SAD TO SAY, I was operating on nothing but adrenaline and caffeine by the time we got to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the West Wing. It was nearly four a.m. at this point, but the Joint Operations Center was buzzing like midday.
The mood in the briefing room was tense to say the least. They had CNN on one of a dozen flat screens arrayed on the wall, with an overhead shot of Remy Williams’s cabin and the subhead Secret Service Agent Found Dead.
At the front of the room, a fiftyish agent in shirtsleeves was shouting on the phone, loudly enough to be heard over everyone else.
“I don’t give a shit who you need to speak to; he’s not a member of the Secret Service. Now change the damn graphic!”
I had already spotted several people I knew, including Emma Cornish, who was MPD’s liaison to the Service’s High Intensity Violent Crimes Task Force; and Barry Farmer, one of two Secret Service agents assigned to Metro’s Homicide Unit. It was as if the two departments had suddenly been knitted together, right there in the middle of the night.
For show, maybe?
I wasn’t ready to say yet.
We all gathered around a long oval table for the first briefing. The man with the big voice in front turned out to be Silo Ridge, deputy special agent in charge. He was the whip on this one, and he stood up with Agent Cormorant.
“I’m sending around a fact sheet,” Ridge said, handing half a stack in each direction. “The subject’s name is Constantine Bowie, aka Connie Bowie, aka Zeus. Most of you know this already, but Bowie was an agent with the Service from 1988 to 2002.”
Nobody flinched but me—and maybe Sampson. It was like a whole new map of this thing had just been unfolded in front of us.
I put up my hand. “Alex Cross, MPD. I’m just catching up here, but what’s the known relationship, if any, with Remy Williams? Other than the fact that they’re both supposed to be former agents.”
“Detective Cross, glad to have you here,” Ridge said, and a few more heads turned my way. “The focus of this operation is former agent Bowie. Everything else is on a need-to-know basis for the time being.”
“I’m only asking because—”
“We appreciate MPD’s participation, as always. This is all obviously a little sensitive, but we’re not going to start unpacking it here. Moving on.”
I gave Ridge the benefit of the doubt, for the moment at least. It wasn’t a bridge I had to cross yet. Or burn.
An image of Bowie’s 2002 credentials came up on one of the screens. He looked like a million other agents to me—Waspy, square jaw, brown hair combed back. Everything but the dark shades.
“Bowie’s been implicated in the murder of at least three women,” Ridge went on, “all of them known employees of the so-called gentlemen’s club in Culpeper County. Those women are Caroline Cross, Katherine Tennancour, Renata Cruz…” Surveillance photos that I’d seen before went by in a slide show. “And this is Sally Anne Perry.”
A video started up, and right away I recognized the recording I’d handed over to Cormorant just the other day. Like Ridge had said, the Secret Service appreciated MPD’s participation.
“There’s nothing pleasant about having to watch this,” Ridge said, “but you should know who we’re going after. The man about to come into the bedroom is Constantine Bowie. And he is about to commit murder.”