Margaret found what she was looking for.
She was in her office at FBI HQ and had just finished analyzing interoffice memos and electronic communication to track the release of the Project Rukh files. She discovered that indeed it was FBI Director Rodale who had approved the transfer of the Project Rukh research to the Gunderson Foundation-just days before Congressman Fischer’s contributions to the Foundation began.
Maybe the two men weren’t at odds at all, maybe they were partners.
But then why would Fischer propose budget cuts to the Bureau?
Whatever Rodale’s connection with Fischer, the next step seemed obvious to her.
Follow the money.
Margaret picked up the phone to make a few calls.
96
3 hours left…
6:29 p.m.
I didn’t find anything specific on justice reform, but I did uncover two House bills with Fischer’s name on them that were currently before Congress-either of which might relate to the case.
The first one, H.R. 597, would add restrictions to death penalty sentencing procedures. “In response to the burgeoning world sentiment on the human rights abuses often precipitated while carrying out lethal injections.”
Second, a bill he was cosponsoring that would increase federal funding for the in-vitro testing of babies to identify genetic or neurological disorders: H.R. 617. The bill didn’t appear to relate per se to abortion, as Margaret had intimated, but these types of in vitro tests were often used by parents who were considering abortion as a Tielman called my name and I looked up.
“We have another plate for you,” he announced.
It took me a moment to mentally shift gears. “A plate? A license plate?”
“Yup.” He crossed the room toward me. “A National Academy student going back to the dorm. Ends up, the plates on her car aren’t hers. A sergeant at the front gate, guy named Hastings, noticed it. Just ten, fifteen, minutes ago.”
“Which student?” I asked.
He glanced at the note he was carrying. “Detective Annette Larotte.” He handed me the paper. “They’re registered to her, but she says she never applied for them.”
Her plates: SED-UAR.
Hmm.
I jotted the plates from Mahan’s car beneath them:
SED-UAR
IPR-OMI
Or maybe,
IPR-OMI
SED-UAR
Ignoring the dashes and read together, the plates could be read “I promised you are-”
You are what? Who is it referring to?
While I was considering this, I noticed Lee Anderson step into the room.
“And get this,” Tielman went on, “they’re Colorado plates. From Denver.”
“Denver?” I was only half-listening.
“Aren’t you from Denver?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, then I called to Anderson, “Who’s tailing Basque?”
He looked annoyed. “I lost him.”
“What? You lost him!” I left Tielman, strode toward Anderson.
“We were at a stoplight,” he muttered, “I was three cars back-maybe he made me, I don’t know. But he turned at the corner, and when I finally got past the light I found his car halfway down the block parked next to the curb. He was nowhere in sight.”
“So someone’s currently watching the vehicle, right? In case he returns?”
Anderson was quiet. “I didn’t know this was that high of a priority.”
I smacked the table beside us, and the chatter in the room immediately became silent. “Was there a woman with him? Anyone else in the car?”
“No.” Anderson seemed defensive, resentful that I was making a big deal out of this. “He was alone in the car. He didn’t meet anyone.”
“Before you lost him.”
He took a breath. “Yes, but he’s not a suspect in this case, is he?” There was a subtle challenge in his words, an attempt to diminish his mistake and thereby excuse it.
I didn’t want to get into this. Not here, not in front of everyone.
“He’s of interest,” I said and left it at that.
A door flew open, and Doehring stormed toward us. His eyes were knives. “Anderson!”
I decided to let Doehring deal with Anderson. As he approached I said, “We have someone monitoring the mass transit footage, right?”
“Angela Knight’s on it.” He was glaring at Anderson.
“Did she say if she’s at HQ today or Quantico?”
“Quantico. With someone named Lacey.”
Perfect. “All right, let’s assign an officer to watch Basque’s car.” I shook my head. “Hopefully, it’s still there.”
Considering the killers’ habit of leaving clues to future crimes, I asked Doehring to arrange protective custody for Annette Larotte until we could make some progress on the case. He agreed, then corralled Anderson to the other side of the room to get the location of the vehicle, and I phoned Angela, told her to keep looking for Basque’s face to show up on the transit videos. “Dr. Lebreau too,” I added.
“Anything else?” She sounded exhausted. “I’m sitting here with pretty much nothing to do, you know.”
“You can look for Adkins.”
“Who?”
I told her about Sevren, and she said, “I thought he was dead.”
“He is.”
What is obvious is not always what is true.
“I think.”
I glanced at the slip of paper Tielman had given me with the plates. “Hey, can you do letter permutations for me? Or if you’re too busy, transfer me to another analyst who can?”
A pause. “How many letters?”
“Twelve.”
“Pat, do you have any idea how many combinations that would be?”
“A lot.”
A few seconds later she said, “479,001,600.”
“I’m not asking you to do it by hand. Lacey loves this kind of stuff.”
Silence.
“Here they are-ready?”
A small sigh. “Go ahead.”
“S-E-D-U-A-R I-P-R-O-M-I.”
“You didn’t tell me there were only ten different letters; that two letters were repeated.”
This type of math was never my thing. “How much does that change things?”
“Now we’re down to…” I heard a few keystrokes. “119,750,400.”
“Great. 360,000,000 fewer to worry about. It should be a breeze. I just want to know what other actual words or phrases these letters might spell.”
“Well, in that case,” she said ambiguously.
“Thanks, Angela.”
A pause. “Sure.”
After she hung up I called Ralph, who answered after one ring. “Hey. I was gonna give you a holler,” he said. “I’m on my way to the airport now. And I’ve got some news on the address book.”
“You need to know something first, Ralph. The officer who was following Basque lost him.”
“What!” He took the opportunity to utter some of the very same words I’d been thinking about sharing with Lee Anderson only a few minutes ago.
“You still think you should come back?” I asked Ralph.
“Yeah. If Basque is there somewhere, that’s where I need to be. Now, listen, the address book: there’s a person in the DC area whose address was deleted from her computer three days ago. We were able to do a data recovery.”
“Who is it?”
A pause. “Gregory Rodale.”
His words stunned me. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I just got off the phone with him. He said they met once at a jurisprudence conference years ago. Hasn’t heard from her since.”