Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) Read online

  “Okay.” He turned to his client. The man was still looking blankly ahead, at nothing in particular. His chest was rising and falling more than Mankowitz had ever noticed. Relief. That had to be it. “John. Let’s go.”

  The two men followed a small phalanx of marshals to a service elevator out of view of the press. It took them directly to the restricted area of the basement parking garage.

  “He has transport, right?” the big marshal asked Mankowitz.

  “I have everything I need,” Barrish told the big African, turning away and walking toward the blue Aerostar waiting with its side door open.

  “I tried to tell him it would be better to have some protection leaving here,” Mankowitz told the marshal.

  “No skin off my back,” the marshal said, thinking to himself that a lynching by that very large and very dark crowd out front might be very appropriate, considering...

  John Barrish climbed into the van and took the middle seat as the door was closed. His wife grabbed him around the neck in a hug that was so tight it was almost painful.

  “John. John.” Louise Barrish kissed her husband’s neck and started to cry. “John. You’re coming home.”

  John felt the warmth of her tears rolling onto his cheeks. He reached up with both hands, gripped her shoulders, and broke the hold she had on him. “Get off of me!”

  Louise fell away as her husband pushed her toward the large tinted window on the van’s left side. Her hands came up to her face, the tears falling upon each trembling finger.

  John looked to her with the eyes she remembered. They also contained the look she had wished would be gone. Somehow gone. “This isn’t the time.”

  “Pop.” Toby Barrish looked back to his father from the passenger seat, his lazy right eye askew. “You look strong.”

  “Always,” John answered, happy more than anything to see his two sons after so long a separation. “Stanley, where are we going?”

  The younger Barrish boy adjusted the rearview mirror to see his father. “We have a place.”

  A place, obviously provided by his one remaining benefactor. Four walls and a roof. Not a home. That had been taken by the State. Still, it would serve the purpose. A place to eat, to sleep, to think. And to prepare.

  “Do we have it yet?” Barrish asked his eldest son.

  Toby looked back, smiling. “Freddy picked it up today. I’m gonna get it from him tomorrow.”

  “Good,” John said, his head nodding confidently.

  Stanley glanced at his father in the mirror as he wound the van up the serpentine driveway to the street. “So we’re going to do it?”

  John gave his son a look that caused him to turn away from the reflection of the man who’d given him life. He flashed on the seemingly endless days spent penned in by concrete and steel. “Yes, Stanley. Now more than ever.”

  It was eagerness, Toby realized. And anger. His father was a master at harnessing the power of the latter, in himself as much as in others.

  “There’s a bunch of niggers out there,” Toby warned his father.

  John snapped his head toward his eldest son, which was enough of an admonition.

  “Sorry, Pop,” Toby said, knowing exactly what his transgression was. “Africans.” Many people referred to his father as a refined racist because he didn’t run around in a white hood saying “nigger” every time he opened his mouth. But Toby saw no difference in the terms. African. Nigger. Coon. It didn’t matter, though he respected his father too much to challenge his views on the subject. And in due course it would not matter. Soon there would be an America populated by Americans, and what anyone called someone with an excess of skin pigment would be up to them. The Africans would be back banging their drums and taking Swahili names for themselves. The Mexicans would be back in tortilla heaven. The Japs and the towelheads would all go home. America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would be white, as it was meant to be. Soon. Sooner than anyone could imagine.

  “You might want to duck down, Dad,” Stanley suggested. “We’re going out the side but there might be cameras.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” John declared.

  “Sit tall, Pop,” Toby said as light from the street above washed over the driveway ahead.

  “I just thought—”

  “You thought wrong, Stan,” Toby said, cutting his brother’s words off.

  The Aerostar crested the driveway and pulled through a line of police onto the blocked-off street. Cameras were everywhere, but only a few demonstrators had figured out that the front of the Federal Building might be a symbolically fine place to show their anger, but the object of that anger would be nowhere near it There were some signs, plenty of obscene gestures and shouting, and lines of hypocritical police holding back those with vengeance in their hearts. They would arrest John Barrish for his beliefs, and they would protect him because of the same. It was a duality they would come to regret in very short order.

  “I’m glad you’re going to be with us for this, Pop,” Toby admitted. His father had conceived the entire plan some time before, nurturing all the elements until everything was in place. Even his incarceration hadn’t halted the preparations. He had seen to that, seen to everything being able to go ahead without him. Still, he deserved to be part of it. “You get to enjoy it all.”

  John Barrish stared straight ahead at downtown traffic, not really smiling, but feeling something beyond pleasure. It was desire. A burning desire that nothing could match. “Not ‘enjoy,’ Toby. Savor.”

  It was the closest words could come, but words meant very little now. Talk was no longer cheap in John Barrish’s mind—it was without value. Action was the only measure of expression worth a damn.

  They have no idea...

  ONE

  First Light

  You would have thought that the Super Bowl was being played just two miles from 1212 Riverside by the number of satellite trucks lining Avenue B.

  “The vultures are out,” Frankie observed as she eased the Bureau Chevy along the crowded roadway.

  “They smell flesh,” Art said, regretting his words as they became prophetic. “Damn.”

  “You’re the one with the high-profile face,” Frankie said, just before the first mic-wielding reporter reached Art through the passenger-side window.

  “You’re Agent Art Jefferson, aren’t you?” a harried female reporter asked. Asked, really, didn’t fully convey the force of her demand.

  Well, if they could exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. Art could use his to push a few buttons. “What is it?” he asked, looking at his watch. “About eleven o’clock? Hey, the news starts in a few minutes. Got anything good?”

  The reporter’s face switched from that of a determined professional to that of a teenager in disbelief at the lame comment her parent had just made. “Come on, Jefferson. Give us a statement.”

  The “us” had pressed up behind and around her. Cameramen circled to the front of the car and the sides, bathing it in a dazzling glare.

  “Watch your toes!” Frankie cautioned the news crews as she crept through the pack. “Feral dogs. Man.”

  “No statement yet,” Art informed them.

  “Is it true there’s a spill of a chemical used in military weapons research?” a reporter asked.

  “We’ll have a statement later.” They hated this, Art knew, being told no! like children. And, of course, they would react as such. But he really couldn’t give them much more than they already knew. His and Frankie’s quick stop at the L.A. office hadn’t yielded much information, and the news they’d listened to on the drive north only mentioned a major chemical accident, possibly involving hazardous materials stolen from an Army depot in New Mexico. What really was going on was yet to be discovered.

  “Why are there Army personnel here?” the closest reporter asked, pressing the attempt for information.

  “Later.”

  “Jefferson! Come on!”

  Early in his career with the Bur
eau, contact with the media had infuriated him. Now he knew how to play the game, and how to win. It was time for the trump card. “No comment. Let’s get in there, partner.”

  Frankie gave the Chevy a bit more momentum and pressed through the pack, stopping at the first roadblock a hundred yards ahead. There, their identification was checked by the four sheriffs deputies manning that checkpoint. After being allowed in they drove another half-mile on Avenue B to the intersection of Riverside. Where the roads met, a sheriffs department patrol car sat blocking the streets’ north and west lanes of travel. A deputy, windmilling his arm as he stood in mid-intersection, directed them right onto Riverside. Heading south now, they could plainly see the glow from the incident command post ahead. Far ahead.

  “This isn’t like any perimeter I’ve ever seen,” Frankie commented. “It’s got to be two miles as the crow flies.”

  A chemical accident, Art thought. Must be some nasty stuff if it’s true.

  “Slow down, partner,” Art said, seeing the orange-vested deputies standing at roadside. The lights of the Chevy painted them as the agents neared, causing the wide reflective stripe on the vest’s front to fluoresce and mark their positions. There were a half-dozen visible, spaced fifty or so yards apart, each holding a road worker’s sign that read SLOW. To that admonition they added hand gestures, pressing downward on the air before them. The message was clear.

  Frankie slowed the car to under fifteen miles per hour and continued on to the incident command post. What had been just a half dome of light on the horizon became much more as they neared. Portable light standards, their self-contained generators humming, ringed an area about a quarter the size of a football field. Two trailers were nose to rear on one side, one each from the sheriffs and fire departments. A dozen fire engines lined Riverside opposite the trailers, and, parked in the trampled sage off the road were more vehicles, including several with the familiar G plates assigned to government agencies. These also had the mark of the United States Army stenciled on their doors.

  When you were a cop, parking was no problem. Frankie simply pulled across Riverside into the empty oncoming lane and stopped, leaving her flashers on.

  “There’s Lou,” Frankie said.

  Lou Hidalgo, the assistant special agent in charge of the L.A. office, saw their arrival and broke away from a small group he was part of to greet them.

  “Lou, how are you?”

  “Art.” The A-SAC, his face drawn, met the two agents at the front of the Chevy. “We’ve got a bad one.”

  Agents, especially those in command, usually referred to situations as “tough” or “sticky.” For the A-SAC to call this one otherwise set it apart more than just descriptively.

  “How so?” Art asked.

  “You heard the chemical spill story, right?”

  “On the way up,” Art replied.

  “And the reporters asked us when we pulled up,” Frankie added.

  “Some road worker who dropped off a bunch of signs overheard something and then shot his mouth off,” Hidalgo explained. “Fortunately he only heard part of a conversation.”

  “So, was Allen cooking up some more explosives?” That would explain the massive perimeter, Art theorized, and Freddy had certainly shown a fondness for things that made noise.

  “I wish,” Hidalgo said honestly.

  Wish? “What was he doing, Lou?”

  Hidalgo looked over his shoulder to a spot of light a mile off in the distance. “Somebody over there was making nerve gas.”

  Frankie looked to her partner just a second before he did the same. “Nerve gas?” she said. “What do you... Like the military stuff?”

  Lou nodded. “There’s an Army guy here who knows the technical stuff, but, from what this cop brain of mine can figure, yeah. Like the military stuff.”

  “Jesus,” Art said softly. He shivered briefly, wishing it was from the chill in the night air. “So there must have been an accident.”

  “That’s what I gather, but only some Army guys and a couple of firefighters have been up there. The Army is keeping a tight seal on the whole area, and on the site in particular.” Hidalgo paused for a second. He was shaken by all this, the agents could see. Very shaken. “Art, there are more dead in there than just Allen.”

  “Who?”

  “Some cops. Paramedics. Someone else in the house. From what we can piece together no one knew what was going on when they showed up on-site,” Hidalgo explained. “There was a nine-eleven call about someone collapsing outside the house. Two deputies were first on scene. Then another arrived and saw his buddies down. He went in. Then a county fire rig and a paramedic unit pulled up together. One of the paramedics and a fire captain went to help them, then they went down. Thank God the other paramedic sounded a warning. He had haz-mat training and held the others back.”

  Art saw that Lou was emotional. “Are you okay, Lou?”

  “Yeah. I’m all right.” Hidalgo sniffled, then continued. “County fire got a haz-mat team out and they detected something nasty, then they asked for help from the Army. They brought in a gas detector and got a positive. Then all this happened. Three-mile perimeter. Reporters. This is big.”

  “But how did they ID Allen?” Frankie asked. “He wouldn’t have been running around with anything that had his name on it.”

  “His face,” Hidalgo answered. “The haz-mat team ran a cable from a camera at the scene to a truck a quarter-mile out. They did a tape of everything, all the victims, and then brought it to the ICP so they could identify the bodies.”

  “So they called you down to ID Allen,” Frankie said. She watched a single tear roll down from Hidalgo’s eye.

  “No. They called me down here because one of the firefighters that went down was my son.”

  “Oh my God, Lou,” Art said. Frankie could only bring a hand up to cover her mouth.

  “I saw Luis lying there, and I recognized Allen on the ground next to him.” Hidalgo stopped for a moment to regain his composure. He was a senior, Luis, his oldest boy, being his namesake. Now that was all gone. “Luis was trying to help that scum when he died. Can you believe that?”

  “Lou, I’m so sorry,” Frankie said, stepping closer and placing a hand on the A-SAC’s back.

  “Yeah. Me too.” Hidalgo took a handkerchief out and wiped his nose. “Jerry said to get you guys up here since Allen was yours.”

  Jerry Donovan, the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office, had proven one thing in the time Art had worked with him: he didn’t like Art. But he also didn’t let that prevent him from assigning the more difficult cases to him. Maybe it was Donovan’s form of quiet warfare against him, but Art had learned to live with it since William Killeen, the former SAC, had packed it in for a retirement consisting of trout-filled Montana streams.

  “God, Lou, is there anything we can do?” Art asked. Actually it was a plea from a man feeling helpless. You could shoot a bad guy, but what could you do for another man’s pain?

  “No. It’s had a while to sink in now,” Hidalgo said. “I’m almost glad Marie isn’t here anymore. Luis was her favorite. I’d never tell any of my others that, but I knew. You could see it when they were together.” Again he paused. “I guess they are again.”

  Breast cancer had taken his wife two years earlier. Now this. “Lou, you should go home,” Art suggested. “What about your kids?”

  “My sister is with them. They don’t know yet.”

  “We can get someone to drive you home,” Frankie offered.

  “I can drive myself. I just wanted to wait until you got here.”

  “Then go now, Lou,” Art said. “Go to your kids. We can take it from here.”

  “All right,” Hidalgo agreed. “Up in the forward trailer is the guy you need to see. He’s Army. I can’t remember his name.”

  “Okay. Go home. We’ll call you later if there’s anything you need to know.”

  “Thanks, Art. Frankie.” Hidalgo gave her hand a squeeze before walking
away to his car.

  “I can’t believe this, Art. First his wife, and now his son.” Frankie’s mind flashed the face of her little girl briefly. How would she survive losing Cassie? How?

  They could stand there, watching the taillights of Lou’s car fade as he drove away, and dwell on the pain and sorrow. But there was a job to do. That there was now a very personal element attached only made it more important to get to it.

  “Come on, partner.”

  The agents went to the forward trailer, a solid white rectangle on wheels that was still attached to the sheriffs department pickup that had towed it there. They walked up the foldout steps into the trailer. Four people were inside, two at a communications console and two standing at a wall-mounted map. One of the latter wore an olive-drab jumpsuit with rank insignia stitched on the epaulets.

  “Excuse me,” Art said. Only the two men at the map turned. “Agents Jefferson and Aguirre from the L.A. FBI.”

  “One minute,” the military officer—a captain, Art thought—said, then turned back to the sheriffs department captain he was standing with. “If the wind gets past fifteen knots you’re going to have to evacuate this area.” A finger tapped on the map. “Remember: fifteen knots and that area gets cleared. Don’t wait for my word. Just do it.” The officer turned back to the agents. “Sorry. It’s been pretty busy around here.”

  “That’s what we gather. I’m Art Jefferson. This is Frankie Aguirre.”

  “Hi,” Frankie said.

  “I’m Captain Orwell. Don’t ask the first name; my parents were cruel.”

  Captain George Orwell? That must have been hell for him during basic, Art thought. “We just sent our boss home.”

  “I’m sorry about his kid,” Orwell said. “He never had a chance.”

  “That’s what we gather,” Frankie said. “Nerve gas?”

  “The worst kind. You want to take a look?”

  “You mean...”

  Orwell looked to Art. His face might be a chocolate brown, but it was a shade lighter than the second before. “It’s safe. At least as safe as it can be. We’ll get you suited up. Come on.”