Edge of Black (10 page)

Chapter 17

Denver,
Colorado
Alexander Whitfield

The plane’s wheels touched down with a juddering impact, and the engines wailed in protest at their violent juxtaposition, reversed to help the screaming bird land and stop before running out of runway and plunging into the prairie land below. Xander had always liked landing. He liked takeoffs, too, but the feeling of 400,000 pounds of metal being slung at the flattened earth and stopping on a dime was especially fun.

They taxied for a few minutes, and he looked out the window toward the mountains of his childhood and felt a great peace stealing through his system. It was good to be home.

He grabbed his bag from the overhead bin and exited the plane, back ramrod straight. Some things he couldn’t let go of, his posture and physical fitness only two of many pieces of him the Army still owned.

Sam must be beside herself with fury at him. He didn’t particularly want to call, but he’d be in much worse trouble if he waited.

In the terminal, he spied a Blue Mountain coffee shop. He would take his chances. A steaming cup of coffee, a banana, a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water refueled him, and he tossed his trash and started out of the terminal. Once he got into the open air, then he’d call her. Not before. Too many eyes and ears around at airports. Too many opportunities for his words to be overheard, misinterpreted, misconstrued.

The air outside the terminal was thin and warm, but he could feel the promise of coolness underneath the easterly thermal flow, the slipstream over the mountains whisking the breeze off the tops of the highest still snow-covered peaks. They’d had a late spring here, with a walloping storm that dumped six feet on the fifteenth of May. Those late-spring storms made him nostalgic; born on the last day of April, he couldn’t remember a birthday that didn’t see the bluebells and larkspurs in the pasture shivering under a thick coating of white.

He got on the rental car bus, went through the indignities expected of him, signed his life away in triplicate, retrieved his vehicle, a Ford Explorer, and once inside the vehicle and out of the garage, flipped open his phone.

A relieved-sounding Sam answered on the first ring. His initial assessment was correct, she was hopping mad.

“Where in the name of hell are you? You’ve been MIA for hours.”

“Hi, honey.”

“No, no, no, no, no, don’t ‘Hi, honey’ me, Xander. You left me in deep shit here. Where are you?”

“What kind of deep shit?”

He heard her swallow, then her tactic changed. Her voice calmed. “I need to know where you are. Things didn’t exactly go as planned this morning.”

“Fletcher wasn’t pleased with you, I take it?”

“He’s fine with me, it’s you he’s furious at. Come on, Xander, no more games. They hauled me down to the JTTF. They aren’t messing around.”

Shit. He was hoping for more time.

“Is that where you are right now?”

“Yes. Now, please. Will you just play ball so I can go home?”

Damn it.

“I’ll call you later, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He flipped off the phone, quickly disassembled it. They couldn’t have traced it that quickly, but all they had to do was get paper from his cell company to see where the call came from. He was going to have to work fast. Without the battery they wouldn’t be able to nail it down better than that last call. So they’d see he was in Colorado, but nothing more.

He pointed the car toward the mountains, and drove. If his hunch played out, he’d be golden. If not, then he’d face the music. He felt like hell lying to Sam, but it was only to keep her safe, nothing more, nothing less. He just needed a few more hours.

That fool Fletcher must have strong-armed her into telling him everything, playing on their friendship to get more than their planned statements out of her.

Well, no matter. Another couple of hours and he’d be where he was heading, and start stalking his prey. Then together they’d be able to quietly and quickly nail the son of a bitch who thought he could terrorize the nation.

Chapter 18

Washington, D.
C.
Dr. Samantha Owens

The JTTF was surprising, to say the least. Having been in multiple law enforcement headquarters, Sam was impressed with their setup. Technologically advanced, for sure. A wide cross section of people from all walks of law enforcement, young and determined, old and grizzled. And they had decent coffee, though she’d had so much caffeine by this point that her hands were starting to shake.

She was loosely under watch at Fletcher’s desk. He was sitting next to her, and vibrating with anger still. She hung up the phone and glanced at him.

“He won’t tell me where he is.”

Fletcher snarled at her. “That’s some man you’ve got there, Sam. Willing to let his woman stay in custody rather than share his whereabouts and whatever idiotic plan he has in mind.”

Sam let her hair down; the pins holding her bun were starting to give her a headache. She shook it out and it spilled over her shoulders. That was better.

“Fletcher, lay off it. I get that you’re pissed. But I don’t control Xander. I trust him. If he thinks this is the right thing to do, then it probably is. Why don’t you let me help you while we’re waiting?”

“Help me? You’re in custody.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Jeez, would you two give it a rest? None of us can get our homework done when mommy and daddy are fighting.”

They both turned to see Inez, her glasses pushed up high on her nose, holding her hand up in a universal stop sign.

“Sorry,” Fletcher mumbled.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Inez. This must be terribly disruptive to your workday.”

Inez scowled at Sam. “Don’t try to suck up. You deserve to be behind bars, not sitting here. I don’t approve of your methods.”

Fletcher smiled at his assistant, then turned to Sam. “What she said.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. You’ve got to give me something to do, though. I’m going stir-crazy.”

“Why don’t you type up your autopsy report?”

“I already did that.”

“Then here. Take my laptop and surf the Net. Facebook. Twitter. Write a blog. Shop for some shoes. I don’t care. Just leave me alone so I can get some work done.”

He shoved the laptop across the desk to her, and she demurely said, “Thanks.”

She resisted cheering; it wouldn’t be seemly.

Inez looked at Fletcher. “Are you sure you should let her do that?”

Fletcher shrugged. “If it shuts her up, I’m all for it.”

* * *

Sam tapped away at the keyboard. As it happened, she did have a Facebook account, purely for business. She’d joined about a year earlier, ostensibly to get in touch with some friends from her high school, Father Ryan, but in reality to keep an eye on one of her employees whom she suspected was stealing illegal drugs from the evidence lockers at Forensic Medical. One of her former death investigators, a girl named Keri McGee, had set up the account for her and “friended,” as she called it, several of the staffers. Sam wasn’t fond of the site, it felt too much like spying on people to go to their pages and look at their pictures and hear the intimate details of their lives, but the sting worked. The staffer was caught, summarily dismissed, and Sam had biometric locks installed on the door to the evidence room so it wouldn’t happen again.

She hadn’t been back on the site, had meant to close her account, but was now grateful for the oversight. She could do a little investigating of her own without anyone being the wiser.

She typed a name into the search box, careful to get the spelling correct. Loa Ledbetter.

Boom. Up popped the woman’s page.

Sam looked at the profile picture and couldn’t stop the lump from forming in her throat. Ledbetter was a beautiful woman, very natural, with a self-assured smile. She was standing in the midst of a group of Maasi tribesmen, staring right into the camera. Sam read her information; she was a Harvard girl, with a B.Sc. in cultural anthropology, an M.A. in sociology and a Ph.D. in sociocultural and medical anthropology. She owned a market research firm that specialized in ethnographic research. In other words, a very intelligent woman who’d made a good life for herself studying other people’s behavior for a living.

What would she have made of the attack?

Sam clicked through a few of the pictures; not being a friend of the deceased, she was limited as to what she could see. But when she went back to the front page, the “Wall,” as it was called, there was a new status update. From Loa Ledbetter herself. An update from the grave. Sam shook off the chill at the coincidence.

Dear all: I am so sad to have to share that my mother was a victim of the heinous attacks in D.C. yesterday. We are devastated, and appreciate your prayers during this difficult time. When arrangements have been made we will update this page. For now, I will leave you with my mother’s favorite quote: “We must dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”—May Sarton

Even one death is too many.

Sam took a deep breath to steady herself. This was how it was meant to be. Children were supposed to mourn their parents, not the other way around.

She looked at Ledbetter’s “friends” page and saw there was one person labeled as family. A daughter, also named Loa. She clicked on the profile, but unlike her mother, Loa the younger’s site was closed off to even the most cursory of investigation.

Sam didn’t waste any time. She sent the girl a friend request and a note that read,
Please accept my deepest condolences. I am one of the medical examiners on your mother’s case. I would like to talk to you if you have a moment.
She left her cell number and email address.

Marc Conlon’s page was very different from Loa’s. It was unrestricted, open for all to see. His friends had been actively posting, there were hundreds of wall entries sending the boy and his family prayers and good wishes, recounting good times had, and numerous tear-jerking replies. Sam was amazed, as she always was, at the openness with which the younger generation lived their lives. Everything they did or said was on display, with no thought to the consequences. The concept of privacy was lost on them.

Sam scrolled through the post until she found his latest entry. What she saw shocked her.

The night before the attack, at one in the morning, he had posted:
Operation TEOTWAWKI entering final stage. Will report back on its success or failure. Wish me luck.

“Fletcher?”

He looked up from his desktop. “Yeah? What is it?”

“How much do you know about Marc Conlon?”

“Not my part of the investigation. Why?”

“Look at this.” She spun the laptop around so the screen was facing him. “What does TEOTWAWKI stand for?”

He read the status update. He paled, then turned to Inez. “Get me Bianco, right now.”

She didn’t hesitate, shot up from her chair and marched off in search of their boss.

“Fletch, what? What is it?”

“It’s an acronym for the end of the world as we know it.”

Chapter 19

Washington, D.
C.
Detective Darren Fletcher

Fletcher cursed himself for letting Sam anywhere near his laptop. Of course she’d be digging into the lives of the dead, that was her job. He had enough respect for her instincts not to throttle her on the spot, though now he really was going to catch hell.

Could a nineteen-year-old boy manage to stage a biological attack of this scale on the Metro? Not without help, which meant there were more of them out there.

He couldn’t help himself, the REM song jumped into his head.

If the end of the world as we know it had Lenny Bruce involved, surely a suburban student could be, too.

The edges of a plan started to form in the back of his mind. It was risky, but what else could he do? He was being hamstrung here, and that wasn’t acceptable. He couldn’t just quit the JTTF, either; he was invested enough in the outcome of the Leighton case to want to see what the truth was, and now his fingerprints were all over it, literally and figuratively, so walking away wasn’t an option.

But someone else might be able to walk away.

“Listen, Sam. When Bianco gets here, let me talk. I’d rather neither of us go to jail today, all right?”

Sam crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. It wasn’t like her to gloat, so she must still be pissed at him. Great. How could she blame him? He was just doing his job. Covering his own ass. He was a bit miffed at her, as well.

Inez came back, looking harried.

“Bianco wants you to pass the information to Cusack. She said to stay on Leighton.”

Of course she does.

Sam finally spoke. “Well, that’s not fair. You found the info, you should be able to investigate it.”

Fletcher shrugged. “Technically, you found the info. But Bianco is all-powerful here. Inez, you didn’t hear that.”

“Of course not, sir.”

Crap. He didn’t want to do it like this, but it was unavoidable.

“Would you do me a favor, Inez? I’m starving. Sam must be, too. Think I could bribe you to grab us a couple of pastrami and Swiss sandwiches from the Au Bon Pain down the street?”

Inez was no dummy, but she stood automatically and held out her hand for money. He handed her thirty bucks and said, “Get one for yourself, too.”

“Thanks, Fletch.”

She disappeared down the corridor, and he turned to Sam. He spoke low so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Here’s the deal. What you did was wrong. Nothing matters right now more than capturing the person who orchestrated the attack. Not our friendship, or your relationship. Can we agree on that?”

She was silent for a moment. “Agreed.”

“I trust you, Sam. I know that you’d never purposefully do something to hurt me, personally or professionally. We are friends, even though you feel we might not be close. You could have told Bianco that you’d been calling me all night and I didn’t answer, but you didn’t.”

Sam nodded. “I didn’t see the point.”

“I appreciate that. Because that would have made things even worse. I’m being railroaded here. The case on Leighton isn’t what it seems. There are some pretty intense accusations being laid on him, and if this investigation isn’t handled just right, it’s going to be me that goes down. You with me?”

“Fletch, what is it? What do they have on the congressman?”

With a quick glance over his shoulder, he slid the file to her. She opened it and, after a few seconds, looked appropriately shocked. She read through the reports swiftly, then closed it and pushed the file back to him.

“Oh. I see.”

“Yes. Something in my gut tells me we aren’t being given all the pieces of the puzzle. So I want your help. I really do. But I’m stuck here, dealing with this portion of the investigation. But you...you aren’t. You have the freedom to do what you want.”

She gave him a wary glance. “I thought I was in protective custody.”

“You are. But sometimes the greater good must be served. The door is over there.”

“What do you want me to do?”

She was quick, he’d give her that.

“Get the hell out of here, go dig up everything you can on Conlon and Ledbetter, find your fool of a boyfriend, and get back to me as fast as you can. Be careful, though. Don’t get picked up. Lay low. If something bad happens, and you can’t get back here, go to Captain Armstrong. He likes you, he’ll take care of you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to figure out what the hell is going on here with Leighton. Now go, Sam. Before I change my mind.”

She was up and out of the chair before his lips closed. She walked with purpose away from his desk, neither looking right nor left, just focused on the door. Fletcher glanced around the bullpen, saw Bianco walking toward the conference room, her view of the door to the hall obscured. Providence.

Sam was gone, out the door, and when no alarm bells went off, Fletcher knew he’d just made the right decision. He could cover for at least an hour before Bianco figured things out, and that might just give Sam enough time to get some of the answers he needed to set his mind at ease.

He sent a note to Armstrong, a heads-up, just in case. And then he pulled the file to him and looked at the DNA again. Such a coincidence, the congressman managing to get himself dead just as the FBI found out he was a serial killer.

Something wasn’t right here. And he was going to figure out what that was, no matter what it cost him.