She yanked it away. “If I get loud, airport security won’t give a red hot damn about your rank, General.”
“You won’t do that,” Rodgers said. “The papers will want to know what it was all about. I’ll tell them.”
She relaxed her body but not her expression. The carousel started to turn behind her. “What do you want?”
“I need to convince them of your innocence.”
“Them or yourself?”
“Both,” he said.
“Since my word is not good enough, what gets me an acquittal?”
“First, what happened to the Groveburn bag?” he asked.
“I left it at the office for Lucy.”
“Why? The night you had it, you told me your Nikes were in it.”
“They were,” Kat said. “I also told you it contained a gift. Lucy wanted me to hold it so her boyfriend didn’t find it. They live together.”
Rodgers could not remember if she said it contained a gift. Maybe she had. “Is it still at the office?”
“I’m in San Diego,” Kat said. “How the hell would I know?”
“You can call,” Rodgers said.
“Right now.”
“Yeah.”
Kat’s jawline tightened as she took out her cell phone. She called the senator’s receptionist and asked about the bag. A moment later, she hung up.
“Lucy came by for it shortly before nine this morning,” Kat said.
“After you left the apartment,” Rodgers said. “She could have put it inside.”
“Right. She just flew in the window like Peter Pan,” Kat said. “Was there anything else?”
“Yes. When we get to the hotel, I want to be there when you empty your luggage,” Rodgers said.
“Boy, you’re pushing this.”
“Sorry. I need to know that the dress is not here.”
“I could have put it somewhere else, like a safe-deposit box.”
“If necessary, we’ll get to that later.”
“And when you don’t find anything anywhere, Op-Center will come up with some other idiotic notion to implicate me,” she said. “The admiral is right. Your people are good at that.”
That was it. Now she had gone too far. “Our people? You don’t know us at all, Kat,” Rodgers said. “We’re good Americans, part of Senator Orr’s America. We have died so people like you can shoot off your mouth. I asked for your help before, and you didn’t want to give it. So, yes. We went behind your back. We found a problem, and I presented it to you. And by the way, it looks like someone ratted out ‘my people.’ The police apparently followed them into your apartment.”
“Do you think the police were watching them?” Kat asked.
“Doubtful,” Rodgers said. “They know McCaskey is former FBI and that he might have spotted a tail. More than likely they were watching your place.”
“Why? How would they have known?”
“I’m guessing that whoever may have put the dress in your freezer, then removed it, tipped them off. Presumably, that someone is Lucy.”
“So Lucy O’Connor picked the bag up, put the dress in the ice compartment so it would stain the ice, then removed it,” Kat said. “Just so your guy would find the dye and blame me.”
“It looks that way,” Rodgers said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Luggage started sliding down the ramp. Kat turned to the carousel. Her indignation was gone, replaced by introspection. Rodgers stepped beside her.
“You really are puzzled by all this,” Rodgers said.
“Puzzled, angry, distracted, and trying to get a bead on who is playing who,” Kat said. “I know someone is.”
“That’s true. And accepting that there is a problem here is a start.”
“I’ve known Lucy for years,” she said. “I cannot believe she would do this. Hell, I looked in that bag. There was a gift, all wrapped up.”
“To make sure you wouldn’t open it,” Rodgers said.
“Maybe.”
Kat reached for her luggage. Rodgers helped her with both bags. His own followed quickly. They went to the taxi stand and stood under a cloudless, rich blue sky. A cool wind blew from the harbor. Rodgers looked toward it. He saw the statue of Charles Lindbergh that stood outside the terminal. It was ironic: a bronze statue of an aviator, and it was free of birds. The world surely was out of kilter.
The line was short, and they were hotel bound within a few minutes. Kat did not speak, and Rodgers did not push her. He would rather have a willing ally than a reluctant one. Five minutes later, they were at the Bay Grand, a mile from the convention center. The lobby was crowded with conventioneers and press. Rodgers and Kat went to the USF registration table and picked up their keys and ID at the VIP station. They were on the same floor, just below Orr’s penthouse. The elevator was packed, and the silence between Rodgers and Kat continued. A young reporter from the Washington Post recognized the general from the coverage of the United Nations attack. Rodgers said he was here in an advisory capacity to Senator Orr. The reporter asked for a comment about the attack on Op-Center. Rodgers said it was abhorrent. He declined to say more. It was fascinating to him how the other conversations in the small carriage winked out as the journalist asked his questions. The delegates did not handle eavesdropping with the slick, multitasking skill of a Washingtonian. A veteran politician or journalist or society kingpin could be at a restaurant or party and not miss a syllable of his own conversation while skimming half a dozen others that might be going on around him. It was not a talent Rodgers had ever admired. He preferred the wide-eyed silence of his fellow passengers.
Kat turned to him when they reached her door. Rodgers’s room was two doors beyond it.
“I still think this whole thing is ridiculous. There is some other, very simple explanation,” Kat told Rodgers. “But if you want to go through my luggage, I won’t stop you.”
“Thanks. But there is something I want more than that,” he replied. “I want your help. I want to find out if anyone on the USF team is behind these crimes.”
Kat laughed humorlessly. “General, I just said I thought this was ridiculous. Why would I want to be part of it?”
“You’re already part of it,” he pointed out.
“Because some former G-man busted into my apartment and found blue ice?” she asked. “Because the police may have been following him and are likely to arrest him? Detective Howell is a friend of our office. He was not happy to see the case turned over to Op-Center.”
That remark took Rodgers by surprise. “What do you mean, he’s a friend of your office?”
“The detective admires Senator Orr. He did not approve of the way hearsay had become Op-Center’s marching orders,” she said.
“Has Howell been promised anything?” Rodgers asked. “Directorship of the FBI, anything like that?”
“No, though the defense secretary post might be vacant real soon.”
Rodgers ignored the dig. “Are you sure he has been offered nothing?”
“Yes. Some people do things out of principle.”
“In D.C., very few. You happen to be talking to one of the two I know.”
“Am I?” She inserted the key card in the lock. “The man I’ve gotten to know, General, is suspicious bordering on paranoid. I’m beginning to wonder how you ever passed the Op-Center psych evaluation.”
“We’re paid to be paranoid,” he replied. “That’s what allows people like you to sleep nights.”
“I sleep fine,” she said as the green light flashed. She opened the door.
“How is Howell when he calls? Comfortable? Surreptitious? Vague?”
“Cautious,” she replied. “That is certainly not uncommon in Washington.”
“I’m missing something here,” he said. “Some connection. Was Howell in the navy?”