“Can you send me his prints?”
“Can’t. Burned off.”
She sent the pics and ended the call. Then she looked at Reeder and said, “So this is what date night is like with Joe Reeder, huh?”
“Now you know why my ex divorced me,” he said.
She shrugged. “At least it’s not boring.”
Fourteen
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Dawn arrived with them as they hit DC, the sun making picture-perfect postcards of the Capitol and its majestic neighbors. Rogers, behind the wheel, thought about nudging Reeder awake, but decided against it, though she knew he had a sentimental streak for the city and its history.
After a long night into wee-hours morning, dealing with efficient but dogged local cops, she’d caught an hour’s catnap while Reeder spelled her; snoozing in the passenger seat, arms folded, he seemed to have finally found a comfortable compromise between his sore shoulder and the seat belt.
He asked from behind closed eyes, “Who knew we were going to Charlottesville?”
“We made the decision in the conference room, remember,” she said, “and left from there.”
His eyes remained closed. “So most of the task force team knew... including Miggie.”
“Right. Excluding Bohannon and Wade, over at Constitution Hall.”
He opened his eyes, tasted his mouth, didn’t like it, straightened, grimaced, readjusted his seat belt, asked, “What about the motor pool guy?”
“I signed out the car without a destination.”
“That narrows the suspect field by one, anyway.”
“You think we were set up?”
“You don’t? Our best lead, so far, blows up in our face, and not metaphorically. You can’t think that’s a coincidence.”
She was a few blocks from the Hoover Building. “I don’t, but I trust my team. I vetted them personally.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “You and I have less than spotless records in that regard.”
Rogers didn’t need to be reminded that the Supreme Court task force had included a betrayer.
“I was very damn careful,” she said, “when I put this team together.”
“You didn’t select Detective Woods,” Reeder said.
“He’s not one of us.”
“In a way he is.”
“But Woods wasn’t around when we decided to go to Charlottesville.”
He shrugged. “Maybe somebody on the team filled him in about our road trip. Maybe somebody called Bohannon and Wade, just keeping them up to speed, and then they told Woods. We need to check, first opportunity.”
“All right.”
“And even if Woods didn’t know about Charlottesville, what do we know about the man? Just that he’s new, was assigned the Bryson investigation, initially bobbled it, and then was on the scene right away at the security office break-in.”
“You might be reaching, Joe.”
“Probably am. But just the same, let’s have Miggie check him out — discreetly.”
“Then you do trust Miggie?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Even though he sent us to a couple of buildings that exploded in our laps?”
Half a grin cracked his placid mask. “You’re starting to sound like me.”
“Paranoid you mean?”
“Patti,” he said, “if after all we’ve been through together, you aren’t paranoid? You’re just not trying.”
She laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point. But looking at our team, and its extended family? It’s hardly the only possibility.”
“I’m listening.”
“Miggie says whoever removed Bryson from the equation had skills enough to turn on the GPS on that burner phone, and track him with it, with your friend none the wiser.”
He gave her a sharp look. “Then they weren’t following Chris — they were ahead of him.”
She nodded. “I think we’re up against some seriously professional big-leaguers who we need to get a bead on, before we start accusing our own.”
He thought about that.
Then he said, “Consider me on the same page.”
She smiled, trying not to look too proud of herself.
“But, Patti, let’s still be careful about what we say in front of our people... till we know who your big-leaguers are.”
The number of media vehicles outside the J. Edgar Hoover Building had tripled by the time Rogers pulled into the underground garage. Some were waiting on foot next to the ramp, catching Rogers and Reeder arriving on camera; but uniformed officers kept the reporters and camera crews back and out of the garage.
Upstairs in the Special Situations Task Force bullpen, she and Reeder found every desk vacant but for the one that had recently been assigned to Miggie. Before they’d left for Charlottesville, Rogers had encouraged her team to work for another hour and then go home for some rest and cleanup; it would be late morning before they’d be back in.
As for their Latino computer expert, he had obviously been glued to his chair all night, no doubt mainlining free-trade Sumatran, at least judging by the way his fingers were still flying at the virtual keyboard.
Reeder went right to him and pulled over chairs for himself and Rogers.
He said to Miggie, “Once upon a time there was something called Senkstone... do you know the rest of the story?”
Miggie grinned, obviously ready to be asked. “Okay if I skip the fairy-tale framework and stick to the facts, Mr. Reeder? ’Cause there’s no happily ever after.”
“Make it ‘Joe.’ A coffee guy like you oughta be able to remember that.”
Another grin. “Let’s start with the SIM card pic of that black what’s-it. I’m pretty sure Senkstone, Senk for short, is what our solid-black Rubik’s Cube consisted of. Now, from the outset you need to understand something — none of the net hits we got on ‘senk’ referred to any kind of explosive. Not one.”
Reeder’s smile was faint but there. “So how is it you found out that’s what it was?”
“I’ll get to that. But next let’s look at Chris Bryson and Jay Akers — two smart guys who used to be in the Secret Service, both of whom had long since developed a good, experienced feel for big-time dangerous.”
“Fair statement.”
“Both of them are concerned about Senk. Both of them got recently made dead — the first after expressing concern about Senk to his wife, the other killed on the job, but making Senk one of his last words.”
Rogers asked, “What do we make of that?”
“We come up with two smart guys who mention a word that refers to something that, I think we can safely extrapolate, both of them considered incredibly dangerous.”
Reeder said, “Let’s so extrapolate.”
“Fine,” Miggie said, sitting forward, “but this incredibly dangerous thing called Senk doesn’t exist... at least, not if you ask the net about it.”
“Everything that exists is on the net.”
“Right, Joe. That’s why I started searching places that don’t exist.”
“Miggie,” Rogers said, half smiling, “maybe you need to knock off for a while. Catch some sleep like the other humans.”
He waved her off. “Joe... Patti... there are entire networks not open to the public: the Silk Road for illegal drugs, the Armory for guns, dozens of others on the Dark Web. Nucleus, Agora, a slew of ’em used for all kinds of illegal activities.”