Page 48 of The Night Of
There had better be a fucking nuclear war happening somewhere, goddamn it. I swiped to answer, growling, “What?”
“Special Agent Sean Avery?”
“Yeah?” No one who called me on my cell used my full title. It wasn’t my office line. “Who the fuck are you?”
“This is FBI Director Eric Silva. You told my agent you wanted in on the forensics?”
So Mr. Clean was working with the director of the FBI. I looked back at Jonathan, still asleep, and then grabbed my borrowed boxers and moved to the bedroom door. I slid them on at the landing, the phone jammed between my ear and my shoulder. “Yeah. I’m on assignment from President Sharp—”
“We know who you’re working for and what your assignment is,” Silva said, cutting me off. “We have something to show you. Meet us outside. We’ve got a car on the street.”
“Meet you on the street? Where? Where the fuck are you?”
“Outside the Naval Observatory. We’re parked at the end of the teardrop.”
I pulled the curtains back on the window overlooking the front drive, the long ribbon of concrete heading toward the guard shack and the teardrop-shaped loop around a gnarled tree from the 1880s. There was a dark SUV parked beneath the thick branches, almost invisible in the pitch-black shadows. I caught the gleam of the windshield, a flicker of moonlight falling through a branch, there and then gone.
“You’re looking right at us. See you in three minutes.”
The line clicked. The FBI director had hung up on me.
“Prick,” I mumbled. I dropped the curtains and slipped back into Jonathan’s bedroom. I didn’t have time for a shower, but I couldn’t go out like this, smelling like I’d spent half the night fucking the president, who happened to be the love of my life. I wiped myself down as best I could with a damp towel, borrowed another pair of Jonathan’s boxers, and then slid on a fresh pair of pants and a borrowed T-shirt from Jonathan’s dresser. I texted Jonathan as I watched him sleep, telling him where I was going and that I’d be back. There wasn’t going to be another misunderstanding between us, or hurt because of things unsaid. I kissed the back of his head, grabbed my gun and my badge, and headed downstairs.
I didn’t look down until I was unlocking the back door. EUCOM HQ was written across my chest, stenciled on the gray cotton. Fuck me. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out where this shirt came from. I almost went back and changed. Well, it wasn’t like I was seeing anyone other than the FBI director.
The Observatory was buttoned up for the night, the gates locked, the guard shack secure, the perimeter locked down. A team of Secret Service agents and uniformed officers guarded the place, their numbers tripled since Baker’s death. The FBI director must have bullied his way onto the grounds, pulling rank on the guards. I’d have to talk to Nguyen about that. The uniforms weren’t supposed to let anyone but us on the grounds after the place was secure. Not even—maybe especially even—the FBI director.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and came around the back of the house and the far side of the pool before walking across the front lawn. Behind me, a light winked on in the master bedroom. Jonathan was awake. I’d left his cell on my pillow, my text message on the screen. He’d know where I was. Still, I walked backward, looking to see if I could catch a glimpse of him moving behind the curtained windows. I saw nothing.
A car door opened, and a dark shape stepped out of the driver’s seat of the FBI director’s SUV. The man was huge, a hulking bruiser with a shaved head. I recognized him: Mr. Clean. Grinning, I clapped him on the shoulder as he opened the rear door and gestured for me to slide in. His face was strangely blank. I’d have thought he’d be happier to see me again.
Director Silva waited in the back seat, dressed in a suit even at this ungodly hour of the morning. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Baker’s death. The furrows in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes were etched deep into his weathered face. His silver hair was limp. The knot of his tie was loose, almost scandalously so for an FBI agent. His cuffs were done, though, and his pants looked like they’d just come out of a press. Fucking FBI.
“Agent Avery.”
“Director Silva.” I crossed my arms over my chest and didn’t offer to shake his hand.
“You’ve already met Agent Keith Warner. Keith is one of my best men. He’s my right hand.” He nodded to Mr. Clean, who was glowering through the tinted window at me. He looked like a bulldog ready to charge.
“Yeah, he’s a real boy Friday. So. What do you have for me?”
“We have the forensics from the gun.” Silva’s eyes caught the shine of a streetlight out on Massachusetts Ave. “What do you know about the weapon President Baker used?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I haven’t been able to find out where he got it. I was hoping you guys would have more luck. Were you able to pull anything from the registration? Any history of the weapon?”
A muscle in Silva’s cheek twitched. “The revolver is old. It was assembled from the parts of at least three other revolvers of the same make and model. We’ve tracked down the manufacturing date for two of them: 1921.”
“Sounds like a drop gun.” Something intended to be left behind, dropped at the scene, an untraceable weapon with no provenance. And a dead end for cops when they ran the serial number. “What about fingerprints?”
“We found Baker’s fingerprints on the barrel and the cylinder, and on the five bullets inside the chambers.”
I waited. “What about the hammer? The grip? Hell, the trigger? If he was holding the gun in a two-handed grip around the cylinder, he’d have had to push back the trigger with his thumb.” Not that there necessarily would be prints left on the trigger, but to have prints on only half the gun was strange. “What did you find there?”
“We didn’t find any prints on the hammer, grip, or the trigger.”
I blinked at him. “What are you saying? Are you saying it was wiped?”
Silva’s jaw clenched. “I’m saying there were no prints on the outside of the gun, except for on the barrel and the cylinder. And those prints were Baker’s.”
