Before Mercer could think of anything to say she ducked into her room and closed the door.
Mercer waited until quarter of eleven the following morning to call the Herbert Clark Hoover Presidential Library. He hadn’t yet heard from Kelly Hepburn and his call to her cell had gone to voice mail, so he went ahead with the investigation without her.
It took a few minutes to establish his bona fides and to track down a staffer who could help him with his rather esoteric request. He was finally put in touch with a researcher named Sherman Smithson who’d been a fixture at the Iowa institution for years.
“I am not familiar with that particular sample, Dr. Mercer,” Smithson said in a pinched nasal accent, “and most of what we have here are paper archives and not bits of rocks and minerals, but I can check some databases for you so long as you understand that most people actually come to us to do primary research of this nature.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Smithson.” Mercer recognized that had he been overly familiar and used the man’s Christian name, Smithson probably would have ended the call on a pretext. “And I am certainly grateful for your help. There actually might be a law enforcement connection to this piece, so whatever you can do will be a tremendous help.”
“Law enforcement?”
Mercer could picture Smithson wrinkling his nose at something so beneath the lofty tower of pure academic research. He’d taken the wrong tack trying to whet the archivist’s interest. He made up the blandest story he could imagine. “Well, I might have exaggerated about law enforcement, but a certain Ohio college might be receiving a stern letter from the dean of the geology department at a university in Pennsylvania if what I suspect is true and Sample 681 was taken some decades ago without permission or even a formal requisition.”
“Ah, I see.” Smithson seemed mollified that this was about nothing more than an old tiff between schools. “Well, let’s hope we can set this straight. What is it exactly you need from us, Dr. Mercer?”
“Anything you can tell me about this Sample 681, but mostly I’m interested in where it came from and when it was collected.”
“Do you suspect President Hoover collected it himself?”
“It’s possible, but it’s just as likely it came from someone else on his behalf, or was sent to him so he could assess its value. At this stage I really don’t know.”
“Very well. I know of two places I can check quickly and a third that might take some time. How about you leave me your telephone number and I will call by this afternoon with anything preliminary. Is that satisfactory?”
“More than,” Mercer assured him, rattled off his cell number, and thanked him before ending the call.
“Good morning,” Jordan said, stepping into the rec room.
Mercer had heard her showering twenty minutes earlier and had been expecting her entrance. She wore new jeans and an American Eagle hoodie with plain white sneakers. For being bought by someone else, the jeans and sweatshirt fit her perfectly.
“Morning,” Mercer greeted her. Harry just waved from his perch at the bar. It was Friday and the crossword was getting tough. “How are you feeling?”
“So much better,” she said.
“Want some coffee?”
“God, yes. And to tell the truth I’m starving.”
“We were supposed to have doughnuts,” Harry said, glancing up from the newspaper, “but Kelly isn’t here yet.”
“You’ll have to check the fridge. I have no idea what Harry’s guests brought over for their octogenarian orgy the other night.”
“Octogenarian? Bah,” said Harry with a disdainful wave of his hand. “A couple of those silver foxes were barely into their seventies. As to orgy? Well, those weren’t blue M&M’s you saw being passed around.”
Jordan winced. “And on that note I am officially no longer hungry.”
“I’m never going to eat again,” Mercer agreed.
Harry smiled like the Cheshire cat and then stood. “Come on, honey,” he said to Jordan. “There’s plenty of food downstairs, and no one brought anything blue other than their hair. Mercer, get her coffee.”
He set a steaming mug onto the table in front of the couch and placed a newly bought half-gallon milk jug and some sweetener packets swiped from some restaurant long ago next to it. While he waited he dialed Kelly Hepburn’s number, and this time someone answered. He was pretty sure he recognized the voice. “Agent Lowell?”
“Yeah, who is this?”
“It’s Philip Mercer. Why are you answering Agent Hepburn’s phone?”
“ ’Cause she can’t,” he said bluntly. “She was in an accident this morning. Her cell got crushed. The phone company’s now routing her calls to me.”
Mercer was filled first with dread and then anger. With everything going on, there was no way Kelly Hepburn had an accident. But before he voiced his suspicions, he asked about her condition.
“Don’t know yet. She’s in surgery at George Washington University Hospital. From what I hear from the EMTs who drove her, her leg’s busted and she took a blow on the side of the head.”
“Hit and run?” Mercer asked, suspicious that the driver was one of the shooters from Minnesota, possibly even the team leader.
“No. It was an eighteen-year-old coed named Samantha Rhodes rushing from her job at a Starbucks to class at the University of Maryland.”
“No shit,” Mercer said, shocked and oddly relieved. He had pictured men dressed in black tactical gear with silenced machine pistols held just out of view as they rammed into Kelly’s car.
“Yeah, no shit.” Lowell sounded a little rattled by what had happened to his partner, but he was quickly regaining his distaste for Mercer. It was in his tone.
“What did happen exactly?” Mercer asked, feeling more on an even keel. This really could be just a weird coincidence. Though he hated them with a passion, he was enough of a realist to know they happened.
“The District PD says the girl swerved to miss a cat that had run into the road and plowed into the side of Kelly’s car. Kelly’s leg was broken, and she slammed her head into the side window hard enough to shatter the glass. That’s the injury the EMTs were most worried about. She’s conscious and all, but groggy, you know.”
“Concussion,” Mercer said.
“Sounds like it,” Lowell agreed. “Why are you calling her?”
“I’m following up on a lead from the trash I recovered from Abe Jacobs’s office. I have a call in to the Hoover Presidential Library about this Sample 681. Did Kelly tell you about it?”
“Sounds like bullshit to me. That piece of wax paper could have been wrapped around his lunch for all we know.”
“It was over fifty years old, according to your own experts,” Mercer countered.
“There’s nothing there, Mercer. Take what I’m about to say any way you want, but our part of the overall investigation is a sideshow, you get me? The real work is being done at the crime scenes in the Midwest. Not here in Washington. Agent Hepburn was only letting you stay involved so you could feel you were doing something to help your dead friend. As soon as we finished our interview of you and that Weismann girl, we were officially done. Understand?”
“No,” Mercer snapped. “This could lead to something.”
“It would be a waste of critical manpower. Let the FBI do the investigating and we’ll leave the rocks and shit to you.” Lowell killed the connection.