Capitol murder

Chapter Twenty-nine

All of the concessions where the suicide bombers worked were owned by Lawrence Cooper, and the managers had been told by him to let the suicide bombers work at each one. Harold Johnson told Keith and Maggie to pick up Cooper and bring him in for questioning.

Cooper lived in a ranch-style house at the end of a cul-de-sac in a development in Rockville, Maryland, that had been built in the late fifties. It was dark when Keith parked in the driveway. He noticed that the lawn was mowed and the house looked as though it had been given a fresh coat of paint in the not too distant past. The agents walked up a narrow slate path to the front door and rang the bell. There was no answer. Keith rang again, then knocked and called Cooper’s name. When there was still no answer, Maggie walked around back while Keith tried to see around the curtains that had been lowered to cover the picture window that looked out on the lawn. The living room was dark, but Keith made out a pale glow that he took for lights that were on in some other part of the house.

Maggie returned to the front yard. “The side door opens into the kitchen. It isn’t locked. What do you think?”

“I don’t like this.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Keith followed Maggie around the side of the house. They drew their guns, and Maggie eased the door open. They were immediately hit by the nauseating smell that hung over every scene of violent death they had ever entered.

“Mr. Cooper,” Maggie called, not expecting an answer.

Keith nodded and the agents crept into the kitchen. The lights were on, and there were pots soaking in the sink and half a loaf of bread and a knife with a serrated blade on a cutting board.

Keith and Maggie entered the dining room cautiously. They saw half-finished meals at place settings where two chairs had toppled over when their occupants leaped up from them. Neither the man nor the woman had made it very far. Mr. Cooper had been shot in the head and had toppled to the floor. A woman who Keith assumed was Mrs. Cooper had made it halfway to the living room when a shot to the back had brought her down and a second shot to the back of the head had finished her off.

Maggie knelt beside Mr. Cooper and studied the entry hole in the center of his forehead.

“One shot, dead center. That’s not easy,” she said.

“Tying up loose ends,” Keith said wearily as he took out his cell phone and dialed Harold Johnson’s number.

“The bombers didn’t do this,” Maggie said as soon as Keith finished the call.

“Their handler, the guy who told Cooper to place Bashar and the others?”

“That’s a good guess.”

“Let’s check Cooper’s bank records to see if he deposited a large sum of money recently.”

“He could have been a dupe. I mean, Bashar and the others were probably smuggled in, so they couldn’t have gotten jobs legally. Cooper might have thought he was getting a group of illegals jobs without knowing what they were planning to do.”

Keith looked at Cooper’s corpse. “We may never know the answer to that one.”