“Oh, shit,” Meade whispered.
Johnson pushed the door open until it bumped against the wall. Inside, the marble foyer was dark; beyond it lay a T-turn hallway.
Johnson keyed his radio. “Two-nine to dispatch.”
“Dispatch.”
“We’ve got an open door at our location. Request you attempt contact via landline.”
“Roger, standby.”
Thirty seconds passed. In the distance, a dog barked once, then went silent. The bug zapper sizzled. Inside the house they heard the distant ringing of a phone. After a dozen rings, it stopped.
Johnson’s radio crackled. “Dispatch, two-nine, no response landline.”
“Yep, we heard it. We’re going in.”
Johnson looked over at Meade, gave him a reassuring nod, then drew his gun and clicked on his flashlight. Meade did the same, then followed.
They turned right at the T and walked through the kitchen, dining room, and living room. All were empty. A side door led from the living room into the garage. Johnson peeked out, pulled back, and shook his head.
They retraced their steps out of the kitchen, past the foyer, and followed the hall to a set of stairs leading upward. At the top they found another hallway: two doors on the right, balustrade on the left. At the far end lay another door. Master bedroom, Johnson thought.
Moving by hand gestures, they checked the first two rooms. Bedrooms: ’N Sync and Britney Spears posters, toys scattered on the floor, colorful wallpaper and curtains … Kid’s rooms.
They moved on. At the last door they stopped. They glanced at one another. If there’s anything to find, Johnson thought, it’ll be here. He gulped hard, looked over at Meade, and gave him another nod.
Johnson turned the knob and pushed open the door. The room was black. The air smelled stale. There was another odor as well, but Johnson couldn’t quite place it. Like metal, he thought. Coppery. Even as his brain was identifying the odor, he tracked his flashlight across the floor to the bedpost, then upward.
What he saw made him freeze. “O sweet Jesus.”
Charlie Latham jolted awake at the phone’s first ring. Part habit, part instinctual consideration for his wife, he rarely let a phone ring more than twice. “Hello.”
“Charlie, it’s Harry.” Harry Owens, a longtime friend of Latham’s, had recently been promoted to assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Division, which made him Latham’s boss. “Did I wake you up?”
Latham smiled; the joke was old between them. “Nah. What’s up?”
“Multiple murder. I think you’re gonna want to see it. I’m there now.”
Latham was wary. As head of the NSD’s Counterespionage/Intelligence group, he had little business poaching on a homicide; his bailiwick was spies and terrorists. “What’s going on, Harry?”
“Better you see it for yourself.”
“Okay. Give me the address.”
It took Latham twenty minutes to reach Randolph Hills. The driveway to the Baker home was filled with three DCPD patrol cars and a van from the medical examiner’s office. Strung from tree to tree in the yard, yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze. Robe- and pajama-clad neighbors gawked from across the street.
A cop met Latham on the porch, handed him a pair of sterile booties, a gauze beanie for his head, and latex gloves, waited for him to don them and then led him inside and up the stairs. Owens was waiting; his face was pasty. “Hey, Charlie.”
“Harry. Bad?”
“Pretty bad. Mother and two children.”
Latham had known Owens for seventeen years and he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Owens so shaken. Still, that didn’t answer why he was here. “What is it?” Latham asked.
“Just take a look. I don’t want to put a spin on it. I need your eyes.”
He led Latham down the hall to the bedroom door, gestured for Latham to wait, then poked his head inside and waved out the Crime Scene people. “Go ahead, Charlie.”
Latham stepped through the door. And stopped.
The mother, an early forties redhead, sat in a hard-backed chair beside the bed. Her wrists were duct-taped to the chair’s arms, her ankles to the rear legs, so her thighs were stretched tight. Harder to rock the chair that way, Latham thought. She’d been shot once in the forehead. Behind her, the yellow bedspread was splattered in blood and brain matter.
The children, both blond-haired girls under ten years of age, were sitting against the wall with their arms taped behind their backs. Their feet, similarly taped together around the calves, were secured to the bed’s footing by nylon clothesline.
Both girls had been shot once in the crown of the skull. The shock wave from the bullets’ passages had left each child’s face rippled with bruises. The effect was known as “beehiving,” named after the ringed appearance of beehives in cartoons.
Latham felt the room spinning; he felt hot. He took a deep breath. “What the hell happened here, Harry? Where’s the—”
“He’s in Rock Creek Park, shot once under the chin.”
Latham felt a flash of anger. “Son-of-a-bitch …”
“Maybe. Look at their ankles, Charlie.”
Latham stepped over the children’s legs and squatted down beside one of them. He pulled back a pajama cuff. There, beside the knob of the ankle bone, a tiny red pinprick on the vein.
Oh, no … Latham grabbed the bed’s footboard to steady himself.
Owens held up a clear, plastic, evidence bag. Inside was a hypodermic syringe. “We found it on the stairway. There’s a little bit of blood on the tip.”
Latham opened his mouth to ask the question, but Owens beat him to it. “We’ll have to get the lab to confirm it, but the syringe looks empty. No residue, no liquid — nothing.”
Nothing but air, thought Latham. They’d seen this before.
2
“What’s next?” said President Martin, flipping to the next page of the brief. “The Angola thing?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Director of Central Intelligence Dick Mason. The Angola thing …
Martin spoke as if the plight of thousands of refugees carried no more import than a photo op with the Boy Scouts. Since the start of the war in Angola, thousands had been driven from their homes in the capital and Luanda and into squalid tent camps.
“If we don’t find a way to get the Red Cross in, disease is going to start hitting the camps.”
“I see.”
Do you? For the first time in his life, Mason found himself in the unenviable position of disliking his boss. It didn’t help that his boss also happened to be the president of the United States. Not that it mattered, of course. He wasn’t required to like the man — he just had to follow his orders.
Martin was what Mason called a “too much man.” Too handsome; too polished; too poised — too everything but genuine. Not that he was a simpleton; in fact, he was well-educated and quick on his feet. The problem was, Martin cared for little else than Martin. He was a dangerous narcissist.
His smartest move had been hiring his chief of staff, Howard Bousikaris, his right hand since the early days of the Haverland administration. The third-generation Greek was loyal and adept at playing Martin’s political hatchet man. Inside the Beltway, Bousikaris had been nicknamed “The Ninja”: It was only after you were dead that you realized he was after you.
“What does State have to say about this?” Martin asked.
Bousikaris said, “Not much at this point, sir. We don’t even know for sure who’s running the government. The central news agency in Luanda has changed hands four times in the last week.”