“Not as far as I know.”
“Tell this Novatny guy that I’m calling the director. I want somebody with some rank to do it. I don’t want a goddamn sheriff’s deputy calling her on the phone. Tell Novatny to coordinate it with the director’s office. I’ll call the director right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Novatny, Parker, and the sheriff were standing in the parking area, waiting for Jake to get off the phone. When he did, Novatny asked, “Now what?”
“The case is yours,” Jake said. “Full-court press. You’re to coordinate with the director’s office on informing Mrs. Bowe. Danzig’s calling the director now. He may send the director himself over to tell her.”
“That’ll put him in a good mood,” Parker said. “The director being such a warm human being in the first place.”
“This is gonna be the mother of all task forces,” Novatny said to Parker. “And we got the gun. We need a full crime-scene crew down here right now. We need guys debriefing the Virginia cops. We need everything.”
The sheriff turned up his hands: “Then I’m out of it. Anything you need, call me.”
“You don’t sound that unhappy,” Parker said. “You don’t mind a bunch of feds trampling around your jurisdiction?”
An excessively thin smile from the sheriff: “I got five hundred eighty-nine square miles to take care of, that don’t have anything to do with U.S. senators getting decapitated and burned at the stake. I’ll take care of the five hundred eighty-nine, you take care of the senator. Of course, anything we can do to help, we’ll do, you poor fuckers.”
Back in the car, heading toward the helicopter, Jake said to Novatny, “About that tip, the guy with the guns.”
“Schmidt,” Novatny said. “I’ve been thinking about that, but I didn’t want to mention it around the cops. What’d you find?”
“I went by the house, nobody home. I looked in the windows. There are four gun safes in one of the bedrooms, their doors are open, they all look empty. Doesn’t look like there’s been anybody home for a while. There’s a note on the door from the Watchmen, asking him to check in. He apparently hasn’t.”
“All right.” Novatny nodded. “You didn’t go inside?”
“Of course not. But I was thinking, you might want to have some of your people take a look at it.”
“I’ll do that,” Novatny said.
“I mean right now. Because I’m gonna call the governor and tell him about the body. He’s gonna find out pretty quick anyway, and I want to be on his good side. Just in case that might be useful. If we have to approach the Watchmen . . . Anyway, you might want to have a couple of your guys on the scene before the Watchmen have a chance to go over the place.”
Novatny nodded again. “We’ve got two Richmond guys at a Holiday Inn in Charlottesville, they’ve been working the case from there,” he said, as they pulled up to the chopper. “Give me Schmidt’s address and a ten-minute head start.”
When Jake was back on the road, he called Goines again, told Goines to find the governor and to have him call back.
“I don’t know how fast I can find him,” Goines said.
“Make it as quick as you can. Make it an urgent priority,” Jake said.
Goodman was back in ten minutes, as Jake was coming into Buckingham, this time at the speed limit. “Mr. Winter? This is Arlo Goodman.” A little less friendly than he had been; more formal, as if he were expecting trouble.
“We found Lincoln Bowe’s body,” Jake said.
Long pause, the airwaves twittering through the cell phone. Then, “Here, in Virginia?”
“Down by Appomattox, between Buckingham and Appomattox.”
“Ah, no.” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“I thought you’d want to know,” Jake said.
“I appreciate it.” A little warmer now. Goodman could turn it on and off, even over the phone. “Who else knows?”
“Some cops. The FBI. The president. We’re moving to tell Mrs. Bowe. The FBI has taken over the scene, a full crime-scene crew is on the way in. Your BCI guys are already on the scene.”
“They didn’t call me,” Goodman said.
“The sheriff was discouraging calls, knowing that the FBI was on the way,” Jake said. “Everybody is walking on lightbulbs.”
“They should have called me,” Goodman said. His voice was quiet, but suffused with rage. Somebody was in trouble.
Jake asked, “You know anything about this, Governor?”
A pause—a shocked pause?—then, “What are you talking about?”
