Supreme Justice (19 page)

“I see.”

She leaned closer. “You don’t think he passed that pill to Granger, do you?”

Sloan frowned, slowly shook his head. “What, and told him it was an aspirin? Or talked him into killing himself? Ludicrous. Of course . . .”

“What?”

The SAIC’s eyes tensed. “If Reeder’s part of the conspiracy, he could have passed the pill along with some
threat
attached. Take this and we won’t kill your mother, maybe. Or maybe there’s a girlfriend.”

She was shaking her head vigorously. “You can’t believe that, Gabe. Joe is the one who convinced the rest of us that this
is
a conspiracy!”

He sighed. “All I know is Reeder was the last one to see Granger before Eaton came around this morning. It’s not exactly a smoking gun, and there are guards and other prisoners, but we need to investigate it. Investigate
everything.
”

“Investigate
Reeder,
you mean?”

A shrug. “Like you said, he’s gone to every crime scene and read it like a book. A book he wrote, maybe? Did he fake his own daughter’s kidnapping to buy time? And there’s
other
circumstantial evidence implicating him.”

“Such as?”

“Such as Reeder owns a shotgun like the one that killed Gutierrez.”

“That doesn’t even rate as circumstantial evidence, Gabe. We’re talking the bestselling shotgun in the USA.”

“Patti, what two things is he best known for?”

“Well, he saved the President’s life.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“. . . That he hated the President he saved.”

“Right. How did he feel about Justice Henry Venter?”

“Not a fan.”

“ ‘Not a fan’ understates it. Reeder is a liberal, and our victims are conservative justices of the Supreme Court. Did you know Peep was my daughter Kathy’s godfather?”

“I didn’t.”

“When she died at an abortionist’s hands, he took it damn near as hard as Kathy’s mother and me. The President Reeder saved was the driving force behind the repeal of Roe v. Wade.”

She spoke so softly even she could barely hear: “And Justice Venter wrote the majority opinion.”

He nodded. “Patti, do you know why I’m telling you all this?”

“No.”

“You were my partner. And you were
his
partner—however briefly. I know how loyal you are. But if you know where Joe Reeder is, you need to tell me.”

“He’s not at home? Or his office?”

His frown was almost a scowl. “What do you think? My guess is, he’s asked for your help. Well, the best way to help him is to let us know where he is.” Huge sigh. “Shit, just a few hours ago we were out in the hall with him. But now I need to bring him in. Just for questioning. But
now
.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re sure?”

“Gabe, I’d tell you if I did.”

The SAIC gave her a long, appraising look. “I’ve left a message on his phone. If he gets back to me, I’ll have him come in. If you hear from Reeder, tell him he needs
not
to ignore my request. Otherwise, I’ll have to put a BOLO out on him.”

Was it possible that Sloan’s handpicked investigator was part of the conspiracy? If she called Reeder herself and told him to get his ass in here and straighten Sloan out, he’d be Daniel in the lions’ den, but with much worse odds.

If Reeder was right, there was a leak on the task force who would be watching. The kidnappers had told him to quit the team, to walk away. Returning, even only to submit to questioning, might well endanger Amy.

On the other hand, if Sloan’s suspicions were correct, Reeder could be preparing for the next justice
murder, or making his way to a nonextraditable country while the task force chased its tail.

Which side was Reeder really on?

The only thing she knew for sure was that his parting advice had been sound:
Trust no one.

“Law not served by power is an illusion; but power not ruled by law is a menace.”

Arthur J. Goldberg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1962–1965, United States Secretary of Labor, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Section 21, Lot S-35, Grid M-20.5, Arlington National Cemetery.

NINETEEN

On the second floor of his town house, in his home office, Reeder sat sifting through crime scene photos on his computer monitor. His cell buzzed, a new text coming in.

Message from Sloan: YOU OKAY? CALL ME.

Reeder ignored it. Right now, he didn’t want to talk to anybody, not even Sloan—nobody who didn’t have information to help get his daughter back.

The conspiracy of killers thought he was a hell of a lot closer to bringing them down than he really was. That might have been to his advantage, had it not led to Amy’s abduction. But it at the very least told one thing: He should be closer than he was. And he
could
be closer, if he knew how to read the evidence.

The answers were buried in what they already knew, what they already had. So he went back to the beginning. What
did
he know? Not just surmise, what did he
know?

He looked hard at the out-of-state jobs pulled before the Verdict Chophouse hit. In those, the pistol-wielding holdup man was clearly left-handed. Butch Brooks was left-handed, all right, but he seemed to be the driver—Granger had said as much (“hell of a wheelman”).

Reeder opened a window on Marvin’s rap sheet—
he
was left-handed, too! Two left-handed players in the Granger crew. A little odd, maybe. But not as odd as one of them turning into a
right-handed
gunman in the Verdict footage . . .

The gun that shot Justice Venter had been found with Brooks, so they’d all assumed Butchie Boy was the shooter. But he wasn’t—hell, he wasn’t even the guy on the crew who waved a pistol around in the earlier robberies. Butch was the driver. The killing weapon had been left with him strictly to connect the Granger crew to the Verdict shooting.

Reeder watched the murder footage again, zoomed in. Like Nicky Blount had said, the shooter was right-handed and blue-eyed. Was there any way it could be Tom Marvin? A left-handed man could, after all, hold a gun in his right hand; it didn’t violate a law of physics or anything. He went back to Marvin’s rap sheet and checked eye color—
BROWN
. Scratch him, unless he was wearing colored contacts.

Then, going back to the Verdict footage, Reeder noticed something he should have seen a long time ago:
The holdup man up front with the AK-47 didn’t flinch when Venter was shot!

The other intruder
knew
that kill was coming. Was Granger the AK-47 wielder? No, the Verdict guy looked beefier than Granger, and maybe shorter.

Neither holdup man at the Verdict, despite the apparel, despite the weaponry, seemed part of the Granger crew. They had to be ringers, meant to fool investigators into wrongly identifying the out-of-state tavern robbers.

When the two pretenders ran out, the vehicle they climbed into had a waiting driver. He might or might not be Tom Marvin. Yet another question, but at least it made Marvin a potential source of further information.

Reeder moved on to the Gutierrez crime scene. The Remington 870 was no help at all. Both he and Gabe had owned that model shotgun at one time or another, along with ten million other gun owners. The slug, however, held a certain significance: Brenneke was an uncommon brand, sold mostly to hunters and law enforcement. Its atypical weight-forward design allowed for a flatter, more powerful trajectory . . . and maximum penetration. Wilhelm Brenneke, a hunter himself, had wanted to kill humanely, if such an oxymoron was possible, and designed his slug to kill, not wound. Most law enforcement people knew about Brennekes, as did avid hunters. The general public? Not so much.

That was consistent with someone on the task force being involved—someone in law enforcement. Beyond the team, the only real possibilities were CSI Darrell Grogan or that young detective at the Gutierrez crime scene, McCrosky. Both knew of Reeder’s involvement, though not before he showed up at the Gutierrez home.

But how could they know what progress the team might be making? They seemed long shots at best.

No, somebody on the team had to be tied to the conspiracy and perhaps had been one of the pretenders at the Verdict who took Justice Venter down. After all, cops could be as coldly effective with deadly weapons as any criminal.

He studied crime scene photos of Butch Brooks dead on the bed, having shot at Sloan, who’d returned fire. Butch lay there with staring idiot eyes, brain spatter on the headboard, gun in his right hand.

And Reeder knew.

He felt the blood drain from his face, and then came the nausea. He’d been running on pure adrenaline since the kidnapper called and now felt physical exhaustion overtake him like instant flu. He barely made it to the bathroom to puke up what little he had in him, then retched and retched until he was crying.

The tears lasted not very long. The whiteness that had overtaken his face gave way to red. Rage flowed through him like savage fuel, but by the time he was back on his feet, he was under control. Breathing evenly, steadily. Amy needed him to be strong. He would be strong.

He staggered just a little, but his stride was back by the time he returned to the home office. He sat back down. He looked at the photo again, close and hard, giving any other explanation a chance to explain itself. But he knew it wouldn’t. He should have seen this long ago. It was as obvious as the Venter footage, wasn’t it?

But the footage he replayed now was from his memory:

Sloan yelled, “
Federal agents
!” and Reeder took off down the hall, halfway there when a shot came, followed by a second.

Reeder had, like everyone else on the scene, accepted what he saw. Now the gun lying on Brooks’s right side—
in the wrong hand
—seemed to glow and throb.

Brooks—the left-handed wheelman, never a gunman, no violent crime on his rap sheet. Two shots had been fired, sounding identical, but since the gun in Sloan’s hand was a Glock and the one in the dead suspect’s hand was, too, what was suspicious about it?

The gun that killed Venter was in that house, in that room, because Sloan planted it there.

Sloan killed Brooks from the door, went to the bed, pulled the murder weapon from concealment, and fired back toward the door, possibly with the gun in Butch’s dead hand to create powder burns. Precious seconds were available to wipe his prints and put the gun in Brooks’s hand on the bed. No fingerprints on the shells in the clip, or even the ejected one on the floor. A hell of a frame. Bold, audacious even, expert. Of course Sloan had kept the street-savvy Patti Rogers away from the raid, bringing along Reeder instead, away from the field for several years, likely gun-shy from getting shot last time out.

That had helped.

Nicky Blount said the killer had blue eyes. So did Sloan. The shooter was right-handed. So was Sloan. Circumstantial evidence was raining down on Reeder. Sloan had a Remington 870 about the vintage of the one that gunned down Justice Gutierrez. Was the next perfect frame coming, any moment now, with Reeder fitted for it?

The why of it was obvious—Sloan’s daughter, Kathy, had died under a back-alley abortionist’s blade. All Gabe’s conservative beliefs must have burned to sudden ashes. The repeal of Roe v. Wade, thanks to the Supreme Court, had paved the way for Kathy’s death. So had Gabe’s beliefs, but a father could hardly blame himself, right? And Gabe had continued to wear his conservative views as a disguise, and Reeder had not discerned a single warning sign indicating his best friend capable of changing from bereaved father to cold assassin.

So much for the people reader.

But was there anything here that wasn’t circumstantial? Was there enough, say, to take to AD Fisk? Or was a frame sliding into place that he couldn’t crawl out of?

His cell phone vibrated, and he checked it: Bobby Landon’s phone was calling.

“You’ve done well. Stay out of it now. Head down. Continue that course, and Ames will be back soon, safe and sound.”

The caller clicked off.

And any lingering, last shred of doubt disintegrated. Under that mechanized, disguised voice was Gabriel Sloan.
Ames,
he’d said. A nickname few on Earth but her godfather called her by.

Was it a good thing for Amy, that Sloan was part of the conspiracy? Reeder could not imagine his friend harming her, or putting him through the same kind of parental hell Gabe himself had suffered. But Sloan might be a cog in this, the way to get at Reeder through Amy, and the wheel could still roll over her.

Who were the other conspirators?
The flunkies, of course, but they were pawns. The AK-47 gunman at the Verdict was another, and possibly the driver of the getaway SUV. Of course, the latter might have been Brooks, part of why Sloan had killed him.

Was it someone above Sloan who had managed to make him SAIC in charge of the task force investigating his own crimes? Or had Sloan himself maneuvered that? Certainly Gabe had recruited Reeder to keep an eye on his old pal, after “Peep” had analyzed the Verdict footage.

So was anyone else on the task force aligned with Sloan?

The most obvious possibility would be Sloan’s longtime partner, Rogers, but if Reeder’s people-reading skills were working at all, she was no part of this. Obviously, she wasn’t the other gunman at the Verdict—she didn’t have the size. She might have been the getaway driver—Miggie had combed traffic cameras for the driver, but without any luck. Probably Brooks behind the wheel, but didn’t
have
to be.

The only other task force member he trusted at all was Carl Bishop; but the DC detective didn’t have the resources.

He had advised Rogers to trust her instincts, hadn’t he? He decided to trust his. He got a cell from a desk drawer.

“Patti, it’s me.”

“Joe. Good to hear from you.”

Something off about it.

Too loud, for one thing. As if for someone else’s benefit. Should he hang up?

Instead he said, “I know who the Judas on the team is.”

“. . . Really?”

Her voice had lowered—she seemed to be talking to just him now, but something was
still
off.

He said, “Not good news.”

She said nothing for long enough a time to make him think maybe she’d set the phone down.
Why hadn’t she asked who the Judas was?

Finally, she said, “Why would that not be good news?”

Okay, she was stalling. They were tracing the call.

He clicked off.

What exactly was going on, he had no idea; but no way was it good, especially considering what he now knew. He yanked the battery out of his phone, killing the GPS, then dropped the cell on the floor and rolled a leg of his chair crunchingly over it.

From another desk drawer he withdrew his SIG Sauer and stuck it in the back of his pants. He went to his bedroom and got on a gray sports coat and threw it on over the polo he was wearing, covering the gun in his waistband.

From a nightstand drawer he took one thousand dollars in twenties and fifties—his emergency stash—before going downstairs and out the front door and down to the sidewalk. Casual, just another guy out for a late-afternoon stroll. In the distance, sirens were coming for him.

He rounded the corner, then peeked around to see the red-and-blue-trimmed white police cars rolling up along with the FBI SWAT team van. In a few eyeblinks, vehicles blocked the street in front of his house. He walked quickly away.

He hailed the first taxi and said, “The Navy Yard.”

M Street was plenty far from where they would be searching for him. He knew there’d be a BOLO, a “be on the lookout” alert. He wondered what Sloan had cooked up for him to deserve that. Judging by the fuss outside his town house, he must at least be a murderer.

The cabbie dropped him a few blocks shy of the Navy Yard, where Reeder crossed to the north side and walked east. Just off M Street, on Tenth, was a guy who traded supplies and no questions for cash.

Walking just fast enough not to attract attention, he made good time to Tenth before turning north. On the west side of the street stood a lone building, two-story brick, housing a tailor and a pawnshop on street level. On the north side, fire-escape-style stairs rose to the second floor, where a locked steel door with an eyehole awaited.

Reeder looked up at the security camera as he knocked.

Silence.

He didn’t knock again, but kept staring at the camera.

Finally, a voice from a speaker reminiscent of a carryout window’s said, “We don’t got any.”

“I need a phone.”

“Try Radio Shack.”

“DeMarcus, I need a special phone.”

“Cops lookin’ for you, man. All over the scanner. Don’t need that grief.”

“Then sell me what
I
need and I’ll be on my way.”

The door opened a crack enough to see DeMarcus Shannon, an African American of at least thirty who looked twenty. His head was bald and his build slender. His burgundy Redskins T-shirt and navy Georgetown basketball shorts clashed like the Crips and the Bloods.

“Get the fuck outta here.”

“No.”

“Maybe I should just call the cops myself. What I hear on the scanner, man, mus’ be a big-ass reward.”

“Complete with questions and media. I did you a favor once. Actually, twice.”

“Shit. Yeah. Okay. Two C’s.”

Reeder handed him two crisp hundreds and the door closed. Within thirty seconds, it cracked open, not as wide, and DeMarcus passed across a cell phone.

“Now get the fuck gone.”

“How clean?”

“You can use it leas’ twice.”

“For two C’s? Throw in another.”

DeMarcus made a face, sighed, and seemed about to protest when a siren blared a few blocks away, a regular occurrence around here, but disconcerting in these circumstances.

“Shit,” the seller said, and practically threw a second phone at Reeder before the door slammed shut.

Going down the stairs, Reeder punched in a number.

She answered on the third ring: “Rogers.”

“Sloan killed Venter.”

“Funny—he said the same thing about you.”