Call to Treason

NINETEEN

Darrell McCaskey was sitting in bed, reading and waiting for Maria to finish taking a shower. His wife had spent most of the day with Ed March, helping him investigate the Malaysian connection. March had taken her to dinner to thank her. McCaskey had been checking on Orr party guests and had been unable to join them.

Maria had just entered the bedroom when the phone beeped. It was Dr. Minnie Hennepin.

“The police are bringing in another apparent hotel homicide,” she told him. “They found the same kind of puncture wound as Mr. Wilson.”

“Who was it?” McCaskey asked as he put his book on the night table. He reached for the TV remote control and put on the local news.

“A Southern businessman. That’s all I heard.”

“Do the police have any information about the killer?”

“Apparently they have no more information than they had on the first one,” she said.

“Doctor, I appreciate the call,” McCaskey said.

Maria lay down beside her husband. He kissed his wife, then cradled her while he checked his cell phone for messages. There were no missed calls. He rang his office phone and found no messages there, either. That was going to make his next step an extremely difficult one.

The death of the businessman, Robert Lawless, was the lead story on the news. They listened to an interview with Lawless’s aide and watched a video shot from the security camera of the woman emerging on the mezzanine. She was careful to hide her face from the camera.

“What does your gut tell you about all this?” McCaskey asked his wife.

“She’s a professional.”

“Yeah. This is not some angry escort turning against men.”

“But what individual would have access to hypodermic needles and drugs?” she asked.

“Potassium chloride is readily available from chemical supply firms, and syringes are easy to come by.”

“Did you learn anything from the party guests?” she asked.

“Unless we’re dealing with a cover-up, all of the women had alibis,” McCaskey said.

The phone rang as they were talking. McCaskey muted the TV and checked the Caller ID. It was Paul Hood.

“I assume you’ve heard,” Hood said.

“Yes,” McCaskey replied.

Maria took the remote and punched up the sound. McCaskey put a finger in his ear so he could hear.

“Not to be cold about it, but how does this impact us?” Hood asked.

“I was just thinking about that, and it looks like a lose-lose-lose situation,” McCaskey said. “The Metro Police have not called to ask for our input. If we force it on them, we’re going to come off as aggressive. If we don’t, we’ll appear weak. If we investigate independently, we’ll seem isolated and high-handed.”

“What if we officially bow out?” Hood asked.

“Bailing is our best option,” McCaskey said. “Scotland Yard will squawk, but it’s unlikely anyone will hear. The trick is what spin do we put on it?”

Maria poked his side. “You can’t leave.”

McCaskey frowned.

“You stand a better chance of finding her than the police,” Maria went on.

“Hold on, Paul,” McCaskey said. He turned to his wife. “Why do you think we can find her?”

“She is not a killer. She is an assassin.”

“Why would an assassin go after a successful but relatively unimportant businessman like Lawless?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“I don’t follow.”

“Unlike the death of William Wilson, this murder was an afterthought,” Maria said. “Someone wanted Wilson out of the way, so they hired a very skilled individual who made it look as if he had died of natural causes. They did not want a murder. Otherwise, they could have hired a sniper to shoot him from Lafayette Park. When you destroyed that scenario, they were forced to target someone else, to make the Wilson death seem like the first high-profile strike of a hypodermic serial killer who was chasing down wealthy businessmen. Lawless happened to be the man she picked.”

“What makes you think that Lawless was an arbitrary choice?” McCaskey asked his wife.

“Look at the dissimilarities in the approach to the death,” the former Interpol agent told him. “William Wilson had bodyguards. The assassin had to approach him as a lover to get past them and make sure they stayed away. And because she was the lover of a high-profile individual, the hotel staff would have made a point of paying her very little attention. She came to the hotel, they did their business, she left — all of it relatively invisible. Tonight was different. Listen to these interviews,” she said, pointing at the TV. “The woman spoke with another man in the courtyard but never looked up at him. The dead man’s assistant noticed her, but she did not let him see her face. She was being very cautious.”

“Right. She did not want to be identified, because she was waiting to kill him,” her husband said.

“No. After the killing, she got off on the mezzanine,” Maria said. “She had already cased out the hotel, knew how to leave with minimum visibility. Why do that and then go back outside and expose herself to all of this scrutiny? If Lawless had been the intended target all along, she could have posed as his wife or daughter and gotten into the room. She could have ambushed a housekeeper and taken a master key. She could have knocked on his door after he had gone in. Who would not admit a young woman? She could have used a syringe to inject hydrochloric acid into the lock to dissolve it. She took none of those safer routes because our assassin did not know Lawless was going to be her victim. Not until she spoke with him, found out he was successful enough to fit the serial killer motif she — or whoever hired her — had invented, and learned that he was staying in the hotel alone.”

McCaskey was silent while he processed everything his wife had said. “You’re saying that making this appear to be a pattern actually underscores the uniqueness of the first hit,” McCaskey said.

“That is how I see it,” Maria replied.

“It’s possible,” he muttered after a long, long moment. “Dammit, it really is. Brava, my love.”

She smiled at him.

“Paul, did you hear any of that?”

“I did, Darrell, and I’m still processing it,” Hood told him. “But tell Maria ‘well done.’ ”

“Thank you!” she said from under her husband’s arm.

“It sounds like we’re going to have to stay involved with this, then,” Hood said.

“Maybe even deeper than we were before,” McCaskey said.

If Maria had nailed this, they were not looking at a vengeful escort or industrial espionage. They were looking at something strongly reminiscent of what the FBI called an IOS, an improvised operational scenario. One in which the carefully devised plans for a strike team, undercover personnel, or sometimes both had to be quickly and effectively reconfigured because something had gone wrong.

An operation that was traditionally handled by seasoned intelligence personnel.