MY CAR WAS QUICKLY BECOMING MY OFFICE THESE DAYS, AND THERE was no way around it. I was shuttling between some ongoing casework I wasn’t ready to drop and the Coyle interviews that the Bureau kept sending my way in a steady trickle. Most days, I worked with Sampson, but now and then I was on my own. The Dragon Slayer.
I kept myself updated on the fly, usually with a phone pressed against my ear—since my Bluetooth was on the fritz and who had time to go to Best Buy these days?
“So what’s the lab saying? They must have something?” I asked. I had my old buddy Jerry Winthrop on the line. He’d been my inside source on the water scare. The rest I got like everybody else—from CNN and the Internet. So far two people had died and the city was close to a panic state. Sampson was off checking other water sources today.
“Looks like the second district line was tainted with high-grade potassium cyanide,” he said.
“Isn’t that—”
“Yeah, it is. Same thing that killed the two suicides out at Dulles. What a coincidence.”
“And no one’s taken responsibility?” I asked.
“Beats the shizz out of me,” Jerry said. “FBI’s not exactly knocking down our door with useful information.”
That was typical. The “open” line of communication between MPD and the Bureau tended to be a one-way street. Jerry told me the official story to the press was that we’d had a chemical overspill and that the problem had been contained. Of course, that depended on what we meant by “problem.”
After I got off the phone, I stopped at a 7-Eleven for some much-needed caffeine. Inside, there was a hastily scrawled NO COFFEE sign taped to one of the pots. I grabbed a Coke instead—and couldn’t help noticing the empty coolers where all the bottled water had sold out.
When I went to pay, the cashier, who had multiple piercings, chinned down at the badge on my belt. “So what’s going on out there, man? How screwed are we?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t close the store just yet,” I said with what I hoped was a disarming smile. “Problem’s been contained.”
The whole idea was to keep the peace—maximum public confidence, minimum panic. But I think that clerk’s real question was the same one we all had. What next?
About ninety seconds later, I found out.