On the screen, a man, Caucasian with short hair, moved hastily through the maze of shelves, checking the tag on every box. He was dressed in nondescript clothing — khakis, a polo-style shirt, and a jacket, zipped halfway up. Nothing that would stand out among the tourists at Mount Vernon. He had a drawstring bag slung over his shoulder. Maddock wondered if it held the fake Washington portrait.
“No sound on this?” Bones asked.
“Nope, just basic security footage.”
They all continued to watch as the man searched the shelves. He finally found what he was looking for. He opened the box, rummaged through it, took out a paper inside a protective sleeve, and stuffed it inside his bag. He paused and cocked his head as if listening. He must have heard something because he hastily put the box back on the shelf, the wrong shelf, and hurried out. As he made his way back to the door, the camera caught the front of his face for a fraction of a second. It wasn’t the sharpest image, but it was something.
Maddock asked. “Any luck on matching the face?”
Sterling said, “Not yet. We’re trying to get some time on the FBI computer, but you can imagine how inter-agency cooperation goes sometimes. Do you recognize him?”
Maddock shook his head, not wanting his voice to betray his thoughts. Bones said, “You think that guy is one of the Sons?”
Sterling shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. I hoped you might have seen him before.”
Maddock detected a trace of deception in her eyes. “I have a question for you. Why are you so interested in this? I couldn’t help notice that during our time here, you haven’t written down a single thing or engaged one of your fellow officers. So please don’t tell me it’s just another case you’ve been assigned. ”
Her blue eyes hardened. “I have my reasons.”
“I’m sure you do. And if you want our help, I’d like to know what they are.”
Sterling’s eyes didn’t change, but her lower lip puffed as she exhaled with force. “You aren’t wrong. My level of interest has little to do with my job. While I did officially take on your case last night, I don’t expect it will remain assigned to me for long. There are some people who would rather this subject remained closed. That said, I don’t intend to give up on unofficial pursuit of the Sons of The Republic. It’s personal, and that’s all I’m going to say right now.”
Maddock looked at Bones, who appeared absorbed by their questioner. “Um, Bones…”
His head snapped back to see Maddock’s inquisitive look. “Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s good enough for me. Let me tell you about the last time we ran into the Sons…”
Maddock cut him off. “We can give you one name, Edmonia Jennings Wright. She’s the majority shareholder in a Delaware company called the Vindication Corporation. As near as we can tell, the Sons have only a loose structure, but it’s safe bet that she’ll be involved in a lot of their activity.”
“What was the last you heard of her?”
Bones chuckled. “That would be when she took you down with a flick of the wrist, right Maddock? The chick is like a hundred years old, but she’s some kind of grandma ninja.”
Sterling’s face almost showed amusement, and Maddock had to focus to keep his cheeks from reddening. “Unfortunately, Bones is right, although she’s more like seventy, not a hundred. I’m sure you can find her easily enough. Once it was clear she wasn’t interested in coming after us, we stopped thinking about her.”
Sterling’s voice was flat. “Looks like you need to start again. I realize you don’t know me at all, but trust me on this.”
Maddock wanted to protest, but he thought about Melissa. If there was any chance Sterling was right about the involvement of the Sons, Melissa was probably in danger. Confronting Wright was the best option for solving that problem.
Second-best option, he corrected himself. There was another.
FIVE
“You know, Bones, You acted like a teenager with a crush on Lieutenant Sterling,” Maddock said softly as they traversed the dark street. Up ahead, an old, gothic-style house loomed against a cloudy sky. It was their destination, and a foreboding one.
Bones frowned at Maddock. “Dude, you know me better than that. Don’t I hit on pretty much every hot chick?”
“I don’t think she’s the sort you need to be messing with. She seems clever enough to get you to let your guard down.”
Bones’ brow crinkled. “Come on. Did I tell her anything that would compromise us?” Maddock opened his mouth, but Bones continued. “No, I didn’t. Sandra Sterling is one hot babe and I was slipping her the old Bonebrake charm. You need to worry about yourself instead of micromanaging me.”
Maddock wanted to argue, but he realized his friend was right. He knew the danger to Melissa was messing with his head and he wasn’t reacting the way he normally did.
“Sorry, Bones, I guess you have a point. You think you could at least lay off the charm some? It can get awfully thick.”
“I don’t know, Maddock, that’s asking a lot. Mostly it just comes naturally. I just ooze it.”
“Like pus?”
Bones winced. “That’s cold. Anyway, since we’re sort of working for her now, I guess I’ll try to rein it in.” He paused. “I guess we’re not exactly working for her. We just agreed to do a little investigating and let her know what we find out.”
“We agreed because she’s holding the threat of charges over our head like a Sword of Damocles.”
Bones grimaced. “How about you quit trying to act smart and let’s focus?”
Maddock and Bones stood in the shadows watching a gate set into a stone wall which surrounded a residence on the outskirts of Baltimore. After catching a few hours of daytime sleep and then making sure Sarah Abrams and Melissa were doing fine, he and Bones had driven north into Maryland. The house behind the fence belonged to Edmonia Jennings Wright.
He hadn’t lied to Sterling when he said they knew about Wright but hadn’t bothered to pursue her. However, he had committed a sin of omission by not telling her another key fact: he and Bones had recognized the face on the video from Mount Vernon.
The face belonged to a man he had last seen in a Philadelphia cemetery while recovering a lost document penned by Ben Franklin. At the time, the man had pointed a gun at Maddock while Edmonia Jennings Wright snatched the document for the Sons of the Republic. Maddock had thought that only Wright escaped during the ensuing firefight, but apparently so had this man.
When they had left the park police building early that morning, Maddock had figured finding the man would be their best route to getting more information on what the Sons were up to. But their normal source for information, a reporter named Jimmy Letson who had rung out of SEAL training, had apparently met a girl and was on a cruise in the Caribbean. They were on their own for a few more days at least.
Which meant taking a more direct route. Bones hadn’t been far off in calling her grandma ninja, and as much as Maddock wanted payback for how she had taken him down so quickly, he knew better than to rush in without any planning.
“It’s just surveillance for now, Bones, no breaking and entering. Figure out if she has any patterns we can exploit.”
“You’re no fun. Whatever happened to the man who said if a cop tried to stop us for speeding, we’d ignore him?”
“I can deal with a public servant. Edmonia Jennings Wright requires an entirely different level of caution.”
Bones shifted his right shoulder, which leaned against one of several spruce trees combining with the darkness to give them cover. “For now, I’m with you. It sure seems weird that she doesn’t have any lights on out here by the street. We could walk right up to the fence and no one would see us. Then again, this place looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost might hang out in the attic. Not sure I’m exactly dying to check it out.”