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Cecille Hudson stood to stretch, her bony frame protesting the eighteen-hour days that had piled up since the attack. The special agent was a thirty-year veteran, hitting an age where the big cases took a physical toll she wouldn’t have noticed a few years earlier. And as a team lead she was in the toughest of jobs – too high to limit herself to the twelve-hour shifts of those she commanded, too low to delegate much work.
Putting together descriptions of the murderers was just the beginning of what made a week feel like a month. The RPG that had assassinated four officers and the explosion that turned a house into matchsticks had helped broaden the embassy investigation. From residents to store clerks to public employees, people remembered – at least vaguely – fleeting contacts with the two low-profile men now on the run.
The shorter man had rented the house, unfortunately from an absentee landlord whose only involvement was pocketing a monthly cashier’s check. He paid with cash, as he did everything locally, from utility bills to groceries and gas. Using the name Harrison Willford, he had obtained a driver’s license and licensed two cars. Neighbors readily identified the photo on the license. One neighbor also remembered seeing a plastic identification badge tucked in the man’s back pocket as they waited in a checkout line, the lanyard hanging down the leg of his work pants. It took little checking for Special Agent Hudson to determine that the name Harrison Willford, though effective, was phony. Still, she got the name added as a possible alias to his wanted poster description.
The taller man offered virtually nothing to go on. Apparently he was happy to have his partner handle their finances. But Willie Slick recalled picking up his mail one day when the taller man had stopped alongside to let a truck pass. In the back seat was a new PC in a box that barely fit through the door. Willie thought he saw an identification badge in the left breast pocket of his neighbor’s shirt. And the rural mailman, running late one afternoon as the taller man pulled into the driveway, said he glanced in the slowly passing car. In a cup holder he saw an ID badge with a shirt clip and what might have been a gold seal glinting in the fading light.
Hudson wondered with irritation why no one on her team had flagged the ID badges for more attention. Because no one else had perused the seemingly endless reports to glean that clue, she answered herself with equal irritation. That was her job. But what were the ID badges clues to? Assume the shorter man was blue-collar and the taller one did something with electronics or computers. Hundreds if not thousands of building contractors, government agencies, computer firms and subcontractors of all stripe issued ID badges, to say nothing of firms providing support services. How could that search be narrowed?
She decided to seek permission to publicly release the photo of Harrison Willford and hope it jogged someone’s memory, maybe someone he worked with or a former boss. He had to fill out forms for insurance, tax deductions, the job itself, using his real name or an alias. All federal jobs and many in the private sector require fingerprints. Any of those touchstones could be a lead, however slim. The work will be tedious, asking employers to look and look again at the photo, asking over and over again, “Are you sure you haven’t hired anyone who resembles this man?” Investigators totaling in the hundreds, likely more, were available for the gritty work. How much time would be wasted, Hudson wondered, if these men hadn’t worked for one of the targeted agencies or firms? Who cares? Maybe someone’s memory will be jogged. Maybe someone will pick up the phone.