He shook his head. “If it’s Senk, they wouldn’t know what to do about it. We need that furnace off-line and disassembled for the lab guys to test it, run ’em through the gas chromatograph.”
Soon Capitol cops were swarming the basement, and — while a medic cleared Rogers — the Capitol PD explored the mechanical jungle. Others were searching the rest of the building, using the SIM card pic of the blond that Reeder provided via his cell. Nothing so far.
Chief Ackley approached and said grimly, “First shooting inside the building since 1998 — I don’t love it happening on my watch.”
“Building’s on lockdown?”
“Why didn’t I think of that? Thank God a hero like Joe Reeder is around to—”
“Screw you, Bob,” he said pleasantly. “Didn’t you ever ask a stupid question?”
“Sure. Here’s one — what the hell’s this about?”
“Filling you in is over my pay grade. Patti will do that, after AD Fisk clears it.”
One by one, Ackley’s subordinates reported in: nothing on the blond so far.
Rogers, surprisingly steady on her feet, came over and joined them, wincing as she put her jacket back on.
“Sure you’re okay?” Reeder asked.
“Hurts like root canal, but I’ll live.”
“Good to hear.”
“You caught a round once,” she said, “that missed the vest.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” he said. “My shoulder forgot to ache for a while.”
“Why the hell would you jump in front of a gunman for Adam Benjamin? Now that I’ve been shot in the vest, just the vest mind you, I sure don’t want to do that again.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t wearing a vest.”
Into his cell, Ackley was yelling, “How the hell did that happen?” Scowling, he listened for a moment. Then: “Keep looking, goddamnit!”
Thirty minutes later, back in Ackley’s office, coffees all around, Rogers asked, “Just disappeared?”
The chief shrugged wearily. “It’s a big building with hundreds of doors, loading docks, about a thousand or so people in the corridors at any given moment, plenty to get lost in. Losing track of one person isn’t that hard to do, especially one trying to get lost.”
Reeder said to the chief, “Why was he down here with a gun? It’s not the kind of place you shoot your way out of.”
Rogers added, “And what was he here to do?”
“Good questions,” Ackley said tightly. “Here’s my favorite — what the hell is going on in my building?”
Rogers glanced at Reeder, who said, “He deserves an answer. See if you can get through to Fisk.”
She tried and did.
With the AD’s blessing, she gave Chief Ackley a broad-strokes rendition of what they were working on, what they knew, what they suspected, what they feared.
Finally, Rogers said, “I think you should probably shut down this building until that new furnace has been thoroughly checked, and till we know for sure what the intruder was doing in the basement.”
Ackley’s laugh was mirthless. “Shut down the United States Capitol, Agent Rogers? It’s like turning the Titanic — in mud.”
“What if you had time to turn before you hit the iceberg, mud or not?”
Ackley shook his head and said, “In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationals fired shots from the gallery of the House of Representatives. That was before any of us were born. Three men and a female fired thirty shots, wounded five congressmen... but the Capitol didn’t stop running that day. Trust me, nothing we say is going to shut down this place.”
“You have it locked down already.”
“Right, and I guarantee you, at least five hundred members of Congress don’t think that pertains to them... like half the laws they pass. Right now, you’ll see them strolling between offices, some heading downstairs for a late lunch. Then there’s the tourists who don’t have anywhere to go during a lockdown.”
“Damnit,” Rogers said.
Reeder said, “She gets grouchy when somebody shoots her. Tell her what you can do, Bob.”
“Agent Rogers, my people will go through that basement inch by inch, using human eyes and every high-tech tool. I will find out why our interloper was down there, and how he got through security with a weapon.”
Rogers’s cell vibrated. She rose and went out into the outer office to take the call.
Ackley said to Reeder, “You think this Senk stuff is a real threat?”
“I do,” Reeder said. “But that new furnace isn’t what we’re looking for.”
“But the target is this building?”
“Maybe, or the White House, or even something nonpolitical — I don’t know. Remember Guy Fawkes?”
“The Gunpowder Plot,” Ackley said.
In 1605, in London, Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators planned to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder they stashed beneath Parliament.
“Hell, Peep — you think that’s what’s going on here?”
“Certainly is possible, and you don’t need hundreds of pounds of this Senk stuff. Ten pounds would shuffle the deck from here to the Washington Monument.”
Sixteen
“You want to be free, don’t you? And how can you if you are scared? That’s prison. Fear’s a jailer.”
Patti Rogers, in the otherwise unoccupied outer area of Chief Ackley’s satellite office, did not immediately recognize the name in her cell phone’s caller ID window — KEVIN LOCKWOOD — but something about it was so frustratingly familiar that she took the call.
“Patti Rogers.”
“Agent Rogers, it’s... it’s me. Virginia.”
The transvestite friend who’d found DeShawn Davis aka Karma Sabich: Kevin Lockwood.
“Virginia,” Rogers said. “What can I do for you?”
That came out like a salesperson and Rogers immediately regretted it.
“Can you meet me?” The next was whispered: “I’m... I’m scared.”
“Virginia, are you in immediate danger?”
“Not this second, but... please, I really need to see you.”
Holding the hand of a jittery drag queen was probably not the best use of Rogers’s time, but Virginia sounded terrified, and was a part of this case, after all. “Where are you?”
“Bob & Edith’s,” she said. “The diner where I work sometimes? There are enough people here to make me feel fairly safe.”
“It may be as much as an hour. Are you all right for that long?”
“I... I think so.”
“Good. I’m in the middle of something, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you. Really, thank you.”
They clicked off.
Leaving Reeder behind to participate in the Capitol search, Rogers got to Bob & Edith’s on Columbia Pike in Arlington in just under an hour — a small miracle in that kind of traffic.
The cozy diner stayed open 24/7, and most people seemed to be eating breakfast, no matter the time of day. Stools at the counter alternated blue and yellow seats, a color scheme continued with the blue tabletops in booths.
As usual, the aromas of comfort food welcomed Rogers — Bob & Edith’s was a place where she often brought visitors from her native Iowa, the fare making them feel at home and the clientele reminding them they weren’t. The families bringing their kids here for Mom-style cookin’ did so as part of a shifting Fellini-esque cast of transvestites, junkies, and alkies. Yet there were no fights, no robberies, not even misdemeanors at Bob & Edith’s, the Switzerland of the DC map.