Black Friday

CHAPTER 72

Something nagged at Maggie ever since they'd left Minneapolis. She couldn't put her finger on it. Even Patrick's charm and boyish naivety couldn't distract her. She was pleased that he wanted to move their relationship beyond the barriers they had imposed, though both of them seemed to tiptoe around each other. He was a good kid, smart, kind and self-reliant. But she knew he had no idea what he was getting himself into. His adventure over the last day may have left him feeling invincible. But tracking professional killers was something that should be left to the professionals.

She'd already talked to Charlie Wurth about how they could utilize Patrick at Sky Harbor, but only at the lowest level of risk. She wanted him in her sights at all times. All of them would be connected with a wireless communication system. Not two-way radios that could be tapped into, but something limited only to their task force. They'd all wear Kevlar vests under their traveling clothes. And GPS tracking systems. She tried to put in place as many precautions as possible, but she knew if Patrick ended up getting hurt she'd never forgive herself.

She glanced at Nick poring over the maps with Wurth in the back of the plane. How could he believe she didn't trust him? That she'd lied to him? Who was she fooling? As soon as she had seen him sitting at the controls in front of the surveillance monitors and knew he was the investigator for the security company, she didn't trust his judgment. Whatever chemistry existed between them didn't seem to run deep enough to include trust and loyalty.

She had almost let herself get lost in their kiss, lost in Nick Morrelli's charm. It felt so right at the time, but there had to be something more, an anchor more solid than chemistry. Or was it simply her? Would she ever be able to trust a man enough to let him into her life? Had she not learned anything in the last two months?

Before boarding she had checked her voice messages. There was an early-morning one from Ben. He joked about her leaping over cars, said he was worried about her and to call when she got the opportunity. He didn't sound like a doctor simply worried about a patient. Outside of Gwen and her partner, R.J. Tully, she wasn't used to having someone worry about her. She wasn't used to having someone want to take care of her. She wasn't sure how she felt about it.

Suddenly she realized what was nagging her. It wasn't Patrick or Nick or even Ben. It was something A.D. Kunze had said earlier. Why couldn't she put her finger on it? She'd read a good deal of the debriefing file before realizing it was a debriefing of Special Agent Raymond Kunze. He'd failed to mention that not only had he conducted some of the early witness interviews, he was also one of the first agents on the scene.

She glanced over at him. He was stretched out and sleeping, a blanket pulled up to his chin. Fourteen years ago Kunze would have been about her age, an experienced agent who had probably already seen his share of the horrors people could do to each other. But nothing prepares you for mass murder.

During their trip from D.C. yesterday he had mentioned Oklahoma City. He'd come to this scene at the personal request of the Minnesota governor and the state's senior senator and he'd even brought along a profiler to connect the dots. For someone who, after fourteen years, still believed that John Doe #2 assisted Timothy McVeigh and then disappeared into the Oklahoma City landscape, Kunze had been anxious to wrap up the mall bombing in a neat, simple package. Had he purposely tried to sway the investigation in the wrong direction by insisting they consider Citizens for American Pride, a fringe, white supremacist group? A group that had never perpetrated violence in the past. Had Kunze already known about Henry Lee's secret group? Or suspected that it existed?

Maggie pulled her laptop case out from under her seat and started rifling through the contents. She pulled out the file folder she'd received on their flight from D.C. Inside were the warnings or what Kunze and Senator Foster had considered warnings. The copies of memorandums were poor quality. They mentioned phone calls and e-mails, but there were no transcripts of the calls, no copies of the e-mails. The memorandums talked about vague warnings but went into great detail about the group called Citizens for American Pride, CAP for short. What Maggie was most interested in, was where the warnings had been sent. Who received the e-mails and phone calls? Why had Kunze been so convinced the group was responsible?

Finally on the last page, toward the bottom, there was a brief note, almost a footnote: "Approximate times of e-mails and phone calls not recorded by Senator Foster's staff."

So it had been the senator who had received the warnings.

Maggie slumped down in the leather chair, tapping the corner of the file folder against the chair arm. It was exhausting trying to figure out any of this. Henry Lee had told her that Citizens for American Pride was a smokescreen, a distraction. But Kunze still believed the group might be involved. He'd even suggested they may have been used.

There were a lot of things about this case that didn't add up, no matter how hard she tried to look for the obvious. Smokescreens, kidnapping, hired bombers and secret organizations.

Kunze had mentioned Occam's razor and now Maggie remembered another adage: Don't speculate about hypothetical components. The simplest answer was usually the correct one. Was Phoenix the simplest answer or mere speculation? Was it possible that they were headed to the wrong airport? Could the Project Manager have chosen Las Vegas?

She shifted in her captain's chair, sank the back of her head into the soft leather and closed her eyes. One thing A.D. Kunze didn't quite understand and William of Occam would never have considered or included in his principle was exactly what Maggie counted on—gut instinct. She'd bet her life on it any day of the week and hopefully she could count on it one more time.