“Great plan, except when these people push back, somebody winds up dead.”
“Reporters never get killed, except in war.”
“I remember somebody in Arizona back in the seventies,” Helm said.
“He’s the exception.”
“There’s always a chance.”
“Don’t be depressing,” Pace said. “You had any luck connecting the two murders?”
“That’s confidential police business,” Helm said formally.
“I thought we agreed we were going to cooperate on this.”
“We did and we can. But not to the point of impropriety on my part. I can’t open my files for you. Ask me specific questions and I’ll give you specific answers, unless you get into an area that’s confidential.”
A flood of deja vu hit Pace. Mike McGill had said almost exactly the same thing at lunch, when was it? It seemed a year ago.
“What can you tell me?” he asked in exasperation. “Are you working with the District police? Are you making any progress?”
“Yes to the last two questions,” Helm replied.
“Who are you working with downtown?”
“Detective Lieutenant Martin Lanier. I understand the two of you met last night. He didn’t like you very much.”
“Figures. You have any leads?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got enough for a story now. I can’t tell you any more.”
“What story? You haven’t told me shit!” Exasperation was nearing despair. “Can I say state police and D.C. cops have leads linking the two murders?”
“No. Say we’re exploring leads that might link the two deaths,” Helm corrected. “We still don’t have proof the first one was murder. Or the second one was anything more than it appeared to be. Lanier has serious doubts the drugstore was a setup to get McGill. But there is eyewitness testimony that could provide a link. And I stress could.”
Pace sat up in his chair, his interest renewed. “What eyewitness testimony? There was an eyewitness to the Antravanian accident?”
“No.”
“Goddamn it, quit talking in circles!”
“Look, Steve, there is something I’d like to tell you, but as a friend, not as a reporter. If it appeared in the newspaper, we could lose potential suspects.”
“Then why tell me at all?”
“For your own protection,” Helm said softly. “So when you look in your rearview mirror, you’ll know what you’re looking for.”
“So tell me.”
“I have to have your word. Everything I say from here on is off the record.”
Pace scowled and rocked back in his chair. He hated decisions like this. Once he agreed to go off the record, he could never use the information, whatever it was, unless Helm released him from the promise. “Go ahead,” he said reluctantly. “You have my word.”
“We’re looking for a late-model, light-blue Ford van with a bashed-in right front side. The police and firemen at the Antravanian accident recall seeing it at the scene with two guys, one of them shooting videotape. Witnesses outside the drugstore last night say the two gunmen escaped in a late-model Ford van, either blue or green, with a bashed-in right front side. In both cases, the witnesses said they saw streaks of another color paint in the area of the van’s damage, either yellow or white. Mark Antravanian’s rental car was yellow. That good enough?”
Pace whistled softly.
“You see why it can’t appear in the paper?” Helm continued. “The truck would be too easy to get rid of or repair. We can’t let these guys know we made their transportation.”
“I have a vague recollection of seeing that truck on Georgetown Pike, too,” Pace said.
“You do?”
“Mike and I were there, yeah. When our source didn’t show that night and we saw the cops scream by, we followed them.”
“What do you remember about the van?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Mike and I were standing on the shoulder of the road on the side where the car went off. The van was behind us on the other side of the road. I think I only turned around once or twice.”
“Then the left side of the truck was facing you?”
Pace thought for a second. “Yeah, the driver’s side. The truck was on the shoulder beside the southeast-bound lane.”
“That jibes with our reports. Our guys saw the damage when the van made a U-turn and headed northwest after the excitement was over. Can you describe the two men?”
“No,” Pace said. “I don’t even have a general impression of what they looked like. I think I remember seeing the camera, though. I probably figured them for TV people.”
“So did the men at the scene,” Helm said. “But no local TV stations have footage of the accident. I checked.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Still off the record, right?”
“Right,” Pace confirmed.
“It’s only speculation, but if it was a contract kill, they might have been shooting proof for whoever hired them. That would be consistent with the theory we developed at dinner in Reston.”
Pace let his chair fall forward with a thunk. The implications were incredible. “Where do you go from here?” he asked.
“Every investigation is like a child learning to walk,” the police captain said. “We take it one step at a time and hope we get someplace useful before we fall on our asses. Keep in touch, Steve. And be careful.”
17
Chapman Davis paused for a moment before the closed door of the office in the main Dulles terminal. The hand-lettered paper sign taped at its four corners to the door read, “NTSB. No admittance.” He wondered who the lousy speller was.
He knocked softly and let himself in. Vernon Lund had agreed to see him, but Davis wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Lund’s previous session with an emissary from Harold Marshall had gone badly—Davis learned how badly a few hours earlier—and he suspected another meeting was the last thing Lund wanted.
Davis had sought out George Ridley at noon, inviting him to lunch in the cramped little dining room on the Senate side of the Capitol. With Congress out for the Easter recess and the tourists at a minimum, there were plenty of tables where the two could sit, eat some of the Senate kitchen’s famous bean soup, and talk. Davis had gone right to the point.
“Marshall asked me to see Lund this afternoon. You told me it didn’t go well when you were out there. How bad is bad?”
“How do you work for the bastard?” Ridley asked, sidestepping the question. “He’s the biggest asshole on the Hill.”
“How do you put up with Helmutsen?” Davis asked. “We got our choice of an asshole or a dumb shit. The voters sent ’em to us. Our jobs, for better or worse, are to put up with ’em. You don’t like it, bro, but that’s the way it’s always been and will forever be.”
“I know. I’m fine with most of the minority members. Marshall’s pond scum.”
“You feel that strongly, why don’t you tell him? The chairman would protect you.”
Ridley responded with a contemptuous noise deep in his throat and shook his head. “The chairman can’t protect himself,” he said. He put his finger in the bowl of his spoon and rocked the utensil, watching the end of the handle hit the padded white tablecloth. “When you’ve been up here as long as me, you get set in the system. And it’s a caste system, Chappy, you believe that. As much as we try to resist, we begin to believe they are somehow superior. I’m too old to try to change the system, or myself.”