The Serpent's Kiss

11

Jill drove and talked, filling Derek in. “Those first fifteen names,” she said. “There were two of them that got flagged big-time.”

“Flagged how?” Derek drummed his fingers on the arm rest, a bundle of nervous energy, impatience oozing from every pore.

Jill felt the same way, but hid it better. They were stuck. Closing traffic for a block around the hospital was creating an incredible kind of gridlock. The New Center Area was one of the healthier areas in the city, and it was a nexus for several major roadways — the Lodge, West Grand Boulevard, Pallister, I-94, Woodward Avenue. She had gotten away from the initial crime scene, but was now sitting bumper to bumper on West Grand Boulevard in front of the Fisher Building. She just needed to make it to either Second or Woodward, but they weren’t going anywhere.

“I ran all the names through our database.”

“FBI?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “That’s who I am, right? FBI. Anyway, I ran those fifteen names, not expecting anything. But two names got flagged.”

“Which ones?” He held the lists in his hands, flipping through them to find the first one with fifteen names.

“John Simmons and Bradley Beales.”

“Okay,” he said, finding their names. He compared their names to the sketch of where the bodies lay. “They were sitting together, a group of nine. Right at ground zero. In fact, it looks like they were sitting opposite each other. What’s so special about these guys?”

“Beales first,” she said, pointing to her laptop. “He got flagged by the CIA.”

Derek snapped open the laptop, trying to ignore the fact they might as well have stayed where they were, the progress they were making. People were getting impatient, honking their horns and yelling. Nobody was moving.

“Why?”

“Well,” said Jill, scowling out the windshield. “First, he took a trip to Pakistan this summer.”

“Okay. So he’s got bad judgement. Pakistan stucks. It’s not my idea of Vacation Land, but some people like hostile hell holes. Why’s the CIA in an uproar?”

“You see, Beales is a linguist at Wayne State University. He was taking the trip to Pakistan, apparently, to practice his new language, which is Urdu.”

“Urdu.”

“Right. Primary language of Pakistan. The other thing is, you see, Beales spoke a whole bunch of languages — Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Arabic, whatever the Turks speak. Turkish, I suppose. He worked for the CIA translating documents.”

“But not at Langley.”

“I asked. Apparently not. But he has a very high clearance and he’s definitely on the payroll. His being killed in a terrorist attack rings a few bells in Washington.”

“I bet.” Derek thought about. Not only had Beales been on the payroll of the CIA, he was an expert in the languages an awful lot of foreign terrorists — the Muslim extremists, anyway — spoke. It was a nexus of some sort and it made his spider-sense tingle.

“Who’s the other guy? John Simmons.”

“Simmons is at the Wayne State University Department of Public Health. He’s also Associate Director of the Wayne State Center for Biological & Chemical Terrorism Research.”

Derek focused his entire attention on her now. “Which is what?”

Since they weren’t going anywhere anyway, she took her eyes off the road and turned to him. “Sort of a think tank. You know since 9/11 there’s been so much money being thrown around that a lot of universities got in on the act, and set up these terrorism centers. They’re generally run by people who know a lot about different aspects of terrorism — public health, emergency medicine, sociology, epidemiology. So they work cooperatively with various universities and keep tabs on what’s going on with the government and try to stay on top of things. It’s what academics do, right?”

“I suppose. Is Beales involved with the—”

”CBCTR. Maybe. It’s not clear. But Simmons definitely is.”

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He sank lower into his seat, knee jiggling the laptop. He hadn’t bothered to turn it on yet.

Jill nodded. “And I think we need to get over to Wayne and track down the offices of the CBCTR, if there is such a thing, and find out a lot more about John Simmons and Brad Beales. But we’re stuck in traffic.”

“You got a bubble?”

“Yes, but I don’t think—”

Derek angled his way out of the car. He stuck his head back in the window. “Put it on.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get traffic moving.”

He took his Colt out of his holster and held it with his right hand, and had his ID from the Department of Homeland Security in his left. He strode up to the car ahead of them and tapped the gun on the window, holding the badge up. The driver of the GMC Jimmy’s eyes grew as big and round as jawbreakers, and he cracked his window. “What?”

“You need to move over. We need to get past you.”

The driver, a sweating African-American in white dress shirt and dark tie, said, “Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

“Up on the damned sidewalk,” Derek said. “I don’t really care. But you move the fuck over, got me?”

The driver stared, then began to nudge his Jimmy over a bit more, as close as he could safely get to the car parked at the curb. Behind him, Jill had put the siren and bubble on her car and kicked them on.

There wasn’t room.

Derek frowned, then gestured for the driver to get out.

“What?”

“Get out, please.”

Slowly the driver complied.

Derek took his place, backed up the Jimmy as far as it would go, then shifted into gear and floored it. With a huge crunch the Jimmy slammed into the Buick Regal parked at the curb. Downshifting, he kept going until there was space to slip through. He forced the Jimmy up onto the sidewalk, then backed it up. He waved Jill to move her car up onto the sidewalk.

When she had the car up on the sidewalk, he slipped in beside her. “Let’s go,” he said.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.

“Hurry up. You think some of these people won’t start driving down the sidewalk now that we’ve given them the idea? Go!”

Thinking that when Matt Gray heard about this she could kiss her government pension and benefits goodbye, she began driving west down the sidewalk of West Grand Boulevard. In her rearview mirror she saw three cars follow her lead. Damn, she thought. He was right.