Edge (50 page)

The object of the game is to discover the answer to these three questions:

1st. Who? Which one of the several suspects did it?

2nd. Where?

3rd. How?

—
FROM THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BOARD GAME CLUE

AT 9:00 A.M
.
my protégée and I were sitting in one of my organization's SUVs on a sedate street in Fair Oaks, Virginia, a section of Fairfax.

“And?” I asked Claire duBois, as she was moving her thumb to the
DISCONNECT
button on her BlackBerry. She'd been calling about Ryan Kessler.

“He's doing okay. The doctor said he was stable. I never understood those medical condition terms. Stable. Serious. Critical. They're like the Homeland Security threat warnings. Orange, yellow, green, taupe. Or whatever they are. Is that really helpful? I don't think so. Somebody sits in a room and thinks those up. Our taxpayer dollars.” She tucked her trimmed, shiny brunette strands behind an ear. The gesture was silent; she wasn't wearing the jingling charm bracelet this morning. For safety's sake. Jewelry and tac ops don't mix.

Ryan was in a federal detention hospital. Amanda, Joanne and Maree were tucked away in the new safe house, with Ahmad and the clone who'd collected Amanda last night watching over them.

DuBois and I were on the trail of the primary.

I returned to our surveillance. The houses around us reminded me of Ryan Kessler's place.
About every fifth one was, if not identical, then designed from the same mold. We were staring through bushes at a split-level colonial, on the other side of a dog-park-cum-playground. It was the house of Peter Yu, the part-time professor of computer science at Northern Virginia College and a software designer for Global Software Innovations. The company was headquartered along the Dulles “technology corridor,” which was really just a dozen office buildings on the tollway, housing corporations whose claim to tech fame was mostly that they were listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

I was watching through binoculars, observing some ambiguous movement in the backyard of the house.

I lifted the Motorola and asked Freddy, who was parked nearby, “We ready to move in?”

“I'm not sure what I'm looking at.”

I squinted. “It's him. I'm sure.”

“You're younger than I am, son. The eyes are the first to go. Well, not the first, unfortunately, but pretty close. Hold on, our surveillance boys're calling. . . . Okay, there're two of them at the house.”

“I see the second one,” I told the agent.

“Some muscle, looks like. You in armor?”

I glanced toward Claire duBois's navy blue blazer, specifically her chest. It wasn't the first time, I had to admit, but the circumstances now were such that there was nothing remotely sexual about the look. I was checking that the thick nylon plates Velcroed around her were secure. I knew that my American Body Armor vest was.

“We're good,” I told Freddy.

“All right. Let's go. My guys and gals tell me they have a visual on the evidence. Oh, and the muscle's armed. Autoloader. In a hip holster.”

“We're moving.” I disconnected.

I said to duBois, “You won't need it but keep your jacket unbuttoned.”

“Okay.”

The “it” was her Glock.

In fact, I was
pretty
sure she wouldn't need it. But I remembered the men in the old military facility in Leesburg. I remembered Henry Loving. I knew from my studies—history, not my other degrees—that people can behave unpredictably at desperate times. Besides, even though we believed there were only two individuals here, this entire job had been fraught with surprise.

Our SUV and four other cars accelerated fast and skidded up over the grass on Professor Peter Yu's property, tearing up the lawn and destroying shrubs. I'm told that this dramatic entrance, which you'd think was made up by TV-movie directors, is in fact the most efficient way to approach a suspect. It's all about intimidation.

We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping—the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical officers, who were sprinting into Yu's open garage, brandishing weapons.

“On the ground, FBI! FBI!”

Screaming is standard operating procedure too. Intimidation, again.

In a moment the two men were on their bellies, hands bound behind them with Monadnock
restraints. Other agents entered the house, searched it and then returned, calling, “Clear.”

Claire and I approached the two suspects, now being helped to their feet.

One of the men stared at me with a gaze of disbelief that immediately turned to pure hated. Sandy Alberts, Senator Lionel Stevenson's chief of staff, spat out, “Corte? I . . . Corte?”

His partner, the muscle, was a pro, probably connected with the same outfit as the people Pogue and I had engaged in the facility on Route 15. He simply grimaced and said nothing.

Freddy, the senior official law enforcer among us, said, “Mr. Alberts, you're under arrest for the kidnapping of a Fairfax County resident, Amanda Kessler, yesterday, and conspiracy counts, involving the homicide of a federal agent.”

Alberts gasped. I don't think I'd ever heard anything other than a threatened animal make a noise like that. “But . . .”

Agents searched his partner's slacks and jacket but came up with no ID. “You going to tell me who you are?” Freddy asked him.

The man was completely silent.

The senior agent shrugged. He said to an associate, “We'll get his prints, track him down. Conspiracy for him too. We'll add more goodies later.” Freddy then turned to Alberts, saying, “There'll be state charges too but those are Virginia's. You'll be hearing from the commonwealth's attorney about them.”

A crime scene tech was inventorying the contents of Alberts's shoulder bag, which had been upended on the floor of Yu's garage. I too looked over the stash. Documents and pictures and some
plastic bags that would have physical evidence—probably some strands of Amanda Kessler's hair or something else with her DNA on it. Alberts and his thug had come here to plant the clues to suggest that Professor Yu was the primary who had hired Henry Loving.

“Sandy,” I said. “Senator Stevenson. Let's talk about him for a minute.”

Desperately the aide said, “I don't know what you mean.”

Freddy snorted a laugh.

I said, “We know everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, let's start with: We know that the senator likes lecturing at schools. We know he likes the company of young ladies.”

Alberts's eyes grew wide. Then he recovered and looked down.

I continued, “Sometime in the past year Stevenson met a student after a speaking engagement—at a community college in Northern Virginia. Her name was Susan Markus. He thought she was a college student. But she actually was in high school. Sixteen years old. A classmate of Amanda Kessler's.”

As duBois had pieced things together, it seemed to be the same event that I'd read about in my research on Stevenson: the community college where he'd given his popular “rule of law” speech.

I told Alberts, “Whether he invited her to his office or a motel or the back of his limo, we don't know.”

“Yet,” Freddy added. “We don't know yet.”

“But we're pretty sure there was some . . . inappropriate behavior on the senator's part.”

“That's a lie!” But there was no conviction behind Alberts's protest.

I said, “The senator can't be stupid. He didn't think she was underage. He met her at a community college and he probably assumed she was a student there, not a high school girl. In any case, whatever happened was statutory rape at the minimum. Amanda Kessler was a volunteer at her school's self-harm prevention program. Susan was depressed about what happened and she came in to get some help. Amanda was the girl she talked to. Susan told her she'd been involved with an older man and he was pressuring her not to say anything about the incident. Amanda set Susan up with an adult counselor but before she went to the appointment she killed herself. Amanda took the death hard and planned to devote her blog to the girl's suicide, looking into why she killed herself, what led up to it. She was going to be talking to Susan's friends, her family. It was just a matter of time before Amanda got to the truth.”

“And,” Freddy said, “we're not completely sure that Susan actually did take her own life. She might've been . . . helped.”

Alberts began to speak but then fell silent.

Freddy, better at the dramatics than I, said, “Oh, going to say something about the coroner's report ruling the death a suicide? Going to say you've looked into it? Why would you've done that?”

Still, silence.

I continued, “Your job was to hire somebody like Loving to find out the names of everybody Amanda had talked to about Susan's death. Get all of Amanda's notes, everything. And then kill her too.”

Alberts's shoulders sagged and he glanced around Yu's house.

I gave voice to his thought, which was too incriminating for Alberts to utter. “I know, you thought we were looking at Global Software Innovations and Peter Yu. . . . No, that was just bait to draw you out into the open. I suspected you and the senator but I didn't have any real proof. I made sure you were on the list to get the interagency alert about Global. If you were guilty I figured you'd come here to plant evidence implicating Yu.”

“I'm completely innocent of any wrongdoing. That's all I'll say. I want an attorney.”

“Help us out here, Sandy,” I said in a reasonable voice. “We've got you cold. Come on.” I glanced toward the solid, unsmiling suspect with him. “I know you found
him
and the other mercenaries through your contacts at the Armed Services Committee, right? They put you in touch with Henry Loving. They arranged for the helicopter. And you were desperate to find out what we knew so you came up with the story about the investigation into warrantless taps.”

His eyes swung desperately.

I said, “Don't take the heat for this, Sandy. Work with us. . . . We know you cut your ties to your lobbying outfit before you went to work with Stevenson but they were involved too, weren't they?”

A paltry shake of his head.

“And the political action committee backing Stevenson? They need him to be the darling of the party. They couldn't afford a scandal. Who there—at the PAC—was involved?”

Alberts, near tears, blurted, “Senator Stevenson
is a great man.” The protest was both humorous and remarkably sad. “He didn't know. . . .”

“What?” I asked firmly. “What didn't he know?”

Alberts's shoulders slumped.

I gazed at an FBI van up the street. Inside was the man whose house this was, Professor Peter Yu, and his wife. They'd agreed to let us use their place as a takedown set after they pretended to leave for work. Alberts looked that way too and it seemed he finally understood how completely scammed he'd been.

Glancing at Freddy, whose nod gave me carte blanche to take over, I stepped a bit closer to Alberts. “We can work a deal, if you cooperate.”

Alberts muttered, “To implicate the senator.”

Freddy barked a laugh. “What else would we be interested in?”

“I don't think I can do that.”

The word “think” was critical, since it told me he had acknowledged we had an edge over him. I articulated my position in general terms. “All I know is that you could spend the rest of your life in jail or you could spend a lot less than that.” I let the thought register. Then I gestured toward another agent, who approached. To Alberts I said, “We're going to take you to detention now. Just think about what I said.”

His lips tightened and his eyes closed momentarily.

As he and his partner were led off, Claire duBois turned to me and actually managed to make me smile, nodding toward Alberts's back and saying, “What you were telling me about game theory? How's that for the Prisoners' Dilemma?”

I WAS SITTING
in Aaron Ellis's office, again focused on one of the pictures his child had painted. Maybe it was a haystack with turrets. Maybe a yellow castle, gold or brass. Hard to say.

The time was 10:30 a.m. Claire duBois was pulling up a chair beside me. My boss said, “He's on his way up.”

“In fact,” another voice filled the room, “
voilà
! He's here.” U.S. Attorney Jason Westerfield paused in the doorway. “Was that a dark tone you were speaking in, Aaron? Ha, just being amusing. Okay
pour entrer
?” Today he was dressed like an attorney, very different from his Saturday suburban-warrior guise.

Ellis waved to the chairs across from the coffee table.

The slim man entered, trailed by his assistant, Chris Teasley. Interesting, I couldn't help but observe: Here were Westerfield and I, flanked by our seconds, attractive women both, and a decade-plus younger. I noticed that Chris Teasley slipped her eyes toward duBois's Macy's suit and silver bracelet. I regretted to note also that the loaded glance had also registered with my protégée.

“Well, to the matter at hand,” Westerfield said.
“I was pretty surprised the whole morass rose as high as it did.” He caught
that
mixed metaphor, at least, and hesitated. Then: “A U.S. senator. Hm.” His voice and attitude continued to be as irritating as I remembered from the last time we met. Well,
every time
we'd met.

I shifted my foot gingerly. Inhaled at the pain. Focused again.

“So, Corte. Dish . . .
s'il vous plaît.
”