—
As soon as Suzanne Brewer finished talking to the truck driver, Andy Shoal caught up to her. “Hello? Excuse me.” She stopped and turned, extended a hand. Andy knew she thought he was a detective, and he was about to ruin her night. “Andrew Shoal from the Post. Can I get your name? Do you have a card?”
She pulled her hand away quickly. “No, sorry.”
“Are you law enforcement?”
“Homeland Security,” she said, and she turned away, making a beeline to the police tape around the blood spatter, thinking it would keep Andy back.
“Really? I just assumed you work with Jordan Mayes over there.”
Brewer knelt under the tape, kept walking. After a few seconds she looked back and saw Andy had ducked the tape as well and remained on her heels. She said, “Sorry, I’m involved in an investigation here. Will you excuse me?”
“Any thought this might have something to do with the Babbitt killing on Cedar Parkway?”
“We are looking into—”
“I mean, it would have to, right? You’ve got bloodstains here. There was a lot of shooting at the other scene.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step on the other side of the tape.” Her eyes flitted around, trying to find an officer close enough to help her.
Andy continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But the weird thing to me is, there is a lot of blood here, especially considering the first event was an hour and a half before the second. No way some guy is going to bleed like that for that long. You have any information about another shooting? Something after Cedar Parkway, and before here?”
Brewer turned away from Andy, looked around at the scene, as if she was considering what the young reporter was saying. After a few moments her head seemed to clear, and she reached out and grabbed a passing state police officer by the arm.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Is this reporter authorized to be inside the police line?”
“No, ma’am.” He squared his shoulders at Andy. “Let’s back it up.”
Andy pulled out a card and pushed it into Suzanne Brewer’s hand. Then he said, “Thanks for talking, Ms. Brewer. I’ve got plenty to run with for now. Call me if you want to talk more.”
Andy turned away, ducked back under the police tape, and headed off to see if Catherine King had gotten any further in her interview.
—
Jordan Mayes finished with his briefing from the confused detective with a handshake. The man had no idea who Mayes was, but the federal credentials he presented trumped any reticence on the Maryland State officer’s part, so he told the man everything he knew about the scene here.
Mayes turned around to look for Brewer in the large group of men and women working the scene here, but the first person he recognized was Catherine King from the Washington Post. He didn’t know her personally, but he read her column and saw her on TV from time to time. He had a vague memory of King being pointed out to him at a cafeteria in the Green Zone in Baghdad years before, and he was introduced to her briefly in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that had been turned into a coalition command center.
He didn’t have a clue what she was doing standing under an overpass at three thirty in the morning.
“Mr. Mayes? Catherine King, Washington Post.”
Mayes’s defenses fired into high gear, but he was polite. “Ms. King? How are you?”
They shook hands.
“Please call me Catherine.”
Jordan Mayes had two bodyguards within arm’s reach, but they didn’t have any clue that this small woman in an overcoat was a threat to his mission. Mayes was stuck talking to her, for a few seconds at least. “Sorry, I’m right in the middle of something.”
“Wondering if you can tell me if you think this carjacking is related to the Babbitt murder.”
“Too early to say. I was on my way there, and came over here, just out of curiosity. What brings you out tonight?”
“Same thing, I guess. I’d love to talk to you, off the record, of course. Can you tell me if you think Babbitt’s murder was related to the work he did with CIA?”
Jordan Mayes frowned. “I think you should talk with the Maryland State Police. I can’t possibly give you anything more than what they have. If you’ll excuse me, that’s all I really have time for right now.”
Mayes felt a muscle in his left eye twitch, and he damned the movement.
—
Catherine saw Mayes’s immediate discomfort, and she hesitated, unsure just how much she wanted to turn up the heat. Quickly she decided to go for broke. “I noticed you arrived with Suzanne Brewer. She is responsible for protecting CIA personnel domestically, isn’t she? Obviously you must have concerns about Babbitt’s killer targeting Agency assets.”