The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER EIGHT

Yellow DO-NOT-CROSS tape had been set around the perimeter of the governor’s estate. The Forensics Unit had already staked their claim, combing and sweeping every inch of the interior. Using high-intensity lamps, which passed varying wavelengths and colors of light over all surfaces, the team sought to identify latent friction-ridge prints, which could point out certain types of trace and biological evidence.

Other investigators used mini-vacs, typical hand-held vacuums with sterilized bags, to pick up trace evidence such as dust, dirt and cellular matter. In the governor’s bedroom, a CSI technician was carefully going over the area to acquire possible prints for the VMD, or vacuum-metal deposition device. Unfortunately, in most crime scenes, more than 97 % of all prints were indigenous, 2 % either contaminated or untraceable, and less than 1 % traceable.

When Special Agent Punch Murdock of the president’s Secret Service detail was halted at the entrance door by D.C. Metro, he flashed his credentials and was allowed to pass. He was a man of simian build and pug-like features. His nose angled badly to one side from too many years in the ring, something he never had corrected since it served as a personal badge of honor and exhibited something savage about him. His eyes also appeared wild and untamed, yet they were alert and all-seeing as Murdock absorbed every detail of the governor’s bedroom. He made his way toward a technician who was running a scanner slowly over the surface of a nightstand.

When Murdock spoke, he did so with an inflection acquired from growing up in the mean streets of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. His accent maintained a rough edge that served to intimidate and repel those he encountered rather than to magnetize them. Moving closer to the technician, Murdock leaned forward until he was level with the technician’s ear. “How’s it going, buddy?”

The forensics investigator continued to examine the surface of the nightstand with meticulous study. Beside him, the covers of the governor’s bed were in disarray. “It’s going,” he said.

“Any traces of blood?”

“Not up here.”

“Thanks.”

Murdock exited the room and worked his way through a mass of investigators, some wearing gloves and paper booties, others taking photos from numerous angles and viewpoints. In the kitchen, the body of Darlene Steele lay on the floor in a supine position, the lids of her eyes at half-mast. A medical examiner was inspecting a bloodless hole in the middle of her forehead. In the back of her head, the pared flesh formed a blooming rose petal of pulp and gore. Carefully, the medical examiner picked alien particles from the edges of the wound with tweezers and placed them in a small vial.

A second examiner stood at the Jackson Pollack wall of design making a critical examination of the blood spatter pattern, trying to determine the angle of the shot from the configuration of blood and tissue and errant hairs that had dried on the wall. To the examiner, there was nothing artistic about the killing or the star-like motif that clung to this canvas.

Murdock looked on with detachment. He had seen this many times over his twenty-five years in law enforcement and had steadily learned how to disengage his emotions from the many bloodbaths visited.

A man wearing a gray suit and maroon tie moved next to Murdock with pen and pad in hand, his face having the fresh-scrubbed look of youth, movie star good looks, and frosty blue eyes that absorbed everything with photo-like retention.

“You’re Punch, right? Punch Murdock?”

Murdock stepped away without responding. The last thing he needed right now was some kid latching onto his lapels.

The young man followed, keeping up with Murdock‘s quick pace. “My name’s Melvin Yzerman,” he said.

“Yeah, well, good for you, kid.”

“I’m from the Washington Post.”

Murdock stopped in his tracks. He knew what was coming. “How did you get in here?”

“That’s not important. What is important is a comment from you regarding your team. As chief of the president’s security detail, how do you feel about your team—”

“Okay, you’re out of here.”

“—being killed by terrorist extremists?”

“Go on, get out of here!”

“And as head of the detail, why weren’t you—”

“Are you deaf, kid? Get out of here!”

“—with your team at such a critical moment?”

“Officers!”

“Answer me that, Agent Murdock. Just give me a simple comment.”

Responding to Murdock’s call, two officers from the D.C. Metro Unit entered the room, one with an extended baton in his hand.

“Which one of you D.C. clowns let this idiot from the Post in here?” Murdock’s face was red, the man livid. Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke. “This is a secured area, even from the press! Get this piece of crap out of here and maintain the premises. Nobody in or out unless they’re from county, state, or law enforcement! Got it?”

The officers, galvanized by Murdock’s tone, grabbed the reporter by the back of his arm and began to usher him from the room.

“Murdock!” Yzerman said over his shoulder. “Do you want to make a comment about your team’s inadequate protection of the pope? Any comment at all?”

Murdock stood silent as he watched the officers force the man toward the exit. He weighed the reporter’s question in his mind, the words bearing an uncomfortable heft.

Fighting for calm, Murdock closed his eyes and stood waiting for tranquility to wash over him, for the anger to melt away. He stood in silence, only for Yzerman’s questions to bounce back and strike a chord that would stay with him throughout the day and establish a mood that would remain raw and irritable.

Entering the spacious dining room where the bodies of Agent Cross and the downed terrorists lay, their remains draped with sheets, Murdock examined his surroundings. From the East Wall the gallery of governors stared omnisciently at him. Murdock looked at the oil paintings with a less than appreciative eye, knowing the truth of what they had witnessed would forever remain unspoken. Dismissing the paintings, he turned a keen eye back to the scene.

Tony Denucci was an investigator for the FBI who specialized in kidnappings. As a youth he was tall and broad with strong facial features. Now he was tall and gangly with a face that had grown long and jaded from witnessing too many tragedies. When he walked he did so with a stoop, his body bowing in the shape of a question mark. Over the years he had become nothing more than a husk of his former self.

Murdock clapped his old friend on the back. They had come up together from the academy some twenty-four years ago, each rising from the trenches to become experts in their respective fields. “How you doing, Tony?”

Denucci looked at him with the red, rheumy eyes of an alcoholic. “Hey, Punch.”

“Got anything?”

“Nine dead all together,” he said. “Two cops, four agents, the governor’s wife, and two intruders. You might want to take a look to see who they are.”

Murdock already knew who they were; the whole world did. They were the self-proclaimed warriors from the Soldiers of Islam.

Murdock raised the sheet from the first body, saw it was Cross, and immediately covered him back up. Upon examining the other two, there was no doubt they were of Middle-Eastern descent. He also noticed the ink on their fingertips was still wet. Their prints had already been taken and were now being processed through the FBI’s watch list and Interpol systems. Whoever they were would not remain a mystery for long.

Murdock got to his feet as Denucci continued to offer more information, using his pen as a pointer. “It looks as if the whole detail was taken by surprise,” he told him. “Not a single man’s weapon was drawn, with the exception of that agent lying over there.”

“That would be David Cross. A good man.”

“Other than him, it looks as if they were all killed before they knew it.”

Murdock ambled around the scene with his hands dug deep within the pockets of his overcoat. “Are you doing the Incident Report for Pappandopolous?”

Denucci nodded. “Yeah. And you?”

“The president wants a first-hand account of what happened here. He doesn’t want to wait for the preliminaries.”

Denucci stepped carefully around the bodies and made several notations in his pad. “Sad thing, isn‘t it?”

Murdock agreed.

“What’s even sadder is that we never saw it coming.”

“And there was nobody in the vicinity that saw or heard anything?”

“Nobody.” Denucci pointed his pen at the oil paintings. “It’s too bad they couldn’t tell us anything, huh?”

Murdock just laid a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Look, Tony, if something comes up will you let me know? Give me something to go on?”

“Sure. If something comes up.”

Murdock gave him a wink. “Thanks, buddy. And hey, don’t be a stranger. Let’s go on a booze cruise some time and tell war stories.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Murdock exited the Governor’s Mansion and took stock. Beyond the police tape, the mob of onlookers had grown exponentially since he entered the house. Vans with microwave dishes now lined up by the dozen, the emblems of major networks stenciled on their sides. Newscasters and journalists tried to press their way through the line, their mics held out in a desperate bid to pick up an informative byte from the officers that maintained the perimeter.

Murdock knew the situation was going to demand long hours on little sleep, something his body was no longer equipped for at the age of fifty-four.

For almost twenty-five years he had moved up through the ranks with the same aggression he managed in the ring, with tenacity and posturing. He was finally rewarded with a position in the president’s Secret Security detail in 1990, then became the detail’s chief in 2002.

But with responsibility comes accountability. And when one holds the reins of the team he drives, and if the team should stumble gravely in its efforts, then the accusing finger inevitably points back at the driver. In Murdock’s case, he could already sense the political finger pointing in his direction, identifying him as the party responsible for the death of his team and the kidnapping of the pope.

Reaching inside the inner pocket of his overcoat, he grabbed his pack of smokes, withdrew a cigarette, and smoked it slowly, wondering how long it would take for the ax to fall upon his once illustrious career.