“But most of the money was counterfeit!” Sparks said. “You said—” “Fuck that!” Kiesling shouted as he bent over Sparks’s desk. “Neither of them knew that. Either way, I don’t give a shit. I’ve got an agent dead.
He was married. Had kids. I don’t even have a body for them. You listening to me? We had to go get a funeral home to give us an urn so we could sweep up some ashes from what was left of that fucking DRMO!”
Sparks started to reply, but Carrothers raised his hand to stop it. He thought about what the FBI man was insinuating. In a way, Kiesling’s theory made some sense, more sense than Sparks’s story about some psychic kid. On the other hand, Stafford had not impressed him as being that kind of guy, and his own long and successful Army career had taught Carrothers to trust his own judgment about people.
“Okay, people,” Carrothers said. “Let’s cool it for a moment. Put that theory on hold. Let’s get back to our primary objective: rinding Carson and the weapon. Mr. Kiesling, could you please go check on what the sweep has produced?”
Kiesling took a deep breath to compose himself, glared at the red-faced Ray Sparks, and left the office. Carrothers closed the door behind him for a moment and turned to Sparks. “I’m not sure I subscribe to Mr. Kiesling’s theory, Mr. Sparks,” he said. “That doesn’t strike me as being Stafford’s style, having met the man.”
Sparks threw a pen across the room. “I was about to suggest there was another way Stafford could have found out,” he said. “And that was if Tangent had told him.”
Carrothers shook his head. “We’re wasting time and energy with all this “Who shot John?’ stuff. Of course, the Bureau and the Justice Department are probably very anxious to divert attention away from their man Tangent’s little stunt, especially after it got one of their own people killed last night.”
“Cover-up,” Sparks said in disgust. “That’s becoming the Bureau’s hallmark these days. I remember when they were the best of the best.
Look, General, Dave Stafford’s a pain in the ass, and, yes, he put some senior people in the shifter, but they were bent and he is not. This is partly my fault, because I reacted the same way you did to the psychic business. But what if the damned girl is a psychic? I mean, I wasn’t going to bring this up in front of Godzilla out there, but the police have been using psychics and profilers for years. Hell, it was a Bureau guy who wrote the book on profiling. Now, hypothetically and all that shit, I don’t know just how desperate you guys are, but if it was my ass, I’d be asking the girl some questions and hoping like hell she was a fucking psychic!”
Carrothers nodded but did not reply. He had had exactly the same thought. Kiesling had been cut in on the real problem here, but he was obviously letting himself be swept up in the cop-killer frenzy that was developing. With Sparks following, he went to the DCIS conference room, where Riesling’s FBI team had set up a temporary command post. The lead agent reported on the statewide search for Carson and his government pickup truck, an effort that included state and local law-enforcement agencies. There had been no contact reports on Carson, but there had been a report of a stolen license plate and magnetic door signs at a rest area out on I-85 northeast of Atlanta. The man making the report remembered parking next to a green pickup truck, although there had been no one in it when he went to sleep. The time frame fit for someone trying to get out of Atlanta after the Fort Gillem fire.
Carrothers went to a map of Georgia and was shown the location of the rest area. The agent reported that there were vehicle checkpoints established on all the interstates in Georgia, with a double barrier on the Carolina and Tennessee borders. Local law in three states had been alerted, and the fact that an agent had been killed would keep them focused. Carrothers studied the map. Georgia was a much bigger state than he had realized. He looked at the single red pin sticking into the rest area on I-85. All that geography, and all they had was that one pin. Then he spotted the name Graniteville, next to a tiny dot up along the Carolina border, about two inches above the red line of the interstate highway. Wasn’t that where Stafford was?
“Graniteville,” he muttered to himself. He looked over at Sparks, who was talking with the DCIS office manager, who had come in with a stack of phone messages for him from “Washington. Sparks only frowned and stuffed them in his pocket. The office manager began to tell him something else, but he waved her off. Carrothers looked back at the map.
Stafford is supposedly in Graniteville, he thought. If Carson had heisted those plates and the signs to cover up the government serial numbers on his truck, then he could be in or near the Graniteville area.
More importantly, so could the Wet Eye cylinder. He felt a growing urge to do something besides sit around and wait. Perhaps he should go to Graniteville and talk to Stafford directly, or, hell, even the girl, but he did not trust the FBI just now. They were too fired up about getting Carson, and their bosses were under enormous pressure to find a way to shovel this tar baby into someone else’s yard.
In fact, they had every incentive just to shoot Carson on sight, which would not necessarily solve the Army’s problem.
He glanced over his shoulder at Kiesling, who was talking to his agents.
From their expressions alone, he confirmed his sense of it: If they did find Carson, he was going to die resisting arrest.
“Mr. Kiesling,” he said. “I’m going to go back to Fort Gillem, where my mobile command center is. I need to check on the progress of the DRMO fire investigation and dampen down any residual press interest. Why don’t you stay here with your team until we get some locating information on Carson? You can call my mobile command center as soon as you have something.”
“Yes, sir,” Kiesling said. “Although I still think we ought to be having some face time with Mr. Stafford.”
“Well, we know where he is. If nothing turns up on Carson in the next six to eight hours, maybe we’ll go check out your theory. But please let’s remember the objective here: Carson.”
After Carrothers had left, Sparks headed back to his office. The office manager intercepted him again. “I was trying to tell you earlier,” she said. “There was one message in that stack for Mr. Stafford, from his ex-wife’s lawyer. He said they were reopening the court case and that they needed some more discovery papers. I told him Mr. Stafford was on assignment in Graniteville, at that Willow Grove Home, and gave him the number. I hope that was all right.”
Sparks gave a hollow laugh. “That’s just what Dave needs at this juncture: a call from his ex-wife’s damned lawyer. He’ll hate you for that one, Leslie.” He shook his head and went back into his office, closing the door behind him.
Stafford was waiting in Owen’s office while John Lee was having a long talk with her out on the porch. It had turned into a warm day for the mountains, and the house had not been shut up for air conditioning yet.
The sheriff wanted Gwen and Jessamine to leave Willow Grove until Carson was caught and the matter of the weapon resolved. What Stafford had not yet picked up was where she was supposed to go. Besides that, Gwen was visibly unhappy with the idea of leaving the little kids behind. They had moved out to the porch to continue their discussion, and Stafford had tactfully withdrawn from what might become an argument. He thought there might be more to their conversation than just Gwen’s leaving.