The next class was outdoors. We were all dressed in sportjackets, but with black padded throat and face protectors for a ‘practical’ at Hogans Alley. The exercise involved three cars in hot pursuit of a fourth. Sirens blared and echoed. Loudspeakers barked commands: ‘Stop! Pull over! Come out of the car with your hands up.’ Our ammo, ‘simunition’, consisted of bullets with pink-paint-infused tips.
It was five o’clock by the time we finished the practice. I showered and dressed, and as I was leaving the training building to go over to the Jefferson dorm where I had a cubicle, I saw SSA Nooney. He motioned for me to come over. What if I don’t want to?
‘You headed back to D.C.?’ he asked.
I nodded and bit down on my tongue. ‘In a while. I have some reports to read first. The abduction in Atlanta.’
‘Big stuff. I’m impressed. The rest of your classmates spend their nights here. Some of them think it helps build camaraderie. I think so too. Are you an agent of change?’
I shook my head, but then I tried a smile on Nooney. Didn’t work.
‘I was told from the start that I could go home nights. That isn’t possible for most of the others.’
Then Nooney began to push hard, tried to stir up old anger.
‘I heard you had some problems with your Chief of Detectives too,’ Nooney said then.
‘Everybody had problems with Chief of Detectives Pittman,’ I said.
Nooney’s eyes appeared glazed. It was obvious he didn’t see it that way. ‘Just about everybody has problems with me too. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong about the importance of building a team here. I’m not wrong, Cross.’
I resisted saying anything more. Nooney was coming down on me again. Why? I had attended the classes I could make; I still had work to do on White Girl. Like it or not, I was a part of the case. And this wasn’t another practical – it was real. It was important.
‘I have to get my work done,’ I finally said. Then I walked away from Nooney. I was pretty sure I’d made my first enemy in the FBI. An important one, too. No sense starting small.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maybe it was guilt churned up by my confrontation with Gordon Nooney that made me work late in my cube on the lower level of the Dining Hall building where Behavioral Science has its offices. The low ceilings, bad fluorescent lighting and cinder-block walls kind of made me feel as if I were back at my precinct. But the depth of the back files and research available to FBI agents was astonishing. The Bureau’s resources were better than anything I’d ever seen in the D.C. police department.
It took me a couple of hours to go through less than a quarter of the white-slave-trade files, and those were just cases in the US. One abduction in particular caught my attention. It involved a female D.C. attorney named Ruth Morgenstern. She had last been seen at approximately 9.30 p.m on Saturday, 20 August. A friend had dropped her off near her apartment in Foggy Bottom.
Ms Morgenstern was twenty-six years old, 111 pounds, with blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair. On 28 August, one of her identification cards was found near the north gate of the Anacostia Naval Station. Two days later, her government access card was found on a city street.
But Ruth Morgenstern was still missing. Her file included the notation: Most likely dead.
I wondered: Was Ruth Morgenstern dead?
How about Mrs Elizabeth Connelly?
Around ten, just as I was starting to do some serious yawning, I came across a second murder case that snapped my mind to attention. I read the report once, then a second time.
It involved the abduction eleven months earlier of a woman named Jilly Lopez in Houston. The kidnapping had occurred at the Houstonian Hotel. A team – two males, had been seen loitering near the victim’s SUV in the parking garage. Mrs Lopez was described as very attractive.
Minutes later, I was speaking to the officer in Houston who had handled the case. Detective Steve Bowen was curious about my interest in the abduction, but he was cooperative. He said that Mrs Lopez hadn’t been found or heard from since she disappeared. No ransom was ever requested. ‘She was a real good lady. Just about everybody I talked to loved her.’ I’d heard the same thing about Elizabeth Connelly when I was in Atlanta.
I already hated this case, but I couldn’t get it out of my skull. White Girl! The women who’d been taken were all lovable, weren’t they? It was the thing they had in common. Maybe it was the killer’s pattern.
Lovable victims.
How awful was that?
Chapter Twenty-Three
When I got home that night it was a quarter past eleven, but there was a surprise waiting for me. A good one. John Sampson was sitting on the front steps. All six foot nine, two hundred and fifty pounds of him. He looked like the Grim Reaper at first – but then he grinned and looked like the Joyful Reaper.
‘Look who it is. Detective Sampson.’ I smiled back.
‘How’s it going, man?’ John asked as I walked across the lawn. ‘You’re working kind of late again. Same old, same old. You never change, man.’
‘This is the first late night I’ve had at Quantico,’ I responded a little defensively. ‘Don’t start.’
‘Did I say anything bad? Did I even cut you with “the first of many” line that’s right there on the tip of my tongue? No, I didn’t. I’m being good – for me. But since we’re talking, you can’t help yourself, can you?’
‘Want a cold beer?’ I asked and unlocked the front door of the house. ‘Where’s your bride tonight?’
Sampson followed me inside and we got a couple of Heinekens each; we took them out to the sun porch. I sat on the piano bench and John plopped down in the rocker, which strained under his weight. John is my best friend in the world, and has been since I was ten years old. We were homicide detectives, and partners, until I went over to the FBI. He’s still a little pissed at me for that.
‘Billie’s just fine. She’s working the late shift at St Anthony’s tonight and tomorrow. We’re doing good.’ He drained about half of his beer in a gulp. ‘No complaints, partner. Far from it. You’re looking at a happy camper.’
I had to laugh. ‘You seem surprised.’
Sampson laughed too. ‘Guess I didn’t think I was the marrying kind. Now all I want to do is hang with Billie most of the time. She makes me laugh, and she even gets my jokes. How about you and Jamilla? She good? And how is the new job? How’s it feel to be a Feebie down at Club Fed?’
‘I was just going to call Jam,’ I told him. Sampson had met Jamilla, liked her, and knew our situation. Jam was a homicide detective too, so she understood what the life was like. I really liked to be with her. Unfortunately, she lived in San Francisco – and she loved it out there.
‘She’s on another murder case. They kill people in San Francisco too. Life in the Bureau is good so far.’ I popped open the second of my beers. ‘I need to get used to the Bureau-crats, though.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Sampson said. Then he grinned wickedly. ‘Crack in the walls already? The Bureau-crats. Authority problems? So why you working so late? Aren’t you still in orientation, or whatever they call it?’
I told Sampson about the kidnapping of Elizabeth Connelly – the condensed version – but then we moved back to more pleasant subjects. Billie and Jamilla, the allure of romance, the latest George Pelecanos novel, a detective friend of ours who was dating his partner and didn’t think anybody was on to them. But we all knew! It was like it always is when Sampson and I get together. I missed working with him. Which led to the next thought: I needed to figure out some way to get him down to Quantico.