Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 72

IT WAS BEDLAM at the Hall that morning. As scary as it had ever been since I entered police work.

An A.D.A. being killed. August Spies' victim number three.

By six A.M., the place was teeming with a hundred Feds: FBI, Department of Justice, ATF. And reporters, crammed into the fifth-floor news room for some kind of briefing. The front page of the Examiner had a big banner headline: WHO'S NEXT?

I was going over one of the crime scene reports from Jill's killing when I was surprised by Joe Santos and Phil Martelli knocking at my door. “We're real sorry to hear about Ms. Bernhardt,” Santos said, stepping in.

I tossed aside the papers and nodded thanks. “It was nice of you to come here.”

Martelli shrugged. “Actually, that's not why we're here, Lindsay.”

“We decided to go back through our records on this Hard-away thing,” Santos said, sitting down. He pulled out a manila envelope. “We figured if he was here, given what he was up to, he had to turn up somewhere else.”

Santos removed a series of black-and-white photos from the envelope. “This is a rally we were keeping track of. Octo-ber twenty-second. Six months ago.”

The photos were surveillance sweeps of the crowd, no one in particular. Then one face was circled. Sandy hair, a narrow chin, a thin beard. Huddled in a dark fatigue jacket, jeans, a scarf that hung to his knees.

My blood started to race. I went up to my board and com-pared it with the FBI photos taken in Seattle five years before.

Stephen Hardaway.

The son of a bitch was here six months ago.

“This is where it starts to get interesting.” Phil Martelli winked.

He spread out a couple of other shots. A different rally. Hardaway again. This time, standing next to someone I rec-ognized.

Roger Lemouz.

Hardaway had an arm around him.