Murder at the FBI (4 page)

He laughed. “That’s a strange term for
you
to use.”

“Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.”

“You weren’t exactly comatose yourself.”

“Ross?”

“What?”

“We’d better be up and out of here in an hour. I have a feeling this day isn’t about to be run-of-the-mill for either of us.”

The unit assembled to investigate George L. Pritchard’s murder was designated “Ranger.” An empty suite of offices in a corner of the second floor was given over to it, and the team—Ross Lizenby; Christine Saksis; a Japanese-American pathology expert from Forensics named Raymond Okawa; a short, chunky blond computer whiz named Barbara Twain; Dr. Perry Prince, a psychologist borrowed from a statistical profile unit; two young special agents, Joe Perone and Jacob Stein; two secretaries; two clerks; and a tour guide named Melissa Edwards, who was working toward her master’s degree in decision science and had applied for acceptance as a special agent—gathered together for the first time at ten o’clock that morning. The suite wasn’t large enough to comfortably accommodate all of them, but Lizenby assured
them it wouldn’t be for long. “I just left Assistant Director Gormley,” he said once everyone had dragged chairs in from adjoining offices. “He wants this investigation wrapped up as quickly as possible. I’m sure no one here would argue with that.”

They started to ask questions, but he cut them off. “Look, this investigation obviously is unique. We have the entire FBI to draw upon, but we also have to keep in mind that this
is
the FBI. There are going to be certain restrictions that we’ll all have to live with. Here’s the first: Agent Pritchard’s death will continue to be referred to as an accident. I’m sure you’ve all heard through the grapevine that he might have been murdered, but until I tell you otherwise, we stick with the accident story. There’s to be no talk about this with anyone outside this special unit, and that means
anybody
, family, friends, other agents, bureau employees. A total blackout on information. Understood?”

There were nods and affirmations.

“Administration promises furniture and equipment by this afternoon. Tech Services will have us on-line with the computers by noon. We’ll have two terminals up here.” He glanced at Chris Saksis before saying, “I’ve been put in charge of Ranger. Special Agent Saksis will be my assistant.” He checked her reaction. She started to respond, but cut herself off, looked down, said nothing. Her only thought was that they seemed to be settling in for a longer investigation than Shelton had called for.

Lizenby gave out assignments that could be pursued elsewhere in the building. “We’ll all meet up
here again at four,” he said, smiling as he added, “when we have something permanent to sit on.”

He walked Saksis to her office in the Indian Affairs section of Investigation. She closed her door and said, “I’m getting off the Pritchard thing.”

“Did you talk to Gormley?”

“Not yet, but I will. I’m trying to get an appointment now.”

“I told him you wanted out.”

“What did he say?”

“He’d been up most of the night and wasn’t in the best of moods. He said he wasn’t interested in what any individual agent wanted.”

“What did you say?”

“Do you mean did I argue your side? No. I don’t think it’ll matter. Let’s just keep our personal lives nice and quiet and ride this through.”

“I’m still going to talk to him,” she said.

“Sure. In the meantime, let’s get started. Gormley gave me the lists of everyone who was logged into the building last night. It’s broken down into two categories—bureau personnel and nonbureau personnel. He wants us to start with the nonbureau types. He’s hoping it falls that way, that somebody not connected did Pritchard in.”

“Don’t embarrass the bureau.”

“Right. Look, take the list and get together with the computer gal—what’s-her-face?”

“Twain. Barbara Twain.”

“Right. Let’s break it down into groups—male, female, other agencies, foreign, domestic—as fine as you can.”

He started to leave.

“Ross,” she said.

He turned. “Yeah?”

“I don’t like this.”

“So talk to Gormley.”

“I don’t mean us working together. I mean the fact that an agent was murdered by one of our own. It’s just begun to hit me.”

“It was an accident. Remember? And if it wasn’t, it was somebody outside the bureau.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll see you later.”

***

By five, the Ranger team was together in its cramped suite. Two computer terminals had been installed, desks, chairs, and telephones were in place, and it suddenly looked like a working office. Budget had assigned an expense number: Range-XP-6215873. Two separate phone lines came directly into the suite and a security system had been installed on the door leading to the hallway. Fireproof file cabinets were bolted to the floor. A large color TV, VCR recorder, reel-to-reel and cassette decks, and a multiband radio occupied one wall of the reception area. Lizenby had requested that one office within the suite be set up as a bedroom. Two yellow sleeper couches had been delivered, along with a small refrigerator, hot plate, and toaster oven. It meant losing a working office, but he felt having a place inside in which to stay over would pay off down the road.

Chris Saksis and Barbara Twain worked out the coding for the list of non-FBI personnel who’d been in the building the night of Pritchard’s murder. It was long—almost 300 names—visitors from
other agencies, outside contractors, support personnel with varying levels of clearance, a few friendly journalists being briefed. “I’ll need help,” Twain said. Saksis promised to get someone from Tech Services.

Lizenby tuned in the six o’clock news on the television set. The lead story dealt with the Middle East. Right after it came coverage of an FBI press conference held in a media room off the public affairs office at four that afternoon. Assistant Director Wayne Gormley conducted it, with Charles Nostrand at his side. Lizenby noticed that the bags beneath Gormley’s eyes seemed to have doubled in size. He looked as though he’d been drinking, but you could never be sure with Gormley. He often looked that way under pressure.

“This is the statement we have for you at this time,” Gormley said, adjusting half-glasses and looking down at notes on a lectern. “As you all know, a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has died in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his death, a full investigation has been launched internally, utilizing every resource—manpower and technical—available to us.

“However, as of this moment, the cause of death has
not
been established. From what we’ve ascertained so far, Special Agent George L. Pritchard, a veteran of seventeen years of faithful and distinguished service to the bureau, was the victim of an unusual and unfortunate accident.”

“Accident?” It was a chorus from the press.

Gormley held up his hands. “If you’ll allow me to finish, Mr. Nostrand will be happy to accept a
limited number of questions.” He waited until the noise had subsided, then completed his statement: “Special Agent Pritchard is the twenty-seventh special agent of the FBI to have died in the line of duty. The director, all who knew and served with Special Agent Pritchard, and I wish to extend our deepest sympathies to his family, and to assure the American public that it will know every detail of his death at the appropriate time. Thank you. You may now ask your questions of Mr. Nostrand.”

“I’d like to ask
you
a question, Mr. Gormley,” a reporter from
Washington Weekly
shouted.

“Sorry, but I have another commitment. Thank you again.”

Most of the questioners demanded to know why the word
accident
was being used when, in fact, 200 tourists had seen Pritchard “gunned down” on the firing range.

Nostrand’s answer: “We are under the impression at this early stage of the investigation that Agent Pritchard died of causes other than the firing-range shots. The tourists you refer to witnessed the unfortunate event from a distance and were not in a good position to see what transpired.”

The questioning continued along the same lines, and Nostrand’s answers never varied. The final question he took was from a radio reporter who wanted to know the name of the special agent in charge of the Pritchard investigation.

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that,” said Nostrand. “I can say that he’s one of the bureau’s best, a skilled investigator. Thank you. We’ve prepared a release, which is available to each of you as you
leave. You’ll find in it background information on the deceased.”

The Ranger team worked into the night. Food was ordered in. A second computer operator arrived and joined Barbara Twain in entering the names from the nonbureau list. Simultaneously, whatever background information was in the main computer on each of the names was retrieved and printed out in the bureau’s hard-copy room a floor below.

Lizenby met with Saksis, and with Special Agents Joe Perone and Jake Stein, in the “bedroom.”

Perone was a tall, muscular forty-year-old with heavy, sleepy eyes, a beak of a nose, and thick, black curly hair. He’d been an accountant before joining the bureau. Stein was considerably shorter and thinner. He’d been a lawyer before applying to the FBI. His brown hair was thin; most of it was gone from the front and top of his head. He wore round, tortoise-shell glasses; he’d barely met the bureau’s requirements for corrected vision when he’d joined seven years ago, and he was constantly worried that one day his eyesight would deteriorate below the minimums of 20/200 corrected to 20/20 in one eye, and 20/40 in the other. Unlike Perone, who had a reputation as a tough field investigator, Stein was better known for his keen analytic abilities, and for being perpetually bemused at the bureaucracy in which he functioned.

“First of all,” Lizenby said, “we’ve got to put together an immediate suspect list.”

Stein laughed and looked at Saksis. “How many names were on that outsider list?” he asked.

“About three hundred.”

“Not bad for openers.”

“Gormley wants a viable list by noon tomorrow.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Perone.

“Tell
him
,” Lizenby said. “Look, that list of three hundred has to have on it a core of people whose dealings with Pritchard can be turned into a motive.”

Stein removed his glasses, blew on them, and carefully polished the lenses with his handkerchief. He said, “Everybody who ever worked with George Pritchard can be said to have had a motive to kill him. Right?”

“Well, he didn’t top the good-guy list, but you don’t go around murdering an FBI agent because he rubs you the wrong way,” Perone said.

“You do if you’re crazy,” Stein said, replacing his glasses on his nose. “Who on that list doesn’t play with a full deck?”

“Perry Prince is evaluating the names on it,” Lizenby said, “on the off chance there’s an obvious wacko. But that’s unlikely. Let’s split up the names and see if anybody jumps off the page based on what we know, or have heard.”

Stein said, “What could we know about them, Ross? They’re not FBI. Who are they?”

“We know some of them,” Chris Saksis said. “They’ve been around a while—the ones in training here, regular contacts who were in the building.”

“What about the other list?” Perone asked.

“FBI personnel?”

“Yeah.”

“Forget it,” Lizenby said. “Right now Gormley wants suspects who aren’t bureau people. Let’s not complicate this more than we have to.”

Stein leaned back and did an isometric exercise with his hands. “I assume we’re cross-checking names with .22 pistol permits.”

Lizenby looked at Saksis. “We’ll get to that as soon as we have the names and backgrounds coded,” she said. “There’s also a list of people on the sign-in sheets who came here that day to see George. That’s probably the best place to start building a list for Gormley.”

“What about his family?” Stein asked. “He was married, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” said Lizenby. “Her name’s Helen. She lives out in Arlington with their daughter.”

“Who’s talked to her?” Perone asked.

“I don’t know. Gormley said a team had been sent out as soon as we knew it was George, but I haven’t had any feedback. I thought you might go see her, Chris.”

“All right.”

Lizenby stood and stretched. “Dr. Okawa’s working with Forensics on further studies of the body. Again, let me stress that no one is to discuss this with anyone outside this special unit. No excuses, no reasons for breaking the blackout. Let’s meet here at eight Monday morning.”

Saksis followed Lizenby into the reception area, where the TV was now alive with a sit-com. Lizenby snapped it off.

“You going home?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go see Helen Pritchard first thing Monday.”

“Good. I’d tell you what I know about his personal life, but I’d rather you start clean. Fill me in when you get back.”

“Sure. Ross, I talked to Gormley about getting off this.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said what you said he’d say, that he’s not interested in my personal needs.”

Lizenby smiled. He stepped close and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t sweat it. It’ll all work—be over before we know it.” He felt a sudden rush of desire. “Want to come over?” he asked.

“No, not tonight. I’m beat, have all sorts of things to do, starting with paying my bills.”

“I’ll see you Monday then.”

***

Ross Lizenby checked in with the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs on his way out of the building. “Any new guidelines from Assistant Director Gormley?” he asked the special agent on duty.

“Nope. All press inquiries are on hold until further notice.”

“They don’t buy the accident story, do they?”

“Would you?”

“Sure. It’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation talking. Take it easy.”

He drove his car, a new silver-blue Toyota Supra, to a telephone booth on a corner in Georgetown. A woman answered. “This is Mr. Adler,” he said. “I’d like to make an appointment.”

“When?”