“They were all wearing ball caps and black masks,” Brooks said. “I got a clear look at the shooter’s cap, though, as they went by me. Red with the Redskins logo on it.”
We took phone numbers for possible follow-up, and I walked back outside. By then a team of criminalists had arrived and were documenting the scene.
I stopped to look at it all again now that we’d been given three versions of how the shooting had gone down. I could see it unfold in my mind.
“The shooter was more than good-he was trained,” I said.
“Gimme that again,” Sampson said.
“He’d have to be a pro to be able to shoot from a vehicle going fifteen to twenty miles an hour and still hit moving targets five out of five times.”
“The difficulty depends on the angle, doesn’t it?” Sampson said. “Where he started shooting and when, but I agree-he practiced for this scenario.”
“And McGrath was the primary target. The shooter put three rounds in him before turning the gun on Edita Kravic.”
One of the crime scene guys was taking photos, a dull aluminum lamp throwing light on the victims. I’d looked at McGrath in death at least six times now. Every time it got a little easier. Every time we grew apart.
5
WORD GETS OUT fast when a cop is killed. Wisconsin Avenue was a media circus by the time Sampson and I slipped out through an alleyway behind Whole Foods. We didn’t want to talk to reporters until we had something to report.
The second we were back in the squad car and Sampson had us moving, I called Chief Michaels and filled him in.
“How many men do you need?” he asked when I’d finished.
I thought about that, said, “Four, sir, including Detective Stone. She and McGrath were friends. She’ll want in.”
“Done. I’ll have them assembled ASAP.”
“Give us an hour,” I said. “We’re swinging by McGrath’s before we head in to the office.”
“No stone unturned, Alex,” Michaels said.
“No, sir.”
“You’ll have to look at Terry Howard.”
“I heard Terry’s in rough shape.”
“Just the same. It will come up, and we have to say we’ve looked at him.”
“I’ll do it myself.”
Michaels hung up. I knew the pressure on him to find the killer was already building. When a fellow cop is murdered, you want swift justice. You want to show solidarity, solve the case quick, and put someone in cuffs and on trial.
Then again, you don’t want to leap to conclusions before you’ve collected all the evidence. With six detectives now assigned to the case, we’d be gathering facts fast and furious for the next few days. We’d be working around the clock.
I closed my eyes and took several deep, long breaths, preparing for the hard road that lay ahead and for the separation from my family.
The prospect of hard work didn’t bother me; being apart from my family did. I’m better when I have a home life. I’m a more grounded person. I’m also a saner cop.
The car slowed. Sampson said, “We’re here, Alex.”
McGrath’s place was a first-floor apartment in a converted row house near Dupont Circle. We got out the key our dead boss had been carrying and opened his front door.
It swung open on oiled hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished space with two recliners, a curved-screen TV on the wall, and a stack of cardboard packing boxes in the corner. It looked like McGrath had not yet fully moved in.
Before I could say that to Sampson, something crashed deep inside the apartment, and we heard someone running.
I drew my weapon, hissed, “Sampson, around the back.”
My partner pivoted and ran, looking for a way into the alley. I went through McGrath’s place, gun up, moving quickly, taking note of how few possessions the chief of detectives had had.
I cleared the floor fast, went to the kitchen, and found a window open. I stuck my head out. Sampson flashed by me. I twisted my head, saw he was chasing a male Caucasian in jeans, a black AC/DC T-shirt, and a black golf hat, brim pulled down over a wild shock of spiky blond hair.
He was a powerful runner; an athlete, certainly. He was carrying a black knapsack, but he still bounded more than ran, chewing up ground, putting a growing distance between himself and my partner. I spun around, raced back through McGrath’s house and out the front door, jumped into the car, threw on the bubble and siren, and pulled out, trying to cut the runner off.
I came flying around the corner of Twenty-Fifth and I Streets and caught a glimpse of his back as he dodged a pedestrian and vanished at the end of the block. It was astonishing how fast he’d covered that distance. Sampson was only just coming out of the alley, at least a hundred yards behind the guy.
I felt like flooring it and roaring after him, but I knew we were already beaten; I Street jogs at the end of the block, becomes Twenty-Sixth Street, and dead-ends at Rock Creek Park, which had enough vegetation and terrain changes to swallow up any man who had that kind of wheels. Oddly, we weren’t far as the crow flies from where the Maserati had crashed and exploded earlier in the day.
I turned off the siren, stopped next to Sampson, and got out.
“You okay, John?”
My partner was bent over, hands on his knees, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
“Did you see that guy go?” he croaked. “Like the Flash or something.”
“Impressive,” I said. “Question is, what was the Flash doing in Tommy McGrath’s place?”
6
TWO HOURS LATER, Detective Bree Stone drove into the tony West Langley neighborhood of McLean, Virginia.
“What do you think Tommy had on his laptop?” asked Detective Kurt Muller, the older man sitting beside her in the passenger seat. He was working the ends of his silver mustache so they held in tight curls.
“Something that got the laptop stolen and maybe also got him killed,” Bree said, thinking back to the meeting they’d just left and the briefing they’d gotten from Alex and Sampson.
There was a lot to absorb, but they were sure that the fast-running burglar had taken McGrath’s computer and probably his backup drive from his home office. They had DC Metro’s IT experts going over McGrath’s work files, and there was a detective looking at every security-camera feed within six blocks of the Whole Foods. Another top investigator was searching through all of McGrath’s old cases to see if he had done anything that might warrant assassination.
Alex had asked Bree and Muller to pay a visit to McGrath’s estranged wife at her home in McLean, Virginia. Alex and Sampson would focus on Edita Kravic and Terry Howard.
“Heard Howard’s sick,” Muller said.
“Hate to think that he was involved,” Bree said as they drove.
“Me too,” Muller said. “He used to be a friend of mine.”
She slowed, spotted the mailbox with the address she was looking for, and turned into the long driveway of a sprawling Cape house with gray cedar-shake siding and a lushly landscaped yard.
“This must have cost a small fortune,” Bree said.
“One point seven five million,” Muller said. “I checked before we left.”
“How does a chief of detectives afford a place like this?”
“Wife’s money,” Muller said. “She came with a trust fund.”
That had Bree chewing the inside of her cheek. Parking, she said, “How come I didn’t know that?”
“I take it you were never invited out here for dinner or a barbecue.”
“I’ve never been here before in my life.”
“I have,” Muller said, and he climbed out.
Bree followed him as he crossed the driveway. When they were twenty feet shy of the door, it opened, and a tall, distinguished-looking man in a well-cut suit exited carrying a briefcase. The man stopped when he saw them.
A woman in her forties appeared in the doorway behind him. She had sandy-blond hair, a tennis-honed body, puffy red eyes, and a tortured expression on her face.