard anything?”

“Factory noise there is pretty intense,” Nichols said. “Plus, the killer might have used a sound suppressor — some damn good ones available these days.”

Rogers asked, “But would a pro do that? A hit at a busy workplace?”

Reeder said, “A pro who has done his homework would do that sooner than some serial killer might.”

“There are exceptions,” Ivanek said, “but most serials operate under conditions they’ve thoroughly stage-managed — they like things wholly in their control.”

Reeder glanced back at the screen, then said to Nichols, “You went to this factory?”

“I did.”

“I take it Dunnelin Machine’s not the building in the Bryson SIM card photo.”

“It’s not.” She smiled, mildly embarrassed. “Sorry, I should have said that right away. No, Dunnelin is a smaller building, brick.”

Rogers could see Reeder’s wheels turning, though his expression itself was typically unreadable. But everyone seemed to sense he was mulling something, and all eyes were on him.

Finally he said, “Rule out serial killer.”

Ivanek frowned. “Mr. Reeder, it’s too early for that. We still can’t know that—”

“You can rule it out. Narrow your focus. This is a professional killer. This is a killer with a list. Your job isn’t so much to find the connections between these victims as it is how they got on the same kill list.”

Rogers asked, “Was Chris Bryson on that list, do you think?”

“A late addition.”

Ivanek sat up so straight he almost stood. “But the mode is completely different. A faked suicide by hanging is hardly a double-tap execution.”

“Chris was a special case,” Reeder said, “and required more than a lone killer to carry out the execution. The others got themselves on the list for reasons as yet unknown. But we do know how Chris got on there.”

Rogers said, “We do?”

Reeder nodded. “He stumbled onto something that he recognized as something big, something bad. Possibly these murders you’ve been looking into... but I think it’s more than that. Chris was a fine investigator, with the same kind of top-notch training everyone here has had. If he’d run into a possible serial killer, he’d have gone to you guys at the FBI. Not pursue it himself.”

Bohannon said, “So what the hell are we dealing with then?”

“I’m not sure,” Reeder admitted.

Wade was shaking his head. “I don’t see how we can rule out a serial killer yet. Maybe your pal Chris didn’t come to us or the cops because he wasn’t sure what he had.”

“Agent Wade — Reggie?” Reeder’s smile was barely there. “Why would a serial who killed four victims in their homes — counting DeShawn Davis — break the pattern for this one vic, Robertson, and kill him at work?”

“Because Robertson had a family maybe.”

“Okay, but why not take out the whole family?”

Wade shrugged. “Not his deal.”

“All right... but why not choose a victim who was his ‘deal’? Not strike at the vic’s workplace, where the possibility of getting caught was exponentially greater?”

“No idea,” Wade admitted.

“Trevor,” Reeder said, turning to the behaviorist, “I don’t mean to tread on your specialty. But nothing’s been taken, no trophies.”

Ivanek said, “Serials don’t always take trophies.”

“Granted. But if this is a serial, how did he get so goddamn good, right out of the gate?”

Nobody had an answer.

Reeder turned to Bohannon. “You’ve said the entry-wound groupings are damn near perfect.” Then to Ivanek: “Does someone killing out of a need to fulfill a compulsion usually display that kind of skill?”

The behaviorist let out some air. “That bothered me, too. Most serials perfect their craft over time and out of experience. Assuming he hasn’t been operating elsewhere...”

“FBI computers would have picked that up,” Miggie said.

“... this guy is already good at his killing craft.”

“Professional-level good?” Reeder asked.

Trevor nodded.

Rogers said, “Which brings us back to a professional killer with a list of victims.”

“It does,” Reeder said, and gestured to the flat-screen. “If Chris somehow tumbled into whatever these pictures add up to — and started looking into something suspicious — then we’ll find the answer in the three photos that he left behind for us.”

All eyes were on the screen.

Reeder continued: “We need to figure out what the black cube is... and what and where that building is... and who our blond man-on-the-street is. A potential victim... or Chris Bryson’s suspect? And it follows there is indeed a connection between these five victims... and my late friend’s murder.”

Luke Hardesy, who had mostly just been listening, said, “Mr. Reeder... Joe... we have been digging. What we have so far mostly falls into the negative column — victims who didn’t know each other or frequent the same places or live in the same towns. No work similarities, no social connections.”

“Understood,” Reeder said. “But something is there. And now with DeShawn Davis and, yes, Chris Bryson, we have two more victims to look at.”

“We?” Rogers said with a smile. “Sounds like you plan to do your typical brand of hands-on ‘consulting.’”

He grinned at her. The others in the room were almost surprised, because Reeder was usually so deadpan, and his smiles barely visible. Not this time.

“Patti,” he said, “you were looking for a possible serial killer, and I was trying to find Chris Bryson’s murderer. Those inquiries have clearly converged.”

She grinned back at him. “Should I say ‘welcome aboard’?”

Looking around the room, he said, “I was thinking of saying the same thing to all of you people.”

That got smiles and a few laughs.

Reeder and Rogers took seats at the conference table and they dug in, beginning with their new member briefing the team on Chris’s murder, concluding with the possibility that the blond man might have been last night’s attacker at the Bryson Security office.

Rogers said, “Even when our unknown subject deviated and killed Robertson away from home, he used the double-tap method. The faked suicide is an entirely new one.”

Reeder said, “Chris was ex — Secret Service. You don’t execute a former agent with two bullets in the back of the head without calling undue attention to the crime. Make it a suicide, and it goes away.”

“And doesn’t get connected,” Hardesy said, nodding, “to the double-tap killings.”

Nodding back, Reeder said, “And the ‘suicide’ buys the killer time to search out and find... and destroy... anything an investigator like Chris might’ve come up with.”

“It’s a workable theory at least,” Rogers said. She slapped the table. “So we see what we can find out about Bryson’s activities in the week before his death, and DeShawn Davis, too. Got to be something.”

Miggie chimed in: “Maybe I can help... Mind if I take your pictures down?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Miggie used his tablet, tapped some virtual keys, and the photos were replaced by a grainy video image of a man in black walking down a corridor, doors on either side.

Ivanek frowned at the screen. “What’s this?”

“Security footage,” Miggie said, “from the hotel the night Bryson died.”

Nichols asked, “How did we get this so fast?”

Rogers said, “When Joe told me he was looking into his friend’s suspicious death, I had Miggie get that footage for him. As a favor.”

“Do we get a better look at this guy?” Bohannon asked. “Working pretty hard to keep his face a secret.”

Miggie said, “At the very end, we do.”

A few seconds later, a hand came across the lens, then a forearm, and the picture went to snow.

Hardesy frowned. “That’s the better look?”

“Tattoo,” Reeder said.

“Gesundheit,” Wade joked, but he was staring at the snowy screen.

Reeder said, “Run it back slow, Miggie.”

Rogers had seen it, too, a hint of something on the wrist where the shirt and coat sleeves tugged down as the arm reached up.

Miggie froze the image, the inked skin still half-hidden under the cuff of the shirt.

“What is it?” Wade asked.

Bohannon said, “A banner of some kind...?”

Nichols said, “Lettering, but I can’t tell...”

Hardesy stood with a suddenness that startled everybody a little. He took off his jacket, unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt, folded it back and showed his own tattoo: a sword pointed upward, two arrows crossing it diagonally, a black banner, the ends touching the tip of the blade on either side, forming a shield. Within the banner, in white, the words De Oppresso Liber.

It matched the one in the video.

“Finally we have a suspect,” Wade said. “Somebody put the bracelets on Luke here.”

A few laughed; most didn’t.

Rogers had seen that tattoo plenty of times back in her days as an MP. She said, “United States Army Special Forces.”

Hardesy nodded. “That’s the Special Forces motto — loosely translates to ‘liberate the oppressed.’”

Rogers sighed, nodded, and said, “It’s a beginning.”

Ivanek said, “It is, but not enough to tell us if our guy is current military or a mercenary.”

“Almost certainly a merc,” Reeder said in a quiet way that brought all eyes to him. “Currently serving Special Forces guys aren’t running around DC over a period of four months committing executions.”

Wade said, “Guy in the video’s blond, and so’s the guy in Bryson’s photo. Are they one and the same? Before, I thought the SIM card blond was our next possible victim. Now I’d vote for suspect.”

“If,” Reeder said, “they’re the same guy.”

Ivanek was shaking his head. “Hard to say. Video’s worse than the crappy picture.”

“I’ll take a swing at a comparison,” Miggie said to Rogers, “and get back to you.”

Rogers’s cell phone rang. She would have preferred to ignore it, but caller ID said it was Woods, the DC homicide detective.

“Shit news,” Woods said.

“What?”

“Somebody torched Bryson’s office.”

“Damnit.”

“It gets worse. The uniformed officer we left on the door last night? He went back this morning, looking for a coffee cup he left behind. Walked right in on the guy torching the place, apparently. Wasn’t expecting anything, so the arsonist got the best of him somehow.”

“When you say ‘the best of’...”

“Shot him. Execution style. Two in the back of the head.”

She sucked in breath, the news hitting her like a blow. “I’m so very sorry, Detective Woods. We’ll do everything we can for you. I’ll have agents out there ASAP.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Special Agent Rogers,” he said, his voice conveying the opposite. “But this is our case. Please keep that in mind. I’m just calling as a courtesy.”

“I do understand. You’ve lost one of your own. But we’re in this together now. You take lead on this aspect, okay?”

“Fine,” he said, in an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it manner, and clicked off.

She did the same, then answered the question that every face in the room was silently asking.

“Bryson’s office has been torched,” she said.

“Good,” Reeder said.

Rogers suddenly recalled how cold he had at first seemed to her, on their case last year.

She said, hollowly, “Joe, an officer’s been killed,” and filled them in on that, leaning hard on the double-tap that made this part of their case.

“I’m sorry to hear about the officer,” Reeder said without apparent emotion. “But we’ve picked up a valuable piece of the puzzle.”

“Well, I’m glad there’s a silver lining to an officer’s death.”

He ignored that. “The killer doesn’t know that we found what he was looking for — the SIM card that gave us those photos.”

Rogers frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, if he’d known, he wouldn’t have gone back there this morning. No reason to.”

Getting it, she said, “Instead he did go back, finished his search, unsuccessfully, then burned the office, so that nobody could find whatever-it-was.”

“Exactly,” Reeder said. “Remember, if what we have is a serial killer, this would go on till we catch him. People would die, but eventually the killer would lead us to him. But a pro, killing names on a list? He stops when he gets to the bottom. And then he’s gone.”

Rogers said softly, “That could be at any moment.”

“Which means,” Reeder said, slowly scanning the faces at the table, “we need to catch him fast.”