the south side of the room; the banner of the USF was suspended from the north side. Both were being steam- ironed to remove the wrinkles. Then they would be rolled and dropped when the convention got under way. Below them, rows of chairs were still being set up, their backs draped with gold and blue covers.
Those were the colors of the convention. They signified a new dawn in a clear sky. The slogan of the convention was, 'A New Day for America.'
That it would be. But not in the way that Don Orr imagined.
Stone went to the podium to see how work on the sound system was progressing. Texas Congresswoman Nicolet Murat was there, waiting to run a sound check. Nicolet would be giving the keynote address the next day. She came from oil money and was in line to become Treasury secretary in an Orr administration. Stone smiled a crooked smile as he greeted Congresswoman Murat and her executive assistant. It was exciting to be part of a big machine with its parts and pieces nearly ready to engage. And not in the way its designer imagined.
The lopsided smile broadened.
How could dead history compare to rich, explosive lifel
THIRTY-EIGHT
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 11:33 a.m.
The McCaskeys did not work very much when they got home.
They sat on the bed, pulled the laptop between them, and reviewed the list of possible suspects: Kendra Peterson, Kat Lockley, Dr. Hennepin.
Mike Rodgers had mentioned a reporter, Lucy O'Connor, who covered Congress and arrived very soon after both murders. The McCaskeys had looked up her background. The resume of everyone who had security clearance to the Capitol was filed online in the eyes-only section of the congressional web site. She wrote for the American Spectator and had a moderately successful syndicated radio talk show. She was a Pittsburgh native who had majored in communication at Carnegie-Mellon University.
'She also took their Interstellar Communication course and grabbed several credits from the Robotics Institute at the university's School of Computer Science,' McCaskey remarked.
'What does that tell you?' Maria asked.
'She likes to think outside the coconut,' he replied.
The couple went back to the police station. Howell's people had been doing some of the legwork they needed now. The Metro Police had obtained the addresses, license numbers, and make of car driven by each individual on their list of potential suspects. They also charted the location of security cameras closest to these people: parking garages, apartment lobbies, convenience stores, gas stations, banks, and traffic intersections. The latter were monitored for speeders and potential terrorists moving through the capital. Once the McCaskeys had these sites, they intended to go back out and visit them, borrow the tapes, and have a look for one of those women returning home after the crime.
They fell asleep instead. The days of youthful 'forced march' crime-fighting were a thing of the past. The McCaskeys needed rest.
Maria got up at five-thirty the next morning. She showered, made coffee, then woke her husband. McCaskey was not happy to have passed out like that. He joined her in the kitchen at six-thirty. They had coffee and whole wheat toast. By seven o'clock, they were on the road.
McCaskey had not done patrol work since he was a debut ant That was Bureau slang for a first-year agent. He forgot how tiring it could be.
Or maybe how much older he was. That aside, it was rewarding work made more so by Maria's enthusiasm. She loved police work and had an eye for detail unlike anyone he had ever met. She had decided that the killer would have driven from the murder sites. A woman alone, on foot, after dark, was likely to stand out. She might have been noticed from a bar or restaurant or by a passing motorist. That could have helped police determine her direction. If she had taken the Metro, she definitely would have appeared on a security camera. A taxi or limousine service was out of the question. Drivers paid attention to the people who got into their cars. Part of that was fear and part of it was bragging rights in case they happened to pick up a celebrity.
Assuming the killer was driving, she would have done so slowly. She would not have wanted to risk being stopped by the police. They might ask where she had been. If the killer had shared a drink with Wilson, the police might have smelled it and insisted on a sobriety test.
There were a great many assumptions in their scenario.
But experience, deductive reasoning, and good instincts could be as important to an investigation as facts, especially in a case such as this where there was very little hard data. McCaskey was thinking about that as they drove from site to site. His Op-Center ID got him access to the videotapes or digital records. None of them proved
