“Why are you bringing this up, Margaret?”
“Because she disappeared and Basque is here in DC and I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Now you sound like Bowers.”
The waitress reappeared, deposited the basket of fries, Rodale’s beer, and a glass of cloudy water for Margaret, then vanished into the shadows again.
Greg took a sip of the beer. “Considering all the media hype and Basque’s claims over the years that he was innocent-and the fact that the case involved Bowers, one of our highest profile agents-yes. I reviewed Basque’s files.”
“And?”
“And I felt there were enough inconsistencies to justify a lawyer giving his case a fresh look.”
“Not just a lawyer, a law professor. He had plenty of lawyers. She’s one of the nation’s most outspoken anti-death penalty-”
“I knew Lebreau.” His words had turned hard. “I gave her a call. That’s it. There’s nothing unethical about that. On the phone you mentioned nanotechnology.”
Now for the big one. “You stand to benefit if the Gunderson Foundation has any breakthroughs.”
“How’s that?”
“Stock.”
“The Gunderson Foundation is a nonprofit organization. What are you talking about?”
“It was clever,” she said. “If they make any breakthroughs, it’ll catapult the whole industry forward, sending stock prices at the other firms in the business skyrocketing. But through it all, you stay one step removed. Still, with the purchase of those stocks, we have breach of trust, conflict of interest, possibly insider trading.”
He took a long sip of his drink. “Did you come here to blackmail me, Margaret?”
“By no means, but there are too many holes in all this. It’s going to come to light eventually. I’m giving you the opportunity to bypass all that, to come clean before it happens.”
“Before you make it happen.”
She didn’t reply.
He set down his beer and gave her a look that seemed to contain both derision and defeat. “You just want my job, Margaret.”
He was right about that, and they both knew it. The FBI Director was appointed by the President of the United States with the Senate’s approval, but an executive AD would almost certainly make the short list if the Director resigned or was asked to step down. “That’s what this is all about,” he said, then repeated, “You want my job.”
“That’s not all I want.”
He nodded as if he’d been expecting that. He slid the beer aside. “What else?”
“I want what’s best for the Bureau, Greg.”
He waited as if expecting her to go on, but when she didn’t he said, “You can’t prove any of this.”
“Give me time. I’m pretty good at connecting the dots.”
He poured ketchup on the fries. “So you want me to resign, is that it?”
“I want you to give a press conference. Explain your reasons. Clear the air.”
“And then resign?”
“Do what you feel is right.”
He left the fries alone but drank some more beer, and it seemed to bring him new resolve. “You quoted a bogus regulation to keep Bowers off this case for forty-eight hours.”
“He was shot. I was doing it for the good of the Bureau. For his own good.”
“That might not be how the Office of Professional Responsibility will see it. We all know your history with Bowers; you’ve been gunning for him for years. I assigned him to the case, and even though he was willing to continue working it, and physically able to, you lied to him, pulled him from it, and hampered the investigation. It might have put innocent people’s lives at risk.”
“That’s absurd.”
His voice grew softer, but colder. “You didn’t follow up to make sure the ME positively identified the body found at the primate center Tuesday evening. If you had, Mollie might still be alive. Two hours ago the Summie family filed a lawsuit against the Bureau. Now that’s on your shoulders. Something you’re going to have to answer for.”
Margaret hadn’t heard about the lawsuit and wasn’t sure what to say.
“If you want to play hardball, Margaret, I can play hardball.”
“With all due respect, sir. Bring it on.”
A stiff silence.
“Do you know where she is?” Margaret asked. “Renee Lebreau?”
“No.”
“Do you know why she might have disappeared this week?”
A deep sadness swept across his face, and Margaret was shocked to see how quickly his demeanor changed. “Basque,” he said. The strain in the word told Margaret that Greg had not just known Renee casually. “I was wrong about him.”
“So now you believe he’s guilty?”
No reply.
“Is she dead, Greg?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in over a year.” Margaret wasn’t sure if she believed that. She waited for him to go on.
Rodale cradled his beer in his hands, and she realized that he looked small and frightened. But she was wary. She’d learned long ago that when people get scared they become desperate. And desperate people take desperate measures.
He took a breath, met her gaze. “Think about what I said concerning you and Bowers. Your last run-in with OPR ended up with you stuck at a satellite office in North Carolina for what? Almost five years? Think about your future, Margaret.”
“Oh, I am, Greg.” She stood. “That’s why I came here tonight.”
Then she paced out the door and left for home to prepare the statement she was going to give to the press tomorrow morning.
99
Lien-hua and I were on I-95 heading toward Quantico.
I checked my texts again. Tessa was home and she was fine and I was starting to feel like an overprotective parent-not a bad feeling. I had Lien-hua text Tessa for me, asking what she was doing, and she replied: “nmjc c/dw.”
I knew that nmjc was teen texting lingo for “nothing much just chillin’.”
With a little deduction I realized c/ is short for the Latin word “cum,” which means “with,” and dw would be Detective Warren.
I only wished it was that easy to decipher this case.
As Lien-hua set down the phone, she said, “So what are these tunnels you’d like to explore?”
“Psychopathology and justice reform.”
A moment. “Go on.”
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking. The congressman is financially in bed with this whole neuroscience research industry.”
“That’s Washington, Pat. Special favors, lobbyists. Politics as usual.”
“Except that because of the location of Twana’s murder, it ties in with this case. Besides, people only lobby when they have an agenda. And it’s almost always either money or morals-to make a buck or to make a point.”
“That sounds like profiling.”
“Just an observation.”
“No, definitely profiling. I must be wearing off on you.”
“Well, I won’t argue with that, but here’s the thing: the Gunderson Foundation is researching primate metacognition, neuroscience, and aggression-the neurology of violence. Meanwhile, Fischer is cosponsoring a bill that’ll provide federal funding for the in-vitro testing of babies for neurological or genetic disorders.”
She listened quietly. “I didn’t know that.”
“And two of his biggest campaign supporters are firms that provide this service.”
“They stand to benefit a lot if the bill passes.”
“And if they benefit, so does he.”
Silence. “How do you see this relating to the murders?”
“I’m not sure, but in the context of the Project Rukh files and Gunderson Foundation research, what if scientists could do that?”
As a profiler, Lien-hua was one of the Bureau’s top experts on criminal psychology. I was anxious to hear her take on this. I continued, “What if it were possible to definitively identify the specific neurological or genetic conditions that cause violent behavior or psychopathology?”
“We already know some of the neurological factors,” she said, “but behavior could never be pinned down that narrowly, that conclusively. There are just too many things that influence our decisions and condition and affect our behavior. You know that as well as I do.”