“Says who?” Agent Reamer said.
“President Hobbs,” Mahoney said. “Evidently, your new boss doesn’t have much faith in the Secret Service these days. He talked with the director, and the director talked to me. And here we are.”
Agent Reamer looked furious but managed to keep his voice somewhat under control as he said, “The Secret Service will not be cut out of this.”
“The Secret Service will not be cut out, but it will do what it is told to do,” Mahoney said, and then he saw us. “Alex, Chief Stone. I want you both part of this.”
Quick introductions were made. U.S. Secret Service special agent Lance Reamer had worked Treasury investigations for the past ten years. The big guy was U.S. Capitol Police lieutenant Sheldon Lee. Lieutenant Lee had served on the victim’s security team for six years.
With the snow and the wind, Lee hadn’t heard the shots or the sound of sixty-nine-year-old U.S. senator Elizabeth “Betsy” Walker falling to the ground behind him.
“I ran ahead and opened the rear door of the Suburban like I always do,” Lee said. “I looked back and there she was. Lying in the snow, bleeding to death.”
His voice choked. “My God, I had to go wake poor old Larry, her husband, to tell him. He’s in there calling his children and... who the hell would do this? And why? That woman was a great person, treated everyone just right.”
That was true. The senator from California could be tough when she was fighting for a cause, and she had a first-rate mind, but she was one of those genial and compassionate women who had never met a stranger. Walker was also the second-most-senior member of the GOP in the Senate and a highly respected politician.
“Can we see the scene?” I asked as the snow slowed to flurries.
Agent Reamer said, “Why exactly are you here, Dr. Cross?”
“Because I asked him to be here,” Mahoney growled. “Dr. Cross used to be with the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, and he has more than two decades of exceptional service as an investigator. He’s under contract to advise us on cases like these because the FBI thinks highly of him.”
Bree nodded. “So does DC Metro.”
Chapter 4
Reamer looked like he’d tasted something disagreeable and threw his hands up in disgust.
Mahoney called by radio and was told we could look at the crime scene from the flaps of the tent. We went as a pack of five past Lieutenant Lee’s Suburban and around the other side of the shelter.
Inside, a team of Quantico’s finest were working in baggy white jumpsuits pulled over their winter gear. Senator Walker lay twisted on her side in the snow. Her hood was half off her head, revealing a bullet hole beneath her right cheekbone.
“What do you know, Sally?”
Sally Burton, the chief FBI criminologist on the scene, stood up from beside the victim. “The snow’s making it tougher than tough, Ned, but so far, it looks like she was hit twice. The head shot killed her instantly. Shooter put a second round into her chest after she fell.”
“Like someone filled with hate would,” Lieutenant Lee said. “A fanatic.”
“Or a professional,” Agent Reamer said.
“Or both,” I said. “Who had reason to hate her?”
“Good question,” Mahoney said, and he looked back to Burton. “Got an angle for the shots yet?”
The criminologist made a sour expression. “The snow and no witness to her falling make the first shot tough to call, but by the chest wound, I’m saying it’s roughly this angle,” she said, gesturing high into the corner of the tent.
Mahoney thanked her, then turned to Lieutenant Lee. “You have good rapport with the senator’s husband?”
“Excellent rapport, sir. Larry’s a sweet old guy, a real friend. Smart as they come too. He used to be a trial judge in San Francisco.”
“Go inside and talk to him frankly. Find out who didn’t like or had a grudge against his wife for whatever reason. Names. Phone numbers if he’s got them.”
“Wait,” Agent Reamer said. “Lieutenant Lee is compromised.”
“He knows the family,” Mahoney said. “Better than any of us. That helps.”
“But—”
Mahoney hardened. “Do you honestly think Lieutenant Lee could be involved?”
“Well, no, but it’s... it’s gotta be against protocol,” Reamer sputtered.
“I don’t give a damn about protocol,” Mahoney said. “He’s in.”
The lieutenant nodded. “I can also get you a log of threatening calls and letters. Even Betsy got them from time to time.”
“Were they turned over to the FBI?” Mahoney asked.
“A few. They’re in your files.”
When Lee left, the Secret Service agent said, “Okay, then what am I doing?”
“Take several of your men, go to Senator Walker’s offices, seal them, and then sit on them and her staff until we get there,” Mahoney said. “Dr. Cross, Chief Stone, and I are going to figure out where the hell those shots came from.”
It didn’t take us long.
We knocked on the doors to the two town houses across and down the street that seemed likely candidates and found the residents home and upset. One, a prominent patent attorney, said her next-door neighbors Jimmy and Renee Fairfax were at their winter home in Palm Beach and had been for more than two months.
We called Mr. Fairfax’s Florida residence to get permission to enter his house but got no answer. But when we found snowed-over tracks coming out of the rear terrace and discovered the rear door unlocked and the alarm system bypassed, Mahoney felt he had more than enough just cause to enter.
There was water in the hallway, probably melted snow, and smaller droplets crossing the floor to a door to the basement. There was no sign beyond that, certainly not of the footprints I’d expected to find, given that the shooter came in out of the weather.
We looked out the front window and decided the shooter had to have been higher, upstairs. We found a clear line of sight in the master bedroom, some hundred yards down the street from the evidence tent in front of Senator Walker’s house.
“He was right here,” I said, looking around. “Probably shot from his knees, using the windowsill as a rest.”
“No brass,” Bree said. “The place is clean.”
Mahoney nodded. “Either a fanatic or a professional.”
“Or both,” I said.
Chapter 5
I had to leave at quarter to nine to make an appointment with a new patient, an attorney at the Justice Department. In addition to my law enforcement work, I have a PhD in clinical psychology and practice on a part-time basis out of an office in the basement of our house on Fifth Street in Southeast DC.
In the northern United States or out west, six inches of snow is no big deal. But in the nation’s capital, it usually creates a state of emergency and near gridlock. I somehow managed to catch a cab, but I had to get out at the bottom of Capitol Hill and walk the rest of the way home.
The storm was clearing but a raw wind bit at my ears as I hustled along and thought about the late Senator Walker. Given her committee assignments — chairman of Energy and Natural Resources, and prominent seats on Appropriations and Agriculture — I was leaning away from the idea that a fanatic professional was behind the assassination.
As a matter of fact, I was tilting away from the idea of a fanatic at all. The entire thing felt surgical, or at least highly organized. Though I wasn’t completely dismissing the idea of a terrorist, I was thinking a pro was responsible.
But why? Why a professional assassin? What had Senator Walker done to get gunned down in cold blood in front of her house? Who had she crossed or destroyed?