Dead Watch

way or an uncivilized way. He could hold it for a while. Talk to Barber. See where the FBI investigation went.

Think about Madison some more.

7 

The call came in two minutes after he’d gotten in bed. A male voice: “Mr. Winter? I understand you’re trying to find out what happened to Senator Bowe.”

“Yes, I am. Who is this?” He checked his caller ID, found the same number he’d seen on the hang-ups, but no name.

“I really can’t tell you that. I’m sure you understand.” Jake did understand—a whistle-blower, a backstabber, a do-gooder. The voice was soft, well modulated. A bureaucrat somewhere, or maybe a politician, somebody with a little authority. “I apologize for calling so late, I tried to call a few times earlier, but there was no answer. If you want to know about Senator Bowe, talk to Barbara Packer. She’s staff with the Republican National Committee. Ask her what she and Tony Patterson discussed three weeks ago in their meeting at the Watergate.”

“What’d they discuss?”

“They talked about nonconventional means of destabilizing the administration. By nonconventional, I mean criminal.”

“Give me one specific,” Jake said. “Give me a can opener.”

The man laughed. “You mean, for the can of worms? Okay. Tell her, ‘We know all about the Wisconsin thing.’ See what she says.”

“You’ve got to . . .”

“What I’ve got to do is, I’ve got to go. Don’t bother to trace the call. Or, for that matter, go ahead. I’m calling from a prepay cell phone. There’s no name on it.”

The man was gone.

Jake thought about calling Novatny to see if a trace might be possible. Maybe there’d be some weird way of figuring out who it was—security cameras over the cash register when the man bought the phone. Something tricky . . . and he thought, Later. Better to find Barbara Packer first, see what she had to say. Whatever it was, it’d be political, and usually it was a good idea to keep politics away from the FBI.

First thing in the morning . . .

He went back to bed, thought about his walk with Madison, and then drifted way.

His eyes snapped open four and a half hours later, and he was up. One benefit of a short night—short nights all his life—was that Jake got in a half day’s work before anybody else was moving. He was in his office by five-thirty, NPR’s Sunrise Classical running in the background, searching the federal databases for Packer, the Republican National Committee staff member, Tony Patterson, who apparently worked for ALERT!, a conservative political action committee, and Howard Barber, Lincoln Bowe’s onetime lover.

Packer and Patterson had spent their lives in political jobs, everything from grassroots organizing to campaign strategy. They were both backroom types, never out front.

Barber was more interesting. He’d been in Iraq, a platoon leader with the Rangers, and had taken home a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He hadn’t been badly wounded—he’d had light duty for two weeks, and then was back on the job. The Bronze Star sounded legitimate, won during an attack on a dissident strongpoint after an ambush.

Back in the States, he’d gotten start-up money from an American Express program, and had put together software that integrated digital radio receivers with mapping programs for low-level infantrymen. The receiver was worn on the wrist, like a large watch, and, among other things, could provide real-time aerial views of combat scenes at the platoon and squad level, as well as linked graphic displays to coordinate maneuvers at the company, platoon, and squad levels. Just like a video game, Jake thought, if you didn’t mind a really bloody “Game Over.”

By seven o’clock, he had everything that was nonclassified. If he needed more, he could go to Novatny, but he was reluctant to do that until he saw where things were headed. Satisfied with the morning’s research, he went to his newspapers, journals, and mail.

The Times had a two-column right-corner headline on Bowe, while the Post stripped the story across the top of the front page. Neither story had anything he didn’t know, except that an autopsy had been scheduled for last night.

At eight o’clock, he got Novatny on the phone: “What happened with the autopsy?”

“This is confidential,” the FBI man said. He crunched, as though he were chewing a carrot.

“I’m a confidential guy,” Jake said.

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Yeah, yeah . . .”

“For one thing, the chemistry will take a while. But: he was dead when they set him on fire, though recently dead. He’d been shot right dead in the heart. In the heart at least. We don’t know about the head, of course.”

“Did they recover any of the slug?”

“Yes, they did. Deformed, but useful,” Novatny said. “A copper-jacketed .45-caliber hollow point. As it happens, we recovered a .45-caliber pistol in Carl Schmidt’s house yesterday evening, hidden in the basement. It was full of copper-jacketed .45-cal hollow points with Schmidt’s fingerprints on them. I would bet my mother’s virtue that we’re gonna get a match on the slug.”

“Whoa.”