Kreiss pulled the drapes closed. It looked like Carter had backup all right, but not necessarily working for her. He slipped on his sport coat, having decided to dress up a little, in deference to the fact that Carter would probably still be in her office clothes. He went downstairs.
Janet saw him come into the bar and raised her hand. He was wearing khaki-colored slacks, a white shirt open at the throat, and a dark blue sport coat. With his gray-white hair and clipped beard, he looked almost professorial, except for the heft of his shoulders and a look in his eye that made other men in the crowded room ease out of his way as he came across to her table. He nodded to her as he sat down and ordered a glass of sparkling water from the waitress.
“Special Agent Carter,” he said.
“You called.”
“Yes, I did,” she said. The bar was really filling up now, and the noise level was growing. Up close, his face looked a little puffy on one side and there was a bandage peeking up over his collar.
“Hurt yourself?” she asked, looking at the bandage.
“Let’s get to it,” he said, ignoring her question.
“I want to find my daughter. What do you want?”
“I reinterviewed Barry dark. He said he told you they were going to Site R. I think I can help you identify what that is.”
“I already know,” he said.
“It’s the Ramsey Arsenal. What do you want?”
She was taken aback and suddenly didn’t know what to say. She realized she should have had a plan B. He leaned forward, his eyes intense.
“Listen to me, Special Agent Carter. I want to find my daughter. Three case folders gathering dust up in the MP shop don’t cut it. I’m going to do what I’m going to do, regardless of the Bureau. If I determine that she’s been abducted and injured or killed, I’ll find out who did it and put their severed heads on pikes out on the interstate.”
She blinked, desperately trying to think of something clever to say.
This wasn’t going anything like the way she had anticipated. She had forgotten how intense he was. Focus, she commanded herself. Focus. Then he surprised her.
“Who would want to plant a bug on your Bu car?” he asked.
“What? A bug?”
“I watched you arrive in the parking lot. Tan Crown Vie? You parked and stayed in the car for a few minutes. Then you walked in. Ten minutes after that, a nondescript minivan came into the lot, cruised all the lanes, paused at your car, left the lot, and then parked long enough for some tall white guy to walk back and put something under your left-rear wheel well. Who would want to bug a Bureau car?”
What the hell is this? she thought.
“I looked for you,” she said.
“Where were you watching from?”
“My room, Special Agent.”
His room.
“Oh” was all she could manage.
He sat back in his chair and drank some of his water.
“You’re obviously not a street agent. What’s your specialty?”
The look in his eyes was one of calm appraisal. She decided this was no time for bullshit.
“I’m a materials forensics evidence specialist. Most of my assignments have been in support of Washington task forces, qualifying the evidence. I did one field tour in Chicago, but it was in-specialty.”
“You do a lot of materials forensics over there in beautiful downtown Roanoke, Virginia?”
“Well,” she said, “some senior people at the headquarters thought it was time for me to get some field experience.”
“You mean you were playing straight-arrow in the lab, upset some prosecutor’s preconceived notions about the evidence, and your mentor was concerned enough about your career to get you out of Dodge for a couple of years.”
She colored and then nodded. To cover her embarrassment, she drank some Coke. It was watery.
“What brought Bambi and Marchand’s lapdog down here?”
“I did, I guess.”
“You guess?”
She winced mentally. Talking to him was like being back at the damned Academy. She kept forgetting he had been a senior agent with many years of experience.
“I made a routine inquiry. It’s… it’s perhaps not something you want to hear.”
He just looked at her, so she described her conversation with Dr.
Kellermann.
He nodded when she was finished. He had been coming at her like an interrogator. Now his expression softened.
“And that inquiry got back to the Justice Department how, exactly?”
“That, I don’t know,” she said. The waitress buzzed by and asked if they needed anything else. Kreiss didn’t look at her, just shook his head.
“I mean, I guess the Counseling Division notified somebody,” she said.
“Although I don’t know why, exactly. My inquiry concerned your ex-wife, not you.” She was trying to keep the conversation going, but there he was, looking at his watch. She had gotten nowhere.
“Have you been to this Ramsey Arsenal place?” she asked.
He sat back in his chair and steepled his hands beneath his chin.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do. Why did you ask that?”
“Because I don’t believe the PA to the deputy AG and her counterpart from Marchand’s office came down here to work a missing persons case. I think they came down here to find out what the hell I’m up to. Let me guess: They send you to get close to me?”
The question came so directly and so unexpectedly that Janet couldn’t keep her expression from revealing the truth. Kreiss smiled wearily.
“They’re so damned transparent. They sit around in Washington for years and years, playing all these palace games. They think field people believe their bullshit.”
“That’s not quite it,” she said.
“They think there’s some kind of bomb making cell that might be working out of the arsenal. They—” “Bombs?” he said with a snort.
“The Bureau doesn’t work bombs; aTF works bombs. If they thought that, they’d turn loose a herd of aTF agents in there and find out. This
isn’t about any goddamned bombs. If those two are here, they’re here about me. Which is probably why two Agency CE worker bees were waiting at my cabin when I got back this morning.”
She thought she saw an opening.
“Got back from where, Mr. Kreiss?”
“That’s my business, Agent Carter,” he said, ignoring her gambit.
“Now, I have a daughter to locate. I don’t really think there’s anything you can do for me. I appreciate your telling me about the Washington interest, but that’s between me and them. If I find my daughter, I’ll let you know. If I don’t but I find the people responsible for her disappearance, you’ll hear about that, too.”
“Right,” she said.
“Heads out on I-Eighty-one.”
He smiled, but his eyes remained grim.
“It’d be a change from all those billboards,” he said.
“Did you really operate alone?” she asked. She surprised herself, asking the question, but she couldn’t imagine what that must be like.
He thought about it for a moment.
“Not at first, but later, yes. The backup was available, but it was more technical than human. Once I went down a hole after somebody, it was an individual effort.”
“But why? Why give away our biggest advantage, our ability to overwhelm a subject, with agents, with data, with surveillance, the whole boat?”