plans to return to Washington, if that's where they'd even come from in the first place. But I had to assume otherwise. For all I knew, they were already back there and planning their next hit.
The minute I got things wrapped up with Detective Cowen, I was in the car and headed for home. And I was moving fast, using a siren all the way.
Chapter 81
AT EIGHT THIRTY the next morning, Colleen Brophy turned off of E Street and into the churchyard, where I was waiting outside the True Press office. She had a bulging backpack on her shoulders, an armload of newspapers, and a nearly finished cigarette in the corner of her mouth.
'Oh God,' she said when she saw me. 'You again. Now what do you want?'
'I wouldn't come if it wasn't important, Ms. Brophy. I'm well aware of how you feel about all this,' I said. Still, after my long Sunday on the road, I was in 'no mood for 'tude,' as Sampson likes to say.
The True Press editor set down her load of papers and sat on the stone bench where I'd just stood up.
'How can I help you?' she asked, her sarcasm still intact. 'As if I have a choice.'
I showed her the picture of Mitchell Talley. 'Have you ever seen this man?'
'Oh, come on,' she said right away. 'You think this is the guy who sent me those e-mails?'
'I'll take that as a yes. Thank you. When was the last time you saw him?'
She took out a new cigarette and lit it off the last of the old one before she answered.
'Do you really need me to participate in this?' she said. 'The trust I have with these people is so tenuous.'
'I'm not trying to bust a shoplifter, Ms. Brophy.'
'I understand, but it's the shoplifters I'm worried about. A lot of the homeless people I work with have to break the law from time to time just to get by. If any of them see me talking to you -'
'This can stay a private conversation,' I told her. 'Nobody has to know about it. That is, assuming we can get on with this. Do you know this man?'
After another long pause and a few more drags, she said, 'I guess it was last week. They picked up their papers on Wednesday, like everyone else.'
''They'?' I asked.
'Yeah. Mitch and his friend Denny. They're kind of like a -'
She stopped short then and turned slowly to look at me. It seemed maybe she'd just put two and two together about something. Or maybe I should say one and one.
'Oh God,' she said. 'They're kind of like a team. They're the ones, aren't they?'
I could feel that mental click, when something falls into place. Had I just found my Steven Hennessey?
'What's Denny's last name?' I asked her.
'I honestly don't know,' she said. 'He's white, tall, and thin. He's got lots of stubble, and kind of a -' She waved her hand under her jaw. 'Like a sunken chin, I guess you could call it. He sort of leads Mitch around.'
'And you say they pick up papers on Wednesday?'
She nodded. 'Sometimes they come back for more if they sell out, but I haven't seen them lately. I swear. I know this is serious now.'
'I believe you,' I said. Everything about her demeanor had changed. Now she looked more sad than anything. 'Any idea where I might look for the two of them?'
'All over. Denny has this old white Suburban he drives around, when he can get gas. I know they sleep in there sometimes.' The Suburban was a dead end now, but I didn't say anything about it to Ms. Brophy.
'And you can try the shelters. There's a list of them in the back of the paper.' She took a copy off the top of her stack and handed it to me. 'God, you know, I hate myself for telling you all this.'
'Don't,' I said, and paid her a dollar for the paper. 'You're doing the right thing.'
Finally.
Chapter 82
AFTER A LONG DAY of canvassing homeless shelters and soup kitchens, I wasn't any further along than I'd been that morning. For all I knew, Talley and Hennessey were still in New Jersey. Or gone to Canada. Or up in smoke.
But when I went back to the office for some files to bring home, Jerome Thurman caught me at the elevator with some news.
'Alex! You heading out?'
'I was,' I said.
'Maybe not anymore.'
He held up a page from some kind of printout. 'I think maybe we've got something here. Could be good stuff.'
Normally, Jerome works out of First District, but I'd gotten him a space in the Auto Theft Unit down the hall, where he could monitor vehicle leads for me. And by 'space,' I mean a stack of crates in their Records Room where he could set up his laptop, but Jerome's never been a complainer.
What he had was a list of hot license plate numbers from an NCIC database. One of the entries was circled in blue pen.
'It's a Lexus ES, reported stolen from an apartment complex in Colliers Mills, New Jersey,' he said. 'That's, like, two, three miles down the road from where your white Suburban went into the water.'
I risked a half smile. 'Tell me there's more, Jerome,' I said. 'There's more, right?'
'Best part, actually. An LPR camera picked up the same plate number coming into long-term parking out at National on Saturday morning at four forty-five.'
LPR stands for License Plate Reader. It uses optical scanning software to read the tag numbers on passing cars and then compares those numbers against lists of wanted and stolen vehicles. It's an amazing bit of technology, even if all the kinks haven't quite been worked out yet.
'Any reason we're just finding out about this now?' I asked. 'That's well over forty-eight hours ago. What was the problem?'
'The system isn't live at the airport,' Jerome said. 'There's a manual download once a day, Monday to Friday. I just got this a few minutes ago. But, bottom line, Alex? I'm guessing your little birdies came home to roost.'
'I'm guessing you're right,' I said, and turned back toward the office.
Even before I got to my desk, though, my excitement started turning into something else. This was a double- edged sword, at best. Considering the heat on Talley and Hennessey right now, I couldn't imagine too many reasons why they'd come back to DC. Chances were, if we didn't find at least one of them soon, some other fox in the henhouse was going to get a bullet in the brain.
Nothing like a little pressure to help you do your best work, right?
Chapter 83
IT WAS JUST after midnight when Denny approached the black Lincoln Town Car parked on Vermont Avenue and got in. The man he knew only as Zachary was waiting for him. Zachary's usual nameless driver/goon was sitting face front at the wheel.
