Call to Treason

NINE

It was one of those days. A day when Darrell McCaskey was working for everyone but his employer.

When McCaskey worked for the FBI, the agents and field directors called things like this tactical exchange activities. TEA time was when operatives for one law enforcement agency or intelligence group were loaned to another organization. Sometimes it was an official and open-ended seconding, such as General Rodgers being assigned to Op-Center. More often than not, it was unofficial, for a day or two, such as Darrell giving a hand to the postal police.

Or being asked just a few hours later to help Scotland Yard investigate the sudden death of William Wilson. Detective Superintendent George Daily, of the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Division, had been asked by the assistant commissioner to rule out the possibility of any “mischief.” McCaskey and the fifty-seven-year-old Daily had worked together ten years before on an international investigation of the abduction of Chinese-American and Hong Kong women. They were being taken to China to help populate a generation that had been gutted by strict birth control policies. Beijing began to worry that there would not be enough children to staff the military and workforce in the twenty-first century. The ring was broken, though the government officials were never punished.

“I’m sure the D.C. medical examiner knows how to do her job,” McCaskey told his old acquaintance.

“No doubt,” Daily replied. “But questions are already being asked, given Mr. Wilson’s standing. The AC would feel very much better if someone with experience in criminal matters had a look.”

“Do you have information that Mr. Wilson was the target of any particular group?” McCaskey asked.

“There is no such indication whatsoever.”

“So this is a cosmetic application,” McCaskey said.

“Hopefully, yes,” Daily replied. “None of us wants to find evidence of criminal activity in this matter.”

McCaskey looked at his watch. “Tell you what, George. I’ll make some calls and get myself invited over this morning. Do you want me to call you at home when I’m finished there?”

“Please,” Daily said.

“Same number in Kensington?”

“What was it your Western cavalry used to say? They would not be back ‘until the enemy is captured or destroyed. ’ I’ll be here until the cavalry drags me away or my wife tosses me out.”

McCaskey laughed. He enjoyed Daily. The man took his cases seriously, but never himself. McCaskey also envied the detective’s relationship with his wife. When they were working in London, Lucy Daily was openly proud of the work her husband was doing. A childhood survivor of the blitz, Mrs. Daily was a strong supporter of law and those who maintained it.

McCaskey hung up, then called his contact at the FBI, Assistant Director Braden, to get him into the coroner’s office. Braden understood the drill and arranged for McCaskey to meet with the medical examiner. The Bureau had a lot of clout with other local offices and set up a meeting for 12:30. McCaskey left his office at once. On the way out, he saw Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers talking outside Rodgers’s office. Herbert looked uncharacteristically sullen. The intelligence chief had lost his wife and the use of his legs in the Beirut embassy bombing in 1983. Tucked in a high-tech wheelchair, Herbert did everything with passion. He laughed hard, fought doggedly, took field assignments whenever possible, and had an explosive lack of patience for bullshit. To see him this quiet was disconcerting.

“Good morning,” McCaskey said as he passed.

Herbert’s back was to McCaskey. The intelligence chief grunted loudly but did not turn.

McCaskey stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“Obviously, you didn’t hear,” Herbert said. His voice was a gloomy monotone. “Mike Rodgers got canned.”

McCaskey’s eyes shifted to the officer. “For what reason?”

“I’m budgetary fat,” Rodgers said.

“You’re saying that Paul signed off on that?” McCaskey asked.

“He signed off on it and delivered the message personally, without offering to resign in protest,” Herbert said.

“That would not have accomplished anything,” Rodgers said.

“It would have made me respect him more,” Herbert replied.

“It also would have been easier,” McCaskey pointed out.

Herbert wheeled around. “Are you sticking up for him?”

“I didn’t realize we were taking sides,” McCaskey said.

“We’re not,” Rodgers said with finality.

Herbert continued to brood.

“It may be a stupid question, Mike, but how are you with this?” McCaskey asked.

“I’m a soldier,” he said. “I go where I’m told.”

That was what McCaskey had expected Rodgers to say. The general let you know what he was thinking. But with rare exception, he did not let you know what he was feeling.

“Will you stay with the army?” McCaskey asked.

“I don’t know,” Rodgers said.

“Jesus!” Herbert said. He was no longer brooding. “I can’t believe we’re hanging here, calmly discussing the screwing of a friend and coworker.”

“We’re not,” McCaskey said. “We’re talking about his plans.”

“Darrell, the man has no plans; he was just fired,” Herbert said. “As for you, you’re a company boy, you’ve always been a company boy, and you’ll always be a company boy.” Herbert pushed on the hard-rubber wheels of his chair and turned. “You may be next. You need to grow a pair, my friend,” the intelligence chief added as he maneuvered around McCaskey.

“Really?” The former FBI agent dropped a strong hand on Herbert’s shoulder. He gripped it hard and stopped the intelligence chief from leaving. “Yeah, I’m a team player. Always have been, always will be. Battles are won by artillery working in tandem, not by loose cannons.”

“What is that, a quote from the FBI manual?”

“No,” McCaskey replied evenly. If they both got angry, this would get ugly. “That’s a personal observation from twenty years of stakeouts, undercover stings, field work, and saving the asses of rogue warriors who thought they could handle entire operations by themselves.”

Herbert thought for a moment. “Okay. I deserved that. Now, take your hand off my shoulder before I go rogue warrior on it.”

There was a disturbing absence of levity in Herbert’s voice. He knew he had been the target of McCaskey’s remark and did not like it. McCaskey let go and stepped to one side. Herbert wheeled away. McCaskey would try to talk to him when he got back. Herbert’s temper had a way of subsiding as quickly as it flared.

Other Op-Center personnel had maintained a discreet distance from the three men. They moved through the corridors in silence, their eyes down or facing straight ahead. But this was an intelligence-gathering organization with sharp political hearing. The employees did not miss much.

“Sorry about that, Darrell,” Rodgers said. “Bob’s angry.”

“He’s Bob,” McCaskey replied.

“True.”

“Look, you’ve got things to do, and I’ve got to be somewhere,” McCaskey said. “Let me know when you’re free for a beer.”

“The end of the week should work.”

“Sounds good,” McCaskey said and shook Rodgers’s hand. It seemed a remarkably anticlimactic gesture after all these years and all they had shared. But this was not the time or place for good-byes.

McCaskey hurried down the corridor to the elevator. He got in his car and switched on the new FIAT device, the Federal Intelligence Activity Transponder. It was a chip built into his watch and activated by pulling the stem and twisting it clockwise. The signal was monitored by all mobile metropolitan and state police units. It was basically a license to speed or leave the scene of an accident. It told the authorities that the car was on time-sensitive government business and could not be stopped. The FIATs were introduced two years before so that unmarked Homeland Security officials would not be stopped or detained. Though McCaskey was not on a high-priority mission, Scotland Yard was an important ally. He wanted to get them what they needed as quickly as possible.

Wilson’s body had been taken to the Georgetown University Medical Center on Reservoir Road. That was where the medical officer was conducting autopsies while the coroner’s office was being modernized. McCaskey went downstairs to look at the body with Dr. Minnie Hennepin. The middle-aged woman had red hair and freckles. She was wearing a sharply pressed lab coat.

“I guess this is what the Feds refer to as ‘cover your ass,’ ” the slender woman said as they walked down the concrete stairs.

“There’s a little of that in everything we do,” McCaskey admitted.

“May I ask why Scotland Yard did not simply send over one of their own investigators?”

“The press would have been all over that,” McCaskey said. “It would be positioned as suggesting a suspicion of wrongdoing. British authorities want to put their minds at ease and also be able to tell Wilson’s shareholders that someone with criminal investigation experience had a look at the body.”

“You understand, Mr. McCaskey, that there was no evidence of lacerations or contusions other than what I would characterize as the natural result of an exuberant sexual encounter. We also did a very thorough toxicological examination. I’m not sure what’s left.”

“You checked for every chemical that could produce results consistent with natural organic failure?” McCaskey asked.

“Everything from formaldehyde to pancuronium bromide,” Dr. Hennepin said. “We found nothing.”

“Some of those chemicals dissipate very quickly.”

“That’s true, Mr. McCaskey. But they would have to be of very low dosage and injected relatively near to the heart in order to be potent,” the doctor said. “I did the pathology for that area of the body, looking for evidence of hypodermic trauma. There was none.”

“In the armpit?” McCaskey asked.

“Yes. I also checked the femoral artery, since that would be a rapid delivery system for chemicals.”

“Well, I’ll have a look at the body anyway,” McCaskey said. “You never know what will turn up.”

“Frankly, I’ll be interested to see a nonmedical approach to a cadaver,” the doctor admitted. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”

“I’ve sent a few people to the morgue but never had a look at them after they’ve made the trip.”

They reached the basement, and she turned on the light. The morgue was smaller than McCaskey had imagined, about the size of a bedroom. There were six stainless steel coolers on one wall in two rows of three. Cases filled with chemicals and equipment stood against the adjoining walls, and a lab table with a deep sink and a computer sat along the fourth wall beside the stairwell. Three autopsy tables filled the center of the room, each beneath a low-hanging fluorescent light.

“Do you want him out of the cooler?” the woman asked.

“That won’t be necessary,” McCaskey said. “Do you have a light we can bring over?”

“Yes,” she said.

McCaskey had been around death before. Too much, in fact. But that had been in shoot-outs or entering a drug den when someone had just ODed. However sad, however tragic, there was drama in the exit. It was the last act of a life. The exchange with Dr. Hennepin had been casual, as if they were deciding what to do with refrigerated leftovers. In fact, they were. There were no pyrotechnic or emotional fireworks, no memorable or even unmemorable gestures. Just the muted echo of their footsteps and low voices, and their curiosity, which hung in the air like buzzards.

The doctor pulled the heavy handle on cooler number four. Billionaire Wilson was not even in number one. Leftovers and one notch below the bronze. The morgue was one hell of an equalizer.

There was a rush of cool air and a smell like raw lamb meat. The body had not yet been embalmed. Dr. Hennepin slid the slab from the cooler. Then she got a workman’s light from one of the cabinets and hung it from the handle of the cooler above. It was not an elegant setup, but it did the job. She also brought over a box of latex gloves. They each donned a pair. Starting at the head, she rolled back the white sheet that covered the body. There was a large Y-shaped incision in the trunk. The area well outside the cut was purple. It shaded to surrounding flesh that was yellowish white. Instead of being sutured, the area had been covered with adhesive tape. The cut had been made through the white tape. After the autopsy was concluded, the wound was closed with a series of clasps built into the tape.

“That’s enough,” McCaskey said when she reached the waist. Since she had already looked at the femoral artery, he was not interested in any region that far from the heart. The first thing he did was look at the eyes.

“A drug might have been applied by eyedropper,” he said. “You often find broken blood vessels from the pressure of holding open the lids.”

“This is a little far from the heart,” the doctor pointed out.

“Yes, but a megadose of coenzyme Q10 could have been given that way—”

“Causing an infarction that would impact the heart quickly and directly,” the medical examiner said.

“And Q10 would not turn up on a routine toxological scan,” McCaskey added.

“How did you find out about the coenzyme?”

“I investigated a doctor who killed a patient with whom he was having an affair,” McCaskey told her. “When we had enough circumstantial evidence, he confessed and told us how he did it. In this case, though, the eyes look normal.”

They did not feel normal, however. The ocular muscles had begun to tighten, setting the eyes stiffly in their sockets. It was like working on a mannequin.

“May I borrow your microlight?” McCaskey asked.

“Yes,” she said, taking the tiny, powerful flashlight from her vest pocket. She handed it to him.

McCaskey angled the head back slightly and shone the light up the nose. The veins of the nasal passage were another area where a killer might have made an injection. The skin did not appear to have been broken.

“Do you need any of the cartilage retracted?” the doctor asked.

“No. There would be a small clot if he had been injected here.”

“And you know that because—?”

“Junkies,” McCaskey said. “There are a number of places they inject themselves so the track marks don’t show.”

“Interesting. I had heard of them using the areas between the fingers and toes,” the doctor said.

“Yes, but law enforcement can see those. That would give us reasonable cause to conduct a search.”

“Fascinating,” the medical examiner said.

McCaskey moved to the mouth. He checked the cheeks. There were no scars, nor any along the gums. Then he checked under the tongue. It was swollen with uncirculated blood. That made the veins underneath it particularly visible. One of them appeared to have a prick mark.

“Look,” McCaskey said.

He pinched the tongue between his index finger and thumb and shone the light into the cavity. Dr. Hennepin looked in.

“I see it,” she said.

The medical examiner retrieved a scalpel and a sterile test tube from the autopsy table. She also grabbed a small tape recorder. Narrating her activities for the official autopsy record, she carefully sliced a piece of skin from the area. When she was finished, she clicked off the recorder.

“I’ll get this to the laboratory at once,” she said. “It will be about two hours before I have the results.”

“Thanks. I’m going to keep looking, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” she said. “Just don’t make any incisions.”

McCaskey said he would not.

The doctor went upstairs to arrange for analysis of the tissue. That left McCaskey alone with the cadaver. The former FBI agent found no other marks on the upper half of the body. He covered Wilson with the sheet and returned him to the cooler. He closed the door.

Wilson was not doing drugs. They would have shown up on the initial lab report. So would injections of insulin or some other medication. Unless the man had nicked himself on a fish bone at the party, this probably meant that someone stuck him under the tongue.

If William Wilson had been murdered, Washington would be turned into a pop-culture Dallas with public and private investigations and endless conspiracy scenarios about who killed the Internet tycoon.

The medical examiner returned. She took McCaskey’s cell phone number as well as his office number and promised to call as soon as she heard something. He thanked her for her help and asked for her complete discretion.

“The autopsy results will be sealed,” she said, “though in my experience that’s as good as saying we have something to hide.”

“In this instance, we may,” McCaskey remarked.

As he left the medical center, McCaskey found something ironic in how this had unfolded. Something that even Bob Herbert might find amusing.

That for a few hours at least, the quintessential team player would be working on this case alone.