Page 8 of Dead Fall

No other country on earth empowered the individual the way America did. Nowhere were the rights and liberties of citizens so well protected. There were times he shuddered to think about what his life might have been like had he been born in another country, especially one not nearly so free.

That thought was playing out in his mind as he pulled up behind a row of squad cars double-parked in front of a luxury condo building in the popular Washington, D.C., neighborhood known as the West End.

Getting out of his vehicle, he made sure his credentials were visible and headed toward the “LZ.”

The term was short for “Landing Zone,” a macabre law enforcement reference used to designate the spot where a body had come to rest after falling off a roof, from a balcony, or out of a window. Since Carolan couldsee the tent he had requested, as well as a bunch of Metro cops standing around, he didn’t need anyone to point him in the right direction.

After signing the perimeter log, he stepped inside the tent and made eye contact with the young FBI agent who had called and woken him up.

Jennifer Fields was one of the youngest and most accomplished agents at CROS. When Carolan had inherited Quick Silver, she was the first person he wanted transferred to his team.

Fields had been born and raised in Harlem. Her dad had been a cop and her mother a nurse. They had worked their asses off to give their daughter an exceptional education. She attended Penn and graduated with a double major in criminology and finance. She was a remarkable student who sat atop the dean’s list every semester, and the FBI had made her an offer before she’d even been fitted for her cap and gown.

She impressed all of her instructors at Quantico. On top of being smart as hell, she was a natural athlete who blew away many of her male classmates during physical training.

Known for crushing a second, unrequired workout at the end of the day, she caught the attention of some of the hard-core members of the Hostage Rescue Team, who invited her to participate in extra training with them. Suffice it to say she left the FBI Academy with a rather special set of skills.

Having spent her high school and college summers working in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, she had learned a lot about its Russian immigrant community. And while she had to fight her way up through the ranks at the Bureau to get there, CROS was a perfect fit for her.

What’s more, Carolan was the perfect boss—or at least he was proving to be. As soon as he had been installed as the new director of Quick Silver, he had made her his number two. And it wasn’t some bullshit, politically correct promotion because he needed a woman or a person of color. Joe made it clear that he not only believed in her, but also, in entrusting her with such responsibility, he expected a hell of a lot from her. Fields had assured him that she was up to the task.

As he walked up to her under the tent, she handed him a Styrofoam to-go cup. “Iced Caramel Macchiato. Seven pumps of syrup. Just the way you like it,” she said, loud enough for the cops standing nearby to hear.

“Even has my name on it,” he replied, accepting the cup. Across the front, written in black Sharpie and massive caps, was the wordBOSSwith a heart drawn around it.

While Carolan could be a detail-oriented hard-ass, he appreciated a good sense of humor. The darker, the better, as it was a sign of high intelligence.

The ability to make light of tough situations was a necessary trait in law enforcement. If you couldn’t make jokes to let off some of the pressure, you were going to lose your mind.

Fields had nothing to worry about in that area. She had a great sense of humor and could go dark with the best of them. It was just one of a long list of reasons Carolan had selected her for the team.

Taking a sip of the hot black coffee she had handed him, he nodded at the tarp covering the body and said, “Okay, take me through it.”

Fields removed the notepad from her back pocket and began reading: “Dimitri Burman. Forty-eight. Estonian-born U.S. citizen. Software guy. Made a fortune in Moscow and St. Petersburg before moving back to the U.S. about seven years ago.”

“Married? Divorced?”

“Single,” she answered. “No kids. Lived in the penthouse on the eleventh floor.”

“Let’s look at the body.”

Fields followed him over, then bent down and pulled back the tarp.

Carolan set down his coffee, accepted a pair of latex gloves, and took his time studying the corpse.

“What personal items did he have on him?” he asked, looking at the man’s shoes before continuing his examination.

“Let’s see,” Fields replied, looking through several evidence bags that had been placed in a clear plastic tub on a nearby folding table. “One Rolex watch, one cracked cell phone, one key chain with various keys, and approximately eleven hundred dollars cash.”

“No wallet?”

Fields double-checked the bin, as well as the evidence log. “Nope, no wallet.”

A missing wallet, if in fact it had completely vanished, was animportant detail. But there was another reason the wallet’s absence was salient, something that was gnawing at the back of Carolan’s mind. He just couldn’t remember what it was.

He decided to shift to another topic. “Have you been up to his condo yet?”

“Not yet. Metro was still processing it when I got here.”

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