“The light was coming in at the back of his head,” Frankie said.
“Looks young,” Art observed, though there was little else he could discern. The profile as the head turned showed sharp lines, tight skin, smooth even. Short, neat hair. Familiar, almost, but then a kid in silhouette was likely to look like any other.
The tape raced back, then slid forward from the time that the left rear window exploded. Trooper Fitzroy rocking side to side as the bullets stitched across his torso, sound on the tape ending as a round cut the trooper’s body mic, falling, crawling with only his legs driving him, Brown coming out, following — no, stalking Fitzroy, his mouth moving as something was said, and two shots.
Art froze the tape there. “The bullets that killed the trooper and the World Center’s plant manager, Harback, came from the same gun. That ties the two events.”
“And the prints,” Frankie added. Dan Jacobs’s team had pulled fingerprints from both Brown and Sanders from the cylinder found in the ventilation system. Doing so had been a trick in itself, as decontaminating the small tank with high-pressure steam and chemical neutralizes would have destroyed any prints. The solution was to take a video feed of the prints as illuminated by a helium laser and analyze those after the feed was digitized and stored as computer data. Jacobs seemed more magician than special agent at times.
Art stayed focused on the screen, rewinding then moving slowly forward as the boxy weapon in Brown’s hand bucked twice. “Harback and Fitzroy with forty-fives. Mankowitz with a forty-five. Mankowitz was hit with automatic fire.” Art froze the image again. “Not too many automatic forty-fives out there other than a MAC-11.”
“All firing hundred-and-eighty-five-grain jacketed hollow-points,” Frankie added. “But the lab couldn’t batch all three.” Expended bullets could be matched to a particular weapon based on the rifling characteristics of the barrel, and could also be closely matched to each other based upon their lead composition. This information was accurate enough to place bullets to specific production runs at ammunition manufacturers. But distribution and inventory anomalies at retailers made the system less than consistent in the real world. A weapon like the Ingram could spit out more than a box of .45 rounds in a second, meaning it could chew through a shelf full of boxes in no time. And that shelf could hold boxes from production runs completed six months earlier, or from the week before.
“The guns,” Art said, adding no more for a moment. “Forty-fives across the board here, and three-eighties for Royce and Kostin. Freddy had a three-eighty on him.”
Frankie sensed her partner’s line of thought. “You think Barrish was behind all these guns?”
“He’s proven proficient at it before,” Art responded. The two Uzis that had been used in the Saint Anthony’s massacre and found dumped at a construction site were purchased by John Barrish while at a festival of hate in Idaho. The law said differently, but they were dealing with reality right now. “Plus Allen had the three-eighty that was used with the other guns at Saint Anthony’s. Danbrook said that Barrish told him, specifically, that he could get guns whenever he wanted.”
“They’re different guns, partner,” Frankie said.
“But they’re guns. Full-auto Uzis and Ingrams. Those have to come from somewhere.”
“Just because Barrish said he could get guns, that still doesn’t say he got those Ingrams that the NALF used.” Frankie’s rebuttal ended on a thought of absurdity, and her head shook at it. “Why would Barrish have given guns to the New Africa Liberation Front?”
“Why would the NALF have the VZ?” Art fired back.
The door to the conference room swung inward, ending the agents’ discussion. Lou Hidalgo was behind it. “Get copies of all the information you have on the World Center, Kostin, and the NALF to Washington…pronto.”
Art turned to face the A-SAC. “What’s up?”
“The police in Maryland pulled a floater from a river. Several weeks old, they figure. A male. Right upstream was a van with a wooden trailer attached; one of those boxy jobs for moving stuff. It looks like the body was in the trailer, which came apart after a while in the river. The Maryland cops ran the plate and got a hit back to a young kid from out here. He left L.A. for Colorado the morning of the World Center attack. He had family there, apparently. He never showed. The last trace he left anywhere was a call to his parents’ answering machine. He said he was in Orem. The phone company computers put the call at a phone booth a mile from where the NALF torched their car. The kid made it just ten minutes after Brown shot Fitzroy.”
“Checking stolens was a waste, then,” Art commented. “They just took the owner with them.”
“Denver PD just had an overdue and missing traveler,” Hidalgo said. “So get the info to Washington. They’re taking over the search for our black militant friends. We’ll keep filling in background on them — anything that helps. Got it?”
“Sure.”
“Do it fast, Art. The van in the river was ten miles from D.C. as the crow flies. The ‘nervous factor’ just went through the roof.”
Art nodded. “On the double.”
An afternoon Conrail freight train rumbled in the background as Mustafa and Roger entered their comrades’ apartment just north of Greenmount Cemetery. “Got it.”
Darian took the paper from Roger and pulled the thin classified section free.
“Gimme sports,” Moises said from his place on the worn carpet. His hair was longer than it had ever been. Unkempt, he thought when looking in the mirror, something he did less frequently with each passing day. And he had a scraggly wannabe beard that tried to sprout fully, but itched more than concealed. Still, he had changed enough that few would recognize him. And more than mere physical alteration. He was Moises Griggs a little less each day, and Brother Moises a little more. Soon there would be only one.
Mustafa sat on the bed as his leader scanned the classifieds, and as their newest member reclined on the floor with the sports section. His perpetually flat expression changed at the second scene. “You know what you’re doing, Brother Moises?”
“Huh?” Moises looked up from the football scores of the day before.
“With that,” Mustafa said. In a chair by the door Roger sat, a pouting smile on his face.
“The paper?”
“The s-s-s-ports section.” Mustafa spit lightly into the wastebasket next to the bed.
“What are you talking about?” Moises lowered the paper completely and propped up on his elbows.
“Hey, who’s the best players, Brother?” Mustafa inquired.
“Players?”
“Brothers or crackers?”
That was easy enough, Moises knew. “Brothers.”
“Which sport?”
“All of them,” Moises answered. “Except maybe hockey. But who watches that, anyway?”
“Football, baseball, basketball.” Mustafa made a free-throw motion toward Moises. “Brothers be good at those games. Oh, yeah. They be good at them. What happens next?”
“Next?”
“After they ain’t so good no more?”
Moises didn’t have an answer.
“Do them commercials?” Mustafa approximated a laugh. “Yeah, how many spotes brothers you ever see on TV when they ain’t runnin’, or jumpin’, or throwin’ a little ball? Hmm? Maybe a couple. Oooh, boy, but you can see cracker after cracker sellin’ any kinda shit they can think of on the tube, or on them ugly-ass billboards, or anywhere else old cracker folks are gonna see ‘em.” He was letting his speech degenerate further into the old South nigger talk his father had beat out of him long before. It was for a point. “Oooh, yeah. Cracker get old, or bust a leg, or throw out a arm, well, then cracker can show his pretty white face on TV doin’ somethin’ else. Brother?” Lips pouted far out, head shaking. “No, brother be too dumb and ugly to do shit like that. Brother can run, an’ jump, an’ throw, an’ put on a good show. That’s what brother’s good fo’. Brother puts on a good show. Good show. But brother ain’t good fo’ mo’ than that. No, sir, massa sir. No, sir.”