The Last Justice (25 page)

"I've already told you several times now," Pratt said sternly on the television screen, "I'm not talking to you. I want a lawyer." At Assad's precinct, that would pretty much spell the end of the interview, but Pacini wasn't quitting just yet.

"When did you put the gun under the chair in the courtroom? The day before? Week before? Did you also tell the shooter how to steer clear of the court security cameras?"

"Now, hold on!" Pratt said. "If you're implying I had something to do with Black Wednesday, that's absurd-I've already been through a thorough investigation."

"Apparently not thorough enough," Pacini said, sliding a manila folder across the table.

He said nothing further and just waited for Pratt's curiosity to do the rest. It took perhaps a minute, and then, sure enough, the cuffed hands reached out and opened the file folder. It contained bank records.

"We went back and looked a little closer. We noticed that an account in your brother's name had substantial cash deposits. We contacted your brother, and it turns out he didn't know he had an account."

Pratt put his face in his hands.

Next to the file folder, Pacini slid a copy of Pratt's law clerk pool memo recommending that the justices grant review of the Hassan case.

"How much did the Hassans pay you to write this?"

Pratt slowly removed his hands from his face and glanced down at the memo. "I want a lawyer."

"Doug, I understand you're a gambler-which, I assume, is how you got into this mess. But let me assure you, this is one time you don't want to gamble." Picking up the file and the memo, Pacini left the room.

"Let him stew over that for a little while," he said to Assad as he entered the ante room. A young-looking agent from the field office came in right behind him.

"Deputy Director Pacini?" he said.

"What do you got?" Pacini said impatiently.

"We traced the e-mail McKenna sent Detective Milstein. It was sent from the D.C. public library. The cell phone company also thinks they've isolated the signal from the cell phone McKenna used to call Milstein. There's currently a signal coming from the same library."

By the time Pacini and Assad arrived at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Supreme Court Commission task force agents, coordinating with D.C. police, had cordoned off two square blocks. Pacini nodded approvingly as they approached the roadblock near the library. Though they still had a long way to go, since 9/11 the Bureau and the other federal agencies had come light-years in their coordination efforts with the District police.

Pacini flashed his credentials, and two uniforms waved them through to the command center outside the library. The agent in charge briefed them on the situation in condensed cop-speak. "He's on the ground floor. No one's with him. He's sitting on a reading chair tucked between two bookshelves. We don't have a clean shot."

"How do we know its McKenna?" Pacini asked. The air was suddenly brittle with the cold and he blew into his cupped hands.

"We don't, but the cell phone he was using is there. The cell company confirmed, and we called the phone and can hear it ring. He hasn't answered and hasn't moved. We're waiting for your word to approach."

Pacini understood the implied message: they had waited for him before making the pivotal move that could very well end up with McKenna dead.

"You searched the area for Ms. Porter?"

"Yeah, no sign of her. We're checking the library security system and cameras on area businesses to see if they caught anything. We're also checking whether the terrorism center's cameras cover the area."

The ball was in Pacini's court. This was what he hated most about being the boss. If it went well, he was the hero, but if it all turned to shit-always a strong possibility-the buck stopped with him. He had learned that the hard way.

"Tell them to approach, but stress that we want him alive."

Inside the library, an agent wearing all black quietly approached the end of a tall bookshelf. "I'm a federal agent!" he yelled. "Get down on the floor, on your belly! Do it!"

The man slumped over in the chair between the bookshelves and didn't respond.

"Get down!"

No response.

"I said get face down on the ground and lay your arms in front of you, fingers spread!"

The agent waited a moment, murmured a few words into his headset microphone, and started to count softly: "Three ... two ... one." He pounced on the figure sitting in the chair. Grabbing the man by the back of the coat, he threw him violently face down on the floor. On the other side of the bookshelves, two agents each shoved a row of books onto the floor, giving them a clean shot at the man's head.

"Yo, take it easy," the man yelled from under the hood of his jacket.

The agent jerked the man's hands behind his back, and within seconds he was cuffed. They pulled him to his feet and marched him outside to the command center where Pacini and Assad waited anxiously in the cold.

"What the hell ... ?" Pacini said as they approached.

After brief questioning, they learned that their captive, a homeless man who smelled strongly of malt liquor, had been paid one hundred dollars to sit in the library with the cell phone. He was passed out drunk, which was why he hadn't responded. Pacini was livid. McKenna and Porter must have assumed that the phone would be traceable to the library, but why lead the agents there? To distract them? From what?

"God damn it!" Pacini muttered as he and Assad headed back to their car.

After reviewing surveillance footage from a nearby business showing Kate giving the street person money, the agents uncuffed him and let him go. Scoob smiled to himself as he strolled away-it was the easiest grand he had ever made.

6.45p.in. Chevy Chase neighborhood, Washington,

cKenna and Kate got out of the cab near Lafayette Elementary School, just down the street from McKenna's house. Had Colin survived the leukemia, he would be starting first grade at the school. Isabel had fretted whether to send him to private school, given the District's notoriously poor school system, but she couldn't face the absurdity of having their preschooler take an IQtest. After much hand-wringing, she decided to give their public school a chance. So they had signed up for pre-K. By the first day of class, Colin was too sick to attend.

The playground was at the top of a hill abutting Patterson Street, giving them a clear line of sight to McKenna's modest colonial. There were no unfamiliar vans or cars parked nearby, which meant that perhaps the library distraction had worked as planned-or else they had already pulled the agents, assuming that McKenna wouldn't be foolhardy enough to return home.

McKenna and Kate approached the house from the alley behind his backyard fence. After easing the gate open, he led Kate through the neglected backyard and down an outdoor stairwell to an exterior basement door. The stairwell was cobwebbed, and the bottom landing was covered with leaves. McKenna peered through the door's window for a moment, then turned, braced himself, and thrust his elbow into the glass. He stuck his hand through the hole, careful not to catch it on the remaining shards, and turned the padlock, then stood at the entryway, listening. After a long moment, he nodded, and they went in.

Once inside, McKenna eyed Kate who seemed taken aback for a moment as she scanned the room. An electric train sat on a plywood table. Stuffed animals filled a bookshelf, and brick-size cardboard blocks were stacked neatly in the corner. Pictures of a happy McKenna family filled the room. His little boy's playroom.

They went up the basement steps to the first floor, where McKenna checked for Sinclair's package beneath the brass slot in the front door. He looked out the kitchen window-it wasn't on the porch, either. Things were out of place. The house had been searched.

"Could it be anywhere else?" Kate asked in a nervous whisper. "With a neighbor or in a mailbox outside?"

"No. It's not here. If it got delivered, the agents have it."

"Where are you going?" she asked as he started up the steps to the second floor. But when she began to follow, he held up a finger and shook his head.

Upstairs, he opened his bedroom closet. Aiden's clothes fit fine, but the sneakers were a size too big. He grabbed his running shoes from the shoe rack on the closet floor and pulled them on. Kneeling down, he tied the laces, and then, feeling his way along the closet's wood floor, he found the crack and gently pried away one of the boards. The agents hadn't searched as thoroughly as they should've. Lifting the small handgun from the hole in the floor, he tucked it in his waistband.

He stood and was startled when Kate appeared and put her finger to her mouth.

"I saw someone coming to the front door," she said in a panicked tone.

Hearing the click of the front door, McKenna dropped quietly to the floor and slid under the bed, leaving room for her to squeeze in next to him.

On their stomachs among the dust bunnies and a couple of socks, they heard someone moving around downstairs. It was quiet for a moment; then the sound of multiple footsteps caused the stairs to creak. They were coming this way.

Brooklyn, New York

he man with the pockmarked face and camouflage hunting jacket sat parked in a stolen Hyundai on Driggs Avenue. He wasn't in the mood for this. The plan was supposed to have him on a beach in Los Cabos by now, sipping on a drink with an umbrella sticking out of it, and enjoying some female companionship. During his years traveling in the military, he had acquired a taste for impoverished women. Nothing was better than a woman who would do anything to escape her circumstances-particularly one whom the language barrier prevented from talking too much. On a furlough in Thailand, they had let him beat them and burn them with cigarettes, and afterward they still cooked him dinner, all on the false promise of a new life in America. It sure beat the American women he despised, with their shameful superficiality and need for pampering.