The Serpent's Kiss

37

Jill Church stood in the hallway outside Rebecca Harrington’s bedroom watching the Ferndale Police Department’s crime scene technician work the room. She wasn’t happy. She had called in a Bureau tech, who hadn’t shown up yet. Trying to control the scene — as Stillwater had suggested — wasn’t really all that easy a thing to do. It wasn’t actually the Bureau’s jurisdiction, though she could argue — and had been arguing — that because this was directly tied into the terrorist attacks that day, it was her jurisdiction. The problem was she couldn’t get corroboration for it. Who was she going to refer the Ferndale cops to? Matt Gray?

“Anything interesting?” she asked the technician, a Latino who looked about twelve-years-old. He’d been introduced as Officer Gomez. He wore a navy blue windbreaker, faded jeans and hiking boots. Wire-rimmed glasses perched on a blunt, broad nose, and his face was pitted with acne scars. Spiky black hair jutted off the top of his head like a hedge.

“Like what?” he asked, crawling around the floor with a pair of tweezers in his hand.

“Physical evidence,” Jill said. “Some indication of who might have done this.” Her money was on the husband, Bill Harrington.

“You mentioned the ex-husband,” Gomez said. “Right?” He looked up at her, light flashing off his glasses.

“Yes.”

Detective Bezinski, standing next to Jill, said, “Don’t get distracted by the case, Joe. Just get the evidence.”

“Where’s the ex-husband live?” Gomez asked.

“Birmingham,” Jill answered.

Bezinski rolled his eyes. “Oh, jeeze. Look, Agent Church. One case at a time, all right? Or Joe’s gonna want to get a warrant for the ex-husband’s house and run that scene and spend the rest of the day comparing his lint collection to try to tie the ex to this scene.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Jill asked.

“Nothing’s wrong with that. But we got a scene here to process first. Let’s do it.”

“We are doing it,” Jill said, exasperated. She was starting to understand Stillwater’s impatience. Homicide cops didn’t spend much time preventing crimes. They came in after someone was already dead and they methodically tried not only to solve the case — if it needed solving — but to build a case to take to court. Unless they were dealing with a serial killer or somebody ready to flee the country, they could take their time.

When you had someone like The Serpent threatening to kill a bunch of people every four hours, you didn’t have time to waste.

“I’m going to look around some more,” Jill said.

“Hey, don’t contaminate anything,” Gomez called.

It was Jill’s turn to roll her eyes. She checked the next bedroom. It was set up as a guest room, a queen-sized bed made up with a blue and maroon-checked comforter, an empty dresser with a few nicknacks scattered across the top, and not much else. On two walls were the kind of paintings bought at starving artist sales that sold by the foot. They were fine, nothing wrong with them, but they lacked some sort of spark that would make them remarkable. One was a seascape. The other a painting of a birch forest along a stream in the winter.

Jill went through the closet and found a few dresses that seemed decidedly unfashionable, a couple pillows and folded blankets. As she’d thought, it was a guest room.

The next bedroom had been converted to a sitting room/office. There was a computer desk, a filing cabinet, a rocking chair and a TV set and portable stereo system. Next to the rocking chair was a basket of yarn, knitting needles and a partially completed sweater. Rebecca Harrington liked to knit to relax, she thought. She wondered why she did it up here instead of the living room, pondering the juxtaposition of the office and the knitting area.

Jill sat down at the computer and punched the power on, waiting for it to boot up. Idly she fingered through the disk holders. Rebecca Harrington apparently was some sort of research coordinator at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute downtown Detroit. All of the disks seemed to be articles related to clinical trials that were ongoing.

Once the Windows desktop appeared, she found the Microsoft Outlook icon and clicked on it. She started with the calendar. Interestingly, Rebecca had planned on being at the Breakfast Club that morning. There it was, listed at 8:00. The rest of the day also listed meetings and deadlines. Looked like Rebecca missed all of them.

Jill’s phone buzzed. She clicked on it. It was Eleanor Mancuso, the Bureau evidence technician she had called. Eleanor sounded breathless. “Jill? It’s Eleanor. I’m turning around. I won’t be in. Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” Jill’s heart sank, thinking The Serpent had struck again.

“There was a big shooting down at Wayne State. They were triangulating the cell signal and it targeted Frank McMillan. Then all hell broke loose and Frank got shot to pieces and a Detroit cop got killed and two others — Detroit Fire Department, I think — got wounded in the crossfire. I’m going back.”

“Eleanor… Frank? Why did it triangulate on Frank?”

“I don’t know,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know. But he’s dead. They’re saying he might have been The Serpent. Can you believe that?”

Jill sat with the phone in her lap, thinking about it. Can you believe that?

Jill had worked closely with Frank McMillan on anti-terror initiatives in Michigan, though not recently. She had largely been side-lined since her abortive sexual harassment suit against Matt Gray. Not sidelined in any way that could be used in a court, as her attorney had told her. Nothing obvious. But moved into liaison roles and support positions, rather than operational or investigative roles. Otherwise, her attorney had said, it was largely a case of his word against hers. The threat of the lawsuit had backed Gray off, but it hadn’t helped her career much.

McMillan would have had the inside knowledge to understand how the various law enforcement groups would interact in this type of a crisis. He would have been able to plot something as elaborate as this.

But she didn’t think he could manufacture sarin gas. Frank had a legal background and a law enforcement background, not a chemistry or science background.

Even assuming he was capable of going bad and committing mass murder, she didn’t think McMillan had the technical expertise. Like most FBI agents, Frank hated terrorists. Like most FBI agents, he had known many people who died in terrorist attacks — at Oklahoma City, at the World Trade Towers, at the Pentagon, at a number of embassies around the world. He didn’t give terrorists noble, but misguided motives. He called them what they were — thugs, murderers and criminals. He had once given a talk on terrorism — at Wayne State, she remembered — on how terrorists could cloak their actions in moral imperatives and reasoning, but that’s all it was. A cloak. Something to mask that they liked violence. They liked chaos.

And he had quoted Lenin: “The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.”

Eleanor had said: Can you believe it?

No, she couldn’t.

Bezinski stuck his head in the door. “Find anything?”

Jill was staring into space, her mind grabbing at an elusive memory, something else Frank McMillan had said in passing.

“What’s wrong?” Bezinski asked.

Jill held up her hand, cocking her head. Thinking. Trying to snag the memory. Bezinski waited patiently.

Suddenly Jill sat upright. “That can’t be a coincidence!” she said.

Bezinski stepped into the room. “I don’t really much believe in coincidences. At least not in a criminal investigation. What’s up?”

Jill jumped to her feet, unsure of what to do next, of where to go.

“What’s going on, Church?”

She looked at Bezinski. He didn’t know about Frank McMillan. He didn’t know about the shooting incident in the city. He didn’t know about the terrorism scenarios that the Special Working Group of the Wayne State University Center for Biological and Chemical Terrorism Research had written.

So he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to connect the dots the way Jill did when she remembered Frank McMillan slipping into his coat about two years ago and saying, “I’m heading over to Wayne. I’m consulting with this Center for Biological and Chemical Terrorism Research group over there.”

“Sounds like fun,” Jill had teased him.

McMillan had shrugged. “They work out scenarios for various attacks and then develop training programs and response plans for public health and emergency medical teams. I go in and tell them how we’d respond in any given situation.”

Bezinski was trying to get her attention. “Agent Church? Jill? What’s going on?”

Jill stared at him. “I’ve… I’ve got to…”

Bezinski waited.

“I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to hook up with…”

Bezinski said, “Who?”

Jill took a deep breath. “This guy from Homeland Security. I think he was on to something. I’ve got to get going.”