“Which mall?”
“The one in Washington. Across from the Smithsonian Castle. He said that Officer Lincoln was killed to keep him quiet about the details of the shooting at the Wild Times Bar.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You bet, uh-oh. But it gets even more interesting. David Kirk is in fact the District’s primary suspect in the murder.”
“So, they’ve got him in custody.”
“Not yet. He seems to have disappeared.”
“You’re the FBI,” Boxers growled. “You got phone records to work with, credit cards, God knows what else.”
“Thank you for a lesson in my capabilities,” Irene said. “We’re searching for him. But between us, not necessarily for the same reason.”
Jonathan got it. “You’re thinking protective custody.”
“Exactly. At least until we can sort out fact from fiction. Paranoia from truth.”
“This is Washington,” Boxers said. “Paranoia and truth are the same thing.”
Irene continued, “According to Kirk Nation, Officer Lincoln called Kirk in a panic, saying that he had to meet with him ASAP to reveal something about the Secret Service’s role in the shooting of other Secret Service agents at the Wild Times.”
“Sounds to me like this Kirk kid is aching to get himself whacked,” Boxers said.
“Apparently they already tried,” Irene said. “His blog entry this morning read like he’d lost his mind. He talked about going to meet his friend — he referred to him as Deeshy — but when he wasn’t at the appointed place and he wouldn’t answer his cell phone, he went looking. Then he tells about two men emerging from behind the carousel — apparently the place where the officer’s body was found — and they approached him to kill him.”
“Can’t say much for the talent they’re using,” Jonathan said. “How’d they miss?”
“I don’t know. The blog entry said that the bad guys had a knife. Maybe he just outran them. In any case, Kirk took a cab from Constitution Avenue and dumped his cell phone with the cabbie.”
A piece fell into place for Jonathan. “You said that he made calls to the decedent’s phone just before all the crazy stuff happened?”
Irene paused. In Jonathan’s mind, he could see it dawning on her face. “They didn’t have to chase him,” she said. “The fact of the phone call, combined with the kid’s decision to run, gave them everything they needed to get a warrant.”
“Who filed for the warrant?” Boxers asked.
“I’ll find that out,” Irene said. “Guys, I really want David Kirk put someplace safe.”
“Finding him is an important first step,” Jonathan said.
“I know where he is,” Irene said. “At least I know where he was about twenty minutes ago.”
Jonathan scowled and looked to Boxers. Got a shrug in return. “But you said—”
“I can’t find him legally,” Irene said. “It’s against the law to troll private conversations looking for key words. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done by certain resourceful people who make their living violating the law.”
Boxers chuckled. “I think she means us, Boss.”
“Last time I played with the NSA on domestic matters they got really cranky,” Jonathan said.
“Everybody at Fort Meade is cranky these days,” Irene said. “It helps to be connected.”
“You already have the address, don’t you?”
“In fact I do. Are you ready to copy?”
Jonathan keyed the mike on his portable radio. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”
He had to wait an uncharacteristically long time for her to answer. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. Did you just call me?”
“Affirm. Everything okay?”
“It is, now that I’m out of the bathroom. Why are we on the radio all of a sudden? I had my phone with me.”
“We’re going hot,” Jonathan said. He knew she’d understand that to mean they had a new op. “I need you to find out what the physical security of Eastern Towers Apartments is like in Alexandria, Virginia. You need me to spell it?”
“Unless there’s something weird about the words ‘eastern’ or ‘towers,’ I would say no. Stand by.”
As Venice took care of the research, Boxers navigated the Batmobile toward the sprawling apartment complex. Finding a spot for the enormous vehicle was always a challenge, and here it proved to be particularly difficult. The beast took up two spaces if you wanted to open the doors all the way, and at this hour, when just about everybody was home, they had to drive out to the back forty to find a suitable spot.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” Venice said. “ProtecTall Security. This should be a cinch. I presume you want me to override their cameras?”
“Exactly,” Jonathan said. ProtecTall was one of Northern Virginia’s largest contractors for providing electronic security for offices, apartments, and individual residences. They were the people on the other side of the electrical impulses when someone opened a door they shouldn’t have or when a wisp of smoke passed in front of a smoke detector. More to the point for Jonathan, they also supervised hundreds if not thousands of unmonitored security cameras. When you saw grainy images of missing persons or wanted fugitives on the evening news, chances were good that the recording came from ProtecTall.
Because they were so ubiquitous, Venice had long ago learned the codes to override their systems. Now, it was only a matter of knocking out the cameras for the next ten or fifteen minutes to make sure that there would be no electronic trail of images. If possible, she’d even go back a little on the recordings to erase the footage of Jonathan and Boxers arriving in the parking lot.
“We doin’ the straight FBI thing again?” Boxers asked as they started the hike toward the main entrance.
“It’s been working well so far, don’t you think?”
“It’s been an exciting day, I’ll give you that,” Boxers said. “I say he’s not here. This feels too easy. Or if he is here, he’s ready for a body bag.”
Jonathan didn’t respond. What could he say? Irene had talked someone at the NSA into breaking about a dozen laws to scan cell phone traffic in a radius of fifty miles from the center of DC looking for a short list of key words that would connect David Kirk to either the Wild Times Bar, the First Lady, or DeShawn Lincoln. There’d of course been thousands of hits — this was an ongoing criminal investigation, after all — but when they filtered them through the list of Kirk’s known associates, they came up with two. One belonged to Charlie Baroli, Kirk’s boss at the Enquirer, and Becky Beckeman, a coworker at the paper. The playback from Becky’s featured a voice that was four-nines consistent with the voice of David Kirk.
Jonathan felt no guilt about stealing three-quarters of one second of taxpayers’ computing time. Like Boxers, however, he worried that the solution was so obvious that that the bad guys would think of it, too.
The stroll to the front of the building took all of two minutes. Jonathan switched his radio to VOX, which meant that every word he spoke would be transmitted. That kept him from having to press a transmit button — a gesture that never failed to draw attention. “Are we ready to go yet, Mother Hen?”
A pause.
“Mother Hen?”
“I need another minute or two.” Her voice sounded stressed. Maybe even angry. Jonathan knew better than to press her for information before she was ready to offer it.
An apartment complex of this size — there had to be a thousand units, distributed among several buildings — was like its own little city, teeming with people. The front doors never stayed closed for more than a few seconds as residents and visitors arrived and departed. Jonathan was struck by the fact that the mean age seemed ten years older than he would have expected. Back in the day, these roach mills were the domain of youngsters new to their careers. What he saw today were forty- and fiftysomethings. He wrote it off as another sign of the economic nightmare that would be the legacy of the Darmond administration.