The Faithful (12 page)

“Yes?”

“I’m also able to see things, and know things, others can’t. I’ve had that ability as long as I can remember—” That stopped me, and I had to laugh. “Well, that means less today than it did a couple of days ago, but still.”

“You’re psychic?”

“I’ve never categorized myself that way.”

“Ah. A closet psychic.”

I smiled. “I’ve never been very comfortable with it.”

“In my experience, none of us are. Very few psychics find the will to turn it to their advantage. And even for those of us who do, it’s still more nightmare than gift most of the time.” She rolled toward me, wheels squeaking across the carpet.

“It might help me gain some insight if I do a reading. Would you mind?” She held her hands out to me. Her palms were pink and callused, and after a moment of hesitation, I placed my hands in hers.

“Great. Now, close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Don’t worry!” she said as I looked at her with alarm. “I’m not hypnotizing you. I just want to see what I can pick up. The more you relax, the better.”

At her bidding, I closed my eyes. All I could hear was her breathing. Eventually she pulled back, wheels squeaking, and I opened my eyes.

She had pulled as far away from me as she could manage, and was looking at me with horror.

My heart lurched. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything is dead!” She leapt up. The chair spun away and crashed against the far wall.

“What?”

“You need to leave!”

“What? I don’t understand! What did you see?”

“You walk with death. No, not just death. Annihilation! Extinction!”

“What! Please, I don’t . . . what do you mean?”

“You must leave! Please,
please
you
must
leave!”

Tears stung my eyes and burned the back of my throat. I stood up on trembling legs and reached out for her. She shrank away from me as though I were a demon.

“Please help me! I don’t understand what’s happening to me! I’m so scared . . .”

“Get out! You have brought evil to my doorstep!”

“How? I don’t understand! Please, help me to understand?”

She was shaking her head, hands over her mouth as though she had just witnessed the murder of her entire family, or something equally horrific.

“You must go! There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Kahina,
please
. . .”

“Just go!”

Sobbing, blinded with tears, I turned to the door. Just before I left, I turned back to her. She was on her knees, weeping, her head bowed to her chest.

“Who is the truth-seeker? Do you know?” I asked.

She raised her head, piercing me with her red, streaming eyes. She looked like a ghost.

“What does it matter? He’ll be dead soon, too.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I’ve got that information. Where can we meet?” Connie whispered seductively, and Josh rolled his eyes.

Still, he was eager to get those names, and equally eager to get out of the office. He had spent the last two days at his computer. Getting some fresh air sounded good. He stretched, feeling the satisfying pop of his vertebrae as they realigned.

“Is it still sunny out there in the real world?”

She chuckled. “It is.”

They agreed to meet in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 12:15. She offered to bring lunch, and he agreed. Hanging up, he checked his watch. It was 11:00 a.m.; he had plenty of time to get some exercise.

After locking the door to his office, he changed into sweatpants and a Georgetown sweatshirt. He pulled on his Reeboks, thundered down the stairs, and exploded out into the sunshine with the glee of an escaped convict. He headed west on F Street at a fast clip, relishing the mindless rhythm of his shoes slapping the pavement as his body adjusted to the inertia of forward motion.

He’d spent the morning submitting the latest DNA samples to the Evidence Control Unit, or ECU. In 2000, the FBI began the National Missing Persons DNA Database, or NMPDD, to assist in the identification of missing persons. The DNA was gathered from hair samples, toothbrushes, or other sources such as saved baby teeth, and sent to the ECU for analysis. The information was then uploaded to CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System.

Over the past decade, Josh had been gathering DNA samples for the children who had gone missing prior to the inception of the NMPDD. This required tracking down scattered family members to get familial samples, which could be obtained by a cheek swab.

It sounded simple enough, but since the cases spanned the last five decades, the task was extremely tedious. For accuracy, DNA samples were required from more than one relative. Ideally, a sample could be obtained from the mother and father of the missing child. Samples obtained from siblings were less useful, and as a last resort, a sample from a maternal relative could be used. A sample from a paternal relative was useful only if the missing child was a boy.

It was a sad fact that many marriages didn’t withstand the grief of losing a child, and divorce was common. This presented a challenge when searching for the biological mother, who had often remarried and changed her name. Finding female siblings presented the same problem.

With the older cases, the search for the parents often ended in death certificates, and surviving family members were hard to find. Josh had a stack of cases awaiting a second DNA sample so they could be submitted to the ECU.

Just to add to the challenge, the ECU allowed only five submissions per month. Josh often had to sit on DNA samples for several months before he was able to submit them.

To date, he’d managed to collect DNA samples for almost half of the children who had gone missing prior to implementation of the NMPDD.

Josh turned on 15th Street and jogged along the south lawn of the White House. He crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and continued past the oval drive of the Ellipse. It was a large grassy area that had been used as a trash dump and a slaughterhouse, and, for a time during the Civil War, it had even housed soldiers. Currently the Ellipse was the location of choice for everything from protest demonstrations to rock concerts.

At Constitution Avenue he turned west, jogging alongside the greenery of Constitution Gardens. He still had forty minutes until his meeting with Connie, so he cut down to the Reflecting Pool and ran the length of it between the Lincoln and World War II Memorials. He entertained himself by watching the camera-wielding tourists, picnickers, and locals out for some lunch-hour exercise.

On his second round he slowed to a brisk walk, stretched, and plunked down on the grass beside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Connie arrived five minutes later, tottering along the grass in snakeskin heels. She was dressed like an eighties heavy-metal groupie, in an acid-washed denim miniskirt and skintight Mötley Crüe T-shirt, her blond hair teased into a hair-sprayed cloud Josh just knew would feel crunchy.

He tried not to goggle at her, wondering what on earth her coworkers thought. He was used to the strict dress protocol of the FBI, where even the women dressed in boxy suits.

Smiling, she dropped a takeout bag onto his lap. “Well, my oh my. There’s nothing sexier than a man all sweaty and hopped up on endorphins. Howdy, Agent Metcalf.”

Her lipstick was bright purple, and the diamond in her incisor twinkled in the sunlight. She sank down beside him on the grass, her skirt sliding up her generous thighs toward her hip bones. He caught himself staring and hastily averted his gaze, only to see her smiling devilishly at him.

“Hello, Ms. Fisher. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Come on, now, only my kids’ teachers call me that.
You
can call me Connie.” She had changed her nail polish to match her lipstick.

Desperate for a change of focus, he turned to the paper bag she had dropped into his lap. It was radiating warmth onto his legs.

“Thanks for lunch. So, what did you bring us?” Unrolling the top, he peered in and groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Connie asked with feigned innocence. “Don’t you like corn dogs?”

Josh got back to the office at 1:30 and tucked the envelope Connie had given him into a locking file cabinet. He grabbed his suit and toiletry kit, locked the office door behind him, and headed for the nearest shower, which was adjacent to one of the gym facilities on the third floor.

Back in his office fifteen minutes later, he pulled out the envelope and grabbed a bottle of water from the minifridge. He ripped open the envelope and pulled out the single piece of paper.

Connie had come up with the names of four of the PSST testing agents, and noted the name of Mr. Macey’s personal assistant as well.

The information had been gathered from Mr. Macey’s assistant, a man on the prowl after a recent bitter divorce. She had promised to get more, explaining slyly that they had made after-hours plans. She was clearly enjoying playing secret agent, and Josh reminded her to be discreet.

“Don’t worry. Sumner Macey is out sick right now. He’ll never know I’ve been poking my nose into his business.” She seemed confident, and he decided it was worth the risk. He would risk quite a bit to get his hands on one of those PSST tests.

In the meantime, he turned his attention to the information she had given him. He ran each of the names through NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. There were no outstanding warrants and no criminal records. None of them were suspected terrorists, sex offenders, foreign fugitives, or missing persons. He grunted in frustration and rubbed his neck, taking a giant gulp of water.

He logged onto the newest tool at his disposal, the Data Integration and Visualization System. The DIVS was a new database search tool with the ultimate goal of gathering data from different sources and compiling it in one place. There were still plenty of kinks to be worked out, but it would eventually provide the ability to search hundreds of millions of documents gathered from different sources, saving agents time, resources, and plenty of gray hairs.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Josh muttered, fingers clacking over the keyboard. There was nothing. Not even a speeding ticket. No bad credit.
Nothing.

This would require legwork. Josh decided to start with Sumner Macey. He made note of his address in Temple Hills, grabbed his suit jacket off the back of the chair, and left the office. It was time to pay some of Mr. Macey’s neighbors a friendly visit.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“What is it, Evelyn?” Executive Administrative Director Dean Forster barked into the phone, running a sweaty hand over the stubble on the top of his head. Large wet patches had seeped through the armpits of his creased white dress shirt, and the ugly pink tie his wife had given him for his last birthday was hanging like a limp penis over the edge of the file cabinet.

He was having a bad day. A very bad day indeed.

First, the director, Roger Whitehorne, had raked him over the coals for that Abousamra mess, blaming Dean for those incompetent idiots who had lost Abousamra just before he killed that family in Silver Spring.

Then that dumb-ass jury had failed to indict Xian Lim in that human trafficking operation. The evil bastard was going to walk, flushing thousands of man-hours down the toilet. They would have to start all over again.

And for the icing on the cake, he was in the midst of staff evaluations, under orders to cut back on much-needed agents due to budgetary concerns. These days, all the money was being funneled into the Counterterrorism Division, and where the money went, the agents had to follow. This meant more cuts to the already-taxed Criminal Investigations Division, and he was seething as he flipped through the personnel files.

“Agent Spring is here to see you. He says it’s important.”

Oh, hell. Agent Lewis Spring’s presence could mean only one thing.

“All right,” he grumbled. “Send him in.”

Agent Spring was young, still brimming with the internal fire that made him choose the FBI as a career. His brown hair was cut with military precision, his clothes so neatly pressed it was hard to imagine a drop of sweat daring to make its way onto the pristine fabric. He was green, eager, and a quintessential rule follower, which was why Dean had chosen him for the task. He was also an IT genius.

Agent Spring was honored to the point of apoplexy to receive direct orders from the executive administrative director. He never paused to question the validity of Dean’s request.

“I take it you have some news for me, Agent Spring?”

“Yes, sir. I set up the net exactly as we discussed. It’s been operational for eight months now, and I test it once a week to make sure it’s working.”

“Yes, yes.” Dean Forster waved a hand in the universal signal for “hurry it up, already.” “And?”

“Well, it’s never picked up a single hit. But today it started pinging all over the place. I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the programming, but I double-checked everything and it’s all good.”

“Agent Metcalf?”

“Yes, sir.” Agent Spring bobbed his head excitedly. “He’s been searching both the NCIC and DIVS today, and six of the names you gave me pinged.”

“I’m sorry, did you say
six
?”

“Yes, sir. Here’s a printout.” Agent Spring pulled a folded sheet out of his breast pocket and handed it over.

Although his legs were trembling, Dean forced himself to stand. As calmly as he could, he shook Agent Spring’s hand. He ignored the quick grimace of distaste that flitted across the young agent’s face at the feel of his sweaty palm.

“Good job, Agent Spring. Let me know if you get any more pings.” Agent Spring left smiling, and Dean sat down behind his desk and unfolded the piece of paper.

Jessica Halliwell

Rupert Vargas

John Easton

Penelope Divisario

Mary-Ellen Litchfield

Sumner Macey

“Shit.” He picked up the phone. “Evelyn, get Deputy Director Warner for me.”

As he waited to be connected to the Office of Congressional Affairs, he sorted through the pile of staff folders on his desk until he found Agent Spring’s file. He pushed it to the side of his desk.

Agent Spring was about to receive a transfer to the Counterterrorism Division, along with a nice jump up the pay scale.