“He needs meth?”
Mayes answered with confidence. “Resources. Arms and financing. No better place to get both if you don’t mind a fight.”
Carmichael said, “And Violator loves a fight.” Slowly his lean face widened into a smile. “It’s classic Gentry, isn’t it?”
Brewer was confused. “Classic in what way?”
“He needs weapons and money, right?” Carmichael said. “What’s the easiest way to acquire them? Knock over a pawnshop? Hit a liquor store with a security guard? Why doesn’t he steal a shotgun out of a patrol car and rob a check cashing business? Why does he do it the hard way? Hit right up the fucking middle of a house full of armed meth head Aryan assholes?”
“Tell me why,” Brewer said.
Mayes understood what Carmichael was getting at, and he answered Brewer’s question. “Because Violator sees himself as the good guy. He only targets bad guys.”
“But you just said you think he is a threat to us.”
“Make no mistake. He truly thinks he’s some sort of hero and we’re the villains.” Jordan Mayes stood now. “I’ll check out the crime scene personally.”
Suzanne Brewer stood as well. “Denny, I’d like to go along, too. I’m behind the curve on understanding this target of ours. If this was him, I want to get the feel of the scene, to see what he’s capable of.”
“Okay.” Carmichael turned his attention to AD Mayes. “Mayes, it’s possible you are in Gentry’s crosshairs, same as me. I want you rolling in armor, with a full detail.”
Mayes whistled softly. “Damn, Denny. I didn’t even have a full security detail in Baghdad.”
“Gentry was on our side back then, wasn’t he?”
8
After dark, Andy Shoal lived on cans of Red Bull and cups of convenience store coffee. He wasn’t a night owl by design but, over time, he had created a chemically structured superhuman version of himself that got him through the nighttime hours, allowing him to excel at his job as a crime reporter for the Washington Post.
As “on” as he was when most people were tucked away in their beds, there was a price to be paid—the physical crash came each day with dawn. He was usually back in his apartment in Arlington by eight and asleep by nine, but by four thirty p.m. he was on his way back to his tiny cubicle in the Post’s office on 15th Street NW, just a few blocks from the White House.
He told himself he wouldn’t have to do this forever. Andy was ambitious, and he was four years into his five-year plan to get out of Metro and into something higher profile, a position on the national desk or on an investigative team that wouldn’t necessitate him being a zombie every damn day, so he worked hard, he got along with his editor, and he didn’t bitch.
All that taken into account, Andy still figured he must be doing something seriously wrong, because why else was he the one driving out to the shittiest ward in the District in the middle of this cold misty night to report on a double homicide?
Tonight’s assignment didn’t sound terribly interesting—the Watergate breakin this wasn’t. From the info he picked up over the police scanner in his car it seemed to be a shooting at a crack house or something. Not anything new and exciting, as Andy had filed countless stories like this already, but there were bodies and there were injured and this was his job, so as soon as he finished a piece he was working on at his desk, he climbed into his Ford Festiva and headed out into the dreary night.
With luck, he told himself, he could get six column inches out of this shooting.
Now he followed the last instructions of his GPS and turned off 4th Street SE and onto Brandywine Street.
Even though he knew the depressing crime statistics for Ward Eight, Andy never really felt unsafe around here. He was from Philly and had been raised lower middle class, so he was no stranger to rough streets. He’d been mugged once in D.C., but that was just three and a half blocks from the Capitol building, so he didn’t ascribe much more threat to the so-called bad parts of town.
As Andy pulled into the neighborhood he heard over his police scanner the crime scene was a possible meth stash house run by the Aryan Brotherhood, and as he parked and looked around he thought that possibility to be highly likely. He couldn’t imagine this property in front of him being anything other than a drug house. It was basically a boarded-up ramshackle single-story with a pickup truck adorned with a rebel flag decal in the driveway out front. The front door was a big black iron monstrosity and the fence around the back of the property was high and ringed with barbed wire.
The entire property was surrounded by police tape, and a few locals stood around in the rainy night. In the street a dozen squad cars idled, all with their headlights facing the home, and many with their lights flashing. A pair of fire trucks were parked end to end out front, and a single ambulance sat in the driveway, the EMTs leaning against their vehicle.