What Lies Behind (17 page)

“My name is Dr. Owens, and I’m with the FBI.”

“The FBI is here? Oh my.”

Yes
, Sam thought,
oh my indeed
.

Chapter 32

Capitol Hill

SAM PASSED OFF
Eloise Poe to the uniforms at the front door, and went back inside to find Fletcher. Before she got very far, her cell phone rang.

Baldwin.
Finally.
She ducked off into the white-and-black kitchen, answered with, “I hope you have a whole lot of answers for me, because my list of questions is growing. I’ve got more dead.”

“More dead? Where?”

She filled him in. He cursed once, very gently.

“Baldwin, I can’t keep operating in the dark. We need to know what we’re dealing with, because this case is getting weirder by the second.”

“I know. I’m all yours.”

“Then would you like to tell me why Souleyret was killed, and why someone seems to be knocking off people who have connections to her, too?”

“I’ve had some back-channel conversations since we talked last. You already know Souleyret was tasked with working on incidences of pharmaceutical espionage.”

“That’s what the file says. Girabaldi seems to feel otherwise. She thinks Amanda was working on a bioterror threat.”

“Right. Well, Amanda had a specialized skill set. For lack of a better term, she was a honeypot. She’d get friendly with the people we needed to look at, get into their systems, load up the software that allowed us to take a look at these company’s practices.”

“I can imagine that would piss some people off. It sounds like she found the source of this threat, and someone realized they’d been taken. And now they’re killing everyone around her.”

“They’re looking for something.”

“I know what they’re looking for.” She told him about the SD card Souleyret had smuggled in and the vaccines they’d found. “We have the vaccination schedules for the whole region. Girabaldi thought the illness outbreak was an isolated incident. The files Amanda has here prove otherwise. They’ve been testing for a while now. It’s scary stuff.”

“Is that all you saw on the SD card?”

“All that we’d found as of an hour ago. We have an eager beaver from Quantico at Fletcher’s place, looking for Robin Souleyret.”

“Daniels, yes, Charlaine told me. He’s very good.”

“Yes, he is. The SD card was built on a sophisticated cipher, layers of encryptions. He cracked the initial code, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more.”

Baldwin was quiet.

“Come on, spill. We have no more time for secrets. We’ve got to find the sister, see if she knows anything and protect her.”

“You won’t have to protect her,” he said.

“So you know where she is?”

“Where? No. Who? Yes. She’s a CIA asset. Or was.”

“Was CIA? Is she dead?”

“In a way. Listen, Robin works for a guy I know. She’s unstable at best.”

“Unstable, how?” Sam asked slowly.

“Robin got blown up a couple of years ago. Literally. She never recovered all the way. She was tough as nails, but the PTSD got her. CIA kept her on the payroll, but she hasn’t been given real assignments in months. She works for my friend from time to time, on specialty jobs, but she’s lost her edge.”

“What did she do for them? What was her position? An analyst, a handler?”

“Um, her work was very specific. You know what Xander was used for often in his position with the Rangers? She was, too. That’s all I’m willing to say. But she’s messed up in the head. She’s better left alone.”

She knew exactly what Baldwin meant. Xander was an Army Ranger. He could do most anything well, without conscience or remorse, if he was given the order to do so. He’d been through every specialized school the Army had to offer, but he’d especially excelled at sniper school. Long-range hits.

Assassinations.

A cold finger paraded down her spine. Snipers scared her. Face-to-face assaults she could handle, but the idea of someone hundreds of yards away controlling your life genuinely freaked her out. Anytime, anywhere, Xander had told her.
Pow
.

“I see. What does Robin look like?”

“Like Amanda actually. They bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. She’s smaller, though, and a natural blonde.”

Sam thought of the long blond hair on the banister. About a woman who spent her life evading capture and arrest, who worked for the CIA.

Which led her straight to the meeting at the State Department, and Regina Girabaldi. That’s why she was involved—Sam would bet this month’s shoe budget the undersecretary knew Robin Souleyret, and had worked with her while she was still at the Agency. It explained the urgency of the meeting this morning. Sam had been right on the money; Girabaldi was closer to this than she let on.

“Did she work for our favorite undersecretary, perchance?”

“Wait,” Baldwin said. “Go careful here, that’s dangerous ground. Are you asking if I think she might be running this?”

“We know she is. She pulled us in this morning and gave us all sorts of crazy directions to cover all this up. Maybe the sister is more involved than we thought?”

“Involved how?”

“Working with the pharm company, moving information? Maybe she got on the wrong side of things? I don’t know, it’s silly to think she could kill her own sister. Isn’t it? I mean, how messed up was she?”

She heard his breath hiss in. “From all accounts, she was pretty messed up, Sam. I’ll get with my counterpart at the CIA, see if I can dig up something more on her. And look at the relationship between Regina and Robin. They were at the Agency at the same time. It stands to reason they know each other.”

“I need to talk to her, Baldwin. I need to have a sit-down with Robin. At the very least, to inform her of her sister’s death. And to ascertain if she’s our suspect.”

“I’ll find her. Don’t you dare go after her alone, you hear me? She’s very, very good at her job, and those instincts die hard. If she’s threatened, there’s no telling what she might do.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a hell of a lot more you’re not saying?”

A ghost of a laugh. “Because I only trust these phones so much. I’m done here. I’m catching a flight out this afternoon. I’ll be back in D.C. late tonight. I’ll come to your place. We can talk.”

“All right. Hey, listen. In terms of diseases or vaccinations, have you ever heard of anything called Gransef?”

“Gransef? No. What is it?”

“It was the label on one of the vials we found at Tommy Cattafi’s place. I’ve never heard of it before, and a basic search didn’t bring it up. I’m worried it might be...the something new we’re looking for. Which is no longer in our possession.”

“Shit. I’ll look it up, see if I can find anything on my end.”

“Thank you. Which reminds me, speaking of Cattafi, do you have any idea how Amanda came to be working with him? Regina said they were friends from way back, but that goes against most everything I’ve seen about Amanda and the nature of her work.”

“Now
that
I can help you with. I talked to Amanda’s most recent handler. She recruited Thomas Cattafi a couple of years ago. He was on a rotation with Médecins Sans Frontières. He was perfect material for us. Smart, connected. Had an understanding of the basic nature of the industry. I don’t know if he was doing actual work for her, but he was definitely a source, and a paid one—he’s on the books. She may have thought he’d be a safer place to head to if she was on the run.”

“It was a big mistake. Someone knew she was going to be there. I’m assuming they came here first, looking for her, and when they found the renters instead, they extracted what they could, killed them, either out of frustration or because they could provide an ID, left a note to try to make it look personal and headed straight for Cattafi’s place. Which would mean someone’s inside your system, Baldwin. I think Amanda’s whole world had been hacked. If they knew where she could be found, and who she’s recruited...”

“I hear you. It’s either someone inside or someone close.”

“Do you know when and where she came into the US?”

“No. There’s nothing on her main passport, nor any of her provided identities. Though with the nature of her work, I’m sure she has a few legends we don’t know about.”

“Who knew the FBI was so secretive?”

“Every organization has its secrets, Samantha. Remember that. And in the meantime? Be very careful. Something feels off about all of this, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

* * *

She found Fletcher on the second floor, staring mournfully at the crime scene, watching his people collect evidence. He shrugged when he saw her.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“Nope. What about you?”

“I talked to Baldwin. He confirmed Cattafi worked for Souleyret. And we need to find the sister. Right now.”

“Why the sudden urgency?”

“She’s a CIA assassin. And she’s a blonde.”

He started. “You don’t think she has something to do with this, do you?”

“Apparently, she had a bad go of it with an IED, and it scrambled her head. If she was approached by the wrong people...hey, while I’m cooking up theories, did anyone check exactly who these two work for?”

He checked his notebook. “One works for Marsha Harper, Republican out of Colorado. The other works for Joe Green, Democrat from New Mexico.”

“That would make for some interesting dinner conversations. Those two are on the opposite sides of most everything. Where did these kids meet? Here in D.C.?”

“We’re going to have to talk to their families and ask. They are both transplants. We’re contacting the local authorities to make notifications. Once that’s done, we can talk to them. Several hours at least.”

“We might be able to take a shortcut. The next-door neighbor was friends with them. She’s a sweet old thing—they clearly looked out for her. She’s downstairs now.”

“Yeah, all right. Nothing more I can do here, anyway. Let’s go talk to the neighbor.”

They went down the stairs to find Eloise Poe holding court on the front porch. She was telling stories about her neighbors. Sam could hear her lilting, breathless voice, full of grief and memories.

She introduced Eloise to Fletcher, who pulled the woman from her adoring fans and started peppering her with questions. After he’d established she was close enough to them to know what was really going on in the house, he asked about the renters’ backgrounds.

“They met in college. University of Colorado. Jared was the president of the Young Democrats, College Democrats, something like that. I understand it’s quite a vocal force out there in Boulder. Michael was the head of the College Republicans. In the minority—he used to laugh about it. They fought like cats that first year, Jared told me once. And when there was some big hullabaloo on campus, they got hauled into the dean’s office, and something clicked. They had coffee afterward and started dating. They knew it would be a contentious road with their backgrounds and their preferences, but they fell in love, and they fought for it all the time.”

Sam thought about the two young men lying upstairs, their lives cut tragically short.

I’m sorry, I had no choice. It’s better this way
.

Anyone who knew their backgrounds would assume Michael had broken it off, and Jared couldn’t handle it. A good ploy, and it made Sam nervous. Normally, it took time to find out personal information about people, what the push buttons would be. This wasn’t hastily arranged.

She thought about Amanda Souleyret, and the note found at her crime scene.

You made me do this.

Something there.

She tuned back in to Mrs. Poe.

“And they moved to D.C., started renting this house. That was—what—four, no, five years ago now. Michael took a job with that pretty woman from his home district, Marsha Harper. She’s a firecracker, that one, and he loved working for her. Jared bounced around a bit, but he was working for what’s his name, Joe. Joe Green. He’s been there for three months or so now. He was out of his probationary period, I do know that. They had us over for dinner to celebrate.”

“Mrs. Poe, did you ever meet the owner of the house, Amanda Souleyret?” Fletcher asked.

Eloise waved at a gnat that was dive-bombing her head. “Of course I did. Amanda and I go way back. As a matter of fact, I’m a bit peeved with her. I saw her this morning, but she didn’t even say hello. It’s been a while since she’s been by. She didn’t need to babysit her renters, no, no. Those boys, bless their hearts, they were good kids. Quiet, respectful. Hardworking. No loud, crazy parties. They’d dog-sit for us when we went out of town. This is just so horrible, I don’t understand how—”

Sam interrupted her. “Wait, Mrs. Poe, you saw Amanda this morning?”

“Well, yes. She’s looking thin. She came to the fence and said hi to Tervis, then went in the back door. She wasn’t in there long, no more than ten minutes. Came out, got into her car—she has a new car, too, a nice Lexus—then drove off. Didn’t even bother to say hi, and it’s been at least two years since I saw her last.” Her eyes got wide, her mouth opened into a little O.

“You don’t think she had anything to do with the boys, do you? Oh my!”

Sam spoke to Fletcher, sotto voce. “The sister. It had to be.”

Eloise had sharp hearing. “Oh no, I’m sure it was Amanda. I was upset she didn’t stick her head in to say hello.”

“Have you ever met Amanda’s sister, Robin, Mrs. Poe?”

“No, I haven’t. Edgar has, though. Yes, my husband’s name is Edgar Poe. Edgar Georgio Poe—his parents had a diabolical sense of humor.”

Fletcher was already turning toward the Poes’ house. “Ma’am, could we speak to Edgar? Mr. Poe? We need to speak with Amanda’s sister right away, and we don’t have any contact information for her.”

She started trotting after him. “Well, Edgar’s not all there, if you know what I mean. Alzheimer’s. Bless his heart, he started to go two years ago, and now he only truly recognizes me and the boys, and that’s not all the time. We can talk to him, but I can’t guarantee you’ll find out anything worthwhile. Why don’t you just ask Amanda for her sister’s information?”

Fletcher stopped and patted the old woman on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Poe, but Amanda was killed last night. So you see, it’s very important that we speak with your husband right now.”