patrols along the East Coast. A severe blizzard that had shut down the West Coast was heading inland and expected to be over KC by nightfall - a point that left Caitlin feeling satisfied with her decision to fly out that morning. Local police were still appealing for witnesses to a hit-and-run accident near the River Market. And tickets for three Avril Lavigne concerts at Kemper Arena in February next year had sold out yesterday within an hour of being available online.
Caitlin changed into her clothes for the day: jeans, a red Kansas City Chiefs sweatshirt she’d bought from the gift shop in the hotel lobby, and a leather jacket. There would be time enough to get into uniform as Colonel Katherine Murdoch once she arrived in Fort Hood. She inhaled an oatmeal cookie and an apple for breakfast, brushed her teeth and tossed the toiletries bag into her suitcase. She was done with Kansas City. All of the files and briefing notes she had reviewed were sitting in the room’s safe. She always packed her bags the night before departure, meaning she had nothing to do now besides organising a ride to the airport and confirming the handover of the room to the security detachment. She was just reaching for the phone when it rang.
‘Colonel Murdoch? This is Special Agent Dan Colvin. We met briefly yesterday afternoon, you might recall. There’s something I need to discuss with you, if it’s not too inconvenient.’
Caitlin was still groggy and not ready to face anything more challenging than a cup of shitty hotel coffee. The voice on the other end of the line sounded oddly upbeat and cheerful. It was a little too early in the morning to be dealing with … well, with morning people.
She remembered this Colvin guy, though. He was with the FBI’s field office here in KC, handling inter-agency liaison. He’d been one of her first contact points when she arrived as the emissary of Chief of Staff Culver. He had taken her to a couple of agencies and briefings. Built like a runner, with a face chiselled out of hard, unforgiving brown basalt, Special Agent Colvin was the type of man who left an impression.
‘Hang on, would you, Agent?’
Caitlin tossed the phone on the bed without giving him a chance to reply. She went through to the bathroom, splashed water on her face and towelled off, which woke her up some. She took three seconds to force herself into the role of Colonel Katherine Murdoch. It was the mental equivalent of pulling on somebody else’s skin.
‘Sorry,’ she said upon returning to the line, ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night. Is there something I can help you with?’
‘I doubt it, ma’am, but there may be something I can help you with. I have a file note, a request from Mr Culver in fact, to contact you in case of developments in a couple of our investigations. It concerns one of our Mandate settlers, a Mr Miguel Pieraro.’
‘Er, yeah … I know of him,’ she replied. ‘I was just reviewing his file last night. What’s up?’
‘I’m afraid Mr Pieraro has been killed. A hit-and-run incident three days ago.’
That woke her up, stunning her into consciousness more effectively than the ice cold water she’d splashed on her face. Caitlin noticed that Colvin didn’t say ‘accident’. She looked at her bags, packed and standing by the door, ready to go. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Agent Colvin,’ she told him, sincere even through the fogginess still clouding her head. She had really felt for the man who had lost everything, save for one daughter. She felt these things more deeply now, having her own child, no matter how hard she tried to shut down her feelings when she was out in the field. ‘That guy deserved a break. But I’m a little pressed for time here, unfortunately. Is there some reason you contacted me, beyond professional courtesy?’
It was a rather discourteous thing to ask, but there had be some reason Colvin had called. And she really was pressed for time.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘The traffic cops called in their colleagues from Homicide pretty quickly on this one. And Homicide called us when they saw that Pieraro’s name was flagged with a link to the federal databases. I figured Mr Culver would want you to know.’
Caitlin could hear the curiosity in back of Colvin’s words. Why would the White House Chief of Staff want a military advisor from his office to know about this sort of stuff? She was glad he didn’t press the matter.
She sat down on the bed, accepting the delay. ‘Homicide?’
‘Yeah,’ said the FBI man. ‘All of the evidence adds up to Pieraro and the woman he was with, a Maive Aronson, being deliberately run down.’
‘I see …’ Her mind was racing ahead now. Was this important enough to delay her departure? ‘Agent Colvin, I’m very grateful that you called me, and I apologise if I seemed a little brusque. I was just heading out the door for the airport.’
‘Ah, that’s cool,’ he replied. He seemed to have decided to dispense with inter-agency formalities after all. ‘Look, if you’d like, I could swing by and pick you up. Our office is just a couple of minutes away from the old Harrah’s, and you’d be welcome to go through the evidence they’ve put together so far. If you think you need to brief Mr Culver on it.’
Again, he spoke with a slightly rising inflection as his professional curiousity kicked in.
Caitlin frowned, unsure of which way to jump. Culver had made it clear that he was interested in anything to do with Blackstone’s complicity in the attacks on those homesteaders down in the Mandate. But he’d also stated that anything besides tying Blackstone to Ahmet Ozal was of secondary importance.
‘I suppose it couldn’t hurt,’ she said, opting to cover both bases. ‘Mister Culver is
‘Oh, that’s fine. I’m on my way out the door now. See you in five.’
He broke the connection. Caitlin forced herself to make one last check of the room before putting a call into the security detail to let them know she was leaving. Two uniformed Protective Service officers appeared at her door less than a minute later. Their ready-room was just down the hallway. She handed over her pass and confirmed the presence of the files in the safe before she left.
The same two air force men - officers, as it turned out - she’d seen in the gym the previous night were waiting at the elevator when she arrived.
‘Think we’ll get to fly this month?’ one asked the other.
His friend shook his head. ‘Nope. Shot our wad over New York. I reckon that was the last flight of the Buffs for a while.’
Caitlin took the information in without comment as they all stepped into the lift. Probably pilots from Whiteman on a pass. She turned up the frost on her stone face to its most glacial. The ride down to the lobby was excruciating.
‘Dyke,’ one of them muttered as she strode out through the sliding doors.
Almost certainly the guy who had tried to catch her attention over by the treadmills. An egomaniacal man- child. It was a pity she had no compelling reason to engage them in character as Colonel Murdoch. Could’ve been useful practice, tearing this asshole a new one.
She turned into the marble lobby. At least it looked like marble; it could just as likely have been some sort of veneer, she wasn’t sure. The whole place had been completely refitted during reclamation. As she wheeled her luggage over to the counter, Caitlin passed a dark spot scoured onto the otherwise smooth, creamy surface. She wondered if she’d just passed over the final resting places of one of the Disappeared. Screens above the desk ran news feeds, the local weather radar and flight information for Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport. She considered buying a trinket from the gift shop to take home to Monique, before thinking better of it.
She dropped her keycard off at the desk and made her way over to the entrance to wait for Dan Colvin. She wasn’t sure what, if any, meaning she should look for in the killing of the homesteader. There was no obvious connection to her primary interest, namely Baumer, Ozal, and the undeclared salvage contract the latter’s company, Hazm Unternehmen, had obtained down in Texas. And it wasn’t as though settlers didn’t have it tough on the frontier anyway. There were more than enough real pirates and banditos out there.
Just as she was shaking her head at the muddy, opaque nature of it all, she recognised Special Agent Colvin coming towards her through the revolving doors. A black, GSA 2002 Chevy Suburban sat idling outside for them.
‘Colonel Murdoch,’ he said, offering her a smile. Dressed in jeans and an anonymous sports coat, he looked like any other government contractor. Apparently there was not much call for the suit-and-tie look of the Hoover era these days.
