Robie walked outside an hour later after going over the details of the mass shooting. The air was warmer today and felt warmer still as the sun rose higher. It was one of those cloudless days in D.C. that you knew would not last. Not at this time of the year. The capital city was like a bull’s-eye on a weather map. Systems from north, south, and west regularly crossed the line of the Appalachians and hit the area, and their confluence could cause severe weather.
Yet today was good, weather-wise. But that was the only good thing about it.
Robie looked over at the numbered markers for the dead on the sidewalk. Yeah, the weather is the only good thing.
He mulled over what Vance had told him.
A Secret Service SUV had been the shooter’s platform.
It had gone missing.
Things did not go missing from the Secret Service.
Robie had worked with that agency years ago to clean up a mess in a country he had never wanted to go back to. The agency was small in comparison to the behemoths of the FBI and DHS. But its people were excellent, loyal, really the only federal agents who systematically trained to take a bullet for their protectee.
He glanced to his left and saw the FBI mobile command post.
He approached, rapped on the door. He flashed his creds to the agent who answered his knock. He mentioned Vance’s name, and was allowed in. It was filled with high-tech gadgetry and investigation equipment. There were four other people present. In his mind Robie split them up between special agents and tech support. The two techs were hammering on computer keyboards, and data obediently flowed across the multiple computer screens stacked on the long table.
Robie said, “Vance told me about collecting surveillance camera footage from the scene of the bus explosion. You got any of it uploaded yet?”
The agent who had let him in the command post nodded. “Hang on a sec.”
He texted something on his phone. Robie knew exactly what.
He’s getting the okay from Vance to show me the pictures.
Robie would have expected nothing less. The FBI did not employ stupid people.
Robie heard the sound of a text shooting back to the agent. The man glanced at the screen and said, “Over here, Agent Robie.”
He led him to one corner and indicated a blank screen.
“Here’s what we have so far.”
The agent punched some keys and the file uploaded to the screen.
Robie sat in a swivel chair, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.
“Have you looked at it yet?” Robie asked.
“First time for me too.”
Robie felt his pulse quicken.
This might truly be enlightening for everybody, he thought.
The door opened and he saw Vance. She closed it behind her and walked over to them.
“Am I in time for the show?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the other agent respectfully.
She sat down next to Robie, their knees nearly touching. She focused on the screen that was now coming to life.
The bus came into view. It traveled a few hundred yards. Robie was relieved to see that the camera shot was not on the side of the bus with the door. A few seconds later the bus exploded.
Robie tensed again. With the bus destroyed, there would be nothing to block the camera’s view across the street, where Robie and Julie’s pixeled figures were now rolling and eventually coming to rest. In a few seconds they would both rise and then…
The screen went black.
Robie looked at the agent controlling this process. “What happened?”
“Blast must’ve knocked out the camera. That can happen. It’s not like bank cameras are built for that stuff.”
He tapped more buttons on his keyboard and finally called a tech over. The tech executed more keystrokes and five minutes later they still had nothing.
Robie sat through two more video feeds that were very much like the first two. Opposite side of the bus and the cameras went down after the explosion.
“Any cameras around the bus depot showing the passengers getting on?” asked Robie. He had searched his memory but could not recall any such surveillance.
“Not that we can find right now,” said Vance. “But it’s early days yet. And we’re trying to locate more footage. Particularly from the other side of the street. And everybody has cell phones and most cell phones have camera and video features, so we’re trying to find anyone who was there last night who might have seen or even photographed or filmed something in the aftermath. Though if they did it probably would be on all the news shows or YouTube by now. I’m going to have my guys go check for more surveillance cameras along the bus route this afternoon, after we get this crime scene under better control.”
Which means I have to find it first, Robie thought.
CHAPTER 48
Robie stood near what was, for him, ground zero.
The remains of the bus were being sifted through by a dozen forensics techs, with an FBI evidence truck waiting nearby to take these items away to the lab. Just like at Donnelly’s, roadblocks were everywhere, holding back the reporters who wanted to see and know everything right now.
He looked left and right, up and down. Vance was correct; nothing obvious that he could see. The bank video across the street was already in the database but thankfully also had been knocked out by the blast. He gazed upward. Surveillance camera about ten feet off the ground at the corner of one intersection. It was pointing downward and had gotten a shot of the bus as well. If it had been pointed a bit differently, it might have captured on film both him and Julie as they escaped.
Like football, a game of inches. Some things were just beyond your control. Then you counted on luck.
But how much more luck can I count on?
His attention turned to the troublesome part of the street, the side he and Julie had been on. He started to walk. With the angle of coverage a camera might have on the street, he gauged what his box of concern should be and added ten percent on each end just to be safe. He covered this ground methodically.
He quickly registered on a camera posted on the wall about twenty feet to the left of where the bus had gone down. It seemed to be pointing directly at the spot of the explosion. He looked at the business located there.
Bail bondsman. Of course. In this neighborhood the owner probably had a ready group of customers. He looked through the plate glass window with rusted iron bars in a crisscross pattern fronting it.
The sign to the right of the door said, “Ring Bell.”
Robie rang the bell.
A voice came out of a small white box set to the door.
“Yeah?”
“Federal agent. Need to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Face-to-face.”
Robie heard footsteps approaching. A short, wide man in his fifties with more white hair in a mustache over his lip than on his head looked out at him through the window.
“Let me see your badge.”
Robie pressed it against the glass.
“DCIS?”
“Part of DOD. Military.”
“What do you want with me?”
“Open the door.”
The man pulled the heavy door open. He was dressed in black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Above his loafers Robie saw pink skin.
Robie stepped through and closed the door behind him.
“So what do you want?” the man asked again.
“The bus that blew up across the street?”
“What about it?”
“You have a surveillance camera.”
“Right, so?”
“FBI been by to see you about it yet?”
“No.”
“I’m going to have to confiscate the film or DVD or whatever you use to house the images captured by the camera.”
“That would be nothing.”