'Why were you thinking about that?'
'Because Op-Center was a victim of pork barrel politics. Maybe Paul is right, doing what he's doing. If we had played the system better, we would have more people looking for a killer. And that should be our bottom line, should it not? Protecting law-abiding citizens.'
'That is my religion,' she said simply.
'Well put.' McCaskey looked out the window again. He noticed they were nearing Lafayette Park. 'We're near the Hay-Adams. Why don't we go back there? Walk around, see if there is anything we may have overlooked.'
'All right,' she said.
That was the beauty of having married a cop. He might have to explain colloquial English to her, but he did not have to explain the intangibles of their lives and work. She got that.
They drove to the hotel, its tawny facade gleaming warmly in the morning light. They parked and decided to walk along Farragut North.
The White House shone through the trees of Lafayette Park. McCaskey could see the press corps gathered in tents on the east side. The president was probably heading to the airport. It was too early in the week for Camp David. He remembered when the press looked for stories instead of handouts. There was a time when someone would have sniffed out the new relationship between the White House and Op-Center, exposed it, and not been afraid to write about it. Access to newsmakers. A different kind of pork barrel.
McCaskey took his wife's hand. She gave it an encouraging squeeze. She seemed to sense the frustration he was feeling with this case and with the situation at Op-Center.
'We'll get her,' Maria said.
'Thanks. I believe that,' McCaskey replied.
Maria stopped suddenly. She looked ahead. 'No, I mean we will get her.'
'I don't follow.'
'I was just thinking about the assassin, what I would do if I had just killed someone at the hotel,' Maria said. 'I would be undistracted by conscience or the late hour. My only concern would be getting away quick and clean. That means I would be parked as close to the hotel as possible, on a relatively dark street.'
'Of course.'
'I would also have parked where there are the fewest eyeballs,' Maria said. 'Where would that be?'
'The side of the hotel by Lafayette Park,' her husband said, 'near where we parked.'
'Yes. Darrell, do you think any of the White House reporters might have been there? Maybe one of them doing a live report for CNN?'
'Very possibly,' he agreed. 'But they would have been facing the White House, not the park.'
'Perhaps they turned on their cameras early.'
McCaskey looked in that direction. He did not think there was a chance of that, though he could not rule it out. Then something occurred to him. Something that made the pact with the devil suddenly seem more inviting.
'We may not need them,' he said.
'Why not?'
'Because if the killer came this way, someone else may have gotten a good look at her,' McCaskey said.
Without saying anything else, he borrowed Maria's cell phone and walked briskly toward the park.
THIRTY-NINE
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 11:54 a.m.
Yuri and Svetlana Krasnov might have imagined their own fate. They possessed the genetic Russian quality of
