He told himself he wouldn’t have to do this forever. Andy was ambitious, and he was four years into his five-year plan to get out of Metro and into something higher profile, a position on the national desk or on an investigative team that wouldn’t necessitate him being a zombie every damn day, so he worked hard, he got along with his editor, and he didn’t bitch.
All that taken into account, Andy still figured he must be doing something seriously wrong, because why else was he the one driving out to the shittiest ward in the District in the middle of this cold misty night to report on a double homicide?
Tonight’s assignment didn’t sound terribly interesting — the Watergate break-in this wasn’t. From the info he picked up over the police scanner in his car it seemed to be a shooting at a crack house or something. Not anything new and exciting, as Andy had filed countless stories like this already, but there were bodies and there were injured and this was his job, so as soon as he finished a piece he was working on at his desk, he climbed into his Ford Festiva and headed out into the dreary night.
With luck, he told himself, he could get six column inches out of this shooting.
Now he followed the last instructions of his GPS and turned off 4th Street SE and onto Brandywine Street.
Even though he knew the depressing crime statistics for Ward Eight, Andy never really felt unsafe around here. He was from Philly and had been raised lower middle class, so he was no stranger to rough streets. He’d been mugged once in D.C., but that was just three and a half blocks from the Capitol building, so he didn’t ascribe much more threat to the so-called bad parts of town.
As Andy pulled into the neighborhood he heard over his police scanner the crime scene was a possible meth stash house run by the Aryan Brotherhood, and as he parked and looked around he thought that possibility to be highly likely. He couldn’t imagine this property in front of him being anything other than a drug house. It was basically a boarded-up ramshackle single-story with a pickup truck adorned with a rebel flag decal in the driveway out front. The front door was a big black iron monstrosity and the fence around the back of the property was high and ringed with barbed wire.
The entire property was surrounded by police tape, and a few locals stood around in the rainy night. In the street a dozen squad cars idled, all with their headlights facing the home, and many with their lights flashing. A pair of fire trucks were parked end to end out front, and a single ambulance sat in the driveway, the EMTs leaning against their vehicle.
Just another night.
Other than Animal Control wrangling a big pit bull in the parking lot of an apartment building three doors down, there was no sense of urgency to the scene, which told Andy this ambulance was here to pick up dead bodies, not injured victims.
As he parked he noticed a gray four-door Nissan that he knew belonged to a homicide detective he’d become friendly with during his time as a cops reporter. He grabbed his backpack, stuffed with a camera, notebooks, an iPad, and a digital recorder, and he climbed out of his car, locking it before heading across the street.
He’d gotten less than halfway to the police tape when a patrolman standing at the perimeter shone a flashlight in his face. The light clicked off quickly, and Andy recognized the burly black officer.
“How’s it going, Mike?”
The cop held his hand up and said, “Not yet, Andy.”
Andy stopped in the street. “What’s that?”
“Can’t let you in just yet.”
“Really?” They always let Andy in, or at least up to the porch to take a quick peek. “Why not?”
“Dunno.”
“Who’s the detective in charge? Is it Rauch? Tell him I’m here, he always lets me poke a head in. Won’t take but a minute.”
“Rauch isn’t in there.”
“Why are you breakin’ my balls tonight, Mike? I saw his Altima back there.”
“Rauch is around, but not in the house. Hasn’t been inside yet. I think he’s on a canvass. Go talk to him.”
“What’s he doing on a canvass if he hasn’t even looked at the scene yet?”
The cop did not answer. He looked a bit uncomfortable, but he also looked resolute. Andy knew he could whine about it a little more, but he also knew he wasn’t getting in that house right now.
He noticed a flashlight’s beam shining through a small opening in a boarded-up front window. There was definitely someone inside. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Mike turned away. “Man, go talk to Rauch.”
Andy found Detective Rauch five minutes later, a half block away, stepping down from the stoop of a duplex. From the look of him he hadn’t gotten any good information from anyone inside.
“Hey, Bobby. How’s your night going?”
Bobby Rauch was a wiry, thin, and balding fifty-year-old who always looked like he needed a sandwich more than he needed the cigarettes he constantly smoked. He kept walking as he said, “It’s goin’, Shoal.”
“How come you’re not over there at the murder? Seen ten thousand, seen ’em all?”
Rauch took the young reporter by the arm and turned him away from the duplex, and together they started walking up the sidewalk towards the house next door. He said, “Do me a favor and go back over the river. Come back in the morning.”
Andy looked at his watch. In a tone that was much more good-natured than smart-ass, he said, “Twelve fifty-eight a.m. It’s morning. Here I am.”
Rauch sighed. “Sorry, but I can’t let you get any closer to that scene.”
“What’s the deal? You got a dead celeb in there or something?” Andy half chuckled as he said it, but he turned quickly serious when he saw Detective Rauch just give him an uncomfortable look.
“Oh man.” Andy got excited quickly. The prospect of this being a real story made him salivate. “Like a congressman’s kid? Who is it?”
Rauch shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that. Just some white trash dealers, from what they tell me.”
“Then what the hell is going on?”
Rauch stopped walking in the dark, and he leaned in closer, causing Andy to recoil at first. Quickly the Post reporter realized the detective wanted to whisper something. As weird as this was, Andy leaned in himself.
Rauch said, “Spooks.”
“Come again?”
“There’s a bunch of spooks in there. They won’t let us in till they are finished looking around.”
“What do you mean ‘spooks’? Like, CIA?”
Rauch shrugged. “They didn’t say that. But I was army, and they aren’t military intel. I ran into a few CIA when I was working Vice. A couple of guys in trench coats show up, not spit-shined like Bureau types, more scotch breath and chewed fingernails. They flash some general-looking Homeland Security credos and push past the PD like they own the fucking place. Same deal tonight, except one of the guys is a serious-looking woman in a trench coat.” Rauch shrugged his narrow shoulders inside his raincoat. “They’re definitely spooks.”
Rauch turned and looked back at the house, and Andy did the same, taking in the dilapidated property from a distance.
“This isn’t exactly Embassy Row,” Andy said. “What are they doing here?”
Rauch lit a cigarette, shielding the flame from the misty breeze. “In true spook fashion, they didn’t volunteer much information about their motives.”