behind him.
Winter followed him.
Quartz halogen lights on telescoping stands made it daytime on the front porch. Reed stood in the gazebo area at the railing like a ship's captain watching the lifeboats being lowered. He slipped a set of fingerprint cards into his shirt pocket as Winter approached.
Martinez's body and that of the first man Winter had shot were covered by sheets and enclosed in a rectangle of crime scene tape.
“I've seen the admiral who called me on only one previous occasion. He was at Norfolk to attend the dedication of a new building named for him. He called me to tell me to stop what I was doing-the FBI is handling this investigation.”
“The Bureau taking over the investigation isn't unusual,” Winter replied evenly.
“The FBI comes in after NCIS has investigated and requested their help. The point is that it didn't take an admiral to give me the command. It's like sending the president of a power company to read an electrical meter. I don't have a problem handing this over to the FBI, but this one is queer. Maybe because of you,” he said, looking him straight in the eye.
“This had nothing whatsoever to do with me.”
“Before I joined the Navy, I was a rookie on a small police force in Georgia. One night I pulled over a car. The kid driving was so drunk he couldn't tell me his name. He blew two point eight. There was a loaded. 357 magnum under the seat. A pillowcase packed with marijuana and a bag with over a pound of cocaine and a hundred and thirty grand and change were in his trunk. I arrested the kid as a John Doe, wrote up a report, impounded the car, put the drugs, gun, and money in the evidence vault.”
Fletcher Reed took a small cigar from his pocket and placed it in his mouth. “The chief was tickled pink. I was a hero. Two months on the job and I had this kid by the balls. I mean it was the biggest drug bust that town had ever seen. I sent the prints off. Next morning I come in and the other cops wouldn't look me in the eye. I ask the chief what's going on, and he calls me into his office and closes the door, says there was no kid, no speeding car, drugs, money, or gun.
“I had made two sets of fingerprint cards because the first one wasn't perfect. I ran that second set of prints. Turns out the kid was the governor's stepson. Rich man with businesses that were vital to the economy. Half the county worked for him in some capacity. I left the department and joined the Navy so I could be a cop, thinking it would be cleaner. Less political.”
“Which do you think is the case here?”
“Nothing new about bunk buddies swapping hand jobs under the blanket. Only a problem when it's justice that gets kicked out of the bed.”
“Reed, the oath I took was to uphold the laws of the United States, and I've done that to the best of my ability. Part of my job is to make sure that if men like those four UNSUBs who ended up here ever come along, I make sure they fail. That's all I did-no more, no less.”
“It seems like armed assassins don't live long when you're around,” Reed commented laconically. “Four here.” He lit the cigar with a kitchen match. “Three in Florida. I found out about your fracas in Tampa seven years back. Wasn't for that report, I'd have thought you were CIA or NSA guarding a defector, not a deputy marshal guarding a killer.”
Winter was surprised that Reed knew they had been watching a killer but suspected he was still fishing.
“Sean Devlin drew a blank with NCIS, but there was a hit from New Orleans Homicide on a Dylan Devlin who was caught with two dead bodies three weeks back. And I know about a certain Mafia dinosaur who got himself arrested two days later, which I assumed was connected. I figure Dylan Devlin left Cherry Point earlier this evening and those men you killed came here looking for him. What bothers me is why you stayed here with his wife, or sister, when you should have been where the action would most likely be.”
Winter was very impressed by this man he thought was just another flatfoot.
Reed surprised Winter by extending his hand, which Winter tentatively shook. “I'm glad you killed those assholes, Massey. It was justice handed out the only way men like that understand it. Do me one favor?”
“Keep away from wherever you are?”
Now Reed did smile. “You are definitely one of those individuals best admired from a distance. After the smoke clears on this mess, look me up and I'll buy the drinks while you tell me what the real deal was.”
A roar signaled twin Blackhawks that thundered in and alighted on the beach. As soon as the side doors slid open, figures carrying equipment cases swarmed out and swept toward the house like an invading army.
“FBI,” Reed muttered.
The man leading the caravan stomped up the steps to them. “Fred Archer, supervising FBI special agent. I'm the case officer,” he said. “You must be Lieutenant Commander Reed.”
Reed nodded.
“You're Massey?” Archer asked.
“I am,” Winter replied.
“We'll take over now, Lieutenant Commander,” Archer said. “Deputy Massey, accompany me inside.”
38
Winter sat beside Sean on the living room couch while Archer talked with Reed. They watched as FBI technicians wearing white coveralls and blue surgical gloves went over the inside of the Rook Island house as if it were a crime scene, using vacuums and dusting every imaginable surface for prints. Unlike at most crime scenes, they were wiping the surfaces clean afterward.
“Angela never knew what hit her, did she?” Sean asked him.
“No,” Winter lied. “I don't believe she did.” He remembered how she was trying to get her gun out of the holster but couldn't. A few seconds had passed from the time she was hit until the second shots ended her life. He didn't want to imagine what thoughts had gone through her mind in those final seconds.
“I was thinking about her family-how close she was to them. It'll be hard on them.”
“Yes, it will.”
His conversation at an end, Fred Archer sat in a wing chair across from the pair. He looked like a forty- something high school football coach straight from 1962 who went through life with a Bible in one hand and a playbook in the other-and often confused them. His hair was perfectly combed and his alert gray eyes would have seemed at home set below an eagle's brow. He wore an FBI windbreaker over his suit coat and tie. Sand filled the ornamental holes in his shiny black wing tips.
Special Agent Finch, Archer's partner, was a small-framed, pinch-faced man with narrow shoulders and an oddly distended stomach. He had a weak chin, wispy blond hair, and a small pug nose. Archer opened the conversation by clasping his meaty hands in front of him. “Okay, Deputy Massey, tell me everything that happened.”
Sean protested, “He already told Officer Reed.”
Archer kept his eyes on Winter. “Mrs. Devlin, let me do my job,” he said condescendingly.
“I'd like to speak to Director Shapiro,” Winter said before Sean could blow up again. “Mrs. Devlin is right. I went through it with Reed, and his partner wrote it down in copious detail, which I assume he shared with you.”
“Well, answer this one thing, then. Wasn't there some way you could have captured just one of them?”
“Absolutely not.”
“The one you fired on point-blank, from slightly above?”
“He-” Sean started.
“Mrs. Devlin. You can stay here, but only if you can refrain from butting in,” Archer interrupted coldly.
“I was there, too,” she said angrily. “Winter told him to surrender and he didn't. He tried to shoot me and Winter fired only to stop him.”
“Deputy Massey was in charge, was he not? You were just being dragged around, weren't you?”
Sean raised an eyebrow but didn't answer.
