“That’ll put him in a good mood,” Parker said. “The director being such a warm human being in the first place.”
“This is gonna be the mother of all task forces,” Novatny said to Parker. “And we got the gun. We need a full crime-scene crew down here right now. We need guys debriefing the Virginia cops. We need everything.”
The sheriff turned up his hands: “Then I’m out of it. Anything you need, call me.”
“You don’t sound that unhappy,” Parker said. “You don’t mind a bunch of feds trampling around your jurisdiction?”
An excessively thin smile from the sheriff: “I got five hundred eighty-nine square miles to take care of, that don’t have anything to do with U.S. senators getting decapitated and burned at the stake. I’ll take care of the five hundred eighty-nine, you take care of the senator. Of course, anything we can do to help, we’ll do, you poor fuckers.”
Back in the car, heading toward the helicopter, Jake said to Novatny, “About that tip, the guy with the guns.”
“Schmidt,” Novatny said. “I’ve been thinking about that, but I didn’t want to mention it around the cops. What’d you find?”
“I went by the house, nobody home. I looked in the windows. There are four gun safes in one of the bedrooms, their doors are open, they all look empty. Doesn’t look like there’s been anybody home for a while. There’s a note on the door from the Watchmen, asking him to check in. He apparently hasn’t.”
“All right.” Novatny nodded. “You didn’t go inside?”
“Of course not. But I was thinking, you might want to have some of your people take a look at it.”
“I’ll do that,” Novatny said.
“I mean right now. Because I’m gonna call the governor and tell him about the body. He’s gonna find out pretty quick anyway, and I want to be on his good side. Just in case that might be useful. If we have to approach the Watchmen . . . Anyway, you might want to have a couple of your guys on the scene before the Watchmen have a chance to go over the place.”
Novatny nodded again. “We’ve got two Richmond guys at a Holiday Inn in Charlottesville, they’ve been working the case from there,” he said, as they pulled up to the chopper. “Give me Schmidt’s address and a ten-minute head start.”
When Jake was back on the road, he called Goines again, told Goines to find the governor and to have him call back.
“I don’t know how fast I can find him,” Goines said.
“Make it as quick as you can. Make it an urgent priority,” Jake said.
Goodman was back in ten minutes, as Jake was coming into Buckingham, this time at the speed limit. “Mr. Winter? This is Arlo Goodman.” A little less friendly than he had been; more formal, as if he were expecting trouble.
“We found Lincoln Bowe’s body,” Jake said.
Long pause, the airwaves twittering through the cell phone. Then, “Here, in Virginia?”
“Down by Appomattox, between Buckingham and Appomattox.”
“Ah, no.” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“I thought you’d want to know,” Jake said.
“I appreciate it.” A little warmer now. Goodman could turn it on and off, even over the phone. “Who else knows?”
“Some cops. The FBI. The president. We’re moving to tell Mrs. Bowe. The FBI has taken over the scene, a full crime-scene crew is on the way in. Your BCI guys are already on the scene.”
“They didn’t call me,” Goodman said.
“The sheriff was discouraging calls, knowing that the FBI was on the way,” Jake said. “Everybody is walking on lightbulbs.”
“They should have called me,” Goodman said. His voice was quiet, but suffused with rage. Somebody was in trouble.
Jake asked, “You know anything about this, Governor?”
A pause—a shocked pause?—then, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a panic-stricken bunch of Watchmen looking for a gun guy named Carl V. Schmidt. I’m talking about the search being run from your office. Your Watchman even left a note hanging on Schmidt’s front door. The feds are closing in on Schmidt’s house now. If you guys know anything . . . I mean, it’ll all come out in the investigation.”
“What’s the name again?”
“Carl V. Schmidt.”
“I don’t know it. The Watchmen are looking for him?”
Jake ignored the lie; it was routine politics. “Yes.”
“I’ll talk to John Patricia. Right now,” Goodman said. “Will you be on this phone?”
“I will.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Out through Buckingham, at Sprouse’s Corner, Jake stopped, looked left. He could take Highway 20 back through Charlottesville, and then north. He could be home in two and a half or three hours. Or he could go straight down Highway 60, back into Richmond. If he went north, he could stop at Schmidt’s place and see what the feds were doing. On the other hand, Danzig would want him doing political assessment, not crime-scene work, about which he knew nothing.
He thought about it for a few seconds, then went straight through the intersection, down 60, back toward Richmond.
Back toward Goodman.
6
Howard Barber arrived late, cursing the traffic, the cops who wanted ID, who might have doubted that he could be both a friend and a Republican, who suspected he might be a media interloper of some kind
Barber disabused them quickly enough. He had an officer’s voice, a CEO’s voice, the voice of a man who ran one of the hottest high-tech start-ups. They waved him through when he used the voice, pointed him at a parking spot next to a stand of azaleas. Before he got out of the car, he got on his cell phone, checked in with his office: “Hold everything for me, don’t put anything through. I’m at the Bowes’, it’ll take a while.”
His secretary said, “You’re meeting Price and Walton at six o’clock at the Hay-Adams. You’re still going?”
“I’ll be there. And call Colonel Lake and tell him what’s happening, that I can’t get out of this. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow.”
He clicked off, sighed. He’d dreaded this. He got out of the car, went up the walk, said hello to a couple of people on the porch, got a biceps squeeze from one of them, then pushed into the scrum of people standing in Madison Bowe’s living room. Madison was talking to an old friend from Lincoln Bowe’s golf club, but broke away and came to Barber and hugged him. “Thanks for coming, Howard.”
“Jesus, Maddy . . .”
“We need to talk.” People were watching them from around the room, the late senator’s wife hugging a strikingly tall, handsome black man who was wearing what appeared to be a five-thousand-dollar suit. You could almost hear the hmmm. Madison said, “Let’s go, ah, God, not in the kitchen, there are a hundred people in there, let’s go somewhere.”
He followed her past the stairs to the study. The door was closed, and she opened it and poked her head in, saw that it was empty. “In here.”
They stepped inside and she pulled the door closed: “Linc . . . Was it Goodman?”
“I assume so,” Barber said.
“Did they torture him? I don’t think he could have taken any pain . . .”
“Maddy, I just don’t know,” Barber said. “Most of my contacts are at the Pentagon, not with the FBI. I called some staff people over on the Hill, but they haven’t been able to find out much. I assumed . . . What did the FBI tell you?”
“They don’t know anything,” she said. “This Winter, the guy I told you about—he was apparently there. I tried to call him at home, but he’s not answering. I left messages.”