Back Blast

30

Catherine King and Andy Shoal stood on the shoulder of the Capital Beltway under the Rockville Pike overpass. Two of the three lanes of traffic had been pyloned off for the police cars, ambulance, and wreckers, so even though the two Washington Post reporters had to park up on Rockville Pike and then scoot down the concrete embankment, once they were here, at least, they were able to walk around the scene and observe the two dozen or so Maryland State Police at work.

A helicopter circled overhead, its spotlight scanning around the Beltway below, and this, along with passing headlights, flashing red and blue lights from the officers’ cars, and a burning flare in the road next to the jackknifed semi, gave a dreamy psychedelic feel to the scene.

The two reporters arrived directly from the scene in Chevy Chase twenty minutes earlier after being frustrated by police tape and unhelpful law enforcement there. They’d learned next to nothing about the murder of Leland Babbitt, but when Andy heard the call on his scanner about the violent carjacking on the Beltway, he gave Catherine his professional opinion that there was no way in hell both these things could happen in tranquil western Maryland on the same night without being related, so they set off for the second scene.

And here they’d had a little more luck getting information.

The semi was more than halfway off the road, with the front wheels of the cab in a ditch next to the shoulder. A group of troopers and other law enforcement officers stood around it. Andy didn’t know these men; he visited three or four crime scenes a day, but always inside the borders of D.C. That said, he did know how to talk to cops, so he finessed his way through the tape and introduced himself to a young detective who helpfully mentioned that the troopers had found blood traces on the concrete embankment and on the shoulder of the Beltway. The CSI units were just now setting up lights and starting to crawl around, looking for more samples.

The cabbie sat in an ambulance, although he didn’t seem to be injured. To Catherine’s astonishment Andy finagled his way through troopers to the open back door of the ambulance and asked the witness for a description of the criminal.

The driver was from Mozambique, and his accent was incredibly thick, but he told Andy the man who’d jacked him had been white, in his thirties, carried a black pistol, and had driven off to the west.

Andy wrote the cabbie’s name down, making him spell it out slowly and carefully, and then he made his way over to the driver of the semi, who had finished giving a statement to the police and was now waiting for his company to send a tow truck. From him Andy got essentially the same description, with the additional information that the man was wearing a red or burgundy cap and a gray jacket. He said the man came down the embankment, stood by the side of the road for a few seconds, and then purposefully leapt in front of the tractor-trailer.

Andy walked back over to Catherine, who had knelt down over a splatter of blood the troopers had already photographed and sampled. He stepped up behind her while she took pictures of the blood with her iPhone. He said, “Both witnesses report one male, thirties, clean-shaven.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Didn’t remember the color of his hair or his height. Apparently the carjacker caused the cab of the semi to skid off the road, and its load blocked the rest of traffic from getting by. When the cab driver stopped his taxi behind the truck the armed assailant showed up at his window.”

Catherine asked, “Did either of them mention the gunman being injured somehow?”

“No.”

She put her phone away and motioned to the red splotches on the side of the highway. “Is that a lot of blood?”

Andy shrugged. “I’ve seen crime scenes with about five hundred times more.”

“Sure,” said Catherine. “But there is more blood over there, and CSI found drops on the pavement on the embankment.”

“Right.”

“And the Babbitt shooting happened a little after eleven.”

“So?”

“So let’s assume the shooter is the same person as the carjacker.”

Andy smiled. “I’d stake my limited reputation on it.”

“Well,” Catherine continued, “I’m trying to picture someone bleeding like this for two hours.”

Andy thought he understood. “You are saying you don’t think the shooter was hurt during the shoot-out in Chevy Chase?”

“What do you think?”

Andy looked at the blood again, both here and on the embankment. “I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes. This isn’t arterial spray, or anything like that, but this guy was most definitely draining blood. You’re right. No way he bled like this for an hour and a half. He’d be dead, or at least unconscious.”

Catherine said, “If neither witness said anything about the man getting hurt here, there must be a third crime scene somewhere, and that’s where he was injured.”

Andy said, “You’re pretty good, Ms. King.”

“I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “But I know where we can go to get them.”

“Where?”

Catherine looked behind Andy, and he turned his head to follow her gaze. There, just climbing out of a black Suburban, were Jordan Mayes and Suzanne Brewer. They both wore black overcoats, and Mayes had two bearded bodyguards with him.

Jordan Mayes flashed his credos to the detective in charge of the carjacking scene and took the man aside. While the two of them stepped off beyond the jackknifed semi, Suzanne Brewer walked over to the truck driver and began talking to him.

“I’ll be damned,” said Shoal. “Are you going to ask them what they’re doing here?”

Catherine said, “We both are. Divide and conquer. I’ll take Mayes.” She started to walk off, then she turned back to Andy. “Don’t mention Brandywine Street. You’re just here because this is a crime, and I’m just here because of the Babbitt killing nearby and his ties to the intelligence community.”

“Got it,” Andy said.

As soon as Suzanne Brewer finished talking to the truck driver, Andy Shoal caught up to her. “Hello? Excuse me.” She stopped and turned, extended a hand. Andy knew she thought he was a detective, and he was about to ruin her night. “Andrew Shoal from the Post. Can I get your name? Do you have a card?”

She pulled her hand away quickly. “No, sorry.”

“Are you law enforcement?”

“Homeland Security,” she said, and she turned away, making a beeline to the police tape around the blood spatter, thinking it would keep Andy back.

“Really? I just assumed you work with Jordan Mayes over there.”

Brewer knelt under the tape, kept walking. After a few seconds she looked back and saw Andy had ducked the tape as well and remained on her heels. She said, “Sorry, I’m involved in an investigation here. Will you excuse me?”

“Any thought this might have something to do with the Babbitt killing on Cedar Parkway?”

“We are looking into—”

“I mean, it would have to, right? You’ve got bloodstains here. There was a lot of shooting at the other scene.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to step on the other side of the tape.” Her eyes flitted around, trying to find an officer close enough to help her.

Andy continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But the weird thing to me is, there is a lot of blood here, especially considering the first event was an hour and a half before the second. No way some guy is going to bleed like that for that long. You have any information about another shooting? Something after Cedar Parkway, and before here?”

Brewer turned away from Andy, looked around at the scene, as if she was considering what the young reporter was saying. After a few moments her head seemed to clear, and she reached out and grabbed a passing state police officer by the arm.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Is this reporter authorized to be inside the police line?”

“No, ma’am.” He squared his shoulders at Andy. “Let’s back it up.”

Andy pulled out a card and pushed it into Suzanne Brewer’s hand. Then he said, “Thanks for talking, Ms. Brewer. I’ve got plenty to run with for now. Call me if you want to talk more.”

Andy turned away, ducked back under the police tape, and headed off to see if Catherine King had gotten any further in her interview.

Jordan Mayes finished with his briefing from the confused detective with a handshake. The man had no idea who Mayes was, but the federal credentials he presented trumped any reticence on the Maryland State officer’s part, so he told the man everything he knew about the scene here.

Mayes turned around to look for Brewer in the large group of men and women working the scene here, but the first person he recognized was Catherine King from the Washington Post. He didn’t know her personally, but he read her column and saw her on TV from time to time. He had a vague memory of King being pointed out to him at a cafeteria in the Green Zone in Baghdad years before, and he was introduced to her briefly in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that had been turned into a coalition command center.

He didn’t have a clue what she was doing standing under an overpass at three thirty in the morning.

“Mr. Mayes? Catherine King, Washington Post.”

Mayes’s defenses fired into high gear, but he was polite. “Ms. King? How are you?”

They shook hands.

“Please call me Catherine.”

Jordan Mayes had two bodyguards within arm’s reach, but they didn’t have any clue that this small woman in an overcoat was a threat to his mission. Mayes was stuck talking to her, for a few seconds at least. “Sorry, I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Wondering if you can tell me if you think this carjacking is related to the Babbitt murder.”

“Too early to say. I was on my way there, and came over here, just out of curiosity. What brings you out tonight?”

“Same thing, I guess. I’d love to talk to you, off the record, of course. Can you tell me if you think Babbitt’s murder was related to the work he did with CIA?”

Jordan Mayes frowned. “I think you should talk with the Maryland State Police. I can’t possibly give you anything more than what they have. If you’ll excuse me, that’s all I really have time for right now.”

Mayes felt a muscle in his left eye twitch, and he damned the movement.

Catherine saw Mayes’s immediate discomfort, and she hesitated, unsure just how much she wanted to turn up the heat. Quickly she decided to go for broke. “I noticed you arrived with Suzanne Brewer. She is responsible for protecting CIA personnel domestically, isn’t she? Obviously you must have concerns about Babbitt’s killer targeting Agency assets.”

Mayes held up his hands in surrender. “That’s a lot of speculation there, Ms. King. Your readers would probably appreciate facts, not conjecture. Like I said, talk to the police.”

Now she decided to drop the bomb. “Well, I would, but I doubt the Maryland police would have much information about that double homicide in Ward Eight the other night. Are you investigating the possibility of a connection to these crime scenes?”

“Ward Eight? I’m not sure I know what you are referring to.”

Mayes was a good liar, but Catherine knew he would be.

“Washington Highlands. Saturday night. Brandywine Street.” She smiled. “You know the one.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. King, I’ll have to break this off right there. If you want you can call Media Relations and they—”

“The Agency’s media people won’t be able to help me on my story. I am aware that you and Ms. Brewer went to the Brandywine Street crime scene the other evening, so I am speculating you had credible intelligence that event was related to a threat on Agency personnel. Then tonight, Babbitt is killed. He was closely affiliated with CIA. You are Clandestine Service, so I’m not sure what your interest in this is, but—”

Mayes turned and began walking back to the Suburban. His security men, late to recognize their principal’s discomfort, began moving between Mayes and the middle-aged woman following him.

Catherine backed off with a pleasant “Good night, Mr. Mayes.”

She received no reply.

Andy and Catherine found each other in the crazed lights of the crime scene a minute later.

Andy wore an expression of frustration. “I didn’t get a thing out of her.”

Catherine smiled, satisfied. “I struck out, too, but I don’t care. Most importantly, we shook the trees a little. I’ll reach out to Mayes in the morning, ask for a meeting on background with him and Carmichael, and helpfully suggest I might just go to the director’s office if I don’t get anything from them.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Carmichael doesn’t like the director. He doesn’t like any director. He resents any oversight. My guess is the director is unaware Clandestine Service leadership is hanging out with the Maryland State Police.

“I surprised Mayes tonight with what I knew, I could see that. They are going to have to come up with some sort of story for me. It won’t be the truth, but they think it will slow me down.”

“But it won’t?”

“No. Whatever direction they try to send me off in will be a feint, but it will show me to look in another direction. You and I need to keep pounding the pavement on this. It’s just getting good.”

Andy and Catherine began climbing back up the embankment to their car.

Andy said, “I need to file a story, you know. I’m not an investigative reporter. My editor wants the news, and he wants it now.”

Catherine said, “File what you know, but not what you suspect. Don’t mention CIA being here at all, but mention Babbitt’s ties to the IC.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry, Andy. When I file a story, we’ll do it together. Trust me, it will be worth the wait.”

Andy smiled as he climbed.