And here they’d had a little more luck getting information.
The semi was more than halfway off the road, with the front wheels of the cab in a ditch next to the shoulder. A group of troopers and other law enforcement officers stood around it. Andy didn’t know these men; he visited three or four crime scenes a day, but always inside the borders of D.C. That said, he did know how to talk to cops, so he finessed his way through the tape and introduced himself to a young detective who helpfully mentioned that the troopers had found blood traces on the concrete embankment and on the shoulder of the Beltway. The CSI units were just now setting up lights and starting to crawl around, looking for more samples.
The cabbie sat in an ambulance, although he didn’t seem to be injured. To Catherine’s astonishment Andy finagled his way through troopers to the open back door of the ambulance and asked the witness for a description of the criminal.
The driver was from Mozambique, and his accent was incredibly thick, but he told Andy the man who’d jacked him had been white, in his thirties, carried a black pistol, and had driven off to the west.
Andy wrote the cabbie’s name down, making him spell it out slowly and carefully, and then he made his way over to the driver of the semi, who had finished giving a statement to the police and was now waiting for his company to send a tow truck. From him Andy got essentially the same description, with the additional information that the man was wearing a red or burgundy cap and a gray jacket. He said the man came down the embankment, stood by the side of the road for a few seconds, and then purposefully leapt in front of the tractor-trailer.
Andy walked back over to Catherine, who had knelt down over a splatter of blood the troopers had already photographed and sampled. He stepped up behind her while she took pictures of the blood with her iPhone. He said, “Both witnesses report one male, thirties, clean-shaven.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Didn’t remember the color of his hair or his height. Apparently the carjacker caused the cab of the semi to skid off the road, and its load blocked the rest of traffic from getting by. When the cab driver stopped his taxi behind the truck the armed assailant showed up at his window.”
Catherine asked, “Did either of them mention the gunman being injured somehow?”
“No.”
She put her phone away and motioned to the red splotches on the side of the highway. “Is that a lot of blood?”
Andy shrugged. “I’ve seen crime scenes with about five hundred times more.”
“Sure,” said Catherine. “But there is more blood over there, and CSI found drops on the pavement on the embankment.”
“Right.”
“And the Babbitt shooting happened a little after eleven.”
“So?”
“So let’s assume the shooter is the same person as the carjacker.”
Andy smiled. “I’d stake my limited reputation on it.”
“Well,” Catherine continued, “I’m trying to picture someone bleeding like this for two hours.”
Andy thought he understood. “You are saying you don’t think the shooter was hurt during the shoot-out in Chevy Chase?”
“What do you think?”
Andy looked at the blood again, both here and on the embankment. “I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes. This isn’t arterial spray, or anything like that, but this guy was most definitely draining blood. You’re right. No way he bled like this for an hour and a half. He’d be dead, or at least unconscious.”
Catherine said, “If neither witness said anything about the man getting hurt here, there must be a third crime scene somewhere, and that’s where he was injured.”
Andy said, “You’re pretty good, Ms. King.”
“I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “But I know where we can go to get them.”
“Where?”
Catherine looked behind Andy, and he turned his head to follow her gaze. There, just climbing out of a black Suburban, were Jordan Mayes and Suzanne Brewer. They both wore black overcoats, and Mayes had two bearded bodyguards with him.
Jordan Mayes flashed his credos to the detective in charge of the carjacking scene and took the man aside. While the two of them stepped off beyond the jackknifed semi, Suzanne Brewer walked over to the truck driver and began talking to him.
“I’ll be damned,” said Shoal. “Are you going to ask them what they’re doing here?”
Catherine said, “We both are. Divide and conquer. I’ll take Mayes.” She started to walk off, then she turned back to Andy. “Don’t mention Brandywine Street. You’re just here because this is a crime, and I’m just here because of the Babbitt killing nearby and his ties to the intelligence community.”
“Got it,” Andy said.