A call came through and when Pat answered, from listening to his side of the conversation, Lien-hua could tell it was from the Director.
When he hung up, he announced that Margaret had agreed to assign two other agents to the case.
“Great.”
But he seemed distracted. She sensed that he was doing his best to be present, but his attention was split — which only made sense, with everything that was going on this week.
“I had a thought,” he said. “We should also do a metasearch to see if there are any suicides in which Calydrole should have been found at the scene but wasn’t.” Then he admitted, “I know that’s a long shot, but let’s throw it in the mix.”
She typed a note to herself. “There’s one other thing we’ve been overlooking. The most obvious one of all.”
“And that is?”
“Corey was the brother of the FBI Director. If there was someone tampering with his medication, do you really think that could be a coincidence?”
“So you’re thinking we look into suicides of relatives of other FBI staff or agents?”
“Yes. Especially high-ranking ones.”
He shook his head. “This is going to take some time.” His focus seemed to drift into another place again.
“Is it Basque?” she asked him.
“What?”
“Basque. You’re here with me, but for the last fifteen minutes you haven’t quite been here with me. I’m wondering if it’s Basque.”
“You’re pretty good at reading minds.”
“Occupational hazard.”
He sighed. “Honestly, I am having a hard time putting him on the back burner.”
“Listen, ever since Friday night you’ve been almost as cooped up as I’ve been. You need to get out. Go visit the neighborhoods of the hot spots you identified. You haven’t even had a chance to orient yourself to the locations yet.”
“You’re even better than I thought.”
“At reading minds?”
“See? That just proves my point.”
Typically, profiles were drawn up before the apprehension of a suspect and were used to narrow the search. But in some instances, such as in the case of Basque, the NCAVC had detailed profiles of the people they’d already identified and were actively searching for. And though Lien-hua hadn’t worked on Basque’s case personally, because of Pat’s close involvement with it, she was familiar with the files.
Of course, she was aware of how excited Pat was about using profiles — a point of mostly friendly contention they’d had since their relationship began — but she went ahead and gave him her take on it anyway.
“He’ll want privacy,” she said, “anonymity, control. He’s brash but definitely not stupid and would have a home base where he could work without the fear of discovery.”
“So, no normal life in suburbia.”
“Sometimes the suburbs can be as anonymous as the city, but I think in this case it’s more likely he’ll seek a greater degree of isolation.”
“So, outside of town.”
“But not too far from an interstate or highway that would give him quick access to the city, or away from it if he needed to flee.”
“You’re thinking a farm, maybe? Somewhere on the outskirts?”
“Maybe. And there’d be some way of warning him that people are approaching — security or infrared cameras, a dog, motion detectors, maybe something that would trigger a silent alarm in the house, I’m not sure. And he’ll have an escape plan if law enforcement should arrive.”
“Like he did in the water treatment plant.”
“Yes. His face has been all over the news for months, so it’s likely he’ll avoid too much exposure to the public, or at least to people who might identify and report him. A disguise is a definite possibility.” She thought again of the long hair he had.
He might be using a wig.
In either case, that wouldn’t really help Pat nail down a location, but it might help if he spoke with someone or reviewed video of Basque leaving or entering a place of business in one of the hot zones. She brought it up and he nodded. “Good thought.”
“Brineesha said she’d stop by,” she told him. “Don’t worry about me. No more lingering today. I’ll work on bringing the two new agents Margaret is assigning to this thing up to speed. You take some time to go and look for Basque.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He leaned in for a kiss. “Thanks.”
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay.”
After she’d told him how much she loved him and he’d replied in kind, he took off.
She tracked down the two newly assigned agents and invited them to her hospital room for a briefing.
The agenda: get them started pulling up more background information on a former Marine who’d disappeared from the system, exploring his possible connection with Corey Wellington, looking for victims of fatal, self-inflicted stab wounds, and searching for suicides of the relatives of FBI agents or staff — especially those scenes that might be missing packets of Calydrole.
This promised to be an interesting afternoon.
42
Over the years, despite my reticence to trust profiling, I had to admit that more often than not Lien-hua’s insights were right on target. It was somewhat disconcerting and a little exasperating, but it was what it was.
Before I left the hospital parking lot, I called Ralph to tell him I’d be in the field investigating the hot zones.
“Man, I need to get out of this freakin’ office too. I’ll come with you. We can catch up on the case and you can tell me about this meeting you had with the Director. I heard about her brother. That’s terrible what happened.”
“Yeah, it looks like he killed himself, but we’re starting to suspect he was murdered too.”
“That, you’re going to have to explain to me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Actually, it really would be beneficial to connect with Ralph and bounce some ideas off each other. With my teaching responsibilities and the time I’d been spending with Lien-hua, we had a lot of catching up to do.
We agreed to meet one block from the Capitol, and I left to pick him up.
Richard Basque had practiced his tricks all morning and into the early afternoon.
Getting out of steel handcuffs wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought it would be, and using hairpins, a barrette, and even paper clips, he’d been able to decrease his time from two minutes to forty-five seconds.
The plastic flex cuffs were a different story.
It was possible to use a wire to saw through the plastic, also possible to wedge a pin into the locking point to release it, but it was difficult, especially if your hands were cuffed behind your back.
Richard decided to give himself another two hours or so of practice with the plastic cuffs before heading to Chesapeake Beach for Noni’s birthday party, where he would go after some little sheep.
Based on Lien-hua’s ideas, Ralph and I didn’t bother with the first hot zone, the one in southeast DC. It didn’t afford the kind of isolated opportunities that the potential zones north and east of the city would provide.
Instead, he drove my car north while I used my phone’s 3-D hologram app and FALCON to identify isolated homes in the geographic area I’d come up with that might be worth looking into. As I worked, I gave him a recap of what Lien-hua and I had uncovered about Corey Wellington’s death.
Ralph listened reflectively. “Did we hear back about the side effects of this drug yet?”