Murder on the Metro Page 5

  “I’m sorry, too, Robert, for your finding yourself in the midst of another terrorist attack.”

  “One with a much happier ending, though.”

  “Thank God. And it’s actually the vice president that I wanted to talk to you about. I need help making sense of something.”

  “I’m hardly an expert on heart conditions, Kendra.”

  “That’s okay; I’m not looking for one. Because I don’t believe a heart condition killed Stephanie Davenport. I think she was murdered.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  Brixton was just getting ready to head out to meet with Kendra Rendine when his intercom buzzed. He’d downloaded an app onto his phone that he’d synched with the building software. Clicking on the app’s icon brought up the face of Mackensie Smith standing in plain view of the security camera outside the apartment building’s entrance.

  “Mac,” he greeted.

  “Glad I caught you, Robert. Mind if I come up?”

  Brixton almost said he was about to leave for a meeting, but he didn’t feel like explaining the details. “Sure,” he said instead. “I’ll buzz you in.”

  He opened the door and waited for Mac to emerge from the elevator just down the hall. The chime sounded mere moments after Brixton had buzzed him in, and he ushered Mac inside after the man had made the brief walk.

  “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of such a surprise visit?” Brixton asked, closing the door behind them.

  “I can’t get this Detective Rogers thing out of my head, Robert. Why would someone run the risk of impersonating a police detective just to talk to you?”

  “With all the chaos, I don’t think there was much of a risk. Whoever he is, this man was well versed enough in these things to know he’d be able to steal a few minutes with me.”

  “Even though you were an eyewitness to what happened?”

  “But nothing I did was actionable. I drew my gun but never used it. When you boil things down, all I really did was get up and walk down the aisle.”

  “Following a woman you suspected to be a suicide bomber.”

  “I never confronted or even spoke to her. And we can’t even be a hundred percent certain that me spooking the young woman is what led her to change cars.”

  “How about ninety-nine?”

  “I’ll grant you that, Mac.” Brixton smiled.

  “Then grant me this, too: I want to put you with a sketch artist, see if we can use the result to get this fake detective identified. You didn’t happen to hand him anything, did you? Something he may have touched and then returned, so we’d have his fingerprints?”

  Brixton shook his head. “I may have been more out of it than I thought, because of the lingering shock and the concussion, but I can tell you his badge and ID were either authentic or a perfect forgery.”

  “Did you notice any security cameras on the platform, if any were angled where you were triaged prior to transport to Georgetown?”

  “I never thought to look. I had other things on my mind.”

  “Well, a camera must’ve caught this guy at some point, if not on the platform then up in the station itself. I think there might be one trained on the spot where the escalator spills onto the platform.”

  “I’ve been thinking along those lines, too, Mac, and what I keep coming back to is the timing.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Whoever this Rogers was, how did he get there so fast? Even more, how did he learn of my specific involvement? I remember filling in a few uniformed Metro cops on what had happened. But they were too busy getting the passengers from both sections of the train to safety to repeat what I’d told them so quickly.”

  “So answer your own question, Robert.”

  “I don’t remember it. I’ve got a concussion, remember?”

  “The question was, How did Detective Rogers learn of your involvement?”

  “He couldn’t. At least, there’s no easy way to explain it, save for one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He was already on the platform, Mac, waiting with the other commuters for the train to come in.”

  Smith weighed that possibility. “Except, if the bomber had been successful—if it wasn’t for you, in other words—the train never would’ve made it to the station.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You think he was working with the bomber.”

  “I do, Mac. In some respect. But if he was involved, it would make no sense for him to be waiting for a bomber whose remains would need to be scraped off the walls.”

  Smith nodded. “Unless she failed to act, or the suicide vest malfunctioned, and he was there to deal with either of those eventualities.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Brixton realized.

  “What’s that?”

  “That he had eyes on that young woman somehow and detonated the bomb himself remotely, when it looked like she was running.”

  Brixton recalled the tablet sticking out of the pocket of the man’s sport jacket. It wasn’t too much of a reach to believe he could have hacked into the car’s security cameras and was following everything that happened in real time. That would explain how he recognized Brixton, off by himself on the platform, and knew of his involvement.

  “As a matter of fact,” he started, and proceeded to fill Mackensie Smith in on the conclusions he just reached.

  “You’re damn good at what you do, Robert,” Smith said, behind a hefty sigh.

  “Thanks, Mac.”

  Smith hesitated. “I didn’t just come here to discuss Detective Rogers.”

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  “We need to have the conversation we were supposed to have yesterday.”

  Brixton nodded. “I’m listening,” he managed to say.

  Mackensie Smith walked to the window, gazing out it toward the Washington skyline in the distance, visible only from one of the building’s higher floors. “This isn’t easy for me to say.”

  “Then just say it, Mac.”

  “I’ve decided to downsize the firm, Robert. Being midsize in this town has left us in a very difficult place. Too big to take on smaller clients and not big enough to attract the big companies. We’ve never made big inroads in lobbying, and all the pro bono work is bleeding us dry. I figure we need to reassess now, while the choice is still ours.”

  “You mean yours, don’t you?”

  “I told you this was going to be hard…”

  “Are you firing me, Mac?”

  Smith tried for a smile, but failed. “You don’t really work for me, do you? I gave you an office, a place for you to meet clients, and sent the firm’s work your way. Going forward, I’m not sure how much work there’s going to be or if there will even be an office for you wherever what’s left of the firm ends up.”

  Brixton considered Mac Smith’s words—insult added to injury, as they say, and quite literally in this case. In the wake of losing his longtime girlfriend and Washington apartment they’d shared and both loved, he was going to be essentially out of work. Although he had clients of his own, he’d relied on the work funneled to him by Smith’s law firm for the bulk of his revenue. Without it, there would be no revenue, and he doubted he could afford an office of his own anywhere remotely close to where the action was in DC. So even some of the drier, or at times more sordid, work he’d been getting would dry up too.

  “Please say something, Robert,” Smith said, making Brixton wonder how long he’d been lost in his own thinking.

  “Wow.”

  “I was hoping for something deeper. That is, if you didn’t throw me out the window.”

  “You thought I’d be angry?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m feeling a lot of things right now, Mac, but anger at you isn’t one of them. After SITQUAL, I only had a career because of you. You gave me an office and talked me up all over town. A bunch of good years, all told.”

  “Not a good end, thou
gh, especially under the circumstances. I was thinking about waiting, Robert, but our lease is up and I couldn’t bear you showing up at the office to find everyone and everything gone. I thought you had a right to know, that you’d want to know.”

  “I feel like a second bomb just went off. How long have you been considering this?”

  “The wheels started turning around the time you broke up with Flo.”

  “You mean, she broke up with me.”

  Smith let that ago. “I didn’t say anything then because I resisted what the numbers were saying. Kept telling myself I could make it work. That firm was my dream. I built it from nothing and I fully expect the last time I walk out the door to be the worst moment of my life.”

  “I know all about bad moments, Mac.”

  “And this is a horrible time to burden you with yet another one. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been making calls around the city to talk you up even more, see if anyone’s looking for someone with your experience and skill set.”

  “And?”

  Smith frowned. “It’s early.”

  “How about so far, then?”

  “No takers. A few said they’d get back to me and did. A few others said they would and didn’t.”

  “I’m damaged goods, aren’t I?”

  “You’ve got a reputation. Not just for breaking eggs, Robert, but also for mixing the shells in when you scramble them. These lawyers don’t like mess and, let’s face it, you’ve made more than your share of them.”

  “Which defines my experience and skill set,” Brixton reminded.

  “The town’s changed,” Mac told him. “Firms aren’t looking for former security operatives who are good with a gun so much as investigators who are good with numbers, forensics. Gunfighters are in short demand these days, and when they need one they call a security company and bring on a former Navy SEAL, something like that.”

  “Someone younger, in other words.”

  Smith didn’t bother denying Brixton’s assertion. “There is that, too, for sure. This town is getting younger and younger. Beyond that, throw a stone up in the air and chances are it’ll come down on the head of a lobbyist. We had one in your office before I gave it to you.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Because I find the whole business detestable. Thousands of people running around DC believing in nothing and not achieving much more, other than lining the pockets of politicians, to enlist them in their cause.”

  “And that’s new?”

  “Not new, Robert, just worse—hyper-exaggerated, you might say, the tail wagging the dog. It’s all about fear. Lobbyists used to operate by getting you to believe in what they were pushing. Now they operate by scaring you into wondering what will happen if you don’t. Politics has become a job for the weak-minded and thin-skinned among us. The only principles these people know are the ones they’re paid to have. Everything’s transactional. It’s not about what I can do for you anymore; it’s about what you can do for me and how can I enlist you to do it. That sound like a world ready to open its doors and welcome you back in with open arms?”

  “Not at fifty-six years old, no.”

  Smith looked like he wanted to stop there, but he made himself continue. “How are you set financially?”

  “You already know the answer to that, Mac.”

  “I was hoping to hear something I didn’t. I’ve included you among those who’ll be receiving a severance package, and you’ll keep your health care coverage for six months.”

  “Leaving me only nine years short of Medicare,” Brixton said, instantly regretting the comment. “I’m sorry, Mac. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “Yes, I did, Robert. I deserved every bit of it, especially given the timing. This isn’t the way friends are supposed to treat each other. I hate to be the one blowing up your world.”

  It was clear from how low Smith’s mouth dropped how much he regretted the inappropriateness of that remark, but Brixton managed a smile.

  “No worries, Mac,” he said, “given how close I came to getting blown up, period, yesterday.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  GEORGETOWN

  Brixton suggested Kendra Rendine meet him at Corridor Coffee in Georgetown, a small establishment off the beaten path of the kind of Washington insiders who might recognize either him or her. Washington was the smallest of small towns when it came to who spotted whom with whom, conspiracies of epic levels hatched at every turn about this political race, issue, or otherwise. Corridor Coffee, by contrast, was populated primarily by locals and the Georgetown University community. He often went there alone, secure in the notion that he wouldn’t be running into anyone that he knew. They agreed to meet at two p.m. In Brixton’s experience, this was the only truly slow time of the day, squeezed between the lunchtime and late-day rushes.

  He’d worked alongside Kendra Rendine a number of times while he was attached to SITQUAL, occasions when her Secret Service duties guarding first the president and then the vice president overlapped with his on behalf of the State Department. He didn’t know Rendine well, but the pressure of protecting diplomats and dignitaries overseas brought with it a slowing of time and an exaggeration of relationships, both good and bad. He found the time spent in protective service, especially in transit, when not everything could possibly be secured, forged a unique bond between professionals like himself and Kendra Rendine.

  I think she was murdered.

  Rendine was not the kind of person to voice such an accusation lightly. She was strictly a by-the-book type, never straying outside the prescribed lines and known for paying meticulous attention to detail. She was also exceedingly cautious, trusting her instincts to occasionally divert from a planned route when a sight, sound, or sense disturbed her, especially overseas. And those instincts had produced an exceptional, untarnished record of service to those she was charged with keeping safe and alive.

  Rendine was waiting outside Corridor Coffee when he got there, and Brixton made a show of checking his watch.

  “You’re early.”

  “So are you, by fifteen minutes.”

  “How much you beat me by?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Meaning you were thirty minutes early.”

  Rendine smiled slightly. “You caught me.”

  “Old habits die hard, right?”

  “All habits die hard, Robert.”

  “Are we talking about any habit in particular?”

  Rendine suddenly looked uneasy, standing there on a public street, no matter how far they were from the congested and gossipy center of Washington. “Let’s get some coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  * * *

  Brixton and Rendine both ordered matcha lattes, on her recommendation—large, since they thought they might linger at Corridor Coffee for a while and didn’t want to stand out for having nothing to sip. They managed to snag one of the outdoor, umbrellaed tables surrounded by foliage and rimmed by peaked cast iron fencing.

  “This is great,” Brixton noted, after taking his first sip.

  “You doubted me?”

  “Not anymore. I just figured, you come to a coffee shop, you order coffee, not some green tea concoction.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “What century are you living in, Robert?”

  “Er, the twentieth?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Being outside, no longer cooped up in his apartment, finally relieved the loneliness he’d felt since returning home from the hospital the day before. In fact, he’d felt that same sense of loneliness ever since Flo Combes had left him to move back to New York. Brixton wanted to believe it was just the natural order of things, that sometimes people grow apart and relationships end. But he suspected it was something more than that, even though Flo had blamed herself for the breakup. He figured she’d done that to let him down easy, keeping the truth of her move back to New York shrouded behind fake smiles and faux explanations. Brixton knew he must h
ave done something to upset her, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was.

  Brixton sipped some more of his matcha latte, dabbing his lips with a napkin to wipe away the excess foam. “You also think the vice president was murdered,” Brixton said, picking up on what she’d just said and keeping his voice low.

  Rendine surveyed the narrow outdoor confines again, not a single crack or crevice in the walls or inlaid brick escaping her attention. It looked very much to Brixton like she was securing the area for herself as she would for a protectee, the most recent of whom had been Stephanie Davenport, until the night before the Metro bombing.

  “I’ll get to that,” she said finally.

  “Might make more sense to start with it.”

  “Not in this case, Robert, because I’ve got no proof to back up my suspicions.”

  “Then what do you have, Agent?”

  She flinched. “Do you have to call me that?”

  “It’s what you are.”

  “So what am I supposed to call you?”

  “Old and stupid,” Brixton came up with.

  “I’ve got something better to describe you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Heroic.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, but I didn’t do anything, Kendra.”

  “Is that what you call your actions, saving the lives of dozens of people? I’ve seen what happens to victims of a suicide attack on a bus.” Brixton watched Rendine suppress a shudder. “I imagine that’s what you would have been facing, if she’d pulled the cord on that Metro car instead of outside it.”

  “But we’re not here to talk about me or what happened on that Metro car, are we, Kendra?”

  “I’m not sure I would’ve called you if I hadn’t seen the report on the news.”

  “In which case you would have pressed Unidentified Male in your Contacts.”

  Rendine flashed him a smirk. “Unidentified male to most, but not to the Secret Service. Can I tell you something you’re not going to believe?”

  Brixton nodded.