“I mean, it would have to, right? You’ve got bloodstains here. There was a lot of shooting at the other scene.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step on the other side of the tape.” Her eyes flitted around, trying to find an officer close enough to help her.
Andy continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But the weird thing to me is, there is a lot of blood here, especially considering the first event was an hour and a half before the second. No way some guy is going to bleed like that for that long. You have any information about another shooting? Something after Cedar Parkway, and before here?”
Brewer turned away from Andy, looked around at the scene, as if she was considering what the young reporter was saying. After a few moments her head seemed to clear, and she reached out and grabbed a passing state police officer by the arm.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Is this reporter authorized to be inside the police line?”
“No, ma’am.” He squared his shoulders at Andy. “Let’s back it up.”
Andy pulled out a card and pushed it into Suzanne Brewer’s hand. Then he said, “Thanks for talking, Ms. Brewer. I’ve got plenty to run with for now. Call me if you want to talk more.”
Andy turned away, ducked back under the police tape, and headed off to see if Catherine King had gotten any further in her interview.
Jordan Mayes finished with his briefing from the confused detective with a handshake. The man had no idea who Mayes was, but the federal credentials he presented trumped any reticence on the Maryland State officer’s part, so he told the man everything he knew about the scene here.
Mayes turned around to look for Brewer in the large group of men and women working the scene here, but the first person he recognized was Catherine King from the Washington Post. He didn’t know her personally, but he read her column and saw her on TV from time to time. He had a vague memory of King being pointed out to him at a cafeteria in the Green Zone in Baghdad years before, and he was introduced to her briefly in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that had been turned into a coalition command center.
He didn’t have a clue what she was doing standing under an overpass at three thirty in the morning.
“Mr. Mayes? Catherine King, Washington Post.”
Mayes’s defenses fired into high gear, but he was polite. “Ms. King? How are you?”
They shook hands.
“Please call me Catherine.”
Jordan Mayes had two bodyguards within arm’s reach, but they didn’t have any clue that this small woman in an overcoat was a threat to his mission. Mayes was stuck talking to her, for a few seconds at least. “Sorry, I’m right in the middle of something.”
“Wondering if you can tell me if you think this carjacking is related to the Babbitt murder.”
“Too early to say. I was on my way there, and came over here, just out of curiosity. What brings you out tonight?”
“Same thing, I guess. I’d love to talk to you, off the record, of course. Can you tell me if you think Babbitt’s murder was related to the work he did with CIA?”
Jordan Mayes frowned. “I think you should talk with the Maryland State Police. I can’t possibly give you anything more than what they have. If you’ll excuse me, that’s all I really have time for right now.”
Mayes felt a muscle in his left eye twitch, and he damned the movement.
Catherine saw Mayes’s immediate discomfort, and she hesitated, unsure just how much she wanted to turn up the heat. Quickly she decided to go for broke. “I noticed you arrived with Suzanne Brewer. She is responsible for protecting CIA personnel domestically, isn’t she? Obviously you must have concerns about Babbitt’s killer targeting Agency assets.”
Mayes held up his hands in surrender. “That’s a lot of speculation there, Ms. King. Your readers would probably appreciate facts, not conjecture. Like I said, talk to the police.”
Now she decided to drop the bomb. “Well, I would, but I doubt the Maryland police would have much information about that double homicide in Ward Eight the other night. Are you investigating the possibility of a connection to these crime scenes?”
“Ward Eight? I’m not sure I know what you are referring to.”
Mayes was a good liar, but Catherine knew he would be.
“Washington Highlands. Saturday night. Brandywine Street.” She smiled. “You know the one.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. King, I’ll have to break this off right there. If you want you can call Media Relations and they—”
“The Agency’s media people won’t be able to help me on my story. I am aware that you and Ms. Brewer went to the Brandywine Street crime scene the other evening, so I am speculating you had credible intelligence that event was related to a threat on Agency personnel. Then tonight, Babbitt is killed. He was closely affiliated with CIA. You are Clandestine Service, so I’m not sure what your interest in this is, but—”
Mayes turned and began walking back to the Suburban. His security men, late to recognize their principal’s discomfort, began moving between Mayes and the middle-aged woman following him.
Catherine backed off with a pleasant “Good night, Mr. Mayes.”
She received no reply.
Andy and Catherine found each other in the crazed lights of the crime scene a minute later.
Andy wore an expression of frustration. “I didn’t get a thing out of her.”
Catherine smiled, satisfied. “I struck out, too, but I don’t care. Most importantly, we shook the trees a little. I’ll reach out to Mayes in the morning, ask for a meeting on background with him and Carmichael, and helpfully suggest I might just go to the director’s office if I don’t get anything from them.”
“What will that accomplish?”
“Carmichael doesn’t like the director. He doesn’t like any director. He resents any oversight. My guess is the director is unaware Clandestine Service leadership is hanging out with the Maryland State Police.
“I surprised Mayes tonight with what I knew, I could see that. They are going to have to come up with some sort of story for me. It won’t be the truth, but they think it will slow me down.”
“But it won’t?”
“No. Whatever direction they try to send me off in will be a feint, but it will show me to look in another direction. You and I need to keep pounding the pavement on this. It’s just getting good.”
Andy and Catherine began climbing back up the embankment to their car.
Andy said, “I need to file a story, you know. I’m not an investigative reporter. My editor wants the news, and he wants it now.”
Catherine said, “File what you know, but not what you suspect. Don’t mention CIA being here at all, but mention Babbitt’s ties to the IC.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry, Andy. When I file a story, we’ll do it together. Trust me, it will be worth the wait.”
Andy smiled as he climbed.
31
It was just past four a.m. when Gentry pulled his gray Ford Escort into the parking lot of the Easy Market on Rhode Island. He was careful to park in the same spot as he did the last time he visited this store, and just as careful to pull his red ball cap down low and to walk where the cameras could not get a look at his face.
The same heavyset young woman with the lazy eye greeted him as soon as he came in the door. “Hey, baby. How’s your night goin’?”
“It’s goin’,” he said. He held his right arm down tight against his parka, as much to hide the tear and the little stain of blood that he’d been unable to clean off as to put a small amount of direct pressure on his painful wound.
“You must work nights, too,” she said, but she’d already turned her head back to the little TV behind the counter.