Fatally Bound (33 page)

“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Mac stated, leaning back in his chair, casually twirling his pen.

“What’s that?” Richardson asked back, one hand on the doorknob, ready to leave.

“You should ask around about us. Ask Donald Wellesley Jr., you know him, don’t you?”

“I know he’s in jail.”

“And we’re the ones who put him there.”

“What’s your point?”

“What Donald Jr. would tell you is that I’m not someone you want digging around in your shit, because if there is dirt to find, I will find it and when I do, you’ll have
really
wished you played ball with us today.”

Richardson maintained her poker face although her cocky smile dissipated ever so slightly. “Are you finished?”

“For now.”

“Well, I’ll take your little cautionary tale under advisement, Special Agent McRyan,” Richardson retorted, the cockiness back. If she was going to flinch, she wasn’t going to let him see it. She turned and left the room, one security man walking in front of her and another one tailing her.

Wire shook her head. “She was the driver, wasn’t she?”

“No doubt in my mind, and the sad thing is …”

“She isn’t the least bit bothered by it because everyone who could have testified to that …”

“Is dead,” Mac finished, tossing his empty Starbucks off the wall and into the garbage can. “Nobody can place her at the scene.”

“So what are we going to do?” Dara asked.

“As much as it galls me, we’re going to do our job, and watch her. Drake Johnson is going to go for her and we need to be there when he does. And we’re going to do one other thing.”

“What?”

“We’re going to take a crack,
a real crack
, at the Rena Johnson case. We know Mychal Richardson owned the van. We know she was there. We know she did it. We just have to find a way to prove it.”

• • • •

Drake Johnson watched through the sheets of rain as the black Suburban pulled out of the parking garage beneath O’Bannon Gardiner, recognizing the FBI agent behind the wheel, one of Gesch’s men. No doubt McRyan and Wire were in the backseats behind the dark tinted windows.

The FBI figured out the missing part of the picture—Mychal Richardson.

He wasn’t surprised.

It was only a matter of time before McRyan and Wire realized there was one person missing.

And Richardson knew he was after her. She knew he was out here and coming for her. The security detail on her every minute of the day told him that. It was good security, ex-military certainly, but they were not perfect.

There was a hole in her protection.

What her security detail didn’t know, what McRyan didn’t know, was that tonight, regardless of the protection she had, she was her most vulnerable.

The high-priced, high-end security would not stop him.

The fact that the FBI would be watching in great force would not stop him.

Mychal Richardson was the final piece, the last one that needed to be punished, the one who needed to be punished the most.

Given his plan, the conditions for his strike, weather or otherwise, couldn’t be more perfect.

“K
eller, what’s your status?” Mac asked, peering at the laptop. Wire, Delmonico, Galloway and Director Mitchell hovered nearby. He had three units in panel vans and another black SUV in the area.

“Agent McRyan, I’m now a block and a half south of the townhouse but have a good view of the front, even with this hurricane. Richardson is still inside and has been for a good hour now, since she got home a little after 7:00
P.M.
Our units are now set in every direction and we have at least eight sets of eyes on the townhouse.” Not to mention the tracking device on her Audi A6, a little maneuver Mac pulled while in the parking garage at O’Bannon Gardiner.

“And the rent-a-cops?”

“They are parked in front and behind and their strength has increased. There are now three two-man teams. They clear everywhere she goes. They took ten minutes to clear her townhouse and it has a high-end security system to boot. She’s secure.”

They’d since learned the private security was from Grogan Systems. “Grogan guys are former military, Mac. They do a lot of government contracting,” Wire stated knowingly. “I’ve run into them from time to time. They have a very good reputation. They’re serious guys. Richardson isn’t messing around and they won’t either.”

“Any sign of Johnson?” Mac asked back into the radio.

“No sign of our guy anywhere,” Keller answered. “I have two other teams driving the immediate area, working a grid, nothing so far but. However, if he were going to move, he’d be waiting for dark.”

“Copy that, Agent Keller.”

“Mac, if she moves or we get a whiff of Johnson in the area, you’ll be the first to know.”

Mac, Wire and Delmonico manned the conference room at the DC Field Office, monitoring the radio and video feed of the evening surveillance. He absolutely hated being so far away from the action. However, their faces were too known to Drake Johnson to be in close proximity to anywhere Mychal Richardson was. “At this point, he’s in my head as much as I’m in his. He can probably see me coming from a mile away,” Mac sighed hours ago, particularly after having drew him out the day before.

They would have to monitor from afar. If Johnson was spotted, then Mac and Wire would move. Richardson’s townhouse wasn’t but five minutes away.

“We should eat,” Delmonico suggested.

“I got this,” the director answered. A half hour later boxes of Chinese food arrived from down the street. “If there’s better Chinese than Wong Zee’s in DC, I don’t know where,” Director Mitchell stated, taking some Egg Foo Young and plopping it down onto a paper plate. This was a meal for a stakeout and Mitchell, deep down, was still a cop, an agent.

While digging into a box of sweet and sour chicken with his chopsticks, Mac opened the copy of the file on the Rena Johnson case.

Giving the file a quick once–over, he immediately admonished himself for not having done this sooner. The case started moving so quickly and her case, seven years old, while viewed as a potential catalyst for the Reaper, was not viewed as integral to solving the case. It should have. Had he given the file a closer look, he couldn’t help think he might have taken a closer look at Drake Johnson to begin with, instead of hearing he was dead and never giving it a second thought. Drake Johnson read this file. How could a brother, especially a brother who was a police detective, not want vengeance? If something like this happened to one of his three sisters, Mac could imagine he’d want to do something.

Rena Johnson was, from the looks of things, a kind, caring and
spiritual
person. The rosary beads in her hands were always with her. Even at the age of twenty-one she was very involved in her local church and in ministry at college and was scheduled to take a mission the following summer. According to her brother, as well as her parents, all interviewed the day after her death, they were very surprised she would have been at such a party, because she rarely drank and never took drugs. Yet she’d had a blood alcohol of .23 in her system, along with Ecstasy and marijuana. A mixture of chemicals that was likely very foreign to her. According to the notes of Detective Flynn up in Auburn, New York, Rena Johnson’s parents said their daughter was not someone who partied or engaged in that kind of behavior. She typically frowned on people who did.

Mac thought back to the first time at a high school party he got so drunk on beer and shots that he couldn’t think straight. He stumbled into his friend’s backyard and passed out in the garden, lying between the cucumber plants and the raspberry bushes. There was compromising photographic evidence of his predicament that made its appearance every five years at high school reunion time.

The combination of drugs and alcohol had to have left Rena Johnson significantly impaired and she probably had no idea what she was doing. The investigators thought she made her way down a winding path through the woods that came out along County Road 5. It would have taken her, given her impaired condition, a good fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to walk or stumble from the farm down to the county road.

The file included an aerial photo of the area, photos of the path and where it emerged from the woods to County Road 5. Once she reached the end of the path, she should have turned left to walk back towards Auburn. Instead, she turned right and moved along on the narrow shoulder and walked around the sharp bend in the road, and just after she made it around the corner she was struck, propelled through the air and down into the deep ditch. The speed limit for the turn was thirty miles-per-hour but a crash investigator calculated the van took the corner speeding at least fifty miles-per-hour. The driver saw Rena, braked hard leaving skid marks, but it was after impact.

“You were the driver, Mychal,” Mac mumbled, “I’d wager a big bet in Vegas on it.”

“What?” Wire asked, looking up at him from her spicy chicken box.

“Nothing.”

Rena Johnson being hit was an accident.

The coroner said Rena survived the impact for a while and may have been able to be saved with immediate medical attention, which was a 911 call away.

Instead, she was left behind. The coroner indicated that she likely pulled herself into the fetal position and somehow managed to get her rosary beads into her hands.

“Why not call?” he moaned quietly, reading from the report.

There were two reasons not to call.

One reason was because the driver was impaired and couldn’t afford or wouldn’t afford to be caught in that situation.

So why not simply call it in anonymously?

Because of the second reason they couldn’t call. Mac snorted, “You couldn’t call because if she lived, she would have recognized who hit her. You couldn’t afford that, could you, Mychal? It would be too big a hit to the family name. Better her life in total than inconveniencing yours,” Mac bitched.

“Okay, enough, what are you mumbling about?” Dara stated, coming to sit down next to him.

“The investigative report on the night Rena Johnson was killed.”

“And?”

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Mac answered. “She didn’t need to die. She survived the impact. With quick medical attention, she could have survived. She could have been saved. All that was required was for someone, anyone, to do the right thing.”

“Are you sympathizing with Drake Johnson?” Wire asked skeptically.

“We’ve been calling him a sociopath or a psychopath. I don’t think he’s those things. He’s off the rails, he’s snapped, but I don’t know that he’s those things.”

“What is he then?”

“He’s a vigilante, a junior Bruce Wayne out to avenge his sister’s death.”

“Except,” Wire reminded, “Batman refused to kill the criminals. He was incorruptible.”

“True.”

“Would you do what he’s doing?” Wire asked more seriously.

“Were this one of my sisters, or Sally, or you, and the police were unable to solve it and I thought I knew who was responsible, would I take action into my own hands?” Mac asked. “Yes, although not to
this
degree. I would hope I would not become a murderer, but I’m not walking in his shoes.” He looked over to Wire. “I think I know what you’d do,” he suggested, thinking to her beating the son of the vice president years ago when he revealed the name of her confidential source with the Giordano crime family in New Jersey. She beat him within an inch of his life. It cost her career in the bureau, at least at the time. “Do you ever regret it?”

“No,” Wire answered, shaking her head. “I lose no sleep over it. He got what he deserved. My guy died a vicious death. Donald Jr. had to have plastic surgery to fix his face after I turned it into hamburger. He got off easy.”

“It cost you,” Mac suggested.

“Small price to pay,” Wire answered dismissively. “I do probably owe the Judge into perpetuity, however.”

“Did all these women get what they deserved?” Mac asked, holding up the now familiar picture of the women standing in front of the van. “Did this night mean they were fatally bound together?”

“I don’t know,” Dara answered, taking the picture from him. Quietly she murmured, shaking her head, “Did all of them really deserve this?”

“I’d love to know that answer,” Mac replied. “And right now, there’s only one person who can answer that question.”

“Speaking of which,” Delmonico yelled, “Richardson is on the move.”

• • • •

“The house is clear, and secure, Ms. Richardson. We will wait inside with you?” the short security man asked.

“The house is clear?”

“It is.”

“The dead bolts are solid?”

“They are, and all windows are secure.”

“Then that will be all. You can wait on the street and you will be discreet and keep back from the townhouse,” she directed.

“Ma’am, with the hurricane outside, visibility is a real issue. We need to stay close and, again, we should have someone inside. We’ll stay out of the way, but we should be inside,” the tall security man suggested.

“No!” Richardson barked her response. “You watch from the outside and you keep your distance. If I need anything I will call. Otherwise, I’ll summon you in the morning. If I’m not up by 7:00
A.M.
, call.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they both sighed reluctantly, and left down the back steps and through the garage.

Richardson took out her phone and called, “The coast is clear. I’ll be waiting for you upstairs. I have a little something
special
for you.”

• • • •

“What’s the address again?” Mac asked Keller, as he looked over a street map of Georgetown.

“So the townhouse is right here on Thirty-Third between N and O Streets,” Wire pointed, “not that far from your place, Mac, for what that’s worth.”

“Agent Keller, was anyone there to greet her?” Mac asked.

“Not as far as we can tell. It’s tough to get too close in this area. Tight streets and alleys make it hard for us to get close without being spotted and it is hard to see in these conditions. The rain is coming down in sheets and the wind is blowing the branches of trees violently so visibility is extremely poor.”

“What about her security detail?”

“They swept the place, exited and now they’ve moved back a good block with two units watching the front of the townhouse and the other is a street over on Thirty-Fourth watching the narrow rear alley, which are the only two ways to access the townhouse.”

Mac looked to Wire and Director Mitchell, “So nobody is there to greet her. Security clears the place and leaves.” Mac grabbed the radio again, “Keller, are there any lights on in the townhouse?”

“Negative.”

“Any lighting at all?”

“Hold on.”

“What the heck is going on?” Delmonico asked. “This makes no sense. Who goes out on a night like this?”

Keller came back, “Mac, Agent Reilly reports from his position that he can only see some dim, almost faint lighting flickering on the second floor in the back of the townhouse.”

Mac looked to Wire and smiled. “You know what this has the feel of, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” Wire answered with broad grin and a laugh. “Booty call.”

“For sure,” Mac answered laughing and dropping himself into a chair.

After five minutes of laughter and joking, Director Mitchell asked: “Who owns the townhouse? Richardson?”

“Negative,” Delmonico answered looking up from her laptop. “It’s owned by Weiss Family Real Estate Holdings, Inc.”

“Weiss Family Real Estate Holdings? Seriously?” Mac asked. “You know which family that is, don’t you?”

“No, who?” Wire asked, but the director knew.

“The Weiss family, and in this town, that would be Ulysses Weiss.”

“Ulysses Weiss? Ulysses Weiss the congressman?” Wire asked, shocked.

“The one and only,” Mac answered.

“Mychal Richardson’s booty call is with Congressman Weiss? No way,” Wire couldn’t believe it. “He wouldn’t dare.”

Fifteen minutes later they had their confirmation. Keller called in a plate number for a black Cadillac CTS sedan.

“Car belongs to the congressman, black Cadillac CTS sedan,” Delmonico reported.

“You just can’t make this shit up,” Mac laughed, using one of his favorite phrases. The case took another unexpected twist. “
Un-be-lieve-a-ble
. She’s got a murderer after her, private security all over the place, not to mention the FBI at a respectful perimeter, yet she’s scheduling a booty call with a married congressman. Talk about chutzpah.”

“He’s married,” Dara complained, disgusted by the whole affair. “I saw the
People
spread last month. His wife is gorgeous,
gorgeous
, the kids are adorable. I don’t understand it.”

“Oh, I do,” Mac replied nonplussed.

“How? How can you, someone who was cheated on by his ex-wife, someone who is as loyal a person as I’ve ever seen, possibly understand this?”

“Let me clarify. It’s more like I understand the type.”

“Which is what?”

“He’s a hound, Dara, and once a hound, always a hound. I know men like the congressman. They love the institution of marriage, love their wives and kids, but they hate the day-to-day and they can’t stay monogamous. If a hound has the option, he takes it. Congressman Weiss? Good looking, rich and powerful. He appears to be a hound. Mychal Richardson, despite the fact I find her to be an ice-cold bitch, is smokin’ hot. These two are made for each other.”