She was texting on an iPhone while driving sixty-two miles an hour.
Years of practice had made Mercury an ambidextrous shot. He was about to pull the trigger when Ms. Textaholic actually took her eyes off the goddamned screen.
She looked over. She saw the gun.
She dropped the iPhone and twisted as he shot.
The tail end of the Taurus swung violently into his lane, almost knocking over the motorcycle, and then it veered back the other way, did a 360-degree spin, ran up an embankment, and flipped over onto its roof.
He put away the pistol and drove on at a steady sixty-three, two miles below the speed limit.
No need to draw any attention now that the traffic laws were being obeyed and a sense of balance, a sense of order, had been restored.
CHAPTER
37
THAT AFTERNOON AFTER we talked to Condon, we went to Bree’s office and gave her our report.
“So Condon threatened two law enforcement officers?” she asked, looking as stressed and tired as I’ve ever seen her.
“Oh yeah,” Sampson said.
“In a manner of speaking, anyway,” I said. “He’s highly intelligent. Knew what we were up to the second we mentioned the massacre.”
“You ask him where he was on the night in question?”
“He wouldn’t answer,” Sampson said. “Said he’d learned the hard way never to talk with an investigator of any kind without an attorney present.”
“But you put him on notice that he’s a suspect,” Bree said. “That can be a good thing.”
“It can,” I said. “But we can’t exactly put him under surveillance from here, and we don’t have evidence to support a search warrant.”
“Find me one thing that links Condon to that factory, and I’ll call in some favors with the state police in Maryland. Have them put him under surveillance.”
“I find one thing that links Condon to that factory and I think Mahoney will take over and call in the FBI cavalry, and it will be out of our hands.”
Sampson said, “I’m going to check if Condon has a Tanner-ite waiver. If not, he’s stockpiling explosives and we can walk in his front door with an army behind us.”
“Good,” Bree said.
We started to leave, but Bree called after me, “Alex? Can we talk?”
“Fine,” Sampson said. “I know when I’m not wanted.”
He closed the door as he left. Bree sagged back in her chair.
“You okay?” I said.
“Not today,” she said. “This morning, the mayor and the chief took turns using me as their verbal punching bag over the massacre.”
“And a few days ago, you helped them get the pressure off their backs by naming Terry Howard as Tom’s killer. You can’t go up and down emotionally along with their roller-coaster whims. Accept the fact that getting pressure from above is part of the job but doesn’t define it. Focus on doing the best you can. Nothing else. Three months from now you’ll have a whole different outlook on things.”
Bree sighed. “Think so?”
“I know so,” I said, coming around to massage her shoulders and neck.
“Ohhhh, I need that,” she said. “My lower back’s hurting too.”
“You’re sitting down too much,” I said. “You’re used to being up and active, and your body’s protesting.”
“I’m a desk jockey now. Part of the territory.”
“Get the chief to buy you one of those stand-up desks. Or better yet, a treadmill desk.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Bree said.
“I’m full of good ideas today.” I bent over and kissed her on the cheek.
“I miss you,” she said.
“I miss you too,” I said and nuzzled her neck. “But we’re good, right?”
“Always.”
There was a knock at the door.
Sampson called out, “You still dressed?”
“No, we’re buck-naked,” Bree called back. “C’mon in.”
He opened the door cautiously, saw me massaging her neck, and said, “Sorry to disturb you in the middle of things, but I had a ViCAP going on drivers who were shot like Mr. Maserati there in Rock Creek.”
I stopped kneading Bree’s neck. “You got a hit?”
“You tell me.”
CHAPTER
38
A FEW WEEKS before Aaron Peters was shot to death by a motorcyclist on the Rock Creek Parkway, thirty-nine-year-old Liza Crawford, a successful real estate agent in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was found dead in her brand-new Corvette on a winding rural road lined in places with stacked stone walls.
The investigator said Crawford was traveling at a high rate of speed when she hit a stone wall. The Corvette flipped over and landed on its roof, crushing her.