Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (26 page)

“And that clued you in,” Frankie said.

Orwell nodded. “We also verified it with a chemical analysis. There’s no doubt.”

“Is there anyone alive in there?” Art asked.

“We were only able to make a cursory inspection, but, no. I didn’t see anybody.” Orwell knew the agent’s reason for concern. “I wish I could tell you more.”

“What now, Captain?” Frankie inquired.

“I’ve got more personnel coming in, and we’re going to get the haz-mat guys from fire up-to-speed on procedures so we can use them. Let me tell you, those guys saved a lot of lives. The first fire and police units on scene rushed in just like up on Riverside. They look like official rag dolls now strewn all over the lobby and stair wells. The haz-mat crew held everybody back once they got on-scene.”

Frankie’s head shook slowly. Dead cops. Dead firefighters. Dead civilians. “Are you going back in?”

“As soon as I have more people. We need to find out how the stuff got in there. I know it was spread through the ventilation system. That’s the only way it could get from the top of the building to the bottom. We only got up to ten, and there were bodies up to there.” Orwell looked skyward briefly. “Thank God for the rain. We didn’t have to make our own here. On a dry, windy day... We were lucky.”

“Lucky?” Art snapped out of his narrowly focused state of worry. “
Lucky?
Captain, the woman I love works in that building. Tell me how lucky I am.”

Orwell looked to Frankie, who gave a very slight shake of the head. “I didn’t mean—”

Art turned away and paced several yards before stopping. This just couldn’t be happening. Not Anne. Not her. Next came the selfish streak, and the pain that any thought of living without her brought on. Not now.
Not when I’m starting to live again...

“Art!”

His head jerked up at the faint call, which came from somewhere in the distance. He looked right, through Pershing Square, then left, then every which way in search of the face to match the familiar voice. Or was it just a dream, a wish already dead? Something he wanted to hear but never would again.

“Art!”

It wasn’t his imagination. “Anne!”

“Art! Here!”

A hand swung back and forth in the air behind the police barricade two blocks distant. Below it was a face that he would have recognized had their separation been twice what it was. “Anne!”

“Art! Art!” Anne yelled, tears mixing with the rain on her face as she jumped high to be seen above the crowd of onlookers.

Art covered the distance almost before his partner knew he was gone, and she was now racing to catch up with him. But his attention was focused forward, on one set of eyes, on one face, on the one woman he loved.

“Anne!” He reached the barricade line as she pushed forward and threw his arms around her, pulling her as close to his body as possible. But not close enough. Never could he bring her close enough to wipe away the pain, the fear that had enveloped him at the thought of her being...

“Art. You’re okay.” Anne had an equally tight grip on him, and let herself be pulled over the barricade. Neither noticed the protestations of the nearest police officer, which were ended as Frankie came up and set matters straight.

“Anne. God, I thought you were in there.”

“Art, what happened?” Anne asked, her voice trembling. “Lena was in there, Art. She’s got three kids. Three kids!”

Art held on tight as Anne began to sob. “Anne, it’ll be all right.”

“Art. The radio said someone did this. It wasn’t an accident. Who? Who would do something like this?”

Art opened his eyes, releasing a river of tears, and looked to the sky. He wanted to tell her that a vile animal had made this all happen, but he knew that was a lie. This was the work of a man, a member of the only species to harbor hate as a way of life.

“Who, Art? Who could do this?”

Again he didn’t answer. He simply held her close, giving her what sense of safety he could offer at the moment. There was nothing more he could do.

At least not yet.

SIXTEEN

Casualties

The president looked to his two advisers from the most powerful chair on the planet as the casualty figure numbed him into a feeling of absolute weakness. “One to two thousand? My dear God.”

Bud saw the president go pale, almost the shade of the drapes to either side of his Oval Office desk. The Man was hearing an official number for the first time since the attack eight hours earlier, and had not had the luxury of a few minutes to let the enormity of the carnage sink in. Bud had, and it still made his knees weak. He surmised that the chief of staff, who stood next to him before the president’s desk, was in a similar state.

“That’s preliminary,” Gonzales added. “The Bureau says it’s probably closer to two.”

The president leaned back in his chair and brought a shaky hand to his mouth. Some would be given pause at the sight, but there was a vast difference between crisis management and the reality of the deliberate murder of this many Americans. “Is everything being done to get help there?”

Bud nodded assuredly. “The Army has their chemical people on-scene, and the governor declared a state of emergency for Los Angeles County.” It was a formality, the NSA knew, and really it would have little impact on such a focused event. But appearances did count, and often such measures put the public a little more at ease. The “do something” theory of response.

“Any suspects?”

“The Bureau is shifting into high gear,” Gonzales reported. “Director Jones should be landing there any minute to get an update. They’ve been following a situation that probably led up to this. A few minutes ago we got word that they want to talk to someone very familiar: John Barrish.”

The president seethed at that. They had had the man behind bars, and let him get away. But even a white supremacist murdering bastard had the right to due process, the lawyer in the chief executive reminded the rest of the man.
But how many times...

“Mr. President,” Gonzales began, “the press office also got wind that the Post is going to report tomorrow that several members of the Judiciary Committee are going to call for Jones’s resignation.”

“For Christ’s sake!” the president swore. “They haven’t even been briefed and already...”

“Where there are bodies...” the chief of staff mused soberly.

“The goddamn vultures should show a little decorum,” the president suggested angrily. But he knew the reason why that would never be more than a hope. A reason less than a year away. Yes, there were vultures out there, and they were circling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a vengeance. “Bud, regardless of what the Bureau thinks, what are the chances of this being an outside job?”

“Possible, but not likely. From what I know of the Bureau investigation to this point, all the indicators lend credence to this being a homegrown operation.”

“If it is that bastard...” the president began, avoiding finishing his statement.

“The Bureau will find whoever it is, sir,” Gonzales said assuredly.

The president accepted his chief of staff’s analysis with a sharp nod. “I want something detailed in the morning. From all ends.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Bud acknowledged, reading the request as a signal that their briefing session had ended. He led the way out of the Oval Office, making a left turn outside the office of the president’s personal secretary. The chief of staff was right behind and followed the NSA to his office.

“This really hurt him,” Gonzales commented. Having grown up with the president he knew better than most when he was truly affected by events.

“In ‘eighty-six we lost seven astronauts and they postponed the State of the Union,” Bud said. “We lose two thousand the day before Thanksgiving. What do we do with that day, now?”

“We get through it,” Gonzales answered. “And we press on.”

“That wouldn’t sound good in print,” Bud reminded the chief of staff.

“Reality usually doesn’t.”

*  *  *

Darren Griggs pressed the doorbell, the third in an hour, and said a silent prayer.

“Hello?” a young voice answered from inside, the light shining through the peephole fading as someone surveyed the visitor.

“This is Mr. Griggs. I’m Moises’ father. I’m looking for him.”

There was a pause as several locks clicked, then the door slowly opened. A young man looking eerily like his son peered through the still-closed screen at Darren.

“Are you Vincent?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a friend of Moises’?”

“Well, yeah,” the youngster answered hesitantly, the way most teenagers would to a strange adult.

“Have you seen him? Is he here?”

“Here? No, man—I mean Mr. Griggs. I haven’t seen him for a couple weeks.”

Another disappointment. Another negative response. Was it the truth, or just a friend protecting a friend? Darren had to know for sure. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and his mother and I want him to come home. That’s all. No trouble or anything. We just want him home, with us.”

“He split?” the young man asked, surprised.

Darren nodded. “Please, we just want him to come back home.”

“Really, I don’t know where he is. I’m being straight with you, Mr. Griggs.”

“I see.” Darren pulled a small envelope preaddressed to his son and passed it through the screen’s mail slot. “If you do see him, please give him this.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Thank you, Vincent.” Darren stood motionless as the door swung shut, and as the locks clicked again, then walked away from the porch of the well-kept home in south Los Angeles. It was dark out, just three hours shy of a new day, a time when “bad things happened to good people.” A time when there were few reasons to venture out.

Darren Griggs had only one, and that singular reason was enough.

*  *  *

“Shit!” Roger swore, his head angling forward to get a full view of the flashing lights in his side view mirror.

“What?” Darian asked as he came out of a light sleep, an answer becoming unnecessary as a bright white light pierced the interior of the Olds from the rear.

“What’s going on?” Moises asked as his own slumber was interrupted. He started to turn to look through the back window, but that action was cut off by Darian’s strong left arm, which swung across his chest like a roller-coaster restraint bar.

Mustafa rose up from his curl in the front seat and carefully eyed the right-side mirror. “Just one car.”

“Where the hell are we?” Darian asked, rolling the stiffness from his neck, and easing the zipper of the gym bag between him and Moises open.

“Utah, somewhere around Provo.” A quick blast of siren made Roger jump. “Man, we either gotta run or pull over.”

“Provo!” Darian said just below a yell. “I told you to take the Seventy!”

“I thought you said
don’t
take the Seventy.”

“Are you a fool? You’re taking us right up to Salt Lake, Ogden, and all the other big cities.” Darian’s hands felt for his weapon, but it was empty. There was no time to fish for a magazine. He felt for the one Mustafa had added to the bag. It was still loaded at that time. He found his comrade’s Ingram and deftly removed its suppressor without looking and blindly made certain a round was chambered. “There aren’t more than a handful of brothers in the whole state and you’re taking us straight into whiteville.” He lowered the zipper on his jacket and slid the Ingram in the left side, safety off. “Pull over. Shit.” He looked slightly toward Moises. “Whatever you do, don’t lean forward, Brother.”

Moises took a deep breath and put his foot over the gym bag that Darian had let slide to the floor of the Olds. “Okay.”

Trooper Michael Fitzroy eased his Utah Highway Patrol cruiser to the emergency shoulder of the interstate and made sure his spotlight was focused fully on the Cutlass’s interior before taking the mic in hand. “Trooper Six David, Provo, traffic stop at Seventy-five connector to I-Fifteen.” Fitzroy, an eight-year veteran of the UHP, waited for acknowledgment from his dispatcher before taking his hand-held radio from its charger and stepping from the cruiser, stopping after only a half-step when the one new procedure—some called it a bother—that had slipped his mind flashed in his thoughts. A quick lean back into the car took care of it, and then he approached the older-model Cutlass on the driver’s side, right hand on his holstered weapon and left hand holding the heavy flashlight high to get a good angle into the vehicle.

“How y’all doing tonight?” Fitzroy asked the driver through the open front window as his eyes scanned the inside of the vehicle. Four male blacks, no obvious open containers, no smell of alcohol or marijuana. Just the glassy stares of men who’d been on the road a long time. The driver especially, and that was his concern.

“Fine,” Roger answered, looking up past the bright spot of light shining down at him. “Did I do something wrong?”

“How long have you been driving?”

“Quite a while.”

“Well, you were weaving a bit back there.” Again Trooper Fitzroy sniffed the air. Still nothing, but there was a bit of an edge to this guy’s voice. “You crossed into the adjacent lanes at least four times.”

Shithead!
Darian leaned forward a bit, crossing his arms on his knees, one finger touching the cold grip of the Ingram.
I told you to wake one of us if you got tired!

“I’m sorry,” Roger said, averting his eyes to look straight ahead. “I guess I’m a little tired.”

Mmm hmm
. “Okay, I want to make sure of that for myself. Do you have your license and registration with you?”

“Yes, sir.” Roger patted his jacket, feeling for the wallet.

“Just leave it in there,” Fitzroy said. “I’m gonna give you a field sobriety test to...”

Damn!
Once he was out of the car the pig would ask him where he was heading. Then he’d bring in reinforcements and do the same with each of them separately.
Dammit!
Darian was cursing himself now for not planning for this contingency. They should have had a singular story all fleshed out to use in just such an instance. As it was there was only one thing to do.