The Good Guy with a Gun (Jim McGill series Book 6) Page 7

  “Not for murder,” the attorney general said, “but for a violation of civil rights. In those cases, though, the unlawful act was based on a discriminatory motivation: color, race, ethnicity or religion. Discrimination based sexuality and gender identity is being considered by Congress but has yet to pass.”

  Both Galia and Jaworsky saw the president was disappointed that she didn’t have the latitude she hoped for … but then she had another thought.

  She asked the attorney general, “If a person bought a gun manufactured in one state and used it to commit a crime in another state, could that be considered a crossing of state lines?”

  Jaworsky nodded. “Yes, it could — if a judge and the Supreme Court says so.”

  “We’ll see what we can get. We’ll prosecute adults for depraved indifference whenever we have the jurisdiction. Whenever a weapon should have been locked up but a young person used it to shoot or kill someone.”

  Galia hated the necessity but felt compelled to play the devil’s advocate. “Madam President, you’ll be accused of inflicting additional pain on already suffering parents.”

  The president’s response was forged steel. “To hell with their pain. It takes a distant second place to the grief the parents of shooting victims feel. Nobody has a right to behave so recklessly they become responsible for the deaths of other people. That’s the essence of depraved indifference, isn’t it, Michael?”

  “That’s it exactly, Madam President.”

  “All right, then. Mr. Attorney General, please reach out to your counterparts in the states and do so quickly. When you have their replies, let me know. We’ll announce to the public that we intend to take every criminal in the country who’s carrying a gun illegally off our streets.”

  Galia was about to comment again, but she decided to wait for the moment.

  The president said, “I’ll be the one to tell everyone who keeps firearms in their homes that they’d better be kept beyond the reach of angry or disturbed children or spouses. If they don’t and there’s a shooting using their guns, they’ll be going to prison.”

  The president sighed and slumped in her chair.

  “You were about to say something, Galia. What was it?”

  “You’ve made a good start, Madam President. Congress can’t interfere with the ideas you’ve proposed, but some of the state attorneys general might refuse to turn their gun cases over to the federal courts.”

  The president offered her a bleak smile. “Then we’ll just have to accuse them of being soft on crime, won’t we? Let them see how their constituencies like that.”

  Both the chief of staff and attorney general liked that irony.

  But Patricia Grant knew Galia Mindel more than well enough to understand she still had something else to say, a political calculation she’d made. She just didn’t want to voice it in front of Michael Jaworsky. Fair enough. In Washington, knowledge was as often a liability as an asset.

  Hence the notion of plausible deniability.

  “Thank you, both,” the president said, “I’d like some time to myself now.”

  Once she was alone, Patricia Grant wept. Abbie McGill was safe, true, but the president had friends who were the parents of Winstead students. She wasn’t sure if any of their sons were on the football team. She prayed they weren’t. Even that supplication made her wince. Was she asking for tragedy to be visited on someone else? The death of strangers would be less hurtful?

  Goddamnit, she hated these killings.

  She damned herself, too, for lacking the power to stop them.

  Neither a nationalized Project Exile nor prosecutions for depraved indifference would have stopped Abel Mays’ rampage that day. There had to be something more she could do.

  The obligation to find some answers forced the president to dry her tears.

  She picked up her phone. “Edwina, please call Mr. McGill. Tell him I need to see him as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 5

  The National Mall — Washington, DC

  Metro Homicide Detectives Marvin Meeker and Big Mike Walker, aka Beemer, felt as relieved as any DC cop when they heard Abel Mays had been found dead. That was, until they arrived at the National Mall and learned that they’d caught a whodunnit. Namely, who the hell had put two rounds in Mays’ head?

  Given the magnitude of Mays’ crimes, finding his killer would be worth a bump in both rank and pay. Failing to find the killer, that wouldn’t be so good. They’d be left counting the days until they retired.

  That and fearing how they’d be remembered if the crime was never solved.

  The two chumps who had struck out on their biggest case.

  Of course, whodunnits, by their nature, were the cases that most often went unsolved.

  Meeker had once showed Beemer a quote from an NYPD detective in the New York Times. “The big secret of detective work is you’ve got to get somebody else to tell you what happened.”

  “Man’s got that right,” Beemer had said.

  Only it was considered bad form simply to give your phone number to the media, ask the public for help and sit back and wait for results. What the public expected from a couple of big-city dicks like Meeker and Beemer, knocking down 75K each with health benefits and a pension plan, was the stuff they saw on “Law & Order.” Maybe Sherlock Holmes, if they watched PBS.

  The Metro detectives made a pro forma attempt to pass off the case to the FBI, who’d taken over federal responsibility from the Park Police, but the special agent handling the feds’ end of things wasn’t having it. Special Agent Abra Benjamin told them, “The stiff on the Mall is ours; the stiff in the car is yours.”

  She pointed out jurisdiction depended on geography. The Mall was federal land, Madison Drive was city property.

  Meeker said, “Yeah, but you look at how Mays got shot, the killer had to be standing on the curb not the street. Means he was on federal land when he committed the crime.”

  “Only we don’t have the killer,” Benjamin said. “If we did, I’d be happy to arrest him. All we’ve got — and by we I mean you — is the stiff. On city property.”

  The two cops stared at the fed. That wasn’t a chore. She had shiny dark brown hair, eyes to match, high cheek bones and a nice nose and mouth. Looked like she worked out, all lean and taut. They weren’t going to intimidate her or wear her down.

  Beemer asked the decisive question. “You’re a lawyer, right?”

  “A lawyer with a gun, a badge and all sorts of other tricks up my sleeve.”

  So Meeker and Beemer knew they weren’t going to win any arguments.

  The detectives walked back to the green Toyota SUV in which Abel Mays had died and still reposed. They did the only thing left to them. They called their boss, Captain Rockelle Bullard, told her she needed to get down to the crime scene. Her superior intelligence and vast experience were required.

  Never mentioning the fact that if anyone got stuck with the blame for not solving the case it would be her. If Meeker and Beemer were mentioned at all, it would only be as footnotes. Besides, they did better following orders than figuring out whodunnits for themselves.

  Rockelle Bullard knew all that. She showed up anyway.

  Third Street, NW — Washington, DC

  McGill and Deke rode the elevator up to Zara Gilford’s top-floor condo in the high-rise security building. Leo waited downstairs in McGill’s Chevy. The elevator car had four cameras set in its ceiling. Deke looked up at each of them.

  “Nowhere to hide in here,” he said.

  McGill had noticed the cameras, too, not that they were conspicuous.

  “Yeah, must be a comfort,” he said without feeling. “What about the National Mall? What kind of cameras does it have?”

  When Deke was slow to answer, McGill gave him a look.

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “Of course, I know,” Deke said.

  The elevator doors opened and the two of them stepped out into a vestibule.

  “You�
�re debating with yourself whether to tell me?” McGill asked.

  Deke said, “The cameras were installed by the Park Police before Holly G’s second inauguration. They can be touchy about the release of their security measures.”

  “But they had to share with the Secret Service.”

  “Of course.”

  “Metro PD?” McGill asked.

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Probably not, given the way feds look down at local cops.”

  That kind of snub still stuck in McGill’s craw, six years after his retirement from public service. Deke, a fed most of his working life, only shrugged.

  Before the conversation could go any further, a tearful, red-faced Zara Gilford opened the door to her condo. She sobbed and fell into McGill’s arms. No question she’d already heard the news of her husband’s death. Spared McGill the burden of delivering it. Didn’t keep him from second-guessing himself for a minute, the way he’d handled things that morning.

  Zara had told him the route her husband ran.

  Had given him the man’s running pace.

  He could have found Gilford with no trouble. Intercepted him on his run. Been on hand with a gun on his hip and had Deke there with his Uzi, too. If Abel Mays or anyone else had tried to shoot Gilford, they could have saved him.

  That probably hadn’t occurred to Zara yet. She invited McGill and Deke inside.

  How had she known they’d come to call?

  Karl Vasek in the lobby could have called up.

  Just as likely, another security camera spotted them getting off the elevator.

  The Oval Office — The White House

  Galia Mindel, on her way out of the Oval Office with the attorney general, had told Edwina Byington, the president’s secretary, to hold all calls to the president and allow no visitors for fifteen minutes.

  “The president’s going to need a little time to herself,” Galia said.

  “Of course. Will fifteen minutes be enough?”

  Twenty-four hours would have been better, Galia thought, but no president had the luxury of that kind of respite anymore. Fifteen minutes of downtime was pushing it. Still, Galia said, “Use your best judgment, Edwina.”

  The Oval Office was soundproof. Short of the president taking a sledgehammer to the walls, Edwina would be unable to hear what went on inside. She certainly wouldn’t be able to tell whether the president was weeping. Still, Galia believed that Edwina was attuned to the president in a way that far surpassed digital technology.

  Galia thought of the faculty as dedicated empathy.

  Something she felt she also had.

  Edwina asked, “And if Mr. McGill should arrive? The president had me place a call to him.”

  “Mr. McGill is always the exception.”

  The chief of staff’s rivalry with McGill had … mellowed. There were still times they contended for Patricia Grant’s time and attention like two kids wanting Mom to hear what they had to say first. But each had come to a better understanding of and respect for the other’s needs. Right now, though, it was the president’s needs that mattered.

  And McGill would be the best one to offer support.

  After Galia retreated to her own office, Edwina waited the directed fifteen minutes and more, trying to anticipate what the president’s requirements would be when the world and its terrors and torments were permitted to return. Edwina allowed herself a personal moment to feel sorrow for the bloodshed at the Winstead School. Those poor young people, dying so horribly, and their families whose suffering had just begun. It was heartbreaking.

  Yet again.

  Doing her best to remain silent, Edwina dabbed the tears that fell from her eyes.

  Where was the comfort to be found at such a moment?

  The answer came quickly to Edwina. Who had comforted the president in the hours after the death of her first husband, Andrew Hudson Grant? Margaret Sweeney had. Margaret had held the president in her arms, prayed with her, soothed her.

  Margaret had also called that morning asking for a moment with the president.

  That had to be more than coincidence, Edwina thought.

  A higher power had to be at work.

  At the twenty-minute mark, Edwina was about to buzz the president when she received a call. Putnam Shady, Margaret Sweeney’s husband, was on the line. He said he had important news for the president.

  Edwina told him she’d see what she could do.

  Then she buzzed the president. “Ma’am, Margaret Sweeney called earlier this morning, asking for a moment. Is there a time you’d like me to schedule her?”

  After a brief pause, the president replied, “Please ask her to come in as soon as she’s able. If she arrives before Mr. McGill, send her right in.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Edwina got back to Mr. Shady. Told him the president was pressed for time, but Margaret Sweeney would be seeing her that day. If he wanted to send word with her …

  Putnam Shady said he’d talk with his wife, and thanked Edwina.

  The president’s secretary hung up her phone.

  Feeling she’d done her best for now.

  C &O Canal National Historical Park

  As a place for a body dump, Byron DeWitt thought the crevasse in Billy Goat Trail A was no match for Jimmy Hoffa’s portal to a parallel universe. Still, if you had little time and few means to dispose of a body, it was a pretty good choice. You had to climb a three-story cliff face and then ignore signs telling you to stay on the posted path to find it. That would buy a killer a fair amount of time before anyone noticed the corpse he had deposited.

  Far more than twenty-four hours, from the state of decomposition DeWitt observed.

  The old saw that a murder had to be solved within a day of its commission or it never would be was BS. Still, the puzzle got harder to piece together with the passage of time. A body’s wrapper of flesh was more disposable than cellophane. Other soft tissue became a party platter for bugs, birds and other scavengers. Mother Nature, using rain, wind and solar radiation, was one heck of a cleaning lady when it came to disposing of physical evidence.

  Even so, DeWitt could see from where he stood, maybe twenty feet above the skeletal remnants, poking out of the tatters that had probably been a custom-made suit, that the victim had suffered a blow to the back of his head that had visibly fractured his skull.

  The deputy director turned to the two women standing nearby.

  A ring of cops and assorted crime scene personnel stood behind them.

  Tara Lang looked like she might once have been a middle school principal. Fortyish, dark-haired, a little soft around the edges but strong, as demonstrated by her handshake. Her manner with DeWitt was collegial rather than deferential. She was one law enforcement professional dealing with another.

  More than just a cop, she was a detective in the Park Police’s Major Crimes Unit.

  Dr. Hasna Kalil was short and slight, topping out at Lang’s shoulder. But there was nothing delicate about her features. Her brow, nose and jaw were all prominent and chiseled. She affected a Western manner of dress, wearing a beret, trench coat, black slacks, rubber soled shoes and leather gloves against the deepening chill of the day. Explaining that she was a surgeon, she hadn’t offered her hand to DeWitt.

  Some docs were cautious about getting the source of their livelihood squeezed.

  “Dr. Kalil,” DeWitt said, “what makes you think you’ve found your brother?”

  “He was my twin.” She spoke English with a French accent.

  “And?”

  “And I know him always, even now.”

  “You’re speaking of intuition?”

  “Yes, and observation.”

  “So you’ve looked at the remains. Can you tell me specifically what you noticed?”

  Dr. Kalil took a moment to collect herself. “Bahir and I were fraternal twins, of course, but our physical similarities in height, weight and skeletal structure are … were remarkable. Looking at him
now …”

  Dr. Kalil needed another moment. She turned away from DeWitt and Lang.

  They waited in silence for her to look back at them.

  She turned back and resumed, speaking in a professional tone. “To my eye, if you were to reposition the skeletal remains to approximate a normal standing position, I would expect them to measure within a centimeter of my own height. If you were to measure the circumference of the skull at the supraorbital ridge, I would expect the result to be no more than a few millimeters different from my own … making an allowance for the fracture.”

  DeWitt picked up on that. “Would you, as a physician, have any idea what might have caused that fracture?”

  Her calm demeanor gave way to cold anger, Dr. Kalil said, “Blunt force trauma.”

  “Possibly from the fall into the crevasse?”

  “No. Ask your specialists in tool marks what might have caused the fracture.”

  “You’re familiar with forensic pathology?” DeWitt asked.

  “Only informally. I spent two years with Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, in Africa. I saw much brutality, clubbing and cutting. Also, I know my brother wore Pierre Cardin suits, and the rags left from that garment look familiar.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” DeWitt said.

  “Thank you. Please let me know when I might take my brother home for burial.”

  She took out a business card and wrote a phone number on the back.

  “I will provide a DNA swab so you may be sure I am not just a foolish woman.”

  Her tone was almost accusatory, DeWitt thought, as if she thought him to be a sexist.

  “No one thinks you’re foolish, Doctor, but one last thing, please. How much would you say your brother weighed the last time you saw him?”

  “Approximately my own weight, fifty-four kilograms.”

  DeWitt did the math in his head: just under one hundred and twenty pounds.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”