The tech was dead. So were at least ten agents and a few police officers. Several were hanging on to life by a thread. Kortney Malone had taken several bullets in the chest. She was hurt badly, but the rescue worker assured me she would live. For that, I was grateful. Malone would be good for the bureau.
I had known something was wrong. I could feel it. But there was no way to know that they had planned to ambush the FBI Nevertheless, I felt responsible for what happened. What made matters worse was that it was all televised.
Kelly tried to console me, but I made the call. It didn’t matter that we all wanted to go in. I made the call. It was on me. Agents were dead. Fortunately, no civilians were hit with all the stray bullets flying around.
The only good thing to come out of the fiasco was that we had captured one twin, and killed another. Hopefully, Geraldine Temperton would help us find Alexis Connelly, who had mysteriously disappeared. We had to get a lead from Geraldine. Something—anything that would lead to her arrest and subsequent incarceration.
Mercifully, the thunderstorm that had soaked us was now over. There must have been eight EMS trucks in front of the Temperton house. I stood in the street watching one of them cart Kortney Malone off to Washington Memorial.
Kelly and I put on a pair of surgical gloves and went into the Temperton house. We needed to find something that would lead us to Alexis Connelly. We would question Geraldine later. Hopefully she’d want to make a deal.
In the living room, on the floor, we found a battery-powered tape recorder. I pushed the play button and we heard the twins snoring. I shook my head. We had been seriously duped.
Next to the living room fireplace, there was a liquid-cooled Yamaha diesel generator capable of delivering up to sixty-five hundred watts of electricity. There were several lines of electricity from the generator to the lights and the stereo system. The Temperton twins were smart. They knew we would come in with night-vision goggles. Turning on the lights had blinded them and the loud music made it impossible to hear. My anger simmered.
As if they were left for us to find, two red and black bullwhips lay on the couch, coiled as if they were snakes ready to strike. Perhaps I should’ve been happy, but it was too little too late. Finding the bullwhips wasn’t like realizing the receipts were the keys to the killings. Finding the bullwhips now was more like a consolation prize. Thanks for playing Bozo! Take this booby prize and go home.
I went over to the couch and picked one up. Flashes of what had happened to me at my dojo filled my mind. My face contorted when I saw myself being beaten. I can only imagine what the other women must have gone through. The coroner had said the savage beatings must have gone on for over an hour.
“Kelly,” I said, “we have to make them pay for this.”