I hurried along to the National Science Foundation, where I pretended to be fascinated by the sculptures and palm trees in the tropical wonderland below. Without turning my head, I skewed my eyes to the right. If someone had been behind me, they were gone now.
Walking quickly, I entered the next pedestrian bridge, at the end of which was an elevator that would take me down to Metro level. Suddenly, the footsteps were back, echoing hollowly along the glass walls, moving quickly and coming closer.
At the other end of the bridge a couple emerged from the Hilton, arms linked and laughing. Witnesses! It came back in a flash, something I’d learned in a self-defense class many moons ago. I spun around, raised both arms and confronted my pursuer. “Kee-yah! It’s an attack! Call the cops!” I screamed.
“I am the cops.”
It was Special Agent Amanda Crisp, dressed in blue jeans, a hooded gray sweatshirt, and well-worn tennis shoes.
I bent over, rested my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. “What the hell?” I panted. I squinted up at her through a fringe of damp hair. “You’ve been following me for days, haven’t you? Why?”
“You have a certain reputation,” she said. “We know about your background. We were afraid you’d go off on your own like V.I. Warshawski.”
“Afraid or hoping?” I snapped.
We stood on the darkened bridge, staring each other down.
“You okay?” The male half of the couple that had been coming out of the Hilton had arrived, cell phone at the ready. “I’ve dialed 911.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “A misunderstanding.”
Crisp flipped open her Nextel, identified herself and cancelled the 911 while the young man looked on, curiosity all over his face.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue,” I said, leaning against the wall. “Tell me your name?”
“Mick.”
“Thanks, Mick.”
“No problem.” He stole a quick glance at his date, who hadn’t budged from the protection of the Hilton. “If you’re sure…”
I nodded. “I’m sure.”
When they’d passed on, I turned on Special Agent Crisp. “So, why were you tailing me? You scared me half to death.”
“We wanted to keep an eye on you, and-”
I cut in. “Afraid I’ll skip town?”
She raised a hand. “Let me finish. Because of some new information we’ve received.”
“What? You think I’m in danger?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Best if you stayed home and let us run the investigation, Mrs. Ives.”
I had the childish urge to say, “Make me,” but counted silently to ten before answering instead. “I don’t intend to spend one more minute in a jail cell, thank you very much, so I want to go on record right now that I’ll do whatever it takes to find out who really killed Jennifer Goodall.”
“We want you to go home and stay put. Stop talking to people. You’re just going to screw things up.”
“How can I get any more screwed than I already am?”
Crisp sighed and seemed to be weighing her words. “Because you’ve just come very close to blowing a carefully orchestrated, multiagency sting operation.”
I stared at Crisp, my mouth hanging open. Literally. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Jennifer Goodall had been cooperating with us and with the Navy I.G. to bring the admiral and his accomplices down.”
“The I.G.,” I repeated, stunned by this information.
“Inspector General.”
“I know what the I.G. is,” I snapped. “So, you think one of them-whoever them is-killed Jennifer Goodall?”
“It’s certainly possible.”
The gaze I sent Special Agent Amanda Crisp was shot straight out of the gates of hell. “Let me get this straight. The NCIS and the FBI and the Navy I.G. have conspired to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit just so you can divert attention from the real target of your investigation, some rogue admiral?” I was shouting now, and I didn’t care who heard me.
“You clapped me in handcuffs, sent me off to that horrible place in Baltimore, you humiliated me…” I sputtered. My temper rose like mercury on a hot summer day. I could practically feel my red blood cells congealing. Any minute, I was going to have a heart attack. “You may have taken years off my life. How dare you?”
I spun on my heels and headed for the elevator. “That’s it. I’m out of here.”
By pure dumb luck, the elevator door opened the minute I pushed the button, and to my enormous satisfaction, it slid shut in Agent Crisp’s astonished face.
She caught up with me by the fare card machine. “We arrested you in good faith, Mrs. Ives. You have to admit there was probable cause.”
Sounding like a win at Dover Downs Slots, the change from my twenty-all quarters-tumbled down the chute. I stooped to gather it up. “I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Look, Mrs. Ives. Go home. Now. Chill out. You need to trust me. Trust that I’m doing everything I can to get you off the hook with the feds.” She paused. “All of them.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It will have to do. It’s all I have to offer.”
I folded my arms and scowled at her. “So, what exactly are you doing to clear my name, Agent Crisp, tell me that? Aside from putting a tag-team tail on me.” I remembered some unexplained static on my landline and added, “And tapping my telephone, too, for all I know.
“And speaking of telephones, I haven’t had any phone calls from my lawyer telling me that the FBI has called to tell him that it’s all been a big mistake and that the charges against me have been dropped. For me, that’s the only acceptable outcome.”
“We know about your involvement with the Dunbar, Vorhees, and Tinsley cases,” Crisp said. “But I need you to back off now. This investigation could have serious, international repercussions.”
“Frankly, Agent Crisp, I couldn’t care less about international repercussions. I just want to be able to hold my head high in public again.”
“This case is much broader than little cases of domestic violence,” she continued.
“Little cases of domestic violence?” I repeated. “Little?” I didn’t realize I had been shouting until a woman standing at the fare card machine grabbed her daughter by the hand and, with a nervous glance in my direction, scurried off in the opposite direction. “Explain that to Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar! That little case of domestic violence, as you so crudely put it, cost them the lives of both their daughters.”
Amanda Crisp raised a cautionary hand. “I certainly don’t mean to trivialize those tragedies, Mrs. Ives, but I think it’s fair to say that if government contracts are compromised, particularly in wartime, thousands of soldiers and innocent civilians could die. We’ve spent over a year setting this up and I’m not asking you to go home, I’m ordering you to.”
I studied her face in the harsh Metro station lights and decided that in spite of myself, I believed her, but I was too angry to give her the satisfaction.
“You’re a long way from Annapolis,” she said. “Give you a ride home?”
I shook my head. “No thanks. I’d rather not.” I didn’t want to spend one more second in a police vehicle, even if I were sitting up front in the passenger seat holding a doughnut in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
I fed my fare card into the machine and pushed through the turnstile. As I headed for the train, I turned and called back over my shoulder. “And it’s Kinsey Millhone.”
“What?”
“Kinsey Millhone, not V.I. Warshawski. Nicer wardrobe. Cooler car.”
CHAPTER 21
By the time I got home, it was after eight. I tossed my keys on the table in the entrance hall, peeled off my coat and scarf and called out the proverbial, “Hello, honey, I’m home!”