CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FBI Academy
For the duration of the investigation, Hans Vigo was staying at a small house on the perimeter of the FBI Academy. It was late when he returned to campus after talking to Kate and Dillon, but he was in no mood to retire.
Something had been bothering him all day. Ever since Lucy told him her notes had disappeared.
What was in the McMahon file that someone didn’t want Hans to see? Was it connected to Tony’s death or completely unrelated? A crime of opportunity?
The halls were quiet at midnight. Two guards patrolled the grounds, the security desk was manned, but everyone else was asleep. The campus wasn’t even half-full—many of the new agents took advantage of Saturday night to get out, visit family, go see a movie. And since it was the first weekend Class 12-14 was allowed recreation, most of them were gone.
Staff was minimal, and only a handful lived on campus—no instructors, only the class supervisor and field counselors. Because of budget cutbacks, only one class supervisor was here now. In the past, there were up to four supervisors supervising up to eight new-agent classes. Now, there were only three new-agent classes working their way through, and one supervisor.
Times were changing. They could train to cover attrition, not to add to their ranks. There was more crime, smarter crimes, but they couldn’t bring on enough people to handle the current workload. Around the country, every law enforcement agency was cutting back, and while the different agencies worked better together than when Hans first started, they were all understaffed.
No sign of that changing in the near future.
Hans turned on the lights. He was the only one down in the basement this late, but he liked working in solitude.
He had already boxed up the new-agent class files for whoever would replace Tony. Hans wished he’d remained close to his old friend. Death was permanent.
Tony had been emotionally tortured, but Hans didn’t believe he had been tortured enough to kill himself. Not deliberately. But he’d always had a problem with drinking, and the fact that he was keeping a bottle in his desk had upset Hans. Alcohol was a serious problem in law enforcement, particularly with someone who dealt with the darkest of human beings. Hans had had his fair share of battling personal demons and frustrations, but he hadn’t turned to the bottle or drugs.
Hans remembered all too well the Rachel McMahon murder investigation. The jurisdictional fights. The media circus. The lies that the parents told, the friends, the family—until Rachel was found dead and the truth washed ashore from a sea of guilt.
Tony had known from the beginning that the McMahons were lying, but he’d been tossed from the case after he and the chief of police nearly came to blows over the father’s interrogation. That was one of many missteps that impacted Tony’s career—why he’d never risen through the ranks the way he should have. It didn’t matter that Tony had been right on every count; he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He broke rules under the philosophy it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Unfortunately, he rarely sought forgiveness.
It didn’t surprise Hans that Tony had bonded with Lucy Kincaid. Lucy had outstanding raw instincts that couldn’t be taught but could be honed. Field experience would turn her into one of the best agents they could train.
Except she also had the same weaknesses as Tony. She tried to be a rule follower; she tried to be who she thought she needed to be to reach her goals. But in her heart she was just like Tony Presidio: gut driven, tenacious, stubborn, empathetic. She would break every rule if she thought she was doing the right thing, and that would leave her where Tony had been: unfulfilled in his career and marginalized because he was unpredictable.
Maybe leaving the Academy was the best thing for her. She could get a job in almost any law enforcement agency in the country. Her skills would be in high demand. And if her past proved a barrier, RCK would bring her on board without hesitation, and not just because Sean and Patrick were partners. The organization had been slowly growing more powerful and in demand over the last few years, and while that worried some people in power, it didn’t worry Hans.
Every new agent was thoroughly vetted. Each one went through extensive psychological and background screenings. It was this vetting process that had affected Lucy’s placement, because while she passed all the psychological tests, the panels felt she was too calculated in her responses and that her master’s in criminal psychology may have given her the leverage to cheat the tests. She had been cold in her interviews, didn’t have any outside interests, and they feared she had a vendetta.
But ultimately, Hans was selfish and he wanted to train Lucy to be the agent he knew she could be. He’d been watching her these last four weeks through the one person he trusted to keep his interest confidential. She’d been doing fine, and she’d passed the tests he’d set up for her, confirming that he’d been right to ask Rick Stockton to overrule the hiring panel.
Tony had been drinking prior to going into cardiac arrest. He had his heart pills on his desk, telling Hans that he’d been experiencing chest pains but chose self-medication over the doctor.
A murder at Quantico would be bold, brazen, and extremely difficult. Poison to induce cardiac arrest would take medical knowledge and opportunity.
Why would someone kill Tony? He wasn’t involved in the politics of the Bureau, had never aspired to be anything but a field agent. He could be grumpy and he rode his students hard, but he was always fair.
It all came back to the Rachel McMahon investigation and the missing file. Tony had figured something out about the case, and either the file was stolen after he died as a crime of opportunity or he was murdered because of his knowledge of the file.
Hans had read over all the official records this afternoon, but there was nothing that jumped out at him. Nothing that would warrant anyone wanting Tony, Stokes, Theissen, and the reporter all dead.
But while Hans had been involved in the original investigation, he hadn’t been as involved as Tony.
Hans pulled the security log from Thursday afternoon to see which card keys accessed the basement. There were no unauthorized accesses, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t. Yet circumstantial evidence indicated that if Tony had been murdered, someone he worked with had killed him.
If Tony was murdered.
Hans called his friend from the lab, Trisha Morrison.
“Hans, it’s nearly midnight,” Trisha said.
“I’m sorry. And you’re not going to like what I’m calling about.”
“You want results.”
“Yes. I know it’s early, but—”
“They’re being run, Hans. That’s the best I can do. I’ll be at the lab tomorrow and will check on the tests personally. But it’s going to take at least another day, and if we don’t find anything, I’ll need to run a broader test.”
“I appreciate it.”
Hans hung up. There was nothing more he could do tonight. He locked up, checked out at the desk, and walked the quarter mile to the small bungalow he was living in for the duration.
The cool, fresh air cleared his head, and he realized how exhausted he was. It had been a long forty-eight hours.
He followed the trail around a fenced construction area, where the new hostage rescue facility was being built. The security lighting was weak and flickered. A scaffolding to his right seemed out of place. He sidestepped it, then tripped over a toolbox and fell hard on his knees.
Pain shot up to his pelvis and he feared he’d broken his leg. He rolled over to catch his breath when a crashing sound startled him.
He couldn’t get away from the scaffolding before it came falling down and pinned him to the ground. The weight of the wood and pipe and equipment was stifling. Blood dripped into his eye from a deep cut on his forehead.
He sensed more than saw movement to his left. He tried to turn his head but couldn’t. A sharp pain exploded his temple, then he felt nothing.