CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The detectives landed at Reagan National Airport late at night but never crossed the Potomac River to go to the capital. Fog covered the Virginia shoreline the next morning. As Guthrie drove to the first meeting, the suburban landscape materialized from the fog in front of the nose of their rental car. Delta Marine Salvage and Supply wasn’t yet open when they eased into the cramped parking lot. They watched a pair of older men open up, waited fifteen minutes, then went inside.

An old warehouse served as the supply and service center, with sections of the wall that faced the Potomac ripped out and leading along breezeways to moorings on the river. Even with outside light, the interior was dim. The ceiling trusses looked like spiderwebs, hidden in the darkness behind shrouded droplights. Lines of shelves, tubs, and bins were toylike in the vast space. One of the old men watched them from behind the counter while they drifted along the dusty aisles, then returned to reading an unfolded newspaper. Every few minutes he slurped noisily at coffee to remind them he was waiting. The other old man turned wrenches on a manifold attached to a hanging motor, grumbling curses about rust and stupidity.

Guthrie and Vasquez dirtied their hands on old merchandise for a half hour before a tall old white man with a salt-and-pepper fade strode through the door. He wore a government-issue dark blue business suit cut to fit and polished shoes with a special license to repel dust. Closer, his face had enough age to make him a grandfather, but his hooked nose and cleft chin suited him. At a distance, a tapered build down from wide shoulders marked him for younger.

“Kid, you didn’t need to call the Rice brothers,” he said to Guthrie when he swallowed the smaller man up with a handshake and hearty hug. “You know I would’ve heard you through.”

“I got a sore throat from arguing with that roadblock you’re using for a secretary,” Guthrie said.

The tall man cut eyes at Vasquez and frowned. “Who’s she?”

“Rachel Vasquez. She started working for me this summer.”

The tall man looked her over again. “She doesn’t stick out too much?”

“Not except for her ears,” Guthrie said, and grinned. “Maybe she shines a little outside the city.”

“Well, you’re outside the city.”

“And maybe you could tell me what you’re talking about?” Vasquez demanded.

“You catch eyes easy to be a detective,” the tall man said. “Not like that one, but that adds to the picture.” He studied her again. “Those’re more bruises?”

“She’s an East Side girl—she likes to fight,” Guthrie said, then turned to Vasquez. “The old guy’s name is Robert McCall, in case you want to turn him in to the proper authorities for being nosy.”

“I haven’t heard from you in a while, kid,” McCall said. “You look prosperous.” He lifted Guthrie’s fedora and looked. “I suppose I could stop calling you kid, since you’ve grown some gray hair on your head.”

“Maybe.”

McCall smiled. “It’s good to see you. It’s churning up memories. You remember the summer Kenny taught you that shit? What year was that? Seventy-five, I think. You were about the size of a wet raccoon—”

“Kenny? Teach me? He was just drunk and having fun. I was too young to know any better. That wasn’t martial arts—”

The tall old man cut him off with a laugh. “Tell that to Angel! I remember, one time he ticked you off, and then he bent over the fire down in the gorge, and you kicked him in his ass. He flipped right over the fire and landed on his feet with beer still in his cup! That was ’77.”

“Ah, Kenny had me convinced. Kicking Angel like that was luck.”

The smile faded from McCall’s eyes. “Long time ago, kid. You sounded serious on the phone. Better be serious if you’re asking what I think.”

“I just need names, addresses, pictures—”

“For Task Force One one two seven,” the old man said. “I heard that part loud and clear—too loud and way too clear. That’s not supposed to be on the intercept list, but the left hand may not know what the right foot is doing. I suppose you don’t know what I mean, so let me clarify: You’d better have a damn good reason.”

Guthrie paused for a moment, and McCall said, “You look like you’re dreaming up a lie, kid.”

“Not this time.” The little detective didn’t seem amused, but he smiled anyway.

“Come on,” McCall said. “I have to get a coil.”

Guthrie and Vasquez followed him deeper into the maze of shelves. Filthy, dusty parts crammed the shelves, each with a neat handwritten tag. McCall studied the items on offer on a shelf of heavy copper coils, selected one, and retrieved it gingerly with a white handkerchief.

“That task force had an officer from Tenth Mountain attached,” Guthrie said. “He’s in Rikers on a murder that I think is connected to his service.”

McCall shrugged. “You have to give me more than that.”

“It’s complicated enough that it’s not a sure thing. My client was framed. The perp used his gun, and since then, he’s rubbed out witnesses. I think I have an eyewitness who can finger a picture. She’s a real sharp old lady in the Village. My connection to the unit is another veteran in the city. His mother got killed recently. I don’t think it’s coincidence.”

“You think somebody in One one two seven didn’t like them,” the old man said softly. “What was disagreeable about them?”

“Don’t know that.”

McCall frowned. “You remember Phoenix, from Nam?”

“Read some stuff,” Guthrie said. “A CIA project to liquidate Vietcong, right?”

“Close enough. We’ve come back to that. This task force has the Activity’s fingerprints all over it. They have presidential authority to liquidate, wherever, whenever, however, in the war on terror.” He smiled sadly. “Didn’t know that, did you? It’s not even secret, kid; it’s just not talked about. On the other hand, if you poke around that nest, you can get stung.”

“Can you get the pictures?”

“I can. My question is whether it sends up flags in SOCOM. If I need to go carefully, it’ll come out in pieces. Either way, I’ll talk with you after six.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Guthrie. “This’ll be the place.” He hefted the coil again. “Give me a half hour before you leave here, kid. And stay off the telephones around here, will you?”

McCall marched briskly up to the counter to pay for his coil. The old warehouse was still quiet, even though a few early customers were searching the shelves. The detectives waited. A half hour’s caution seemed worthwhile after hearing those few letters early in the alphabet: CIA.

*   *   *

After the fog burned through, the sun rolled over northern Virginia like a glowing ball of iron. Guthrie and Vasquez killed time while they waited for lunch. The young Puerto Rican didn’t have skeletons in her closet to share—she was too young. That left the little man from West Virginia doing most of the talking. He let her drive around the suburban landscape and recover from getting lost while he tried to distract her.

One side trip sent Vasquez most of the way to Harper’s Ferry before she caught on and turned around. After she took the mistaken turn, the little detective grinned like a shark and told her that Mike Inglewood hadn’t always walked with a limp. Listening to anyone normal, the story that followed would’ve had something to do with Inglewood’s feet. With Guthrie, the search for the punch line was how he kept Vasquez’s head turned.

When Inglewood was a uniform fresh from the Academy, he worked midtown. One of Guthrie’s stakeouts coincided with Inglewood’s shift. Guthrie notified the watch commander he was running an operation, but as usual for the little detective, he gained a better view of the club’s pool deck by climbing a billboard across the street—technically illegal. He wanted to catch the fraud he was trailing while he used the pool. Inglewood decided Guthrie was more of a Peeping Tom than a detective. Along the span of seven days, the green patrolman ran Guthrie into the precinct house three times for trespassing. Truce talk and a big chicken dinner settled the business: Stakeouts should stay in the car, but sometimes a man had to go where he could see.

“Happily ever after, huh?” Vasquez asked.

“Sure,” Guthrie said. He pointed at a road sign as they whizzed past. “Maybe you would rather I take a nap while you drive to West Virginia?”

Even with turnarounds, the detectives reached their lunch meeting early. Guthrie had found Agent Rackers by way of a third-party introduction. The FBI agent had standing reservations at an Arlington restaurant, La Dame. When Guthrie saw the manicured parterres around the entrance and the neat gold calligraphy on the windows, he paused and sighed. The window dressing was served up alongside a healthy dose of American commercialism—a jet-stream boulevard raced in front of the windows, and a horseshoe mall, complete with parking lots and a bus stop, provided a ghastly mirror image.

Inside La Dame, the maître d’ took a moment to study the scruffy pair before honoring them with a table as far from the front as he could find. Their small round table had a dark green cloth and a basket of fresh rolls, with a saucer of butter alongside it. Guthrie was mollified after a few bites, but Vasquez continued fuming. Reservations were not enough. Grudgingly, she removed her Yankees cap after the maître d’s second visit. Agent Rackers arrived before hostilities escalated; he fit perfectly, wearing a dark blue Italian suit, a fresh shave, and a hundred-dollar haircut. His expression darkened with each step the maître d’ led him away from the front windows, and then his eyes lit with dawning recognition when he saw Guthrie and Vasquez.

“I suppose we’re not the crackerjack detectives you expected,” Guthrie said.

Rackers smiled. “Perhaps I was misled by the society bona fides,” he said. “Some people in New York spoke highly of you.”

“I guess we’ll be keeping our jobs, then,” Guthrie said.

“I’d prefer to clarify my position at the beginning,” Rackers said as he glanced at the menu. “Naturally, FBI policy allows no comment on an ongoing case. We’re not actually discussing an investigation.” He smiled. “Ours is a discussion of unrelated topics.”

“I thought the field office—” Guthrie began.

“The SAC held a different view from the beginning. The Manhattan office briefly entertained a competing idea, but the special agent’s opinion matters more.”

“We’re talking about the same thing?” Guthrie asked. “I got a couple of dead girls around the city. That’s what you’re talking about?”

“We should eat first,” Rackers said. “Then we can use the lounge. I recommend anything that includes fish. They use Brittany-coast recipes here.”

Guthrie nodded. They made small talk. Rackers entered the FBI, and the Behavioral Science Unit, as an academic. The psychologists often trailed behind the field investigators, with notepads full of suppositions based on patterns, looking for motive from the physical evidence. Rarely did they point their fingers at a place to start. That distinction was reserved for the senior agents, with decades of field experience and an academic feather in their caps. Without saying so, Rackers made it plain that he wanted to point a finger at New York. The meal was good, but it vanished in the purposefulness of their talk.

La Dame’s lounge was U-shaped, with a bar on the short wall facing the door. One middle-aged man sat at the bar with a cocktail, but the lights were too bright to encourage hard drinkers. They ordered coffee and settled into a leather-benched booth. Rackers studied the detectives again, then interrupted Vasquez as she began to take offense.

“Serial killers are commonplace enough that I shouldn’t lecture,” he said.

“Just like on TV, right?” Vasquez said.

“Exactly. We have a definition, and we search for what fits. Part of the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico culls data, looking for patterns and geographical clusters. That is my specialty. I search for footprints, then guess whether they add together to prove that someone has walked through. Our basic assumption begins with a certain type of person being required to commit serial murder.”

“You don’t agree? I thought it worked just that way,” Guthrie said.

“I do agree,” Rackers said, then made a sour face. “Only perhaps not this time. I have collected a signature for an unsub who doesn’t commit sexual assault.”

“That’s required?”

“The absolute answer is no, but the correct answer is yes, when the unsub is regenerative. An impulse to murder requires a powerful motive; sex is such a motive. Serials kill to satisfy an urge—our analysis accepts that as a given. The corollary requires the killer to be sick. He fails to match societal norms—he’s aberrant. He becomes addicted, escalates, grows careless, and is caught.” He smiled. “I’m lecturing.”

“Then you’re not talking about our guy in Rikers,” Vasquez said.

“I do know that you’re working on a case in New York, but I don’t have details on suspects.” Rackers shrugged. “Officially, this is not a case. No suspect is necessary because no case file exists to close.”

Guthrie smiled and finished his cup of coffee. “So you don’t know about our case. Do you know about the New York killings?”

Rackers nodded. “Serials have a signature, a methodology for their crimes that allows them to satisfy their motivating urge. The commonality can include a weapon, or a particular type of victim. A signature can be very subtle. The Bowman killing in New York, and others in the area, match the signature I have collected. Officially, there is no such signature, and therefore no killer.”

“Why the hell is that?” Vasquez blurted.

“Simply put, they’re afraid,” Rackers replied. “Part of the Behavioral Science Unit culls data, as I said. Certain victims fit the definition for potential serial victims—at risk, roadside dumps, rape-murders—unless motive clarifies quickly for a local suspect. The United States generates a fairly constant number of these types of murders each year, suggesting a stable population of serial predators. Within certain bounds, the unit expects to catch them as they reach a certain point in their development—when they become sloppy. That number for an individual serial in the United States isn’t high. A half dozen or dozen is typical. Elsewhere, the typical number can be far higher, where data exists. In China, a hundred may be typical. They’re afraid because my signature is larger than that. The number is high enough that it is pressuring our numeric baseline—” Rackers gave Vasquez a sharp glance. “You’ve heard this before?”

“No. I just—” Vasquez began.

“I think she just realized we got a suspect,” Guthrie said. “Well, we did. He died. We had a witness. He died. There was another witness. She died. Now we’re looking.”

“You have a line on something?” Rackers asked.

“I gotta admit that when I walked in here, I was crossing a t,” Guthrie said, “or maybe I was dotting an i. I followed this angle because suddenly my client is off this particular hook. I know that sounds perverse, but I’m working for the defense.” The little detective grinned.

“You didn’t believe this was relevant to your—” Rackers flushed.

“Now it’s time to deal,” Guthrie said. “You don’t even want to know my suppositions—they’re out there. I need more information, and you have more bodies. Give me the information on your victims. Then I can cross-check them.”

“Wait!” Rackers said fiercely. “First, in exchange for what? Second, what could you cross-check them with? Data is what I do—give yours to me, and it’ll go faster.”

Guthrie shook his head. He raised one finger. “I point you in the direction I’m looking.” He added a second finger. “You got no case—so you’re talking. If I give you something that turns it into a case, you stop talking. I would be back at the beginning, with nothing. That means you pay off first.”

Rackers groaned, then settled back into the leather bench. The man at the bar spared them a glance and signaled the bartender for another drink. “I’ve been picking at this problem for fourteen months—almost since the beginning. The signature begins only four months before that,” he said. “So I want him. If he exists. No serial has ever killed so many so quickly. He doesn’t have a cooldown. He just kills.”

“If he exists,” Vasquez said softly.

“That’s correct.” The FBI agent reached inside his suit coat and produced a palmtop. He opened it and fed it a disc. “I can’t give you anything you couldn’t get somewhere else. Fortunately for you, that’s a great deal. Every coroner in the country has a link to the national database. What I’m saving you is the trouble of sifting the data—for which you should be forever grateful.” His fingers worked, feeding files to be copied.

The detectives waited silently until Rackers slipped the disc from his palmtop and slid it across the table. He smiled as Vasquez took the disc and hid it in her pocket. “You’re difficult to deal with, but that could be a New York motto,” he said.

“The Bowman murder matches your signature, right?” Guthrie said. “I got, or had, witnesses proving my client was framed—that’s personal motive. While I’m looking, two witnesses in the Bowman murder get killed, and an investigator—”

“A police officer was killed?”

Guthrie shook his head. “A house detective for the lawyer. They were actually after us.” He gestured with a fingertip at Vasquez and himself.

“That’s him!”

“Them. Russian mobsters.”

“A Russian. That explains the body count.”

“Here’s the rest, Mr. Rackers. Althea Linney was killed in a Bronx robbery. She won’t be on your list, but she should be.”

*   *   *

Guthrie and Vasquez parked on the grass at Easy Acres, a produce market existing in the blurry transition between suburban Arlington and the rural countryside of northern Virginia. A few dozen cars and trucks were scattered on the shoulders of the rural route and lined carelessly in the grassy farmyard beneath old oaks with thick, outstretched limbs. On one side of the barnyard, a farmhouse swirled more like a party in progress than a place of business. Pavilions shrouded the barnyard, covering produce stalls that overflowed from the barn. A second kitchen in the remodelled barn served as a cannery, pouring forth an aroma of apples and cinnamon that washed down to the road. A dozen people in hairnets peeled, sliced, sorted, and washed apples, while more stirred vats, loaded juicers, and scraped pans full of sauce, syrup, and diced apples.

The stall owners were friendly; the market was a cooperative. Inside the barn, dry goods were offered alongside cheese, fruit, and vegetables. Guthrie shopped, and Vasquez followed him back and forth to the rental car as he tucked away spices, jars of honey and preserves, and a sack of oats. She asked him if he was going to buy a pig, prompting him to wonder whether she thought the trunk was large enough to hold a small one. After a trip to carry a bag of shelled hickory nuts back to their car, Robert McCall whistled at them as they marched back through the barnyard.

“Kid, you haven’t changed a bit,” McCall said. He studied the two cantaloupes he held in his oversized hands and gave them a sniff.

“Well, what’re you doing here, then?”

“Not making an ant of myself,” the tall old man said, and grinned. “You aren’t going to believe how lucky you are.”

“I don’t feel lucky.”

“This might do it: One one two seven isn’t a SOCOM operation—it belonged to CENTCOM. They wrapped up their own piece of the special-ops thunder, and they—well, that’s Pentagon stuff. I doubt it’s what you want, even if it’s entertaining.” McCall grinned again, looking boyishly happy with the two melons in his hands. “SOCOM was getting all of the ribbons and gold stars, while CENTCOM was eating crap for all of the mistakes. See, CENTCOM has operational responsibility for every asset in the theater. Fuckups go directly up the chain of command. SOCOM borrowed assets when they needed them, but with zero accountability because they were liaising. Fuckups are on the actual commander, not the little bird riding his shoulder.”

“This is supposed to be good for me?”

“Absolutely,” McCall said. “SOCOM doesn’t have a finger in the task force, and so I don’t need to worry about the Activity calling me. One one two seven was a test unit for insurgent-control tactics. The big brains have been analyzing everything from the beginning. Everything you wanted was on a long pass-around list.”

“So Uncle Rob’s ass is covered, you mean.”

“That’s not good?” the old man asked. “You’re hesitating, kid. Some kind of chickenshit is coming.”

“You said was a test unit?”

“Was,” McCall confirmed. “I checked out your Tenth Mountain officer, Olsen. Some of that’s beyond my reach. The big brain word is exemplary. The task force was built around him, and didn’t survive after him. The task force bulked up at a certain point, and after that a pissing contest went on between CENTCOM and SOCOM. The Activity tagged them as an asset, with the usual accountability issues.”

“Somebody outside the unit could be interested?” Guthrie asked. “Tell me something about that.”

Robert McCall shrugged, considered the melons again, and placed one back in the basket. “Jealousy, maybe. SOCOM continuously poaches personnel. If anyone was fragged, that would be in the field.” He frowned. “You like Olsen for a target? He never had any complaints filed by his men.”

“We’re looking at it,” Guthrie said. “What about the Activity?”

“That’s Intelligence Support Activity. They do something new—they make solutions. I told you before, there’s authorization for anyone, anytime, anywhere. The Activity locates the time, the place, the person—and then they solve it.”

Vasquez crossed her arms and looked at Guthrie. “That’s who Linney was talking about,” she said. “But I don’t think that’s who we’re looking for.”

“You’d better hope so, kid. The Activity does things the CIA never dreamed about.” The tall old man pulled a disc from his pocket. “This’s a cut and paste from about a dozen sets of files—names, addresses, photos, dates—but don’t think it’s not dangerous because it can’t be sourced.”

Guthrie took the disc and slipped it into his pocket.

“You know you owe me now, right?”

The little detective nodded.

“Good. Tell Danny Rice he owes me a year of whiskey.”