“If he’s not on anyone’s radar, how’d he get on the list?” Thibodaux asked. “Maybe he really was a mole.”
“We’ve yet to figure that one out,” Palmer said grimly, nodding toward an empty chair with shreds of duct tape at the arms and legs. “There’s one more.”
Someone had been tied there, likely made to watch.
“Worse than this?” Thibodaux moaned. He turned to Quinn. “I’m gonna need one of my grandmama’s good- luck gris-gris bags to protect me. This place is chockablock full of evil, beb.”
“It’s a woman.” Palmer held open the door to a small unfinished storeroom. “This is… was her house.”
Quinn stepped through the narrow doorway to find a small room awash with blood.
As a younger man, just starting out in the business, he’d been amazed at the amount of fluid inside a human body. There was a reason they called it “wet work.”
The pallid corpse of an amber-haired female was thrown back over a collapsed stack of cardboard boxes. She looked to be in her late thirties-maybe Quinn’s age. Her throat had been cut, all the way to the bone-Quinn guessed with some sort of wire. She was naked but for the beige bra that was bunched up cruelly under her armpits. A high-school yearbook and a small wooden music box-presumably things precious to the woman-had fallen out of the boxes and lay below the ashen white of the woman’s trailing wrist. Droplets of coagulating blood pooled below the tips of curled fingers. High cheekbones and the steep angle of her jaw made Quinn guess she might have a hint of Asian blood. Her storm-gray eyes were thrown wide in a silent scream of terror.
Quinn turned away after he’d taken in as much as he thought he needed. Each time he saw a woman who’d been hurt or killed-and he’d seen far too many-he couldn’t help but think of Kim. “Anything I can learn from this one?”
“FBI techs say she was raped,” Palmer said.
Bodington leaned a hand against the door frame. “Too early to tell if there’ll be any DNA. Son of a bitch bit a chunk out of her shoulder though-probably trying to subdue her. My guys can get a good cast of his teeth from the wound. Looks like the old girl put up a fight.” He nodded to the tip of a female finger, complete with oddly untouched pink nail polish, lying on the concrete floor. “Killer probably used a garrote. Old girl must have gotten a finger inside the piano wire before he yanked it tight-”
“The old girl’s name was Nadia,” Veronica Garcia interjected from the doorway, behind Director Ross. She was icy, detached. “Nadia Arbakova. She worked for the Secret Service in their Protective Intelligence Division.”
“Was she on Drake’s list?” Thibodaux asked.
“No,” Palmer mused, almost to himself. “Oddly enough, she was not.”
“She’s on my list,” Garcia offered.
“Oh.” Bodington gave a sarcastic smirk. “You’ve been in the field a half a day and you already have your own list?”
To her credit, Garcia ignored the pompous attempt to keep her in her place.
“She has a relationship with an agent on the vice presidential detail. He’s one of the priorities you gave me.” She looked at Palmer, who gave her a reassuring nod. “I’d planned to review her background information with her this morning.”
“So,” Bodington mused, “you just happened to drop by at exactly the right time to find two dead bodies in the basement?”
“I decided to stop off and chat with her this morning,” Garcia said. “Her house is on the way in from mine. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”
“Damn appropriate metaphor.” The FBI director smirked, nodding at Haddad’s body. “Maybe that’s exactly what you did.”
Quinn had had enough. “You need to shut your mouth,” he hissed, suddenly losing patience.
The FBI boss blustered, rising up on the balls of his feet as if he might actually get physical.
“Calm down, Kurt.” Palmer held up a hand. “He’d kill you before you could make a fist.” He turned to a grinning Garcia. “Please continue, Agent Garcia. What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
“James Doyle,” Veronica said. “He’s working day-shift at the Observatory today. I have an appointment at three-thirty to talk to the agent in charge of his detail.”
“Very well,” Palmer muttered. “One victim on the list and one not
…” He walked back toward the stairwell door as he thought, ignoring the grotesque, bag-like figure of Tom Haddad’s bloated body. When he reached the base of the stairs, he turned to face the rest of the group. “It goes without saying we have a cold-blooded son of a bitch at work here, maybe more than one. This idiot congressman has crossed the line by going public with the existence of his list.”
“Has he released the names?” Thibodaux asked. “I thought he said it was a secret.”
“Drake has his own version of WikiLeaks. The entire list blasted out over the Internet last night right after his show.” Palmer reached in his shirt pocket and removed a folded sheet of white paper, looking directly at Quinn. “Take a good look.”
“Think I’ll recognize some of the names?” Quinn took the paper.
“I’m sure you will, son.” Palmer sighed. “You’re one of them.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Some men killed for pleasure. Some, like Mujaheed Beg, were blessed with a righteous cause. To hold another’s life in one’s hands was enjoyable enough, but to kill an American-that was such a pleasure as to be sinful, unless the cause was a holy one.
The Mervi ran an olive hand through his hair, combed back like a wood duck. He squinted at the sun. It was nearly noon. His target would arrive at any moment.
A cloud of insects hovered like pepper tossed into the air a few feet off the paved jogging trail. Cicadas buzzed in the thick foliage along the shore of a small lake, ticking out their last few calls of the season. A swimming beaver cut a long V in the brown surface, disappearing under a raft of lily pads.
A creature of the desert, Mujaheed had been unaccustomed to such an abundance of life. He swatted a mosquito that landed on his cheek. A striped lizard scuttled along the paved asphalt trail before darting into a tuft of brown grass.
A car door slammed on the far side of the lake, echoing off the water.
Beg looked at his watch. So predictable.
Lake Artemesia Park was a stone’s throw from the Beltway and adjacent to the College Park Metro station. Though it was in the city, the little gem of a park was tucked in among the trees and connected to miles of wooded trail. A peaceful lake beckoned University of Maryland students like Grace Smallwood who liked to run in the woods.
Mujaheed leaned against the cedar post of a small gazebo off the trail, pretending to stretch his calf muscles. He was dressed in a pair of gray running shorts and a black T-shirt. Apart from a small cardboard box in his right hand, he looked like any other jogger.
Most visitors preferred the cool of the evening and the park was nearly empty. One other runner-a young Asian man with a South Korean flag on his T-shirt-and a gaggle of young black women pushing baby strollers had passed him a few moments before. Beg gauged his timing so he’d meet Grace Smallwood coming from the opposite side of the lake, well away from the mothers’ gossip group and the other jogger. The sight of so many women out in the open with their heads uncovered disgusted him. They deserved the rewards they reaped.
Mujaheed counted to twenty, then fell into an easy trot along the trail. He went counterclockwise around the lake trail to meet Grace Smallwood as far away from the others as possible.
Mujaheed had found the Russian woman the night before bland as a wet cloth. She’d fought, but not as well as he had hoped, considering she was supposed to be trained in such things.
He’d changed his shirt after he’d finished with her, and then taken some time to look through her bedroom. When there was an opportunity, he liked to get a feel for the life he’d just ended. He’d found little but a few photo albums and an inordinate amount of sewing crafts. A small framed photo of Arbakova beside a Native American
