Detective Cross

Chapter 22

Two days passed without a call from the bomber.

The deadline for the veterans’ appropriations bill loomed, with no sign that the IEDs on the National Mall were having an effect on Congressional gridlock. Senators on both sides of the aisle continued to maintain their support of veterans yet fight every effort to get the spending bill to the President’s desk.

I’d told Mahoney and Bree about Kate Williams’s theory that the bomber was using the DC Circulator, and they’d given it enough credence to have agents and detectives interview the route’s drivers.

None of the drivers had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Then again, it was cherry blossom season. Even with the bombings and the threats, the Circulator continued to be packed with tourists.

In a meeting at FBI headquarters that Wednesday morning, Mahoney typed on his laptop, and said, “My agent missed it the first two times through, but he may have found something in the security video shot inside Union Station the night before the explosion. Look for the garbage can at center right.”

The screen at the far end of the conference room lit and showed forty, maybe fifty people walking on platform four alongside an Amtrak train. The garbage can was blocked from view as passengers moved toward the last few cars.

“Any one of them could have planted it,” Bree said when the footage stopped with the platform clear. “And there had to be other trains that used that platform earlier.”

Mahoney said, “True, but watch the sequence again.”

He backed the video up twenty-five seconds, saying, “Look for the one in the black hoodie carrying the book bag.”

Bree and I studied the crowd, seeing several weary men and women in business suits, K Street — types working late, carrying briefcases and trudging along. Behind them walked a person of medium build, likely a male, wearing a black hoodie that was up, casting the face in shadows. His shoulders were hunched forward, his head down and turned, as if he knew the position of the cameras.

“Watch for the moment John Doe and the people in front and behind him go by the trash receptacle,” Mahoney said.

It took them no more than two seconds to go by the trash bag, and I didn’t catch what Mahoney was talking about. But Bree did.

“We can’t see his left arm, but his shoulder moved, and there was a flash of yellow near the mouth of the trash can.”

“Exactly,” Mahoney said. He backed it up, froze the tape on that moment, and magnified the screen so we could see exactly what was being junked.

“Popeye’s chicken?” I said.

“A take-out box for a five-piece dinner assortment,” Mahoney said.

“Okay?” Bree said.

“Now look at this footage from eleven minutes earlier.”

The screen jumped and showed the same person, wearing jeans and black shoes, hoodie up, face blocked from view, standing near some lockers, and a trash can. He was eating a drumstick from a yellow Popeye’s box. He finished it, put the bone in the box, and then walked away when the Acela to Boston was called for boarding.

“That’s our bomber,” I said. “He could have trashed the box right there.”

“Exactly,” Mahoney said. “Why wait?”

Bree’s phone and my phone buzzed almost simultaneously. I looked down at the text, and jumped to my feet. Bree did the same.

“What’s going on?” Mahoney said.

“Someone called in a bomb threat to Jannie’s high school,” I said. Ignoring the fact that I was suspended from the force, I followed Bree to her squad car. We raced north through the city, sirens and lights flashing, to Benjamin Banneker Academic High School. We stopped at a patrol car blocking access to Sherman Avenue and Euclid Streets.

It was ten in the morning, almost hot, and though they were well removed from school property, the kids gathered on sidewalks and lawns looked anxious.

“Everyone’s out?” Bree asked the principal, Sheila Jones, a woman we both liked and respected.

Jones nodded. “They know the drill. This has happened before, Chief Stone.”

“Bomb scares?” I said.

“It’s usually a student or a friend of a student who’s behind on their studying before a big test. At least that’s my theory, because nothing ever comes of it.”

“Or hasn’t yet,” Bree said. I scanned the crowd of students for Jannie.

“Were there big tests coming up?” I said.

Jones frowned. “Not schoolwide tests. They just finished midterms.”

“Dad?”

I turned to find Jannie had come up behind us. Looking very upset, she threw her arms around me and hugged tight.

“You okay, baby?”

She looked at me, shaking her head, on the verge of tears. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“The threat, Dad. It was called in to me.”