Rising Phoenix (24 page)

The President seemed deep in thought for a
moment. The two men watched his expression carefully. “So what’s your recommendation, Perry?” he asked finally.

Trent’s brow furrowed slightly. “I don’t think that there is anything you or I can do, really. The Bureau’s got its teeth into this thing, and I’ve directed them to use every method available to get these guys—fast. I told Sherman confidentially that if he had any ideas that might be unconventional, I wanted to hear them. And if they had any merit, I’d bring them to you.”

Trent took a sip of his coffee. “I know that neither of you much cares for Bill Calahan, but I don’t think he’s particularly relevant to the investigation. In my opinion, we can trust Tom to get this investigation off the ground pretty quickly.”

“Calahan’s having a press conference tomorrow at ten, isn’t he?” Jameson asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, Perry. Thanks. I want to be kept up on everything that happens in this investigation. Daily reports. Nothing’s insignificant, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Trent promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Jameson would get more detail than he could handle. Trent was painfully aware that he was getting off easy. Too easy. It gave him a queasy feeling.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, putting down the nearly full cup of coffee and heading for the door.

“Close it behind you, please,” Bryce called.

“So what do you think?” The President didn’t look at his chief of staff, but concentrated on the stained glass lampshade next to him.

Bryce slid his feet onto the table in front of him, pushing himself farther back into the chair. “It’s a difficult situation. The press is going to come out firmly against the poisoners and are going to be more and more critical of us every day these guys aren’t caught. On the other hand, the public perceives your administration to be soft on crime.”

The President opened his mouth to protest, but Bryce cut him off.

“I’m not saying that it’s true—but you’re a Democrat and you’ve stressed rehabilitation over punishment. The fact is that crime’s gotten worse with every administration since Lincoln—you just happen to have the chair now.”

“So what are you getting at, Mike?” Jameson respected Bryce’s ability to see all angles of an issue, but God knew he liked to hear himself talk.

“I’m not sure that these guys—what do they call themselves? The CDFS? Are going to be all that unpopular.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Look, Dan, you go talk to some guy working forty hours a week in a factory in Sheridan, Wyoming, and you ask him what he thinks about the whole thing. You know what he’ll say? Hell say that the druggies got what was coming to them. That it’s about time someone cleaned up the cities.”

Jameson flushed. “So what are you suggesting? That we tell the media that I think it’s okay to go out and kill as many people as you want—just as long as they’re narcotics users?”

Bryce straightened up in his chair. “No. That’s what’s so difficult. You have to go out there and say
that the government is going to do everything in its power to stop these guys—but you have to do it in a way that doesn’t make our friend in Wyoming mad. The media’s on your side. They’ll focus on the most horrible and unjustified deaths. You know, high school track stars with straight A’s, cute twelve-year-olds from the projects—that kind of thing. You’re not gonna see the guy with a murder rap and six aggravated assaults. I’ll guarantee you that.”

Jameson stood up and walked past his desk to face the large window behind it.

Bryce continued. “You’ll have to be at that press conference tomorrow, Dan. We’ve got to make sure that the media sees you getting personally involved in this.”

Jameson was only half listening. “Is it our fault, Mike?”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t just mean you and me. I mean the government in general. In the last, say, fifteen years, what has the U.S. government done that has really made a difference to its citizens?” He turned around and looked at Bryce. “Now things have gotten so bad, the public is forced to take action to correct the country’s problems.”

“This isn’t the public taking action, Dan. This is some nut running around murdering people.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jameson said, but he wasn’t as certain as he made himself sound.

Bryce stood. “Of course I’m right. You’ve got a good record of trying to get a handle on crime. We just have to make sure we keep that in front of the public during this thing.”

B
eamon punched in the combination to the door guarding the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center, or SIOC, and pulled the heavy door open. Inside, the space was broken into a number of soundproof rooms. The interior walls were glass, and he could see straight through to the back.

The suite was almost empty. Beamon nodded to a young agent manning the phones as he refilled his Styrofoam cup with coffee. Calls coming into the JEH Building after hours were fielded in SIOC. It was this kid’s unlucky week.

To Beamon’s left was the largest of the four rooms and the space reserved for his team. Through the glass wall he could see that Laura Vilechi was already hard at work. She sat at the conference table that dominated the room, framed by a large blackboard. Her nose was stuck in a blue file folder.

On the blackboard she had written a chart.

INVESTIGATION

Beamon shook his head and wondered for the fiftieth time if he’d made a mistake in hiring Laura as his right-hand man—as he intended to introduce her.

They had met almost five years ago on an embezzlement case and discovered quickly that they couldn’t agree on anything. Beamon was the absentminded professor—prone to flashes of brilliance that left everyone shaking their heads in amazement. Between those flashes, though, he had to struggle to keep up with the mundane details of the nuts and bolts investigation.

Laura had a completely different style—and the chalkboard told him that it hadn’t changed. She had a photographic memory for details, and fanaticism for process. She left no stone unturned, and never, never made mistakes.

Their first meeting had been less than pleasant. She had already decided how she wanted the investigation run, and she wasn’t about to let anyone screw it up. Beamon had his own ideas about how to get things done. She had stood there, hands on hips, staring coldly at him as he ranted and raved about her inexperience and uninspired approach to investigation. She hadn’t backed down, and he respected that.

“How you doin’, Laura,” Beamon said, slipping
through the door and closing it quietly behind him. He couldn’t believe it, but he was actually a little nervous.

She looked up at him with mild suspicion. “I’m good, Mark.”

Beamon examined the blackboard more closely, finally pointing to it. “I see you haven’t changed.”

She pointed to the large bag of donuts dangling from his right hand. “I see you haven’t, either.”

Beamon laughed and set them on the table.

“I didn’t know what you liked, so I got an assortment.”

She opened the bag and pulled out a chocolate-covered. The topping stuck to her fingers. “Well, I’m here, but I sure can’t figure out why.”

“My doctor told me I didn’t have enough stress in my life. Naturally, you came to mind.” Beamon flashed a wide grin and reached into the bag to find another bear claw. “I think you took our last run-in too seriously, Laura. I defended my methods and you defended yours. Shit, if anybody came off that case worse for the wear it was me.”

“Come on, Mark. You obviously don’t agree with my methods. Why did you bring me in on this?”

Beamon frowned. “If I gave you the impression that I didn’t agree with your methods, I’m sorry. The fact that you and I approach a problem from opposite sides is precisely why you’re here. I’m willing to admit that my weakness is detail and procedure. And as I see it, yours is being too rigid.” Laura bristled slightly at the criticism, but he ignored it. “Put both of us together, you get the perfect investigator.”

“And you think we can work together?”

Beamon turned serious. “Yup. Our problem last time
was that neither one of us was really in charge. This time I’m the boss.”

They stared straight at each other for almost ten seconds. Laura finally averted her eyes and reached for her donut. “Maybe next time it’ll be me.”

He laughed. “The thought keeps me awake at night. So when did you fly in? You look tired.” Her blue skirt and white blouse looked like they had come directly from a suitcase, and her strawberry blond hair wasn’t pulled back as tightly as he remembered it. It didn’t matter, though, she would have been striking in old blue jeans and a dirty sweatshirt.

“I got in tonight at ten. I was up watching TV when CNN started reporting on the hospitals, and I figured I might as well come in before the phone started ringing.”

Beamon nodded toward the blue folder lying next to her on the conference table.

“So what have we got?”

“Not a whole lot,” she said quietly. “The Saint Louis office has interviewed everyone at the bank where the suspect got the cashier’s checks—except one guy who apparently quit and is on a rock-climbing trip in parts unknown. We should be able to find him in a few days, but he didn’t really have much in the way of direct contact with our guy. Anyway, not much there.” She flipped the page.

“We and DEA are interviewing the victims who are still able to talk and getting the names of their suppliers. DEA’s working on tracing the poisoned drugs back to where they got hit—but it’s too soon to see if that’ll go anywhere.” She flipped another page.

“Our forensics guys haven’t had much luck in figuring
out what the poison is, but they’re working on it round the clock. Apparently they’ve brought in one of the world’s leading experts on toxicology. He’s from Harvard, or something.” Laura tossed the folder on the table, sending it spinning to the far edge.

“What about the envelope? Anything there?”

“Zip.”

“So I’m safe in saying we don’t have dick,” Beamon said.

“An unfortunate choice of words, but that’s what it boils down to.”

“Any estimates on casualties?”

“Last time I looked, we were moving into four digits.”

Beamon crossed his arms and stared at the blackboard. “This should be one hell of an interesting case. It’s the only crime I’ve ever investigated that the victims don’t want to talk. We’re gonna hit a brick wall trying to get information out of the narcotics community.”

Beamon considered his next move. No brilliant strategies flashed into his mind, and he knew from experience that he couldn’t force them. They would probably have to wait for the CDFS’s next move to get anything concrete. That is, if there was a next move.

The piercing ring of a phone cut off his train of thought. He looked around, spotting it on a credenza against the wall. He strolled slowly over and picked it up. “Mark Beamon.”

“Mark! It’s Trace.”

Trace Fontain was the head of the Bureau’s laboratory science group, and in charge of filtering through the blood of the victims and confiscated narcotics to
isolate the poison. Beamon didn’t know him well, but they had been running into each other every now and again for the last fifteen years.

“What’s the good word, Trace?” Beamon found a remote control and was trying to figure out how to turn on the television anchored to the wall above him.

“Afraid there is none, Mark. Your choices are bad news and worse news.”

“Jesus, I just can’t seem to get a break around here. Bad news first.”

“We haven’t been able to figure out what they’re using yet. We know it attacks the vital organs, but it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

“Fuckin’ hell, Trace. All you have to do is put the shit under one of those mass spectron microscope doodads and the goddam computer does your job for you.”

Laura frowned deeply and stared up at him. He’d forgotten how much he hated that look.

She was right, of course. Trace had enough academic plaques to side a house. The Bureau was lucky to have him.

“Sorry, Trace. It’s early, you know? Hit me with the worse news.”

“You’re really not gonna like this one.”

“I’ll try not to kill the messenger.”

“We’ve been interviewing the victims that are still lucid, and examining the organs of the dead ones, and there is evidence that the poison has a, uh, bit of a delayed reaction.”

Beamon considered that for a moment. “So, like, if I snort some coke today, I might not show symptoms till tomorrow? They have stuff like that?”

“Uh, no. It’s a little worse than that. It works on kind of a bell curve. Depending on how much you take and your body chemistry, reaction times are different.”

“Get to the point, Trace.”

“Well, a pretty good average would be, uh, right around a week and a half for the first symptoms. Death three days after they start appearing.”

Beamon started pounding his head slowly on the wall in front of him. “No more bad news today, okay?”

“You all right, Mark?” Laura asked as Beamon slammed down the phone.

“Did you know that some poisons have delayed reactions?”

“Sure, I guess. I never really thought about it.”

“And how long do you think the longest delayed reaction would be?”

“Dunno. One or two days?”

“Try one or two weeks.”

She was silent for a moment. “Is this another one of your dumb jokes?”

“You’re not feeling any better, are you, honey?”

Erica pulled the gray and brown afghan up around her husband’s shoulders and looked into his red-rimmed eyes. The Reverend Simon Blake didn’t reply.