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  “Alex! You heading out?”

  “I was,” I said.

  “Maybe not anymore.”

  He held up a page from some kind of printout. “I think maybe we’ve got something here. Could be good stuff.”

  Normally, Jerome works out of First District, but I’d gotten him a space in the Auto Theft Unit down the hall, where he could monitor vehicle leads for me. And by “space,” I mean a stack of crates in their Records Room where he could set up his laptop, but Jerome’s never been a complainer.

  What he had was a list of hot license plate numbers from an NCIC database. One of the entries was circled in blue pen.

  NJ — DCY 488.

  “It’s a Lexus ES, reported stolen from an apartment complex in Colliers Mills, New Jersey,” he said. “That’s, like, two, three miles down the road from where your white Suburban went into the water.”

  I risked a half smile. “Tell me there’s more, Jerome,” I said. “There’s more, right?”

  “Best part, actually. An LPR camera picked up the same plate number coming into long-term parking out at National on Saturday morning at four forty-five.”

  LPR stands for License Plate Reader. It uses optical scanning software to read the tag numbers on passing cars and then compares those numbers against lists of wanted and stolen vehicles. It’s an amazing bit of technology, even if all the kinks haven’t quite been worked out yet.

  “Any reason we’re just finding out about this now?” I asked. “That’s well over forty-eight hours ago. What was the problem?”

  “The system isn’t live at the airport,” Jerome said. “There’s a manual download once a day, Monday to Friday. I just got this a few minutes ago. But, bottom line, Alex? I’m guessing your little birdies came home to roost.”

  “I’m guessing you’re right,” I said, and turned back toward the office.

  Even before I got to my desk, though, my excitement started turning into something else. This was a double-edged sword, at best. Considering the heat on Talley and Hennessey right now, I couldn’t imagine too many reasons why they’d come back to DC. Chances were, if we didn’t find at least one of them soon, some other fox in the henhouse was going to get a bullet in the brain.

  Nothing like a little pressure to help you do your best work, right?

  Chapter 83

  IT WAS JUST after midnight when Denny approached the black Lincoln Town Car parked on Vermont Avenue and got in. The man he knew only as Zachary was waiting for him. Zachary’s usual nameless driver/goon was sitting face front at the wheel.

  “The clock’s winding down on this thing,” Denny said straight-out. “We need to put it to bed before it all blows up.”

  “We agree,” Zachary said. Like it was his decision. Like the big man in the ivory tower, whoever he was, didn’t pull the strings, write the checks, and call the shots here.

  Zachary took a plain manila folder out of the seat pocket and handed it to him. “This will be our last arrangement,” he said. “Go ahead. Take it.”

  Arrangement. The guy was too much.

  Inside the folder were two dossiers, if that’s what you could call them — a couple of pictures, a few paragraphs, and some Google maps slapped together on copy paper, like somebody’s shitty little school project. Wherever the boss man spent his billions, it sure as hell wasn’t on document prep.

  But as for the names on those dossiers? Now they were impressive.

  “Well, well,” Denny said. “Looks like your man wants to go out with a bang. That’s a pun, little joke. No extra charge.”

  Zachary pushed his pretentious horn-rims a little higher on his nose. “Just… focus on the material,” he said.

  It would have been nice to go upside this guy’s head one time. Nothing major, just enough to put some kind of expression on his face. Any expression at all would be a big improvement.

  But this was no time to start coloring outside the lines. So Denny kept his mouth shut and took a couple of minutes to absorb the information. Then he slid the manila folder into the seat pocket and sat back again.

  This part was all rote by now. Zachary reached over the seat, took the canvas pouch from Mr. Personality in the front, and put it on the armrest. Denny picked it up.

  Right away, he could feel it was light.

  “What the hell is this?” he said, and dropped it back on the armrest between them.

  “That,” Zachary said, “is one-third. You’ll get the rest afterward. We’re doing things a little differently this time.”

  “The hell we are!” he said, and just like that, the driver was up and over the seat with a fat .45 shoved halfway up Denny’s nose. He could even smell traces of gunpowder. The weapon had been used recently.

  “Now listen to me,” Zachary said. More like purred. “You’re going to be paid in full. The only change here is our terms of delivery.”

  “This is bullshit!” Denny said. “You shouldn’t be messing around with me now.”

  “Just listen,” Zachary told him. “Your incompetence up in New Jersey was not appreciated, Steven. Now that the authorities know who you are, this is just good business practice. So, are we going to have a smooth finish to this thing or not?”

  It wasn’t a real question, and Denny didn’t answer. What he did was reach down and take back the canvas pouch. That spoke for itself. The .45 was dislodged from his face and the driver pulled back, although he didn’t turn around.

  “Did you see the car parked behind us?” Zachary asked softly, as if they’d been sitting here having a friendly chat the whole time.

  And, yes, Denny had seen it, an old blue Subaru wagon with Virginia plates. His spotter’s radar wasn’t something he turned on and off.

  “What about it?” he said.

  “You need to get out of the city. We’ve got too much exposure here. Take Mitch and go somewhere discreet — West Virginia, or whatever you think is best.”

  “Just like that? What am I supposed to tell Mitch?” Denny said. “He’s already asking too many questions.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something to handle him. And take this.” Zachary handed over a silver Nokia phone, presumably encrypted. “Keep it off, but check it at least every six hours. And be ready to go when we tell you.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Denny said, “what’s this ‘we’ shit anyway? Do you even know who you’re working for?”

  Zachary reached across and opened the door to the sidewalk for him. They were done here.

  “This one’s your big payout, Denny,” he said. “Don’t blow it. Don’t make any more mistakes either.”

  Chapter 84

  FOR THE SECOND DAY of canvassing at homeless shelters, I did what I already should have and pulled in more of my team, including Sampson. I even called in that favor with Max Siegel, to see if he could spare any warm bodies.

  Max surprised me by showing up himself, along with two eager young assistants. We split up the list and agreed to come together at the end of the day to check out mealtime and evening sign-in at one of the larger facilities.

  At five o’clock that afternoon, we were all at Lindholm Family Services when they opened their doors for dinner. The shelter served more than a thousand meals a day, to a clientele that was everything you might expect, and some things you might not.

  There were families with kids, and people who talked to themselves, and folks who looked like they just came from an office somewhere, all eating shoulder to shoulder at long cafeteria tables.

  For the first hour or so, it was a frustrating repeat of the day before. None of the people who were willing to talk to me recognized Mitch’s picture or the old file photo I’d pulled of Steven Hennessey, aka Denny. And some people wouldn’t talk to the police at all.

  One guy in particular seemed to be in his own world. He was sitting at the end of a table, turned away from everyone else, with his tray balanced on the corner. He mumbled to himself as I came over.

  “Mind if I talk to you for a second
?” I said.

  His lips stopped moving, but he didn’t look up, so I held the picture down low where he could see it.

  “We’re trying to get a message to this guy, Mitch Talley. There’s been a death in the family he needs to know about.”

  This is the kind of half-truth you have to be comfortable with to get things done sometimes. We were all in street clothes today, too. Jackets and ties can be counterproductive in a place like this.

  The man shook his head. “No,” he said, too fast. “No. Sorry. I don’t recognize him.” He had a thick accent that sounded eastern European to me.

  “Take another look,” I said. “Mitch Talley? Usually hangs out with this guy named Denny. Any of it ringing a bell? We could use your help.”

  He looked a little longer and ran a hand absently over his salt-and-pepper beard, which was matted halfway to dreadlocks.

  “No,” he said again, without ever looking up. “I’m sorry. I do not know him.”

  I didn’t push it. “All right,” I said. “I’ll be around for a while if you think of anything.”

  As soon as I stepped away, he went right back to the mumbling, and on a hunch, I kept an eye on him.

  Sure enough, I’d barely started talking to the next person before the mumbler got up to leave. When I looked over, his tray was still there — along with most of his dinner.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I called out loudly enough that a few people around him turned their heads.

  But not him. He just kept going.

  “Sir?”

  I was moving now, and that caught Sampson’s attention. The mumbling guy was clearly making a beeline for the exit. When he finally did look back, realizing we were coming after him, he broke into a run. He shot straight out the double doors and onto Second Street ahead of us.

  Chapter 85

  OUR RUNNER WAS HALFWAY to the corner by the time Sampson and I got outside. He’d looked maybe early fifties to me, but he was moving pretty well.

  “Damnit, damnit, damnit —”

  Foot pursuit sucks. It just does. Never mind all the variables — it’s nothing you want to be doing at the end of a long day. But here Sampson and I were, tearing ass down Second Street after a crazy man.

  I shouted a few times for him to stop, but that obviously wasn’t in his game plan.

  The rush-hour traffic on D had bunched up enough that he made it across the street fairly easily.

  I cut right behind him between a taxi and an EMCOR truck, while a couple of guys on lawn chairs outside the shelter shouted after us.

  “Go, buddy! Go!”

  “Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig!”

  I was guessing they weren’t talking to me.

  He ran straight on, into the little park by the Labor Department. It cut a diagonal between the high-rise buildings toward Indiana Avenue, but he never got that far.

  The ground was terraced here, and when he lurched up and over the first retaining wall, it slowed him down just enough. I got one foot on the wall and both my hands on his shoulders, and we came down hard in a patch of ground cover. At least we weren’t on the sidewalk anymore.

  Right away, he started scrabbling with me, trying to pull free, then trying to bite me. Sampson got there and put a knee down on his back while I stood up.

  “Sir, stop moving!” John shouted at him as I started a quick pat down.

  “No! No! Please!” he yelled from the ground. “I haven’t done anything! I am an innocent person!”

  “What’s this?”

  I had pulled a knife out of the side pocket of his filthy barn coat. It was sheathed in a toilet paper roll and wrapped in duct tape.

  “You can’t take that!” he said. “Please! It is my property!”

  “I’m not taking it,” I told him. “I’m just holding on to it for now.”

  We got him up on his feet and walked him back over to the wall to sit down.

  “Sir, do you need medical attention?” I asked. There was an abrasion on his forehead from where we went down. I felt a little bad about that. Trembling here in front of me, he just seemed kind of pathetic. Never mind that he’d been holding his own until a minute ago, trying to bite off one of my fingers.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am not required to talk to you. You have no reason to arrest me.”

  His English was good, if a little stilted. And he obviously wasn’t as out of it as I’d thought, although he still wouldn’t look at us.

  “How about this?” I said, indicating the knife. I handed it to Sampson. “Look, you just ran away from your dinner. You want a hot dog? Something to drink?”

  “I am not required to talk to you,” he said again.

  “Yeah, I got that. Coke okay?”

  He nodded at the ground.

  “One hot dog, one Coke,” Sampson said, and headed over to the carts on D Street. I could see Siegel and his guys on the sidewalk, waiting to find out what had happened. At least Max was keeping his distance; that was a welcome change.

  “Listen,” I said. “You notice I haven’t asked for your name, right? All I want is to find the guy in the picture, and I think you know something you’re not saying.”

  “No,” he insisted. “No. No. I am just a poor man.”

  “Then why did you run?” I said.

  But he wouldn’t answer, and I couldn’t force him. He was right about that. My hunch wasn’t enough to detain him.

  Besides, there were other ways to get information.

  When Sampson came back with the hot dog, the guy ate it in three bites, downed the soda, and stood up.

  “I am free to go, yes?” he said.

  “Take my card,” I said. “Just in case you change your mind.”

  I gave it to him, and Sampson handed back the knife in the cardboard sheath. “You don’t need money for a call,” I said. “Just tell any cop on the street you want to talk to me. And stay out of trouble with that blade, okay?”

  There was no good-bye, of course. He pocketed the knife and headed straight up D Street while we stood there watching him go.

  “Talk to me, Sampson,” I said. “Are we thinking the same thing here?”

  “I think we are,” he said. “He knows something. I’m just going to let him get around the corner first.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll ask Siegel to finish up at the shelter. Then I want to get this Coke can over to the lab, see if it tells us anything.”

  Our mystery man had just reached First Street. He turned left and continued on out of sight.

  “All right, that’s my cue,” Sampson said. “I’ll call if there’s anything to tell.”

  “Same here,” I said, and we split up.

  Chapter 86

  WALKING AWAY from the police detectives, Stanislaw Wajda could feel his heart still bucking in his chest. This wasn’t over yet. No. No. Not at all.

  In fact, when he reached the corner and chanced a quick look back, they were still watching. They’d probably follow him, too.

  It had been a mistake to run like that. It only made things worse. Now there was nothing to do but keep moving. Yes. Figure it out later. Yes.

  The grocery cart was right where he’d left it, in an alcove at the back of Lindholm. You weren’t supposed to use the back door here. In fact, very few people seemed to even know about it.

  The alcove was just big enough to tuck the cart away — out of sight of the street — when he couldn’t keep an eye on it himself. He pulled it out now and proceeded up the road, slowly and cautiously, but ready to run again if he had to.

  It felt good to move. The walking eased his mind. And the sound of the cart rattling and shimmying over the sidewalk was a kind of white noise that blocked out the other sounds of the city. It created a space where he could think clearly and focus on his work, and what to do next.

  Now, if he could just remember where he’d been when he left off.

  Mersenne 44, was that it? Yes. That was it. Mersenne 44. r />
  It came back slowly, shimmering into his mind as if out of the shadows, until he could see it clearly.

  See it and speak it.

  The words tumbled out of him when they came, but quietly, in nothing more than a mumble. Nothing anyone would overhear, just enough to help make the number real once again.

  “Two to the thirty-two million, five hundred eighty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-seventh,” he said.

  Yes. That was it precisely. Mersenne 44. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  He picked up his pace now and continued up the street without looking back again.

  Chapter 87

  IT WAS QUIET at the Fingerprint Analysis Section when I got there. The only person in the lab was one of the civilian staff, an analyst named Bernie Stringer who usually went by “Strings.” I could hear the heavy metal on his iPod blaring away while he worked.

  “I hope that’s not priority!” he shouted, and then pulled out an earbud. “Narcotics is already kicking my ass here.” There were two full boxes of slides on the bench next to him.

  “I just need some prints off of this,” I said, holding the Coke can up by the lip.

  “Tonight?” he said.

  “Yeah, actually. Now.”

  “Knock yourself out, man. Cyanoacrylate’s in the drawer by the fuming chamber.”

  That was fine by me. I like working in the lab every once in a while. It makes me feel smarter, even if printing is Forensics 101.

  I went over to the fuming chamber and set the can upright inside. Then I put a few drops of cyanoacrylate, which is really just superglue, on a dish and sealed it all up to heat for a while.

  In about fifteen minutes, I had a nice four-print set standing out on the surface of the can. Sampson’s paw print was there, too, but it was easy enough to differentiate, sizewise.

  I dusted the ones I wanted with black powder and took a few pictures, just in case.