'Something big must have happened. Like, really big.'
'I don't like this, Denny.' Mitch's knee started bouncing. 'Ain't they been looking for a Suburban since we made that hit in Woodley Park?'
'Yeah, but a dark-blue or black one. Besides, they're stopping everyone, see? Hell, I wish we had some papers to sell in this traffic,' Denny said, as upbeat as he could make it. 'Might earn back some of that gas money we spent today.'
Mitch wasn't buying it. He stayed all hunched down and tense as they crawled along toward the head of the line.
Then, out of the blue, Mitch said, 'Where did we get the gas money, Denny? And that envelope for Alicia? I don't get how we're paying for this.'
Denny gritted his teeth. The one thing Mitch could usually be counted on for was a distinct lack of probing questions.
'You know what happened to that curious cat, don't you, Mitchie? D-E-D, dead,' he said. 'You just focus on the big stuff and let me handle the rest. Including this.'
They were coming up on the checkpoint now, and an NBA-size officer motioned them forward.
'License and registration, please.'
Denny reached into the glove compartment and handed them over without a blink. Here's where it paid to work for the right people. 'Denny Humboldt' had a record as clean as a show cat's ass – even that parking ticket would be history by now.
'What's going on, Officer?' he asked. 'It looks big.'
The cop answered with a question, while his eyes played over the piles of junk in the backseat. 'Where are you two coming from?'
'Johnsonburg, PA,' Denny said. 'Nowhere you ever want to go, by the way. The place is a hole.'
'How long have you been gone?'
'Just since this morning. Day trip. So I guess you can't tell me anything, huh?'
'That's right.' The officer handed him back his items and motioned them on. 'Move along, please.'
As they pulled away, Mitch pried his hands off his knee and heaved a big sigh. 'That was too damn close,' he said. 'That sonofabitch knew something.'
'Not at all, Mitchie,' Denny told him. 'Not at all. He's like everybody else – none of 'em have a clue, not a clue.'
It didn't take them long to find some coverage on the radio. Word was coming in fast that the DC Patriot sniper had struck again. An unnamed police officer had been gunned down from a distance, right there on the DC side of the Potomac.
Sure enough, as they crossed the Roosevelt Bridge into the city, they could see a whole mass of law enforcement parked along Rock Creek Parkway off to the left. Denny hooted out loud. 'Check out the piggy convention! Looks like Christmas came early this year.'
'What are you talking about, Denny?' Mitch still looked a little glazed from the checkpoint stop.
'The dead cop, man. Aren't you listening?' Denny said. 'It's all going down exactly like we hoped. We just bagged ourselves a goddamn copycat!'
Chapter 62
NELSON TAMBOUR HAD been shot just before dusk, on a grassy strip of no-man's-land between Rock Creek Parkway and the river. The highway was already shut down by the time I got there, all the way from K Street to the Kennedy Center. I parked as close as I could and walked the rest of the way in.
Tambour had been a detective with NSID, the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. I didn't know him personally, but that didn't make this incident any less of a nightmare. MPD had just lost one of its own, and horribly so. Detective Tambour had been found with his skull blown half open – a large-caliber bullet had passed right through his head.
It was dark now, but several klieg lights had the scene lit up like the inside of a football stadium. Two tents had been erected off to the side, one as a command center, and another for evidence collection out of sight of the pesky news choppers circling overhead.
We also had Harbor Patrol on the water, keeping pleasure craft at a good distance from the shore. And command staff were everywhere.
When I saw Chief Perkins, he motioned me right over. He was huddled off to the side with the assistant chiefs from NSID and Investigative Services, as well as with a woman I didn't recognize.
'Alex, this is Penny Ziegler from IAD,' he said, and the knot in my stomach tightened right up. What is Internal Affairs doing down here?
'Something I should know about?' I said.
'There is,' Ziegler told me. Her face was just as creased with tension as ours were. Murdered cops tend to make everyone wiggy.
'Detective Tambour's been on no-contact status for the last month,' she said. 'We were going to be filing criminal charges against him later this week.'
'What charges?' I said.
She looked to Perkins for a nod before she went on. 'Over the last two years, Tambour oversaw an undercover operation at three of the big housing projects in Anacostia. He's been skimming half of everything they've seized, mostly PCP, coke, and Ecstasy. He was reselling it through a network of street dealers in Maryland and Virginia.'
'He may have been on a drop right here,' Perkins added with a shake of his head. 'They found a key of coke in his trunk.'
Four words flashed through my mind: Foxes in the henhouse.
Suddenly Tambour was a lot more in line with the snipers' victim profile than he'd been a minute ago.
At the same time, though, he was an unknown to the general public. He hadn't been in the headlines like the others, at least not yet, and that was a difference.
An important one? I couldn't be sure, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that maybe something was off here.
'I want to impose radio silence on anything to do with the investigation,' I told Perkins. 'Whoever made this hit obviously has some kind of inside line.'
'Agreed,' he said. 'And, Alex?' Perkins put a hand on my arm as I turned to go. His eyes looked strained. Maybe even a little desperate. 'Work the hell out of this,' he told me. 'This is close to getting out of control.'
If this hit wasn't by our sniper team, it already was out of control.
Chapter 63
FBI PERSONNEL STARTED showing up right after I did. That was definitely a double-edged sword for me. Their Evidence Response Teams bring some of the best toys in the business – but it also meant Max Siegel wouldn't be far behind.
In fact, we bumped heads over Nelson Tambour's body.
'That's a hell of an exit wound,' Siegel said, coming into my airspace with his usual sensitivity. 'I heard the guy was dirty. Is it true? I'll find out anyway.'
I ignored the question and answered the one he should have been asking. 'It was definitely long-range,' I said. 'There's no stippling at all. And, given the body position, the shots probably had to come from over there.'
Directly across from us, maybe 250 yards offshore, we could see flashlight beams crisscrossing the underbrush on Roosevelt Island. We had two teams over there, scouring for shells, suspicious footprints, anything.
'You said shots, plural?' Siegel asked.
