Chapter Forty-nine

When Dana got home, she found copies of the Washington Post piled up on her doorstep. She dropped them on the kitchen table with the mail. Then she went to the bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and took a shower. Hot water pounded her body. She luxuriated in the steamy confines of the stall until she began to feel like a prune.

Dana dried off, dressed in sweats, and went back to the kitchen. She poured a mug of coffee and checked her answering machine, smiling for the first time in days when she heard Jake tell her he was headed home. She missed him terribly, and she had worried about him constantly since he’d left for Afghanistan.

Dana was about to look at her mail when she remembered the idea that had occurred to her just before her release. She looked up the number for Ben Mallory, Bobby Schatz’s investigator.

“Mr. Mallory, thanks for taking my call,” Dana said when she was put through. “My name is Jaime Pavel. I’m a reporter with the Post, and I’m researching an article about the way people who lost relatives in the Twin Towers on 9/11 are coping, years after the disaster.”

There was dead air for a second. When Mallory spoke, he sounded confused.

“Why are you calling me, Miss Pavel?”

“I was led to believe that you had a brother who was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11.”

“You’ve been misinformed,” Mallory said. “My brother manages a Walmart in Kansas.”

Dana apologized for taking up the investigator’s time and ended the call. She looked at the clock. It was the middle of the afternoon. Ginny was probably still at the DOJ. They needed to speak, but Dana didn’t want to call her at Justice, so she decided to wait and call after Ginny got home.

Dana shuffled through her mail before opening that day’s edition of the Post. The headline TERROR SUSPECT MURDERED jumped out at her.

According to the article, the body of Ronald Tolliver had been discovered by a jogger on a footpath bordering the C amp;O Canal. He had been shot, and his wallet was missing. Robbery was the presumed motive. Because there was no immediate way to identify the victim, it wasn’t until late last night that the authorities had discovered that the dead man had been arrested in connection with the attempted bombing at FedEx Field and released because of lack of evidence.

Dana wasn’t surprised that Tolliver was dead, but who had killed him? Was it Imran Afridi or someone working for him? Was it the people who had kidnapped her? What did it matter? Tolliver deserved to die.

What with following Tolliver and then her abduction, Dana had not read a paper or heard news reports for the past three days, so she was shocked when she noticed another front-page article about the murders at Senator Jack Carson’s estate. The story said that United States Senator Jack Carson, Carson’s chief of staff Lucas Sharp, and Brad Miller, a legislative assistant, had been attacked by burglars in Carson’s home. Dana’s jaw dropped when she read that Brad and the senator had been rescued by escaped serial killer Clarence Little, who had killed the three burglars before calling 911. Lucas Sharp had died during the encounter, but it was not clear who had killed him.

Dana was thoroughly confused. Why had Little left Brad and the senator alive? Hadn’t Little killed Jessica Koshani and Dorothy Crispin to terrorize Brad or the senator or both? Dana grabbed the phone and punched in Brad and Ginny’s number. The answering machine told her to leave a message, and she told Ginny or Brad to call her. She was about to hang up when Ginny came on the line.

“Dana, it’s me. The press has been driving us crazy, so we’re screening our calls.”

“Is Brad okay?”

“Not really. He’s out of a job, for starters, and he’s also the star witness for the prosecution in the murder and treason cases against Jack Carson.”

“Carson is accused of murder and treason?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I’ve been out of touch, and I just found out what happened.”

“Where have you been? This has been the lead news story for the past two days.”

Dana ignored Ginny’s question. “Is Brad with you?” she asked.

“No, he’s at FBI headquarters, giving a statement.”

“Why are you home?”

“Crawford accused me of leaking the transcript, and I’m on administrative leave.”

“We have to talk.”

“About what?”

“Can I come over?” Dana asked, ignoring another question because she didn’t know if someone was listening to the call.

“Don’t. I’m besieged by reporters.”

“I can get into the basement through the back door that opens into the alley behind your apartment building if you open it for me. I’ll call when I’m a block away.”

“T ell me what happened to Brad, and what’s this about Senator Carson committing murder and treason?” Dana asked when they were in the apartment.

“This isn’t public knowledge yet,” Ginny said before relating what Brad had told her.

“Is Carson going to fight the charges?” Dana asked when Ginny was through.

“Who knows, but regardless of how the verdict comes out, Carson is ruined. Little put the DVD on the Internet yesterday evening. I watched a few minutes before turning it off. It’s really gross. If that was me, I’d lock myself in my room and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.

“Now it’s your turn to answer some questions. Why did you want to see me?”

“I followed Ron Tolliver when he left the jail,” Dana said.

Ginny’s eyes widened. “Did you see who killed him?”

“No. I was abducted before I could.”

“Abducted? By who?”

“I don’t know. But I suspect the CIA or Homeland Security. I also think we’ve been used by the same outfit that grabbed me.”

“Used how?”

“Did Crawford act like a complete dick every time you dealt with him?”

“Yeah.”

“He really made you dislike him, right?”

Ginny nodded. Dana switched gears.

“Doesn’t it bother you that you were transferred to the Counterterrorism section of the DOJ when you’d only been at Justice for a short time and have no qualifications to work in that section?”

“It was strange, but a high school graduate would have been overqualified for the work Crawford had me doing.”

“Collating 302s?”

“Yeah.”

“Which put you in a perfect position to discover a transcript of an illegal recording authorized by someone you’d grown to despise.”

Ginny frowned.

“About the same time you moved to Counterterrorism, Bobby Schatz offered me the position of investigator in the Tolliver case at an obscene rate of pay. Before he made the offer, I had never met the man. And to get me on board, Schatz lied about why he couldn’t use his regular investigator.

“Why was he so desperate to hire me, Ginny? And why did Crawford invite you to sit in on his meeting with Schatz and me? I think Crawford wanted that transcript delivered to the defense team. He knew how honest you are. He knew you were so new to the job that you wouldn’t have formed a hard and fast loyalty to Justice. He also knew that we were good friends.”

“Hold on, Dana. Terry Crawford is in a lot of trouble because of that taping. He could lose his job.”

“But he hasn’t, has he? And I’m betting he won’t.”

“What you’re saying makes no sense. Why would Crawford risk his career to set a terrorist free? And what if I hadn’t given the transcript to you?”

“If you didn’t leak the transcript, I’m betting there was a backup plan. Your other question is harder to answer, but I have a suspicion as to what the answer might be.”

“Let’s hear it,” Ginny said.

“You read the 302s. Why did the plot to blow up FedEx Field fail?”

“The detonators didn’t work, so none of the explosives went off.”

“Did the agents arrest the suicide bombers before they got their trays or when they were in the stands preparing to blow themselves up?”

“They arrested them in the stands.”

“Why did the authorities let the game go on? Why did they let their agents go after the suicide bombers when they would be facing certain death?”

Ginny got it. “They must have known in advance that the bombs wouldn’t go off.”

“Which means that the detonators were meant to fail from the get-go. And that means that the FBI knew about the plot in advance, which means that there was a mole in the terrorist organization.”

“Ron Tolliver?” Ginny said.

“That’s my guess.”

Ginny paused and mentally reviewed everything she’d read about the case.

“Do you know how Tolliver was caught?” Ginny asked.

“No.”

“It was blind luck. One of the suicide bombers had a head for numbers, and he memorized the license plate of Tolliver’s car. That led the FBI to Tolliver’s house. But here’s the weird thing: After he was in custody, Tolliver wasn’t taken to the place they were keeping the other members of the cell. That’s some secret facility. I have no idea where it is. Instead, Tolliver was brought to the DOJ for interrogation. Bobby Schatz would not have been able to get to Tolliver if he was being held at a secret prison, but locking him up at the DOJ makes perfect sense if we were set up.”

“The people running Tolliver had to figure out a way to get rid of the charges so he could get back on the inside of Imran Afridi’s organization,” Dana said. “Schatz never told me who hired him in the middle of the night and told him Tolliver was being held at the DOJ. I’m betting it was someone in the government who knew Tolliver was the mole, and I’m betting the government made a deal with Schatz.”

“The plan to get Tolliver out worked, but they miscalculated, and he was killed,” Ginny said.

Dana sighed. “That’s probably what happened, but we’ll never know the truth unless someone writes about the case in his memoirs.”

“Not necessarily,” Ginny said. “Let’s see what happens to Terry Crawford. If he’s hung out to dry, we’re probably wrong and he taped the attorney-client conference out of zealousness. If good things happen to Counselor Crawford somewhere down the line, we’ll know we’re right.”

Загрузка...