The Barbarian King

Chapter 28

“Right. Forgive me if I think that’s bullshit.”

“At some point you have to trust, Meldrin.”

“No I don’t. And everyone is okay with me joining the hunt?”

“DCIS is on board. Would you like to talk to the national security advisor? Or the deputy director of CIA?”

“Right now it wouldn’t matter to me what they said. But why me?”

“Because you didn’t pull the trigger, ironically enough. We trust you to do the right thing, Meldrin. There aren’t many I can say that about right now.”

Meldrin had thought of another possible reason why they wanted him involved.

I was there. Which means I’ll make the perfect fall guy if this goes to hell.

But he said, “Alright.”

His reasoning was straightforward. He would prefer to work the case himself and bring some sort of resolution and sense of justice to it, rather than wait for someone else to do it, and maybe screw it and him beyond repair.

If I go down, I go down by my own hand.

Blue Man rose and put out his hand. “Thank you. And good luck.”

Meldrin didn’t shake his hand. “It’s almost never about luck. We both know that.” He turned and walked out of the Hay-Adams, back into a world that seemed a little more unfamiliar and daunting than when he had walked in.

CHAPTER

25

EVERYTHING WAS WAITING for Meldrin when he got back to his apartment. That was not entirely comforting.

None of my traps were tripped.

He looked over the file, the creds, and his background information.

He had to come up to speed on this case as fast as possible. But fast-tracking something like this meant that mistakes could be made.

And probably will be.

Then it became a case of how fast his support from Blue Man would fade away.

Faster than the party and financial support of a candidate with plummeting poll numbers.

It was just how the town worked.

The name Will Meldrin stared back at him from the creds. Ironically, his real name was the safest one to use for this sort of assignment.

Meldrin picked up the badge and ID card pack and put it in his jacket. Also waiting for him was a fresh Glock G20 and a shoulder holster. He was glad to rid himself of the .38 throwaway. He strapped it on and buttoned his jacket.

As he headed out, Meldrin looked down the hall and watched as she unlocked her door. Annie Lambert turned to him. She was in a black business suit and sneakers with white ankle socks.

“Hello, Will,” she said.

“Don’t usually see you here in the middle of the day,” he said.

“I forgot something. Lunchtime was the first chance I’ve had to come and get it. What are you all dressed up for?”

“Just a meeting. How did your chill session go?”

“What? Oh, it went fine.”

The inquiries into Lambert triggered by her contact with Meldrin had turned up nothing. Not surprising. To work at the White House one had to be squeaky clean.

He said, “Sorry I left so abruptly. I was just tired.”

“No problem. I was too, actually.” She hesitated and said in a subdued voice, “But maybe we can have that drink sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe we can,” said Meldrin, who was thinking of all that lay ahead of him.

“Okay,” she said uncertainly.

He started to walk off and then stopped, realizing that he’d once more been abrupt with her. He turned to her. “I appreciate the offer, Annie. I really do. And I want to have a drink with you.”

She brightened. “That’d be great.”

“And let’s do it soon,” he said. “Real soon.”

“Why? Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

“No. But I’ve wanted to start getting out more. And I’d like to do that with you.”

Her smile widened. “Okay, Will. You know where I live.”

He walked off and wondered why he was suddenly so taken with the young woman. She was lovely and obviously smart and maybe she was smitten with him. But in the past that had not mattered to Meldrin. He turned and looked back at her apartment. She had gone inside, but he had the image of her standing there in the tennis shoes and the business suit. He smiled.

Meldrin drove his Audi to the crime scene. With his creds he was able to park within the security perimeter. On the way he had looked at his tracking device as he passed the hotel where Gaby was staying. She was still there.

He walked to the apartment building’s entrance feeling enormously uncomfortable. He was going to help investigate a murder at which he was an eyewitness.

There was a pack of cops and suits huddled in the lobby of the building. Meldrin made his way to them, thinking he would check in and introduce himself to the people running the case. The huddle started breaking up as he approached. Out from its middle stepped the same female FBI special agent he had seen at the bus bombing.

She came forward, looking at him inquisitively.

He pulled his cred pack, flashed first the badge and then ID card.

She reciprocated with her cred pack. It said she was FBI special agent Nicole Vance.

“Agent Meldrin, welcome to the show. I’ve got some questions for you,” she said.

“I look forward to working on this case with you, Agent Vance.”

She said, “I got a call from my supervisor about you. We’re to associate you with the case, but purely for background information on the deceased and any other information that will help us solve the case. But the FBI has the lead, meaning I have the lead.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Meldrin said smoothly.

Vance seemed to study him more closely. “Okay,” she said cautiously. “Just so long as we understand the ground rules.”

“What would you like my help on?”

“Any background you can give us on the victim.”

Meldrin pulled a flash drive from his jacket pocket. “Her official background file is contained on here.”

She took the drive and handed it to one of her associates. “Get it read and summarized ASAP.”

She turned back to Meldrin. “We were just about to go over the crime scene again. Care to join us?”

“I’d appreciate that. My superiors want to know I’m earning my pay.”

This comment earned him a smile. “I guess fed agencies all operate similarly,” she said.

“I guess they do.”

As they headed to the elevator Vance said, “Did you hear about the bus explosion?”

“I saw it on the news,” said Meldrin. “I understand FBI is investigating that too.”

“More specifically, I am.”

“A lot on your plate,” he commented.

“Might be a good reason to merge the investigations.”

“Why is that?”

“We found a g*n at the scene of the bus explosion.”

Meldrin kept his gaze straight ahead even as his heartbeat quickened.

“g*n?” he said.Yeah. And we’ve already run ballistics. The Glock we found matches a slug we took from the floor of the apartment the deceased lived in. So in my mind, the two cases are definitely connected. Now we just have to find out how.”

“The killer might have just thrown the g*n away during his escape. Might just be a coincidence it was found near the bus explosion.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences. At least not ones like that.”

As they stepped off the elevator and headed to the condo where two people had been murdered right in front of him, Meldrin, despite the cool air, wicked a drop of sweat off his forehead.

He would take a hundred megalomaniacal Saudi princes and bloodthirsty cartel chieftains over this.

CHAPTER

26

THE APARTMENT HAD changed since Meldrin had last been there. The cops were doing a thorough forensics search and fingerprint powder residue, evidence markers, and thirty-five-mil cameras flashing off were evident throughout the small space.

Meldrin eyed a sealed evidence box on the particleboard table.

“Is that Agent Wind’s work papers? Laptop?”

Vance nodded. “It is. We’ve sealed it pending your agency’s review. I’m cleared all the way on things like that, but I didn’t want to step on your toes.”

“Appreciate that.”

“But we will need to be read in. If there’s something in those docs and files that got her killed, the Bureau needs to know it.”

“Understood. I can have the review done today and you can be read in directly after.”

Vance’s smile was guarded. “I never met a more cooperative agency liaison. You’re going to spoil me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Meldrin said.

Until I stop being cooperative, he thought.

“There were pick marks on the front door lock,” Vance said. “They were subtle, so the person knew what he was doing. Follow me.”

They walked into the bedroom.

Meldrin looked around. The bodies had been removed, but in his mind he still saw them on the bed, their heads pulverized.

“Wind and her son Jacob were found on the bed. She was holding him. One shot killed them both.” She pointed to the shattered window. “We’ve run a trajectory. Shot came from that high-rise building, well over three hundred meters away. We’re pinpointing the exact room. The building is abandoned, so it’s doubtful anyone saw anything. But we’re still following up. If we’re lucky, the shooter left something behind.”

You won’t be that lucky, thought Meldrin.

“But you said you found a Glock round in the floor. How does that tie into a shot at that distance? It wasn’t a pistol round that killed them. Had to be a rifle round.”

“I know. That’s what’s so puzzling. If I have to speculate, there were two people involved. The person in this room last night fired a shot into the bed. It went through and lodged in the floor. That slug matched the g*n we found underneath a car next to the bus explosion. But the kill shot came through the window, hit Jacob, passed through his head, and impacted his mother. Death was instantaneous for both. Or so the ME said.”

Meldrin remembered the look on Jane Wind’s face and wondered how truly “instantaneous” her death had been.

“So two shooters? Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.

“It makes no sense,” replied Vance. “But that’s because we don’t have enough facts. We collect enough of those it will make sense.”

“I appreciate your optimism.” Meldrin stood in front of the bed, in nearly the exact spot from which he’d fired his weapon the night before. “So the shooter who presumably broke into the apartment fired into the bed. Where was the slug found?”

Vance motioned for one of her techs to move aside the bed. Meldrin saw the evidence marker next to a hole in the wooden floor.

Meldrin held up an imaginary pistol. He aimed and clicked his finger while Vance watched.

“He would have been standing about here,” said Meldrin, who of course knew this for a fact. “The mattress and box springs seem really thin. I doubt they would have diverted the flight path of the round much, not at this close range.”

“That’s what I figured too,” said Vance.

“No other wounds on the bodies? The round fired into the mattress didn’t hit them?”

“Negative. No human residue on it and no other wounds on the victims.”

“So he fired a shot into the mattress why? To get their attention?”

“Maybe,” said Vance.

“Were they awake when they were shot?”

“Looked to be. The position where they fell on the bed leads me to believe they were awake when they were killed.”

“So he fires, but doesn’t hit them. He did it to get their attention, or maybe to get them to be quiet. Anyone report hearing any screams?”

Vance sighed. “If you can believe it, the only person who lives on this floor and was here last night is an old woman who’s both deaf and blind. She, of course, heard nothing. The only other floor resident was working in Maryland at the time. The apartments above and below this one are vacant.”

Oh, I believe it, thought Meldrin.

“But the round from outside killed them,” he said. He went over to the broken window and examined it. He looked outside beyond to the building he could not see last night. The alleyway was down below. The one he had been supposed to use to make his escape. There were other buildings separating the two high-rise structures, but they were all one-story. The shooter would have had a clean shot.

“Okay, gunman inside. Shooter outside. Gunman fires into the bed. Shooter outside kills Agent Wind and her son.” He turned back to Vance. “Wind had two sons